Greetings!
I hope this finds you well enjoying whatever you love to do at the end of August.
I have this feeling that listening matters a lot. I mean really listening, not just hearing or waiting to speak or filling the air with sound to bounce off our ears. I have also noticed that we often watch or read the news and yet it’s hard to hear what’s going on.
My antidote to all this non-listening is to seek out listening posts – actual voices of real people who understand things that I don’t. I listen to their stories. These are rarely served up by conventional media outlets (although those folks do make noise). At best, I consider mainstream news sources “lagging indicators” – I check on them to compare how they are parsing news compared to voices closer to the topic. I find the differences interesting but that’s another thread for another time.
When there are big, complex stories buzzing on social media timelines it seems especially critical to listen. For instance: “The Amazon is on Fire!” the headlines scream. What’s going on? What to do?
This calls for more listening to diverse voices. And they might not be voices screaming about fires, since the conditions that fanned the flames were established well before the news reached Leonardo DiCaprio’s Twitter feed along with other well-meaning English-speaking, northern hemisphere-based celebrities.
Sticking with the Amazon story for a moment, excellent listening opportunities abound in this Medicine for the Resistance podcast episode, Black in Brazil with Marina Nabão. The two Canadian hosts explore challenges faced by women of colour and Indigenous communities. Their guest is based in Brazil in a city far from the Amazon. And the timing of the recording – June 2019 – coincided with the release of the final report from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. The podcast hosts had a compelling introductory discussion before they turned the conversation towards the Brazilian context with their guest. This was not about “fires in the Amazon”. However, having listened to it weeks before the news of the fires broke in the English mainstream media, I found the connections to social policy, human rights, and the current Brazilian government’s level of dialogue on global issues were like an advanced briefing.
At the end of the day, the raging flames are one visible outcome of that which fuels fires in the rainforest: poverty, policy and polarization. Listening to people who know about this firsthand helps me understand both what’s happening today and how it relates to my community closer to home.
There are other voices I’ve found helpful, especially those exploring a deeper understanding of soil, forests, and biodiversity, as well as our relationships across cultures and generations. For example, Emergence magazine offers diverse voices in written and podcast format. Although I am an avid reader, I have far preferred the podcasted versions of these stories. If you’re looking for an entry point to this publication, I recommend Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System, or The language of the Master. Again, these are not about fires in the Amazon, per se. Yet the first one offers a rich view on the evolution of our food system from the perspective of corn, which is related to the story of soy, a crop tied to the fires. The second one takes us on a journey into how language is a tool that has shaped our worldview with unintended consequences, shining a little light on how we come to call those fires “wild”.
The new carbon removal marketplace, Nori hosts The Reversing Climate Change podcast, bringing different perspectives onto their show, far beyond the specifics of their blockchain based currency platform designed to incentivize climate-friendly farming practices. A recent episode that stands out for me had former US Republican Congressmen (and former climate change denier) Bob Inglis as a guest. Listening to someone with serious political experience, from a nation with influence over every other country’s climate and trade policies whether I like it or not, as he described his personal and professional evolution on one of the most pressing agendas of our time…well, it was informative! And it gave me hope that while there are serious issues to address (see, for example, fires in the Amazon) there is a lot of fundamental shifting going on, in good ways, even if the news cycles haven’t deemed it sexy enough to report on just yet.
Lastly for now – realizing there is a certain irony to writing about listening – for those who can listen in Portuguese (or who want to skim for the most amazing music choices!) I highly recommend the work of Paulina Chamorro who brings decades of radio broadcasting experience to her Vozes do Planeta podcast. Her recent episodes offer dialogue with a range of experts who provide data, context and commentary on the situation in the Amazon. For years she has been hosting a range of “voices of the planet” whose perspectives are well worth joining on a listening journey across rivers, oceans, forests, and cities throughout Latin America.
Enough writing! Time for a little more listening.
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
