beneath the stream

http://www.beneaththestream.com/feed.xml

27. Neil Oliver ~ the land tells us who we are

September 9, 2020

We are delighted to be joined in this episode by archaeologist, historian, author and presenter Neil Oliver, who talks with us about the places where we can be reminded of things that have affected every version of humanity and can imagine we reach through the thin divide between us and the past. Places where we understand that humanity is a work in progress; that Nature is not finished with us.

Since the last ice age the landscape has become a priceless time capsule preserving moments of human history. Our story is in the land. We can read it and touch it; the land can tell us who we are and how we got here and, as Neil says, here we can discover “the love and grief that our ancestors have left, or have been put, in the ground; no more potent magic is available to us human beings.”

Neil Oliver’s website
Book: The History of the British Isles in 100 Places
Podcast: Love Letter to the British Isles

INTRODUCTORY AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC: Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Box Hill, Surrey
A A Gill
Joanna Lumley
Homo heidelbergensis
Iona
Westminster Abbey
Ness of Brodgar
Céide Fields
Torr An Aba, Iona
Vedbæck, Denmark
Fernand Braudel
Olduvai
E O Wilson
Happisburgh footprints
River Thames
The Wash
Homo antecessor
BBC Coast
King Solomon
Fife
Walkers Crisps
Mesolithic
Loch Doon
Chert
Smalls Lighthouse
Association of Lighthouse Keepers
Orford Lighthouse
Llandudno copper mines

26. Wild Swimming with Karen Parry

August 8, 2020

Entering wild water we have the chance to become one with the river, the kingfisher, the sea, the seal. Or instead the visceral thrill of breaking the surface ice can leave us, in Karen’s words, “screamy flappy and trying to quieten the survival part of your brain”. It all depends it seems on what intention you set out with - a personal wild experience with no safety forms to complete.

With Karen of the glorious Swim Wild podcast as our guide, we explore how everyone comes to wild swimming for different reasons. How magical places and times of day are enhanced simply by being held by the water. As she says, each wild swim is unique and once it trickles through your fingers it’s gone, you can’t hold it, and there its no other recourse than to plan your next one.

Swim Wild podcast
~ the podcast for the wild swimming community. Interviewing members of your tribe about iconic swims, personal challenges, the friends they have made, the impact on their health and well being and finding a deeper connection with the natural world. Testing out the theory that, whenever and wherever we swim outside, we "emerge from the water better versions of ourselves".

Luka Bloom https://www.lukabloom.com

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Lake District, Cumbria UK
Great North Swim
Gilly McArthur
Jini Reddy, Wanderland
WhaleFest
Sunderland
Terns
Kingfisher

25. Wild Food with Eva Gunnare

July 10, 2020

Food can be about more than taste, it can be about the gathering and that when you ‘spend a lot of time in Nature you have another relationship with it’. In this episode we learn much, especially about the uses of Arctic plants, from a joyous conversation with Eva Gunnare, who has made her home in Jokkmokk, a place that is the heart of indigenous Sami culture in Sweden.

Unlike may of us, the Sami have had a different connection to the land: they use it but do not own it and work together to make a living. Indigenous peoples can have deep-rooted traditions of using plants for medicine and food - a tradition where the difference between survival food and base food is knowledge, knowledge that can be lost but can also be kept alive.

Eva guides tours and gives ‘taste performances’ and you can find out more at her website. Eva's 'Rose' song:

"My rose, my lily, I would like to share every day of my life with you. When I have become gray, I have spent every day of my life with you".

A love song that I usually dedicate my life in Jokkmokk with plants, people, forests and all.

All other music by Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Sámi
Jokkmokk
Stockholm
Kvikkjokk
Mountain Sorrel
Padjelanta National Park
Goahti turf hut
Alpine Bistort
Wild Angelica
Rowan
Birch
Rosebay Willowherb
Reindeer
Scots Pine
Cloudberry
Arctic Bramble
Bilberry
Bog Bilberry
Joik
Noiadi / Shaman
Nettles
Dandelion
Meadowsweet
Glögg

24. The Wolf

June 8, 2020

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf”, Aldo Leopold.
Prejudices, storytelling, popular culture and medieval demonisation populate the landscape we have created for the wolf; one that often bears little resemblance to the harsh and diverse landscapes they actually call home.

However, it is as a non-human creature that can seem all too human in its habits, that we humans seem to struggle the most. In this podcast we ponder the history of our relationship with wolves, the detail of how they live and where, the motifs we have created and how they live alongside us, and increasingly so. What is our future alongside wolves? What is the wolf’s future alongside us?

MUSIC BY COLIN WILLIAMS

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Yellowstone National Park
Theodore Roosevelt
Aldo Leopold
David Mech
Doug Smith
Jim Halfpenny
Dan Hartman
Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Rudyard Kipling
Nunamiut Inupiat of Alaska
Blackfoot Confederacy
Pawnee
Zuni
Fenrir
Lupa romana
Little Red Riding Hood
Aesop’s Fables
Three Little Pigs
Big Bad Wolf
Of Wolves and Men - Barry Lopez
The Great American Wolf - Bruce Hampton
The Grey - Liam Neeson
Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon
The Colour of Money
Sasquatch
An American Werewolf in London
Rietschen
Trophic cascade
E O Wilson
Ed Bangs

23. Interspecies ~ language between us?

May 12, 2020

“Long ago when animals could speak …”. In this episode we explore the boundary lines between non-human species and ourselves, boundary lines that many indigenous peoples - and our ancestors - did not see, and the ability, or not for communication to pass across that boundary. Today, for western society, it is only in children’s novels that animals can speak and be heard.

So much is invested by animals in the biology of communication and we can teach creatures about human communication but is it inconceivable that they have an ability to speak to us in their form? In maintaining scientific distance do we only allowed artists and musicians to show us that other species have ‘language’ and we should not treat the non-human as less than ourselves?

TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE BY DAVID ROTHENBERG

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

22. The River ~ all things merge into one

April 8, 2020

The human and the non-human claim rivers as their own. By the banks of the River Kennet we conjour with our thoughts and experiences of rivers waters, along with those of a diverse cast of that includes: Roger Deakin, Bruce Springsteen, Norman Maclean, Masuru Emoto, Feargal Sharkey, Icy Sedgewick, Lewis Mumford, Michael Harner, Bedřich Smetana and Joseph Conrad.

We take in the travels, contours, myths, creatures, stories and spirits of rivers such as the: Awash, Tigris, Indus, Yellow, Nile, Danube, Amazon, Alde, Namada, Volga, Boyne, Crystal, Laxa, Congo, Moldau, Tana, and Everglades. We fight over them, deify them, we use them and misuse them, and yet what runs through them, because of us and despite us, is the the lifeblood of our world.

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

21. Sea Voices: siren voices

March 8, 2020

How do we each respond to the environmental alarms that are being sounded by climate, nature, youth and the ocean? In this episode we feature interviews with Roger Hardy and Rhett Griffiths - wave-tossed thoughts from the tideline of the North Sea - plus a recording of Rhett’s epic poem ‘The Tipping Tide’.

Artists suggest different ways of seeing the world and, in response to these issues and as part of Siren Festival in 2019, artist and sculptor Roger Hardy created a powerful installation and multiple figurative sculptural piece on Aldeburgh beach entitled ‘Time and Tide’. He also created ‘Lookout’, a human figure gazing out at the sea from the South Beach Lookout. Here was also installed - in written form and in audio recoding - ‘The Tipping Tide’, a poem by Rhett Griffiths.

With extracts of Colin singing ‘Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy’, we explore what the sea says to us.

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Rhett Griffiths

poem - The Tipping Tide

Roger Hardy

Siren Festival
Roger Hardy’s ‘Time and Tide’
Roger Hardy and Rhett Griffiths’ 'Lookout' and 'Tipping Tide'
Lancaster
Dawlish
Aldeburgh Festival
Suffolk
Devi Singh
Heathcote Williams
Benjamin Britten
South Beach Lookout
Greta Thunberg
School strikes
Mudlarking
Felixstowe

20. Owl ~ mythology, motif and mastery

January 9, 2020

An archetype, a creature that we impose human ideas, ideals, values and characteristics upon. An unknowable, untouchable creature of the dark, whose call provokes fear and awe. A silent, surreptitious, living breathing feathered predator, whose beyond-human abilities allow it to master the night and span almost every habitat on Earth. Which of these is Owl for you?

As a family of birds, owls are all of these and more, and we explore their role in human culture from 30,000 years ago to the present day, as well as sharing tales of owl encounters around the globe. Evil messenger and harbinger of Death? Wise councillor and friend from childhood literature? Owl can be what each of us bring to it but is also master of its world.

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Forest Eagle Owl
Sinharaja, Sri Lanka
Pliny the Elder
Tengmalm’s Owl
Florence Nightingale
Pablo Picasso
Winnie the Pooh
Bagpuss
Tawny Owl
Eric Hosking
Ural Owl
Sir David Attenborough
Hawk Owl
Saariselkä, Finland
Little Owl
Chauvet Cave, France
Eurasian Scops Owl
Athena
Harry Potter
Western Screech Owl
Hopi
Sokoke Scops Owl, Kenya
Aztec god of death
Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
Barn Owl
William Wordsworth
Tlingit
Egyptian Book of the Dead
Great Horned Owl
Seminole Apache
The Secret Life of the Owl, John Lewis-Stempel
Great Grey Owl
Barred Owl
Minnesota, USA
Eurasian Eagle Owl
Eurasian Pygmy Owl
Pel’s Fishing Owl
Blakiston’s Fish Owl
Snowy Owl
Twin Peaks, David Lynch
The Messengers, Mike Clelland
Whitley Strieber
Owlman, Cornwall
The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel
Mark Twain
Elf Owl
Short-eared Owl
Denmark
Öland, Sweden
Goldcrest
“In a hole with an owl” The Fast Show

19. Wilderness 2 ~ is it beyond our reach?

December 11, 2019

“What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”, said writer Aldo Leopold, and in this episode we revisit what the human concept of wilderness means and where we might find it. Unmodified, unspoiled, on the edge? When in our history was the point when humans changed their view of wilderness?

With incidental music from Colin, we consider how wilderness means many differing things to different people - it is ‘home’ for some and hostile for others - and discuss what our view of it says about us. Is our definition derived from an International Union for the Conservation of Nature edict, or is it reflect - or even imposed - by the human approach to the way we make art? Ultimately, is wilderness still a valid notion or is it beyond our reach, beyond our gift to bestow, at a time when perhaps we need it more than ever?

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Jane Smith
Marco Brodde
Darren Rees
Kitty Jones
Chris Wallbank
Julian Hoffman
Beauchene Island, Falklands
Bay of Biscay, France & Spain
Pasvik Valley, Norway
Unst, Shetland
Spitsbergen
Hoo Peninsular, England
Dan Richards
IUCN wilderness definition 1B
Xia Gui - master chinese painter
Old Testament
Paleolithic art
Sicily rock art caves
Shan shui - master chinese painter
Thomas Moran
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (painting)
The Sublime (artistic movement)
Sewell Newhouse (trap maker)
Industrial Revolution
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (painting by J. M. W. Turner)
Smithsonian, Washington DC
Aboriginal Australian art
Shoshone
Ansel Adams
BBC Planet Earth
John Muir
Bushcraft
Aldo Leopold
Annie Dillard
Edward Abbey
Kvitøya Island, Svalbard
Barry Lopez
Of Wolves and Men
Jordan
Bedouin
All Things are Quite Silent (English folk song)
Franklin Expedition

18. The Sea ~ a prelude

November 10, 2019

The Sea ~ a prelude

Summoning the spirit of a forthcoming full podcast on The Sea, we tease with Rhett Griffiths reading an extract from his poem ‘The Tipping Tide’ (more of the poem and an interview to come), Colin singing ‘Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy’, plus wave-tossed thoughts recorded by the sea-washed shingle on the tideline of a grey North Sea.

All in rather lively STEREO by way of a change. Enjoy.