Shows
beneath the stream36. The Sun ~ power over usAround the world there are over 100 human names that mean ‘The Sun’; perhaps the clearest evidence of us humans being inspired by, and acknowledging the significance of, a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star, a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core.
Its benevolence and its destructive capacity affect all aspects of our being, our cultures, our artworks, and take The Sun away and Polar Night makes us sad, detached, without energy, struggling to concentrate, struggling to stay awake. Give us too much of it and we cannot survive its power...
2024-07-0740 min
beneath the stream35. Tide ~ time & tidingsA high tide coming
Will eat the land
A tide no breakwaters can withstand.
Act 1 Scene 1 Peter Grimes, Op. 33 Benjamin Britten, libretto Montagu Slater
On a cold winter's day, we go down to a river that becomes the sea and, in an exploration of the complex human relations with the tide, we go with the ‘ebb and flow’, feel the currents, watch the high water mark and study what gets cast up. We are waiting to see what the tide brings and what it takes away; especially at this time in h...
2023-12-1341 min
beneath the stream34. Extinction ~ loss, hope and redemptionWe live in the age of the 6th Mass Extinction; one that is human caused. Yet, amidst all this loss, we are still finding so called ‘Lazarus’ species; creatures that we believe we had extirpated but have been re-found. And some that have not been proven, but many fervently believe are still alive, clinging on to existence away from human gaze and knowledge; ready for a second coming.
Why are we so reluctant to let go of that which has demonstrably gone? Why do we hold a desperate desire that some creatures are still there, but we didn...
2023-06-0736 min
beneath the stream33. Sense of scent ~ second nature, beyond wordsOf all the ways we relate to the natural world it could be said that the human sense of smell is by turns our most powerful sense and yet also our weakest link with the rest of Nature. Scents can transport us, can help us form enduring memories, proves the link between our olfactory system and our limbic system.
The human nose and brain can detect 1 trillion different odours yet we have inadequate language to describe them, often amalgamate them into collective smells (“it smells like a forest”) and struggle to quieten our mind in Nature and beco...
2021-08-0944 min
beneath the stream32. Sam Lee. The Nightingale ~ totem, identity and hopeIs song connected to even deeper roots than time and place? Can music and song can bring us closer to the non-human world? Does musical meaning arise from the experience of inhabiting the world and is it shared freely between humans and birds and trees and ‘all our relations’?
We explore all this and much more with the wonderful Sam Lee. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and c...
2021-07-0738 min
beneath the stream31. Black Shuck ~ and the hounds of the liminal landsAn archetype, a creature that we impose human ideas, ideals, values and characteristics upon? A real, spectral being, visiting us from the demonic world? Or simply our domestic companion for thousands of years that we have venerated, commemorated and depicted in myriad ways? Hounds have been - and continue to be - all of these for us humans.
As a denizen of the wild around them, humans have encountered wolves, jackals and dogs dependent upon geography, and those cultures have found ways to bring those relationships into myth, legend, worship, movies and more. In this episode we...
2021-06-1239 min
beneath the stream30. Ed Parnell ~ Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted CountryThe power of place, our fascination with what is not human . . . these have been cornerstones of Beneath the Stream since we began. But so too is the power of the human mind, our perceptions, our telling of stories and perhaps, most of all, the telling of stories to ourselves through culture and memory and the tricks and truths we encounter.
The work of author Ed Parnell is a powerful illustration of all of the above. His acclaimed book Ghostland has been described as “Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is hau...
2021-03-0758 min
beneath the stream29. Ed O’Brien ~ in nature, writing the album ‘Earth’“There are many songs in the landscape”, says Ed O’Brien, guitarist and member of Radiohead, “it roots you in what it means to be a human being; what are we doing walking on this planet”. In this podcast it’s our delight to have time with Ed as he describes the making of his solo album ‘Earth’ in retreat in mid-Wales, amidst a timeless, rich vein of Celtic tradition, and in Brazil amidst the polyrhythms of insects that are at the heart of samba.
Landscape, belief, aliveness, quantum physics, spirituality, and reading poetry aloud in the mountains, the i...
2020-11-0848 min
beneath the stream28. Gillian Burke ~ storytelling and the light and shade of being aliveGillian Burke is a biologist, TV presenter, public speaker, voiceover artist, writer and mother, and she joins us to discuss how people can relate to, and tell stories of, the human and non-human world. At a critical time for our environment scientists and artists can tell stories, especially when every single person and every single organism has a story to tell, about staying alive.
With her African, Asian, European, Native American, Oriental and Polynesian ancestry she uses different perspectives is to push past boundaries and discover greater empathy and connection with each other and the world we...
2020-10-1044 min
beneath the stream27. Neil Oliver ~ the land tells us who we areWe 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 i...
2020-09-0900 min
beneath the stream26. Wild Swimming with Karen ParryEntering 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...
2020-08-0800 min
beneath the stream25. Wild Food with Eva GunnareFood 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 livin...
2020-07-1000 min
beneath the stream24. The Wolf“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 h...
2020-06-0800 min
beneath the stream23. Interspecies ~ language between us?“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...
2020-05-1200 min
beneath the stream22. The River ~ all things merge into oneThe 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, d...
2020-04-0800 min
beneath the stream21. Sea Voices: siren voicesHow 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 create...
2020-03-0800 min
beneath the stream20. Owl ~ mythology, motif and masteryAn 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...
2020-01-0900 min
beneath the stream19. Wilderness 2 ~ is it beyond our reach?“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 Internat...
2019-12-1100 min
beneath the stream18. The Sea ~ a preludeThe 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.
2019-11-1000 min
beneath the stream17. Wilderness 1 - with Dan RichardsThe way that people respond to wild places lights them up; so proposes writer Dan Richards, who’s latest acclaimed book, ‘Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth’, explores what wilderness means to us. In this podcast he discusses whether our response to wilderness is bearing witness to the traces of humans who have been affected by places that, in our imagination, are meant to be savage and untameable.
Does wilderness comprise the places where a writer can touch ‘other’? Be lonely? Feel alive? Escape human connection? Or see what the world would be like witho...
2019-10-0700 min
beneath the stream16. PilgrimageFrom the North-west passage to Niels Bohr via Bruce Chatwin, Bardsey Island, Joan Baez and Blue Whales, our journey on this podcast explores the physicality, spirituality and ‘otherness’ of pilgrimage. Recorded on location on the Camino de Santiago in Asturias, northern Spain we ponder the meaning of this human act of endurance, faith and meditation.
What do we learn when we feel the earth on our skin and feel, and touch or reconnect to, something more: to meet the crossing points to our ancestors, or the migratory routes of birds, or profound non-human experiences. Accompany us and disc...
2019-09-1200 min
beneath the stream15. 'Irreplaceable' with Julian Hoffman - the fight to save wild placesRecorded on Hampstead Heath in London, we take a journey into some of the most threatened places and habitats of the non-human world by talking with Julian Hoffman, author of the newly published and acclaimed book ‘Irreplaceable’. He eloquently weaves accounts of both loss and ‘radical hopefulness’ through the stories of the people working to save these places, and through our conversation we seek to answer questions about our relationship with the non-human.
Are stories becoming ever more important for us to navigate the great challenging environmental issues of our time? Why do locations become places of importan...
2019-08-1100 min
beneath the stream14. Bear - totem and reality in AsturiasThere is perhaps no creature that better encapsulates our conflicted relationship with the non-human world. Think of the complex mix of ideas that we humans associate with bears in modern times: child’s toy; indigenous people’s power totem; the reality of human-bear antagonism; the fear of unpredictable predators; celestial constellation; Boston Bruins; Chicago Bears; Yogi; Goldilocks; the list goes on. Through their place for us in myth, symbolism, history and reality do bears ‘see’ through us, and in doing so allow us to see beyond our humanity and glimpse again how we are primordially connected to the natural world?
2019-07-0700 min
beneath the stream13. Sounds II - messages from the non-humanNature, the non-human - and humans too - connect together in the world of sounds. We are all auditory creatures. However, how do we non-humans relate to what we hear? How do we experience these sounds and where do we store the images and memories we associate with them: in our heads, our hearts, our cells, or all of those?
With three chosen non-human sounds that mean something to him and spark discussion, plus his own music, Colin considers: the messages that the non-human shares with us; the difference between noise and sound; seeking being unsettled by...
2019-06-0700 min
beneath the stream12. Ghosts in the DarknessNight distorts the human world and, as we become separated from what is not human, is the night the way we reconnect with that experience? Sat in a final fragment of Dunwich’s 10th century Greyfriars Monastery, near a single tombstone of All Saints Churchyard, we record this podcast at night in one of the “most haunted places in England”.
With ‘A Natural History of Ghosts’ by Roger Clarke, filling our minds, we contemplate why should ghosts - whatever that phenomena might be - appear more often at night? As night ‘falls’ (or does it rise?) we consider the f...
2019-05-1100 min
beneath the stream11. Wild Wood“To enter a wood is to pass into a different world” said author Roger Deakin, and in this episode, recorded in ancient Staverton Thicks forest, we explore why it is that there is a history of humans going to the woods to grow and learn, and to travel to find ourselves, often by getting lost. Why is it a place of story-telling, of fairy tales, of childhood imagination?
Disorientating for many modern humans, is there a density of ‘otherness’ in forest, and is this why for us the wild wood is it place of fear but also a place...
2019-04-0900 min
beneath the stream10. Myth and The Woodwose - feat. Thea SmileyWe humans have long made sense of the non-human world around, and beyond us, through storytelling and myth. Folklore has much to say about hairy wild men, and women, and their relationship to us, past and present. Exploring these motifs, stories and the creative process, we focus on these ‘woodwose’, their presence on church fonts, and their probable origins as creatures and symbols.
We speak with playwright Thea Smiley who, with theatre company Wonderful Beast, has written about The Last Wildman and The Woodwose. With her we ponder what we should learn from wild places and wild peopl...
2019-03-0700 min
beneath the stream9. TracksIn this podcast we explore the proscribed routes, the safe paths, the trackways; and how they affect our perception of the land and our experience of the non-human world. What lives beyond the path? Are we an animal making paths of convenience or is there a human need for paths, boundaries and way markers - is it that our species deliberately wants to make marks on the land?
On a windswept autumn day we explore The Ridgeway and ancient Wayland’s Smithy discussing trading routes, pilgrimage, and how to avoid getting lost on tracks that may even be...
2019-02-0700 min
beneath the stream8. NightNight makes us focus on our human experience of the darkness. Night is a place where the non-human world thrives: both in reality through wild predators whose senses exceed ours, and also in imagination as, for humans, the darkness often harbours our fears and is home to the unknown, the half-seen, and the mis-heard.
We explore what is special about night, In what ways does night reveal itself that goes beyond simply the interval between the light of day? How do we respond as the night-time takes away our senses? Maybe night is when we see ourselves...
2019-01-0700 min
beneath the stream7. WindIn a windswept locale we explore how both we, and the inhabitants the non-human world, respond to the wind. Wind spirits, the voice of the wind, hurricanes, and the sense of ‘aliveness’ that it has all affect us. Why does it makes us feel a certain way? How is it perceived by many indigenous human cultures?
For birds, insects, trees, seeds, oceans and more, the way the wind moves across The Earth is fundamental to their lives. And so it is to us. Indeed during this podcast you cab get the wind in our voices.
THEM...
2018-12-0200 min
beneath the stream6. Sounds 1We explore some of the most evocative sounds in the natural world and examine the power that the acoustics of the non-human world have over us. As we listen in Part 1 to Ian’s choice of sounds, we discuss how we navigate the natural world with sound and how it gives us a sense of place.
Are we acoustic creatures? What is the ‘voice’ of the non-human world? How does it speak?
How does sound link to a sense of place and calendar and what is it power to stir memories in us? What indeed is its...
2018-11-0800 min
beneath the stream5. Fear - with guest Robert Lloyd ParryThe non-human world, in it’s many guises, can often be a place where we face our fears. Recorded in Cambridge at Mill Road Cemetery and the 12th century Leper Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, this episode features an interview with Robert Lloyd Parry, an outstanding performance storyteller, who specialises in classic literary ghost fiction, in particular the work of Montague Rhodes James.
We explore Fear: as a human adaptation; as a heightened sense; as a part of our experience in the wild; as something ‘unnatural’; or something we experience in solitude; and how we experience it in our...
2018-09-0900 min
beneath the stream1. LightThe qualities of light, and how the natural, human and non-human world can be viewed and impacted by light is under discussion in this episode of the podcast. References you might wish to follow up include:
Watership Down, Hampshire, UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down,_Hampshire
John Aitchison, cameramen and broadcaster http://johnaitchison.net
The Native American medicine wheel https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/exhibition/healing-ways/medicine-ways/medicine-wheel.html
Songlines by Bruce Chatwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songlines
Ladysmith Black Mambazo https://e...
2018-09-0400 min
beneath the stream4. Fire and the human imaginationWhat is it about fire that draws us to its side? It brings warmth and safety, yet it carries a destructive threat. Recorded on location by the fireside in Suffolk, this episode explores our long relationship with fire and how it links us to our landscapes. We talk about how it has bound us in belief, and its role at the centre of communities and belief systems.
THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST.
Some of things we discuss in this episode
Beltane https://en.wik...
2018-08-0100 min
beneath the stream3. The AncestorsRecorded on location in Asturias, Cantabria and Castilla y Leon in northern Spain: join us, Colin Williams and Ian Rowlands, as we look at how our ancestors approached death, life and spirit, through our exploration of ancient sites and the manner in which they are located in the landscape.
These sites provoked some lasting emotions and questions in us: our place in time and bones of the land; what is the import of posterity; our relationship with our far-distant ancestors; their relationship to the creatures they shared their world with; and their relationship to the rituals, spirits an...
2018-07-2600 min
beneath the stream2. Ritual and CeremonyThe power and diversity of ritual and ceremony: join us, Colin Williams and Ian Rowlands, as we look at how the cycles of the natural, human and non-human world can be viewed and recognised through ritual. Why do humans create rituals? How do they relate to our experience of a world of ‘other’?
THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net
Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:
Carpathian Mountains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
2018-07-1900 min