Episodes
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Doug Tallamy: The Nature of Oaks
If you can only plant one tree, make that tree an Oak. Doug Tallamy, national advocate for restoring the LIFE in our places with the power of Native Plants, celebrates the mighty Quercus family of trees with this latest book, his third as definitive matchmakers for humans and plants. The Nature…
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Illinois Clean Energy Policy - Andy Heaslet on the making of a model
Renewable energy Return On Investment is booming, across the U.S. and worldwide. With uber-real concerns about this trajectory on environmental minds, Earthworms reviews how a powerful coalition of advocates - in a timely turn of events - moved Illinois state lawmakers to achieve results for...
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New Earth Farms Composting: Community Service Super-Charged
"What's going on in that bucket," wrote the great enviro-spiritual guy Wendell Berry in The Work of Local Culture, "is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth." Here in St. Louis, New Earth Farm brings that moment right to you - as an...
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Earthworms On The Farm: Rosy Buck Grows in Circles
Sustainable farming is both lifestyle and full-time job for Holly Evans, Randy Buck and their three children. Holly and Earthworms host Jean Ponzi "tour" this young family's 15+ acre Rosy Buck Farm on a hillside property in Leasburg, MO, where Randy digs circular vegetable beds! Third in...
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Remembering Jay Schober - from the Earthworms Archives
Earthworms' late, dear, zany friend Jay Schober was one hemisphere - with he dearest friend Jim Findlay - of the St. Louis Brain Sandwich, in the early glory DAZE of KDHX. Honoring Jay, we serve up again this interview, recorded in January 2021, promoting Jay and Jim's memoir, We Never Got To Be...
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City Sewing Room: Stitching, Teaching, Sharing GREEN
Would you like to learn to: Sew from a pattern? Customize a thrift-store find? Replace a busted zipper? You can do all this and more in a lively, well-stocked compound on St. Louis' near-south side. Welcome to City Sewing Room! Creative Director Rita Hunt shares the what-why-how of this…
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Advocating for Night Sky Darkness
ALAN - Artificial Light At Night - is surging. Light pollution disrupts health for humans and wildlife, wastes energy and money, and blocks out awe-some Universe views. How to flip the switch on this issue? Dark knights arose in 1988 to challenge and turn this offense to Quality of Earth Life....
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Hamilton Native Outpost: Growing Native Grazing Abundance
To champion grassland soil health in Missouri, where conventional grazing practice is practically enshrined in state law, Amy Hamilton's family enterprise has dug in as deep as roots of the native plant species whose seeds they sell. Hamilton Native Outpost has been led since 1981 by Amy and her...
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St. Louis County Library: Worlds of Ways of Learning
If you have a library card or not, St. Louis County Library welcomes you into their multi-verse of learning. Earthworms' Jean Ponzi has been hosted as a speaker many times by SLCL's Sarah Kunz Jones, Adult Programs Coordinator. This conversation returns the favor, spotlighting myriad SLCL…
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St. Louis Green Dining Alliance: Sustainable Credible Edibles
Hungry for new dining thrills? Need a place to meet and eat in an area of STL you don't know well? Align your fork, dollars and values by heading to a restaurant certified by the Green Dining Alliance, a program of our town's EarthDay-365. As program manager, Ben Daugherty whisks his love of...
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Nee Kee Nee: Urban Park Stream Revived!
In a south St. Louis city park created in Victorian times, Indigenous culture, native plant ecology and 21st century engineering are newly united in a southwesterly flow. Tara Morton, Community Engagement Manager for this project's urban someplace, Tower Grove Park, shares the story of Nee Kee…
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Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Cat Techtmann
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) offers indigenous wisdom to "conventional" society, where responses to issues like climate change and biodiversity loss need all hands to work together. Cathy "Cat" Techtmann serves as a University of Wisconsin-Extension Environmental Outreach State...
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Nature OF and FOR Healthy Human Culture with Jo Pang
From his personal relationships with the organizations we know as Forests (where Collaboration AND Competition thrive), Jo Pang helps good health flourish in human orgs, specifically those focused on "social good." The work of Culture Wise, Jo's enterprise, supports organizations who envision a...
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Nature, Design and Health with David Kamp
Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing, Richard Louv
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Road Kill - yes, not kidding folks, sez Don Corrigan
St. Louis journalist Don Corrigan storms the American Popular Culture Association with his books exploring way more than journalistic topics - like ROAD KILL. Corrigan's book American Roadkill: Animal Victims of our Busy Highways is in the great animal rights tradition of Joseph Grinnell of the...
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Lawns Into Meadows: Owen Wormser, Landscape Regenerator
This idea seeks not to uproot every shred of living carpet - "just" the (humongous, sterile, resource-intensive) areas we don't use. Owen Wormser is an ecological landscape designer who sees restorative potential in our acres of compulsive turf. His Nautilus Award-winning book's practical and...
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Milkweed's Murderous Other Bugs
The wild world of Milkweed plants is populated by aphids who suck the plant's life, beetles who suck the aphids dry, ant lion babies who will eat each other - and sometimes the Monarch butterflies whose caterpillars gotta eat Milkweed or starve. APHIDS! Native gardening specialist Besa Schweitzer...
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Mosquito Alert STL: Community Science Bug-Off Power
St. Louis is the first U.S. city using the app Mosquito Alert, developed in Barcelona, Spain, and in use across Europe. This Citizen Science project combines support for our Public Health pros with rich opportunities for eco-logical messaging: We CAN Control the Pests AND Protect our Pollinators!...
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I Want a Better Catastrophe - Climate Activist Andrew Boyd
"Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the Play?" In his new book I Want a Better Catastrophe, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd navigates the Climate Crisis with grief, hope and gallows humor. Earthworms host Jean Ponzi chimes in (leaving Boyd the best lines, as a gracious host would do).…
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STL Story Stitchers: Artist Collective Stands Strong
Creating from The Center in midtown St. Louis, youth artist Story Stitchers collect stories, reframe and retell them through art, writing and performance to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships and literacy. Story Stitchers Branden Lewis and Chris BlueBeatz…
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ShutterBee: Catch the Community Science Buzz
As flowers bloom, bees rev up their pollinating rounds, and a host of Community Scientists are helping local pros explore key bee-health questions: what promotes bee diversity and bee-plant interactions in residential and community gardens? This is Shutterbee! Backyard bee photography to improve...
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Green Schools Quest: Growing Young Champions
Missouri Green Schools enriches learning and lives! Work through three pillars of a Green School - Environmental Impact, Health and Wellness and Sustainability Education - is drawing on the strengths of two terrific partners and their organizations: Hope Gribble, Green Schools Manager for…
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Beetcoin: Non-Crypto, Non-Currency with Woody Tasch
Woody Tasch thinks like a root vegetable grows: slow, sure, mostly underground, deeply nourishing. From this perspective, in collaboration with a rainbow circle of fellow evolutionists, comes the investment structure Tasch and friends call Beetcoin: small local donations generating Zero interest,...
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Piasa Palisades Sierra Club Rocks South-Central Illinois
In Illinois communities along the mighty Mississippi, Sierra Club members are advancing enviro-policy and awareness. The club's Piasa Palisades Group, named for a fierce bird in lore of the Illiniwek people and the stone bluffs towering over river and towns,is active locally and in their state....
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Gen Z and Nature: Relations Worth Growing
Charmin Dahl, conservation educator and nature-loving mom, shares her experience and perspective relating to Nature with her digital native kin. Explore with her - and head on out-of-doors, with your young friends. More from Dahl in The Healthy Planet Magazine and in her blog for Villa Montessori...
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Experienced Goods: Beneficially Circulating GREAT STUFF
Thrift stores, tag sales, rummage piles. They may be everywhere, but some rise above the jumbled fray with grace, circulating our castoff human-made stuff as beacons of beneficial reuse. One of these is Experienced Goods, supporting free Community Hospice care in Brattleboro, Vermont. Gemma...
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Great Rivers Environmental Law Center - Celebrating 20 Years
Great Rivers Environmental Law Center defends and protects Nature: places, creatures, plants and US. Celebrating two decades of this worthy work, GREC President Bruce Morrison recalls triumphs, challenges and how collaboration with community is changing they way his team practices enviro law....
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Green Burial with Elizabeth Fournier, the Green Reaper
Elizabeth Fournier always wanted to work in funeral service. She was drawn to the service in this profession, and fascinated by its technical skills. Today she works "for a better living" - with Nature's tech - and she's proudly known far and wide as The Green Reaper. Fournier is a national...
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Fair Shares: Abundance, Innovation, Relationships, Food!
It's a sister-rooted family scene at Fair Shares. The resourceful twist of this CCSA - Combined Community Supported Agriculture - nourishes St. Louis with produce and value-added products, a plateful of action for over 15 years. As founding sister Sara Choler Hale prepares to set sail (literally)...
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Midwest Climate Collaborative: Heather Navarro's Leadership Challenge
What does a Mom and environmental lawyer do after leading a statewide enviro-coalition into its second half-century and serving as a City of St. Louis Alderperson? This one, Heather Navarro, takes on directing climate action for the Midwest U.S. The Midwest Climate Collaborative, based at...
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Historic Greenwood Cemetery - Cautiously Encouraging Updates
Historic Greenwood Cemetery, terrestrial resting place of over 50,000 Black human beings, embodies the paradox of dis- and respect that our species can so profoundly bring to pass. In a heartfelt complementarity, Greenwood also offers one of our region's best opportunities for environmental and...
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Seed Bank with Meg Englehardt
As climate change threatens native plant populations, freezers in a lab in Gray Summit, Missouri are helping to preserve seeds vital to potentially restoring communities of these plants. Meg Englehardt, Seed Bank Manager for Missouri Botanical Garden, is guardian of these precious resources.…
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Belonging to Earth - a Meditation Conversation with Lisa Hoover
Meditation practice can lead a person to understand causes and outcomes, prompt awareness of impacts and impulses, ground the perception that change is an only constant - and foster a commitment to act with loving kindness. Valuable for our toddler human species, busy whacking at all around us.…
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Jayvn Solomon on Loutopia
What if plants, regenerative technology, and spaces for people comprised the structure of our urban environs? Envision It! Artist and community-grower Jayvn Solomon does, in his big body of work, Loutopia. On view through May, 2022 at TechArtista, 4th and Pine, in downtown St. Louis, this...
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Earthworms On The Farm: Urban Buds Blooms in St. Louis City
From plots of land in the Dutchtown neighborhood of south St. Louis, farmed since the 1870s, partners Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack send forth bunches, bouquets and buckets of flowers that are "locally grown, not flown" to gladden many local hearts. Especially poignant in this conversation with...
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John Cavanagh: The Water Defenders
From Flint to Standing Rock - indeed, world-wide - communities keep resisting corporate and government actions that threaten water quality and access. One heroic story from El Salvador embodies the most resourceful courage and painful struggle of "ordinary people" who know water is more precious...
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Earthworms On The Farm: BLH Farms Grows Great Soil, Flowers
The land of second generation Missouri farmer Matt Arthur flowers thanks to his investment in growing soil. He says: "We are stewards of our land, committed to a no-till practice of regenerative agriculture. No chemicals, lots of cover crops, a preference for native species. Growing in permanent...
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Earthworms On The Farm: Sunflower Savannah
For Sam and Bill Wiseman, Sunflower Savannah Farm embodies the continuity of life. Everything serves a purpose and contributes to the wellbeing of the farm. Sheep eat the grass, conserving tractor fuel, and produce compost to grow cut flowers and specialty veg. Garden produce supports the Market,...
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Earthworms On The Farm: Rustic Roots Sanctuary
Where in an urban space do goats, bees, flexible muscles, resilient spirits, elderflowers, generous hearts, and veg all flourish? Thanks to farmer and healer human being Janett Lewis, in Spanish Lake, a community in unincorporated North St. Louis County, MO. Janett's work through Rustic Roots...
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Earthworms On The Farm: Legacy Circle Farms Strong Soil, Specialty Crops
On Legacy Circle Farms, Tyler and Erin Bernsen start their growing underground: nourishing "challenging Ozark soil" with compost, mulch and intensive grazing. Vibrantly visible are their crops of vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, nuts, high value herbs like turmeric and ginger, and heirloom…
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Global Freshwaters Summit April 19-23
Here at the confluence of the fourth largest watershed on Earth, most St. Louisans don't connect with our big rivers - or our community tributaries - beyond an occasional public event. How to help us relate to the value, needs and health of our waters? Convening presenters from local, DC and…
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Earth Month - St. Louis Style
Earth Day, April 22, is one of the most widely observed dates on this planet. For enviro-advocates, this celebration has become Earth Month: starts in March, runs to May. This is way true for the folks of EarthDay-365, celebrating virtually again this year in St. Louis. Executive Director Dr.…
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Dawn Karlovsky "Interwoven" Dance Inspired by Trees
As dancer and choreographer Dawn Karlovsky read about The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate in Peter Wohlleben's bestseller of that name, SHE felt that communication - and transformed her experience into dance. Her conversation with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi explores the...
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The Art of Sparkling with Becky Brittain, Ph.D.
Becky Brittain is a passionate sparkler of life, a practiced mover of energies to help ourselves, Earth and others. Her new book The Art of Sparkling - Share Your Inner Light with the World (Weeping Willow, 2020) embodies Becky's energy, grounded in some hefty experiential cred. Becky Brittain,...
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OneSTL - Implementing Our Regional Sustainability Plan
Back in 2009, HUD gave St. Louis their largest-ever grant award to develop a regional sustainability plan. A zillion stakeholder-session hours late, OneSTL took form. But, as with many plans, there was no $$ for implementation - until Person-Power took the helm. Today, circles of advocates…
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Earthworms On the Farm: Heru Urban Farming
The mission of Heru Urban Farming, growing on lots in the City of St. Louis, is to bring healthy, sustainable produce to those who need it most. Founder and CEO Tyrean Heru Lewis is a 5th generation farmer with a background in health and physical education, a Master's degree in Management, and a...
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Earthworms On The Farm - Crystal Stevens of Flourish
Earthworms On The Farm - conversation series NEW for 2021! This periodic feature welcomes farmer participants in Known & Grown STL, a regional local-food certification program and brand from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. First up: Crystal Stevens, whose Flourish farm is located near...
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Terrain Magazine
Along the trail into a New Year, Terrain Magazine celebrates outdoor activity - and local faves - with 2021 Readers' Choice Awards. Editor/publisher Brad Kovach shares the what-how-why of this specialized pub's success, promoting hiking, climbing, paddling, cycling and generally, actively…
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Update: Perennial City Grows, Learns, Farms, Composts
Back in Summer 2018, when Earthworms met Tim Kiefer and Beth Grolmes-Kiefer, they talked their dream of urban farming while their subscription compost collection service was taking off through St. Louis' central corridor. FF toward end of '20 to hear how their Perennial City enterprise is now...
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Naturalist Graphic Novel Updates Rockstar Biologist Memoir
When E.O. Wilson, one of the greatest biologists of all time, wrote his memoir Naturalist in 1994, could he have imagined his work illustrated to reach a 21st century visual audience? Today, he does! KDHX host Jean Ponzi flips the cover with conversation and full-color VIEWS of the new graphic...