Wise Women

Just listened to a fabulous interview with Ellen Burstyn. At 81 she's lived through a lot and still keeps living and learning, just like all the wise women in my life. http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-ellen-burstyn-learned-survival/

I also read a great interview in Newsleek on the plane back from Joshua Tree about Jane Goodall who is also in her 80's and still touring and speaking almost daily to throngs of people, especially women, and girls who she inspires to become the next generation of scientists, or...whatever they want to be. check it out at http://www.newsweek.com/2014/10/31/jane-goodalls-jungles-279259.html

Got me thinking about how grateful I am for all the wise women in my life, like my 2 aunties who visited this summer, and all the wild women in my mums circle and her most of all.

Hundertwasser on 99% invisible

Another podcast plug. This week 99% invisible did a story about one of my favourite eccentric artists and outside the box thinkers. I have always loved this man's out of the box thinking and bright colours, but when I was in New Zealand I bought his book "The Art of the Green Path" and really got deeper into his philosophy, which guided all of his wild and resonant thinking. Here is a story that does a beautiful job of summarizing this indescribably wild person. http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-straight-line-is-a-godless-line/

My New Favourite Podcast "Death, Sex, Money" (Who'da Thunk It???)

Check this out. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/deathsexmoney/

Haida Gwaii Culinary Cooperative interview on CBC

Recently Kiku from the HGCC was interviewed on All Points West. click here to listen, or download the podcast.

David Suzuki does it again.

Check out this summer's latest from David Suzuki. He and his family have become well acquainted with Haida Gwaii in the past few years and in this radio series "the bottom line" manages to sing the praises of Haida Gwaii while also covering the gamut of environmental issues. Take a listen, all 10 episodes are available as FOR FREE right here, but only until Sept 20th!

Here's another Ted Talk, pretty inspiring. Evelyn Glennie is a musician, a percussionist to be more specific. She is also hearing impaired, but I would never of known that. She shows why we shouldn't judge books by covers, and why we should listen with our whole bodies.

The Biotech Context

This is another talk in the global citizenship seminar series at UBC given by David Suzuki.

http://www.ubc.ca/podcasts/media/mp3/2006/13032006_biotech.mp3

In case you have been in some subterranean vent somewhere...or else just outside of Canada for the last 30 years here's a little bio: David Suzuki is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster, and is well known to millions as the host of CBC's popular science television series, The Nature of Things. An internationally respected geneticist, David Suzuki was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. Currently, he is a professor emeritus with UBC's Sustainable Development Research Institute. Through his role as chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, is widely recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology.

The End of Education

I have listened to this talk a bunch of times and it is pretty awesome. Dr. David W. Orr is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education and his recent work in ecological design. This includes his efforts to build a $7.2 million Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College, as well as a continued presence in the environmental literacy scene with 4 books and over 120 articles in scientific, social science, and popular journals. (A Global Citizenship Seminar Series seminar originally presented on 13-Jan-2006)

This is a talk he gave at UBC in January 2006

http://www.ubc.ca/podcasts/media/mp3/2006/13012006_endeducation.mp3

This American Life

This is my favorite weekly podcast. I know the title "This American Life" can be a bit of a turnoff for some of us smug Canadians, get over it, American, s many of them, are really great and this podcast helps me to remember that even a right wing American T.V. evangelist can make you think, and even better, can change his ways. It is a FREE broadcast out of Chicago by NPR. You can subscribe to it and if you have iTunes it will automatically load the new show onto your computer each week, or you can listen to the shows straight off the internet, all you have to do is go to the links and click where is says "full episode" in orange.

A few which relate to teaching in some way are:
"Music Lessons"fairly self explanatory,
"Going Big" which tells the story of a project in Harlem called Baby College which aims to put childrens' futures in their own hands rather than continually trying to "fix" their parents, but seems to accomplish both objectives. It also has the story of families coping with mosaic down syndrome, and the unconventional solution one of them comes to.
"The Cruelty of Children" again, self explanatory, but I will tell you that this tels of how a kindergarted teacher invokes a new rule "you can't say you can't play", and how it actually works.
"A Little Bit of Knowledge" is a confusing thing.

Deconstructing Dinner

I am a big fan of a podcast called "deconstructing dinner" it is broadcast out of Nelson BC and they do great shows about local food sustainability etc. From this page you can play the episode "Deconstructing Dinner In our Schools" which is about a group from Nelson called "earth matters" (http://www.earthmatters.ca/) who teach grade 5 and 6 students about what is in their food and the connection between what they are eating and their environment, including climate change and the impacts of pesticides. It has some great interviews with kids which show just how much kids are capable of understanding about all this stuff. They have a free weekly podcast, and if you still don't know what a podcast is you owe it to yourself to ask me or figure it out yourself. They are really good sources of inspiration.
http://kootenaycoopradio.com/deconstructingdinner/041306.htm