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This week on the Earth Eclectic Radio Hour, host Bart Everson presents “Gifts of a Living Planet” — an episode that arose not from a predetermined theme but from a kind of welcome abundance. We’ve been reaching out to artists, labels, and producers, asking them to share their work; so many have responded that we felt a genuine obligation to get as much of it on air as quickly as possible, rather than parceling pieces out across future themed episodes over weeks and months. The result, perhaps by grace rather than design, has the shape of a prayer: it opens and closes with two different songs called “Gaia,” and in between offers music, spoken poetry, and field recordings from three continents.

The episode opens with “Gaia” by Lubiana, a Belgian-Cameroonian singer and composer whose album Terre Rouge, originally released in 2024, was re-released in April 2026 as Terre Rouge (Mother Earth) with four new tracks devoted to the divine feminine — of which “Gaia” is one. Bart follows with a poem: “Planet,” from Danger Days (Saturnalia Books, 2020), read by its author Catherine Pierce — former Poet Laureate of Mississippi and author of four books of poems — who recorded herself specially for Earth Eclectic. The poems in Danger Days celebrate our planet while also bearing witness to its collapse.

Threaded throughout the episode — heard beneath our DJ breaks and returning between segments — are field recordings Bart made himself at dawn on the north shore of Lake Monroe in Indiana, during an extended power outage. He calls the blackout a gift: an invitation to pause, and to hear what the world sounds like without its machines.

A segment of healing music follows: “Peace and Calm” by Nicholas Peters, featuring a Chakli Himalayan singing bowl layered with stream sounds from near the River Bollin in Manchester; “If All the People” by Russ Arlotta of Takoma Park, Maryland — who passed away on November 10, 2024, after a years-long battle with mantle cell lymphoma, a talented singer-songwriter who created three albums with accompaniment by his musician friends, with Home completed and released posthumously by those friends; and Manchula of Buenos Aires with “Niña (De tu pureza)” from EntrelverdE, including a spoken introduction advocating earthing — the practice of placing bare feet directly on the ground — as a discipline of energetic and mental health.

Tony Brewer of Bloomington, Indiana, follows with “Compost of Resistance,” a poem composed moments before it was read live at Vidwest Fest in Columbia, Missouri, addressing the restoration of prairie degraded by mining.

We are proud to present two pieces by the Nelda Swiggett Quintet of Seattle, with a recorded statement from Nelda herself between them. On Earth Day 2017, she debuted a climate-themed work, The Alaska Suite, which has been performed 36 times, touching nearly 2500 people across Washington State with its message of hope and call to action. Her new work, For the Birds, further engages the power of artistic expression — live music, spoken words, images, and poetry — to connect audiences emotionally to the realities of climate change through the lives of birds.

The Ensamble de Percusiones Usach of Santiago, Chile then offers “Tierra Sagrada: I. Choike Purrún” from Azul del este (Aula Records, 2026). The album gathers works by four Chilean composers inspired by the Mapuche worldview and by the verses of National Literature Prize winner Elicura Chihuailaf. The album’s title draws from a central concept in the Mapuche worldview: the Blue of the East represents the spiritual origin of the human being — the place where the sun is born, and from where energy, abundance, and equilibrium flow.

The episode closes, as it opened, with “Gaia” — but a completely different song with a completely different sound, this one by Quietflame of Slovakia. (Watch the official visualizer lyric video.) The same name spoken twice, an act of address to the planet itself.

Note: We connected with Nelda through Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on policies to address the climate crisis. We encourage listeners to join CCL — it’s free — and get involved in a local chapter as well as CCL’s Earth-Based Spirituality Action Team. The team is for anyone who keeps the sacred Earth at the center of their practice. We see action on climate change as an urgent moral imperative. We recognize and honor the spiritual nature of climate work.

Featured image: “Peace on Earth” painter unknown; photo by Bart Everson