From a Colorado poet's daily practice and a Brecht lyric written under fascism, through Barcelona harbor, Caracas, Indigenous Colombia, a Paiwan-language firefly song from Taiwan, and a 2002 German demo about fairies in the forest fog, this episode maps the reciprocal relationship of light and darkness as seen from an Earth-based perspective — and finds, in their interplay, something very close to a theology.
From a sardonic Chicago pianist cataloguing microplastics and clathrate guns, through an Irish elegy for a stream of the dead and a geologist-poet's Permian nightmare, to an unreleased song from Sweden about leaving a toxic Earth, we map the full emotional response to prospects of collapse, climate change, cataclysm, extinction, and ecological catastrophe.
Host Bart Everson presents an hour of nominated music for the inaugural Earth Eclectic Music Award, featuring folk, ambient, and world artists from the USA, Austria, Ireland, Argentina, Turkey, and beyond, all united by a reverence for the living Earth.
"Songs of the Great Mother" offers an hour of devotional music honoring the Living Earth as divine feminine — spanning Bulgarian wordless vocal, Swedish folk-rock, Norwegian pop, Lithuanian experimental jazz, Japanese ambient, and American choral music, anchored by a personal message from Swedish singer-songwriter Annika Fehling about the island walk that summoned her song into being.
Makes the case for instrumental music as ecospiritual expression through an hour of wordless celebrations of Earth — from Goa trance and New Orleans electronics to guitar on a sacred Japanese mountain, a sixteen-second Louisiana ambient flash, and a 1972 jazz reading of Marvin Gaye's ecological elegy. It all stems from an observation two centuries ago that music clothes thought with power language cannot impart.
"One Earth, Many Tongues" recreates the vibrant multilingual atmosphere of the GreenAccord environmental journalism conference through a global musical journey — from Italian marshes and Romanian folk to Cameroonian forest chants and Brazilian poetry. We celebrate the universal language of ecological devotion that transcends borders.
"Maybe the Birds Taught Us" soars through a global collection of avian-inspired music, from political elegies and indigenous invocations to natural field recordings and Renaissance madrigals. These songs and sounds reveal how birds have shaped human creativity across languages, cultures, and centuries as both teachers and fellow travelers.
"Songs of the Standing People" celebrates trees through diverse musical perspectives. We've got choral celebrations, folk narratives, experimental field recordings, and electronic meditations on crown shyness.
"Fresh Devotions" presents a global chorus of new ecospiritual music from early 2026—featuring choral celebrations, elemental invocations, cetacean collaborations, and forest meditations—revealing how contemporary composers across continents are channeling ancient reverence through modern expressions.
"Planetary Poetry" explores how Earth's voice emerges through human verse—from ancient Icelandic hymns and Whitman's celebrations to contemporary ecological poets and indigenous wisdom—revealing how poetic language has long been humanity's response to planetary consciousness.