Becoming Spring

This episode is the first in a series of more-than-human interviews Susa and I have planned for this podcast. Every third episode will be one of these. In these episodes, we do our best to give a little space for a more-than-human to “speak”, and discuss a little about the context and about what messages we can read into this. We try to listen, but of course our own human capacities and patterns of thought influence what we are able to hear and interpret here. This is why the episodes also include soundscapes without speech. We hope that our listeners might be inspired by this to think of various ways these soundscapes may be interpreted.

In this particular episode, we host “Finnish Winter”, with the help of Susa, who lives in Finland and regularly experiences this winter. The soundscapes for this episode were recorded in April 2024, and this Winter was already turning towards Spring, although the amount of snow was still quite high. Birds that normally eschew the coldest winter months in Finland can be heard returning. These sounds trigger Susa and Kim to reflect on the pleasantness of natural soundscapes, on Finnish seasonalities, on the importance of seasonality more broadly, on how seasonality is being affected by climate change, and much more. Of course, all with an eye for implications for “Planning”, that is, imagining futures and how to reach (or avoid) them…

We hope you enjoy the episode!

We refer to one book in the episode, here is the reference:

Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Penguin Random House UK.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit planetaryplanning.substack.com