The many benefits of investing in relationships, diversity, and reciprocity

In her first book, Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard argued that forests are not collections of isolated trees but living, communicating communities connected by underground fungal networks.In her new work, When the Forest Breathes, she extends that idea into a broader thesis: forests are relational, self-renewing communities whose health depends on cycles of reciprocity among trees, fungi, soil, and people—and if we learn from those relationships, we can redesign forestry, climate policy, and even our own communities around regeneration rather than extraction. This approach can produce healthier, more biodiverse forests, increase carbon storage, reduce vulnerability to fire and drought, and align human economies with ecological cycles.

The living world is not a backdrop. It is a teacher.

We built our civilization on a single, confident assumption: that the natural world is a resource. Not a teacher, not a community, not a relative — a resource. Something to be surveyed, extracted, managed, and, if necessary, replaced. This assumption is so embedded in our institutions, our economics, and our education that most of us have spent our lives inside it without ever having to name it.

What trees can teach us about caring for a shared world

The Hidden Life of Trees helped bring to public awareness what Suzanne Simard’s groundbreaking research on forest networks had revealed: how forests actually live and relate. Rather than collections of isolated, competing trees, forests are interdependent communities and complex communication networks that teem with hidden activity—places where trees share resources, respond to threats, and cooperate to sustain shared life.

How exposure to the natural world could actually help repair society’s fraying social fabric

If this idea seems obvious, here is the science that makes the case. Society should treat access to nature as core social infrastructure and “prescribe” it at scale to heal both individual bodies and a fraying civic fabric. Long treated as a backdrop, nature is a low-cost, high-leverage intervention that measurably improves physical and mental health while strengthening social connection and civic empathy. To address loneliness, polarization, and chronic illness, we need structural “nature prescriptions” embedded in cities, schools, and health systems—not just lifestyle advice.

Hemp is one of the first domesticated plants and might be one of the most versatile known to humanity.

Industrial hemp is a millennia-old plant that can meet many of our essential needs—food, shelter, clothing, soil health—while also supporting climate stability and biodiversity. In France, an organization called InterChanvre has helped turn that potential into a working system, showing what a truly integrated, place-based economy can look like from seed to finished product.

Tomorrow is not for sale.

Ailton Krenak says it plainly. The economic system most of us take for granted—corporate capitalism, shaped by a colonial mindset—has done far more than damage the Earth. It has also diminished our sense of agency and narrowed our imagination. It trains us to believe in endless growth, constant progress, and technological rescue, even as the living and social systems that sustain us visibly fail around us.

An encyclopedia of traditional ecological knowledge encoded in hunter‑gatherer storytelling

Michelle Scalise Sugiyama calls herself an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in literature, folklore, evolutionary psychology/anthropology, and hunter-gatherer studies. On this website, Talking Stories, she builds an open, evolving encyclopedia that shows how hunter‑gatherer stories function as an information technology for storing and transmitting detailed ecological knowledge across generations.

Wresting at what is most primal and uncertain in us

Nina MacLaughlin is a writer, carpenter, and literary journalist whose writing braids memoir, myth, folklore, and close observation. I appreciate her ability to move associatively between personal memory, ancient stories, and contemporary unease.

Political divides are bridged by appreciation for nature.

As the federal government cuts back environmental protections, reduces climate monitoring, opens more public land to logging and mining, and weakens endangered species safeguards, a new 2025 report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that 3 out of 4 people in the U.S. see nature as essential to their wellbeing.

The Power of Trees for Public Health

The Green Heart Project in Louisville, Kentucky, is a pioneering study that links urban greening to human health. Launched in 2018, it’s a controlled, community-based trial in a racially diverse, working- to middle-class area of south Louisville with about 30,000 residents.

Do you know how your weed was grown?

I'm disappointed by the state of the legal cannabis industry.

What if ecosystems could show us how to metabolize fear, restore balance, and regenerate after trauma?

Mor Keshet is a New York-based Integrative Eco Art Therapist who has worked internationally with refugee children, survivors of human trafficking, and families in crisis.

The parallel between human supremacy and white supremacy

Arkan Lushwala is a Peruvian ceremonial leader, healer, author, and elder known for sharing Indigenous wisdom and sacred leadership.

“Ecology needs psychology; psychology needs ecology.”

Psychotherapists, says writer D. Patrick Miller, are trained to hear subtle inner voices — the wounded child, the broken family, the archetypal unconscious.

"We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again."

Joanna Macy often described today’s greed, violence, and ecological destruction as products of an “industrial-growth society” fueled by delusion, greed, and the illusion that we are separate from each other and the Earth.

We need a new way of thinking to build resilient, sustainable communities in a rapidly changing world.

Chris Reed is an urban ecologist and designer. Nina-Marie Lister is a planner and ecologist. Together, they argue that ecological thinking not only can—but must—shape design practices for a sustainable future.

"Reality is basically about change."

Mary Evelyn Tucker sees a clear path toward healing the planet, our relationship with nature, and with each other. She suggests that spiritual ecology—the field that explores how spirituality and the environment are interwoven—is the way finder.For this article, she brought together three other scholars to explore this promise. She begins by zooming out.

The historical landscape ecology of New York City

The land that would eventually become New York City was once a highly productive, biodiverse landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds, and streams.

'Nature literacy helps us reconnect and make the right decisions.'

Many people today lack basic knowledge and vocabulary about the natural world—a phenomenon known as “nature illiteracy.” Seirian Sumner argues that this disconnect is widening as we spend more time with technology and less time outdoors.

'When we look deeply into the earth, we can see the presence of the whole cosmos.'

If we think about the earth as just the environment around us, we experience ourselves and the earth as separate entities.

'Now, for many of us, the natural world is the source of transcendence.'

I imagine that the passing of Pope Francis and the election of a new pope has Paul Elie reflecting once again on Catholicism’s relevance in contemporary life.

We can find the deep biological connections between humans and the natural world right beneath our feet.

Remember nature? While bully boys bloviate and grab power, it's helpful to remember that humans are just one strand in the intricate web of life—and no strand thrives unless the entire web does.

Gender fluidity is not a contemporary invention, but a long-standing social technology for navigating complex human environments.

Throughout human history, diverse gender expressions have emerged as consistent, adaptive social strategies that represent a complex intersection of biological plasticity and cultural innovation.

Tiny urban forests are transforming urban landscapes and contributing to the fight against climate change.