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Environmentalism isn’t a one dimensional thing, says environmental justice technologist and author Joycelyn Longdon on the Climate Curious podcast. In conversation with co-host Ben Hurst, Joycelyn shares the thinking behind her new book, ‘Natural Connection’, and breaks down how anyone can step into their inner environmentalist by tapping into rage, imagination, innovation, theory, healing, and care. Tune in to learn why climate action isn’t about achieving a checklist of individualistic traits, and instead, maybe it’s about being… you!
Watch the full length interview live in-studio, on YouTube.
Buy Joycelyn’s book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454481/natural-connection-by-longdon-joycelyn/9781529902662
Watch Joycelyn’s TEDxLondon Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBXiWON-LDU
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
Joycelyn’s reading list
- Armstrong, Karen. 2022. Sacred Nature: How We Can Recover Our Bond with the Natural World.
- Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change,Changing Worlds.
- Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2019. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.
- Butler, Octavia E. 1993. Parable of the Sower.
- Care Collective, The. 2020. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence.
- Jones, Lucy. 2020. Losing Eden: Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul.
- Kelley, Robin D. G. 2002. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
- Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
- Krawec, Patty. 2022. Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future.
- Page, Cara and Woodland, Erica. 2023. Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety.
- Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. 2018. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.
- Powers, Richard. 2018. The Overstory.
- Sheldrake, Merlin. 2020. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures.
- Shiva, Vandana. 1993. Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology.
- Solnit, Rebecca. 2004. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.
- Solnit, Rebecca. 2023. Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.
- Tori Tsui – It’s Not just You
- Mikaela Loach – It’s Not That Radical
- Leah Thomas – The Intersectional Environmentalist
00:00 Introduction to Climate Curious Podcast
02:18 Joycelyn’s journey
05:28 The intersection of racial and environmental justice
11:11 Writing ‘Natural Connection’
16:40 Exploring rage and joy in environmental activism
25:26 Global stories of environmental and social justice
27:12 The essence of technology and creativity
27:55 Grounding ideas in real-world examples
29:39 The role of hope in environmental action
34:29 Innovation lessons from Wakanda
38:43 Indigenousknowledge and modern technology
44:18 Connecting with nature in urban environments
52:01 Resources for further learning
54:04 Conclusion
Transcript
[00:00:00] Introduction to Climate Curious Podcast
[00:00:00] Joycelyn Longdon: You can start from anywhere and come back to the earth. But from a car, take apart its constituent parts. It comes back to the earth. Take the food in your hand. It comes back to the soil. Everything comes back to the soil. Yeah. And so you are always connected to the earth.
[00:00:14] Ben Hurst: This is climate Curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared, or confused by climate change.
[00:00:21] Maryam Pasha: I’m Marion Pasha, the director and curator at Telex London, and the co-host of this podcast alongside the amazing Ben.
[00:00:28] Ben Hurst: Hi, I’m Ben Hurst. [00:00:30] Activist and advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like and self-confessed climate normie.
[00:00:40] Ben Hurst: Okay. Welcome everybody. Welcome to all of the listeners. Guys.
[00:00:44] Ben Hurst: I want to let you know straight off the bat things are changing around here. It’s different now. Merriam’s not here anymore. So I, it’s me. It’s not the big two anymore. It’s just big me. It’s me, Ben. I’m hosting this one by myself. Um, Marilyn and [00:01:00] Josie are in Canada.
[00:01:01] Ben Hurst: Is it Canada? Oh my gosh. They’re in Canada. They’re at TED right now. But today.
[00:01:07] Ben Hurst: We are joined by the wonderful Joycelyn Longden. Hi. Hi. Uh, you are. Who are you? You’re an award-winning environmental justice technologist. First of all. In fact, we’ll come back to environmental justice technologists ’cause that feels important.
[00:01:23] Ben Hurst: But congratulations on being award-winning. Thank you. Something, something that we all aspire for. Um. Towards. [00:01:30] You are a writer, you are a communicator. And most importantly, for this podcast episode, you’ve just released a new book called Natural Connection. Yeah. Uh, the subtitle is What Indigenous and Marginalized People Can Teach Us about Environmental Action.
[00:01:46] Ben Hurst: And I, I love this ’cause I think that this is really about grounding. Uh. What climate action is, what climate activism is, uh, in the everyday and like making this accessible for Normies, [00:02:00] normies like me. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much. I’ve read, I’ve read a good chunk of this book and I feel like I understand it.
[00:02:06] Ben Hurst: So we’re off to a good start. We’re off to a good start. Um, thank you so much for Grace in us with your presence today. Thanks for having me. Welcome Jason. Thank
[00:02:14] Joycelyn Longdon: you. Thank you.
[00:02:15] Ben Hurst: Okay, so. We are gonna dive in.
[00:02:18] Joycelyn’s journey
[00:02:18] Ben Hurst: Uh, and I, I guess the first place I wanna start is you, last year were on the stage at Telex London Countdown.
[00:02:26] Ben Hurst: Uh, your talk was an integrating technology on social [00:02:30] justice and on indigenous wisdom. It was an incredible talk. Thank you. I’m, I’m well, uh, familiarized with your talk, but I, I’m so interested in like how you. Found yourself. How, how the heck did you get here? How did you find yourself in this place talking about this stuff?
[00:02:45] Ben Hurst: What’s the crossover of, uh, academic practice and indigenous advocacy? Mm-hmm. How does, how do those two things meet? ’cause it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that lack naturally mm-hmm. Finds its way together. Mm-hmm. So I’m interested [00:03:00] in that.
[00:03:00] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah, it definitely has not been a linear journey. It wasn’t something mapped out.
[00:03:04] Joycelyn Longdon: It was, you know what I do now? I never thought even existed when I was a kid, like looking to the future. Right, right, right. What am I gonna be doing when I’m older?
[00:03:12] Ben Hurst: Because it, did it even, did it actually exist when we were kids? Literally, no, I
[00:03:17] Joycelyn Longdon: mean, not this particular job role. I mean, people have been doing work in these different fields, uh, maybe separately for decades and decades.
[00:03:23] Joycelyn Longdon: So, you know, I’m not the first person asking. Like these general questions, but yeah. Maybe the specific [00:03:30] questions could only come together through my lived experience. Mm. And the kind of journeys that I’ve been on, um, I, I guess they come together through me being a kid. That was one. So into like literature and communication and reading and learning about the world.
[00:03:49] Joycelyn Longdon: Right. You’re one of them kids? I’m one of them, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I was also really into science. Mm. And like. Asking questions about how the world works.
[00:03:57] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:03:58] Joycelyn Longdon: And I loved the natural [00:04:00] world. Um, I had, uh, an amazing experience when I was 12, where I went to Ireland for the first time. And that was the first time I truly was like, oh wow, this world is so beautiful.
[00:04:09] Joycelyn Longdon: And I love being outside and I love exploring, right? The natural world. And I was lucky enough, even though I grew up in London. I grew up in an area that my council flat had like a brook behind it. Right. Like a little stream. And it had loads of fields around it. So I grew up kind of, even though I was a city kid.
[00:04:24] Joycelyn Longdon: Where, where in
[00:04:25] Ben Hurst: London
[00:04:26] Joycelyn Longdon: did you grow
[00:04:26] Ben Hurst: up? Oxbridge. Mm, Oxbridge. Okay. Right. With the With the brook. Yeah, with the [00:04:30] brook. I see, I see. That.
[00:04:32] Joycelyn Longdon: So these, all these things came together and obviously I grew up in African household. Mm-hmm. So I stuck with the science bit. Yeah.
[00:04:39] Ben Hurst: As you do. Yeah.
[00:04:40] Joycelyn Longdon: So I studied astrophysics at undergrad.
[00:04:42] Joycelyn Longdon: Wow. And when I left that degree. I had, whilst I was doing that degree, I also ran a creative studio for black and brown creatives in London.
[00:04:51] Ben Hurst: Okay.
[00:04:51] Joycelyn Longdon: Because I needed that creative side as an outlet. Yeah. And I was really involved in kind of. Thinking about and writing [00:05:00] about racial justice. Mm-hmm. And racial justice in the creative industries.
[00:05:04] Joycelyn Longdon: So when I finished my astrophysics degree, I thought, okay, I’ve got all of these STEM skills. I have a love for creativity and for nature. Is there a way,
[00:05:13] Ben Hurst: is there any place? Is there a way,
[00:05:15] Joycelyn Longdon: yeah, I can bring these together. I dunno why I thought I’d be able to bring them together, but I just had that innate feeling like.
[00:05:22] Joycelyn Longdon: If I want to be filled with purpose in my life, yeah. These three things need to come together for me. Yeah.
[00:05:28] The intersection of racial and environmental justice
[00:05:28] Joycelyn Longdon: And I think learning about [00:05:30] how racial justice and climate justice are completely intertwined. Yeah. That’s what struck it for me. Yeah, because I was reading about how. You know, my community, people in Ghana, black people around the world, black people in the UK were being impacted by the climate crisis.
[00:05:45] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. Being impacted by environmental destruction. And you know, after doing three years of racial justice work, I was now seeing like all this work that I was doing all this time that I thought environmentalism is not for black people. Like I stick to the racial, it’s not [00:06:00] for us. Yeah. I stick to the racial justice stuff because that’s what is important for black people.
[00:06:04] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. But the environmentalism, even though I have this love for nature. That’s not for me.
[00:06:09] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:06:10] Joycelyn Longdon: But then learning about how climate action and the climate crisis impact black people so hugely That was my in. Yeah. Because I was like that these two things are not separate. Yeah. So the last thing was to add the tech.
[00:06:23] Joycelyn Longdon: Understand, just fit
[00:06:25] Ben Hurst: that last bit. Yeah. Because I wanted
[00:06:26] Joycelyn Longdon: to do something that used the skills that I already had.
[00:06:29] Ben Hurst: [00:06:30] Right.
[00:06:30] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and that’s when I found my PhD program. Um, it. It only actually asked for the tech and the nature of it. So again, I was just constantly trying to Tetris
[00:06:42] Joycelyn Longdon: and the justice
[00:06:42] Joycelyn Longdon: part. Um, and, and so I, I got onto that program and it was in my training year that we got a talk from a bio acoustician, someone who works with, uh, sound and biodiversity.
[00:06:55] Joycelyn Longdon: And I was like, you know what? My other love is music. Yeah. And my other love is [00:07:00] sound. And that really inspired me. And so I thought, okay. Here it is. I can bring all these things together, man. I’ve got the creative element with the sound and obviously with writing and everything outside, I’ve got the technical element with using technology to monitor biodiversity.
[00:07:16] Joycelyn Longdon: And I’ve got the justice element because I’m gonna investigate how these technologies impact those who live closest to the environments, right. That we’re trying to conserve. Um, and I guess just to make clear from the outset, when I use the word indigenous, I mean some people [00:07:30] might immediately think.
[00:07:31] Joycelyn Longdon: Only to, uh, tribes. The America specific. Yeah. Yeah. Um, side or, you know, uh, north America, south America. Um, but, um, my focus is in Africa. Mm-hmm. Um, at least for my PhD. And, um, our communities are indigenous and indigeneity is not like. Homogenous word. It doesn’t look like one person. We’ve got indigenous communities all over the world.
[00:07:51] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Including in Britain. Um, so yeah.
[00:07:54] Ben Hurst: It’s so interesting, even the, like even listening to you talk, I’m finding like I feel like you are inspiring me in [00:08:00] real time because even the word indigenous has been. Like, what’s the, what’s the word for that? Repurposed. Mm-hmm. Or, or taken to mean something very specific rather than just you are native to the land that you inhabit.
[00:08:12] Ben Hurst: Right? Yeah. Um, and I, my next question was gonna be about like the, the bioacoustics things ’cause that, that. Seems like super out of left field. Mm-hmm. In terms of like those other two pieces mm-hmm. Of loving nature and loving tech, like, seems like. Oh yeah. I get that. [00:08:30] And there was a bit in the beginning of your book where you, where you speak about like studying astrophysics and looking up and then coming back down and like down to earth.
[00:08:38] Ben Hurst: Yeah, yeah. Coming back down to reality or the, the real earth. Right? Yeah. Um, but like, where does, where does Bioacoustics fit? And for people who are listening who may hear the phrase bioacoustics and not know exactly what that means, like what are we actually talking about in practical terms?
[00:08:54] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. The easiest way I like to explain what Bioacoustics is, is just saying it’s Shazam for nature.
[00:08:59] Joycelyn Longdon: Right, right, right. You know [00:09:00] how you
[00:09:00] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Shazam. What’s that song? Constantly? Yeah.
[00:09:03] Joycelyn Longdon: Uh, you can do that for birds Wow. And other species. And I mean, that’s a very simplistic way to describe it. Mm-hmm. But. That, that gives you a real gist of using computation and using machine learning to analyze sound recordings from nature and from ecosystems.
[00:09:19] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and I came to that because in the first year of my program, um, you have to decide. Kind of what technology or what, what space of [00:09:30] environmental risk you wanna focus on. Right.
[00:09:31] Ben Hurst: This is the PhD. Yeah, this is my PhD. So you already know about a range of technologies at this point? Exactly, exactly. Okay. So
[00:09:36] Joycelyn Longdon: satellite imagery for, um, for, um, monitoring deforestation, right.
[00:09:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Or, um, LIDAR scanning, which can basically scan trees and say how much carbon they’re storing or, um, so many different technologies. Right. For. Oceanography or we, we had a big choice of things that we could study. Right? Um, and. I, I, as I said, I, I, [00:10:00] this bioacoustics, um, professor, um, bio acoustician came and gave us a presentation on how Bioacoustics was being used in conservation to monitor biodiversity and monitor bird populations and monitor the health of forests around the world.
[00:10:14] Joycelyn Longdon: And I think that really triggered something for me because unlike satellites, the sensor takes you into the forest. It takes you into communities. And I, that was really important for me to understand how technology is changing. The way that forests exist. Right. Um, because [00:10:30] forests are becoming like data sites Yeah.
[00:10:32] Joycelyn Longdon: And data inform from them much inform
[00:10:35] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:10:35] Joycelyn Longdon: And extraction Yeah. Is linked to colonial extract practice. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so yeah. Hopefully that gives a better idea. Yeah. Of, of how Bioacoustics works.
[00:10:45] Ben Hurst: Thank you so much. The first of all, sorry. Also congratulations on the book. That is, that is no small task to write a book, and you’ve written this book whilst also studying your PhD at the [00:11:00] same time.
[00:11:01] Ben Hurst: And those two things. Do not cross over, like this was not, you’ve just copied and pasted sections from your, from your research into the book. So this is a lot of work that you’ve done. Yeah.
[00:11:11] Writing ‘Natural Connection’
[00:11:11] Ben Hurst: And we’ve, we very rarely ask the question on this podcast, like, what was the process like of writing that? But I am so interested in like how you find or how you found that process of actually putting pen to paper and generating this Yeah.
[00:11:24] Ben Hurst: Book and putting it out into the world. Like I love that you split it into these. Six sections. Mm-hmm. That cover [00:11:30] like very different mm-hmm. Themes and very different, how do you describe it? Like approaches? Yeah. To understanding or engaging with climate action.
[00:11:39] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Ben Hurst: But also that there’s not just these six themes that are like, uh, completely disconnected, but the.
[00:11:45] Ben Hurst: Managed to find this way of connecting. Mm-hmm. All of those different ideas and all of those different stories. Mm-hmm. Um, and in the book, you’re talking about rage. You’re talking about imagination, you’re talking about innovation theory, which I found super interesting. A [00:12:00] lot of reference to be hooks as well, which I love.
[00:12:02] Ben Hurst: Um, and then healing and care. But I’m so interested in what brought you to, like, how did you arrive at those? Did you set off knowing those are six things you were writing about or did it just kind of
[00:12:14] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Come
[00:12:14] Ben Hurst: out of. Whatever that space was that you are in.
[00:12:17] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. The book came was very emergent. Mm-hmm.
[00:12:20] Joycelyn Longdon: You know, it wasn’t this structured kind of planned thing, which is quite a, a contrast to my academic work. Right, right. And, which I think was actually a really nice way for the book [00:12:30] to emerge. At the beginning when I first started writing the book, I was more so thinking about roles. Mm-hmm. Like what are, what is our role in the climate crisis?
[00:12:38] Joycelyn Longdon: And I’d started to structure the book based on. Different roles within the climate movement, but very early on I felt kind of disenchanted with that way of looking at things because I felt intimately that my, my, the way that I show up in environmentalism is not based on like what I [00:13:00] do, but more so on who I am.
[00:13:02] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm.
[00:13:02] Joycelyn Longdon: And that. Actually part of the problem, and I think the reason why so many people feel isolated or excluded from environmental action is ’cause there’s this feeling that you have to be a certain person. Yeah. And you have to do certain things. Yeah. And I think that takes away from the essence that deep down, all of us are connected to the natural world.
[00:13:19] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. And we are all connected to each other. And this focus on like, what do you do kind of gets away. Which role do you play? Yeah. Which role do you play? Yeah. What’s important in some spaces. That wasn’t what I wanted to [00:13:30] talk about. Right. And that wasn’t one what, what I wanted to get to. I wanted to get to like how do we as humans exist in this world together amidst ecological crisis.
[00:13:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Amidst social crisis.
[00:13:43] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:13:43] Joycelyn Longdon: And even though it’s a book about environmentalism, I think for me, I. Natural connection is, is, is, is just how, how do we live with each other in the living world?
[00:13:52] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Like
[00:13:53] Joycelyn Longdon: how is it that we show up? And so these six themes were kind of [00:14:00] core themes that I saw in myself.
[00:14:02] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:02] Joycelyn Longdon: In the ways that I had either engaged with or been motivated to take environmental action or to show up in different ways with environmental action rage being that kind of very obvious thing that people think about when they think about. Climate action protest. Shut the street stuff, shouting, throw the pain.
[00:14:20] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:14:21] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and in the book, I complicate that a little bit. Yeah. And kind of try to get us to reimagine what Anger and rage. [00:14:30] Is and how it’s, um, I think I describe it as a fire that can equally burn and enlighten. Yeah. It’s a tool that we can use. It’s, um, it’s a welling of emotion that communicates our feeling.
[00:14:43] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, innovation, obviously I’m interested in, in technology, and I’m in the space of understanding how you can, redefining what technology is. Mm-hmm. Um, imagination, care, theory, healing, they’re all. Kind of parts of me and how I’ve been seeing the world [00:15:00] and how I see people show up within environmentalism and I discuss them in the book to kind of complicate them to try and show that like environmentalism isn’t this one dimensional thing.
[00:15:10] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:15:10] Joycelyn Longdon: And that communities for decades and centuries have been also showing up in these different ways. So they also came out with the case studies that I had been reading over years and years and years. Right. And seeing like. Oh wow. This is how these people are using theory. Oh wow. This is how these people can teach us about care.
[00:15:27] Joycelyn Longdon: This is how we can be taught about how to heal, how [00:15:30] to grieve, how to channel our rage, how to decolonize our imagination. And I think these are all things that are so important for environmental action beyond just these like individual individualistic ideas of. Who we should be. Mm. In order to be environmentalists.
[00:15:46] Ben Hurst: And so if, while you were writing this, did it work that way round where it was like the themes dictated the stories that you told? Or was it the other way round where it was the stories ended up dictating the themes?
[00:15:56] Joycelyn Longdon: It was a mix. I had a lot of the stories before just through my [00:16:00] reading and research and so I think I, I worked with the stories that I already had and the stories that I wanted to tell personally and they kind of.
[00:16:09] Joycelyn Longdon: Organically
[00:16:10] Ben Hurst: found their space. Found their
[00:16:11] Joycelyn Longdon: space. Yeah. And then as I had a deeper understanding of what each of these roots, ’cause in the book, I, I call them roots, um, then I added more, more stories to them. So it was kind of all organic, like,
[00:16:26] Ben Hurst: it’s like it’s supposed to be, right. Yeah. It’s organic, which is [00:16:30] nice.
[00:16:30] Ben Hurst: And I, I, I love that. Uh, you mentioned this idea. Of rage being both like illuminating. Mm-hmm. And having the power to like burn things down. Mm-hmm.
[00:16:40] Exploring rage and joy in environmental activism
[00:16:40] Ben Hurst: What is it that you’ve learned through reflecting on this for an extended period of time? What is it that you’ve learned about rage or about anger? Yeah. That like you are carrying forward with you after, after this process.
[00:16:51] Joycelyn Longdon: I think especially. Being a black woman, and I know people don’t always like black women speaking to the exact fact [00:17:00] that they’re black women, but that does shape the experience I’ve had in life. Yeah. And being a black woman who has spent a long time in institutions, um, there’s a lot of shame that comes with rage.
[00:17:12] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:14] Joycelyn Longdon: Sometimes you, for survival reasons, you do not show your rage. You kind of, you always have to check yourself, push it down. Yeah. And push it away down and hide it. Um, and I think writing the chapter was actually also a process for me [00:17:30] to acknowledge that like, there’s a lot that I’m angry about and that I’m valid mm-hmm.
[00:17:35] Joycelyn Longdon: In
[00:17:36] Joycelyn Longdon: showing and expressing that anger and that so many of us are doing this. Suppression thing. Yeah. And that that comes out in different ways. Yeah.
[00:17:46] Ben Hurst: Manifests in other places. Yeah. And our
[00:17:47] Joycelyn Longdon: anger isn’t just individual, it becomes a collective thing. Yeah. That if we don’t know how to turn it into that light, it starts getting directed in, in ways that we might not want it to.
[00:17:59] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm. [00:18:00] And at the end of the introduction to the Rage section, I share a quote from Audrey Lord who. Talks about the possibility of rage being something useful, and she’s like very specific in saying like it has a possibility to being useful depending on the way that it’s harnessed.
[00:18:17] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Joycelyn Longdon: So rage in itself is valid.
[00:18:20] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:18:21] Joycelyn Longdon: But it’s how we use that rage, how we channel that rage, how we process that rage that. Determines the outcome.
[00:18:28] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:18:29] Joycelyn Longdon: And so for [00:18:30] me, I think it was learning to love rage and also learning to be interested in how we move through rage. Yeah. Into, into new spaces. Yeah. Um, and I also in that section talk about how Joy is the sister of Rage and how.
[00:18:47] Joycelyn Longdon: They go together. Yeah. They link like our joy and our rage are sisters. And they, and we should use it as, as such, so like, am I being as joyful as I am angry?
[00:18:57] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Joycelyn Longdon: And how am I, you [00:19:00] know, revolting against the systems that wanna keep me angry. Angry with my joy. Yeah. Um, and especially in this kind of. Uh, social media getting more and more rage polarized, rage and polarized, and where we’re in this constant heightened state, how do we kind of divest from that and focus our anger?
[00:19:21] Joycelyn Longdon: ’cause that’s also what Audrey Law talks about, is like, how do we focus our anger in order for it to be useful? So that’s kinda what I’ve taken away through, [00:19:30] through writing this chapter and also engaging with other people, is that out rage is important. Yeah. And it’s necessary. And also we must like challenge the ways in which we channel that rage.
[00:19:42] Ben Hurst: Yeah. And it’s so, it’s so important. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of therapy. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve done a, you’ve been through a lot of time thinking about this stuff. ’cause I think even just that reframing of rage is something neutral, like not something bad. Um, is like so powerful. ’cause I think for lots of us, we.
[00:19:57] Ben Hurst: Feel like anger, [00:20:00] rage, sadness. There are good emotions and there are bad emotions. Yeah. And you are meant to lean into the good emotions and kind of forsake or neglect the bad ones. But like then that question of like, okay, so what do we do if this becomes, mm-hmm. So, so, so important. Mm-hmm. And I’m, I, I wanna explore a little bit maybe some of this connection in terms of like the things that do actually make you.
[00:20:22] Ben Hurst: Or fill you with rage, right. Which, some of which you speak about in the book. Um, I’m really interested in this connection between. [00:20:30] Social inequalities that exist and how that links to environmental destruction in your mind? Like what does that look like for you? Or where do you see it happening in the world?
[00:20:41] Joycelyn Longdon: It’s happening everywhere. Everywhere.
[00:20:43] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Joycelyn Longdon: And that’s what I want to get across to people. And it’s why I’m so passionate, because you know, when we were talking about when I was younger mm-hmm. And I was like, the racial justice is for me. Mm-hmm. The environmental justice or the environmental environmentalism is not
[00:20:56] Ben Hurst: is for
[00:20:57] Joycelyn Longdon: them.
[00:20:57] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. It’s for them. That’s where we’ve got it all wrong. Mm-hmm. And [00:21:00] I’m speaking to everyone, but I’m also speaking to black people and people of color. Yeah. Like this is our issue because our people are the most affected.
[00:21:09] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Joycelyn Longdon: Whether it’s abroad, but also especially here. Yeah. At home. And I think there’s always this tendency to think about social inequality in environmentalism as something that happens outside.
[00:21:19] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Joycelyn Longdon: And something that again, we have to be a savior about.
[00:21:23] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, but. It shows up in so many different ways from, you [00:21:30] know, the death of Ella Kii, Deborah, um, you know, who was the first person in the uk? She died at nine years old.
[00:21:38] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Joycelyn Longdon: And, uh, the coroner’s report stated air pollution. Yeah. As the cause of death.
[00:21:43] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. So we are living. Primarily black, Southeast Asian people are living in areas that are unfit to live in Yeah. That are unsafe to live in. The same, in America, you have Cancer Alley 200.
[00:21:57] Ben Hurst: Cancer Alley.
[00:21:58] Joycelyn Longdon: Cancer Alley. [00:22:00] It’s a, A corridor along the Mississippi River. There are over 200 petrochemical. Plants, sites, production extraction sites.
[00:22:10] Joycelyn Longdon: It’s the highest area of prevalence of, of cancer in America. It also sits on top of historic slave sites, right? Slave graves. And so there is this like doubling of oppression and extraction.
[00:22:26] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:22:26] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, we have it all over the world. [00:22:30] There are where there is environmental destruction, where there is environmental extraction.
[00:22:35] Joycelyn Longdon: There is social injustice. Right. And it’s also in the way that we try to solve the environmental crisis as well. Right. It’s not just
[00:22:42] Ben Hurst: by souping in and saving the day and fixing it for the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for example,
[00:22:45] Joycelyn Longdon: in conservation, uh, you know, we think, okay, let’s just lock off all the forests.
[00:22:51] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Push all the indigenous local communities out. The only way to protect the world is to disconnect humans and nature.
[00:22:57] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:22:58] Joycelyn Longdon: Which further ties [00:23:00] into the way that colonialism impacted communities in those areas by disconnecting them with the land. Mm-hmm. That’s why I call this but natural connection, because so much of the social inequality that comes from environmental destruction is based on disconnection, disconnection of people from healthy.
[00:23:16] Joycelyn Longdon: Thriving environments to live in, and that’s happening in the city, and it’s happening in the forest or by the ocean or whatever. And I mean, the elephant in the rim is the fact that the climate crisis impacts. The most [00:23:30] marginalized. The most. Yeah. So even those who have contributed the least to global climate, um, carbon emissions are the most impacted by droughts.
[00:23:39] Joycelyn Longdon: By unnatural. Uh, disasters. Disasters. Disasters. Yeah. Floods. Uh, floods. Yeah. Everything. Um, and so, yeah, it’s an intersectional issue and. I think what is empowering about that though, whilst it sounds depressing, is that we all have an interest in the outcomes [00:24:00] of environmental action.
[00:24:01] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Joycelyn Longdon: Because you might be living in an area where you know you are living in a council estate mm-hmm.
[00:24:08] Joycelyn Longdon: And you are worried about the health of the people around you. One of the pioneers of the environmental movement. Um. Hazel m Johnson. Mm-hmm. She got into into environmentalism. Not ’cause she was necessarily an environmentalist, but her community in Chicago. She was realizing people in the community were getting ill.
[00:24:27] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm.
[00:24:27] Joycelyn Longdon: And she didn’t understand why they were getting ill. [00:24:30] And she took it upon herself to investigate this and realized that they, their community had been built on top of a toxic waste dump, which was why they were getting more ill. Right. And that’s an example of where it’s not this idea of being an environmentalist and going out and being with the trees.
[00:24:45] Joycelyn Longdon: Tag yourself to a tree, which is what I do, saving the pads. Yeah. But you don’t have to do that. Yeah. It’s also about like. Addressing the issues within your communities, which we, we all should be doing. Right. And we all should be looking out for, whether it’s food poverty, whether it’s energy poverty. Right.
[00:24:59] Joycelyn Longdon: That’s a [00:25:00] huge thing to do with the environmental crisis because people are going out without heat. Mm-hmm. People are dying because they don’t have access to energy that they need in the uk. Um, so these problems affect us all and we all have a way in. That’s, that’s how I see it, is that. In our community, if we think about things that we’re already engaged with, there’s a climate.
[00:25:22] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah, there’s a climate connection. There’s a place for you. Yeah. There’s a place for you. Yeah.
[00:25:26] Global stories of environmental and social justice
[00:25:26] Ben Hurst: One of the things that the, the book does really well is [00:25:30] it gives such a varied collection of stories. Like one of my favorite bits is when you’re talking about Wakanda. So you talk about, you’re talking about worlds that don’t even really exist in real li in real life, right?
[00:25:39] Ben Hurst: Yeah. But it feels like you have covered every single area of the globe. Feels, I, I mean, I dunno how it’s possible you must travel a lot, but it feels like you’ve been everywhere. We’re talking about Ghana, we’re talking about Brazil, we’re talking about Nigeria, India, Iran, Ethiopia, a bunch of different places.
[00:25:56] Ben Hurst: What is it that kind of moves you or motivates you [00:26:00] to find the stories that you find mm-hmm. To unearth those kinds of examples? Uh, I, I’m thinking of the, the coolin towers in Iran. Mm-hmm. But any examples that you’ve chosen, like what is it that drew you to those specific
[00:26:14] Joycelyn Longdon: mm-hmm. Stories. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For one to start, I didn’t go to every single place.
[00:26:17] Joycelyn Longdon: Okay. Right, right.
[00:26:19] Ben Hurst: That would be, I just imagine you like Dora, like just in the areas.
[00:26:23] Joycelyn Longdon: No. So obviously Ghana is a place that I, I go to a lot. Mm-hmm. Um, and a lot of these stories either came from [00:26:30] connection with people who had been to those places, interviews with researchers, or interviews with communities directly.
[00:26:36] Joycelyn Longdon: I tried wherever possible to get interviews with. People who are directly lived, right. Those experiences, a lot of it was research driven as well, and I think the stories were really things that I felt that people could, could connect with and that exemplified the ideas that I was trying to share. So for the, um, cooling towers in Iran, I just came across that story and I felt that it.
[00:26:58] Joycelyn Longdon: Held so well. This idea [00:27:00] of rethinking and reimagining what technology is right away from this western modern, um, output that can only be created from big tech or with loads of money or this, it’s always ai.
[00:27:12] The essence of technology and creativity
[00:27:12] Joycelyn Longdon: It’s always ai. Like that’s not what technology is. And I think when I looked at the etymologies or like the root of the word technology, where it comes from, it comes from the Latin for art and craft.
[00:27:23] Joycelyn Longdon: And that to me, really. Got to the core of why I, I didn’t know that. That’s why I was [00:27:30] into technology, but when I reflect on my love for creativity, yeah. That got to the core for me of what technology should be. Yeah. And I think that, I was trying to find examples that showed that we have been doing this and communities do know what it is to look at a problem and look at it creatively.
[00:27:47] Joycelyn Longdon: Find ways to build technologies that are not necessarily extractive. Mm. And that are also beautiful. ’cause those, those towers are gorgeous. Gorgeous.
[00:27:55] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:55] Grounding ideas in real-world examples
[00:27:55] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and so that’s kind of how I, I. Brought some of these stories [00:28:00] and some were from connections I had with people, but also some were just where I’d been inspired, right.
[00:28:05] Joycelyn Longdon: I’d been stopped in my tracks and I had wanted to read deeper and deeper and deeper about them and felt that they could give a really clear message, an example to people about what this looks like, because whilst the book isn’t a solutions book and it, it was, it never meant to be, it’s more of an ideas book.
[00:28:22] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. I did want to like kind of ground and anchor all of the ideas in. Basically showing that we, [00:28:30] we do kind of have all the answers already. Yeah. And our ancestors have been doing this and we are capable of being creative and connected to the living world at the same time.
[00:28:40] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Joycelyn Longdon: And that environmental action shouldn’t be this thing of restriction and burden and depression, but could actually be a creative process.
[00:28:51] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Could actually be a process of bringing in the wisdom of the past and matching that with. The imagination [00:29:00] of a future that doesn’t even exist yet. Yeah. Um, and so for me, the stories are really ways of like, coloring that idea.
[00:29:06] Ben Hurst: Yeah. And you’ve given us a real gift, honestly. ’cause I, you talk about etymology a lot in the book, right?
[00:29:11] Ben Hurst: Like you, you clearly, you clearly have a passion for words. Um, but like, I think even that, again, like another reframing of like technology as this kind of. Like magic of creation where like science and art meet because I, there were science in my mind, there were science people and there are art people.
[00:29:27] Ben Hurst: The two don’t mix, you know? But like actually [00:29:30] this idea of technology is the actual medium and face. It’s a craft. Yeah. Yeah. It’s something that we’re, we get to imagine and then we figure out how to do that in practice practice’s.
[00:29:39] The role of hope in environmental action
[00:29:39] Ben Hurst: Is there something that you’ve learned about hope
[00:29:42] Ben Hurst: from.
[00:29:43] Ben Hurst: This process of, of writing the book, because you obviously, you start in that space of there’s a lot to be mad about.
[00:29:49] Ben Hurst: Where does that leave you? Yeah. Like what was your natural journey through that process and what have you learned about hoping for the now or the future?
[00:29:56] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Actually the very last chapter, it’s kind of called the [00:30:00] epilogue in the book, is all about rooting in hope. And it’s all about what hope looks like.
[00:30:05] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. And for me. I think all of the stories are about hope. All of the stories about are about humanity, right? And about our. Need and passion to live and to be connected to one of, to one another. I, I find that deeply hopeful. Um, I find it deeply hopeful that communities [00:30:30] who are vulnerable, who are marginalized, who are oppressed, have all of the energy.
[00:30:38] Joycelyn Longdon: To push against and resist against systems of oppression that are right. So much larger. And I, I find that not just hopeful, you know, ’cause I don’t want to romanticize it, but I also find it deeply important because there are many of us who live in, live relatively comfortable lives.
[00:30:55] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:55] Joycelyn Longdon: Who are devoid of hope.
[00:30:57] Joycelyn Longdon: Oh, there’s nothing we can do.
[00:30:58] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. It’s just the way [00:31:00] it’s all,
[00:31:00] Joycelyn Longdon: it’s the way it is. I’m gonna not focus on that because there’s just nothing I can do. It’s too, if I don’t do the biggest thing in the world, then. I can’t change anything. Mm. Um, and I in the, in the last part of the book, and, and when I talk about hope, I speak with the writer, Rebecca Sonet, who is someone who’s really inspirational from me.
[00:31:17] Joycelyn Longdon: And she talks about this idea, one, that, that for, for communities who are marginalized and who are facing environmental destruction, hope is not an option. Yeah. Right? Because it’s the difference between death, your survival [00:31:30] or not. And she gives this example of, imagine if you are in a sinking ship and.
[00:31:36] Joycelyn Longdon: You know, you can see six people that are maybe not gonna make it and you’re in a boat. Would you look at those six people and say, there’s no way I can save all six people, so I’m not gonna save any of them.
[00:31:46] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:31:47] Joycelyn Longdon: That’s not what we do. That’s not even to is try and save. That’s not nature. We try and save as much as we can and we are all, we have, we must save each other.
[00:31:56] Joycelyn Longdon: No one is going to come and save us. Yeah. Um, [00:32:00] and, and so I think thinking about hope. As something that’s rooted. That’s what, that’s what I come to at the end, is that all of these cha, all of these sections, the rage, the innovation, the imagination, these are all things we can use to root our hope, right?
[00:32:16] Joycelyn Longdon: Like that’s something we can never let go of. One thing I talk about in the Imagination Chapter is about our ancestors and ancestors, you know, whether that’s ancestors of. Indigenous peoples in America, or [00:32:30] ancestors of, you know, diaspora and, and Africans and Jamaicans or whoever. They have seen the end of the world before.
[00:32:39] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:32:40] Joycelyn Longdon: For their communities. Yeah. And yet they still sung. They still danced. They still made art. They made us, yeah.
[00:32:48] Joycelyn Longdon: We we’re here. Yeah, we’re
[00:32:49] Joycelyn Longdon: here. And. And so the world ha people have been through the ends of the world before.
[00:32:56] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:32:57] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and it’s [00:33:00] how we show up at the end of the world, at the end of this world.
[00:33:03] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:33:04] Joycelyn Longdon: That will usher us in to the next world. And there is a next world. And it depends on us, what that next world looks like. It could look worse than now.
[00:33:13] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Joycelyn Longdon: And it could look so much better than now. And in the end of the Imagination chapter, I talk about Octavia Butler. And how she doesn’t ever talk about utopia.
[00:33:22] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. She just talks about a better world.
[00:33:24] Ben Hurst: Yeah. And the thing that exists after this. Yeah. The thing that exists
[00:33:28] Joycelyn Longdon: after this, and if we [00:33:30] maybe stopped. In the Western way of thinking about scale and like, how are we gonna save the whole thing? And just think about how can we all make the world better?
[00:33:38] Ben Hurst: Yeah,
[00:33:38] Joycelyn Longdon: that sounds so simplistic.
[00:33:40] Joycelyn Longdon: But for me, that’s deeply hopeful. ’cause that’s what our ancestors have done in their, in their small areas, in their own ways, in their own locations, with their own skillsets. They have striven to make their world a piece of this world better. Mm. And that’s hopeful for me.
[00:33:59] Ben Hurst: I love [00:34:00] it. I love it. I love it.
[00:34:02] Ben Hurst: And it does, it feels like while you’re saying it, I feel like I can feel hope.
[00:34:05] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:06] Ben Hurst: Building inside of me. Like just again, that idea of like, what is the, there is gonna be a, a new world, new world, world. Like there’s an usher in a new world coming and either you’re gonna be part of it, you going or you’re not.
[00:34:16] Ben Hurst: But like also if you’re not, like, what do you leave? That new world as for the people who inhabit it after us. Yeah. Um, all right. A bit of a left, A left turn here. Sharp. Left turn. Okay.
[00:34:29] Innovation lessons from Wakanda
[00:34:29] Ben Hurst: But my [00:34:30] question is, it’s ’cause of my favorite bit of the book. Um, what do we learn about innovation? I. From Wakandan cosmology.
[00:34:38] Ben Hurst: I just, I just need, just because I know, I know there’s someone listening who needs to hear this bit. In particular, what do we learn about innovation or what can we learn about in innovation from comic books and Marvel movies?
[00:34:50] Joycelyn Longdon: Oh, so much. So much. And specifically like Afrofuturist, right? Um, stories and sci-fi, and obviously this is.
[00:34:57] Joycelyn Longdon: A bit to my passions of someone who just loves [00:35:00] science and space and all of that. Mm-hmm. Um, I think I wanna preface it, and I do say it in the book, you know, Wakanda, I use Wakanda ’cause it’s a very recognizable
[00:35:10] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:35:11] Joycelyn Longdon: World. A place that’s been built in our imaginations.
[00:35:15] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:15] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, it’s still built within like a Western conception.
[00:35:17] Joycelyn Longdon: It’s an American movie at the end of the day. Yeah. Um, and there are authors like Neti aka, who talk about, um, African. Uh, futurism. Yeah. Which is different from Afrofuturism, but I use, um, Wakanda as [00:35:30] like something that a lot of us, a nice touch point, can connect to. And I think the way that I talk about Wakanda acting as kind of like a blueprint for how we can think about or reimagine what technology is, is this idea that the Wakandans didn’t use technology.
[00:35:44] Joycelyn Longdon: To defeat other people. Yeah. Or to oppress other people. They used it for collective good.
[00:35:50] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:51] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, vibranium was something that came from the earth mm-hmm. From a plant. And so it, it acknowledges that all [00:36:00] technology comes from the earth.
[00:36:01] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:02] Joycelyn Longdon: None of this, while it’s manmade, it’s all the earth. Yeah.
[00:36:05] Joycelyn Longdon: And I talk about this in the healing chapter about how we think nature only exists. Out there, but this is nature. This is nature. This is nature. This is nature. Yeah. Otherwise it wouldn’t exist. Yeah, it would not exist. Um, and so vibranium is this thing that is incredibly technological. It, it can do all of these incredible things.
[00:36:22] Joycelyn Longdon: It can stop bullets going through clothes. It can create huge sources of power.
[00:36:27] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:28] Joycelyn Longdon: Yet it’s also something that when [00:36:30] ingested can take you to the ancestral plane.
[00:36:32] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm.
[00:36:32] Joycelyn Longdon: And can connect you with your ancestors. And so in that source, I. It is held. My idea about innovation and technology, which is using the wisdom of the past as.
[00:36:45] Joycelyn Longdon: In the same vein as creating and, and, and developing and advancing. And so those, those two are not separate, but also the reverence for the natural world is not separate. When we see Wakanda, it is not a depleted, extracted [00:37:00] place. There are animals, there are wildlife. Yeah. There are mountains. There are clean rivers.
[00:37:04] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. There are. There is this abundance in the community, in the society, and while of course the world is a Wakanda. Yeah, I think we, we, the intention is not to use Wakanda. It’s like, okay, now we’re gonna build. Yeah. Now let’s do, that’s good. Macand. Or you know, something like vibranium exists, but I mean, the sun exists.
[00:37:25] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. There’s so much on this planet that is mind bogging, [00:37:30] mindbogglingly amazing. Mm-hmm. Just, I mean, as someone who in, who is interested in science and, and the way that this world works, it never ceases to just amaze how complex and like beautiful this planet is. Yeah. Um, and so it’s about how do we keep that reverence for life and for the natural world.
[00:37:50] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. How do we. Advance and, and create advances on advancements and innovate and create solutions and problem solve [00:38:00] and keep, you know, the past, keep wisdom of our people, all intertwined into that and. Understand that everything that we do is imbued with the past. Um, and there’s so much to be learned from the past.
[00:38:14] Joycelyn Longdon: And I think that for me was what I was trying to pull out of the Wakanda story is this like trifecta of technology, nature and, and ancestral wisdom. Which wisdom? Yeah. I feel like is a world that I would like to build and be part of [00:38:30] Building. Yeah.
[00:38:30] Ben Hurst: And a world that you are building. Right, because that, that was gonna be my next question was, so in, in real life, if we don’t imagine these imaginary people in Africa, and we think actually talking about real mm-hmm.
[00:38:41] Ben Hurst: Indigenous communities.
[00:38:43] Indigenous knowledge and modern technology
[00:38:43] Ben Hurst: On Earth now in real time, what benefits do they see from the use of these technologies that we do have, like in real time? ’cause I feel like on this podcast, like even in, in the introduction we were talking about, um, different types of technologies that exist. And I was like, oh, I know about [00:39:00] that.
[00:39:00] Ben Hurst: Oh, we’ve spoken to a person that does that. Mm-hmm. Oh, it’s that person. Oh, that’s. Been. Mm-hmm. Um, and just like this idea that these technologies can hold so much value, um, and so much transformative power for these communities of people. I’m, I’m so interested in like where you see that playing out in real time.
[00:39:16] Ben Hurst: So for these indigenous, indigenous communities, um, like, let’s take Bioacoustics for example mm-hmm. Which is your work, right? Mm-hmm. Like where do you see that having impact or playing out for people mm-hmm. In real time?
[00:39:27] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. I think it’s, it’s, [00:39:30] it’s. It’s so tricky. Mm-hmm. Because technology, especially Western conceived technology, has so much ties, so many ties to colonialism and extraction.
[00:39:43] Joycelyn Longdon: Right. And so for me, I don’t think about technology in like what it can do for indigenous communities. I think about the knowledge that’s already held in community and how that can actually come out, be amplified by the, and be amplified or be. [00:40:00] Expressed through new conceptions of technology. Yeah. Um, because of course you could just say, oh, well look, buy acoustic success, all these cool things, we’re gonna give it to communities and then they’re gonna be great.
[00:40:10] Ben Hurst: Yeah. They’re gonna love it. It would be Wonder. Wonder. And they’re gonna love it and it’ll be
[00:40:12] Joycelyn Longdon: wonderful. And that is not the case. Yeah. Um, and there are many places where technology’s like what we’re talking about, they don’t need to be there. Yeah. And they, there are already technologies within communities that exist.
[00:40:25] Joycelyn Longdon: Hunting is a technology.
[00:40:27] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:40:29] Joycelyn Longdon: so it’s [00:40:30] not always this kind of western conception, these by acoustic sensors, you know, they’re cool. But yeah, the some, we don’t start from the assumption that that technology is needed there, or that it will, it will help communities.
[00:40:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:40:41] Joycelyn Longdon: It’s actually understanding what knowledge is already held, what the gaps communities are having.
[00:40:45] Joycelyn Longdon: What are the fights that they’re fighting?
[00:40:47] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm.
[00:40:47] Joycelyn Longdon: What are the things that they want to protect? How do they wanna move through the space? And then are there technologies that one, they want to engage with? Yeah. And two, that will support the goals that they have
[00:40:57] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:40:57] Joycelyn Longdon: In, in the location that they’re [00:41:00] working in.
[00:41:01] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, so with the community that I work with, it kind of evolved that for community members, really being able to connect to the sounds of the forest was an important part of reconnecting to a forest that had been militarized, right? So, especially for women, a lot of women wouldn’t go very deep into the forest because.
[00:41:20] Joycelyn Longdon: The conservation regime there is is quite militaristic. Right. And you could get, say, arrested or whatever Yeah. For being within the forest. And so being able to like [00:41:30] hear and connect to the sounds of birds and of monkeys. In the comfort of your room and to be able to see the outputs of machine learning algorithms that show you which species are there, where are they?
[00:41:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah, how are they distributed throughout the forest was something that felt connecting, um, to them. And also there’s a lot of extraction going on right now whereby acoustics can track that and monitor that, and over time show how kind of beneficial or disastrous certain actions are within the forest.
[00:41:59] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, [00:42:00] because it
[00:42:00] Ben Hurst: helps them to reconnect to what they would’ve been doing. Yeah. If the outside force had come in, had it come in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that. Um, and,
[00:42:07] Joycelyn Longdon: and I think, you know, that was basically, bioacoustics was already a technology being used in there without the sensors, right? Yeah. Because the people, the hunters are constantly listening to the forest and have immense knowledge about what bird is this?
[00:42:21] Joycelyn Longdon: What bird is that? What exact call is that? Yeah. And so it was also like it facilitated this cross community like. Education and, [00:42:30] and learning and storytelling and sharing, because now everyone’s saying, um, you know, I hear this bird when I go to the forest, or this bird tells me I’m supposed to go back home.
[00:42:40] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. To a farm. Or it was, it’s not necessarily the technology that did that, but it was the introduction of it that got people to actually be like, do you know what? This is, this is a skill that we have. Yeah, we can do this. This is a skill that we have of connecting to this forest, and we know this forest really well.
[00:42:56] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:42:57] Joycelyn Longdon: And the outputs of this technology [00:43:00] only allow us to gain better insight.
[00:43:03] Ben Hurst: This is incredible. You know, it’s like, it’s such an interesting experience just sitting here having this conversation with you because I can feel my. Brain betraying me. Like while you’re saying, while you are saying things, I’m like, oh, that’s really going the long way round.
[00:43:15] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Or like, oh, that’s such a, like, that would obviously add time to like the process. Exactly. But. That is so important. Important. Like it’s so fundamentally important. Like not just in terms of, oh, just transition and blah, blah, blah, blah, but actually when you’re thinking about, [00:43:30] even thinking about how you can help or support or mobilize groups of people in their own environments.
[00:43:35] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Like to actually think about what the people want want. And that’s the thing, thing in in
[00:43:40] Joycelyn Longdon: conservation, people do have those thoughts, right? Yeah. Like it takes too long, you know, everything’s urgent. And I think that’s kind of part of the prop. The reason why we’re here, that’s why we’re
[00:43:46] Ben Hurst: in the situation we’re in, and we’re
[00:43:48] Joycelyn Longdon: gonna just replicate if we just think right.
[00:43:49] Joycelyn Longdon: We are gonna make technology in the UK and we’re gonna export it out there. And it’s inherently a good thing.
[00:43:55] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:43:56] Joycelyn Longdon: That, that is not moving away from any of the [00:44:00] systems of oppression that have come before us. Um, and so being critical, working slowly allows us to work more justly because it allows the power dynamics to settle a little bit more.
[00:44:11] Joycelyn Longdon: They’ll always be there. Mm-hmm. But when we go fast. We leave people behind. We leave people behind.
[00:44:16] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:44:17] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:44:18] Connecting with nature in urban environments
[00:44:18] Ben Hurst: Well, we’re coming towards the end now. Yeah. Um, I got a couple more questions for you. The, the first one is this picture? Yes. Sorry, this picture on the front of the book is this guy. What’s this guy climbing?
[00:44:28] Ben Hurst: Is it a tree or is it water? [00:44:30] Tree. Water. Is it a tree or is it a waterfall? That’s a tree. Okay. So this dude’s climbing up a tree, right? Yes. And I think, um, a really important image to set the tone of what. What the book is communicating, which is about this idea of actually reconnecting or connecting with nature.
[00:44:47] Ben Hurst: The place where it, it loses me a little bit is I live in a city like I, I’ve never, I mean, I’ve climbed trees before, but nothing like that. But I’ve never, I’ve never climbed a tree to the point where I thought, if I fell, I might die. Yeah. So I’m, I’m [00:45:00] interested in this idea of like. Natural connection and what that looks like for people.
[00:45:07] Ben Hurst: Like most of our listeners I think are based in cities. Cities, yeah. So what does that look like for people who are city dwellers? What does it look like for us to reconnect with nature? And you spoke about that experience of growing up and the estate and behind the house, there’re, there’d be in nature.
[00:45:23] Ben Hurst: Um, but also you’ve spoken about the fact that nature is in the house, right? Nature is everything and around us, and we are also part [00:45:30] shame. Yeah. See another one. There you go. Um, but we are also a part of nature. So what does that look like?
[00:45:35] Ben Hurst: Yeah. For
[00:45:36] Ben Hurst: people who are in London, for people who are in Brazil, wherever they are in cities.
[00:45:41] Ben Hurst: Yeah. What is natural connection for those people?
[00:45:44] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. I think I address it pretty much right at the beginning of the introduction, that while I like to frolic.
[00:45:50] Ben Hurst: Yeah, I remember that line specifically. Yeah. Iro.
[00:45:53] Joycelyn Longdon: I like to hug a tree. That’s not what natural connection is about. Mm. A lot of the stories in this book, a lot of the [00:46:00] environmental justice heroes that I’m pointing to, their actions were in cities.
[00:46:04] Joycelyn Longdon: Right. Their actions were not in the forest. Mm. Because the environmental destruction that they were experiencing was coming to them in the city. Mm. Um, and, and I grew up in a city. Right. But I still developed that. Natural connection myself, and I say that a natural connection is developed wherever we are.
[00:46:27] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. Because it’s not an external thing [00:46:30] necessarily was, there’s lots of examples in the book of different people’s connection to the natural world or to environmental action. It’s internal, like a natural connection is an internal thing. It’s how we view the world. It’s actually putting on a new set of glasses.
[00:46:43] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. And looking at the world in a different way. It is acknowledging that. Everything in this room, its nature. Like that piano over there is made of beautiful wood that would’ve been a tree.
[00:46:53] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:46:53] Joycelyn Longdon: And by say, thinking about the living world or the, or the nature as a [00:47:00] living thing, we are here with that tree.
[00:47:02] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm. Like that tree, the essence of that tree, the soul of that tree is here. And this was dug from the ground.
[00:47:08] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:09] Joycelyn Longdon: This water came from somewhere. Yeah. From a spring. Yeah. Somewhere. True. This is beautiful fabric that was, you know, grown and then sewn together. Mm. I think it’s creating just a reverence for all of the things that are around us.
[00:47:24] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm. That we just ignore every day. And I think that’s part of the reason we’re in this crisis. Yeah. Is because [00:47:30] we as a collective. And not by fault of our own. Right. Because of the systems,
[00:47:37] Ben Hurst: yeah. Of
[00:47:37] Joycelyn Longdon: capitalism that keep us tired, that keep us angry, that keep us dysregulated stuff to get outta those emotions, to get outta those emotions.
[00:47:47] Joycelyn Longdon: It disconnects us from the fact that we are nature. That we are natural beings and that we are surrounded by nature all the time. Yeah. And that, and just slowly doing that as a practice, every [00:48:00] day, every week, you’ll start to see you, you act differently. There’s this thing in, um, I think in the health space where it’s like if you go for a run in the morning or if you exercise in the morning, you are more likely to make better decisions Yeah.
[00:48:12] Joycelyn Longdon: Through the day, because subconsciously. You’ve, you’ve made a good decision. Thought I made a good decision, so I might as well keep making more good decisions. And I think it’s the same about an natural connection is like. If you start thinking, where did this cloth come from? Like, I’m gonna, you know, think about what material this is and, okay, let me think [00:48:30] about where in the world that comes from.
[00:48:31] Joycelyn Longdon: Or, you know, I can hear a bird, I dunno what bird that is. And there’s not many birds around me, but like, what bird is that, or what tree is that around me? Yeah. Or um, what is this building made of, or. How do I get to work? Or what am I buying at the grocery store or yeah. Am I gonna click that Klarna? Or, you know, how does that shift my relation with the rest of the world?
[00:48:58] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Um, [00:49:00] then slowly, for me at least by having those glasses on, it make, it makes you show up differently in the world, which is what the book’s about. It’s like how. How are we connecting with the rest of the world?
[00:49:12] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. And
[00:49:12] Joycelyn Longdon: with each other as well. And, and it’s also seeing the nature in each other, the beauty in each other, the complexity in each other.
[00:49:18] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah.
[00:49:19] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, yeah. It’s just being curious about where we come from and what we’re all made up of.
[00:49:26] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:49:26] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, and in and in the care chat, uh, section where I [00:49:30] talk about making kin with the Earth, it’s just like you can start from anywhere. And come back to the earth. Mm. Start from a car, take apart its constituent parts.
[00:49:39] Joycelyn Longdon: It comes back to the earth. Mm. Take the food in your hand. It comes back to the soil. Everything comes back to the soil. Yeah. And so you are always connected to the earth, even if you. It doesn’t feel like it Don’t feel that way.
[00:49:49] Ben Hurst: Even if you don’t perceive it as that. Even if you don’t
[00:49:50] Joycelyn Longdon: perceive it as that.
[00:49:51] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:49:52] Joycelyn Longdon: Um, so I think, you know, a natural connection is, is actually less about what’s going on all the way over there or all the [00:50:00] way in the, in the National Park or in the Na Nature Reserve, although we should also be campaigning for more of that, that in the city and cleaning up the city. Yeah. So that people can be living in green cities where, you know, we know that soci, um, communities in cities.
[00:50:14] Joycelyn Longdon: That are rich have more tree cover. Yeah. Which means they have more cooling.
[00:50:18] Ben Hurst: Yeah. And
[00:50:18] Joycelyn Longdon: have less pollution.
[00:50:19] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:50:20] Joycelyn Longdon: So it is imperative for those of us living in cities to ensure that our councils are doing the best that they can to provide us with healthy environments. Yeah. ’cause we know [00:50:30] that the natural world, we are nature and we need nature around us.
[00:50:34] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. Um, for our health, for our mental health, physical health, spiritual health. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and so it’s. It’s about both. It’s about noticing nature all around us, and also bringing nature more and more into our lives and into our worlds.
[00:50:52] Ben Hurst: I love it. I love it. And it makes, it makes me think like my, um, my therapist the other day was saying, I was asking about like, uh, [00:51:00] techniques to deal with stress.
[00:51:01] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm. And they said, take your shoes off and go and touch some grass. Grass, like standing in the garden, some grass. And it was, it was like a very. Intense experience because I suddenly became aware of like everything that was around me. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, if you did it for like two minutes. Yeah. Like the first two minutes you’re like, oh, I’ve, I’ve, and then you settle and then you hear birds and you hear things in the bushes and you see things running around and you’re just so much more aware of like the world around you.
[00:51:24] Ben Hurst: Um, but. I can understand what you’re saying there about that becoming an everyday practice everyday and also not as [00:51:30] something that like necessarily it’s a massive shift you have to do. No, no, no, no. Like you could just practice being just meant like, just just thinking. Be more aware. Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:37] Joycelyn Longdon: Being more aware, being more, you know, connected to your surroundings like.
[00:51:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Urban wildlife is crazy.
[00:51:42] Ben Hurst: Yeah. There’s a lot.
[00:51:43] Joycelyn Longdon: There’s a lot of it.
[00:51:44] Ben Hurst: Foxes, but also a lot
[00:51:45] Joycelyn Longdon: of other, and foxes are not that
[00:51:46] Ben Hurst: bad. They’re not that bad. There’s a lot of pigeons. Yeah. But they’re cool. They’re cool as well. They’re cool.
[00:51:50] Joycelyn Longdon: Pigeons. Produce milk. Like what did you know that
[00:51:52] Ben Hurst: milk that people drink? Not milk.
[00:51:54] Ben Hurst: That people drink
[00:51:55] Joycelyn Longdon: milk. That pigeons drink.
[00:51:56] Ben Hurst: Okay. Right. But baby, yeah. Milk for baby pigeons. Just to clarify, baby [00:52:00] pigeons. Milk for baby pigeons.
[00:52:01] Resources for further learning
[00:52:01] Ben Hurst: Um, alright, so if people want to learn more about. This natural connection between environmental action and indigenous wisdom, where would you recommend? Mm-hmm.
[00:52:13] Ben Hurst: They go obviously firstly to natural connection. Um, but where else, like mm-hmm. How do people start to learn? How, how did you start to learn? Mm-hmm. How does one become more aware of this kind of stuff?
[00:52:26] Joycelyn Longdon: I think reading and listening to people who. [00:52:30] Are indigenous who are, um, doing this work is so important.
[00:52:34] Joycelyn Longdon: And another really good book is called Braiding Sweetgrass, um, by Robin Wool Kimara. Um, it’s all about indigenous knowledge and wisdom and science in the natural world. Um, there are loads of books I can maybe provide a like, oh yeah. Resource list. We’ll put in the, in the notes. Yeah. Um, afterwards, in the back of the book, there’s also a big resource list of different books, um, that people can read.
[00:52:55] Joycelyn Longdon: Um. I, I reading.
[00:52:57] Joycelyn Longdon: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:58] Joycelyn Longdon: I do think also in [00:53:00] this day and age when we’re always on the phones, like taking time out to, to read, but also to listen, like going onto the internet and following indigenous communities or following. Conservationists are following intersectional environmentalists. You might know Green Girl Leah or Wua Groo who runs, um, black Girl Environmentalist or, um, uh, I mean, there’s so many.
[00:53:24] Joycelyn Longdon: I, I like, don’t, can’t think of everyone. I don’t wanna miss. You don’t have to think. I don’t wanna miss people off the [00:53:30] list. So, and
[00:53:30] Ben Hurst: the more you add is the more you miss. Yes. That’s difficult.
[00:53:33] Joycelyn Longdon: So, um. So, yeah, I think actually don’t include that because I wanna, yeah, I, I wanna put them in the in notes. I wanna put a huge list.
[00:53:40] Joycelyn Longdon: Episode
[00:53:41] Joycelyn Longdon: notes. Yeah.
[00:53:41] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah. I wanna put them in the, in the episode notes. But I think for me it’s like just creating intentional time, like whether it’s each week or once a month even to listen to one podcast.
[00:53:53] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:53:54] Joycelyn Longdon: That’s talking about, about these topics. Reading a book over an extended period of time. [00:54:00] Um.
[00:54:00] Joycelyn Longdon: Yeah, I, I think there, there’s so many resources out there.
[00:54:03] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:54:04] Conclusion
[00:54:04] Ben Hurst: Jocelyn, thank you so much for joining us on the episode. Thank you so much for having me. It was incredible. So interesting. And for everybody listening at home, please do check the episode notes for all of those examples of books you can read, people you can follow on social media.
[00:54:20] Ben Hurst: And finally, remember, stay curious.
[00:54:27] Maryam Pasha: Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope [00:54:30] you’ve enjoyed this episode.
[00:54:31] Ben Hurst: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure that you get next week’s releases,
[00:54:36] Maryam Pasha: and why not reach out with your very own climate confessions?
[00:54:39] Ben Hurst: While you’re at it, please leave a rating and a review.
[00:54:42] Maryam Pasha: Now, let’s shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod
[00:54:45] Ben Hurst: executive produced by Josie Colter.
[00:54:48] Maryam Pasha: Produced by Ben Beheshty.
[00:54:49] Ben Hurst: Music, also by Ben Beheshty,
[00:54:51] Maryam Pasha: communications by Tara Cooper and Izzy Gladstone.
[00:54:55] Ben Hurst: Curation by Deesha Chandra,
[00:54:57] Maryam Pasha: hosted by Ben Hurst.
[00:54:58] Ben Hurst: I’m Maryam Pasha. [00:55:00]
[00:55:00] Maryam Pasha: And remember,
[00:55:01] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
