Outrage + Optimism / Special Series

Our Story of Nature: From Rupture to Reconnection

In this three-part podcast series, Christiana Figueres and co-host Isabel Cavelier Adarve, former negotiator for Colombia and co-founder of Mundo Comun, ask listeners to redefine our human identity. They challenge us to see ourselves as an integral part of nature herself. They discuss whether this renewed understanding of - and relationship with - the rest of nature can help us turn the current extractive culture into one based on awareness of our interdependence.

About this series

We begin in Part 1 by looking at our original rupture and separation from nature: how most humans grew to believe we were superior to nature, could control it and extract without limits. The hosts explore how our different systems of belief and religious origin stories fed into this idea of separation and superiority, and some of the consequences of that - colonialism, patriarchy, and depletion of the earth’s resources.

In Part 2 we move on to look at how those old paradigms now permeate modern societies in everything from economics, food and energy systems to design - and how we are beginning to become aware of the grave dangers these paradigms have placed us in. The hosts explore how we are now living with nature and trying to save it for our own benefit.

And in Part 3, we end by delving into reconnection, wonder and awe in, and of, the natural world. The hosts explore how a sense of interdependence - living as a part of nature - might restore our agency and open us up to the possibility of remaking our world. They uncover the shoots of a different, better future that are already emerging.