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Bridging the Gaps 2020: Podcasts on ecology, health, energy, well-being…..

Our 2020 podcast series, Bridging the Gaps, was co-organised by Feasta and the European Health Futures Forum. It was a follow-on to our 2019 series Beyond the Obvious, also done in collaboration with the EHFF.

The hosts, Seán O’Conláin and Caroline Whyte, explored a range of topics with guests from a wide variety of backgrounds. We uploaded 10 podcasts in the course of 2020. Please feel free to comment below, and check out our 2021 Bridging the Gaps series.

Our thanks to Laoise Kelly who gave us permission to use her harp music. The piece is ‘Princess Beatrice’ …

Why we should buy food from local producers

Good opinion piece in the Irish Times from Talamh Beo’s Manchán Magan, explaining the benefits of Community Supported Agriculture: “This localised, diverse farming was how food was always produced until international seed and chemical fertiliser behemoths began luring farmers towards new soil-depleting practices, with the promise of increased profits – not admitting that it was at the expense of the health of the soil and the surrounding environment”.…

Submission on Evaluation of Community Banking and Local Provision of Banking and Financial Services in Ireland

Feasta Currency Group members believe that community (or public) banking could form a central component of a healthy future Irish economy. There is an urgent need to expand this sector in Ireland in order to help protect the Irish economy from debt-related financial risk, stimulate community development and help bring about the transition to a growth-neutral financial sector.

Beyond the Obvious: novel podcasts for enquirers

Our pilot podcast series, Beyond the Obvious, was co-organised by Feasta and the European Health Futures Forum.

The hosts, Seán O’Conláin and Caroline Whyte, explored a range of topics with guests from a wide variety of backgrounds. There are six monthly podcasts of 20-30 minutes, released between March 15th and September 17th 2019. (We took a break in August.) Please feel free to comment below.

Topics include:

• decarbonisation
• decreasing energy consumption
• measuring wellbeing
• reviving biodiversity, which is taken to include local culture and language
• drivers of health
• monetary reform

Our thanks to Laoise …

Anticipating the coming of troubles – envisaging a lifeboat economy

Brian Davey argues that, while there is no point in hoping that the powerful will manage to resolve the multiple crises we're facing, we can still work on developing permacultural designs of local cultivation space and residential areas, and on ways to create soils and grow trees that absorb carbon, so that new forms of living and organising may become possible.