How do you live your life like tomorrow matters? Perhaps you're already growing food. Consuming less. Connecting with your community. Perhaps you're already thinking hard. Keen to see the world a little slower. Greener. Healthier. But where to begin? Here on the Future Setting podcast, we dig deep into the hearts and minds of blissfully normal people doing bloody amazing things, unearthing their moments of contradiction, their hopes and fears for the future and what galvanizes them to action in the name of inspiring all of us to do a little more in shaping a better future. Today I'm Jade and this is future dating. So you're probably wondering why you're hearing a new voice. And that's because I'm teaming up with Jade to bring you a special set series within future studying. I'm Hayley, and I'm here to be curious with wisdom keepers about stories that explore what it means in this day and age to become heart led beings. Together, we'll explore how tuning into our inner world helps us show up and know love, intention, and connection to ourselves, our communities, and of course, the planet. Welcome to stories from the Heart. nature is not a place. Nature is a process which comes back to that thing I was saying earlier about evolution. It's constantly dynamic, constantly adapting, constantly finding ways forward. It's like a stream that's ever flowing. And when you're listening, you're hearing that movement and you have to be in the moment as it's happening. So today we're joined by one of Australia's most renowned sound recordist, Andrew Skeoch, an educator, author, naturalist and environmental thinker. Andrew has spent the last three decades capturing the sounds of wild environments across the globe. Through his label Listening Earth, he has published recordings featuring breathtaking habitats from nearly every continent, albums that attract tens of thousands of weekly streams, and Spotify. His work has been featured in immersive exhibitions like Our Country and Sydney Wildlife World, as well as major films including Rabbit Proof, Fence, and The Jungle Book. Beyond recording, Andrew is a passionate speaker and educator, weaving sound and storytelling to engage audiences from TEDx stages to university classrooms. As president of the Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group, he's nurturing the next generation of field recordings. So get ready to tune in, because today we're immersing ourselves in Nature's Symphony with Andrew, exploring not only the sounds of the wild, but also the deeper connections between our inner world and the environment around us. So welcome. Welcome, Andrew. Thanks for jumping on the pod with us. You're in Australia right now and I'm currently in Peru, and so there's a bit of a time difference. today I actually walked into a shop that had the most beautiful artistic style jewelry. you know, it was all shaped like animals. And I started talking to the woman in the shop and she started telling me about these, these art pieces, that she actually had these visions to create this jewelry from listening. So she was listening to the Icarus, which, I'm not sure if you're aware of, but it's like the music and the sounds that they play during ceremonies, in Peru with the bow tribe and community here. And so it actually got me thinking as well, you know, in our Western society, go, go, go, we often don't consider, sound and we don't think about sound consciously or listening consciously and. Because you've traveled to so many continents around the world, and this is your specialty is recording sound and listening and you wrote the book Deep Listening. I would love to hear. What have been some of your most profound moments of listening and learning in these places? Well. Hello, Hayley. And, and hello to your listeners. Yeah, that's a huge question, isn't it? With, with that life experience of traveling and listening, it's difficult to pick out particular waypoints along the journey. But there are a few, I think probably the very first one. I've grown up as a bit of a nature kid in Sydney. I used to go down to the gully below where I lived, and I got to know my birds really well, but, I was bird watching, you know, I was looking at, And I learned to draw birds. I got interested in drawing, and I ended up going to the Australian Museum and using the skin collection, being invited to do that, which was a real honor. And it wasn't until much later in my life that, I it occurred to me to start listening, and, I had a borrowed pair of microphones and a music project that I was looking at doing, and so I thought, oh, recorded a few birdy noises while were on the job. And what I heard was just so beautiful and so unexpectedly sublime. I hadn't expected that. And so I, it really was a moment of what I think of as acoustic awakening. So it was such a sublime experience. And, I think it was the moment when I thought. No, this is this is something that I am really drawn to, and I think I have a, a sense of how to record and that I wanted to share what I was hearing with people. So we changed our music recording label as it was at that stage to Nature Sound label. And, as they say, the rest is, the rest is the journey. So, yeah. So that that was one moment and I think another one was, being in Central Australia and it was a really windy morning. We'd been there for several weeks and we'd encountered, quite a few windy mornings, and it was just like, not another one because you just can't. You can't. It's just you can't do anything, you know? And the birds weren't singing very much and the trees were getting thrashed around. And I eventually found a relatively sheltered spot in the lee of a, a big rock wall and just set down there. And so this is a waste of time, isn't it? And I been I'm sitting there and I'm reflecting on, I'd been told several years previously by some Aboriginal people and they were saying, oh, yeah, we went out to this place to do a ceremony with the kids, and, we took all our food and we arrived at sundown. But the wind was absolutely howling, and it was throwing up the dust and getting in and our food and everything, and it was just impossible until eventually an elder said, look, the spirits don't want us to be here. Let's let's all go home. And as soon as they decided that the wind calmed right down. So I'm reflecting on this. And it just occurred to me, oh, maybe the wind doesn't want me to be here, you know? Hey, mind just kind of rambles and, And I thought, well, why wouldn't nature want me to be here? And then I thought, well, maybe, like a lot of white fellas, here I am. You know, getting recordings to to sell commercially and, you know, this is, is not, not the right thing to do ethically. And then I thought, well, no, I really I'm doing this to share something really precious with an audience who may not ever get to hear this, not only in this country, but around the world. Now I feel as though my my, intentions are good. And then it occurred to me that actually, maybe the elements weren't wanting me not to be there, but to be more present to what was going on. And so I stopped and just really listened. And at first I didn't really hear very much at all. And then I noticed that there was this almost subliminal roar pervading the landscape, and it was the sound of the wind hitting the rock wall above me and creating this sound that that ebbed and flowed from one rock surface to another. It felt like distant surf. And then I started hearing birdsong, and it was a long way away, maybe up to half a kilometer away, so far away that all I was hearing was the echoes rather than the actual birdsong. I turned on my microphones, and for the next hour I just really immersed myself in the sound of that place. Tiny little sounds like a flock of painted finches flying past the, past, the sound of a a kestrel that was nesting up in the rock wall. And listening back to that recording, I realized that it was a transformational moment because for the first time, I wasn't just listening to stuff, I wasn't just listening to species, and I wasn't trying to get a good recording. I was really immersed in that experience of listening, and I was hearing not just the birdsong, but the elements, the wind. I was hearing time. I was hearing the landscape tape that that process of erosion. It was a, not only was I hearing the landscape in an integral way, but I'd found a more inclusive way of listening myself. So that was another pivotal moment. And there have been many, many more that, you know, just been times profound and not that, that one realizes the depth of, of listening. so many themes of listening within that. And I think as a society we often think of listening as just this. Oh we're talking But the, the listening to the elements or listening to the wind, the listening to the animals, to the erosion, there's such a deeper level of listening that we can actually That's right. our environment. And that, in turn, can teach us about ourselves. And it's interesting because I've, I've sat with this, this value of mine as well, which is listening. And I, have worked in the film industry for a long time and have interviewed a lot of people. And so when I record video or anything, I'm actually tuning in to not just the person in front of me, but I'm thinking about, oh, what are the the what can I film the fire? Can I capture the sound of the fire crackling? Can I capture the, you know, the actual essence that creates the whole story of a place rather than just extremely good filmmaking is they think about these deeper layers. And, it also goes hand in hand. I've got a lot of friends in the the healing spaces as well, and in right to passage spaces and, a lot of friends who actually do parts work. I don't know if you've heard about it, but it's it's sort of like your, your tuning into your body and your what your body is telling you. And, you know, your heart might be in pain or your stomach. And when you really tune in and ask your body questions as well and listen to your body, it comes up with answers as well that go behind the stories behind your body. And so Well, our body really is is our first interface with the natural world. And so our physical senses and not just sights and smells and so on, but our internal senses that I think you're referencing here. And our sense of what's happening inside our body. It's, it's as much instinct and intuition as it is about, you know, pain or a sense of, of wellness. And to me, the essence of, of deep listening. The first thing that you need to do when you go out into, into the bush and natural environment and is to slow down and be quiet. If you've got any devices, turn to turn the gadgets off. And, and then extend your senses and you're extending your senses into the world around you. And it's it's odd to have to suggest this as being a novel thing that we do, because, you know, we live in such a noisy world and there's so much going on around us. We've become very, very good at filtering out the stuff that is what you might call irrelevant information. You know, the sound of a plane going over or traffic off the highway a kilometer away or whatever it might be. The next door neighbor's leaf blower. And we've become very good at filtering all that junk noise out. But in the process, we filter out the environment, because that is our environment. So when you go out into nature, it's one of the few times in life when you can actually relax and open your ears up again. You can be vulnerable to listening to the whole world around you. And it's a lovely exercise, I think, to to actually do that consciously, where you scan in every direction, you start in front of you without turning your head. Just focus your listening attention in, in different, different directions. And you'll notice that sounds come from particular places, particular directions and, that they might be directions that are quite silent and to listening to those silences because, nature has a presence even in its silence. And to become familiar and comfortable with silence is a very important cognitive skill. It's it's the antidote to boredom, to actually be able to just relax into the stillness and silence and feel the aliveness that's there, whether that's within you, whether it's sensually around you in sound. So for me, listening is really important because it isn't just one of our senses, you know, everything that we know about the world is essentially comes through our senses internal, external, but listening is special. And the reason is that it is the sense by which we initiate and maintain relationships. And the world is all about relationships. Everything is interacting with everything else dynamically in the moment, constantly flowing and changing, responding, adapting, and so on. So listening tells you what's going on in a way that, the visual sense, for instance, doesn't do. When we look at the world, our eyes focus at a particular distance and we see objects, we identify objects, and that becomes the basis of our language. You know that all the nouns that we use in the world and, and, and so sound, sorry, sight divides the world up. Whereas when you're listening, you might be hearing individual sounds that you can name, but you're hearing them in relationship. And so when you're listening, you're kind of putting the world back together again. I like to think, and, you know, I said earlier on that there are only a very rare occasions where you get that sense of listening to the whole integrated sound world around you. One of them is when you're outside in nature, and the other one is when you're listening to music, because music is a complete, integrated sound world and you're totally immersed in it, and you're drawing meaning from the relationships between the sounds. So it's very similar in in deep listening to nature, you're outdoors, you're hearing all the different voices, but and you're identifying the voices and, and behavioral associations of different species. You know what they're you can tell what they're doing. I often think of, when you're listening to nature, you're, you're hearing a story being told to you, and it's the story of what's going on around you at that time. You know, certain birds are feeding or that might be flocking, their contact calls. They might even be a moment of alarm. So there are all these things going on which with familiarity, you can you can read that, that narrative. And it's similar in music, you know, that the skills that you have, the cognitive skills of drawing meaning from music, are the skill of listening to component parts and hearing, and integrity and deriving meaning from that. And it's very similar skill, I think, than listening to the whole soundscape in, in, at one time, in one place. So listening is, has all these, these cognitive connotations. And then the ultimate one really is that, listening comes our limbic system and our limbic system, our emotions, particularly that, cortisol fight or flight response. When you extend yourself out into nature and you're calming and you're slowing yourself down, it calms that limbic system. And in our modern world, that's what's hijacked by consumerism, by, political messaging, particularly right wing political messaging. It's all about activating your, your fear and your you've got to have this and you got it. You got to do it now, and you've got to be more productive, and you've got to do this. And you go to that. So listening allows you to just slow down and take in information at a slower pace. Nature doesn't throw information at you as quickly as modern media does. It doesn't demand your attention. You have to voluntarily open yourself and be vulnerable to that information. So, yeah, listening has all these resonances, that are essential to finding your stability. And, and integration with the real world, in a way that our other senses don't. So deep listening is, it's a profound journey. It doesn't happen straight away. You really need to cultivate this sense of listening. And, and so it changes you. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's interesting because we see this, we feel this on such a deep level Feeling. hear that song that you feel it, you feel the story behind it and you feel that in your Yeah. Well. Now. Well, look, this might be a good occasion to, to play you a recording, because this was another one of these pivotal moments. I was in the outback, and, I was recording for several weeks, and one of the, the birds in inland Australia is the Terezin crows. They're like crows, ravens and other corvids. They're very intelligent and social birds. Some species of Toolmakers and use this, like the Caledonian crow. But they're very curious species. And on this occasion I put my microphones out. I often do this very early in the morning to 3 a.m., and I put them on a tripod with a long battery, and I leave them there to record. And, I'd come back later in the day and pick up my rig and have a listen to the adventures that my mics have head see what they've picked up. And I'd often find that the local crows had come to check out this strange object in their their domain. And, but on one morning, a bird did something really quite extraordinary. It, it flew in and it gave half a dozen calls, and then it flopped down to the ground, and it hopped along until it. I could hear that it was right underneath my microphones. And then it began vocalizing. And I'll let you hear this recording now. All right. So basically what happens is you hear it, it does all this, and then it starts doing these really wonderful sort of goggling ugly, sort of like And then it finishes off with a, as if to say, boring nothing here. And then it gives a whole lot of calls and it flies off. So when I listen to this, this is another one of these pivotal moments. And I, I, you know, up to this point, I'd been thinking in terms of species identifying species, recognizing the vocalization in terms of its behavior and the role that it played in its life and so on. And I realized this is the first time it really hit me as quite a, quite a with a profound shock that I'm actually listening to another mind. And it's a mind that lives in the same world that I do, but it lives in a very different way. But it's not that different that I can empathize with that I can't hear. It's curiosity and even it's disappointment that that, call at the end and it and moving along, maybe nothing to say here. And you know, that is essentially I'm empathizing with what I'm hearing. I'm empathizing with this bird. And in the in the case of the Crow, it's relatively straightforward. I can recognize its curiosity with other species. Perhaps it's a little bit more difficult, you know, frogs or insects, but you can still hear the voice of the animal. You can still hear it giving, announcing its presence in the world and communicating. And you can get a sense of its sentience. It might be very different to what we think of as sentience, but nevertheless, you can recognize its aliveness and its right to share this world with us. And the essence of this is empathy. And I think empathy is really important because, you know, if you sit down and you talk to somebody who's worldview and life values and experience are different to your own, to extend your empathy to another person, to really feel the presence of this other person and what they're they're attempting to say to you is, firstly, it's a mark of respect, but it also gives you a true knowing of another person beyond the words, deeper than, than what's being communicated. It gives you a sense of something, something far more, primal is not quite the right word, but so more of the essence and that connection that you have, that empathic connection that you, you find with another living creature, another person or another animal is the beginning of care and compassion. So if we are to find connection and care for the living world around us, then empathic listening to other creatures is one of the most beautiful and powerful ways that I know of. Of doing that. And so whilst it's I mean, it's lovely fun to learn about species and vocalization, all these things, there's so much to learn about the sound of the natural world. But this crow also taught me to listen with the heart. And so we need to bring our whole selves to listening, not just our intellectual capacity to understand what we're hearing. Which is limited anyway. yeah, to bring our whole selves to to that listening experience. Yeah. See where. someone, I think it really, really can change things. Yes, indeed. And, Actually, it's more. It's even more powerful than that because the way that we've set up our society, a lot of our history, human history, is based on in power. And, I've, I've heard people describing the current situation, and indeed, I think it applies to the historic situation, is that humans are torn between power and life, that we are alive and we find connection and love, and beauty in the world. But we're also driven by power, which is our capacity, our intellectual capacity to understand the world and manipulate it and control it to our will. And at this particular moment in our history, I think we are seeing that process almost coming to an end game. With capitalism hyper capitalism, toxic capitalism, if you like, becoming ever more obsessed with wealth and power and profit and exploiting the planet and indeed exploiting each other. So the thing about empathy and listening, empathy, is that it, you can't have power over others if you're extending empathy. It is the antidote to, to that kind of power that divides people and, it creates harm by, by criticizing minorities and, and outcasts and, and creating the, the others. So empathy is, is a really important socially and politically as well as personally and in one's personal connection with the life and with, with the world. It's an important quality that we need to bring in to our, our social functioning, political, economic and, and so on. So listening is, is often thought of, you know, it's indigenous people talk about listening to country and there's a reason that they use listening is the sense that connects, as I've said earlier. But I also think listening is the, is the sense that connects us socially to that. We need to listen to each other. And when you start doing that with openness and respect, then it becomes very difficult to enact these kind of Machiavellian strategies of, of hijacking the limbic limbic system and, and creating fear and division. So we need, what I think of as a listening and listening culture. And a lot of indigenous cultures seem to be this way, but Western cultures, we are not very good listeners. We haven't been taught to do it. We're not encouraged to do it. I found I couldn't do it when I first started. You know, it's been a long journey for me in learning how to listen. And, but it's I think it's the, it's the sacred ingredient in the recipe. A sprinkle of listening in the world would, would really do wonders. More than more than just a sprinkling, a healthy dose. Yeah, a a restorative dose. also say this in your book and this actually hit me in the truth in my bones, and I just want to read it out and actually just hear your take on what this means and maybe give some insight to the listeners. But in your book, you say nature's functioning is the result of evolution shaping life at every level Yeah. advantageous is discarded by evolution. and it's it really connected with me especially I actually and I'll tell you recently, who spoke to me about the Andean, cosmology here in Peru. And she was saying, you know, their belief system is that we go into 500 years of darkness and then 500 years of lightness. And I've heard a lot of people speak to this as well, and that you know, is stripping away any behavior or anything that is not serving the evolution of humanity. And so when I read that in your book, I was like, oh, that's interesting. There's these there's been multiple people who have had this sort of theme, but, I think an important aspect of what you're talking about highly is that, we, we tend to use the word evolution, almost in parallel with things getting better. And that's not actually the way evolution works. Evolution doesn't make things necessarily better. All it does is it's in the moment. Does this work. Because if it doesn't, you know, evolution will discard that adaptation. But it's it's important. You know, I think when we think of evolution as well, we tend to think of animal morphology of their bodies and their foraging habits. They build shape or the length of their legs or something like that. It's. But evolution also shapes behaviors. And we know that in terms of animal behaviors, but it shapes the ways that animals collectively behave. they seem to be principles underlying the functioning of living systems. And, you know, in a similar way, perhaps, to music are principles underlying music principles of harmonic relationships, of textural and tonal relationships, of rhythmic relationships and patents and so on. Well, it's kind of similar in nature, in nature has its feedback loops and making isms. They can be amplifying loops. They can be loops that tend towards homeostasis. And they're also principles of relationship in natural systems. And when we think of relationships, we tend to think of them as either being competitive or cooperative or somewhere in between. And the interesting thing when you look at natural systems is that cooperative relationships are ubiquitous. They are just found at every level, all over and, and in some cases they're audible as well foraging flocks, mixed species, foraging flocks. So one of my favorite examples of where birds get together in a foraging flock and it increases their foraging efficiency and also their safety because they're more vigilant as a flock than individual birds can be. So there's a real advantage to hanging out with other species. And but the interesting thing is, and actually, maybe we can play a little bit more audio this point of, mixed race, these foraging flock, this is one one in the bushland where I live. And you can hear a range of different species. They're primarily, silver eyes, buff rumped hornbills. I think there's a great fantail, as always, seem to be a part of these these flocks. There's a scarlet robin tree creeper and, They're all moving through the forest together. So these four foraging flocks move through the forest and, all together. And the interesting thing is, yes, they are cooperative behavior, but the thing is, it's a cooperative behavior amongst a range of different species. They all forage differently. Some are up in the canopy, some in the mid story. The fantail fly out and grab insects from the wing. The robins, perched low down and looking for stuff on the forest floor. The buff ramps, thorn builds up down in the low shrubbery. They're all foraging in entirely different ways. The tree creepers are extracting bugs from underneath the tree bark, and yet they come together as a collective. And for me, the lesson is, yes, cooperation works. Cooperation is profound in natural systems. But the real lesson here is that cooperation works best across diversity. When diversity is included in the cooperation, it becomes that much more beneficial, that much more of an adaptive benefit. And so, you know, if we translate that learning to our own social systems, we're not terribly good at, cooperating across, human diversity, cultural diversity, national diversity, international diversity. I mean, so that, to me seems like a profound thing for us to learn. and create this for myself, we often can cut that other person down and be jealous or, you know, there's these ways that we might act that cuts that person down, which is called tall poppy syndrome, but it's actually so normal for us to be so diverse and to be okay and accepting of the talents that we do have, and then to build upon what we do have and, and also learn from each other. And Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like biomimicry, right? When it's you. We're mimicking nature in many ways. Yes. My mother had a good way of saying it, which I've never forgotten. She said an awful way to be an awfully boring world. If we were all the same. And, you know, I think, you know, when you say to say. Yeah, it would be. What? So what you're saying is. Absolutely. You know, I agree the Hello there. Just a quick interlude that I know you'll be patient with, because it's these few moments that make it possible to continue creating and sharing future stream conversations. I also know that you trust that I wouldn't interrupt you for just anyone, especially not a values aligned business, because no partnership is worth that. As I'm recording this, I'm sipping on perfectly pink hibiscus tea that was sent from the gorgeous Elle from Australian Medicinal Herbs. All of their products are paddock to packet. Isn't that the cutest thing? All the farming and processing is done in their little farm in New South Wales, and sent directly to their customers so that the products are as fresh and as medicinally beneficial as possible without a middleman and no compromising of quality. It really is like it's a natural medicine, not made in a lab, but outside in nature. 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What a perfectly circular solution to all of us sharing and learning together. diversity is a wonderful thing. And diversity in nature is, is that's the way that natural it's one of these principles that nature always tends towards diversity. Because there's resilience and adaptive possibilities and creative possibilities in in diversity, if we're a monoculture, monocultures are very vulnerable. So we need cultural diversity, human diversity. And, I think that tall poppy syndrome, it's a very Australian thing, isn't it? But, it's, Yeah, it's you could you can kind of understand that it's come from our colonial past. We don't we don't like the, you know, the high status kind of the Lords and ladies. But at the same time, it's also it's become a part of that power over life. Life appreciates diversity. Power is I'm going to step on you to get to where I want to get to. And, I think about it as well you know in, especially in Australia we use rewards and punishments as a way of behavior management. And that actually stemmed from back in the day, long, long time ago, people trying to control animals and using that as rewards and punishments. And then we use that for, for us children in schools. And so they then develop this like competition, competition against each other rather than this growth mindset of like, oh, what can I do? What can I offer the world? And how can I learn and learning becomes of value rather Yes. And look, I mean, competitive is the other side to the cooperative. And it's part of what's interesting is that we value competition as if it's kind of equal but opposite. And there are good things from competition. You know, it encourages excellence. It punishes laxness. It brings out the optimal outcomes in every situation. And it's essential. And it's it's part of nature. It's natural. Well, the interesting thing is that when you actually inquire into nature, and particularly through listening, you realize that, no, it's not equal and opposite at all. Cooperate, competition exists, has the potential to exist in nature, but creatures avoid the costs of competition. And that's the thing that they will, they will interact with each other in contentious ways. And by the way, I'm not talking about predation. That that is a very different process. But in terms of, within a particular species, individuals will interact with each other, over status and access to resources, and they do so in very ritualized, formalized behaviors. As a fellow Australian, highly recognized things like, kangaroos, boxing, rabbits and hares do a similar kind of, you know, put up your dukes kind of thing. And the point about these behaviors is that they resolve the contention over status or resources in a way that doesn't do harm. They don't actually hurt each other. And you find these behaviors throughout the animal world, in insects, in other mammals, in fish, in reptiles, and very often their, physical, physical ways of interacting. But in birds they sing, and in particular they sing in the dawn chorus. That's their time of negotiating relationships, of saying, well, this is where I live and you're my neighbor. And we respect, our individual home ranges and space in the landscape. And we also form communities by singing the same song together, even playing sound games backwards and forwards with each other. And these behaviors you only hear in the dawn chorus. And it's a way it's a comparative to, the kind of ritualized behaviors of other animals to, just add some resolve and sort out and affirm their relationships with each other. So competition is costly and, it's not advantageous. And throughout the animal world, we find that creatures avoid direct, costly, harmful competition. And, we don't have those. Well, we actually, we do have the same mechanisms. It's just that we tend to ignore them. And the mechanisms that we have that are similar to is based in the same principle that animals have a basically, largely communicative ones. We, and to talk and to listen and diplomacy, negotiation, truth telling, openness, honesty, transparency, all of these qualities. And they're, they're basically about sitting down and listening to each other, extending empathy to, to build that foundation for actually hearing the words. So once again, we're back to listening. And we. constantly. and you spoke about birdsong and I can imagine you've been to so many parts of the world. And I know a lot of people who come to Australia, they actually go Come. available in Australia. Like the birds, they're, insane. You know, being here in Peru right now, there's a few bird songs here and there, but it's just that the loudness is not there. There's not the diversity of so many different birds all singing at once. And when I think about singing as well, in indigenous cultures, we would sit together in song and sounds, and it is so normalized to be sharing your voice and opening your throat up in sort of voice and sound together and often in, western lands. And it can kind of be with especially for me, I can speak for myself is is my voice has been really shut down. You know, I've wanted to be a singer. I've seen people on television being pop stars. And you have to have a certain type of voice for that. And it's it has always felt like, yeah, it's become this competitive thing again instead of this innate human ability to connect with your voice and to share voice with the people around you. And, you know, birds don't think Well, it's. This is a really. It's what you're saying is a great fascination to me because I've been a musician, and, the thing is, it's it's not only voice and that inhibition of voice, but the essential thing is that we've commodified music. We've commodified music so that we can make money out of it. And this has been a process, been going on for a long time. So this is not a new thing. If you look at indigenous music, indigenous people, everybody participates in music. And if you don't, what's wrong with you? You know, I mean, come on, everybody everywhere does it. It's not about quality. It's about that participation. And then as you move into the sort of levels of of music making, as you move into more what we might call folk music, you start getting people who are really skilled and you start developing the actual, the, the form of the music, that it becomes slightly more complex and so only good players can do it. And from there it can move into what I call a classical phase, where it becomes virtuosic, that you need the most skilled players, the most skilled composers. Where can we take this, this, this process. And by that stage, the ordinary person is excluded, and then you simply add the commodification to it. In in Western cultures that, you know, we, we record it, we put it on records and CD's or Spotify streams or whatever it is. And professional musicians make their, their living from entertaining the rest of us who sit there saying no. And that's nice. So we've gone we've gone from, you know, 100% participé ation to a fraction of of people making music. And there's a gulf between the professional musician and what, you might say, the amateur musician that might join a choir or a folk group or something. And the rest of us who just listen. And I must admit, these days I mean, the in the final category there. But the interesting thing about it is coming back to nature and listening is that when you listen to nature, you're in the moment. You're hearing everything that's going on around you. And we tend to think of nature as being a place. Nature is a park or a hillside, or a beach or a river bank or, you know, something like that. Even when you think of habitat for animals, it's still a place. But nature is not a place. Nature is a process which comes back to that thing I was saying earlier about evolution. It's constantly dynamic, constantly adapting, constantly finding ways forward. It's like a stream that's ever flowing. And when you're listening, you're hearing that movement and you have to be in the moment as it's happening. So rather than a noun, the word nature, you think of it as a verb and going back to music, music has become a noun. Music is a thing. It's a song. It's a symphony. It's, you know, it's it's it's a thing. But music isn't a thing. Music is is a verb in the same way we do music, we make music. One author has come up with the word music to describe what we do when we get together and make music, and it's very likely, I think, that, music, you know, we have two modes of communicating music and language. And language is relatively recent. We know that because the, communicative capacities, the organizational capacities that language allows, we can only see in the fossil record, from probably the, the late Paleolithic into the Neolithic. So before that, our ability to communicate ideas and, and transmit and trade ideas was, was much more limited, which means that our language was. But I think music probably goes way, way back. It's it's not just ancestral. It's it's it goes back to species before us Neanderthals, Homo erectus, it goes way, way back because music is related to the body, to movement. And we know what that movement was. We know that we stood upright and started walking across the landscape maybe 3 million years ago. And if that's the case, then music possibly goes back. That far. It would certainly explain. It's that deep, mysterious mental hole that it has on us that it's actually a biological phenomenon, not a cultural one. And, the thing about music and music being is that it brings us together as animals. It, by synchronizing to a pulse, we can communicate, we can share, we can invent all in the abstract. This isn't linguistic. We can make sounds. We can express ourselves emotional. Lee a personality, character. We step forward, step back. We can create new things. We can respond to what other people are doing. This is the musical process. And in the process of doing that, we move from being, primates who can't do rhythm to music into being a social animal. And from that social animal, we then can become, an intelligent linguistic animal, a cooperative animal. So music is the foundation upon which everything else is, is, has later emerged for us as a species. It's, we are a very fine example of the fact that sound and communicative strategies in sound, which you hear in, in all kinds of different animals and, you know, the birds singing in the dawn chorus is another good example of a communicative strategy that allows them to resolve their their interactions and relationships with each other. So these strategies of using sound when they evolve, it's like nature says, well, that's a damn good idea. Let's run with that. And before you know it, we've got a species that sings and dances until stories and can develop a language and cooperate. And here we are. elements are really I, which I truly believe bring us back to our heart. And I think the more we're intertwined with nature, the more we feel like we're living from the heart and before we wrap up, I would actually love You. Yeah. on what it means to you to become more of a heart led society. It's a really important question, because we tend to think that, that there isn't any direction to our sociology. We simply our societies. But if you think of the structures of society as being, kind of engineering structures, that they have a purpose, then you have to start thinking about, well, what's the purpose that you're trying to achieve in your society? And to me, I would say it comes down to health and well-being and, and, a sense of homeostasis and, sustainability in harmony with the natural world. Because if we don't have those things, we're simply not going to survive. This is this is what nature tells us. Competitive processes and not advantageous. So it seems to me that what we need to be thinking about, as is those values of society. And then what are the processes that are going to bring those values out? And we've been working on this for a long time. A lot of, the democratic institutions, the concept of civil society, for instance, is attempting to address these issues. But where we haven't got to is thinking about our cognitive process. And this has only been emerging in the last hundred years or so with neurological studies. And it is still our minds are still being exploited by capitalism and by politics, for their own interests. And, so. I think the, the answer to your question is, Look, I think there's a really important consideration here, and I'll just throw this one out because I'm not. I've heard people. I've read the research on this. When you're talking about heart, you're talking about sensitivity, being open and sensitive. And the human species is diverse. Human population is diverse, and it's diverse in terms of sensitivity. Not everyone has the same capacity for sensitivity. And that has profound implications, because whilst some people, they want to live in their heart space, they want to live by the beauty and esthetics of of life and the world, that sense of harmony and integration. Other people don't. They have no idea what you're talking about. Couldn't get really, could not care less. They want something different. And whether you call that power or control, you know, it depends on your language, I suppose. But it's quite clear that, they don't really care about the same things that I might or you might. So whatever we do, it has to encompass the entire of human existence. And going back to evolution briefly, just to give an understanding where this might have originated. If you think of a hunter gatherer tribe and then they know that far in the past, you know, we're only talking about maybe ten home or 10,000 years. It's not long into in evolutionary terms. And so you have a community based on hunting and gathering. Now as a gatherer, you're going out, you know, taking the children, the elderly, and you're sitting down quietly and you're foraging. Whatever you're doing, it's a time to sing, to tell stories, to create culture, to care and nurture and look after. That's where the sensitivity comes in. Meanwhile, the other half of the tribe have gone out hunting. Now, as a hunter, you don't want to think for yourself. You want to follow the leader. The leader tells you exactly what we're going to do, and you have to follow them without thinking. And you have to be insensitive to pain, to your own pain, to the possibility that you might be injured, you might be killed. You might see your colleagues injured or killed. You have to get that that animal. Otherwise the tribe doesn't eat. And they might be spiritual, connotations with this of respecting the animal that you're killing and so on. And, and it's kind of interacting with its spirit in some way to create a dialog and understanding and empathy with, with the prey. But nevertheless, you have to be insensitive to do that. So it's possible that our human sensitivities have diverged into these these not necessarily two different camps, but but different qualities. And so in our modern world, we have to accommodate the fact that not everyone wants beauty in their lives. Some people just love power. They love big engines and big boats and lots of noise. And getting out there and, you know, yahoo ING around and you know, that's that's a reality. So whatever we're thinking about in terms of the way that we structure a society, once again, you used the word biomimicry earlier on, and I think it's a it's a gorgeous word because it implies many things. Firstly, that we actually listen to and respect the natural world, and secondly, that we learn not just about nature through listening, studying, whatever, but that we learn from nature, which is a very different consideration. And what we learn from nature is that cooperation works. Cooperation across diversity avoid competition where contention and argument or debate is required. Do it in a way that doesn't cause harm. And from all of those following those principles can come social structures, democratic structures of, inclusion, respect and participation, I think is an absolutely key one. I think to think creatively about society, politics very economics at the moment. Our economics is very much a win lose wealth, profit power kind of dynamic. And that means that we're actually out of control of it. We can't make decisions that aren't profit based. And so it's a paradox, isn't it, that people have won control or actually the least in control, because they can't do anything other than follow the money. So, so all of these things need to be thought about in the context of how nature has evolved over not just hundreds of thousands, but billions of years to create viable, functioning living systems. We have to work out how we're going to do it ourselves, and it needs to encompass that, that human diversity of sensitivity as well as, kind of get out there and do it kind of, insensitivity in a way. So it's a, it's a complex thing, but there are a lot of really good minds thinking about it and working on it and developing ideas, trialing ideas in, in, you know, in, in small spaces, working groups and so on. So I think there's I'm actually pretty optimistic, I think as we move, you know, you were saying earlier about these cycles, these big cycles of history. And I think our knowledge of who we are as a species, of how our brains and our limbic system work and motivations have fears, and what we desire in life, I think as we're learning more and more about that, we're refining both social structures, democratic and so on. And bringing it more to a human level. I'm optimistic that we'll find a way forward. there's so much in there Andrew and I feel like we have covered so many avenues can really tell that you have listened so deeply in your life to the point of understanding human nature, evolution, different species and how everything is intertwined. I guess, more sensitive to the environment, the more we can evolve in that, in that direction as well, and become more sensitive creatures as well as having, you know, using our mind in a way that is beneficial to the earth and to to our communities and to ourselves and is not destructive. I agree with all of that. And you know I think in what I'm saying there's a limitation in my thinking which is that I have a lot of time out in the bush when you're at with microphones and recording, as I have done over the years around the world, it's pretty solitary exercise and you get a lot of time just to reflect and, engaged with what's going on in nature around me. So the limitation in that is that I don't have that real world experience of being in business or being in government or being in the cut and thrust of have, you know, the modern world. So what I'm saying in a sense, is, is abstracted. And, you know, I think what I'm saying is important. And, if there's any clarity and overall perspective that I can offer, then I feel very privileged to be able to do that. But how we actually take these ideas and build them down to being practical, applications of, of principles in nature, that's, that's for us all to be creatively working on. And the the practical application, that's where it's at as well. We can, we can have so much knowledge. But if we're not applying the practicalities of that Yeah. Well, I think, you know, what is it, circumstances, the mother of invention or something along those lines. there will be a time that we're going to have to take all these, these nice ideas and, and start living by them before we wrap up I would love to know if there's any sort of things you wanted to share with the listeners. Like what your book is called, where they might find it, where they might be able to attend any of your, workshops or No. Thank you. Haley. So the book is called Deep Listening to Nature, and it's available online at, online booksellers that can be printed on demand. Or it can. I can send one directly from, a signed copy, accessible from our website. And you can purchase it on our website. There's 30 years worth of field recordings all around the world that are available on, platforms like, Tidal and Spotify. And in terms of, of talks and presentations, this is something that I really love doing is standing up on my hind legs and and giving a presentation to an audience, and it's just so much fun. I think that, you know, we live in such a digital world where, you know, you, you're literally on the other side of the planet. As I talk to you now. But to actually be in a room with, with other living, breathing people and, and looking at them in the eye and talking, in real time is, is a very special privilege. So I really enjoy that. But it's limited to where I can get to, which at the moment is, I've been traveling around Australia for the last two years giving talks. Amazing. Well thank you Andrew Can. sensitivity to our environment and a deeper listening to ourselves and the world around us. A lot to reflect on. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What resonated with you from this episode? And maybe what have you listened deeply to today or recently that's given you a fresh perspective on the essence of life? As always, we're so, so grateful for your support each week. Whether it's a buy me a cuppa, a share, or a download. Every little bit helps us to continue this journey with you. So thank you for being a part of it and I hope you're enjoying hearing my voice for a change and all the wonderful people with this special sub series of future studying. And of course, Jade will be back next week with another thought provoking pod. So make sure you hit that download button on Spotify or Apple wherever you get your podcasts. And I hope your heart is well and so. So hold this week with whatever you're moving through and I will see you in a few weeks.