Episode Details

Joe Steensma is today's guest and he comes all the way from St Louis, Missouri where he is a Professor or Practice at the Brown School which is part of Washington University. Joe has a diverse and fascinating background - a forest kid who came to admire and love birds, studied biology and chemistry and ever since has been applying his deep observational strengths and technical skills to address system challenges by using the lessons he has accumulated from the natural world. Joe is a Ted speaker and has started, run and sold dozens of businesses, and his applied research has seen him work everywhere from the US to Haiti, to Nigeria and here in Australia.

While here in town I was fortunate to grab a bit of his time while he's been delivering a series of 'capitalism for good' and what what biology has taught me about business lectures at Macquarie University.

This chat was not just so much fun, but revealing that the answers we seek are already all around us. The natural world - from the woodpecker to the powerful owl to the interactions and relationships within and between species - can be our teacher, if we let it. I came away realising not only is the disconnect from nature harming us individually and collectively, but what has replaced it - homogenised pictures and stories and ideas and practices of what a good and appropriate life look like - is narrowing our own ability to address problems effectively and create the world we all want to see.

This conversation is both fun and informative. My first foreign national guest which feels like a thing, and I'm grateful for what Joe shared here and helping me to remember and re-ground back into the obvious conclusion that nature is our teacher, our answer, our hope. I hope you enjoy listening. 

Thank you for listening today, I appreciate it and don't take your precious time for granted.

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As I mentioned earlier, the event schedule for the rest of this year is available - head to the Finding Nature LinkedIn page for more details on this, follow there and also on Humanitix. One last place you can sign up is at  findingnature.substack.com where each month I publish a series of contributions from other professionals working in the sustainability and impact fields on what motivates them, their philosophies and how that informs their daily lives. The theme last month was meaning, while this month for July it is perseverance.

Considering Joe's love of birds and this theme, there's no quote this week but the migration story of the arctic tern which epitomises perseverance. The arctic tern completes the longest annual migration of any species on earth - travelling each year from the arctic where they breed, south to Antartica, and all while weighing only around 100 grams and with a wingspan over just little over two feet.

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