What if the answer to climate anxiety isn't more data, but more play? Lil Milagro Henriquez is the founder and executive director of Mycelium Youth Network, where she's helping young people build climate resilience through radical imagination. What I’m taking away from this episode:

• Dreaming isn't frivolous. In this moment of collective failure of imagination, making space to dream huge isn't a luxury. It's a first step in building the futures that we’ll want to inhabit.
• Climate education should prepare people for the world they'll actually live in. Our current system pretends the world will stay roughly the same for the next 20-30 years. What if instead, we created space to confront the grief of what we’re losing and then showed young people the hundreds of real solutions and careers they could pursue?
• Go ahead, let young people create solutions. It's "surprisingly radical" that if you give young people the opportunity to express a concern and create a solution, they will. So ... maybe we adults should ask ourselves why is this radical. Or better yet, we could just create more spaces where youth can actually do this work.

• Lil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lil-milagro-henriquez-b5997391/
• Website: myceliumyouth.org
• Instagram: @myceliumyouth

• Mycelium Youth Network: Oakland-based nonprofit using gaming and traditional ecological knowledge for climate resilience education.
• Gaming for Justice: Mycelium Youth Network’s original immersive experience that is designed, drawn, and soundtracked by SF Bay area artists. Using a combination of oral storytelling, visuals, and music, the game explores the history (and future!) of the San Francisco Bay Area with a specific focus on Oakland, California.
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline: The Indigenous futurism novel Lil references about people who retain the ability to dream in a world where most have lost it.
• 2017 California Wildfires: More than 10,000 structures were destroyed across the state, and more than 9,000 fires burned a total of 1,248,606 acres.

Leave me a comment (guest and topic suggestions welcome!) and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Visitwww.marinapsaros.com/earthworks for show notes, transcripts, and more.

Join us for a funny, fascinating reminder that the most powerful environmental stories focus on characters and plot, not lectures. Today's guest is award-winning novelist, former beekeeper, and accidental farmer Julie Carrick Dalton.

Let your characters work it out. Julie hands off her big existential climate questions to her fictional characters and let's them sort it out. Not only does this let her sleep at night, it also allows her to see multiple perspectives. After all, no character in real life (or good fiction) is always right or always wrong.

Love the hell out of what you have. When confronted with loss, you have a choice: get stuck in the grief or protect and celebrate what's still there. Let's love the hell out of what we have left, because that’s how we find strength and inspiration to take action.

Find your personal why. Don't write a "climate story", write YOUR story. Julie lost 40,000 honeybees in a single day when a neighbor's lawn chemicals drifted into her hives. That loss inspired "The Last Beekeeper."

Story first. The people who pick up books labeled "climate fiction" probably aren’t the ones who most need the message. Julie gives her thriller readers the content that they want … and if they wind up rethinking their assumptions about environmental issues, that’s a happy extra.

• New Hampshire's growing season has extended by 22 days over the last century, but some regions have seen even more dramatic shifts. Check out the EPA's Climate Change Indicators: Length of Growing Season.
• Moth Story Slams are hosted in cities across the country, and you too could tell a 5-minute story on stage!
• The Land Back movement seeks to put more Indigenous lands in Indigenous hands. NPR did a recent story on efforts in the US.

Want to nerd out about craft? We dove deep into processes like Julie's visual plotting system (with spirit animals!) and the intensive writing program that took her from journalist to published author. Tune in if that sounds like fun.

• Website: juliecarrickdalton.com
• Newsletter: Julie's Plot Twist on Substack
• Instagram: @juliecdalton

Julie's Books

• "Waiting for the Night Song" (2021) - CNN, USA Today, Newsweek Most Anticipated Book
• "The Last Beekeeper" (2023) - Massachusetts Book Award longlist
• "The Forest Becomes Her" (July 2026) - forthcoming from St. Martin's Press

Leave me a comment (guest and topic suggestions welcome!) and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit www.marinapsaros.com/earthworks for show notes, transcripts, and more.

Come explore a world of music, art, and environmental hope with Sarah Kraning. Sarah is a painter with synesthesia whose work bridges contemporary art and music cultures. In her ongoing project with global wildlife nonprofit Re:wild, she's fusing the colors, rhythms, and movements of nature with the emotional palette of popular music. In our conversation, we get into:

• Painting wildlife soundscapes during the 2024 Texas eclipse, and what it sounded like when it got real dark (04:05)
• Why making the invisible visible is at the heart of her conservation work (10:55)
• The challenge of measuring cultural shifts (instead of just counting eyeballs) (21:32)
• How letting yourself be authentically you (even without formal art training!) can lead to your most impactful work (24:37)

• Website: sarahkraning.com
• Instagram and TikTok: @sarahkraning

• Go ahead, make a weird mashup of the things you love. Sarah has a neuroscience background, not formal art training. Her most impactful work started happening when she brought together her passions for wildlife conservation, music, amd painting with her synesthesia.
• When imposter syndrome hits, ask "what would I create if I was alone in my room, just enjoying the process?" You’ll be more authentic, which means you’ll probably do a better job (and you’ll certainly have more fun!)
• Rethink what success looks like for impact work. Don’t let the algorithms and platforms make you believe that follower counts are the end-all-be-all. Shifting hearts and minds and culture is what actually matters.

• Re:wild: Global wildlife conservation nonprofit Sarah partners with on Invisible Worlds
• Speaking of Psychology podcast episode: Tasty words, colorful sounds: How people with synesthesia experience the world, with Julia Simner, PhD
• #TeamWater: The latest impact campaign from MrBeast and Mark Rober (spoiler alert: they crushed their $40m fundraising goal)
• Sarah's art + wildlife prints: 100% of proceeds support Invisible Worlds and Re:wild's conservation work
• “Fish make music! It Could it be the key to healing degraded coral reefs?” Listen to the recording at this link to hear marine life howling at the moon!

Leave me a comment (guest and topic suggestions welcome!) and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit www.marinapsaros.com/earthworks for show notes, transcripts, and more.