Animals Make Us Human
Through words and images, writers, photographers and researchers reflect on their connection with animals and nature. They share moments of wonder and revelation from encounters in the natural world: seeing a wild platypus at play, an echidna dawdling across a bush track, or the inexplicable leap of a thresher shark; watching bats take flight at dusk, or birds making a home in the backyard; or following possums, gliders and owls into the dark.
Hopeful, uplifting and deeply moving, this collection is also an urgent call to action, a powerful reminder that we only have one world in which to coexist and thrive with our fellow creatures. By highlighting the beauty and fragility of our unique fauna, Australia’s favourite writers, renowned researchers and acclaimed photographers encourage readers to consider it in a new light.
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Phenomenal
One woman reclaims her sense of wonder by seeking out the globe’s most incredible natural phenomena. Journalist and mother, Henion combines her own conflicted but joyful exper-iences as a parent with a panoramic tour of the world’s most extraordinary natural wonders.
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Program: Our never-ending desire to subjugate the earth, ABC RN Late Night Live
28 Nov 2024 Presented by David Marr
Historian Phillip Blom argues that the human need to dominate and subdue the natural world can trace its origins to ancient Mesopotamia. This was perpetuated through the Judeo-Christian notion that God charged man to be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it. The Enlightenment age reinforced the notion of human dominance over all creatures. Blom says this idea was relatively harmless until technology developed to the point where we are now destroying the planet. So we now need to urgently change our thinking – or perish.
Guest: Phillip Blom, author of ‘Subjugate the Earth: The Beginning and End of Human Domination of Nature’ published by Polity.
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The tree whisperer – ABC listen ABC RN | Late Night Live, 4 Dec 2024
Writer Dave Witty was amazed when he moved here from England and discovered the diversity of species and the age of our forests. The role of different species and why they played these roles in our history.
He writes that the very old grand trees that have survived in urban areas remind us that “elegance can be found not just in human architecture but in nature as well. They bear the scars of quiet endurance”. Yet somehow, “they have gone unnoticed by our collective gaze.” Dave hopes that all might change. And he argues trees are great facilitators of empathy.
Guest: Dave Witty, author of What the Trees See: A Wander Through Millennia of Natural History in Australia, published by Monash.
… From MMM Issue #48, Feb-Mar 2025