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The Nature and Science of Work podcast

The Nature and Science of Work podcast

Di: Robert Levin
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 A nature walk through the world of work! The Nature and Science of Work podcast is the audio version of The Nature and Science of Work newsletter on Substack!

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Episodi
  • Songs of An Ancient River, Its Work, and Ancient Workers: A "Nature Guides Work" series podcast

    Songs of An Ancient River, Its Work, and Ancient Workers: A "Nature Guides Work" series podcast
    Aug 9 2023

    Welcome to the Nature and Science of Work podcast. This is a podcast in our “Nature Guides Work” series. Thank you for joining us!

    Is this podcast, we again join Aldo Leopold, and his explorations of work in nature, this time a remote and ancient mountain river, and what its work and workers mean to all of us. And singer-songwriter, and “Nature Guides Work” contributor, Tom Sebok, has created an original contribution, pairing natural river sounds from the western US with his own musical interpretation of Aldo Leopold’s prose song.

    In our first “Nature Guides Work” podcast we visited Leopold, a noted 20th century conservationist, researcher, and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, at his refuge, The Shack, in a poor sand county in Wisconsin.

    There he observed nature working around him: flights of geese into a frozen lake; calling of summer birds on their workday schedules.

    Into his observations he wove acid and accurate comments on those he lived around and worked with at a prominent university.

    Here we bring together three interpretations, through another passage of Leopold’s, of a wilderness river in northern Mexico, the Gavilan.

    Two interpretations are from the present. You’ll first hear an interpretation of the context producing this beautiful and arresting excerpt from Leopold’s chapter about the river.

    And you’ll hear Tom Sebok’s musical interpretation, who brings his work as a musician, sound engineer, songwriter—and conflict resolution specialist. Tom recorded river sounds, in Garfield County in western Colorado in the US—the waters of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers—then paired those with his musical interpretation, to create the original composition, “River Song.”

    Aldo Leopold’s interpretation of the river Gavilan, from which I’ll read excerpts, draws on many times and places in his life. He takes his time on the wild Rio Gavilan, and see it through his time and work as an academic research scientist. He also draws a beautiful picture of the ancient human on the Gavilan before him and how they worked.

    *    *    *

    Acknowledgements

    In this podcast, you heard excerpts from “The River Gavilan,” in A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. Originally published in 1940 by Oxford University Press, available in a current edition by the Library of America.

    And you have heard “River Song,” composed and recorded by Tom Sebok in 2023, together with Tom’s recording of sound from Colorado river waters.

    *    *    *

    For the Nature and Science of Work podcast and the “Nature Guides Work” series—thank you for listening!

    Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.



    Get full access to The Nature and Science of Work at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com/subscribe
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    14 min
  • Dark Winter Night, Midsummer Dawn: Sand County Schedules—in Nature

    Dark Winter Night, Midsummer Dawn: Sand County Schedules—in Nature
    Jun 7 2023
    Welcome to The Nature and Science of Work podcast. I’m Robert Levin. Thank you for joining us!In this podcast, we dig deeper from our recent inaugural piece, in our “Nature Guides Work” series, on “Schedules and Scheduling in Nature,” by exploring the perspectives of Aldo Leopold, on that topic, in his writings.In the first half of the twentieth century, Aldo Leopold was a pioneering forester, fire fighter, conservationist, and ecologist, a pragmatist, and a professor—terms that don’t often go together. His writings on these topics came together in the form of A Sand County Almanac, in its time a classic of a conservation ethic, and later considered a founding statement of environmentalism. But Aldo Leopold predated that movement—the word doesn’t appear in A Sand County Almanac.What does appear is beautiful writing about nature, and how it works, written from the perspective of time spent, during the Great Depression, on an abandoned farm with poor soil, “a sand farm,” in a poor county in Wisconsin, a “sand county,” but with a rich life of nature for someone who understood how nature works.Here are three selections from A Sand County Almanac. Each about the work of birds and their schedules—and much more.The first, selected from an entry titled, “July: Great Possessions,” describes among the birds on the sand county farm, an entire intricate schedule of work and song at daybreak, of what we would now call an ecosystem, or here, an ergosystem, and its broader effects.The second selection, from the beginning of the entry titled, “March: The Geese Return,” describes a more singular worker and schedule—a lone goose flying into the narrow seam between winter and spring, through the snows of Wisconsin, executing high-risk operations strategy known as “minimizing time to completion,” in the dead of night, starting in the dead of winter. Is Leopold’s reference to a prophet and bridges a reference to his own work career, going from forester, to lab administrator, to a professor of game management at a prestigious university that may not have liked game management? Possibly.The last passage is also about geese—but only in part. It immediately follows the passage about the lone goose. It hints at who in that passage may have been the prophet who has burned his bridges. Aldo Leopold started his career as a firefighter and forester in the early United States Forest Service. He left the Southwestern US behind to become associate director of a US Department of Agriculture forest products lab in the more rarified university city of Madison, Wisconsin. He then crossed a bridge, accepting an appointment onto the university faculty.This passage, and others in A Sand County Almanac, provides more than a hint of conflict between Aldo Leopold’s love of nature, practicality, and pragmatism and the “refined” academic community around him. Some of whom, one can imagine from this passage, may have found it an affront that a “Professor of Game Management”—the first in the United States—was in their exalted midst, let alone one of the belief that knowledge of his subject could be valuable to such highly educated people.Three passages from A Sand County Almanac. Three examples of how Aldo Leopold found schedules and the work of nature in the world of nature around him in the Sand County place he liked to call home. * * *Acknowledgements: The three selections are excerpts from copyrighted material in A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold, originally published in 1940 by the Oxford University Press. A current edition is published by the Library of America. The brief excerpts used are connected to original commentary and criticism in this Nature and Science of Work podcast.The bird sounds and songs accompanying the excerpt from “Great Possessions” were recorded for The Nature and Science of Work in May, 2023, at Lincoln Farms Road, Maine. * * *For The Nature and Science of Work podcast—and the “Nature Guides Work” project, I’m Robert Levin.Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.Thank you for listening! * * *Listen to All the Podcasts—on Apple Podcasts!You can listen to, follow, and share every The Nature and Science of Work podcast—in The Nature and Science of Work archive; on the Substack app; and on Apple Podcasts and your other favorite podcast providers!* Listen on Apple Podcasts* Listen on Google Podcasts* Listen on Amazon Music Podcasts* Listen on Spotify* Listen on Stitcher* Listen on Pocket CastsRead All the Newsletters!If you liked this “Nature Guides Work,” you’ll want to read and subscribe to The Nature and Science of Work newsletters. Each edition brings unique, refreshing, useful perspectives, on the world of your daily work and on the worlds of work around us in nature. Unique—you’ll find these perspectives nowhere else.Subscribe to The Nature and Science of Work: Read and Listen to All the ...
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    13 min
  • PODCAST: Conflict and the Disruptive Cascade

    PODCAST: Conflict and the Disruptive Cascade
    Feb 2 2023
    In our last podcast, the example of extreme weather causing operational disruption at Southwest Airlines showed us that disruption does not by itself lead to conflict—and, if you are caught in a disruption, you can act to reduce the risk of conflict or the conflict itself. In this podcast—what about the opposite? Does conflict lead to disruption at work?Conflict is a part of work, but need not be destructive. The point is not whether conflict creates disruption, but how and to whom.We can think of upstream disruption and downstream disruption. Disruption “upstream” may set conflict in motion.Who gets disrupted by a conflict—and how—is downstream disruption. There is primary disruption—the disruption between the two (or more) “combatants”—and secondary disruption, a number of disruptions flowing from the primary disruption, in turn creating a disruptive cascade that courses through a workplace, and beyond.Who and what do these secondary disruptions disrupt?*. *. *As a rule of thumb, conflict that creates a disruptive cascade will affect coworkers, customers, and the company. Coworkers are disrupted at the least by something similar to rubbernecking a freeway accident. Conflict among combatants at work is impossible to look away from. When the conflict is about getting something done, then that thing (like putting out a newspaper) becomes disrupted downstream. When that happens, more disruptions flow downstream. People recognize that their work, their working conditions, their livelihoods, their jobs are all affected—in ways that can cause them to leave or to retaliate.The disruptive cascade affects family members. They may be taking time to listen to accounts of the disruption; be asked to provide advice; provide advice when not asked; be worried about job loss or job change—or be in direct conflict with a worker in the family about what to do or not do.So, faced with conflict in your vicinity creating downstream disruption and a disruptive cascade, what do you do? Remember this:* Upstream disruption can cause conflict (but not always).* Conflict can cause downstream disruption (but not always).* Downstream disruptions frequently create a larger disruptive cascade.* Disruptive cascades affect people inside and outside of an organization—coworkers, customers, the company, and family members.* Tackling the conflict breaks the flow of disruption.* Downstream disruption can provide a reason for tackling the conflict: “We’ve got to tackle this. The paper didn’t come out yesterday.”* If you’re not in a position to tackle the conflict, tackle the downstream disruptions. Stem the disruptive cascade. That helps.Actions have consequences. Disruptions are a part of life, and work. So is conflict. When conflict causes disruption, your efforts to stand apart from the combat, to stem the disruptions and their impact, help you, your family members, and coworkers, customers and company.*. *. *Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.*. *. *Read All the Newsletters!If you liked this interview, you’ll want to read The Nature and Science of Work newsletters. Each edition brings unique, refreshing, useful perspectives, on the world of your daily work and on the worlds of work around us in nature. Unique—you’ll find these perspectives nowhere else.Listen to All the Podcasts—on Apple Podcasts!You can listen to, follow, and share every The Nature and Science of Work podcast—in The Nature and Science of Work archive; on the Substack app; and on Apple Podcasts and your other favorite podcast providers!And now on Amazon Music Podcasts!* Listen on Apple Podcasts* Listen on Google Podcasts* Listen on Amazon Music Podcasts* Listen on Spotify* Listen on Stitcher* Listen on Pocket CastsSubscribe to The Nature and Science of Work: Read and Listen to All the Newsletters, All the Podcasts, and the Entire Archive!!Subscribe now to The Nature and Science of Work to receive all Explore and Integrate features and podcasts, by email or with the Substack app, and receive complete access to the extensive and growing Nature and Science of Work archive.Talk to Us!Reach us by replying to any Nature and Science of Work emailing or at natureandscienceofwork@substack.com.Get the App Get full access to The Nature and Science of Work at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com/subscribe
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    10 min
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