speaker-1: My guest today has spent almost 90 years exploring rainforests, deserts, mountains, and journeying to live with remote indigenous communities across the world. But the most profound journey of his life happened in hospital bed. After being given a 20% chance of survival during COVID and being induced into a coma, Robin Hanbury Tennyson experienced firsthand how nature fought for him after all those years. When he fought for nature. He emerged with an even stronger belief in the effortless healing power of nature and the resilience of the human spirit. Today we have the privilege of talking to highly celebrated nonogenarian Robin Hanbury Tennyson about exploration, near-death experiences, indigenous wisdom, Britain's forgotten temperate rainforests, and a phenomenal continuing legacy. That shines a light on just how much one individual can path into a lifetime. Robin, welcome to the show.

speaker-0: It's such a treat to be with you, Naher. I'm delighted.

speaker-1: Thank you so much. So, Robin, you farmed for over 60 years in Bodminmoor. You were the first person to travel by Jeep from London to Sri Lanka. You're a celebrated hot place explorer who led the first tropical rainforest expedition of 120 international scientists back in the 70s to Borneo to learn how these rainforests work. You have more degrees attached to your name than there are stars in the sky. you've published over twenty-five books, you've crossed South America twice, east to west in nineteen fifty-eight and north to south in nineteen sixty-four, you've lived with over a hundred indigenous communities, you've created a charity called Survival International to protect their rights, and you've yourself have survived not just conflict zones but also a COVID coma. And then after you came out of the coma, unscathed with no long COVID symptoms. You climbed Cornwall's highest mountain and you raised money for a healing garden in a hospital. And by the time this podcast is aired, you would have completed your water bike challenge, peddling over a hundred miles on the Thames to raise a hundred thousand pounds for the thousand-year trust to help build Europe's first rainforest research station in the UK. I think I need a lie down. I think I need like a leap. I think I need a liter of glucosate to just, you know, bring my energy levels back to speed. But most people slow down around, you know, seventy. What's the secret behind your energy?

speaker-0: Well, I don't like the idea of getting old. It all began when I was seventy nine and I suddenly realized I was about to be eighty. And you can't pretend you're young anymore when you're eighty. Up until that point I was always the youngest person in the room. Suddenly I was the oldest. And I was annoyed by that, so I thought I'd do eight silly things to celebrate being eighty and to sort of piss in the wind really and defy fate. And so I wrapped London Marathon as the first challenge, having not

speaker-1: It does.

speaker-0: I Well that's one done, but I hadn't I I'm not a jogger. I I didn't do any training and everybody said you have to train all the time to do this. And I said, No, I'm going to just suffer once. Why suffer lots of times? And it was pretty horrible, but one was buoyed up by all the wonderful people along the side cheering you on. So that rather set it a trend. And I raised with other silly things that I did in that year, climbing more mountains and so on, and jumping out of aeroplanes. I raised 150,000, I think, for survival. And then I did it again, as you've said, so clearly after I recovered from COVID. And then last year I rode up and down the Tamar River and raised another seventy five thousand for the Thousand Year Trust. My son has now started this charity, the Thousand Year Trust, to restore Britain's temperate rainforests and we are building a research station here to look into this extraordinary habitat which most people don't know we have in Britain. But it's just as rich as tropical rainforest and much rarer.

speaker-1: Thank you so much for that. And I love that zest for life. It really shines through in everything that you've done and are doing. But tell me, Robin, why should people be concerned about temperate rainforests? Why are they so important? And what's the purpose of the Thousand Year Trust? And what's your goal with the research center that you're trying to set up?

speaker-0: Well, as you say, everybody knows about tropical rainforests, and it was my big expedition back in the seventies with all those scientists that we actually worked out how tropical rainforest works and why it was so important. And we were part of the trigger that started the whole international tropical rainforest movement. I don't think there's a school anywhere in the world now where children haven't got a picture of a tropical rainforest on the wall and don't know how important tropical rainforest the indigenous inhabitants of tropical rainforest are. But there is also a thing that we didn't know about called temperate rainforest. In the northern hemisphere, we have it all the way down from Norway to Portugal along the west coast of Europe, the Atlantic seaboard, and it is just as rich as tropical rainforest, but very, very rare. Now there's only a tiny percent left. And although The tragedy of the tropical rainforest is huge. We've lost about fifty percent in my lifetime. Temperate rainforest there's only about one percent, less than one percent left, and nobody knows about it. If you get a degree from university in in biology or botany or any of the natural sciences and want to go and study tropical rainforest, there are lots of research institutes all over the world, Amazonas and Borneo and Southeast Asia. but there is no research place for temperate rainforest. And the extraordinary paradox, irony about all this is that my little farm here on Bodmin Moor happens to have one of the last and largest and richest pieces of temperate rainforest left in Britain. We have about a hundred acres, and we have started studying that and finding out what healing properties it has. We have four universities examining it. So we're building a research station here where people can come and stay and study this incredibly rich habitat without having to go to Costa Rica or Belize or somewhere to study tropical rainforests.

speaker-1: It's fascinating. I mean, are these are these temperate rainforests really as rich in species as tropical rainforests are?

speaker-0: Yes, they are. And of course w people are just beginning to find out about them. David Attenborough in his wonderful television series had a programme on the the wild places of Britain recently, which revealed to a lot of people the existence. But they go very deep back into our mythology in Britain. A fifth of of England, Scotland and and Wales, all the Western seaboard was all covered two thousand years ago in this Dense temperate rainforest with mossy logs, rocks and wild woods and all the mythology of jabbawkies and knights in shining armor goes deep into our culture. So we're very aware of it deep down in our mythology, but that we don't often see it because there are only little fragments left. And the purpose of the Thousand Year Trust is to over the next thousand years, to restore that forest. to join up the little fragments and particularly to give people the opportunity for the therapeutic effects of going into these woods and sitting there, which we're now beginning to understand, actually works. It worked for me and it's working for lots of other people. So it's a most exciting project and suddenly it's taking off and it's of our time.

speaker-1: Incredible. And I love the time span that this trust stretches over. I mean, one very rarely comes across anything more than ten years, to be honest, or fifty years. And so a thousand years. It feels like you're really leaving a fantastic legacy here.

speaker-0: Well let me just say th the reason it's called a thousand year trust is that an oak tree takes three hundred years to grow to maturity, three hundred, three hundred and fifty. it then spends as a mature tree for about another three or four hundred years, and then if it's left alone in the wood and not chopped up into logs, but allowed to mature and die in the wood, it will continue for another three hundred years as a wonderful bughouse for beetles and insects and things, as it matures and moulders back into the land. So that's where the thousand years comes from. It is the lifespan of a single oak tree.

speaker-1: That's incredible. And is the oak tree symbolic of a typical species found in temperate rainforests?

speaker-0: It is the predominant species. There are two predominant species and they are the main ones. But of course there are masses of other indigenous native trees that create the biodiversity. And within them there are such a a variety of life forms. Every oak tree has at least six hundred different species living on it. Epiphytes and liverworts and ferns, and then going in closer little tiny insects and filmy ferns and extraordinary things, some of which are very rare now, but the diversity is just extraordinary and just as rich as you find in the tropical rainforests, which we all know about.

speaker-1: But Robin, why did we lose so much of our temperate rainforests? What happened? Was it similar to the deforestation story in the tropical rainforests?

speaker-0: Not really. In Amazonas the Amazon is being cut down largely for the ridiculous idea that it would make better cattle farming, and that's what we proved with our expedition that the tropical rainforests particularly grow on deserts. There is no soil underneath, so when you cut it down, it turns into a terrible laterite plane. And now half the Amazon is now covered in soy plantations, which are used for cattle feed, which is an irony. And it's a nonsense, and the same is happening in Southeast Asia, where the forests are being cut down and being replaced with palm oil, which appears in almost everything you buy in the supermarket. And it's very exciting that they're now finding a substitute for palm oil, so we may be able to restore some of those forests, but so much of it has gone. In Britain the reason for the destruction of the temperate rainforest was farming, in cutting it down to make more agricultural land. And that was fine for a time. but we have divided ourselves between agriculture and forestry. We put a fence down between. So cows, which are naturally forest animals and would be happier in the forest, and the forest would be happier with them there because they provide much benefit to the forest, are now separated, which has happened for a long time. And then the introduction of sheep was the great disaster. I mean, I've been a sheep farmer for sixty years. I love my sheep. And I love sheep farming, but they are an alien Middle Eastern species which has no affinity with temperate rainforest.

speaker-1: Wow, that is a complete news flash to me. I thought sheep were the quintessential English animals that you see dotted along the countryside.

speaker-0: No, they're a desert animal from the Middle East and their little feet impact the ground and their favorite food, the ferroche for a sheep, is a little oak sapling growing up, so you get no regrowth.

speaker-1: I believe that's the Ferrero Rocher for Deer as well.

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. Deer deer and sheep. And of course we have eight species of deer in this country, six of which are introduced, and only two are native, and there are far, far too many deer. They stop the regrowth of the forests. So that is what we are trying to reverse and and with huge success. Merlin is already we've planted a hundred thousand trees on our farm, the sheep have all left, and we now have the beginnings of this wonderful recovery of nature, which is so exciting and it happens so quickly and so easily. I don't know if you know about the NEP story. Yes.

speaker-1: Yes, the poster child of region farming in the UK.

speaker-0: That that's the example o of regenerative farming that's happening and it's happening so quickly and it is so exciting to see the butterflies coming back and the bees and the insects, all of the wonderful vegetation which is native to here.

speaker-1: Yes. Coming back to your farm estate, you have two thousand hectares, but you've decided to do something differently. You gave w the farm to your son Merlin, but he did something quite different with the farm. Would you be able to tell the listeners a bit more about that?

speaker-0: It's nothing like t two thousand hectares. it was two thousand acres at one point, but I sold off a lot of it and I'm just left with what I bought originally, which is only a little three hundred acre hill farm, of hundred acres of which is this wonderful forest, which agricultural advisors over the years kept telling me that I should cut down because I wanted to have more good agricultural land which would be profitable. And I didn't know how important it was, but I said no I I love it. I loved these woods and I was the only person who ever went into them. And they are magical and I'm not cutting them down. So they have survived as a result. but what Merlin when I handed the farm to him and over to Lizzie, his wife, it was then bringing in an income of ten thousand a year from a tenant. And they had been both in high power jobs in London, earning a lot of money but spending it because London's expensive. And so they suddenly found they were having to try and make a living off this hopeless little hill farm now. But Merlin, who had been in Afghanistan on three tours with special forces and been blown up by a bomb and and and he ten years after that suddenly developed complex PTSD. And the way in which he coped with that psychological drama in his life was by walking in these woods and discovering, as many other people have done, the healing power of nature. the Japanese are very much ahead of us on this with Shinrinoko forest bathing. And so by sitting under a tree and breathing the pheromones and the terpenes that come out of the tree, he actually, just as I did after COVID, experienced this wonderful healing power of nature. And Lizzie in the same way, the comfort of being with the forest. And so they started a retreat in some old buildings of ours. And it became what I think the Times at one point rather Grandly declared as one of the ten best retreats in in the world, with people coming who are suffering from PTSD or stress, as nurses in the National Health Service who were burnt out, would come and spend some time meditating and doing yoga and bathing in the river. We have a wonderful clear river you can drink from, which is quite rare in Britain, running through the wood, over waterfalls. And so people are getting this wonderful therapy and comfort by coming to the Kabila retreat. Anyway, they did that for three years. and we've just handed it over, sold it on to a a wonderful company, it's still called Kabilla Colmo, who have picked up the baton and are running with it. We're not really into the hospitality business it but they are, and they're doing a wonderful job. Having had about four thousand people through the retreat, they've moved on in order to emphasize this business of examining actually what it is that makes the rainforest, the temperate rainforest so rich and important. And that's why we're raising all this money for the research station that we're building as we speak. We're just starting now, right here on the farm, and this will be the first place where people can come and study this wonderful habitat.

speaker-1: Incredible. So Robin, you fought to keep those woods standing. You went against the advice, you know, of various people who said, chop it down, you know, you can have more land for farming. And those very woods healed your son and his wife. And me. And you. And they went on to pass on that healing by creating that retreat. I think it comes full circle and it brings me back to that point, you know, about how you fought for nature and then how nature fought for you. So Circling back to how you were healed, would you like to tell us a little bit about your experience in Dereford Hospital in Plymouth?

speaker-0: Yes. I have to go back a little further. in February twenty twenty I published my I think twenty sixth book, which was called Taming the Four Horsemen, and it was about the apocalyptic things that are happening on the planet and my rather radical suggestions about ways of saving them. And the first one, the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, as I'm sure everybody knows, the first one is the White Horse, which represents pestilence. And on page four of this book I say there is about to be a massive global pandemic. I did a little research and all epidemiologists were saying the same thing. So I wasn't being, you know, nostrodamus on this. And four weeks after publication, in March twenty twenty, I was one of the very first people to go down with COVID, and certainly one of the oldest, and not expected to live.

speaker-1: It's almost like a selffuling prophecy, like the fourth horseman, you know, the pale horseman of death was coming for you.

speaker-0: Exactly. So that was a self fulfilling prophecy, as you say. And because I was the first, and because miraculously by being wheeled into the healing garden, it just happened that the hospital I went to, Dereford Hospital in Plymouth, was the first hospital to have a healing garden attached to the intensive care unit, and I was the second patient to be wheeled out into it. And because Chelsea Flower Show had been cancelled, there were lots of flowers in it, and I remember clearly coming out of my coma. feeling the sun on my face and and smelling the flowers and waking up and and saying, croaking through my tracheotomy tube, I think I'm going to live. I had tubes coming out of everywhere, I was on kidney dialysis, I was on a ventilator and so on. And they had experimented with all sorts of drugs on me so that I was high as a kite on every kind of hallucinogen, which was made life in the hospital much less boring, 'cause hospital life is so boring So having hallucinations really made it much more fun. But anyway, I came out of the coma and and decided that I would raise some money for Cornwall to have a healing garden as well. And now they're popping up everywhere. There's a lot on the news about I think University College Hospital in London having a healing garden on the roof. And so I I've again somehow stumbled into being at the front of the beginning of something wonderful that's happening.

speaker-1: That story just gave me goosebumps. And I think you've forgotten to mention that five months after you came out of COVID, you know, you climbed Cornwall's largest mountain, to actually raise funds for the Healing Garden in Truro. But on that day, if I remember reading correctly from your book, there were gale-force winds. I think it was Storm Alex that was raging through the British Isles. And you still climbed that mountain in the pelting rain.

speaker-0: But it made a better film by having that. It was i it was extraordinary, but it was my wife's idea. sh when I came out of the hospital, rather to her shock, horror, this cripple came out, I was able to go one yard on a Zimmer frame. And because it was the first, it covered an enormous amount of publicity and of something like thirty television stations all wanted to interview me and I had the wonderful lease to set from on the Today programme asking me what I was going to do next. This is a one of the problems explorers have is that they are never asked about what they've just done. They're asked what is your next exploit? So one has to come up with something. And my wife, Luella, had learnt that for every week you're in intensive care. it takes a month to recover. So I was in intensive care for five weeks, and we came out on May the third, twenty twenty, and so we decided that I would climb this mountain on October the third. twenty twenty, which just happened to be the highest rainfall of the g heaviest winds since records began in eighteen ninety. And it made a much more dramatic film. It's all on my website, Robinsbooks.co.uk. You can watch the film and it's good fun. But as a result, we were able to raise enough money to start a healing garden in Cornwall Holland.

speaker-1: Wow. So how many healing gardens are there today in the UK?

speaker-0: I have no idea. You must look it up. I think they're beginning to get more and more. This was the first that I was in. I think Cornwall was the second. I know there's University College Hospital in London. I'm sure that I know I'm in contact with other people in East Anglia who are doing it. I think they're happening everywhere. Every hospital should have a healing guard.

speaker-1: So say if I were the chief financial officer of a hospital and someone came to me and said, We need to carve aside funds to set up a healing garden. And say if the CFO were not to be convinced because they were like, What's the financial return? As they often do, what would you say? What is the business case?

speaker-0: You are so right. The bureaucracy of the National Health Service is something that we had to fight against when we did our hospital service. Constant obstacles are put in the way of every innovative change that we wanted to have. And it was a big uphill battle getting through. There were far too many bureaucrats in the National Health Service and far too few doctors and nurses. Doctors and nurses were all on our side, but the bureaucrats put every kind of obstacle in the way. Anyway, we got there. I think what you would say is that it is actually cost effective to have a healing garden, because the therapeutic effect of being in a garden and among flowers will mean that you heal so much more quickly, both physically and probably more importantly mentally as well, because both the patients and the overstressed nurses need somewhere to go and chill out, and there is nothing like a garden. Our wonderful one in Cornwall has because so many people were generous and donated lots of plants to it. It has four hundred year old tree ferns. So you almost feel like you're going into a tropical rainforest. Paradox. But anyway, it's a a marvel, and we've seen these patients like I was coming out wheeled in their trolleys. The Cornish one is the first that has gas piped in there so that you can plug the patient in. And you see these grey, pasty faced patients coming out with tubes sticking out of everywhere, getting plugged in. And feeling the sun on their face and seeing the flowers and actually smiling and feeling better. And it's good for everyone, so if we could just persuade the bureaucrats in the National Health Service that it's cost effective to have healing gardens, that would be a big breakthrough.

speaker-1: And I think that's a really compelling financial imperative. If patients heal quickly enough and heal permanently enough, that is something that would make a compelling argument to have these healing gardens in place. And I really believe that if every hospital, had that healing garden, there would be so many more smiles, there would be so much more compassion and so much quicker recovery there that it's you don't need to make a business case for it.

speaker-0: No. And it's not just in hospitals. I mean, that is one whole big area, and I couldn't agree with you more. You're so right. But of course, there is a question of healing the whole population of a country. And at the moment, we l mostly live in urban areas where you get n very little chance with a small park to walk in. And our dream is to restore the forests of Britain, which is the most d forest depleted country in Europe, or the second most depleted. Malta has apparently less forests than we do. But Britain has lost so much of its forests, and if they grew right up to the edge of towns, then people would be able to walk out of their congested tower block area and walk not very far and find themselves in a forest where they would be getting benefiting from the therapeutic effect of being narratory.

speaker-1: Robin, you've been a hot place explorer, as you call yourself, and you've seen shamans enter the spirit world, and you've seen how effortlessly forests produce, you know, that healing effect. Can you tell us what went through your mind when you were experiencing those hallucinations and when you were in that healing garden? And you said that you saw the light and the long tunnel, but you could have switched that off. And you chose to come back. Can you talk us through a little bit about that and why you chose to come back to this messed up world?

speaker-0: Extraordinary question, which I will try to answer. It was an amazing experience. I did very nearly die at least three times. I was coming out of consciousness, although I was in a coma, which they couldn't get me out of, and I was being fed all these materials. I was aware quite a lot of the time of my existence. And as I said before, the main experience I think anybody who's been in hospital will share with me will agree. Is that hospital is intensely boring. You're stuck in a bed, you're not able to turn over. You can see the clock on the wall, and you know that nothing is going to happen for six hours and you can't sleep. So the relief of going into a hallucinogenic trance through whatever drugs I was being fed was actually very positive. And I remember feeling the excitement of something happening. And I did see the classic thing that other people have written about, which is the long white tunnel. I can't say I saw figures waving, beckoning me in at the very end. People have said that they did, but I was certainly aware that if I went down that tunnel, I would be well, i in my mind at that time I would be switching the world off because it's in such a mess. And I just thought, well, I'll give it another chance. And there was a little white wicked gate, I remember, which I could open, and if I went through that, it would be the end. And I decided not to do that. And I'm quite sure that it was that combination of the sort of spiritual experiences of the hallucinogens that I was being fed, and perhaps a little bit of my own determination not to give it all up and have another go, that got me through. And I remember the wonderment of waking up and actually deciding to live again. And it's like being given a second chance, it's extra time in a football match. You suddenly realize that you were in You were supposed to die and you've got another chance, and my goodness, if you've got that and you're still healthy and able to do things, make the most of it.

speaker-1: Absolutely. And honestly, Robin, anyone who talks to you today would find it very hard to believe that you survived all of that unscathed at the age of 87, was it?

speaker-0: Yeah, something like that.

speaker-1: You can't tell. You know, it's like you've had no long COVID symptoms. You're climbing mountains, you're raising money, you're doing a water bike challenge. You really have seized that second chance.

speaker-0: I'm very lucky. I mean it's it's it's luck. It's not nothing else than that. I mean I feel so sorry. So many younger people really had very serious long COVID. Doctors and nurses who got COVID in their forties, you know, were severely debilitated by it. And the doctor who rang my wife the three times that they told her it was prepare for a difficult conversation, it's less than five percent chance. he said, and even if he does get through he'll be severely brain damaged. so I am incredibly lucky that I haven't had those suffering and I mean just because I'm over ninety now, you know, obviously the aches and pains of old age are there, and you know, I'm worried that my next challenge my back will give out or my knees or something. But one has just to be determined to pedal through the pain threshold and get on with it. And it you feel better as a result of doing things.

speaker-1: It's incredible. They say the body produces natural painkillers as well, you know, when you do cardio, but it does you are an a true source of inspiration.

speaker-0: Well, I mean, another of the rather extraordinary things about my life story is that after a lot of exploring in South America, the crossings and so on, during the course of which I met quite a lot of remote indigenous tribes, who were always very hospitable and I was interested in their lives. I'm not an anthropologist, but I wrote a bit about their lives and how excellent and different they were. And then in nineteen sixty nine I was on an expedition. Hovercraft expedition on the upper Orinoco, visiting some tribes as well. And we realized that with I was with a marvelous ethnobotanist called Conrad Gorinsky, and he was collecting medicinal plants from the shamans. And we went to one particular tribe who who reputedly had a a very interesting blood stopping plant. And it was the same people who produced curare, which is now integral to heart transplant operations and so on. But the people said, yes, we we used to collect that, and the shaman would be the man who'd know all about that. We said, Well take us to the shaman and said, He's just died, and he was the only one who really knew about this plan. And they went and they said, Would it be this one or would it be that one? We suddenly realized that a whole incredibly large library of information had died with this one man in whom was vested the pharmaceutical knowledge of that tribe, which had been accumulated over thousands of years. And that This was a a terrible tragedy and it was happening all over South America, particularly in Brazil, where of the three hundred or so tribes, one a year was dying out. Tribes were becoming extinct due to the corruption of the Indian Protection Service at that point. And we said there's nobody doing anything about this. there's the World Wildlife Fund that's been formed for wildlife, there's Amnesty International for Political Prisoners, there's lots of organizations. But there is no organisation for indigenous people who are dying out because of government corruption and stupidity.

speaker-1: Which year are we talking about now?

speaker-0: Nineteen sixty nine. February sixty nine. And so we all got together in my flat and we decided there should be a movement. And long story, but Survival International was born. And it's now the the main international organization representing uncontacted people and indigenous people who are suffering all sorts of problems from stupid governments and multinational companies who are destroying their land and and their lives. So I'm very proud of that. But I'd really just stumbled into doing that, and the same really with the rainforest expedition later, in which we discovered why rainforests actually matter, and why a standing rainforest is much more valuable in every sort of way, commercially as well as scientifically, than a bare landscape that's cut down. And so now it's all happening again here on the farm, which is pretty exciting.

speaker-1: I can imagine. So what has Survival International done for uncontacted tribal communities?

speaker-0: Well, there are mainly in in South America, Brazil and Peru, i is the main area where there are about a hundred smaller or larger uncontacted tribes who are known about by they often have relations who are settled and who are in contact with them. But these are people who have said quite clearly they do not wish to have anything to do with modern society and are l living sustainable lives in the forest. And there are now we are Finding others in Southeast Asia, in in Malmahira, in in Indonesia and also in India, in the Nicobar Islands. These are t people who have remained outside of contact and made it quite clear that this is how they wish to be. One of the things we've had to do is to prove that they're there, because governments often say, No, we'll give logging concessions and oil concessions, so this is all destroyed, their land. choose to remain isolated if they so wish. And that on the uncontacted peoples projects is really the baseline of what we were doing. Of course there are many other people who are in contact and suffering for hundreds of years, but are still retaining their strong culture, but suffering as a result by ignorant governments on the whole, who wish to destroy their way of life and so we fight to protect their right to determine their own future.

speaker-1: I love that because there's always a price tag to these communities who choose to live differently. And if governments aren't fully aware of just how precious the knowledge that they possess is, then i it can come at a very financially punitive cost to them.

speaker-0: Well what is so exciting is that the United Nations and the international organizations are now suddenly beginning to realize the significance of indigenous knowledge. I was at COP twenty six in Glasgow, the last but one, and it was so exciting to see that for the first time, one of the four criteria for combating climate change was tapping into indigenous knowledge. I mean, this was unbelievable forty years ago. But as a result There were many, many indigenous people there, lots of feather headdresses in the crowd and you could see them and we all went and protest and and demonstrated and made our case. And this was so exciting to see that indigenous knowledge is now integral to international recognition of the problems facing us with climate change.

speaker-1: Absolutely. And they're an integral part of the solution. You know, they're part of the opportunity. That example that you shared, you know, pharmaceutical companies depending, you know, on Shaman's knowledge for plants that have blood clotting benefits is such a powerful case in point. And going back to what you said about, you know, the COPS, you were really at the beginning of the modern environmental movement, way before the COPS happened. So What was it like arguing for these ideas in the sixties and seventies when most people thought it was ridiculous?

speaker-0: You're so right. Well, one of the other founders of Survival was a man called Teddy Goldsmith, brother of famous Jimmy Goldsmith. And he broke away from us a year after we started Survival and started the ecology movement in Britain. And my first director, who actually left to work with him, Robert Allen, wrote the Blueprint for Survival, which is an extraordinary document which sold a million copies all over the world and helped To found most of the green movements everywhere. It was the first green shoot of the whole green political movement. And the extraordinary thing was, if you read that document, that he was so right about so many things about what was wrong with the world and how we needed to address the problems. Unfortunately, for the last 50 years since then, the solutions, people have got round. The forecast that they made about running out of natural resources. They found more oil, agricultural collapse of desertification of agricultural systems. They bred more green species of rice that could survive droughts. And so the inevitable apocalyptic dramas that are facing the planet were postponed for far too long over the last several decades, because we kept through our innovations, and we are a very clever species. We kept finding ways round these problems. But I think at last now all those chickens are coming home to roost, that Teddy forecast back in those days, and he was ridiculed for saying, you know, that the world was coming to an end because we were destroying stuff. He was pillaried and caricatured as a doom watcher. But actually he was right. And now people are beginning to realize that actually we are over exploiting this planet to the extent Where it is actually critical to our own survival. And there's another amazing historical link there with the way my rather peculiar life has turned out.

speaker-1: You really shine a light on the double edged sword of innovation and human ingenuity there. Because as you say, you know, we came up with GMO and intensive agriculture and we delayed the inevitable, as you say. But there's only so much you can delay. There's only so many tipping points that you can sweep under the carpet for a certain amount of time till the house is on fire. And it really speaks to Something that I continue to draw inspiration from, which is if we've created this mess and we've had the brains to provide innovations that have delayed something that was inevitable, we also possess the brains to create the solutions. So I know that you've written in Taming the Four Horsemen about the four catastrophes and apocalyptic scenarios that will come if we don't tap into that hive brain and figure out how to work within planetary boundaries. But what's one thing that's really giving you a cause for optimism

speaker-0: Optimism is quite difficult to have at the moment when we really do face an existential crisis with climate change. This is the trigger that is making people wake up and realize we have problems. How do we address that? One of the critical issues that our son, Merlin and I, argue furiously about these things. We don't agree about everything. He is passionately opposed to AI. I'm not sure if AI may be a solution to some of the problems, because the ability to identify physical and other solutions to immense problems of our diseases and pandemics and other things is greatly enhanced by using AI. And I love it for research. Even though one has to keep a very big pinch of salt when you listen to AI because very often it gets it wrong. But what I enjoy about it is that I can access every latest scientific paper, which I don't understand ninety percent of because I'm not a scientist, but I can tap into the latest things that top scientists are saying about the state of the world. And very often I just go straight to the summary to see if that at least is written in plain English and I can understand what they're talking about.

speaker-1: When we talked about deforestation and the, you know, the footprint that agriculture has on this planet, there was one line from your book. It's a quote, which says, and I'm going to read it out now, that forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them. I just love that. And it feels like the writing is so clear on the wall, you know, and everything that you've written in your book that we know what we're headed towards. But there is still a small, a slim window, you know, if we wake up and smell the coffee and act collectively. So if we had to get the next twenty years right, what do you feel the world could look like? What do you imagine the world looking like?

speaker-0: Well, the good news is that a lot of people are getting aware of this, as I've said. And the other piece of good news is that nature is incredibly resilient. Given half a chance, it will recover. Even devastated rainforests will come back to a much richer habitat than they were before if left alone. And given a chance. So those are the two pieces of good news. combined with what you've mentioned, the extraordinary innovativeness and inventiveness of our species. I mean, here we are with what has been often described as the most sophisticated thing that evolution has produced, the human brain. I mean, it is extraordinary how clever we can be when we're doing the right things. And so there should be hope. We can do it. And what I'm trying to say in Taming the Four Horsemen is that if we address the main apocalyptic menaces that are appearing on our horizon and scaring the hell out of us, and address them imaginatively using the best of our brains and perhaps some AI to expand even further our mental abilities, because AI can do a million calculations in the time it takes us to do half a dozen. So I think there is every possibility it's been sort of the story of my life, actually. All the campaigns that I've been involved in. It's been so obvious that these are the right things to do, and everybody n no excuse now because they know the answers. It's just that irritating things like wars and politics get in the way.

speaker-1: So I wanna wrap up with a quick fire round and ask you some questions and encourage you to say whatever comes to your mind first. One book every young environmentalist should read. Apart from taming the four horsemen.

speaker-0: Apart from that, I think Silent Spring, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was was the the book that changed everything. Sixty five years ago, very simply what it did was after the war, we had used a an immense amount of DDT, which had saved a lot of lives and helped but was polluting the environment terribly.

speaker-1: Those who don't know what D D T is, would you be able to explain that?

speaker-0: DDT is a pesticide, herbicide. It was developed for controlling malaria, I think, originally. But anyway, it was being used grossly all over the world and other pesticides and herbicides. And she wrote this wonderful book, Silent Spring, which opened everybody's eyes to the fact that we were polluting our world in a dreadful way, and turned the tide and and did a lot of good. But of course we've sort of lost the plot on that and we're now doing it again. So that's the book I would mention. And somebody's got to write a new one that brings it up to date.

speaker-1: Next book idea for anyone listening. Okay. One lesson indigenous communities understand better than the rest of us.

speaker-0: Boy, they understand that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature.

speaker-1: What's the most overrated idea in environmentalism?

speaker-0: Now these are the good guys who are trying to save the world. I think one aspect of that is something Survival International is much involved in, which is some enthusiastic environmentalists, conservationists believe that nature, which we all recognize is wonderfully resilient, should be left alone and there should be no interference by man at all. Whereas of course Over the last millennia, man has been involved in nature all the time. Indigenous people live in harmony with nature and do not destroy it. So there is a movement or a theory within conservation that the best way to save nature is to remove the indigenous inhabitants. And this is happening particularly badly in India, where over a million tribal people have been removed from reserves. in order to save nature, supposedly. And these are people who very often worship the tiger, for example in tiger reserves, and are not poachers and are actually the best defence against poaching. So I would say that that mistaken concept within conservation is the worst.

speaker-1: Very telling, thank you. What would you say to a young person who's overwhelmed by climate anxiety?

speaker-0: Go and walk in a wood and see what it can be like. work in the natural world and discover the interrelationships between nature and us and and focus on them and you'll be all right.

speaker-1: Thank you. So just to close up, you've spent your life exploring the outer and inner world, people, places, surviving extraordinary challenges and launching new movements. When future generations look back, what do you hope they would say about you?

speaker-0: well I I hope they'd recognize that within all the showing off, because people say, What causes you to be an explorer? And it all comes from a small boy wanting to climb higher up trees than other ones because he was a small, spotty, insignificant youth. And so if you look back through explorers, they mostly didn't have a father figure and were trying to impress their mothers. So it starts with showing off. But if you are incredibly lucky, as I have been and find that some of your showing off actually triggers movements which might just help to save the world, then you're very lucky.

speaker-1: Nice. And I love the way you slipped in a bit of psychology there as well. Great. so to conclude with a big thank you and a few reflections, Robin, your life has really been a bridge between worlds. You've seen shamans enter the spirit world, you've entered it yourself during COVID, you've chosen to come back, you've discovered uncharted realms of inner and outer exploration, and your legacy can be seen in organizations that you've helped create, the landscapes and the indigenous communities you fought. Protect the funding that you've raised for various causes, including healing gardens, which generations of patients and medical professionals will benefit from. But perhaps the most important takeaway from your experience, in my opinion, is the fact that in saving nature, we are actually saving ourselves. So, Robin, thank you so much for this privilege and for your time and for being on this episode. It's been an absolute honor.

speaker-0: Thank you, Nir. It's been a delight talking to you. Thank you so much.

speaker-1: If something you've heard on the podcast has made you pause and rethink how you would partner with nature, follow ReWiggle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and YouTube. And if you know someone who is actively rewiggling how they work with nature, building solutions, shifting systems, or turning ideas into action, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at rewiggle at gmail.com. Because the best conversations don't really end when the episode does. They stay with us and sometimes they change what we do next.