Internet of Nature Podcast

There's a statistic I keep coming back to: the average child can name more than 1,000 corporate logos, but fewer than 10 native plant species in their own neighborhood. Christina Delfico has been fighting that number for 13 years — one toddler, one oak tree, one planting day at a time.
In this episode, I talk with Christina — Emmy-nominated TV producer turned urban greening practitioner, and founder of I Dig to Learn on Roosevelt Island — about what actually happened when 400 New Yorkers gathered to plant New York State's first-ever Miyawaki method pocket forest. We get into the wood wide web, why a 20-year career at Sesame Workshop turned out to be perfect training for ecosystem restoration, and what Christina did not expect when she handed 1,500 baby trees to 400 strangers on a Sunday in April.
We also talk about the woman who came back every week to water the specific tree she and her son had planted. About beach plums, the Lenape Center, and what Henry Hudson's journals tell us about what Manhattan used to look like. And about why a pocket forest might be the best gateway drug urban forestry has ever had.
Visit the Manhattan Healing Forest at South Point Park on Roosevelt Island — public, free, and on Google Maps. Learn more about the forest at sugiproject.com. Find Christina and iDig2Learn on Instagram at @idig2learn.

A free-range chicken has more space than a child on a Dutch school playground. Ian Mostert has spent 12 years doing something about that.
In this episode, I talk with Ian Mostert — youth health worker turned urban greening practitioner, and Project Manager for Child and Nature at IVN Nature Education — about what actually changes when you transform a paved, fenced schoolyard into a green community space. We get into why the hardest part of greening a schoolyard has nothing to do with plants, why he starts every stakeholder conversation with childhood memories instead of data, and what happens to bullying, concentration, and teacher burnout when children finally get the outdoor environment they're built for.
We also talk about the boy who couldn't function inside a classroom but lay on his stomach for half an hour watching ants — and became calm. About the teenagers who had been dealing drugs on a schoolyard and agreed to clean it up every morning because someone finally included them in the community. About why Ian insists every greened schoolyard must be open to the neighborhood 365 days a year, and why that single condition transforms a school amenity into a third space that struggling families desperately need.
The conversation ends where I think the whole urban greening movement needs to go: the bureaucratic silo problem that makes holistic investment nearly impossible, why storytelling will get us further than data ever has, and Ian's dream of one million green schoolyards worldwide.
Find Ian and IVN Nature Education at ivn.nl.

Just because someone lives in an apartment doesn't mean they don't want to go outside and be in nature.
In this episode, I sit down with Lauren Zullo, Managing Director of Impact at Jonathan Rose Companies, at their Midtown Manhattan headquarters to talk about what happens when you design affordable housing around health — and how nature fits into that equation. Lauren's work sits at the intersection of housing, sustainability, and the social determinants of health, and she makes the case that housing touches every single one of them: air quality, food access, social connection, financial stress, and the immediate environment in which people live.
We talk about how Jonathan Rose Companies brings nature into 19,000 units of affordable housing across the US — from trees for shade in the Bronx to green roofs that make rooftop solar more efficient in DC — and why the business case for green space isn't about ecosystem services but about building places people actually want to stay. Lauren also shares the story behind Sendero Verde in East Harlem, one of the largest affordable Passive House buildings in the world, where the courtyard follows a Lenape walking trail and the plantings were chosen based on the indigenous species that once grew on the site.
Find Lauren Zullo and Jonathan Rose Companies at rosecompanies.com.

There's a reason people write poetry about trees and not speed bumps.
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Geoffrey Donovan — forest economist, 23-year USDA Forest Service researcher, and founder of Ash and Elm Consulting — about why the health benefits of urban trees dwarf every other benefit we talk about, and why most people still don't believe it. We get into the emerald ash borer study that produced the headline "when trees die, people die," the Portland research showing the inverse — tree planting linked to decreased cardiovascular mortality — and why the strongest evidence sits at both ends of life: babies born heavier when mothers live near tree canopy, and people living longer in greener neighborhoods.
We also talk about biodiversity and immune development, including Geof's studies linking genus-level plant diversity to lower rates of childhood asthma and leukemia, why peak exposure to grayness may be a risk factor for ADHD, and what a pregnant woman can actually do with all of this research. The conversation ends where I think the field needs to go: science-based storytelling, why Geof reads Seamus Heaney to audiences after the graphs, and why trees don't make cities more livable — they make them survivable.
Find Geof and Ash and Elm Consulting at ashelmconsulting.com.

Most people walk through their city every day and never notice the nature around them.
In this episode — the Season 7 premiere — I talk with Nuno Curado, founder of Wild Eindhoven, from a bench along the river Dommel in the center of Eindhoven. We walked from the High Tech Campus into the city along the river, barely touching a road, talking about beavers, birdsong, mushrooms, and what happens when people start paying attention to the wildlife that's been around them all along.
We discuss how Nuno, a newcomer from Portugal, turned his own process of discovering Eindhoven's nature into guided walks that help residents connect with the living city beneath the asphalt. We talk about the beaver that appeared five meters from a walking group and why he calls it "a very marking moment," and why finding your first mushroom changes the way you see everything after it.
The conversation also explores Nuno's work at Trefpunt Groen Eindhoven, a 25-year-old organization that acts as the voice of nature in Eindhoven's urban development — and a model I think more cities need.
This episode will resonate with urban ecologists, nature educators, municipal planners, and anyone who's ever jogged through a park without once looking up.
Find Nuno on his website, Wild Eindhoven, and on LinkedIn.