Pip Podcasts: When Telling Becomes Listening

This chapter examines the ‘soundwork’ of women’s digital garden communication by considering the affective potential of a collection of Australian permaculture podcasts and the ways they communicate compassion in environmental communication. It is guided by the words of writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who writes that ‘telling is listening’ (The wave in the mind: Talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination (1st ed.). Shambhala, 2004, p. 196), suggesting that listening to these garden stories is listening for an affective connection, rather than reaction. Permaculture is a philosophy that emphasises care and connection and these are complex and political concepts which risk being weaponised against women, when linked with them and their home places. This chapter questions the way compassion operates and circulates in these podcasts, drawing on affect scholar Lauren Berlant’s work on affective compassion and the “cruel optimism” that it risks. What happens when women’s environmental communication becomes communication about compassion?