Podcasting for Change
Introducing: The Black Earth Podcast Impact Report 2025-6
This report is alive! Play with the leaves here, and click on the drawings, buttons, pictures and videos below for hidden surprises. This page has been designed with play and exploration in mind, in the spirit of bringing conversations and change to life.
Scroll to explore
For the best experience, explore this report on desktop!
Black Earth is an award-winning podcast and platform celebrating Earth and amplifying black women leaders in the environmental movement.
We work at rare intersections: environmental science and relational storytelling, inner transformation and structural change, ancestral knowledge and contemporary activism.
Through storytelling, impact collaborations, and resources, we are weaving a global movement to restore humanity's relationship with our beautiful, living planet.
A Letter From The Team
The Power of Podcasting
Podcasting has huge, and still largely untapped, potential for impact campaigning.
As podcast audiences grow exponentially worldwide, and with political leaders already using podcasts as a core pillar of their media and campaign strategies, this is a pivotal moment to harness the power of podcasts for good.
If we use podcasts strategically, there is the potential to shift public awareness and opinion on key issues and drive positive change for our world.
Our fourth season focused on the theme of ‘Just and Joyful Transitions’.
This season covered a variety of solutions black women are working to help us navigate a world in transition such as: seed sovereignty, Afro-Brazilian rematriation, extreme heat resilience and diversity in climate entrepreneurship.
For the first time since Black Earth began, episodes were created in both audio and subtitled video format.
About Season 4
Our Impact in Numbers*
10
23%
increase in subscribers to our podcast across the most popular listening platforms for our audience (Apple, Spotify and YouTube)
video episodes shared this season, including two episodes made available in multiple languages
>105K
70
reach/ impressions on content and episodes shared online for Season 4 on our social channels (LinkedIn and Instagram)
countries where episodes from Season 4 of Black Earth were downloaded
downloads of Black Earth podcast episodes across all seasons so far, including the latest episodes
downloads so far of episodes and content from Season 4 of Black Earth
>5K
>30K
* Above data collected between August 13th 2025 and March 31st 2026
Our Guests
Our guests are the heart of the podcast – sharing their wisdom, insight and experience across a range of crucial issues and topics. This season featured 8 incredible guests across 10 episodes (2 episodes made available in additional languages). Explore the episodes below:
-
![]()
Agnes Agyepong
How Black Mothers Are Leading Change for Clean Air and Justice in the UK
In this episode we speak to Agnes Agyepong, founder of Global Child and Maternal Health, about air pollution, pregnancy and environmental justice in the UK.
-
![]()
Tracee Worley
How Black Women Are Creating Climate Futures
In this episode we speak to Tracee Worley, founder of Radical Futures, to learn how communities, especially Black women, are using the power of radical imagination and care to reimagine climate futures.
-
![]()
Mandy Nyarko
Redefining Climate Entrepreneurship
In this episode we speak with Mandy Nyarko, a leading climate and sustainability investor, about the power of diverse climate entrepreneurship.
-
![]()
Mashudu Takalani
Why Seed Sovereignty Matters
In this inspiring and enlightening episode, Marion speaks with Mashudu Takalani of the EarthLore Foundation about seed sovereignty and stewardship in Southern Africa.
-
![]()
Eugenia Kargbo
Africa’s First Chief Heat Officer on Community, Nature, and Climate Resilience
In this episode we’re joined by Eugenia Kargbo, Africa’s first Chief Heat Officer, to explore how communities and nature are responding to a warming world.
-
![]()
Fran Paula
Quilombola Wisdom From Brazil
In this episode we meet Fran Paula, a Quilombola researcher from Brazil, who is documenting the life-giving agricultural practices that sustain her people.
This episode uses live translation and is available in Brazilian Portuguese & English.
-
![]()
Dr Alicia Odewale
How Trees Remember Us
In this moving episode, we speak to diaspora archaeologist and founder of the Black Heritage Trees Project, Dr. Alicia Odewale, to explore the links between black heritage and the lives of trees.
-
![]()
Mireille Kayijamahe
Voices of Peace from the Congo Basin
In this episode we’re joined by Mireille Kayijamahe, founder of Terra Mucho, a podcast and platform uplifting African women’s leadership across the Congo Basin through storytelling, mentoring and well-being.
This episode is available in French & English – French version here.
Our impact
1 – Sparking Conversation
A key part of our approach was planning impact-driven activities and content to inspire community conversation. The activities included:
Newsletter: We launched Tender (R)evolutions, a regular newsletter diving deeper on the episodes through inspiring insight and reflection. There are already over 550 followers and 230 newsletter subscribers.
Social media lives: We ran two social media lives including a LinkedIn live event with episode guest, Tracee Worley, following the release of her episode on imagining radical futures. Over 700 people viewed the online event, with many sharing questions & comments.
Click me to explore!
2 – Supporting our guests
A core part of our strategy was to amplify the incredible work of our guests, and developing collaborative relationships to support them longer-term. Examples of what we did include:
Black Heritage Tree Guidelines: With episode guest, Dr. Alicia Odewale, we contributed to a citizen science resource which provides guidance on how to honour and conserve Black Heritage Trees.
Resources & content: We produced dedicated resources and content for each guest to promote and support their work.
Events & media: We have proactively reached out to events and media to pitch features on our guests.
Click me to explore!
3 – Widening access
For the first time, two of our episodes were also made available in additional languages to improve accessibility to our content and share learnings from diverse acknowledgement communities who speak languages other than English.
The episode with Quilombola leader and researcher, Fran Paula, was released in Brazilian Portuguese before Climate COP30 in Brazil, contributing to the crucial conversation on Quilombola land rights and community action at the conference.
The episode with Mireille Kayijamahe was also released in French to engage Francophone audiences, sharing the vital conversation on African women’s leadership in the Congo Basin.
4 – Industry engagement
Our team has contributed to industry conferences and policy engagements sharing our learnings on how to effectively communicate and strengthen public engagement on ecological justice issues. This has included:
Wildscreen: Both Marion and Caz ran a session at Wildscreen’s global Science in Storytelling event in March 2026.
Sheffield International Documentary Festival: Marion presented the Season 4 impact campaign at a panel hosted by the University of Arts London.
Tremula Festival: Marion spoke at an nature audio storytelling festival, sharing about the podcast and impact production.
UCL: Caz delivered a lecture to over 30 students across multiple disciplines on the power of podcasting for impact.
ScreenSkills: Caz spoke to over 100 screen industry professionals about her work and the podcast.
Additionally, through existing and new partnerships, we were able to secure features by high-profile organisations and individuals in the movement, including WWF (spotlighting the podcast to 115,000 followers) and the Women in Sustainability Network (shared the podcast to their network of >60,000). Our guests also helped to amplify our content through personal and organisational channels.
5 – Facilitating policy & grassroots impact
We took a strategic approach to our outreach focused on translating Black Earth conversations into real world change.
To achieve this, we provided updates on ongoing policy issues covered in previous seasons. We also collaborated with policy partners and grassroots communities to increase support for timely issues. As a result, we were able to contribute to these impact moments:
Air pollution & Ella’s law – Our episode with Agnes Agyepong revisited the issue of air pollution in the UK, a conversation shared in our first ever episode of Black Earth with Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, founder of the Ella Roberta Foundation. The Second Reading of the Clean Air Bill (also known as Ella’s Law) took place in March 2026. Sian Berry MP, who has initiated Ella’s Law, reshared Agnes’ episode to highlight the importance of this issue.
APPG on Race Equality in Education: In September 2025, Marion was invited to a closed Parliamentary consultation on clean air justice in the UK, following the release of the episode with Agnes Agyepong.
Hurricane Melissa fundraiser: We supported fundraising for the Black River community in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes on record which struck Jamaica in late October 2025. Our post was viewed around 10,500 times, and reached nearly 4,000 accounts through Instagram and Linkedin.
6 – Strengthening our platform
To meet our goals for this season, we upgraded our production process which involved building new strategies, operational processes, website and branding. Some of these changes included:
Video podcasts: For the first time, our episodes were also recorded and shared as videos with subtitles through YouTube and audio streaming platforms including Spotify, allowing our audiences to both watch and listen to our episodes.
Website: We launched a brand new website for the podcast, which offers dedicated episode pages, information and insight for our listeners to dive deeper on the podcast content.
Impact outreach: We established a dedicated impact outreach framework for each episode to ensure our target audiences had multiple opportunities to engage with the content and our platform.
Read the full report
What we’ve created this season is far greater than we could have ever imagined – and we know that the true impact of this work may be far beyond what we can ever measure.
This is just a snapshot of our impact so far. Discover more through our full report, which shares further insight on our strategic approach, outcomes and learnings.
What’s next for Black Earth?
This year, the next chapter of Black Earth is about deepening our work on podcasting for social impact.
We are doing this by continuing to conduct impact activities including media outreach and participating in events, and by field-building: sharing our knowledge, reflections and learnings from this report with environmental and impact storytelling sectors in the UK and globally.
We are also spending this year in deep planning for Season 5 – exploring new possibilities for how we build upon what we’ve achieved through Season 4.
Discover our Conversation Guide
We just launched our brand new conversation guide to bring the world-changing conversations of the podcast into communities across our Earth.
Discover the guide and resources below – designed to be used either alone, or through discussion with others.
We are open and excited to share our learnings and impact approach to podcasting. From 121 discussions, to events and speaking opportunities, we’d love to be in touch to share more.
Reach out to our team below!
Learn more about Our Impact
Support Black Earth
We are currently open to meeting with mission-aligned funders, and social impact organisations who want to collaborate with us.
Get in touch for an introductory conversation below. We look forward to connecting with you!
With thanks to
Our team
Founder and Host
Impact Producer
Podcast Editor
Artist
Our funding partner
Black Earth Podcast is supported by Synchronicity Earth, our funding partner for Season 4.
Synchronicity Earth is a UK-registered charity focusing on global biodiversity conservation. They are a different kind of conservation organisation – focused on doing work that can bring about meaningful change for endangered species and vulnerable ecosystems, and that has a positive impact on the livelihoods of often marginalised communities.
The achievements shared within this impact report were made possible with the support and trust of the Synchronicity Earth team.
This report website was created by Caz, with thanks to immersive storytelling creative Babusi Nyoni for the inspiration!