Response-Able: Ecological Psychology, Wayfinding, and Multi-Species Life. A catch-up with Carl Woods.

Show Notes

In this rich, wandering catch-up with with Dr. Carl Woods we explore how an ecological approach to psychology, sport, and everyday life might help us live more responsibly in a time of ecological collapse.

Drawing on two of Carl’s recent papers – a commentary on wayfinding (in conversation with Harry Heft and Gibsonian ecological psychology) and “Responsibility in a Time of Ecological Collapse” – we unpack what it means to pay attention, to be “response-able,” and to re‑situate humans within, not above, the more‑than‑human world.

In This Episode

The backstory to Carl’s recent papers
  - How a provocative earlier paper on doing sport science differently led to a conversational review process with John van der Kamp.
  - The emergence of a special issue on ecological psychology’s response to the climate crisis.
  - Why Carl and colleagues moved from talking about morality to proposing an ethic of responsibility.

From cognitive maps to wayfinding as skilled movement
  - Harry Heft’s challenge to the idea that humans and animals navigate via internal cognitive maps.
  - Why exploratory movement and picking up environmental structure are central to finding one’s way.
  - Seafarers, albatrosses, currents, and how different species perceive and navigate their worlds.
  - The downstream implications: how your theoretical lens changes what and how you study in both lab and field.

What is an ethic of responsibility?
  - Moving beyond box‑ticking, principled ethics and university forms.
  - Responsibility as rooted in our **interwovenness with the world** and our ongoing relations.
  - Five practices Carl and colleagues foreground:
    - **Attentiveness**
    - **Politeness and curiosity**
    - **Rendering each other capable**
    - **Openness to encounter**
    - **Ongoingness and mutual flourishing**

Education of attention & “attention snacking"
  - Marianne’s idea of small attentional shifts as “attention snacks” that can nudge long‑term behavioural change.
  - Why ecological approaches focus not on “changing what’s in the head” but on what people become attuned to.
  - How this differs from traditional “behaviour change” models that rely on prescriptions, rules, and optimisation.

Stories that make it concrete
  - Pigeon Watch (Donna Haraway): Chicago schoolchildren move from seeing pigeons as “rats with wings” to recognizsng them as social beings with life ways, and begin to act differently in their neighbourhoods.
  - Barbara Smuts and the baboons: what it means to observe animals from their perspective, with politeness and curiosity, rather than forcing their behaviour into our theories.
  - Dancing at UQ: how a glazed façade and manicured forecourt at the University of Queensland became a spontaneous public dance space, illustrating how design can unintentionally hold open pluralistic affordances.
  - Marianne’s sea kayaking and rock‑hopping: timing, swell, sound, and the full sensory education of attention needed to move through dynamic seascapes.
  - Whiteouts and a search-and-rescue dog: how Marianne and her dog Skye co‑navigated in zero visibility, and what this reveals about multi-species wayfinding.
  - Companion animals (dogs, horses) and over‑control: shifting from obedience and dominance to *shared responsiveness, trust, and agency.

Tight and loose logics in design and coaching
  - How to design environments and practice tasks that have:
    - A tight task goal, but 
    - Enough loose affordances and “wiggle room” to invite creativity, exploration, and spontaneous solutions.
  - Applying this to:
    - Urban and campus design
    - Physical activity promotion
    - Sports coaching (beyond “right/wrong technique” and deficit detection).

Climate, local weather, and caring for the tree at the end of the street
  - Reframing “global climate change” as "local weather change" to reconnect people with what they can directly perceive.
  - Why attending to local events (floods, changing seasons, declines in sparrows) may be more powerful than distant abstractions.
  - Marianne’s house sparrows and the garden center’s nesting wren: small acts of making space for more-than-human life.
  - The question Carl poses: How do we help people care about the tree at the end of their street?

Trust, ongoingness, and flourishing together
  - Trust as an attunement to the other, and a willingness to be vulnerable in the expectation of shared ongoingness.
  - Symbiotic examples: mantis shrimp and goby fish, sled dogs and Inuit travellers, rescue dogs and handlers, horses and riders, teammates in sport.
  - How trust, attention, and responsibility intertwine so that all parties can flourish.

Themes You’ll Hear Throughout

- Ecological psychology (Gibson, Heft) as a way of seeing - perception, movement, and environment - as inseparable.
- Critiques of human exceptionalism and “humans versus nature” thinking.
- The power of small, local, concrete practices – counting pigeons, noticing a tree, watching how a bird nests – to open up ethics and responsibility.
- Practical consequences for:
  - Sport and coaching
  - Dog and horse training
  - Environmental design and conservation
  - Everyday living with weather, animals, and places


If you enjoy conversations that braid together theory, practice, and story – from spearfishing and sea kayaking to pigeons, baboons, dogs, horses, and sparrows – this episode offers a deep yet grounded exploration of what it might mean to live more response-able lives in entangled, more-than-human worlds.

Links to the papers that frame this conversation (both open access)

On Response-Ability in a Time of Ecological Collapse

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10407413.2026.2613808#abstract

On finding one’s way: a comment on Bock et al. (2024)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-024-02011-1