Warm waters, humid, verdant jungle and the nighttime hum of insects are where we find ourselves this week as our guest, Yasmin Khan, transports us on a much-needed break to the tropics. 

Yasmin is the bestselling author of travel cookbooks exploring the food, people and stories of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. In 2025 she found herself in the middle of a bizarre legal storm when she was threatened with legal action by a deli for calling her latest book ‘Sabzi’ - the word for veg or greens in multiple languages.

In this conversation with Katherine they discuss the controversy (the case was eventually dropped) and the issues it raises, including the ownership and commodification of food culture. Plus finding community when the chips are down, the ebb and flow of cooking for pleasure, snatched moments of rest with a small child and UK national treasure, Nigella Lawson. A wonderful, and important, conversation.  

Links from the episode

Yasmin’s Substack Risingup.substack.com

Yasmin’s Instagram

Kaco Pens

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

How to Eat by Nigella Lawson

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript, to discover how to enjoy our bonus episodes, our ad free episodes and if you subscribe, how to submit your own idea for a dream retreat

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Bowler is the multiple New York Times-bestselling author, professor of divinity and stage-four cancer survivor who has mastered the art of finding small delights in the everyday. No grand gestures for her. 

In this wonderful conversation with Katherine, they talk about ‘how to cope’, the brittleness of time and why revelling in absurdity is really the answer to everything. A celebration of silliness, tattoos, the important differences between canoes and kayaks and the most beautifully realised depiction of precious time spent with a best friend.

Links from the episode: 

Kate’s new book Joyful Anyway

Kate’s website where you can find her previous books https://katebowler.com/ 

Kate’s podcast Everything Happens

Kate’s Instagram

A Truce that is Not Peace by Miriam Toews 

My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman

Canadian ice fishing cabins https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/portraits-canadas-ice-fishing-huts-180957794/ 

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript, to discover how to enjoy our bonus episodes, our ad free episodes and if you subscribe, how to submit your own idea for a dream retreat

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our first guest to choose a city for his dreamscape, the brilliant writer, BBC broadcaster and educator Jeffrey Boakye reveals he’s most at peace when walking for walking’s sake through the ever-changing textures of London’s streets.  The very essence of a ‘flâneur’, as we discover.

A gorgeous and meandering conversation, Jeffrey and Katherine explore a wonderful array of topics: from skateboarding as a life lesson in failure to finding joy in packed tube trains, why we need to foster more pointless hobbies to what the movie Groundhog Day teaches us about the mundane and the sublime. Often philosophical, frequently laughter-filled and as always, deeply thought-provoking.

Links from Episode:

Jeffrey’s website where you can find his books https://www.jeffreyboakye.com/ 

Jeffrey’s Substack

Jeffrey’s Instagram

Jeffry’s BBC Radio 4 music show Add to Playlist

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Transcription by Ben Lerner 

The Door by Magda Szabo

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

https://oleandsteen.co.uk/ Danish Bakery

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A beautiful, bird-filled episode from the wonderful collaborative duo of writer Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris. Together they have created some of the best-loved books on the natural world in recent years, including The Lost Words.

In this transcendent episode they share their quite different visions of what rest looks like for them. Robert conjures a wild, bird-filled landscape in the Scottish Cairngorms whilst Jackie imagines taking a sentient ship to a melding of The Rain Wilds and Earthsea. Full of wonder, wild knitting, ‘glacial erratics’, laughter and of course plenty of nature chat, this episode is a true salve for the soul.

Links from the episode

The Book of Birds by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane 

The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane 

The Lost Spells by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane

Jackie’s Instagram

Jackie’s website

Robert’s Instagram

Deep Deep Light pain brushes and paints https://deepdeeplight.com/ 

A Wizard of Earthseaby Ursula K. Le Guin

The Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb

The Illustration Department Podcast

Artist David Gentleman

Read about Albrecht Dürer’s painting Young Hare here 

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

Read about artist Mark Rothko on the Moma website

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free and to access our bonus content

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back! After a small, restorative break, we are excited to bring you a new season of The Clearing, where Katherine will explore visions of rest and retreat with some more wonderful guests. 

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com to discover how to enjoy all episodes ad free and to listen to bonus content as it’s released. 

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

California-based illustrator, author and Instagram phenomenon Carissa Potter chats to Katherine about the complexities of taking rest during challenging times.

In a masterclass of self-reflection, Carissa questions whether the political left have failed to cultivate tolerance and understanding, if we should brand people as evil and how to ‘show up’ when you are the caregiver of a child with complex medical needs. 

It is no surprise that someone who thinks so deeply about the world has also developed a fully formed fantasy of where she would go to get away from it all; just her and her ‘platonic love at first sight’ creating art together and dipping in the waters at Indian Springs Calistoga. Bliss.

Links from the episode: 

Carissa’s website

Carissa’s Instagram

Carissa’s Substack

Carissa’s online shop People I’ve Loved 

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Experiencing everything, everywhere, all at once is where we find our guest Elissa Altman this week, as she chats to Katherine in the midst of a snow cyclone in Connecticut. 

An author and speaker whose work touches on issues of family, trauma, and the permission to create, she acknowledges her deep need for rest and retreat as she whisks us away to her favourite place in the world; a tiny cottage set back from a stony beach in Owl’s Head, Maine. 

Overlooking the sea and with guitar to hand, Katherine and Elissa grapple with overcoming guilt, the pleasures of re-reading, the fetishisation of Mary Oliver and the horror of people placing items on their desks. 

A glorious and warm-hearted episode with some timely reminders about the impermanence of things, good and bad. 

Links from the episode: 

Elissa’s website where you can find her books

Elissa’s Substack 

Elissa’s Instagram

Devotions poetry collection by Mary Oliver

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As someone whose life was turned upside down by an unexpected divorce and a subsequent move away from the evangelical church, US author and podcaster Jen Hatmaker has learned, and earned, a wisdom that is tangible.

In this episode of The Clearing Jen transports Katherine to her grandparents’ 1970s cabin in the snowy Colorado mountains to share the many ways she has come to terms with life’s challenges. Against a blissful setting of floor to ceiling windows, low lighting and a crackling fire, Jen describes letting others ‘drive their car in the Jen Hatmaker hate lane’, the comfort of feeling small, saying yes to everything and how ‘Me Camp’ changed her life.

Links from the episode:

Jen’s website where you can buy her books including her memoir Awake 

Jen’s Instagram

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

Various books by David Sedaris

Learn more about Anne Lamott 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A deliciously glamorous escape to the snowy setting of a luxury Swiss chalet hotel where 1920s faded English aristocracy meets 1950s Hollywood starlet decadence. 

Marabou-trimmed silk pajamas and well-stocked libraries with crackling fires abound in this absolute joy of an episode with author Daisy Buchanan. 

Listen in as Daisy imagines herself preparing for a Grand Ball, with all the pleasure of a day spent wrapped in enormous fluffy white towels and none of the anxiety. She also romps through an array of subjects with Katherine, from her newfound love of reiki to the quest for calm in the neurodivergent brain and why she is so drawn to reading about the strangeness of large families. 

The most wonderfully realised escape to indulge in at any time. 

Links from the episode:

Daisy’s Instagram

Daisy’s books 

Mortification edited by Robin Robertson

The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes

The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson 

Laurie Colwin’s books - Home Cooking, More Home Cooking, Happy All the Time, Family Happiness

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Floor to ceiling windows overlooking a temperate blue ocean off the coast of New Zealand is where this week’s guest, journalist and author Poorna Bell, dreams of rest and retreat.

Since the death of her husband in 2015, Poorna has become well-versed in making the most of the everyday. As a result this is a conversation filled with the joy of small things. From relishing the prospect of unstructured days, to finding unquantified pleasure in movement. From an appreciation of the smell of toast to being able to say no to picnics. And why she never wants to receive another present again. Ever.

Links from the episode: 

Poorna’s Substack As I Was Saying

Poorna’s website

Poorna’s Instagram

Banana Yoshimoto’s novel Kitchen

Lucy M. Boston’s The Children of Green Knowe 

Lottie Hazell’s novel Piglet 

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prolific author of nine books and writer behind the Substack phenomenon The Hyphen, Emma Gannon takes us away for a whole year to her imaginary retreat in Palm Springs, where she plans to indulge almost solely in her number one favourite pastime  - reading.

Revealing the extent to which she craves alone time, she tells Katherine about her very real experience of burnout, how she went from someone who lived to work to appreciating downtime and why she relates to The Hermit in Tarot. 

An inspiring listen that challenges our ideas of ‘the right way’ to live and embraces the concept of letting go. 

Links in the show: 

Emma’s Substack The Hyphen

Emma’s website

Emma’s Instagram 

A link to buy her books including A Year of Nothing

Find Emma’s conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert about memoir here 

Max Richter’s track On the Nature of Daylight 

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com for a full transcript and to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.