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Real people share real stories of their dialogue with Nature. Hear how it feels to talk with animals, birds and landscape. Share the magic of cross species communication.
Created by award winning Nature writer and poet Estelle Phillips.
Instagram @estelle_writer44
TikTok @EstellePhillips
Doctor Anjana Khatwa has received the Geological Society of London's RH Worth Medal and the Geologists Association's Halstead Medal. She presented fossil detectives on BBC two, contributed to Men of Stone on BBC Radio four, and appeared as the resident geology expert on BBC four show Beach Live. I have been wanting to speak with Anjana since becoming aware of her connection with rock. I was over the moon to speak with her in the gorgeous woods at National Trust Kingston Lacey. We started with Anjana's first conversation with rock.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I'm doctor Anjana Katwa. I'm an earth scientist, a presenter, and the author of The Whispers of Rock, Stories from Earth, my new book that came out on September 2025.
Estelle Phillips:And it's just about to come out in paperback.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Yeah. The paperback release is scheduled for September 2026. I've seen and listened to some interviews that you've done
Estelle Phillips:when you've been talking about rock. In particular, there was one where you brought out a lump of was it igneous gray rock?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Yes. Sounds like the is it the rock I found when I was a child? Yes. I know the one.
Estelle Phillips:How old was that rock?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Well, that rock was quite young in terms of a geologist's eyes. It was from some lava flows in Southeastern sorry, Southwestern Kenya called the Shetani lava flows and that that piece of basalt was about 300 years old. So very young.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. But you found that as a child. Why did you find that?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Found it because I was looking for it because I I went to this incredible country because my parents are from there and on our way from Nairobi to Mombasa, we just stopped off in all sorts of different places to see wildlife and landscapes and it just so happened we stopped to stretch our legs at this place the Shaitani Lava flows which is in the Tsavo West National Park. And I was just walking over these incredible jagged black rocks that had been left behind by a fissure eruption, a volcanic eruption several hundred years ago and I'd never seen anything like that before in my life and the rocks just spoke to me.
Estelle Phillips:Can you talk a little bit about how they spoke to you, please?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Yeah. I think when you're someone, particularly a child who grows up in an environment where nature is very much shrouded in concrete, your vision of what is natural comes through and nature itself comes through all sorts of other different ways. It comes through spirituality and culture and story told within your family, within your community. When I went to this incredible landscape, the Shaitani lava flows, I could just feel the immense raw elemental power of the earth and when I looked at the rocks around me, I could see almost frozen in motion the way the lava had flowed and I didn't know this at the time. I know this now because I'm a I'm a qualified earth scientist but essentially these lava flows are from basaltic lavas which are very fluid.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:They don't really have a very high viscosity which means they flow like a river. The lava flows like a river and all around me I could see forms and shapes in the lava that were reflective reflective of how this eruption had happened. That is what the rocks spoke to me. They spoke to me about the immense power of the earth, about the dynamic nature of our planet and I just wanted to know more about their stories. How old were you?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:About 13.
Estelle Phillips:That just makes it even more amazing. At 13, it's not necessarily the thing you expect someone to be thinking about, is it? I'm interested in the aspect within you that made you receptive to those very big thoughts, But at the same time what I'm hearing is that you kind of felt you were
Dr Anjana Khatwa:within it. Yeah. That belief of nature being within myself that comes from a long history of stories and belief systems that are passed down in my community. So I'm from Well, I'm of Indian heritage. Not from India but I am of Indian heritage.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:My my faith is I'm a Hindu and we believe that nature is within us. It's all around us. It exists elementally in all of the things that make our world whether it's in a celestial sphere or whether it's deep under the ground. And so to be within amongst those rocks felt like I was part of that landscape and that not only comes from a very spiritual sense sense within myself but also from a young girl who was absolutely fascinated by science. I really was.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I lived and breathed science at that age and I just probably at school probably just started to learn about geography and geology and so being in that landscape where where you really can't see those things in Britain and certainly can't see them in Slough and to be in a landscape that has such a raw vision of what the what our planet is capable of. That's why I think that my teenage mind, my imagination and my heart was moved by those experiences.
Estelle Phillips:Was that the first time that you'd been moved like that?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I think if I'm speaking of experiences in the landscape, I would say that would really was an epiphany for me to feel that very deep connection and sense of awe about what our world How our world was formed but that sense of always having a connection and a grounding with nature that's something that's always I've always had within me and that's principally down to my mother because and I write about this in the book, there is a ceremony that that in our community that we conduct every spring which welcomes the coming of the spring. There's holly but there's also this small ceremony that my mom and my grandma used to do in our back garden and it involves the worship of a rock. So when I was writing the book, I I kind of recalled these memories. It was amazing. I thought it's always been there but as part of my journey to becoming an earth scientist, I've had to step into a completely different space within myself.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:So I've had almost had to like park those memories to embrace rational reason and empirical thinking to succeed as a scientist. So yeah, I think I probably had those experiences before going to Kenya but it's only through writing the book I've rediscovered them. That must
Estelle Phillips:be really wonderful for you internally.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I think it's been an incredible reawakening of myself that I had suppressed for a very long time and we're talking decades because in order to succeed within a scientific career, you have to present yourself in a certain way and I work in an incredibly white field as well. It was very male dominated. So in order for to be assimilated into that culture, into that society, I've had to push away some other parts of my identity and it's through writing the book that I've really sought to blend those two different identities together and that has been a re awakening. That has been an enormous privilege that the book has opened up for me. I
Estelle Phillips:can see that's very important. Not just for you, I also think that's important in a wider sense for other people who are juggling the same dichotomy. It's an interesting dichotomy kind of frustrating that
Dr Anjana Khatwa:it exists. I'm frustrated that exists and actually I know many other scientists that are frustrated that it exists and when I was consulting with the peer reviewers who were sent the book and I asked for the book to be sent to some very eminent geoscientists to review it to tell me what they thought and they all came out in unison saying we're so glad you've written this because what the book does is it begins to open the door to a more unified sense of thinking, more rational place to exist which is a place of tolerance, which is a place of balance. And what I found would what I thought would be a career ending moment in my life, this book being published which blends together spiritual thinking with scientific. Instead what it's done is it's opened up a new way for scientists to begin to embrace different ways of knowing. Some other people have already done that of course, like Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:But I think that is
Estelle Phillips:more I'm sorry. I'm nodding. I'm going, but I don't know what he's done. What's
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Well, he Robin Wall Kimmerer is a she and she that's alright. She is a professor of ecological sciences but she's also an indigenous woman who is a member of the Potawatomi tribe in North America. And Robin's book Braiding Sweetgrass was a really critical moment I think for scientists to begin to understand the value of indigenous and traditional knowledge as she calls it and the value that places along side equitably with Western scientific thought. So I don't think I'm new in in in kind of bringing that that sense of bringing together different knowledge systems together. What is new is that this is being done within the geosciences which in itself is is quite colonial in terms of its architecture and its and its thought structures.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:And what I've done with my book is try to dismantle that entirely. I really agree. Think that that context being new it makes it extremely important because that context is so different. Yeah and I think for some people that that context of beginning to challenge how how we think about geology, how we feel about it and how we should view it in terms of a more sustainable and ethical future. I think for some people that was quite terrifying but what the book does is it doesn't it doesn't denigrate those that do work in those extractive industries.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:What is asking for is more empathy and understanding as to how we utilize the resources that the earth has given us in a more equitable way with particular regard to how those extractive industries affect nature but also the people that are dependent upon those natural environments. And presumably how it affects them themselves, the minerals and Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Because once you begin to extract these resources from the the they're gone forever.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Rock is a finite resource and I think this is what perhaps some people don't quite appreciate or understand. This is what I'm championing. You know, we're we're sitting in the middle of a forest and it's winter and we know in a few months time there will be new shoots on, you know, there'll be flowers pushing up from the ground. This aspect of the natural world, the biotic aspect of the natural world regenerates. But rock does the same but it will do that over tens if not hundreds of millions of years.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:So the rock that we use today whether we're burning it or crushing it or turning it into some products that helps us live our lives, we will not see the likes of that rock in its in its raw elemental form for hundreds of millions of years and that is quite something to comprehend.
Estelle Phillips:Do you think that the grandeur and the majesty of its age has impacted your sort of like inherent connection with rock?
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I see rocks as these ancient knowledge keepers of not only how our world was created and formed but also of our human experience. And every time I meet a rock that is what I gained from it. I gain an immense wisdom and insight into how our world was created. Whether that's in a building stone or a pebble on the beach, it doesn't matter that rock is telling me a story. And then layered on top of that is another experience which is when I met that rock, something was happening in my life.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:I was I was in a city for an event that I was doing or I was walking along the beach with my husband and my children and that memory attaches itself to that rock as well. So I think rocks and particularly landscapes where you can see rocks or buildings where the rocks are displayed so beautifully around you, I think they become incredible markers in our life where we can not only attach this understanding of deep time but also the feelings and the emotions and the thoughts we have in our own time.
Estelle Phillips:Thank you very much, Anjana. This has been a fantastic podcast here.
Dr Anjana Khatwa:Oh, thank you for having me.
Estelle Phillips:No. Thank you. It's absolutely fantastic. Thank you. Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape.
Estelle Phillips:Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.