Podcast
Our podcast features exclusive interviews, author-narrated essays, fiction, multipart series, and more. We feature new podcast episodes weekly on Tuesdays.
This Week’s Podcast
Photo by Tim Thomas, National Science Foundation / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
This Week’s Podcast
Antarctica the Woman
by Stephanie Krzywonos
Visiting the Ross Ice Shelf across several seasons, Stephanie Kryzwonos interrogates the heroic narratives of male exploration and conquest—written almost entirely by white men—that gender the land through feminine tropes. Might these characterizations, borne of a colonizing hunger to conquer and subdue, say more about the culture they come from than about the land they describe? What would happen, Stephanie asks, if we moved beyond fantasies and savior complexes, and instead approached Antarctica as a living place with agency?
Read this essay.
Recent podcasts
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| Tristan McConnell | 54 min |
A Whale in the Desert: Tracing Paths of Migration in Turkana
Tristan McConnell
54 min
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In a world rapidly spiraling into climate turmoil, will we reorient to welcome migration not only as a right, but a necessary human adaptation? In this week’s essay, writer Tristan McConnell ventures across Turkana in northwest Kenya, home of the Great Rift Valley: a place where some of our earliest ancestors emerged millions of years ago before dispersing in waves first across and then out of the continent. As he discovers how deeply human movement, landscape, and survival are entwined, he wonders what such a place might remind us about who we truly are, and have always been. Read this essay. Photo by Sarah Waiswa |
In a world rapidly spiraling into climate turmoil, will we reorient to welcome migration not only as a right, but a necessary human adaptation? In this week’s essay, writer Tristan McConnell ventures across Turkana in northwest Kenya, home of the Great Rift Valley: a place where some of our earliest ancestors emerged millions of years ago before dispersing in waves first across and then out of the continent. As he discovers how deeply human movement, landscape, and survival are entwined, he wonders what such a place might remind us about who we truly are, and have always been. Read this essay. Photo by Sarah Waiswa |
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| A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee | 43 min |
Stepping into the Liminal
A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
43 min
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When we are both left with the fragments of a dying world and given glimpses of an emerging one; when there is so much beauty and destruction to be witnessed, how can we find our bearings? In this talk, given at Emergence’s recent Shifting Landscapes retreat held at Sharpham Trust in Devon, England, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee offers a frame for how we might navigate our current moment of unprecedented transition and transformation. Speaking to what can take root when we truly open ourselves to grief, love, and ultimately kinship with the living world, he urges us to step into the liminal—the space between worlds—to recognize an invitation into new ways of being. Read the transcript. Photo by Kasia Murfet |
When we are both left with the fragments of a dying world and given glimpses of an emerging one; when there is so much beauty and destruction to be witnessed, how can we find our bearings? In this talk, given at Emergence’s recent Shifting Landscapes retreat held at Sharpham Trust in Devon, England, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee offers a frame for how we might navigate our current moment of unprecedented transition and transformation. Speaking to what can take root when we truly open ourselves to grief, love, and ultimately kinship with the living world, he urges us to step into the liminal—the space between worlds—to recognize an invitation into new ways of being. Read the transcript. Photo by Kasia Murfet |
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| Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder | 78 min |
Speaking Wind-Words
Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
78 min
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How do words shape our world? In this week’s narrated essay, writer Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder visits the wind-sculpted dunes of Nebraska’s Sandhills, considering the prophecies that collided across the American Great Plains in the nineteenth century. Tracing the histories of violence, conquest, and degradation that have played out there, Chelsea locates the points at which human and wilderness were separated. Wondering what words, what prophetic voices are needed to guide us out of an entrenched dualism, she calls us to remember that we have always been intimately linked with the cycles of our ecosystems. Read this essay. Photo by Russel Albert Daniels |
How do words shape our world? In this week’s narrated essay, writer Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder visits the wind-sculpted dunes of Nebraska’s Sandhills, considering the prophecies that collided across the American Great Plains in the nineteenth century. Tracing the histories of violence, conquest, and degradation that have played out there, Chelsea locates the points at which human and wilderness were separated. Wondering what words, what prophetic voices are needed to guide us out of an entrenched dualism, she calls us to remember that we have always been intimately linked with the cycles of our ecosystems. Read this essay. Photo by Russel Albert Daniels |
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| Melanie Challenger | 41 min |
Animals in the Room
Melanie Challenger
41 min
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How might our human systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the nonhuman creatures they involve and impact? In this week’s narrated essay, writer and ethicist Melanie Challenger considers what it would take to expand the democratic imagination to include and represent animal voices in the decisions that affect them. Advocating for a quieting of our own narratives so that we might recognize political signals from the behaviors of the vast community around us, she envisions the revolutionary mechanisms which could make present the expressions of animals within our systems of power. Read this essay. Photo by Annie Marie Musselman |
How might our human systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the nonhuman creatures they involve and impact? In this week’s narrated essay, writer and ethicist Melanie Challenger considers what it would take to expand the democratic imagination to include and represent animal voices in the decisions that affect them. Advocating for a quieting of our own narratives so that we might recognize political signals from the behaviors of the vast community around us, she envisions the revolutionary mechanisms which could make present the expressions of animals within our systems of power. Read this essay. Photo by Annie Marie Musselman |
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| Lauret E. Savoy | 40 min |
Ancestral Structures on the Trailing Edge
Lauret E. Savoy
40 min
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Histories are enduring presences. No matter how deeply they are buried, they remain. In this week’s narrated essay, author Lauret E. Savoy meditates on the history of the Chesapeake region and the vestiges of collision and rupture that continue to mark its physical and cultural terrains. Surfacing ancient geological movements alongside the deliberate construction of race in colonial America, she considers the entwinement of tectonic and human histories—the ancestral structures that remain in plain sight and out of view. Read this essay. Artwork by Studio Airport |
Histories are enduring presences. No matter how deeply they are buried, they remain. In this week’s narrated essay, author Lauret E. Savoy meditates on the history of the Chesapeake region and the vestiges of collision and rupture that continue to mark its physical and cultural terrains. Surfacing ancient geological movements alongside the deliberate construction of race in colonial America, she considers the entwinement of tectonic and human histories—the ancestral structures that remain in plain sight and out of view. Read this essay. Artwork by Studio Airport |
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| Lydia Millet | 26 min |
Thylacine
Lydia Millet
26 min
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As rapid warming, pollution, habitat destruction, and insidious violence against other species speeds up the rate of extinction and edges ecosystems ever-closer to collapse, what voids are left in the tapestry of the living world? In this short story, novelist Lydia Millet imagines the plight of the last remaining Tasmanian tiger—a creature caught in the crosshairs of Australia’s settler narrative, eventually hunted to the point of extinction. As a man seeks the company of the tiger, housed in a failing zoo, he summons the courage to care for what remains amid an overwhelming sorrow for what has been lost. Read this story. Find “Thylacine” and other “Short Stories of Apocalypse,” in our inaugural print fiction collection. Artwork by Studio Airport |
As rapid warming, pollution, habitat destruction, and insidious violence against other species speeds up the rate of extinction and edges ecosystems ever-closer to collapse, what voids are left in the tapestry of the living world? In this short story, novelist Lydia Millet imagines the plight of the last remaining Tasmanian tiger—a creature caught in the crosshairs of Australia’s settler narrative, eventually hunted to the point of extinction. As a man seeks the company of the tiger, housed in a failing zoo, he summons the courage to care for what remains amid an overwhelming sorrow for what has been lost. Read this story. Find “Thylacine” and other “Short Stories of Apocalypse,” in our inaugural print fiction collection. Artwork by Studio Airport |
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| David G. Haskell | 42 min |
When the Earth Started to Sing
David G. Haskell
42 min
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In this audio experience by biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell, we are invited to be attentive to the songs and stories that thrum in the air around us. Hearing three billion years of our planet’s sound evolution—a lineage of language—in the trills, hoops, barks, bugles, clicks, and pulses of the life around him, David shares the connection to both deep time and the more-than-human world that can be found when we tune in to the Earth’s orchestra. Made entirely of the tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound, this experience combines human speech with other voices to immerse our senses and imaginations in the generative, provoking, and unifying power of sound. If you enjoy this audio story, check out David’s companion practice, Playful Listening, which invites you to immerse yourself in the sonic world around you. And listen to our interview with David, “Listening and the Crisis of Inattention.” Illustration by Daniel Liévano |
In this audio experience by biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell, we are invited to be attentive to the songs and stories that thrum in the air around us. Hearing three billion years of our planet’s sound evolution—a lineage of language—in the trills, hoops, barks, bugles, clicks, and pulses of the life around him, David shares the connection to both deep time and the more-than-human world that can be found when we tune in to the Earth’s orchestra. Made entirely of the tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound, this experience combines human speech with other voices to immerse our senses and imaginations in the generative, provoking, and unifying power of sound. If you enjoy this audio story, check out David’s companion practice, Playful Listening, which invites you to immerse yourself in the sonic world around you. And listen to our interview with David, “Listening and the Crisis of Inattention.” Illustration by Daniel Liévano |
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| Jake Skeets | 31 min |
The Butchering
Jake Skeets
31 min
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In this story, Diné poet and author Jake Skeets honors the food traditions that have sustained his people since time immemorial. As he prepares to butcher a sheep for Kinaałda, a Diné puberty ceremony of family and song, Jake contemplates reclaiming culture and restoring the relationships between people and land, food and community. Summoning the experiences that have shaped his own kinship with food, he puts forth story as a pathway to food sovereignty, reminding us that “the beauty of the beyond and the beauty of the world” come together in each bite. Read this story. Photo by Bear Guerra |
In this story, Diné poet and author Jake Skeets honors the food traditions that have sustained his people since time immemorial. As he prepares to butcher a sheep for Kinaałda, a Diné puberty ceremony of family and song, Jake contemplates reclaiming culture and restoring the relationships between people and land, food and community. Summoning the experiences that have shaped his own kinship with food, he puts forth story as a pathway to food sovereignty, reminding us that “the beauty of the beyond and the beauty of the world” come together in each bite. Read this story. Photo by Bear Guerra |
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| J. Drew Lanham | 14 min |
Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves
J. Drew Lanham
14 min
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“Joy is our lives mattering, / Blackness respected.” Juneteenth is a day to celebrate and defend freedom, equity, and belonging for Black Americans. In this stirring reading of his poem “Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves,” poet, birder, and naturalist J. Drew Lanham grounds his vision of racial justice in quiet moments of awe among the more-than-human. Embracing radical acts of joy and creativity, he lifts up liberation, reparations, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world. Read this poem. Photo by Sheila Pree Bright |
“Joy is our lives mattering, / Blackness respected.” Juneteenth is a day to celebrate and defend freedom, equity, and belonging for Black Americans. In this stirring reading of his poem “Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves,” poet, birder, and naturalist J. Drew Lanham grounds his vision of racial justice in quiet moments of awe among the more-than-human. Embracing radical acts of joy and creativity, he lifts up liberation, reparations, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world. Read this poem. Photo by Sheila Pree Bright |
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| David Abram | 54 min |
Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet
David Abram
54 min
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In this week’s narrated essay, cultural ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram conjures the impossible movements of Alaskan salmon, sandhill cranes, and monarch butterflies on their annual migrations, marveling at the reciprocal interactions that guide these creatures across the wider body of the Earth. What if, David asks, we understood migration as emerging from a conversation—a spontaneous reciprocity—between migrating creatures and the environments they migrate within? How might we humans, whose senses have coevolved with the enfolding biosphere, begin to recognize ourselves, too, as expressions of the animate, breathing Earth? Read this essay. Art by Katie Holten |
In this week’s narrated essay, cultural ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram conjures the impossible movements of Alaskan salmon, sandhill cranes, and monarch butterflies on their annual migrations, marveling at the reciprocal interactions that guide these creatures across the wider body of the Earth. What if, David asks, we understood migration as emerging from a conversation—a spontaneous reciprocity—between migrating creatures and the environments they migrate within? How might we humans, whose senses have coevolved with the enfolding biosphere, begin to recognize ourselves, too, as expressions of the animate, breathing Earth? Read this essay. Art by Katie Holten |
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| Nathaniel Rich | 52 min |
Hidden Bayou
Nathaniel Rich
52 min
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“Did Nieux Swamp resemble the original deltaic marsh, before it had been ruined by sea level rise, shipping canals, and pipelines? Or had the Foundation’s engineers created an alien landscape?” This week, acclaimed author Nathaniel Rich invites us to step into a short story that blurs the line between climate fiction and our emerging, engineered future. In “Hidden Bayou,” an actuary-turned-field-biologist follows an endangered bird through a man-made climate mitigation project funded by a multibillion dollar corporation. When a surprising encounter disrupts his duties, he is left to confront his own role in the eerie, manufactured landscape. Read this short story. Art by Studio Airport |
“Did Nieux Swamp resemble the original deltaic marsh, before it had been ruined by sea level rise, shipping canals, and pipelines? Or had the Foundation’s engineers created an alien landscape?” This week, acclaimed author Nathaniel Rich invites us to step into a short story that blurs the line between climate fiction and our emerging, engineered future. In “Hidden Bayou,” an actuary-turned-field-biologist follows an endangered bird through a man-made climate mitigation project funded by a multibillion dollar corporation. When a surprising encounter disrupts his duties, he is left to confront his own role in the eerie, manufactured landscape. Read this short story. Art by Studio Airport |
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| Makshya Tolbert | 24 min |
Becoming Water
Makshya Tolbert
24 min
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As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us, what memories remain held by water? What histories of pain and destruction, what hallowed moments are carried in its currents, taken into its body like shards of glass, and resurface to haunt us, to guide us? In this narrated essay from our archive, writer and poet Makshya Tolbert wades into the liminal, haunted space that exists between water and Black memory. As she navigates Black lineages of thinking and practice, she comes to the meeting place of past and present, life and death, slavery and freedom, and embarks on her own return to water. Read this essay. Photo by Sheila Pree Bright |
As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us, what memories remain held by water? What histories of pain and destruction, what hallowed moments are carried in its currents, taken into its body like shards of glass, and resurface to haunt us, to guide us? In this narrated essay from our archive, writer and poet Makshya Tolbert wades into the liminal, haunted space that exists between water and Black memory. As she navigates Black lineages of thinking and practice, she comes to the meeting place of past and present, life and death, slavery and freedom, and embarks on her own return to water. Read this essay. Photo by Sheila Pree Bright |
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