Recent Audio & Video

This is the first episode of Close Readings: Nature in Crisis, a podcast series for the London Review of Books.

My co-host is Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Together, we ask: Is nature in a state of crisis? How do the massive effects of human actions on our planet—the actions of some far more than others—relate to the larger history of life on Earth? 

Over the course of the series, we’ll loosely trace an arc from biology to society: from an exploration of plant life with Zoe Schlanger’s The Light Eaters, to a consideration of the legal rights of nature with Robert MacFarlane’s Is a River Alive, to a set of arguments around the changing role of ecological thinking in the politics of left and right (including the far right). We’ll consider arguments about the future of energy, the limits of growth, and the future of capitalism, so near the end of the series we'll look at books like The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right by Sam Moore and Alex Roberts and Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism by Thea Riofrancos.

In the first episode, Peter and I discuss Rachel Carson, a gifted stylist and brilliant thinker who drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. We show how Carson wrote at the edge of science, anticipating the study of epigenetics and endocrine disruption, and how her work led to the founding of the EPA. We illustrate why, though some of her proposed solutions fell short, Silent Spring remains ‘both an exhilarating and melancholy pleasure’.

You can find more episodes here.

Special Four-Part Series for the LRB Podcast: Climate, Politics, and Procreation

My guests and I explore the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice. What does it means to pursue reproductive justice in a rapidly warming world? What happens when environmental devastation gets linked population? How have population, procreation and women's bodies been thought of in the past, where are we today, and where might we be headed in the future? Guests include Black activist and feminist scholar Loretta Ross, evolutionary biologist and feminist scholar Banu Subramanian, historian Alison Bashford, and scholar of climate, feminism and activism, Jade Sasser.

Georgetown Global Dialogues: Degrowth as a Response to the Climate Crisis

A conversation with Kohei Saito and David Wallace-Wells. What is the degrowth agenda, and what are its origins and core tenets? Would slowing growth necessitate a far-reaching transformation of the global capitalist system? How might such a transformation look in practice—and what are the viable alternatives? 

This event was part of the Georgetown Global Dialogues, which featured leading intellectuals from the Global South in forward-looking conversations with U.S.-based thinkers across a range of topics.

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee: Reimagining The Nation Post-Pandemic

For Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Michael Rubens interviews Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Reich, Meehan Crist, and Nikole Hannah-Jones to find out if we could actually come out of the COVID-19 crisis as better and stronger nation than before.

(Spoiler: we absolutely could have, but we didn't, really… )