Podcasts about Anthropocene

What's the episode about?In this episode, hear Patricia MacCormack on philosophy, death activism, veganism, antinatalism, necrosexuality, the Anthropocene, dudebros in academia, and a loving and vitalist relationship to deathWho is Patricia?Professor Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy. She is the author of Cinesexuality (Routledge2008) and Posthuman Ethics (Routledge 2012) and the editorof The Animal Catalyst (Bloomsbury 2014), Deleuze andthe Animal (EUP 2017), Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis ofCinema (Continuum 2008) and Ecosophical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury 2018) and The Ahuman Manifesto: Activisms for the End of the Anthropocene. She recently completed a Leverhulme Fellow researching and developing Death Activism and completing the monograph Death Activism for Bloomsbury (2025), which we will talk about today. She is also the author of numerus journalarticles and anthology chapters and the author of fiction.  Patricia's photo is of her on Mary Wollstonecraft's former grave.How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?To cite this episode, you can use the following citation: MacCormack, P. (2025) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 3 July 2025. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.29473577What next?Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.

O'Donnell had a lifelong dream of following the path of Zebulon Pike.

La Marche du Temps Profond est une balade de 4,6 km qui permet aux participants de parcourir les 4,6 milliards d'années de l'histoire de la Terre.1 mètre parcouru = 1 million d'années.Notre guide est Sandrine Laplace, qui m'a permis de me glisser dans un groupe d'une dizaine de participant.e.s (sandrine@7eme-generation.org).Cette expérience étrange, ludique, sensorielle, instructive est sournoisement utile. Elle permet un voyage concret dans le "temps long", depuis les origines de notre planète jusqu'à aujourd'hui, en passant par toutes les grandes étapes de la Vie.Cette balade nous plonge inévitablement dans une réflexion profonde sur notre place/rôle dans l'histoire et notre impact sur l'environnement et le Vivant.Et en plus on y croise des personnes sympas !_______La Marche du Temps Profond (Deep Time Walk) a été créée en 2007 au Schumacher College (UK) par Stephan Harding et Sergio Maraschinet.L'atelier (comptez 4h en moyenne) s'adresse à un large public : entreprises, collectivités, écoles, associations, particuliers. Il peut être adapté pour de grands groupes en mobilisant plusieurs animateurs expérimentés. Plus d'infos :https://www.deeptimewalk.org/_______

Climate change regularly falls victim to the tyranny of the immediate, meaning it is pushed out of major media outlets by news perceived as more urgent or immediate.Beyond that, for some years, articles covering climate issues were rarely seen in national media and, in a few instances, almost prohibited.That is changing as it is now a topic frequently covered, as illustrated in recent episodes of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television show, "Landline".Data scientist, Hannah Ritchie, writes about "How much biofuel would we need to decarbonise aviation?";And here you can hear her discussing "Heikki Malinen: Does sustainable aviation fuel work?" on her podcast, "Solving for Climate';And should you be eager to know more about "Hannah Ritchie";"Discarded clothes from UK brands found in protected Ghana wetlands – Greenpeace";"The desalination plant is running, but these Victorian towns are on water restrictions";"Climate Change Will Bankrupt the Country";"Sustainable Aviation Fuels Are Struggling to Take Off Amid Greenwashing Claims";"Biofuels Policy, a Mainstay of American Agriculture, Has Been a Failure for the Climate, a New Report Claims";"Government to consider changes to gas appliance ban";"Indicators of Global Climate Change";"Brazil: Let's deliver on our old climate promises before making new ones";"How ‘sophisticated' climate misinformation gets to the heart of power";"Current heatwave ‘likely to kill almost 600 people in England and Wales'";"England's rivers ‘under threat' as water extraction surges to record levels";"Fuel firms can challenge California's emission limits, supreme court rules";"Here's how climate change is affecting your home insurance";"As anti-tourism protests grow in Europe, we need a rethink – but that's no reason to stop travelling";"Do solar farms make good neighbors? New study challenges NIMBY assumptions.";"Don't expect rooftop solar to power NZ's future, says new Meridian boss";"The rise of the Anthropocene can be tracked in hummingbirds' beaks";"Labor's new environment laws won't be ‘credible' unless new projects consider climate change, advocates warn";"Can Solar and Geothermal Energy Help a Church and Its Neighbors Wean Off Fossil Fuels?";"Predicting current and future habitat of Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) under climate change";"Cleanup underway after storms topple trees, power lines across D.C. region";"Trump says he plans to phase out FEMA after 2025 hurricane season";"Bribe or community benefit? Sweeteners smoothing the way for renewables projects need to be done right";"As the federal government fumbles on nature law reform, the states are forging ahead";"Overhead power lines kill millions of birds a year. Scientists found a way to help cut the devastating toll";"UK Plans to Ban Destructive Activities Like Bottom Trawling in Marine Protected Areas";"Protected Bike Lanes Lead to Nearly Twice as Many Bicycle Commuters: Study";"Oil Prices Drop, but Iran-Israel Conflict Raises Many Risks";"xAI Data Center Emits Plumes of Pollution, New Video Shows";"Climate crisis could hit yields of key crops even if farmers adapt, study finds";"The world's shrinking cloud cover is driving record temperatures, new research finds";"Trump is undermining U.S. science. Here's why that's dangerous.";"Net zero's a bit under the weather in Barnaby land";"How big is the generational divide on climate change?';"Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says";"Attenborough's Ocean is the film I've been waiting my whole career for – now the world must act on its message";"UK temperatures of 45C may be possible in current climate, Met Office says".

Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Carlos A. Scolari, Catedrático del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona. Ha sido Investigador Principal de diversos proyectos de investigación internacionales y estatales, desde el proyecto H2020 TRANSLITERACY (entre 2015 y 2018) hasta el proyecto LITERAC_IA, que comenzó en 2024 y dirige junto a María del Mar Guerrero. Sus últimos libros son Cultura Snack (2020), La guerra de las plataformas (2022) y Sobre la evolución de los medios (2024). Ahora está trabajando en un libro sobre los fósiles mediáticos.Notas del Episodio* Historia de ecologia de los medios* Historia de Carlos* Diferencias entre el anglosfero y el hispanosfero* La coevolucion entre tecnologia y humanos* La democratizacion de los medios* Evolucion de los medios* Alienacion y addiccion* Como usar los medios conscientementeTareaCarlos A. Scolari - Pagina Personal - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Escolar GoogleSobre la evolución de los mediosHipermediaciones (Libros)Transcrito en espanol (English Below)Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido al podcast el fin de turismo Carlos. Gracias por poder hablar conmigo hoy. Es un gran gusto tener tu presencia aquí conmigo hoy. Carlos: No gracias a ti, Chris, por la invitación. Es un enorme placer honor charlar contigo, gran viajero y bueno, yo nunca investigué directamente el tema del turismo.Pero bueno, entiendo que vamos a hablar de ecología de los medios y temas colaterales que nos pueden servir para entender mejor, darle un sentido a todo esto que está pasando en el mundo del turismo. Bueno, yo trabajo en Barcelona. No vivo exactamente en la ciudad, pero trabajo, en la universidad en Barcelona, en la zona céntrica.Y bueno, cada vez que voy a la ciudad cada día se incrementa la cantidad de turistas y se incrementa el debate sobre el turismo, en todas sus dimensiones. Así que es un tema que está la orden del día, no? Chris: Sí, pues me imagino que aunque si no te gusta pensar o si no quieres pensar en el turismo allá, es inevitable tener como una enseñanza [00:01:00] personal de esa industria.Carlos: Sí, hasta que se está convirtiendo casi en un criterio taxonómico, no? ...de clasificación o ciudades con mucho turista ciudades o lugares sin turistas que son los más buscados hasta que se llenan de turistas. Entonces estamos en un círculo vicioso prácticamente. Chris: Ya pues, que en algún memento se que se cambia, se rompe el ciclo, al menos para dar cuenta de lo que estamos haciendo con el comportamiento.Y, yo entiendo que eso también tiene mucho que ver con la ecología de los medios, la falta de capacidad de entender nuestros comportamientos, actitudes, pensamientos, sentimientos, etcétera. Entonces, antes de seguir por tu trabajo y obras, este me gustaría preguntarte de tu camino y de tu vida.Primero me pregunto si podrías definir para nuestros oyentes qué es la ecología de los medios y cómo te [00:02:00] interesó en este campo? Cómo llegaste a dedicar a tu vida a este estudio?Carlos: Sí. A ver un poco. Hay una, esta la historia oficial. Diríamos de la ecología de los medios o en inglés "media ecology," es una campo de investigación, digamos, eh, que nace en los años 60. Hay que tener en cuenta sobre todos los trabajos de Marshall McLuhan, investigador canadiense muy famoso a nivel mundial. Era quizá el filósofo investigador de los medios más famosos en los años 60 y 70.Y un colega de el, Neil Postman, que estaba en la universidad de New York en New York University un poco, digamos entre la gente que rodeaba estos dos referentes, no, en los años 60, de ahí se fue cocinando, diríamos, lo que después se llamó la media ecology. Se dice que el primero que habló de media ecology que aplicó esta metáfora a los medios, fue el mismo Marshall McLuhan en algunas, conversaciones privadas, [00:03:00] cartas que se enviaban finales dos años 50, a principios de los 60, se enviaban los investigadores investigadora de estos temas?Digamos la primera aparición pública del concepto de media ecology fue una conferencia en el año 1968 de Neil Postman. Era una intervención pública que la hablaba de un poco como los medios nos transforman y transforman los medios formar un entorno de nosotros crecemos, nos desarrollamos, no. Y nosotros no somos muy conscientes a veces de ese medio que nos rodea y nos modela.El utilizó por primera vez el concepto de media ecology en una conferencia pública. Y ya, si vamos a principio de los años 70, el mismo Postman crea en NYU, en New York University crea el primer programa en media ecology. O sea que ya en el 73, 74 y 75, empieza a salir lo que yo llamo la segunda generación, de gente [00:04:00] formada algunos en estos cursos de New York.Por ejemplo Christine Nystrom fue la primera tesis doctoral sobre mi ecology; gente como, Paul Levinson que en el año 1979 defiende una tesis doctoral dirigida por Postman sobre evolución de los medios, no? Y lo mismo pasaba en Toronto en los años 70. El Marshall McLuhan falleció en el diciembre del 80.Digamos que los años 70 fueron su última década de producción intelectual. Y hay una serie de colaboradores en ese memento, gente muy joven como Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, que después un poco siguieron trabajando un poco todo esta línea, este enfoque. Y ahí hablamos del frente canadiense, eh?Toda esta segunda generación fue desarrollando, fue ampliando aplicando. No nos olvidemos de Eric McLuhan, el hijo de Marshall, que también fue parte de toda esta movida. [00:05:00] Y si no recuerdo mal en el año 2000, se crea la asociación la Media Ecology Association, que es la Asociación de Ecología de los Medios, que es una organización académica, científica, que nuclea a la gente que se ocupa de media ecology. Si pensamos a nivel más científico epistemológico, podemos pensar esta metáfora de la ecología de los medios desde dos o tres perspectivas. Por un lado, esta idea de que los medios crean ambientes. Esta es una idea muy fuerte de Marsha McLuhan, de Postman y de todo este grupo, no? Los medios - "medio" entendido en sentido muy amplio, no, cualquier tecnología podría ser un medio para ellos.Para Marsha McLuhan, la rueda es un medio. Un un telescopio es un medio. Una radio es un medio y la televisión es un medio, no? O sea, cualquier tecnología puede considerarse un medio. Digamos que estos medios, estas tecnologías, generan un [00:06:00] ambiente que a nosotros nos transforma. Transforma nuestra forma, a veces de pensar nuestra forma de percibir el mundo, nuestra concepción del tiempo del espacio.Y nosotros no somos conscientes de ese cambio. Pensemos que, no sé, antes de 1800, si alguien tenía que hacer un viaje de mil kilómetros (y acá nos acercamos al turismo) kilómetros era un viaje que había que programarlo muchos meses antes. Con la llegada del tren, ya estamos en 1800, esos kilómetros se acortaron. Digamos no? Ahí vemos como si a nosotros hoy nos dicen 1000 kilómetros.Bueno, si, tomamos un avión. Es una hora, una hora y cuarto de viaje. Hoy 1000 kilómetro es mucho menos que hace 200 años y incluso a nivel temporal, se a checo el tiempo. No? Todo eso es consecuencia, digamos este cambio, nuestra percepción es consecuencia de una serie de medios y tecnologías.El ferrocarril. Obviamente, hoy tenemos los aviones. Las mismas redes digitales que, un poco nos han llevado esta idea de "tiempo [00:07:00] real," esta ansiedad de querer todo rápido, no? También esa es consecuencia de estos cambios ambientales generados por los medios y las tecnologías, eh? Esto es un idea muy fuerte, cuando McLuhan y Postman hablaban de esto en los años 60, eran fuertes intuiciones que ellos tenían a partir de una observación muy inteligente de la realidad. Hoy, las ciencias cognitivas, mejor las neurociencia han confirmado estas hipótesis. O sea, hoy existen una serie de eh metodología para estudiar el cerebro y ya se ve como las tecnologías.Los medios afectan incluso la estructura física del cerebro. No? Otro tema que esto es histórico, que los medios afectan nuestra memoria. Esto viene de Platón de hace 2500 años, que él decía que la escritura iba a matar la memoria de los hombres. Bueno, podemos pensar nosotros mismos, no, eh?O por lo menos esta generación, que [00:08:00] vivimos el mundo antes y después de las aplicaciones móviles. Yo hace 30 años, 25 años, tenía mi memoria 30-40 números telefónicos. Hoy no tengo ninguno. Y en esa pensemos también el GPS, no? En una época, los taxistas de Londres, que es una ciudad latica se conocían a memoria la ciudad. Y hoy eso, ya no hace falta porque tienen GPS.Y cuando han ido a estudiar el cerebro de los taxistas de Londres, han visto que ciertas áreas del cerebro se han reducido, digamos, así, que son las áreas que gestionaban la parte espacial. Esto ya McLuhan, lo hablaba en los años 60. Decía como que los cambios narcotizan ciertas áreas de la mente decía él.Pero bueno, vemos que mucha investigación empírica, bien de vanguardia científica de neurociencia está confirmando todas estos pensamientos, todas estas cosas que se decían a los años 60 en adelante, por la media ecology. Otra posibilidad es entender [00:09:00] esto como un ecosistema de medios, Marshall McLuhan siempre decía no le podemos dar significado,no podemos entender un medio aislado de los otros medios. Como que los medios adquieren sentido sólo en relación con otros medios. También Neil Postman y mucha otra gente de la escuela de la media ecology, defiende esta posición, de que, bueno, los medios no podemos entender la historia del cine si no la vinculamos a los videojuegos, si no lo vinculamos a la aparición de la televisión.Y así con todos los medios, no? Eh? Hay trabajos muy interesantes. Por ejemplo, de como en el siglo 19, diferentes medios, podríamos decir, que coevolucionaron entre sí. La prensa, el telégrafo. El tren, que transportaba los diarios también, aparecen las agencias de noticias. O sea, vemos cómo es muy difícil entender el desarrollo de la prensa en el siglo XIX y no lo vinculamos al teléfono, si no lo vinculamos a la fotografía, si no lo vinculamos a la radio fotografía, [00:10:00] también más adelante.O sea, esta idea es muy fuerte. No también es otro de los principios para mí fundamentales de esta visión, que sería que los medios no están solos, forman parte de un ecosistema y si nosotros queremos entender lo que está pasando y cómo funciona todo esto, no podemos, eh, analizar los medios aislados del resto.Hay una tercera interpretación. Ya no sé si es muy metafórica. No? Sobre todo, gente en Italia como el investigador Fausto Colombo de Milán o Michele Cometa, es un investigador de Sicilia, Michele Cometa que él habla de l giro, el giro ecomedial. Estos investigadores están moviéndose en toda una concepción según la cual, estamos en único ecosistema mediático que está contaminado.Está contaminado de "fake news" está contaminado de noticias falsas, está contaminado de discursos de odio, etcétera, etc. Entonces ellos, digamos, retoman esta metáfora ecológica para decir [00:11:00] precisamente tenemos que limpiar este ecosistema así como el ecosistema natural está contaminado, necesita una intervención de limpieza, digamos así de purificación, eh? También el ecosistema mediático corre el mismo peligro, no? Y esta gente también llama la atención, y yo estoy muy cerca de esta línea de trabajo sobre la dimensión material de la comunicación. Y esto también tiene que ver con el turismo, queriendo, no? El impacto ambiental que tiene la comunicación hoy.Entrenar una inteligencia artificial implica un consumo eléctrico brutal; mantener funcionando las redes sociales, eh, tiktok, youtube, lo que sea, implica millones de servidores funcionando que chupan energía eléctrica y hay que enfriarlos además, consumiendo aún más energía eléctrica. Y eso tiene un impacto climático no indiferente.Así que, bueno, digamos, vemos que está metáfora de lo ecológico, aplicado los medios da para dos o tres interpretaciones. Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. Siento que cuando yo empecé tomando ese curso de de Andrew McLuhan, el nieto de Marshall, como te mencioné, cambio mi perspectiva totalmente - en el mundo, en la manera como entiendo y como no entiendo también las nuestras tecnologías, mis movimientos, etcétera, pero ya, por una persona que tiene décadas de estudiando eso, me gustaría saber de de como empezaste. O sea, Andrew, por ejemplo tiene la excusa de su linaje, no de su papá y su abuelo.Pero entonces, como un argentino joven empezó aprendiendo de ecología de medios. Carlos: Bueno, yo te comento. Yo estudié comunicación en argentina en Rosario. Terminé la facultad. El último examen el 24 de junio del 86, que fue el día que nacía el Lionel Messi en Rosario, en Argentina el mismo día. Y [00:13:00] yo trabajaba, colaboraba en una asignatura en una materia que era teorías de la comunicación.E incluso llegué a enseñar hasta el año 90, fueron tres años, porque ya después me fui vivir Italia. En esa época, nosotros leíamos a Marshall McLuhan, pero era una lectura muy sesgada ideológicamente. En América latina, tú lo habrás visto en México. Hay toda una historia, una tradición de críticas de los medios, sobre todo, a todo lo que viene de estados unidos y Canadá está muy cerca de Estados Unidos. Entonces, digamos que en los años 70 y 80 y y hasta hoy te diría muchas veces a Marshall McLuhan se lo criticó mucho porque no criticaba los medios. O sea el te tenía una visión. Él decía, Neil Postman, si tenía una visión muy crítica. Pero en ese caso, este era una de las grandes diferencias entre Postman y McLuhan, que Marshall McLuhan, al menos en [00:14:00] público, él no criticaba los medios. Decía bueno, yo soy un investigador, yo envío sondas. Estoy explorando lo que pasa. Y él nunca se sumó... Y yo creo que eso fue muy inteligente por parte de él... nunca se sumó a este coro mundial de crítica a los medios de comunicación. En esa época, la televisión para mucha gente era un monstruo.Los niños no tenían que ver televisión. Un poco lo que pasa hoy con los móviles y lo que pasa hoy con tiktok. En esa época en la televisión, el monstruo. Entonces, había mucha investigación en Estados Unidos, que ya partía de la base que la televisión y los medios son malos para la gente. Vemos que es una historia que se repite. Yo creo que en ese sentido, Marshall McLuhan, de manera muy inteligente, no se sumó ese coro crítico y él se dedico realmente a pensar los medios desde una perspectiva mucho más libre, no anclada por esta visión yo creo demasiado ideologizada, que en América Latina es muy fuerte. Es muy fuerte. Esto no implica [00:15:00] bajar la guardia, no ser crítico. Al contrario.Pero yo creo que el el verdadero pensamiento crítico parte de no decir tanto ideológica, decimos "esto ya es malo. Vamos a ver esto." Habrá cosas buenas. Habrá cosas mala. Habrá cosa, lo que es innegable, que los medios mas ya que digamos son buenos son va, nos transforman. Y yo creo que eso fue lo importante de la idea McLuhaniana. Entonces mi primer acercamiento a McLuhan fue una perspectiva de los autores críticos que, bueno, sí, viene de Estados Unidos, no critica los medios. Vamos a criticarlo a nosotros a él, no? Y ese fue mi primer acercamiento a Marshall McLuhan. Yo me fui a Italia en la decada de 90. Estuve casi ocho años fuera de la universidad, trabajando en medios digitales, desarrollo de páginas, webs, productos multimédia y pretexto. Y a finales de los 90, dije quiero volver a la universidad. Quiero ser un doctorado. Y dije, "quiero hacer un doctorado. Bueno. Estando en Italia, el doctorado iba a ser de semiótica." Entonces hizo un [00:16:00] doctorado. Mi tesis fue sobre semiótica de las interfaces.Ahi tuve una visión de las interfaces digitales que consideran que, por ejemplo, los instrumentos como el mouse o joystick son extensiones de nuestro cuerpo, no? El mouse prolonga la mano y la mete dentro de la pantalla, no? O el joystick o cualquier otro elemento de la interfaz digital? Claro. Si hablamos de que el mouse es una extensión de la mano, eso es una idea McLuhaniana.Los medios como extensiones del ser humano de sujeto. Entonces, claro ahi yo releo McLuhan en italiano a finales de los años 90, y me reconcilio con McLuhan porque encuentro muchas cosas interesantes para entender precisamente la interacción con las máquinas digitales. En el a 2002, me mudo con mi familia a España. Me reintegro la vida universitaria. [00:17:00] Y ahí me pongo a estudiar la relación entre los viejos y los nuevos medios. Entonces recupero la idea de ecosistema. Recupero toda la nueva, la idea de ecología de mi ecology. Y me pongo a investigar y releer a McLuhan por tercera vez. Y a leerlo en profundidad a él y a toda la escuela de mi ecology para poder entender las dinámicas del actual ecosistema mediático y entender la emergencia de lo nuevo y cómo lo viejo lucha por adaptarse. En el 2009, estuve tres meses trabajando con Bob Logan en the University of Toronto. El año pasado, estuve en el congreso ahí y tuvimos dos pre conferencias con gente con Paolo Granata y todo el grupo de Toronto.O sea que, tengo una relación muy fuerte con todo lo que se producía y se produce en Toronto. Y bueno, yo creo que, a mí hoy, la media ecology, me sirve muchísimo junto a otras disciplina como la semiótica para poder entender el ecosistema [00:18:00] mediático actual y el gran tema de investigación mío hoy, que es la evolución del la ecosistema mediático.Mm, digamos que dentro de la media ecology, empezando de esa tesis doctoral del 79 de Paul Levinson, hay toda una serie de contribuciones, que un poco son los que han ido derivando en mi último libro que salió el año pasado en inglés en Routledge, que se llama The Evolution of Media y acaba de salir en castellano.Qué se llama Sobre La Evolución De los Medios. En la teoría evolutiva de los medios, hay mucha ecología de los medios metidos. Chris: Claro, claro. Pues felicidad es Carlos. Y vamos a volver en un ratito de ese tema de la evolución de medios, porque yo creo que es muy importante y obviamente es muy importante a ti. Ha sido como algo muy importante en tu trabajo. Pero antes de de salir de esa esquina de pensamiento, hubo una pregunta que me mandó Andrew McLuhan para ti, que ya ella contestaste un poco, pero este tiene que ver entre las diferencias en los [00:19:00] mundos de ecología de medios anglofonos y hispánicos. Y ya mencionaste un poco de eso, pero desde los tiempos en los 80 y noventas, entonces me gustaría saber si esas diferencias siguen entre los mundos intelectuales, en el mundo anglofono o hispánico.Y pues, para extender su pregunta un poco, qué piensas sería como un punto o tema o aspecto más importante de lo que uno de esos mundos tiene que aprender el otro en el significa de lo que falta, quizás. Carlos: Si nos focalizamos en el trabajo de Marshall McLuhan, no es que se lo criticó sólo de América Latina.En Europa no caía simpático Marshall McLuhan en los 60, 70. Justamente por lo mismo, porque no criticaba el sistema capitalista de medios. La tradición europea, la tradición de la Escuela de Frankfurt, la escuela de una visión anti [00:20:00] capitalista que denuncia la ideología dominante en los medio de comunicación.Eso es lo que entra en América Latina y ahí rebota con mucha fuerza. Quizá la figura principal que habla desde América Latina, que habló mucho tiempo de América latina es Armand Mattelart. Matterlart es un teórico en la comunicación, investigador de Bélgica. Y él lo encontramos ya a mediados de los años 60 finales de los 60 en Chile en un memento muy particular de la historia de Chile donde había mucha politización y mucha investigación crítica, obviamente con el con con con con el capitalismo y con el imperialismo estadounidense. Quizá la la obra clásica de ese memento es el famoso libro de Mattelart y Dorfman, eh, eh? Para Leer El Pato Donald, que donde ellos desmontan toda la estructura ideológica capitalista, imperialista, que había en los cics en las historietas del pato Donald.Ellos dicen esto se publicó a [00:21:00] principio los 70. Es quizá el libro más vendido de la comic latinoamericana hasta el día de hoy, eh? Ellos dicen hay ideología en la literatura infantil. Con el pato Donald, le están llenando la cabeza a nuestros niños de toda una visión del mundo muy particular.Si uno le el pato Donald de esa época, por lo menos, la mayor parte de las historia del pato Donald, que era, había que a buscar un tesoro y adónde. Eran lugares africana, peruviana, incaica o sea, eran países del tercer mundo. Y ahí el pato Donald, con sus sobrinos, eran lo suficientemente inteligentes para volverse con el oro a Patolandia.Claro. Ideológicamente. Eso no se sostiene. Entonces, la investigación hegemónica en esa época en Europa, en Francia, la semiología pero sobre todo, en América latina, era ésa. Hay que estudiar el mensaje. Hay que estudiar el contenido, porque ahí está la ideología [00:22:00] dominante del capitalismo y del imperialismo.En ese contexto, entra McLuhan. Se traduce McLuhan y que dice McLuhan: el medio es el mensaje. No importa lo que uno lee, lo que nos transforma es ver televisión, leer comics, escuchar la radio. Claro, iba contramano del mainstream de la investigación en comunicación. O sea, digamos que en América latina, la gente que sigue en esa línea que todavía existe y es fuerte, no es una visión muy crítica de todo esto, todavía hoy, a Marshal McLuhan le cae mal, pero lo mismo pasa en Europa y otros países donde la gente que busca una lectura crítica anti-capitalista y anti-sistémica de la comunicación, no la va a encontrar nunca en Marshall McLuhan, por más que sea de América latina, de de de Europa o de Asia. Entonces yo no radicaría todo esto en un ámbito anglosajón y el latinoamericano. Después, bueno, la hora de McLuhan es bastante [00:23:00] polisemica. Admite como cualquier autor así, que tiene un estilo incluso de escritura tan creativo en forma de mosaico.No era un escritor Cartesiano ordenadito y formal. No, no. McLuhan era una explosión de ideas muy bien diseñada a propósito, pero era una explosión de ideas. Por eso siempre refrescan tener a McLuhan. Entonces normal que surjan interpretaciones diferentes, no? En estados unidos en Canadá, en Inglaterra, en Europa continental o en Latinoamérica o en Japón, obviamente, no? Siendo un autor que tiene estas características. Por eso yo no en no anclaría esto en cuestiones territoriales. Cuando uno busca un enfoque que no tenga esta carga ideológica para poder entender los medios, que no se limite sólo a denunciar el contenido.McLuhan y la escuela de la ecología de los medios es fundamental y es un aporte muy, muy importante en ese sentido, no? Entonces, bueno, yo creo que McLuhan tuvo [00:24:00] detractores en Europa, tuvo detractores en América latina y cada tanto aparece alguno, pero yo creo que esto se ido suavizando. Yo quiero que, como que cada vez más se lo reivindica McLuhan.La gente que estudia, por ejemplo, en Europa y en América latina, que quizá en su época criticaron a McLuhan, todas las teorías de la mediatización, por ejemplo, terminan coincidiendo en buena parte de los planteos de la media ecology. Hoy que se habla mucho de la materialidad de la comunicación, los nuevos materialismos, yo incluyo a Marshall McLuhan en uno de los pioneros des esta visión también de los nuevos materialismos. Al descentrar el análisis del contenido, al medio, a la cosa material, podemos considerar a macl también junto a Bruno Latour y otra gente como pionero, un poco de esta visión de no quedarse atrapados en el giro lingüístico, no, en el contenido, en el giro semiótico e incorporar también la dimensión material de la comunicación y el medio en sí.[00:25:00] Chris: Muy bien. Muy bien, ya. Wow, es tanto, pero lo aprecio mucho. Gracias, Carlos. Y me gustaría seguir preguntándote un poco ahora de tu propio trabajo. Tienes un capítulo en tu libro. Las Leyes de la Interfaz titulado "Las Interfaces Co-evolucionan Con Sus Usuarios" donde escribes "estas leyes de la interfaz no desprecian a los artefactos, sus inventores ó las fuerzas sociales. Solo se limitan á insertarlos á una red socio técnica de relaciones, intercambios y transformaciones para poder analizarlos desde una perspectiva eco-evolutiva."Ahora, hay un montón ahí en este paragrafito. Pero entonces, me gustaría preguntarte, cómo vea los humanos [00:26:00] co-evolucionando con sus tecnologías? Por ejemplo, nuestra forma de performatividad en la pantalla se convierte en un hábito más allá de la pantalla.Carlos: Ya desde antes del homo sapiens, los homínidos más avanzados, digamos en su momento, creaban instrumentos de piedra. Hemos descubierto todos los neandertales tenían una cultura muy sofisticada, incluso prácticas casi y religiosas, más allá de la cuestión material de la construcción de artefactos. O sea que nuestra especie es impensable sin la tecnología, ya sea un hacha de piedra o ya sea tiktok o un smartphone. Entonces, esto tenemos que tenerlo en cuenta cuando analizamos cualquier tipo de de interacción cotidiana, estamos rodeados de tecnología y acá, obviamente, la idea McLuhaniana es fundamental. Nosotros creamos estos medios. Nosotros creamos estas tecnologías.Estas tecnologías también nos reformatean. [00:27:00] McLuhan, no me suena que haya usado el concepto de coevolución, pero está ahí. Está hablando de eso. Ahora bien. Hay una coevolución si se quiere a larguísimo plazo, que, por ejemplo, sabemos que el desarrollo de instrumentos de piedra, el desarrollo del fuego, hizo que el homo sapiens no necesitara una mandíbula tan grande para poder masticar los alimentos. Y eso produce todo un cambio, que achicó la mandíbula le dejó más espacio en el cerebro, etcétera, etcétera. Eso es una coevolución en término genético, digamos a larguísimo plazo, okey. También la posición eréctil, etcétera, etcétera. Pero, digamos que ya ahí había tecnologías humanas coevolucionando con estos cambios genéticos muy, muy lentos.Pero ahora tenemos también podemos decir esta co evolución ya a nivel de la estructura neuronal, entonces lo ha verificado la neurociencia, como dije antes. Hay cambio físico en la estructura del cerebro a lo largo de la vida de una persona debido a la interacción con ciertas tecnologías. Y por qué pasa eso?Porque [00:28:00] la producción, creación de nuevos medios, nuevas tecnologías se ido acelerando cada vez más. Ahi podemos hacer una curva exponencial hacia arriba, para algunos esto empezó hace 10,000 años. Para algunos esto se aceleró con la revolución industrial. Algunos hablan de la época el descubrimiento de América.Bueno, para alguno esto es un fenómeno de siglo xx. El hecho es que en términos casi geológicos, esto que hablamos del antropoceno es real y está vinculado al impacto del ser humano sobre nuestro ambiente y lo tecnológico es parte de ese proceso exponencial de co evolución. Nosotros hoy sentimos un agobio frente a esta aceleración de la tecnología y nuestra necesidad. Quizá de adaptarnos y coevolucionar con ella. Como esto de que todo va muy rápido. Cada semana hay un problema nuevo, una aplicación nueva. Ahora tenemos la inteligencia artificial, etc, etcétera. Pero esta sensación [00:29:00] no es nueva. Es una sensación de la modernidad. Si uno lee cosas escritas en 1,800 cuando llega el tren también la gente se quejaba que el mundo iba muy rápido. Dónde iremos a parar con este caballo de hierro que larga humo no? O sea que esta sensación de velocidad de cambio rápido ya generaciones anteriores la vivían. Pero evidentemente, el cambio hoy es mucho más rápido y denso que hace dos siglos. Y eso es real también. Así que, bueno, nuestra fe se va coevolucionando y nos vamos adaptando como podemos, yo esta pregunta se la hice hace 10 años a Kevin Kelly, el primer director de la revista Wire que lo trajimos a Barcelona y el que siempre es muy optimista. Kevin Kelly es determinista tecnológico y optimista al mismo tiempo. Él decía que "que bueno que el homo sapiens lo va llevando bastante bien. Esto de co evolucionar con la tecnología." Otra gente tiene una [00:30:00] visión radicalmente opuesta, que esto es el fin del mundo, que el homo sapiens estamos condenados a desaparecer por esta co evolución acelerada, que las nuevas generaciones son cada vez más estúpidas.Yo no creo eso. Creo, como McLuhan, que los medios nos reforman, nos cambian algunas cosas quizás para vivir otras quizá no tanto, pero no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de esto para nada. Chris: Bien, bien. Entonces cuando mencionaste lo de la televisión, yo me acuerdo mucho de de mi niñez y no sé por qué. Quizás fue algo normal en ese tiempo para ver a tele como un monstruo, como dijiste o quizás porque mis mis papás eran migrantes pero fue mucho de su idea de esa tecnología y siempre me dijo como no, no, no quédate ahí tan cerca y eso.Entonces, aunque lo aceptaron, ellos comprendieron que el poder [00:31:00] de la tele que tenía sobre las personas. Entonces ahora todos, parece a mí, que todos tienen su propio canal, no su propio programación, o el derecho o privilegio de tener su propio canal o múltiples canales.Entonces, es una gran pregunta, pero cuáles crees que son las principales consecuencias de darle a cada uno su propio programa en el sentido de como es el efecto de hacer eso, de democratizar quizás la tecnología en ese sentido? Carlos: Cuando dices su propio canal, te refieres a la posibilidad de emitir o construir tu propia dieta mediática.Chris: Bueno primero, pero puede ser ambos, claro, no? O sea, mi capacidad de tener un perfil o cuenta mía personal. Y luego como el fin del turismo, no? Y luego otro. Carlos: Sí, a ver. Yo creo que, bueno, esto fue el gran cambio radical que empezó a darse a partir la década del 2000 o [00:32:00] sea, hace 25 años. Porque la web al principio sí era una red mundial en los años 90. Pero claro la posibilidad de compartir un contenido y que todo el mundo lo pudiera ver, estaba muy limitado a crear una página web, etcétera. Cuando aparecen las redes sociales o las Web 2.0 como se la llamaba en esa época y eso se suma los dispositivos móviles, ahí se empieza a generar esta cultura tan difundida de la creación de contenido. Hasta digamos que hasta ese momento quien generaba contenido era más o menos un profesional en la radio y en la televisión, pero incluso en la web o en la prensa o el cine. Y a partir de ahí se empieza, digamos, a abrir el juego. En su momento, esto fue muy bien saludado fue qué bueno! Esto va nos va a llevar a una sociedad más democrática. 25 años después, claro, estamos viendo el lado oscuro solamente. Yo creo que el error hace 25 años era pensar solo las posibilidades [00:33:00] buenas, optimistas, de esto. Y hoy me parece que estamos enredados en discursos solamente apocalípticos no?No vemos las cosas buenas, vemos solo las cosas malas. Yo creo que hay de las dos cosas hoy. Claro, hoy cualquier persona puede tener un canal, sí, pero no todo el mundo crea un canal. Los niveles de participación son muy extraños, o sea, la mayor parte de la población de los usuarios y usuarias entre en las redes. Mira. Mete un me gusta. Quizá un comentario. Cada tanto comparte una foto. Digamos que los "heavy users" o "heavy producers" de contenido son siempre una minoría, ya sea profesionales, ya sea influencers, streamers, no? Es siempre, yo no sé si acá estamos en un 20-80 o un 10-90 son estas curvas que siempre fue así? No? Si uno ve la Wikipedia, habrá un 5-10 por ciento de gente que genera contenido mucho menos incluso. Y un 90 por ciento que se [00:34:00] beneficia del trabajo de una minoría. Esto invierte la lógica capitalista? La mayoría vive de la minoría y esto pasaba antes también en otros, en otros sistemas. O sea que en ese sentido, es sólo una minoría de gente la que genera contenido de impacto, llamémoslo así, de alcance mayor.Pero bueno, yo creo que el hecho de que cualquier persona pueda dar ese salto para mí, está bien. Genera otra serie de problemas, no? Porque mientras que genera contenido, es un profesional o un periodista, digamos, todavía queda algo de normas éticas y que deben cumplir no? Yo veo que en el mundo de los streamers, el mundo de los Tik tokers etcétera, etcétera, lo primero que ellos dicen es, nosotros no somos periodistas. Y de esa forma, se inhiben de cualquier, control ético o de respeto a normas éticas profesionales. Por otro lado, las plataformas [00:35:00] Meta, Google, todas. Lo primero que te dicen es nosotros no somos medio de comunicación. Los contenidos los pone la gente.Nosotros no tenemos nada que ver con eso. Claro, ellos también ahí se alejan de toda la reglamentación. Por eso hubo que hacer. Europa y Estados Unidos tuvo que sacar leyes especiales porque ellos decían no, no, las leyes del periodismo a nosotros no nos alcanzan. Nosotros no somos editores de contenidos.Y es una mentira porque las plataformas sí editan contenido a través los algoritmos, porque nos están los algoritmos, nos están diciendo que podemos ver y que no está en primera página. No están filtrando información, o sea que están haciendo edición. Entonces, como que se generan estas equivocaciones.Y eso es uno de los elementos que lleva esta contaminación que mencioné antes en el en los ámbitos de la comunicación. Pero yo, si tuviera que elegir un ecosistema con pocos enunciadores pocos medios controlados por profesionales y este ecosistema [00:36:00] caótico en parte contaminado con muchos actores y muchas voces, yo prefiero el caos de hoy a la pobreza del sistema anterior.Prefiero lidiar, pelearme con y estar buscar de resolver el problema de tener mucha información, al problema de la censura y tener sólo dos, tres puntos donde se genera información. Yo he vivido en Argentina con dictadura militar con control férreo de medios, coroneles de interventores en la radio y la televisión que controlaban todo lo que se decía.Y yo prefiero el caos de hoy, aún con fake news y todo lo que quieras. Prefiero el caos de hoy a esa situación. Chris: Sí, sí, sí, sí. Es muy fuerte de pensar en eso para la gente que no han vivido en algo así, no? Osea algunos familiares extendidos han vivido en mundos comunistas, en el pasado en el este de Europa y no se hablan [00:37:00] exactamente así.Pero, se se hablan, no? Y se se dicen que lo que lo que no tenía ni lo que no tiene por control y por fuerza. Entonces, en ese como mismo sentido de lo que falta de la memoria vivida, me gustaría preguntarte sobre tu nuevo libro. Y sobre la evolución de medios. Entonces me gustaría preguntarte igual por nuestros oyentes que quizás no han estudiado mucho de la ecología de los medios Para ti qué es la evolución de los medios y por qué es importante para nuestro cambiante y comprensión del mundo. O sea, igual al lado y no solo pegado a la ecología de medios, pero la evolución de los medios,Carlos: Sí, te cuento ahí hay una disciplina, ya tradicional que es la historia y también está la historia de la comunicación y historia de los medios. [00:38:00] Hay libros muy interesantes que se titulan Historia de la Comunicación de Gutenberg a Internet o Historia de la Comunicación del Papiro a Tiktok. Entonces, qué pasa? Esos libros te dicen bueno, estaba el papiro, después vino el pergamino, el manuscrito, después en 1450 vino Gutenberg, llegó el libro. Pero eso el libro no te cuentan que pasó con el manuscrito, ni que pasó con el papiro. Y te dicen que llega la radio en 1920 y en 1950 llega la televisión y no te dicen que pasó con la radio, que pasó con el cine.Son historias lineales donde un medio parece que va sustituyendo al otro. Y después tenemos muchos libros muy buenos también. Historia de la radio, historia de la televisión, historia de internet, historia del periodismo. Como dije antes, retomando una idea, de McLuhan no podemos entender los medios aislados.Yo no puedo entender la evolución de la radio si no la vinculo a la prensa, a [00:39:00] la televisión y otro al podcast. Okey, entonces digo, necesitamos un campo de investigación, llamémoslo una disciplina en construcción, que es una teoría y también es metodología para poder entender el cambio mediático, todas estas transformaciones del ecosistema de medios a largo plazo y que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino, ver cómo esa red de medios fue evolucionando. Y eso yo lo llamo una teoría evolutiva o una "media evolution" Y es lo que estoy trabajando ahora. Claro, esta teoría, este enfoque, este campo de investigación toma muchas cosas de la ecología de los medios, empezando por Marshall McLuhan pero también gente de la tradición previa a la media ecology como Harold Innis, el gran historiador, economista de la comunicación y de la sociedad, que fue quizás el intelectual más famoso en Canadá en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Harold Innis que influenció mucho a Marshall McLuhan [00:40:00] Marshall McLuhann en la primera página de Gutenberg Galaxy, dice este libro no es otra cosa que una nota al pie de página de la obra de Harold Innis Entonces, Harold Innis que hizo una historia de los tiempos antiguos poniendo los medios al centro de esa historia. Para mí es fundamental. Incluso te diría a veces más que McLuhan, como referencia, a la hora de hacer una teoría evolutiva del cambio mediático. Y después, obviamente tomo muchas cosas de la historia de los medios.Tomo muchas cosas de la arqueología de los medios (media archeology). Tomo cosas también de la gente que investigó la historia de la tecnología, la construcción social de la tecnología. O sea, la media evolution es un campo intertextual, como cualquier disciplina que toma cosas de todos estos campos para poder construir una teoría, un enfoque, una mirada que sea más a largo plazo, que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino que vea la evolución de todo el ecosistema mediático, prestando mucha atención a las relaciones [00:41:00] entre medios, y con esta visión más compleja sistémica de cómo cambian las cosas.Yo creo que el cambio mediático es muy rápido y necesitamos una teoría para poder darle un sentido a todo este gran cambio, porque si nos quedamos analizando cosas muy micro, muy chiquititas, no vemos los grandes cambios. No nos podemos posicionar... esto un poco como el fútbol. Los mejores jugadores son los que tienen el partido en la cabeza y saben dónde está todo. No están mirando la pelota, pero saben dónde están los otros jugadores? Bueno, yo creo que la media evolution sirve para eso. Más allá de que hoy estemos todos hablando de la IA generativa. No? Tener esta visión de de conjunto de todo el ecosistema mediático y tecnológico, yo creo que es muy útil.Chris: Mm. Wow Increíble, increíble. Sí. Sí. Pienso mucho en como las nuevas generaciones o las generaciones más jóvenes en el día de hoy. O sea, [00:42:00] al menos más joven que yo, que la mayoría, como que tiene 20 años hoy, no tienen una memoria vívida de cómo fuera el mundo, sin redes sociales o sin el internet. Y así como me voy pensando en mi vida y como yo, no tengo una memoria de vida como fuera el mundo sin pantallas de cualquier tipo, o sea de tele de compus. No solo de internet o redes. Carlos: Sí, no, te decia que mi padre vivió, mi padre tiene 90 años y él se recuerda en el año 58, 59, su casa fue la primera en un barrio de Rosario que tuvo televisión y transmitían a partir de la tarde seis, siete de la tarde. Entonces venían todos los vecinos y vecinas a ver televisión a la casa de mi abuela. Entonces cada uno, cada generación tiene sus historias. No? Chris: Ajá. Ajá. Sí. Pues sí. Y también, como dijiste, para [00:43:00] entender los medios como sujetos o objetos individuales, o sea en su propio mundo, no? Este recuerdo un poco de la metáfora de Robin Wall Kimmerer que escribió un libro que se llama Braiding Sweetgrass o Trenzando Pasto Dulce supongo, en español. Y mencionó que para entender el entendimiento indígena, digamos entre comillas de tiempo, no necesitamos pensar en una línea, una flecha desde el pasado hacia el futuro. Pero, un lago, mientras el pasado, presente, y futuro existen, a la vez, en ese lago.Y también pienso como en el lugar, el pasado, presente, y el futuro, como todos esos medios existiendo a la vez, como en un lago y obviamente en una ecología de su evolución de sus cambios. Carlos: Es, muy interesante eso. Después te voy a pedir la referencia del libro porque, claro, [00:44:00] McLuhan siempre decía que el contenido de un medio es otro medio. Entonces, puede pasar que un medio del pasado deja su huella o influye en un medio del futuro. Y entonces ahí se rompe la línea temporal. Y esos son los fenómenos que a mí me interesa estudiar. Chris: Mmm, mmm, pues Carlos para terminar, tengo dos últimas preguntas para ti. Esta vez un poco alineado con el turismo, y aunque no estas enfocado tanto en en el estudio de turismo. Por mis estudios y investigaciones y por este podcast, he amplificado esa definición de turismo para ver cómo existiría más allá de una industria. Y para mí, el turismo incluye también el deseo de ver una persona, un lugar o una cultura como destino, como algo útil, temporal en su valor de uso y por tanto, desechable. Entonces, me gustaría [00:45:00] preguntarte, si para ti parece que nuestros medios populares, aunque esto es un tiempo, digamos con más libertad de otros lugares o tiempos en el pasado, más autoritarianos o totalitarianos? Si te ves la posibilidad o la evidencia de que nuestros medios digamos como mainstream más usados, están creando o promoviendo un , un sentido de alienación en la gente por efectivamente quedarles a distancia al otro o la otra.Carlos: Yo ya te dije no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de los medios. Nunca, la tuve. Esto no quita de que los medios y como dijimos antes, tienen problemas. Generan también contaminación. Llamémoslo así si seguimos con la metáfora, ? El tema de alienación viene desde hace [00:46:00] muchísimos años. Ya cuando estudiaba en la universidad, nunca sintonicé con las teorías de la alienación.El concepto de alienación viene del siglo XIX. Toda una teoría de la conciencia, el sujeto, el proletario, llamémoslo, así que tenía que tomar conciencia de clase. Bueno, las raíces de esa visión del concepto alienación vienen de ahí. Yo, a mí nunca me convenció, justamente. Y acá si interesante.El aporte de América Latina en teorías de la comunicación siempre fue diferente. Fue reivindicar la resignificación, la resemantización el rol activo del receptor, cuando muchas veces las teorías que venían de Europa o Estados Unidos tenían esta visión del receptor de la comunicación como un ser pasivo. En ese sentido, la media ecology nunca entró en ese discurso porque se manejaba con otros parámetros, pero digamos que lo que era el mainstream de la investigación de estados unidos, pero también de Europa, siempre coincidían en esto en considerar el receptor pasivo, alienado, [00:47:00] estupidizado por los medios. Y yo realmente nunca, me convenció ese planteo, ni antes ni hoy, ni con la televisión de los 70 y 80, ni con el tiktok de hoy.Esto no quita que puede haber gente que tenga alguna adicción, etcétera, etcétera. Pero yo no creo que toda la sociedad sea adicta hoy a la pantallita. Deja de ser adicción. Okey. Esto no implica que haya que no tener una visión crítica. Esto no implica que haya que eventualmente regular los usos de ciertas tecnologías, obviamente.Pero de ahí a pensar que estamos en un escenario apocalíptico, de idiotización total del homo sapiens o de alienación. Yo no lo veo, ni creo que lo los estudios empíricos confirmen eso. Más allá que a veces hay elecciones y no nos gusten los resultados.Pero ahí es interesante, porque cuando tu propio partido político pierde, siempre se le echa la culpa a los medios porque ganó el otro. Pero cuando tu partido político gana, nadie dice nada de los medios. Ganamos porque somos mejores, [00:48:00] porque tenemos mejores ideas, porque somos más democráticos, porque somos más bonitos.Entonces, claro te das cuenta que se usan los medios como chivo expiatorio para no reconocer las propias debilidades políticas a la hora de denunciar una propuesta o de seducir al electorado.Chris: Claro, claro. Ya pues estos temas son vastos y complejos. Y por eso me gusta, y por eso estoy muy agradecido por pasar este tiempo contigo, Carlos.Pero los temas requieren un profundo disciplina para comprender, o al menos según yo, como alguien que está muy nuevo a estos temas. Entonces, a nuestra época, parece que somos, según yo, arrastrados a una velocidad sin precedentes. Nuestras tecnologías están avanzando y quizás socavando simultáneamente nuestra capacidad de comprender lo que está sucediendo en el mundo. Los usamos como protesta a veces como, como mencionaste, [00:49:00] pero sin una comprensión más profunda de cómo nos usan también. Entonces tengo la curiosidad por saber qué papel desempeña la ecología de los medios en la redención o curación de la cultura en nuestro tiempo. Cómo podría la ecología de los medios ser un aliado, quizás, en nuestros caminos? Carlos: Sí, yo creo que esta idea estaba presente, no? En los teóricos de la media ecology, digamos la primera generación.Ahora que lo pienso, estaba también en la semiótica de Umberto Eco, no? Cuando decía la semiótica más allá de analizar cómo se construye significado, también aporta a mejorar la vida significativa, o sea, la vida cultural, la vida comunicacional, nuestro funcionamiento como sujeto, digamos. Y yo creo que en ese sentido, la media ecology también.Digamos, si nosotros entendemos el ecosistema mediático, vamos a poder sacarlo mejor [00:50:00] coevolucionar mejor. Vamos a ser más responsables también a la hora de generar contenidos, a la hora de retwittear de manera a veces automática ciertas cosas. Yo creo que es todo un crecimiento de vivir una vida mediática sana, que yo creo que hoy existe esa posibilidad.Yo estoy en Twitter desde el 2008-2009 y sólo dos veces tuve así un encontronazo y bloqueé a una persona mal educada. Después el resto de mi vida en Twitter, es rica de información de contactos. Aprendo muchísimo me entero de cosas que se están investigando. O sea, también están uno elegir otras cosas.Y por ejemplo, donde veo que yo hay que hay redes que no me aportan nada, no directamente ni entro. También es eso de aprender a sacar lo mejor de este ecosistema mediático. Y lo mismo para el ecosistema natural. Así como estamos aprendiendo a preocuparnos de dónde viene la comida, [00:51:00] cuánto tiempo se va a tardar en disolver este teléfono móvil por los componentes que tiene. Bueno, también es tomar conciencia de eso. Ya sea en el mundo natural, como en el mundo de la comunicación. Y yo creo que todos estos conocimientos, en este caso, la media ecology nos sirve para captar eso, no? Y mejorar nosotros también como sujetos, que ya no somos más el centro del universo, que esta es la otra cuestión. Somos un átomo más perdido entre una complejidad muy grande. Chris: Mm. Mm, pues que estas obras y trabajos y estudios tuyos y de los demás nos da la capacidad de leer y comprender ese complejidad, no?O sea, parece más y más complejo cada vez y nos requiere como más y más discernimiento. Entonces, yo creo que pues igual, hemos metido mucho en tu voluntad y capacidad de [00:52:00] hacer eso y ponerlo en el mundo. Entonces, finalmente Carlos me gustaría a extender mi agradecimiento y la de nuestros oyentes por tu tiempo hoy, tu consideración y tu trabajo.Siento que pues, la alfabetización mediática y la ecología de los medios son extremadamente deficientes en nuestro tiempo y su voluntad de preguntar sobre estas cosas y escribir sobre ellas es una medicina para un mundo quebrantado y para mi turístico. Entonces, así que muchísimas gracias, Carlos, por venir hoy.Carlos: Gracias. Te agradezco por las preguntas. Y bueno, yo creo que el tema del turismo es un tema que está ocupa lugar central hoy. Si tú estuvieras en Barcelona, verías que todos los días se está debatiendo este tema. Así que yo creo que bueno, adelante con esa reflexión y esa investigación sobre el turismo, porque es muy pertinente y necesaria.Chris: Pues sí, gracias. [00:53:00] Igual yo siento que hay una conexión fuerte entre esas definiciones más amplias de turismo y la ecología de medios. O sea, ha abierto una apertura muy grande para mí para entender el turismo más profundamente. Igual antes de terminar Carlos, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes encontrar tus libros y tu trabajo?Sé que hemos hablado de dos libros que escribiste, pero hay mucho más. Muchísimo más. Entonces, cómo se pueden encontrarlos y encontrarte?Carlos: Lo más rápido es en en mi blog, que es hipermediaciones.com Ahí van a encontrar información sobre todos los libros que voy publicando, etcétera, etc. Y después, bueno, yo soy muy activo, como dije en Twitter X. Me encuentran la letra CEscolari y de Carlos es mi Twitter. Y bueno, también ahí trato de difundir información sobre estos [00:54:00] temas.Como dije antes, aprendo mucho de esa red y trato de también devolver lo que me dan poniendo siempre información pertinente. Buenos enlaces. Y no pelearme mucho.Chris: Muy bien, muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que esos enlaces y esas páginas estén ya en la sección de tarea el sitio web de El fin del turismo cuando sale el episodio. Igual otras entrevistas y de tus libros. No hay falta. Entonces, con mucho gusto, los voy compartiendo. Bueno, Carlos, muchísimas gracias y lo aprecio mucho.Carlos: Muchas gracias y nos vemos en México.English TranscriptionChris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast The End of Tourism, Carlos. Thank you for being able to speak with me today. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me today.Carlos: No, thank you, Chris, for the invitation. It is a great pleasure and honor to chat with you, a great traveler and, well, I have never directly investigated the subject of tourism.Well, I understand that we are going to talk about media ecology and collateral issues that can help us better understand, give meaning to all that is happening in the world of tourism. Well, I work in Barcelona. I don't live in the city exactly, but I work at the university in Barcelona, in the central area.Well, every time I go to the city, the number of tourists increases every day and the debate on tourism in all its dimensions increases. So it is a topic that is on the agenda, right?Chris: Yes, well I imagine that even if you don't like to think or if you don't want to think about tourism there, it is inevitable to have a personal lesson [00:01:00] from that industry.Carlos: Yes, to the point that it is almost becoming a taxonomic criterion, right? ...of classification or cities with a lot of tourists, cities or places without tourists that are the most sought after until they are filled with tourists. So we are practically in a vicious circle.Chris: Well, at some point I know that it changes, the cycle breaks, at least to account for what we are doing with the behavior.And I understand that this also has a lot to do with the ecology of the media, the lack of ability to understand our behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, etc. So, before continuing with your work and deeds, I would like to ask you about your path and your life.First, I wonder if you could define for our listeners what media ecology is and how you [00:02:00] became interested in this field? How did you come to dedicate your life to this study?Carlos: Yes. Let's see a little bit. There is one, this is the official history. We would say media ecology, it is a field of research, let's say, that was born in the 60s. We must take into account above all the work of Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian researcher who is very famous worldwide. He was perhaps the most famous media researcher philosopher in the 60s and 70s.And a colleague of his, Neil Postman, who was at New York University, was a bit, let's say, among the people who surrounded these two references, no, in the 60s, from there it was brewing, let's say, what was later called media ecology. It is said that the first person to talk about media ecology, who applied this metaphor to the media, was Marshall McLuhan himself in some private conversations, [00:03:00] letters that were sent to each other in the late 50s, early 60s, by researchers on these topics?Let's say the first public appearance of the concept of media ecology was a lecture in 1968 by Neil Postman. It was a public speech that talked about how the media transforms us and how the media transforms us, forming an environment in which we grow, develop, and so on. And we are sometimes not very aware of this environment that surrounds us and shapes us.He first used the concept of media ecology in a public lecture. And then, if we go back to the early 70s, Postman himself created the first program in media ecology at NYU, at New York University. So, in 73, 74 and 75, what I call the second generation began to emerge, of people [00:04:00] some of whom were trained in these courses in New York.For example, Christine Nystrom was the first PhD thesis on my ecology; people like Paul Levinson who in 1979 defended a PhD thesis directed by Postman on the evolution of the media, right? And the same thing happened in Toronto in the 70s. Marshall McLuhan died in December 80.Let's say that the 70s were his last decade of intellectual production. And there are a number of collaborators at that time, very young people like Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, who later continued to work a bit along these lines, along these lines. And there we talk about the Canadian front, eh?This whole second generation was developing, expanding and applying. Let's not forget Eric McLuhan, Marshall's son, who was also part of this whole movement. [00:05:00] And if I remember correctly, in 2000, the Media Ecology Association was created, which is the Media Ecology Association, which is an academic, scientific organization that brings together people who deal with media ecology.If we think at a more scientific epistemological level, we can think of this metaphor of media ecology from two or three perspectives. On the one hand, this idea that media create environments. This is a very strong idea of Marsha McLuhan, of Postman and of this whole group, isn't it? The media - "medium" understood in a very broad sense, no, any technology could be a medium for them.For Marsha McLuhan, the wheel is a medium. A telescope is a medium. A radio is a medium and television is a medium, right? I mean, any technology can be considered a medium. Let's say that these media, these technologies, generate a [00:06:00] environment that transforms us. It transforms our way, sometimes our way of thinking, our way of perceiving the world, our conception of time and space.And we are not aware of that change. Let's think that, I don't know, before 1800, if someone had to make a trip of a thousand kilometers (and here we are approaching tourism) kilometers was a trip that had to be planned many months in advance. With the arrival of the train, we are already in 1800, those kilometers were shortened. Let's say no? There we see as if today they tell us 1000 kilometers.Well, yes, we take a plane. It's an hour, an hour and a quarter of a journey. Today, 1000 kilometres is much less than 200 years ago and even in terms of time, time has changed. Right? All of that is a consequence, let's say, of this change, our perception is a consequence of a series of media and technologies.The railroad. Obviously, today we have airplanes. The same digital networks that have somewhat brought us this idea of "time [00:07:00] real," this anxiety of wanting everything fast, right? That is also a consequence of these environmental changes generated by the media and technologies, eh? This is a very strong idea, when McLuhan and Postman talked about this in the 60s, they were strong intuitions that they had from a very intelligent observation of reality. Today, cognitive sciences, or rather neuroscience, have confirmed these hypotheses. In other words, today there are a series of methodologies to study the brain and we can already see how technologies...The media even affects the physical structure of the brain. Right? Another thing that is historical is that the media affects our memory. This comes from Plato 2,500 years ago, who said that writing would kill the memory of men. Well, we can think for ourselves, right?Or at least this generation, who [00:08:00] lived in a world before and after mobile apps. 30 years ago, 25 years ago, I had 30-40 phone numbers in my memory. Today I don't have any. And let's also think about GPS, right? At one time, taxi drivers in London, which is a Latin city, knew the city by heart. And today, that's no longer necessary because they have GPS.And when they went to study the brains of London taxi drivers, they saw that certain areas of the brain had shrunk, so to speak, which are the areas that manage the spatial part. McLuhan already talked about this in the 60s. He said that changes narcotize certain areas of the mind, he said.But well, we see that a lot of empirical research, very cutting-edge neuroscience research is confirming all these thoughts, all these things that were said in the 60s onwards, by media ecology. Another possibility is to understand [00:09:00] this as a media ecosystem, Marshall McLuhan always said we cannot give it meaning,We cannot understand a medium in isolation from other media. It is as if media only acquire meaning in relation to other media. Neil Postman and many other people from the school of media ecology also defend this position, that, well, we cannot understand the history of cinema if we do not link it to video games, if we do not link it to the appearance of television.And so with all the media, right? Eh? There are some very interesting works. For example, about how in the 19th century, different media, we could say, co-evolved with each other. The press, the telegraph. The train, which also transported newspapers, news agencies appeared. I mean, we see how it is very difficult to understand the development of the press in the 19th century and we don't link it to the telephone, if we don't link it to photography, if we don't link it to radio photography, [00:10:00] also later on.I mean, this idea is very strong. It is also one of the principles that I consider fundamental to this vision, which would be that the media are not alone, they are part of an ecosystem and if we want to understand what is happening and how all this works, we cannot, uh, analyze the media in isolation from the rest.There is a third interpretation. I don't know if it's too metaphorical, right? Above all, people in Italy like the researcher Fausto Colombo from Milan or Michele Cometa, he is a researcher from Sicily, Michele Cometa who talks about the turn, the ecomedia turn. These researchers are moving in a whole conception according to which, we are in a unique media ecosystem that is contaminated.It is contaminated by "fake news" it is contaminated by false news, it is contaminated by hate speech, etc., etc. So they, let's say, take up this ecological metaphor to say [00:11:00] We have to clean this ecosystem just as the natural ecosystem is contaminated, it needs a cleaning intervention, let's say a purification, eh?The media ecosystem is also in the same danger, isn't it? And these people are also calling attention, and I am very close to this line of work on the material dimension of communication. And this also has to do with tourism, right? The environmental impact that communication has today.Training an artificial intelligence involves a huge amount of electricity; keeping social networks running, eh, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, involves millions of servers running that suck up electricity and also have to be cooled, consuming even more electricity. And that has a significant impact on the climate.So, well, let's say, we see that this metaphor of the ecological, applied to the media, gives rise to two or three interpretations.Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. I feel like when I started taking that course from Andrew McLuhan, Marshall's grandson, as I mentioned, it changed my perspective completely - on the world, on the way I understand and how I don't understand our technologies, my movements, etc. But now, from a person who has been studying this for decades, I would like to know how you started. I mean, Andrew, for example, has the excuse of his lineage, not his father and his grandfather.But then, as a young Argentine, he began learning about media ecology.Carlos: Well, I'll tell you. I studied communication in Argentina, in Rosario. I finished college. The last exam was on June 24, 1986, which was the day that Lionel Messi was born in Rosario, Argentina, on the same day. And [00:13:00] I worked, I collaborated in a class in a subject that was communication theories.And I even taught until 1990, three years, because after that I went to live in Italy. At that time, we read Marshall McLuhan, but it was a very ideologically biased reading. In Latin America, you must have seen it in Mexico. There is a whole history, a tradition of criticism from the media, especially of everything that comes from the United States, and Canada is very close to the United States.So, let's say that in the 70s and 80s and until today I would tell you that Marshall McLuhan was often criticized because he did not criticize the media. I mean, he had a vision. He said, Neil Postman, yes, he had a very critical vision. But in that case, this was one of the big differences between Postman and McLuhan, that Marshall McLuhan, at least in [00:14:00] public, he did not criticize the media. He said, well, I am a researcher, I send out probes. I am exploring what is happening.And he never joined in... And I think that was very clever of him... he never joined in this worldwide chorus of criticism of the media. At that time, television was a monster for many people.Children were not supposed to watch television. A bit like what happens today with cell phones and what happens today with TikTok. At that time, television was the monster. At that time, there was a lot of research in the United States, which was already based on the premise that television and the media are bad for people.We see that it is a story that repeats itself. I think that in that sense, Marshall McLuhan, very intelligently, did not join that critical chorus and he really dedicated himself to thinking about the media from a much freer perspective, not anchored by this vision that I believe is too ideologized, which is very strong in Latin America. It is very strong. This does not imply [00:15:00] letting down one's guard, not being critical. On the contrary.But I think that true critical thinking starts from not saying so much ideology, we say "this is already bad. Let's look at this." There will be good things. There will be bad things. There will be things, which is undeniable, that the media, even if we say they are good, will transform us. And I think that was the important thing about the McLuhanian idea.So my first approach to McLuhan was from the perspective of critical authors who, well, yes, come from the United States, they don't criticize the media. We're going to criticize him, right? And that was my first approach to Marshall McLuhan.I went to Italy in the 90s. I was out of college for almost eight years, working in digital media, web development, multimedia products, and pretext. And in the late 90s, I said, I want to go back to college. I want to be a PhD. And I said, "I want to do a PhD. Well. Being in Italy, the PhD was going to be in semiotics." So I did a [00:16:00] PhD. My thesis was on semiotics of interfaces.There I had a vision of digital interfaces that consider, for example, instruments like the mouse or joystick as extensions of our body, right? The mouse extends the hand and puts it inside the screen, right? Or the joystick or any other element of the digital interface? Of course. If we talk about the mouse being an extension of the hand, that is a McLuhanian idea.The media as extensions of the human being as a subject. So, of course, I reread McLuhan in Italian at the end of the 90s, and I reconciled with McLuhan because I found many interesting things to understand precisely the interaction with digital machines.In 2002, I moved with my family to Spain. I returned to university life. [00:17:00] And there I began to study the relationship between old and new media. Then I recovered the idea of ecosystem. I recovered the whole new idea, the id

How can the visual arts shed light on the historical relationship between socialism and the natural world?

In this episode of Climate Positive, host Gil Jenkins sits down with Mike Berners-Lee—author, professor, and leading expert on sustainability—to explore the central message of his latest book, "A Climate of Truth." In a world spiraling deeper into climate, ecological, and social crises, Mike argues that the most powerful lever we have isn't new technology—it's honesty. The conversation unpacks why truth in politics, media, and business is essential to breaking the deadlock on climate action and building a livable future.Links:Purchase “A Climate of Truth: Why We Need It and How To Get It” (Published April 2025)Mike Berners-Lee on LinkedInMike Berners-Lee WebsiteEpisode recorded March 26, 2025 Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, Hilary, and Guy at climatepositive@hasi.com.

Med Selkies, 11min., UK Directed by Kelly Ann Buckley Med Selkies is a poetic film exploring a near-future climate crisis where land is ravaged, and a lone human drifts at sea. Succumbing to the depths, the human encounters an ancestral, aquatic force – beings who once diverged from humanity to adapt to life beneath the waves. https://www.instagram.com/k_a_b_art_n_sound Get to know the filmmaker: What motivated you to make this film? ~ This was an expansion of a project I did for Focal Point Gallery – a wonderful contemporary arts gallery in SouthendonSea, UK. I was lucky enough to be commissioned to create an exhibition for their FPG Sounds programme. My project – Echoes in the Fossils – was a sound-led audiovisual 5 part piece – focused on rising sea levels and lost past & imagined future soundscapes, ranging from Mesolithic to Anthropocene epochs, which touched upon futuristic polymer-human hybrids. Med Selkies was a continuation of that exploration, after Echoes in the Fossils had finished. I am interested in the Aquatic Ape theory and the idea that there may be some human cousin out there in parts of the ocean we don't know about. Med Selkies evolved from my thinking about that, and what may happen if we are forced to return to the ocean, living with them, because of climate change. This was combined with the thinking about humans carrying micro plastics in their bodies vs the plastic eating microbes scientists are now working with. What if these grow huge, and we become the food? It's all very mixed up thinking and dreamlike and I suppose this vibe was carried through to the film Subscribe to the podcast: https://twitter.com/wildsoundpod https://www.instagram.com/wildsoundpod/ https://www.facebook.com/wildsoundpod

Hello Interactors, This week, four strange bird encounters landed in my lap — three in real life, one on my screen. First, a crow tore through the bushes in our yard chasing a frantic nuthatch. Moments later, I spotted two more crows feasting on roadkill just outside our house. Then, while walking with my wife, we watched four ducks in hot pursuit of another, flapping furiously down the street — some kind of aerial turf war. And finally, scrolling through my feed, I stumbled on a paper describing a Cooper's Hawk hacking the city's traffic system to hunt smarter. After all that, I tried seeing cities as a bird might. So I wrote as one.HISS, HUM, HUNTI first sense the city as vibration. Before sun rays even breech the branches, a hiss of car tires emerge; street lamps click off; somewhere a garage door rumbles open. Each resonance strikes the hollow chambers of my bones like sonar. It's a sketch of distance, density, and direction. This all makes perfect sense to me even though I am just a kid. A juvenile Cooper's Hawk — Accipiter cooperii — yet the human-made maze below me is as legible to me as the nest I left barely two winters ago. What follows, in human words, is a recount of one day's hunt. I hope to demonstrate what humans regard as intelligence, innovation, and enterprise exists in a single act of predation.DANCING WITH DATA AT DAWNPerched on a gray mast of the Main and Prospect traffic light, I begin to render the scene. My basemap is no pixel grid glowing on some screen across town; it is a topological organ in my scull. Topology matters when a lamppost sits one maneuver away from the porch roof, which is one glide away from the dumpster rim. My so-called ‘bird brain' calculates dynamic flows of probability. One flip of a traffic light, a garbage truck rolls by, and that gust of wind changes direction. My internal map pulses between “larger” when prey likelihood rises and “smaller” when likelihood falls.As I gaze out above the east-west avenue, a slipstream peels off the 7AM wave of commuters. I spot a sparrow in a vortex that spirals from the garbage truck's wake at 07∶13. That acoustic shadow beneath that florist's van is one place I could pass unseen. But is a sparrow worth it?What I am doing — unknown even to myself — is what spatial scientists call real‑time kernel‑density estimation. At any point on a simple 2D path I can plop a small mathematical bump — a kernel. I can then reason about the density mapped below me by stacking up every bump's contribution at a particular spot. That once scatter of points on a map morphs into a smooth curve that shows where meaningful observations truly cluster. I continuously weight a landscape of pigeons, cyclists, and idling SUVs by situational context rather than simple Euclidean distance.Complexity geographer David O'Sullivan calls this kind of adaptive map a narrative model — a story the system tells itself so it can keep acting. My mental basemap obeys what is adjacent to what on this map. After all, a three‑meter hedge is more impenetrable than thirty meters of empty air; therefore straight‑line distances can lie and deceive. When humans try to simplify distances by saying, ‘as the crow flies', they have no idea what they're leaving out.BRAKES BUILD BARRICADESAt 07∶26 a stainless‑steel button is pressed; I hear the relay's metallic click 3.2 seconds before the little white pedestrian blinks alive. I am perched here because I anticipated this poke by pedestrians on their morning commute. Vehicles will now queue as these bi-peds spill into the cross walk. The stacked metal boxes of steel, rubber, and plastic will form a barricade forty meters long…potentially.Brake‑lights align into a pulsing crimson corridor whose half‑life I have calculated and averaged across nineteen previous dawns. Humans call the coming congestion a nuisance, but I call it camouflage. For twenty‑two seconds the asphalt canyon's turbulence drops below an acceptable range. I can now hover as if among cedars.A scientist has been watching from the opposite curb. They will soon begin recording this trick in their field book as so: a hawk anticipates the signal pattern and times its dives to the red‑phase distribution of brake lights.Because most queues are short, but occasionally very long, I have to be careful to time this properly. If I dive for prey based on the overall mean of the lineup, I will arrive while half the cars were still rolling to a stop — dangerous. So instead, I consider just the top-10% longest lines. Scientists marvel that I learned this algorithm in a single winter. I marvel that they need calculators to compute it.ZEBRA STRIPE SLALOM STRIKEI drop. The scent of hot rubber folds swirls with the cedar‑resin on my breast feathers as the warm air fills my plumage. The slowing bumper of a school bus becomes a landing spot — a moving parapet. Fresh into the dive, the thermoplastic zebra stripes flash white‑white‑white like a stroboscopic speedometer. None of this was made for me, yet every dimension matters for my survival. The curb‑to‑planter setback of 0.9 meters sets my glide angle; the bollard spacing — installed last year to calm e‑scooters — creates a slalom that funnels starlings toward an ornamental plum in a front lawn.Urban design handbooks invoke words like livability and placemaking, as if these geometries were some kind of neutral toolkit. But for me, in the instant before impact, this curb‑to‑planter setback, this bollard slalom, adjudicates more than legal fiction — it means life and death.Urban forms may look passive, yet every angle, radius, and dwell time means someone has won and someone has lost — wide curb radii speed cars through a right-turn but lengthen the crossing exposure for a toddler. Urban geometry is power cast in concrete; it never clocks off, and is both political and ecological: a three‑second refuge for a starling is a three‑second targeting solution for me.FORCE AND FEATHERS FACES FEEDBACKImpact. Feathers erupt like dark gray confetti. The starling crumbles under thirty‑four newtons of closing force — about the weight of a brick slammed into its ribcage. While I mantle the prize, a more philosophical bird might wonder: Who authored this death? Was it my neuromuscular burst alone? Or the person whose fingertip initiated a forty‑second cascade of stopped traffic? Or the traffic engineer who — chasing level‑of‑service targets — extended the red phase by six seconds last fiscal year?Philosophy of science warns against naïve linear causation; urban events rarely run in neat A → B lines. Herbert Simon, writing on complex systems, described cities and organisms as “nearly decomposable hierarchies,” where slow, macro‑scale layers — like signal‑cycle regulations, curb geometries, and commuter habits — set the boundary conditions within which rapid micro‑events unfold. My talon snap and a starling's dodge happen inside those higher‑order constraints, even as countless such micro‑acts, in aggregate, keep the larger structure of life humming along.My strike, therefore, is a city‑scale phenomenon folded into tendon and keratin — street grids, signal cycles, and global supply chains compressed into one ballistic gesture. In the metallic tang of blood this mystery unfolds. I taste data: adipose fat tissue infused with fryer grease, feather sheaths dusted in brake dust, hormone ratios ticking through molt stage like seasonal code. Each swallow becomes a lab assessment — an unwitting biopsy of the urban food web — revealing how corn subsidies, restaurant waste, and airborne microplastics percolate up the trophic ladder. To devour a single starling is to audit the metabolic ledger of the Anthropocene, one protein strand at a time.All of which reminds me that agency, mine, yours, the starling, is relational: the prey's demise is over‑determined by a network whose nodes include asphalt viscosity — how a petrochemical blend modulates surface friction, drainage, and midday heat plumes — and municipal bond ratings that decide whether this intersection receives fresh pavement or another crosswalk. Chemistry, finance, and instinct co‑author every kill I make, and every step you take.FIBERS, FOSSILS, AND FIRMWARE REFRESHDusk now drapes the mast in violet. Streetlamps flicker on; LED headlight arrays begin tinting the roadway cyan. Beneath the darkening asphalt, copper once meant for a clicking telegraphs now pipes broadband; beneath that, bricks baked when canals were high‑tech cradle those cables like red‑clay fossils. Media archaeologist Shannon Mattern argues that cities have always computed — tallying grain on cuneiform tablets, ringing bell‑tower hours to synchronize labor, routing mail through pneumatic tubes — only the substrates keep shifting, from clay and bronze to fiber optics and silicon. And trust me, nature was doing math long before humans claimed to invent it.From my perch, epochs overlay transparently: timber palisades, horse drawn carriage tracks, fiber conduits. My hunting tactic is merely firmware patch v.2025 in a 5,000‑year old operating system. Your protocol tomorrow may be Li‑Fi pulses from a smart pole — a future where streetlamps won't just illuminate, they'll whisper streams of data in rapid-fire flashes — or the hiss of an autonomous shuttle that brakes at frequencies human reflexes never reach.And you'll be impressed with yourself. Meanwhile, I listen, map, and adjust — in my world here, survival goes to whoever learns faster, not whoever hits harder. Every fresh tactic buys a heartbeat of advantage, yet it also tightens the ratchet: the prey adapts, signals change, habits shift. Humans follow the same spiral — each smarter signal controller, each app‑driven reroute, plugs one gap while opening two more, slipping us all a step deeper into the city's endless, restless loop.OF DASHBOARDS AND DAGGER-WINGSHumans may obsess over their dashboards and digital twins, yet a hawk that weighs less than a laptop already runs a live cognitive twin of the urban systems you built. Your impressed with monthly model updates while my model is updated at wingbeat resolution. If Homo sapiens hope to build a resilient future they might start where I perch: by listening for weak signals, mapping contingencies as well as coordinates, and recognizing that every curb, click, and feather participates in these nested conversations of forces.The next time you press that crosswalk button and that electromechanical relay inside the signal‑control box snaps the circuit closed, ask not only whether it is safe to cross but what other intelligences have read that clue before you.Meet us in the hush of those red taillights — inhabit that brief, engine‑silent interstitial where the white pedestrian man shines — then test what flickers in your own peripheral “bird brain”. Listen for the thin rustle of variables you once called noise; trace how a single press of that button ripples through nerves, budgets, buildings and beaks. Hold the silence long enough to notice how even I, a vicious dagger‑winged stalker, leave scraps for ground‑feeders and vacate a block after one clean kill so others may eat. If you can rest in that hush without lunging for your phone or some manically measured meaningless metric, you may begin to practice reciprocity — paring appetite to need, letting leftovers seed the next cycle — while stalking your own assumptions with the same taloned precision I bring to feather and flesh. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

For this episode, we sat down with Kate Rigby to discuss her new book Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction. The text is a reclaiming of the ancient theological meditation form, the hexameron, to consider the climate crisis and mass extinction. Meditating on a day of creation in each chapter, she tells us about the insights each day of creation has for the Anthropocene like contemplative practices in the First Day and the move from a "Kingdom" to a "Kindom" of species in the Fifth Day. This episode and the next will be on religion and ecology, a fitting focus on the topic at a time of a new Pope!   For more of Kate Rigby:   Website: https://mesh.uni-koeln.de/   Guest Magpie Recommendation: Magpie Whisperer - https://www.shop.themagpiewhisperer.com/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you're enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded April 25, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford, delves into the conflict between big cats and humans. Nayanika's book, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (2021), was a key source of inspiration for Cataplisms, which examines the intersections of capitalism through a feline lens. In this piece, Nayanika focuses on the governance of nonhuman animals, their entanglements with humans, and what the consequences are.  Mathur talks about the two types of big cats—the seeda saada (straightforward) ones who are scared of humans and keep their distance, and the crooked cats – the adam khor (maneaters) who prey on people. The reasons why some cats become man-eaters, while others avoid humans,  are widely debated. Hypotheses include that the cats have come from elsewhere, due to hunting and poaching, or that they're children of other man-eaters. This uncertainty has consequences. For example, the tiger Ustad, who resided in Ranthambore, was moved out of the sprawling environment of the national park to be confined in a zoo on the suspicion of being a man-eater. This move stirred a national controversy, eliciting an emotional outpouring and contradictory viewpoints. Ustad's life may have been restricted without cause. How does one govern the unknown?  Given the precarious status of most big cat species, the fact that hunting crooked cats is the standard solution of the Indian state becomes even more fraught. Especially, as Mathur underlines, when it is difficult to identify which cat is the crooked one. Drastic measures are often taken posthumously to ostensibly abide with the laws of the land and justify a kill.  Mathur emphasises the need to think more deeply about our entanglements with the non-human, revise our laws and institutional practices, and give up our crooked ways.  This audio story is part of the Cataplisms project. You can learn more about it here.  This story was produced by Tushar Das. You can find him on Instagram and his work on the Brown Monkey Studio website.    About Nayanika Mathur Nayanika Mathur is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies as well as Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford, UK. Educated at the Universities of Delhi and Cambridge she is an anthropologist with an interest in studying the state, ethnographic methods, nonhumans, and the climate crisis. At Oxford Nayanika is co-director of a research network ‘Climate Crisis Thinking in the Humanities and Social Sciences' which explores the ways through which climate change poses a profound challenge to how the academy – from forms of writing and modes of teaching to disciplinary divisions – operates. Nayanika is the author of two monographs – Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy, and the Developmental State in Himalayan India (Cambridge University Press 2016) and Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (Chicago University Press, 2021). The first is centred upon the study of bureaucrats and the second on big cats, though they are often confused. In her argument on the governance of big cats this connection - between the paper tiger that is the Indian state and the crooked cats that are entangled with the planetary crisis – becomes, one hopes, clearer. 

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

À l'occasion de la Journée mondiale des espèces menacées, le 11 mai, BSG rediffuse cette série consacrées aux 5 grandes extinctions de masse connues par la Terre.Sylvie Crasquin est paléontologue, spécialiste des microfossiles, et aussi des extinctions de masse. Vous avez sans doute entendu dire, ici ou là, que nous serions actuellement dans la 6e extinction de masse, dans ce fameux anthropocène, où l'activité humaine dérègle le climat.Avant d'aborder les grandes extinctions du passé, les premiers épisodes de cette série sont faits pour vous donner un contexte, des repères temporels, des notions importantes, pour bien comprendre chacune de ses extinctions.Des bouleversements catastrophiques mais naturels, qui ont changé la donne, fait bifurquer la vie, rebattu les cartes._______

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explores forest carbon offset to understand green capitalism. Commodifying forest carbon offset requires keeping carbon in place through forest protection and valuation, unlike other forest commodities – for example Açaí berries, which also feature in the ethnography – that involve extraction. Initially set out to do a supply chain analysis, Greenleaf instead wrote a well-thought-out account disentangling the relationships at play in a place which at the time was celebrated for being ‘a leader in forest- focused development', through tracing the complexity of the uneven, contingent and contesting cultural, material and multispecies relations involved in making forest carbon valuable. At the same time, she illustrates how forest carbon's commodification turned it into a source of redistributable public environmental wealth and how green capitalism can also reinforce just the marginalization it seeks to combat. By outlining these complex relations and tensions, Greenleaf elucidates broader efforts to create a capitalism suited to the Anthropocene and those efforts' alluring promises and vexing failures. Mentioned in this episode: Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City : Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press, 2017. Appadurai, Arjun, et al. The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship : Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press, 2008. Maron E. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist and legal scholar and currently Assistant Professor at the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. She is interested in how human and more-than-human relationships are shaped through efforts linked to environmental crisis. Her topics of interest include landscapes, green economies, environmental justice and land rights. Olivia Bianchi is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, currently finishing the MSc program in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology. Her interests include anthropological inquiries into materials, especially textiles, as well as the topics of sustainability and waste more generally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

The fifth and final TRUUD podcast explores the future of urban development and the necessary investments for creating healthier places. Host Andrew Kelly with experts Daniel Black, TRUUD Research Co-Director and Thomas Aubrey, Credit Capital Advisory, discuss the issue of short-termism in planning and the importance of long-term vision, drawing parallels with historical and European examples. They highlight the need for integrated planning that includes transport, green spaces, and social infrastructure alongside housing. The conversation examines methods for measuring the impact of urban development on health and the economy, introducing the HAUS model from TRUUD. Financing models, including land value capture, are considered crucial for delivering sustainable and high-quality urban environments. The podcast also touches on the significance of leadership, devolution, and community involvement in achieving these goals.Funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership which aims to reduce non-communicable diseases such as cancers, type-2 diabetes, obesity, mental ill-health and respiratory illnesses, TRUUD is providing evidence and tools for policy-makers in government and industry.Find more at the TRUUD website: https://truud.ac.uk/ Books recommended in the episodeDaniel Black:The Death of Rural England by Alan Hawkins Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher How Institutions Think by Mary Douglas Thomas Aubrey:Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism by Peter Hall, with contributions from Nicholas Falk.Andrew Kelly:The film They Came to a City (1944) directed by Basil Dearden and adapted from a play by J.B. Priestley. Available on BFI Player.Music credit: New York London Tokyo by Petrenj MusicProduced by Beeston Media.

Photographer Zed Nelson joins us in the studio to talk about his new book, ‘The Anthropocene Illusion’, which meditates on the fractured relationship between humans and nature. Plus: contemporary art in Dakar, Senegal.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, you'll discover why The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green resonates so deeply with readers. Through a series of insightful, nostalgic, and often hilarious essays, Green reviews everything from Halley's Comet and Diet Dr Pepper to scratch-and-sniff stickers and Liverpool soccer games. His reflections turn the ordinary into something extraordinary, offering moments of humor, heartbreak, and wonder. He wrote during the covid pandemic and makes you appreciate newly the challenges of connecting with others during times of separation. We discuss the essays we might write to review our own lives—the fleeting experiences, vivid memories, and quiet moments that have shaped our world. Green's unique format invites you to do just that: to pause, reflect, and assign meaning to what might otherwise go unnoticed. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book that makes you laugh out loud and, at times, cry. It's a tender, funny, and profoundly human read—one that stays with you long after the last page. If you haven't picked it up yet, this episode might be just the push you need.

Guest Manish Jain - a radical "unlearner" and rethinker of education - is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter-cultural dialogue. Inspired by MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Ivan Illich, his village grandmother, Indigenous communities and Jain spiritual philosophy, Manish is one of the leading planetary voices for de-schooling our lives. He has helped thousands of young people escape from factory schooling and recover their dignity, self-worth and "alivelihoods." Manish, a Harvard alumnus and former investment banker with Morgan Stanley, has also worked for UNESCO and UNICEF among other, came to question the dominant economic model, and not least, the Western-style education model that is perpetuating destructive growth and development, and fomenting a 'West is Best' mindset. He is the co-founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples' Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, Swaraj University, India's first self-designed people's university where each learner (ages 17-28) can join and work on their unique path, and the Ecoversities Alliance, a global network of alternative universities.Guest Felipe Viveros is an independent researcher, strategist and consultant specializing in campaigning, program design and fundraising. He has worked with governments and organizations globally pioneering the prototyping and implementation of a new development paradigm, and has served as the European representative of the GNH Centre Bhutan, the board Chair of /TR and at the Sacred Head Waters Initiative. Felipe also is co-writer of "In the Anthropocene" (a favorite FVR song over the years) performed by Nick Mulvey.Production Credits:Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive ProducerLiz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), ProducerOrlando DuPont, Radio Kingston Studio EngineerMusic Selections:1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song)Artist: Moana and the Moa HuntersAlbum: Tahi (1993)Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand)2. Song Title: In the AnthropoceneArtist: Nick MulveyAlbum: N/A - released as a single in October 2019Label: N/A; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYnaQIvBRAEAbout First Voices Radio:"First Voices Radio," now in its 32nd year on the air, is an internationally syndicated one-hour radio program originating from and heard weekly on Radio Kingston WKNY 1490 AM and 107.9 FM in Kingston, New York. Hosted by Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), who is the show's Founder and Executive Producer, "First Voices Radio" explores global topics and issues of critical importance to the preservation and protection of Mother Earth presented in the voices and from the perspective of the original peoples of the world.Akantu Intelligence:Visit Akantu Intelligence, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuintelligence.org to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse

Mike Berners-Lee is Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question and There Is No Planet B and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. His latest book is A Climate of Truth.In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.00:00 Clips01:02 Welcome03:03 Mike's Intro- "A professor of what... I'm not really quite sure... a professor of the future?"- Academic: Climate change, carbon flows, sustainable food systems, AI, technology- Small World Consulting "help organisations to respond to the environmental and wilder polycrisis that we are accelerating towards"- "Trying to create a better world for humans and other beings to live in"- From climate change to "the climate emergency... crisis... breakdown"- From trying to deal with climate change in isolation to..."all these things are just so joined up... climate... nature... food... population... social questions... politics... economics..."- "You can't deal with that separate from questions about what matters, who matters, does truth matter... you have to go deeper and deeper..."- Philosophy "I'm very pragmatic about it."- "It's important to work at all of these levels at once"- "I lose patience [with fellow academics] when they lose contact with everyday reality"- "How much of how we basically think and how we basically run society is fit for purpose... and how much we need to go back to the drawing board?"- The Anthropocene "the era in which suddenly it's humans that are so powerful"- "How we do economics... politics... how we think... it all dates back to a time when we could just expand our activities... the world was a robust playground... we could get away with anything we liked... Now we're right up against the stops... a hard physical boundary"- "We've given ourselves enormous physical power and wejust haven't given ourselves, yet, the wisdom with which to wield that power"- "We're like babies running around with machine guns"09:52 What's Real?- Mathematician parents "they also went to church"- "They asked a lot of questions [about religion]... they were not literalists"...21:53 What Matters?34:00 Who Matters?51:05 A Better World?01:24:30 Follow Mike: - "A Climate of Truth" A very simple guide to what's going on in the world…"- Mike on BlueSky @mikebernerslee “I'm on BlueSky and I'm not on X… Please do avoid any social media in which you do not trust the owner… please switch right now”.- Mike on Sentientism.infoAnd more... full show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠"I'm a Sentientist" wall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ via⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ this simple form⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠groups⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The biggest so far is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on FaceBook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Come join us there!

The Anthropocene is the term that describes the current era in Earth's history when human activities are having a significant impact on the planet.  It is an epoch filled with species extinction and species attrition in both numbers and range.  The population of large carnivores are among the most affected species and recovering these animals […]

Felix Adler believed that philosophy should speak to everyone, not only scholars. At its heart, ontology—the study of being—is about exploring what it means to exist and how we find our place in the world. For Adler, this exploration was the foundation of ethical Humanism, a philosophy grounded in naturalism, reason, and empathy. These values help us understand reality and navigate moral choices with compassion and thoughtfulness, essential tools for facing the Anthropocene.

[@3 min] Alright, this week...we go Inside the Huddle with Nathan Granner! The American tenor is set to star in a revised version of Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell's "The Shining" at Portland Opera, but we had to ask him about the opera "Balls." [@33 min] And then…In Home Team, Lyric Opera of Chicago announces their next season, which includes performances by former creative consultant Renee Fleming and…the Smashing Pumpkins?….but, sadly, not on the same concert. [@46 min] Plus, in the ‘Two Minute Drill'…In 2025, conductor Marin Alsop says she is not looking forward to the 30's, and by that, she means the return of the 1930s. GET YOUR VOICE HEARD operaboxscore.com facebook.com/obschi1 bsky @operaboxscore

In this episode, we welcome longtime friend and collaborator of the UCL Global Governance Institute, Professor Philipp Pattberg, to the podcast, a leading scholar in global environmental governance and sustainability transitions. As Director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute and Professor of Transnational Environmental Governance at VU Amsterdam, Philipp's research examines the role of non-state actors, polycentric governance, and institutional complexity in shaping environmental policy. His work has not only advanced our understanding of governance arrangements beyond the nation-state but has also been instrumental in defining the contours of global governance itself – critically interrogating how the very concept of governance is framed, structured, and, ultimately, deployed in the world. With the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, fast approaching, we take stock of the evolving governance landscape under the Paris Agreement. A decade after its adoption, the Paris framework continues to define global climate efforts – but does it still hold promise as an effective governance mechanism? In this episode, Pattberg explores the tensions between ambition and implementation, the growing role of private authority and climate clubs, and the need for transformative governance approaches to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. He also reflects on the broader implications of environmental governance beyond climate, from biodiversity loss to planetary boundaries, and what lessons can be drawn for possible futures of multilateralism. Throughout, he challenges us to consider how governance itself is shaped by ideological assumptions, questioning the analytical ‘boxes' that define the field. Philipp is Professor of Transnational Environmental Governance at VU Amsterdam and Director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute. His research focuses on climate governance, biodiversity policy, and institutional change in global sustainability governance. He has published extensively in leading journals, including Global Governance, Global Environmental Politics and Environmental Policy and Governance, and is the author of Private Institutions and Global Governance and Environmental Politics and Governance in the Anthropocene (with Frank Biermann). Philipp's VU Amsterdam profile can be found here: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/ph-pattberg We discussed: • '20 Years of global climate change governance research: taking stock and moving forward', International Environment Agreements (2022). With Cille Kaiser, Oscar Widerberg and Johannes Stripple. • ‘Forum: Global Governance: Decline or Maturation of an Academic Concept?' International Studies Review (2010). With Hans Overbeek, Klaus Dingwerth and Daniel Compagnon. • ‘The Fragmentation of Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis', Global Environmental Politics (2009). With Frank Biermann, Harro van Asselt and Fariborz Zelli. • ‘Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics', Global Governance (2006). With Klaus Dingwerth.

How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of Elephants: Sharing Lives and Landscapes in Assam (Routledge, 2024) is an anthropological consideration of coexistence, grounded in people's everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam, Northeast India, this book examines human-elephant copresence and how minds, tasks, identities, and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions, asymmetries, and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect. Developing a multifaceted picture of human-elephant relations in a postcolonial setting, each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter, where elephants adapt to human norms, people are subject to elephant projects, and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human-elephant relations, felt through the elephant's power to disrupt and transform human lives, as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human-animal relations, environmental humanities, conservation, and South Asian studies. Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of Elephants: Sharing Lives and Landscapes in Assam (Routledge, 2024) is an anthropological consideration of coexistence, grounded in people's everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam, Northeast India, this book examines human-elephant copresence and how minds, tasks, identities, and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions, asymmetries, and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect. Developing a multifaceted picture of human-elephant relations in a postcolonial setting, each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter, where elephants adapt to human norms, people are subject to elephant projects, and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human-elephant relations, felt through the elephant's power to disrupt and transform human lives, as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human-animal relations, environmental humanities, conservation, and South Asian studies. Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of Elephants: Sharing Lives and Landscapes in Assam (Routledge, 2024) is an anthropological consideration of coexistence, grounded in people's everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam, Northeast India, this book examines human-elephant copresence and how minds, tasks, identities, and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions, asymmetries, and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect. Developing a multifaceted picture of human-elephant relations in a postcolonial setting, each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter, where elephants adapt to human norms, people are subject to elephant projects, and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human-elephant relations, felt through the elephant's power to disrupt and transform human lives, as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human-animal relations, environmental humanities, conservation, and South Asian studies. Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. The Presence of Elephants: Sharing Lives and Landscapes in Assam (Routledge, 2024) is an anthropological consideration of coexistence, grounded in people's everyday interactions with Asian elephants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Assam, Northeast India, this book examines human-elephant copresence and how minds, tasks, identities, and places are shared between the two species. Sharing lives and landscapes with such formidable beings is a continuously shifting and negotiated exchange inherently composed of tensions, asymmetries, and uncertainties – especially in the Anthropocene when breakdowns in communication increasingly have a violent effect. Developing a multifaceted picture of human-elephant relations in a postcolonial setting, each chapter focuses on a different dimension of encounter, where elephants adapt to human norms, people are subject to elephant projects, and novel interspecies possibilities emerge at the threshold of nature and society. Vulnerability is a common experience intensified in contemporary human-elephant relations, felt through the elephant's power to disrupt and transform human lives, as well as the risks these endangered animals are exposed to. This book will be of interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human-animal relations, environmental humanities, conservation, and South Asian studies. Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2024) presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis. The Australian continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there is a rich history of Indigenous land-ethics and cosmological thought. By using the age-old idea of 'cosmos'--the order of the world--to foreground ideas of a good order and chaos, reciprocity and more-than-human agency, this book interrogates the Anthropocene in Australia, focusing on notions of colonisation, farming, mining, bioethics, technology, environmental justice and sovereignty. It offers 'cosmological readings' of a diverse range of authors--Indigenous and non-Indigenous--as a challenge to the Anthropocene's decline-narrative. As a result, it reactivates 'cosmos' as an ethical vision and a transculturally important counter-concept to the Anthropocene. Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell argues that the arts can help us envision radical cosmologies of being in and with the planet, and to address the very real social and environmental problems of our era. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, and postcolonial, transcultural and Indigenous studies, with a primary focus on Australian, New Zealand, Oceanic and Pacific area studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Has human activity changed our planet so much that it's now time to rename the current epoch? 

Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2024) presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis. The Australian continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there is a rich history of Indigenous land-ethics and cosmological thought. By using the age-old idea of 'cosmos'--the order of the world--to foreground ideas of a good order and chaos, reciprocity and more-than-human agency, this book interrogates the Anthropocene in Australia, focusing on notions of colonisation, farming, mining, bioethics, technology, environmental justice and sovereignty. It offers 'cosmological readings' of a diverse range of authors--Indigenous and non-Indigenous--as a challenge to the Anthropocene's decline-narrative. As a result, it reactivates 'cosmos' as an ethical vision and a transculturally important counter-concept to the Anthropocene. Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell argues that the arts can help us envision radical cosmologies of being in and with the planet, and to address the very real social and environmental problems of our era. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, and postcolonial, transcultural and Indigenous studies, with a primary focus on Australian, New Zealand, Oceanic and Pacific area studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this month's episode, we spoke with Sarah Dimick about her new book Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures. It connects literature and the environment through an idea of seasonality and rhythm. Climate change can be understood as a time of unseasonableness, of environmental events and cycles being outside normal rhythms of time. Living today is defined by this arrhythmia, and Sarah charts new territory in studying literature for its reflections of this cyclicality, what she calls literary phenology.   For more from Sarah Dimick:   Email: sarah.dimick@northwestern.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you're enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded January 30, 2025   CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2024) presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis. The Australian continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there is a rich history of Indigenous land-ethics and cosmological thought. By using the age-old idea of 'cosmos'--the order of the world--to foreground ideas of a good order and chaos, reciprocity and more-than-human agency, this book interrogates the Anthropocene in Australia, focusing on notions of colonisation, farming, mining, bioethics, technology, environmental justice and sovereignty. It offers 'cosmological readings' of a diverse range of authors--Indigenous and non-Indigenous--as a challenge to the Anthropocene's decline-narrative. As a result, it reactivates 'cosmos' as an ethical vision and a transculturally important counter-concept to the Anthropocene. Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell argues that the arts can help us envision radical cosmologies of being in and with the planet, and to address the very real social and environmental problems of our era. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, and postcolonial, transcultural and Indigenous studies, with a primary focus on Australian, New Zealand, Oceanic and Pacific area studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Today I want to start a fun new series on a topic that I've wanted to explore for quite a while, which is the concept of regenerative education. I've worked as a teacher and educational facilitator in different capacities since the beginning of my career, first in before and after school programs for kids, then as an arts and environmental educator at summer camps, then English as a second language in both South Korea and Guatemala, and in between teaching various technical workshops in natural building, permaculture, ecosystem restoration, the transition journey to regenerative agriculture, and of course water management and water cycle restoration. Every time I engage in these activities I gain huge respect for teachers and the incredible skill and patience it takes to be an effective educational facilitator. Similarly, I want to continue to grow as a teacher and even improve my skills as a student since I'm also always in some sort of course or other at the same time. I know this is a wide and nuanced topic and so to help me to become oriented to the considerations and scope of what I'm exploring, I reached out to Pavel Cenkl, who is the Academic Dean at Prescott College in Arizona (US) and the Founder of the Regenerative Learning Network. His work focuses on the intersection of transformative learning, community, and ecology and building a more regenerative, resilient, and equitable educational future. He's also the author of several books including Transformative Learning (with Satish Kumar), “Relational Ecologies: Building Regenerative Community Learning Networks” in Regenerative Ecosystems in the Anthropocene (2023) and “Lessons from the Periphery” in Regenerative Learning (2022). Pavel's current book in progress is titled Networked Learning: Transforming Higher Education through Distributed Learning. This conversation weaves from the troubles with traditional or conventional educational models and why they leave so many behind, and increasingly in debt, through alternative models of teaching and the potential that educational institutions really have. We explore the role of technology in learning as well as the things the digital world can't replace. Pavel also give his take on what makes effective educators and a window into their process of creating learning curriculums that are in line with the concept of regenerative education. This is the first in a series of interviews that I'm in the process of planning so if you have any ideas of what questions I should explore or who I should speak to in upcoming interviews, I encourage you to reach out to me through the Regenerative Skills Discord server. 

When you think of sharks, do you think Jaws? Or a creature with enough understanding to seek help from a person? Would you be surprised to know, that someone has been working with sharks for years to the point, that they allow her to take out hooks lodged in their skin? Given our misconceptions of the creatures, I'd imagine you would be. Cristina Zenato is that person, who's a master diver and expert on sharks. She's built an amazing relationship with the sharks around the Bahamas, creating a deep connection with them, to a degree I can only understand through bonds we build with more familiar animals. In this interview Cristina gives us a deeper understanding of sharks, her ability to work with them, the virtue in knowing a single place deeply, the reality of the marine environment that's facing environmental destruction, and some wisdom from the sharks. Credit to Kewin Lorenzen as videographer and Cristina Zenato for the image and videos accompanying this episode. (00:00) - Understanding Fear and the Unknown (03:14) - Building Trust with Sharks (10:51) - Establishing Relationships with Marine Life (18:06) - The Reality of Shark Encounters (25:07) - The Role of Humans in Shark Behavior (32:36) - Sharks in the Anthropocene (34:11) - Sharks and Human Interaction (37:22) - Shark Population Decline (42:30) - Conservation Efforts and Education (45:30) - Lessons from Sharks (54:22) - Living in Symbiosis with Nature

Leila Taylor is a Brooklyn-based writer, speaker, and designer whose work focuses on the intersection of history and horror and the gothic in contemporary culture. She's the author of Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread (out Feb 11, 2025) and Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul, her essays have appeared in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay, The Repeater Book of the Occult, The New Urban Gothic: Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene, and the graphic novel Bitter Root. On this episode, Leila discusses the captivating power of haunted houses, the aptly named Brutalist architecture movement, and the irresistible appeal of the “witch house.” Pam also talks about apotropaic house magic, and answers a listener question about amulets and talismanic jewelry.Check out the video of this episode over on YouTube (and please like and subscribe to the channel while you're at it!)Our sponsors for this episode are Ritual + Shelter, Dear Antigone, BetterHelp, Mithras Candle, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and ZOUZ IncenseWe also have print-on-demand merch like Witch Wave shirts, sweatshirts, totes, stickers, and mugs available now here, and all sorts of other bewitching goodies available in the Witch Wave shop.And if you want more Witch Wave, please consider supporting us on Patreon to get access to detailed show notes, bonus Witch Wave Plus episodes, Pam's monthly online rituals, and more! That's patreon.com/witchwave

(Conversation recorded on November 6th, 2024)     The vision of a carbon-free, net-zero society is often framed around the promise of transitioning away from fossil fuels. But what can we learn from past “energy transitions” that might inform how feasible – or unrealistic – this vision actually is?  Today, Nate is joined by energy and technology historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz for a lesson on the importance of understanding the historical trajectory of energy use for realistically navigating the unprecedented challenges humanity faces today – including the dominant narrative of a modern-day “energy transition.” Jean-Baptiste explores the interdependent relationship between different energy sources—from wood to coal to oil—and reveals how this history shapes our hopes for renewables and nuclear energy moving forward. How can examining the history of energy and material use help us fully grasp the scale at which human societies actually consume them? What role do our current economic systems play in driving an ever-growing demand for new energy sources? In the history of our species, have we ever fully transitioned off of one energy source and replaced it with another – and what does this imply for the hope of a fossil-free future?      About Jean Baptiste Fressoz: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian and researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Center of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, France. His work focuses on environmental history, technology and energy, and the Anthropocene. He is the author of Happy Apocalypse: A History of Technological Risk, as well as the co-author of the book Chaos in the Heavens: The Forgotten History of Climate Change. Most recently, he wrote More and More and More: An All Consuming History of Energy.   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the whole story of The Great Simplification? Watch our 30-minute Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners  

Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II Alaska's Seth Kantner is back with us, as promised, for part two. Seth was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing, and making a life on the land there ever since. He is the author of the novel Ordinary Wolves, considered one of the most powerful, gritty, and true-to-life Alaska books ever written. His non-fiction books, Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land, and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, illustrated with the photos that have made him a world-renowned wildlife photographer, chronicle a life, a people and a landscape tangled in the conflict between the oldest powers of nature, wildlife and wilderness and the storm of changes wrought by the modern Anthropocene. Through it all, he's maintained his profound sense of wonder, and his equally profound sense of humor. He even found time to write a children's book (Pup and Pokey) about the mishaps and adventures of a wolf pup and a porcupine surviving on the tundra. Join us for a freeform conversation with one of the most unique voices of our time.   --- The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.  Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.  BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Christopher J. Preston is a writer, public speaker, and environmental philosopher based in Missoula, Montana. His new book Tenacious Beasts takes an inspiring look at wildlife species that are defying the odds and teaching important lessons about how to share a planet. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Christopher talks about an optimistic future with wildlife, envisioning a fresh way to live alongside the natural world in the Anthropocene age. Touching on different facets of ecological restoration from Indigenous knowledge to rewilding practices, Christopher describes with a measure of hope, a future in which humans and animals can once again coexist. [Originally published Aug 8, 2023. Ep 101] Christopher's Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047562/tenacious-beasts/ Christopher's website: https://christopherjpreston.com/ Listen to Nature Revisited on your favorite podcast apps or at https://noordenproductions.com Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/bdz4s9d7 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/5n7yx28t Podlink: https://pod.link/1456657951 Support Nature Revisited https://noordenproductions.com/support Nature Revisited is produced by Stefan van Norden and Charles Geoghegan. We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions - contact us at https://noordenproductions.com/contact

Shifting Sovereignties: A Global History of a Concept in Practice (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) explores practical manifestations of sovereignty from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Taking a global-history perspective and centring Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, it destabilises overly neat theoretical notions of the concept. Shifting Sovereignties shows that, in practice, sovereignty is far from absolute, perpetual, indivisible, or supreme; rather it is fuzzy, compromised, fragmented, and layered. From these observations, the authors derive a historical conceptualisation which makes change and contingency core aspects of the understanding of sovereignty. Rather than understanding sovereignty as a characteristic of individual states, Mihatsch and Mulligan propose the notion of “sovereignty regimes”: frameworks of legitimation enforced through mutual recognition. These regimes are created and managed by more or less institutionalised structures which embody what the authors call “system sovereignty.” Sovereignty regimes and system sovereignty are, like sovereignty itself, continuously changing and contingent. This process of change forms the core of the book. Shifting Sovereignties thus contributes a practical, historical perspective on a concept which is foundational in political science, international relations, and international law. If purchased from De Gruyter, you can get the book with a 30% discount for €41.96 / £38.15 / $46.19 by ordering with discount code DGBSS30 Moritz Mihatsch is Assistant Professor in World History at the University of Cambridge. Michael R. Mulligan is an Assistant Professor in Law at the Euro University of Bahrain. The book has a X/Twitter page, @ShiftingSovs. Benjamin Goh (@BenGohsToSchool) is an independent scholar and humanities educator in Singapore. He holds a MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. (Hons.) in History from Yale-NUS College. He is a historian of education, and has published on the history of sex education in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Shifting Sovereignties: A Global History of a Concept in Practice (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) explores practical manifestations of sovereignty from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Taking a global-history perspective and centring Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, it destabilises overly neat theoretical notions of the concept. Shifting Sovereignties shows that, in practice, sovereignty is far from absolute, perpetual, indivisible, or supreme; rather it is fuzzy, compromised, fragmented, and layered. From these observations, the authors derive a historical conceptualisation which makes change and contingency core aspects of the understanding of sovereignty. Rather than understanding sovereignty as a characteristic of individual states, Mihatsch and Mulligan propose the notion of “sovereignty regimes”: frameworks of legitimation enforced through mutual recognition. These regimes are created and managed by more or less institutionalised structures which embody what the authors call “system sovereignty.” Sovereignty regimes and system sovereignty are, like sovereignty itself, continuously changing and contingent. This process of change forms the core of the book. Shifting Sovereignties thus contributes a practical, historical perspective on a concept which is foundational in political science, international relations, and international law. If purchased from De Gruyter, you can get the book with a 30% discount for €41.96 / £38.15 / $46.19 by ordering with discount code DGBSS30 Moritz Mihatsch is Assistant Professor in World History at the University of Cambridge. Michael R. Mulligan is an Assistant Professor in Law at the Euro University of Bahrain. The book has a X/Twitter page, @ShiftingSovs. Benjamin Goh (@BenGohsToSchool) is an independent scholar and humanities educator in Singapore. He holds a MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. (Hons.) in History from Yale-NUS College. He is a historian of education, and has published on the history of sex education in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Shifting Sovereignties: A Global History of a Concept in Practice (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) explores practical manifestations of sovereignty from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Taking a global-history perspective and centring Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, it destabilises overly neat theoretical notions of the concept. Shifting Sovereignties shows that, in practice, sovereignty is far from absolute, perpetual, indivisible, or supreme; rather it is fuzzy, compromised, fragmented, and layered. From these observations, the authors derive a historical conceptualisation which makes change and contingency core aspects of the understanding of sovereignty. Rather than understanding sovereignty as a characteristic of individual states, Mihatsch and Mulligan propose the notion of “sovereignty regimes”: frameworks of legitimation enforced through mutual recognition. These regimes are created and managed by more or less institutionalised structures which embody what the authors call “system sovereignty.” Sovereignty regimes and system sovereignty are, like sovereignty itself, continuously changing and contingent. This process of change forms the core of the book. Shifting Sovereignties thus contributes a practical, historical perspective on a concept which is foundational in political science, international relations, and international law. If purchased from De Gruyter, you can get the book with a 30% discount for €41.96 / £38.15 / $46.19 by ordering with discount code DGBSS30 Moritz Mihatsch is Assistant Professor in World History at the University of Cambridge. Michael R. Mulligan is an Assistant Professor in Law at the Euro University of Bahrain. The book has a X/Twitter page, @ShiftingSovs. Benjamin Goh (@BenGohsToSchool) is an independent scholar and humanities educator in Singapore. He holds a MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. (Hons.) in History from Yale-NUS College. He is a historian of education, and has published on the history of sex education in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Dr. Luke Kelly, Associate Professor in Quantitative Ecology at the University of Melbourne, joins us to discuss his research on fire and biodiversity in Australia, focusing on the diverse ecosystems, the challenges posed by changing fire regimes, and the role of grazing and invasive species. We explore the importance of understanding plant traits in relation to fire resilience and the ongoing biodiversity crisis, and how Australian fire science is working to address these issues.  Resources: Kelly, L. T., et al. (2023). Understanding fire regimes for a better Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 48(1).   Dr. Luke Kelly Email, Publications, Website Dr. Carolina Baruzzi @wildlandmgmt, Publications   Have suggestions for future episodes? Send us your feedback! (here) Check out our newest podcast, Wild Turkey Science! Enroll now in our free, online fire course. Available to all. This podcast is supported by listener donations - thank you for being a part of this effort. For more information, follow UF DEER Lab on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.   Music by Dr. David Mason and Artlist.io Produced and edited by Charlotte Nowak  

Dr. Luke Kelly, Associate Professor in Quantitative Ecology at the University of Melbourne, joins us to discuss his research on fire and biodiversity in Australia, focusing on the diverse ecosystems, the challenges posed by changing fire regimes, and the role of grazing and invasive species. We explore the importance of understanding plant traits in relation to fire resilience and the ongoing biodiversity crisis, and how Australian fire science is working to address these issues.    Resources: Kelly, L. T., et al. (2023). Understanding fire regimes for a better Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 48(1).   Dr. Luke Kelly Email, Publications, Website Dr. Carolina Baruzzi @wildlandmgmt, Publications   Have suggestions for future episodes? Send us your feedback! (here) Check out our newest podcast, Wild Turkey Science! Enroll now in our free, online fire course. Available to all. This podcast is supported by listener donations - thank you for being a part of this effort. For more information, follow UF DEER Lab on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.   Music by Dr. David Mason and Artlist.io Produced and edited by Charlotte Nowak  

Dr. Tara B. M. Smith is an early career interdisciplinary academic that works in the fields of science fiction, literature, religion and popular culture. Tara is currently a research affiliate at the University of Sydney. In 2024 Tara was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Harvard Divinity School, Boston, writing on religious ideas and experiences of people that paint and play within the science fiction “grimdark” universe of Warhammer 40,000. Tara is a passionate educator who holds a Graduate Certificate of Higher Education and has taught in academic settings for over 5 years across a variety of units including media studies, religious studies, writing skills and composition. When Tara is not studying, she spends time with her two cats Thomas and Momo and her fiancé Luke in Sydney, Australia.While most people who talk and think about the story of Dune focus on the political and religious aspects of the series [for example, the Bene Geserit with their genetic breeding program and the Kwisatz Haderach, or the Butlerian Jihad -the war against thinking machines = technology and AI], Tara's article, “The Anthropocene in Frank Herbert's Dune Series” from 2021 takes a different approach and explores the ecological/philosophical aspects of the story. As she notes, Frank Herbert was warning his readers about their anthropocentric tendencies and urging people instead to think about ecological conservation, or at least he appears to be planting a seed in the minds of the readers to be more aware of their place or role on the Earth.Poem mentioned in this interview:“I drove my feet through a desertWhose mirage fluttered like a host.Voracious for glory, greedy for danger,I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab,Watching time level mountainsIn its search and its hunger for me.And I saw the sparrows swiftly approach,Bolder than the onrushing wolf.They spread in the tree of my youth.I heard the flock in my branchesAnd was caught on their beaks and claws!”– from Arrakis Awakening by the Princess Irulan (Herbert 1978, 228)Dr. Tara Smith:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-b-m-smith-phd-fhea-306418192/“The Anthropocene in Frank Herbert's Dune Series”, Foundation 140, 50.3 (2021): 62-74. The_Anthropocene_in_Frank_Herberts_Dune.docTheme Music and Editing: Daniel P. SheaEnd Production: Stephanie SheaThe full episode can be heard at my Patreon page: www.patreon.com/RejectedReligion, or can be purchased for a one-time fee. 

What can we learn from whales, the ways they communicate, and how their life cycle affects whole ecosystems, absorbing carbon and helping cool the planet? How have we contributed to the ecological degradation of the environment? How does language influence perception and our relationship to the more than human world?NAN HAUSER (Whale Researcher; President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation; Director, Cook Islands Whale Research) describes how a whale protected her from a tiger shark during an underwater filming session and reflects on their emotional connection.DAVID FARRIER (Author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils · Professor of the University of Edinburgh) explores the long-term impacts humans have on the environment, emphasizing the material legacies we leave behind for future generations.DANA FISHER (Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity; Author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action) discusses her "apocalyptic optimism," arguing that significant social and environmental change is likely to occur in response to extreme risk events, which will drive mass mobilization.SIR GEOFF MULGAN Author of Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social & Political Imagination; Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation at University College London) on the evolution and potential of the circular economy. He elaborates on how adopting practices that promote reusing and recycling can drastically reduce waste and resource consumption.LEAH THOMAS (Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet; Founder of @greengirlleah & The Intersectional Environmentalist platform) advocates for an inclusive approach that addresses the specific environmental injustices faced by marginalized communities and encourages incorporating social justice into environmental advocacy.MAYA VAN ROSSUM (Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations; Leader of Delaware Riverkeeper Network; Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment) underscores the profound impact of pollution and environmental degradation on human lives and stresses the significance of storytelling that address these deep-rooted issues.MICHAEL CRONIN (Author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene; Senior Researcher at the Trinity Centre for Literary & Cultural Translation) argues for horizontal relationships with the environment, moving away from hierarchical views, and emphasizes the need to recognize the non-human world.To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast