For you, listener, it’s been a week, but for us recording, it’s been a month! We talk about our boring lives and exciting emails. Aparna’s starting a newsletter about looking after fountain pens. Haley sings a bird song. We discuss why technology is not, and cannot be, the antithesis to nature. We wonder whether it is better to be an expert or enthusiast. Aparna discovers that bird accents are remarkably consistent. Haley discovers beetles that scuttle upside down. For the main discussion we read from the texts that have most helped with our dissertations.
Aparna spotlights “28ish Days Later” BBC Radio 4 Podcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bvg9nm/episodes/player)
Haley spotlights Green New Deal UK (https://www.greennewdealuk.org/)
Mentions:
“The Arrival” by Shaun Tan, 2006
“Come From Away” the musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, 2013
“I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature” by Lucia Perillo, 2009
“H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald, 2014
Ursula K. Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards in 2014
“Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain” edited by Heather Taylor Johnson, 2017
Zadie Smith essay “On Optimism and Despair, from “Feel Free”, 2018
“The Hatred of Poetry” by Ben Lerner, 2016
“When the Hero is the Problem” by Rebecca Solnit, 2019
“Exposure” by Olivia Sudjic, 2018
The Marginalian website (https://www.themarginalian.org/)
Thank you to Pádraig Ó Tuama whose poem “The Facts of Life” inspired the title of this podcast.
Cover image by Sanjana Kapur.
