Shows
In the WeedsHorse Travel and Horse Warfare: A Conversation with Historian Gary ShawWe’re back! After a long hiatus due to professional/ life stuff, I’m happy to share with you my interview with Gary Shaw, Professor of History and Medieval Studies at Wesleyan University. Continuing our series on horses, we explore another angle of the long-standing relationship between humans and horses, looking at the role that horses played in human transportation and warfare. As we brace ourselves for the impact of A.I., I find it instructive to look back to a time when our transportation and military technologies depended on other animals. It’s impossible to fully comprehend the impact...
2025-03-1553 min
On The Basis Of DemocracyEpisode 9: Words as Weapons: Unpacking Trump's Rhetoric and the Rise of HateIn this compelling episode, Dr. Nicole Asquith joins us to delve into her enlightening study: "We’re led by stupid people": Exploring Trump’s use of denigrating and deprecating speech to promote hatred and violence."
We unpack her analysis of verbal-textual hostility (VTH) in Trump's campaign speeches and discuss the alarming implications of linguistic choices made by politicians in shaping public discourse.
Dr. Asquith shares her insights on the specific categories of verbal hostility, focusing on denigration and deprecation and how they serve as precursors to acts of violence. She highlights the power of political spee...
2024-11-0150 min
Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed HubTech Savy ChildrenJoin Heather Harries, Founder of the Education Hub with her guest Nicole Asquith, for a discussion on navigating Technology as parents and children. A thought-provoking podcast delving into children and technology. Join us as we explore the impacts of screen time on young minds, from its influence on cognitive development to its implications for social interaction, safety and emotional well-being.
2024-03-2522 min
Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed HubLet Them Fly : Working Mum Guilt with Heather HarriesJoin Heather Harries, Founder of the Education Hub with her guest Nicole Asquith to discuss mum guilt and hacks to over come it. The pod cast follows the journey of parenting whilst trying to hold down a full time job; featuring discos baths and gobble monsters.
2024-03-1017 minIn the WeedsDinosaurs with Lydia MilletThe title of Lydia Millet’s last novel - Dinosaurs - seems to wink at the threat of human extinction, and, yet, its explicit referent in the book is to birds, those sometimes-alien creatures who survived the impact of the asteroid that wiped out most of their kind. This kind of double meaning, something like a sign that points in multiple directions, abounds in Dinosaurs, which is at once a moving human narrative and a reflection on the ways in which our frailty puts us at the mercy of our shortcomings as a species but also, ultimately, serves as an...
2024-02-2646 min
Drivr's Home Radio TestHRT010 - DrivrTracklist:
1. Gotshell - Second Today (Original Mix)
2. Egbert, Secret Cinema - Element (Original Mix)
3. Radio Slave - Vision (Obscure Shape & SHDW Remix)
4. Yotam Avni - Circulation (Original Mix)
5. Argenis Brito, Bloody Mary - Sed Non Satiata (Original Mix)
6. Coyu - 1+1 Feat. Thomas Gandey (Truncate Remix)
7. Pig&Dan - Acid Bath (Original Mix)
8. Vaal - Wander To Hell (Baikai Remix)
9. Ben Sims - Love & Hurt (Gary Beck Remix)
10. Moby - Like a Motherless Child (Nicole Moudaber Remix)
11. Felipe Venegas, Fransico Allendes - Llovizna (Luciano Remix)
12. Adellacosta - No Perspective (Original Remix)
13. Dustin Zahn - Born Spark (Original Remix)
14. Shelly Johannson...
2023-08-312h 05In the WeedsDavid Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous with Trevien Stanger, Part 2A continuation of my earlier episode in which Trevien Stanger - instructor of environmental studies at St. Michael's College in Vermont - and I discuss Abram's book, which, I think it's fair to say, has had a profound effect on both of us. This time, we focus on Abram's argument about the impact of the invention of the alphabet on our relationship with the natural world. If you'd like to listen to part 1 of this discussion - https://www.buzzsprout.com/356774/11992722If you'd like to listen to my conversation with Johanna Drucker about the invention o...
2023-07-2944 minIn the WeedsStudy of a Liminal Corridor with Michael InglisThere’s a funny little corridor tucked away behind a park in the Village of Pleasantville, New York where I live, where bears and bobcats amble through, walking atop the Catskill Aqueduct, the 100-year-old artery that delivers water from the Catskill mountains to New York City. Fellow resident, Michael Inglis, who has been hiking this patch of semi-wilderness for the past twenty-five years, has recently written a book about it, Woods and Water: Walking New York’s Nanny Hagen Brook. He calls this a “liminal space,” existing as it does at the margins of a human-dominated landscape. After reading his book...
2023-06-0221 minIn the WeedsWilliam Taylor on the Domestication of HorsesWhen we think of major innovations in human history, what comes to mind are inert technologies - from the wheel to the computer - but one of the most significant developments occurred as the result of the relationship between humans and another animal, horses. The domestication of horses brought about a major sea-change in human society, as we became much more mobile. It affected everything from agriculture to warfare to the dissemination of language and culture. To discuss the domestication of horses and the impact of this relationship, I spoke with William Taylor, Assistant Professor and Curator of Archeology at...
2023-04-1943 minIn the WeedsMaddieJennifer Lynch Fitzgerald tells the story of her relationship with Maddie, a mustang rescued in Habersham County, Georgia from a man who was collecting horses to sell for meat. When Maddie was found, she’d been tied to a tree for months, was malnourished and very angry. Jen tells how, in spite of her limited experience with horses, she learned to train or "gentle" Maddie. She discusses what she's learned about horse language and what it's meant to her to develop a relationship with an animal who was once wild. This is the first installment of a short series of epi...
2023-01-3031 minIn the WeedsDavid Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous with Trevien Stanger, Part 1I’ve mentioned this book numerous times on the pod. It’s fair to say that David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass are the two books that really kicked off the idea for In the Weeds. And it feels like time to dig into Spell. All the more so since my current episodes are exploring the question “how did we get here?” Not only how did we materially arrive at our current environmental crisis but how did we, in the West, develop a culture that led to this mess, a culture that...
2023-01-061h 07In the WeedsThe Invention of the Alphabet with Johanna Drucker“Letters have power,” Johanna Drucker tells me. But what is the nature of this power and how did it all begin? Unlike writing, the alphabet was only invented once. Somewhere in Egypt or the Sinai Peninsula, about 4,000 years ago, speakers of a Semitic language adapted Egyptian hieroglyphics to represent the basic phonetic building blocks of their language. All modern alphabets can be traced back to this origin.Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, and author of numerous books, including her most recent, Inventing the Alphabet (University of Chicago Press...
2022-12-0643 min
Flightless BirdLeaf Blowers"In this week’s Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand why Americans love leaf blowers so much. Plagued by leaf blowers around his tiny one bedroom apartment,
David attempts to reach President Joe Biden to discuss leaf blower use at the White House. Failing miserably, he has to settle for another politician - also powerful - Pleasentville Village Trustee, Nicole Asquith. Why are various cities and States attempting to phase out gas guzzling leaf blowers, and what are they so dangerous? David speaks to Seattle Met magazine journalist Benjamin Cassidy, who recently wrote about the Seattles leaf blower tu...
2022-12-0648 minIn the WeedsWilliam Bryant Logan on the Ancient History of Managed WoodlandsWilliam Bryant Logan’s book Sproutlands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees opens the door to a little known history, in which people all over the world, from Norway to Japan to pre-colonial California, managed trees in a way that was beneficial to trees and humans alike. Logan stumbled upon this history after taking on a job for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for which he was given the task of pollarding trees. Pollarding is an ancient technique for pruning trees that, along with coppicing, was used for millennia to cull woodlands without having to destroy the...
2022-10-3151 minIn the WeedsJohn Roulac on AgroforestryPicking up where we left off in the spring, we return to the topic of farming through a conversation with John Roulac, entrepreneur and executive producer of the movie Kiss the Ground. Roulac’s latest project, Agroforestry Regeneration Communities, supports initiatives in Central America and East Africa that teach farmers how to grow what are sometimes called food forests. Food forests mimic the structure and diversity of natural forests; they have the ability to restore ecosystems and bring diversified nutrition and economic development to rural communities.This approach to farming – new by contrast with po...
2022-09-2132 minIn the WeedsNate Looney on Urban Farming, Jewish Ethics and Diversity Equity and InclusionFor the second of three episodes on farming, I talk to Nate Looney about Jewish ethics, Diversity Equity and Inclusion and, yes, farming, specifically, his experience as an urban farmer using hydroponics and aquaponics to produce gourmet leafy greens and microgreens for restaurants and farmers markets in his hometown of L.A.Nate Looney has followed an unusual career path, from the U.S. National Guard to service in New Orleans and Iraq as a military police soldier to CEO and Owner of Westside Urban Gardens, an urban agricultural start-up based in L.A., to his current...
2022-07-0130 minIn the WeedsFilmmaker Jim Becket on The Seeds of Vandana Shiva“When you control seed, you control life on earth,” says Indian environmental activist and scholar Vandana Shiva in the new documentary film The Seeds of Vandana Shiva. Known as “Monsanto’s worst nightmare,” Vandana Shiva has been a champion of small, organic farms, since she established seed banks, in a subversive act she likens to Gandhi’s championing of the spinning wheel, to counter the efforts of large corporations to control agriculture in India through the selling of pesticides and trademarked GMO seeds. In this episode - the first of three on farming - I talk to filmmaker Jim Becket about...
2022-06-1434 minIn the WeedsLydia Millet's Mermaids in ParadiseMermaids are the fly in the ointment in Lydia Millet’s very funny satirical novel Mermaids in Paradise, “an absurdist entry into the mundane,” as she puts it. And, yet, her mermaids, who have bad teeth and the particular features of individuals, also draw us into the wonders of the ocean itself. Mermaid lore, Millet reminds us, recalls manatees and the order of the Sirenia, and it speaks to “the way we imprint our imaginations onto the wild.” One of the most interesting writers working at the intersection of fiction and environmentalism, Lydia Millet has written over a dozen nove...
2022-05-0650 minIn the WeedsSo You Think You Know What a Mermaid Is...As co-editors of The Penguin Book of Mermaids, a compendium of stories from all over the world, Marie Alohalani Brown and Cristina Bacchilega show us that mermaids are not always white, not always beautiful and don’t even always have a fish tail (sometimes mer creatures have the tail of a whale or an anaconda). What they also teach us is that legends of merfolk and other kinds of water spirits exist pretty much everywhere that people do.What is so fundamental about these myths of hybrid creatures that bridge the human world and the wat...
2022-04-0858 minIn the WeedsMore Real Than Real: VR and the Metaverse with Lisa MesseriAccording to Mark Zuckerberg and others, the metaverse - a would-be digital double of the real world - is good for the environment, because it will make us drive less, fly less. We won’t have to visit the barrier reef in person; we can experience it from our own living rooms. But will this descent into technology make us more alienated than we already are from the natural world? And do we really want to recreate an idea out of dystopian science fiction anyway? These are some the the issues I discuss with Lisa Messeri, Assistant Professor at Ya...
2022-03-1853 minIn the WeedsAir Travel, Climate Change and Don’t Look Up with Chris SchabergChris Schaberg, whom you might remember from my episode on SUV commercials, has written a number of books on air travel. I wanted to talk to him about the impact of air travel on climate change but also about what air travel - and, increasingly, the fantasy that we can be tourists in space as well - reveals about the relationship between us human animals and the sophisticated technology that drives globalization (and, as a fall out, climate change). I was also itching to talk about Adam McKay’s film Don’t Look Up, in which a comet hurtling towa...
2022-02-1042 minIn the WeedsArt as Climate Action with Susannah Sayler and Ed MorrisSusannah Sayler and Ed Morris have been working at the intersection of art and climate activism for the last fifteen years. They are co-founders of the Canary Project, started in 2006 and inspired by a series of articles that Elizabeth Kolbert published in The New Yorker that eventually became her book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Adapting Kolbert’s investigative strategy, Ed and Susannah initially set out to photograph places around the world being impacted by climate change - in order to call out a warning, as the name Canary Project suggests. (Though the photographs themselves or the ins...
2022-01-2143 minIn the WeedsOn the Origins of Christmas Trees with Judith FlandersIn time for the winter solstice, we revisit our episode on the history of Christmas trees with historian Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography (2017) as well as numerous books on the Victorian period, including The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime and The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.Flanders helps us to parse history from myth, as we discuss the origins of Christmas and the practice of bringing evergreen trees into our homes to decorate them for the holidays. Guitar rendition of “O Tanne...
2021-12-1629 minIn the WeedsExploring the Forest Canopy with Meg LowmanIn our continuing series on climate change, I talk to Meg Lowman who knows more about trees than most people on this planet. She invented canopy ecology - the practice of studying trees in the treetops - and has worked across 46 countries and 7 continents, designing hot air balloons and walkways and other ways to explore and study this diverse biosphere. We discuss her recent book, The Arbonaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us. This riveting memoir takes us from her small-town roots in New England to her work in Australia, where she f...
2021-12-0348 minIn the WeedsStudying Climate Change at Black Rock Forest with Andy ReinmannTo find out what we know about how a warming planet will affect the forests in my home state of New York, I visit Black Rock Forest, a research station in the Hudson Highlands, and talk to Andy Reinmann, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center of the Graduate Center, CUNY and in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Hunter College.We talk Phenocams, melting snow packs in New England, which tree species are likely to survive a warmer climate and how trees can help mitigate the impact of...
2021-11-1936 minIn the WeedsThe Unnatural World with David BielloIn the second installment of our series on climate change, I talk to environmental journalist and science curator for TED Talks David Biello about his book, The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age. Biello argues that, culturally, we’re still prey to the false notion that there’s a divide between the human and the natural, when, in fact, we humans are dependent on the natural world for our survival and are, furthermore, affecting every corner of the world, no matter how remote. We explore this notion of the Anthropocene - the geologic term mean...
2021-11-0546 minIn the WeedsReckoning with our Emotions About the Climate Crisis with Daniel SherrellIn his new book, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, Daniel Sherrell reflects on his career as a climate activist and tries to process the emotional fallout, for himself and his generation - Millennials -, of growing up in the age of climate change. Written as a letter to his imagined future child, the book is a kind of Dantean descent into the pit of emotions - from frustration, grief, rage and despair to hope - that all of us who are engaged with what is happening to our planet must grapple with. T...
2021-10-1858 minIn the WeedsWe’re Back! Intro to A New Season on the Climate CrisisThis past summer, the UN Secretary General, in connection with the UN report on climate change, spoke of a “code red for humanity,” a warning that was underscored by the fires, floods and searing temperatures we saw worldwide. Now, the Democrats in Congress (most of them, anyway) are fighting to pass the most ambitious climate bill to date and, a month from now, the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, will convene in Glasgow. So, do we really have any choice but to tackle the #climatecrisis head on? That said, with all the podcasts on climate change, I’m leaving most o...
2021-10-0203 minIn the WeedsMountains and Desire with Margret GrebowiczIn 1923, when British mountaineer George Mallory was asked why he wanted to summit Mount Everest, he famously answered “Because it’s there.” These days, there are still many who want to climb Mount Everest, but the conditions of mountaineering have altered significantly: people are outraged by the trash on Mount Everest; concerned about the risks incurred by the Sherpa; worried about environmental degradation and indigenous rights, as in the case of Uluru in Australia, which is now closed to climbers; and, last year, the Himalaya were closed to climbers due to Covid 19. All of this complicates the age-old question, “Why do it...
2021-06-1835 minIn the WeedsThe Rich Ecology of Oak Trees with Doug TallamyEntomologist Doug Tallamy and I discuss his new book, The Nature of Oaks, in which he pulls back the curtain on the fascinating world of living creatures that inhabit oak trees. From acorn weevils to spun glass caterpillars, the book introduces us to a cast of unusual characters, many of them insects. Tallamy and I discuss these characters, how to best plant oaks (pssst! plant acorns) as well as other engaging and useful oak facts. To listen to my earlier interviews with Doug Tallamy, you can click here for my interview on Bringing Nature Home and here for my...
2021-06-0241 minIn the WeedsThe Forests of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with Philip WeinsteinIn our fourth episode on the forest in fiction, I speak to Philip Weinstein, Professor Emeritus of Swarthmore College and author of numerous books on fiction, including What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison, about the forest and the natural world in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In this gripping story by the Nobel-prize winning author, the forest plays numerous roles, including that of a place of refuge - notably during Sethe’s escape from slavery -, a place exempt from institutional pressures, and a place that remembers a pre-European past and connects former slav...
2021-05-131h 01In the WeedsThe Forest of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Randall MartinIn our third episode on the forests of the Western imagination, I discuss A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Randall Martin, Professor of English at the University of New Brunswick and author of Shakespeare & Ecology. Associated with the night, with dreams, the imagination, madness, and the theater itself, the forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - inhabited by fairies who delight in playing pranks on the Athenians who enter it - is not merely a passive backdrop but, rather, a potent realm that challenges many of the traditional categories of Western culture, including the distinction between human...
2021-04-141h 12In the WeedsThe Tangled Woods of the Psyche: Ellen Handler Spitz on Sondheim and Lapine’s Into the WoodsIn the second episode of our series on the forest in fiction, Ellen Handler Spitz - a renowned specialist of psychology and the arts and senior lecturer in the Humaninties program at Yale - and I discuss Sondheim and Lapine’s musical, Into the Woods. Into the Woods brings together characters and story lines from several well-known fairy tales, drawing particularly on the Brothers Grimm’s versions, and explores the moral repercussions of the characters’ actions in a second act that begins “Once upon a time… later.” In his 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment, psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelhe...
2021-03-2358 minIn the WeedsThe Forests of Dante’s InfernoIf you hear a story that begins “in a dark wood,” you’re instantly transported to a place of fear, of danger and disorientation. Where does this come from? One important, early source is Dante’s Inferno. In the first of our series on fictional forests, Peter Olson and I discuss the two principal forests of the Inferno, the “dark wood” of the opening, where the pilgrim is lost, and the “brooding wood” of Canto XIII, in which those who committed suicide have been transformed into bushes and trees which can speak and bleed. Peter Olson, the Provost of North Central Mi...
2021-03-0550 minIn the WeedsThe Forests of Our Imagination - Intro to a new seriesWhenever we enter a fictional forest - whether in a film, a novel or a fairy tale - we know we’re bound for a story of adventure, possibly of danger, magic or transformation. In the next few episodes of In the Weeds, we’ll be exploring works of fiction in which the forest plays a key role. Underlying our discussions will be some broader questions: why is the forest such an evocative place in our stories? What does it stand for? And what does the imagined forest tell us about our relationship with actual forests, past and p...
2021-02-1904 minIn the WeedsGrowing Whole Children in the GardenTwo friends - Margaret Ables, co-host of the podcast What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, and Sonia Fujimori, educator and former coordinator of the edible garden at our children’s elementary school - join me in conversation with educator and anthropologist of education Lorie Hammond to discuss her new book, Growing Whole Children in the Garden.For more information see https://in-the-weeds.net/podcast/growing-whole-children-in-the-garden/
2021-01-311h 13In the WeedsReading Rocks with Marcia BjornerudGeologist Marcia Bjornerud gives us primer in “reading rocks.” We start by discussing where the “stuff” of our solar system comes from - you’ll be amazed by the origins of water on Earth, for example - and then delve into the different rock types, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Bjornerud explains the “grammar” of these different rock types and gives us tips for what to look for as well as reading recommendations. Though it clearly takes practice and experience, learning to read the rocks in our local landscapes can help us see the places where we live in a whole new way...
2021-01-1754 minIn the WeedsA History of the Christmas Tree with Judith FlandersThere are two things about Christmas that you can count on, says historian and author Judith Flanders: most of the origin stories you’ve heard are false and people have always thought ‘Christmas was better in the old days.’ Though it may not be true that Santa’s red suit came from Coca Cola, nor that Prince Albert brought the Christmas tree to Britain, the history of Christmas that Flanders relates in her 2017 book, Christmas: A Biography, is just as compelling. In this episode, I talk to her about the history of the Christmas tree, a subject I first l...
2020-12-1430 minIn the WeedsUsing Wilderness to Sell CarsSince the 1990s, we’ve been seeing the same kind of commercials: sweeping vistas of the American wilderness, forests and clear streams, rocky ledges, perhaps a dusting of snow. And, cutting through the landscape, a jeep or an SUV. No other cars in sight. Such a vision would seem to be fraught with contractions. For starters, this is not how most of us experience driving. Where we experience roads and traffic, SUV ads give us off-roading in beautiful country, using nature to sell technology. And, yet, these ads are clearly effective.I discuss these fantasies of...
2020-11-2546 minIn the WeedsThe B WordWhen my daughter was eight years old, she came home one day and announced that she "knew what the B word was." But she was confused: why was a word for a female dog - the most awesome of creatures, in her mind - also an insult for girls and women? Interesting, I thought. What did this insult say about our relationship to animals, to dogs specifically, and about the gendering of that relationship? What did it say about how our culture connects animals and women?These questions sparked a series of conversations - with l...
2020-11-1438 minIn the WeedsCovid, Economics and the Environment: A Chat with Marc ConteHow fragile is our economy? Can it rebound from the impact of the shutdown and - similarly - from stresses climate change might inflict in the future? These are some of the questions I’ve found myself asking during the Covid pandemic. Looming over all of these was a broader and more troubling question: were the success of our economy and the future health of our planet somehow at odds? Following the logic of capitalism, would we only thrive if we produced and consumed at a rate that would eventually put our own species, as well as many others, at...
2020-10-2653 minIn the WeedsThe Apocalyptic #3: Invasive Species by Joe WallaceAfter a long hiatus, In the Weeds picks up where we left off with a third installment of our series on the apocalyptic!From parasitic wasps to zombie ants and the hive mind, Joe Wallace’s novel Invasive Species takes strange natural phenomena and spins them into an apocalyptic yarn, in which a new, emergent predator threatens the human species. This is an unusual take on the apocalyptic genre I explored previously in interviews with theologian Bernard McGinn (episode #18) and novelist Brian Francis Slattery (episode #21). In this case, the end-of-days is not the end for everyone, just po...
2020-10-0143 minKicking & StreamingEpisode 2 – “Regrets” ft. The Browning Version (1951) and The Land of Steady Habits (2018)Beau and Chris ponder on the nature of failure and midlife crises as they discuss Anthony Asquith's Criterion Classic, The Browning Version, and Nicole Holofcener's Netflix original, The Land of Steady Habits.
2020-06-291h 25In the WeedsSocially Distanced with Amy HallIn the fourth and last of my "socially distanced with" episodes, I touch base with Amy Hall, VP of Social Consciousness for the clothing brand Eileen Fisher with whom I discussed "the hidden cost of clothes" in episode 14.The clothing industry is among those being hit hard by the pandemic. Amy and I speculate about the long-term effects this may have and the ways in which it may alter our buying habits. We also chat about what she's up to, including her new blog (http://www.amyjhall.com) and a consultancy business she's started to help other...
2020-06-0918 minIn the WeedsSocially Distanced with Brian SkarstadIn the third of my “socially distanced” episodes - shorter episodes in which I touch base with former guests to see what they are up to during the quarantine - I talk to violin maker Brian Skarstad. He tells me about some of the advantages of socially distancing for him, such as taking on projects he normally doesn’t have the time for, as well as the challenges. Together, we reflect on the way this unusual time is changing our relationship to music.A few links you might find useful. In our chat, Brian mentions The Ja...
2020-05-0718 minIn the WeedsThe Apocalyptic #2: Lost Everything by Brian Francis SlatteryIn the second episode of my series on the apocalyptic, I talk to Brian Francis Slattery about his novel Lost Everything, which won the 2012 Philip K. Dick award. The novel follows two friends on a mission up the Susquehanna River, in an apocalyptic not-too-distant future, in which climate change and civil war have transformed the Northeast of the United States into a tropical wasteland, replete with monkeys climbing over post-industrial ruins.Slattery and I discuss the canoe trip he took along the Susquehanna with two biologist friends to research the book; his discussions with a r...
2020-04-2747 minIn the WeedsSocially Distanced with Marcia BjornerudIn the second of my “socially distanced” episodes, I talk to geologist Marcia Bjornerud at her home in Wisconsin, who says that the coronavirus pandemic is a reminder that, throughout all of geologic time, microbes have been in charge. We talk about viruses, what odd entities they are, the curious role they have played in evolution, and we muse over the possible long-term effects of the dramatic changes to our lives and culture this virus has wrought.
2020-04-2023 minIn the WeedsSocially Distanced with Doug TallamyIn a series of short episodes, I check in with previous guests to see what they are up to under stay-at-home orders and to find out what they have to say about the pandemic. In the first of these "socially distanced" chats, I talk to entomologist Doug Tallamy who tells us that the biologists saw this coming due to the problems of overpopulation and crowding in cities. Look at what happens when you have too many caterpillars in a container, he tells me.We also talk about the possible benefits of more time at home, i...
2020-04-1418 minIn the WeedsThe Apocalyptic with Bernard McGinnThe word “apocalyptic” pops up in conversation a lot these days, at a time when fiction and reality seem to be blurring. In the first episode of a series on the apocalyptic and what it reveals about how we feel about what’s happening to the natural world, I talk to the world-renowned theologian Bernard McGinn about the origins of the “apocalyptic imagination” and how fundamental it is both to Christianity and to narrative in Western culture.
2020-04-1032 minIn the WeedsNature's Best Hope with Doug TallamyGardening and observing the natural world may offer us solace during this time of worry and confinement. So I bring you my latest interview with entomologist Doug Tallamy, who has been teaching many of us about the need to garden with native plants in order to feed insects, especially pollinators, and preserve all of the "ecosystem services" that we humans, along with other animals, need to survive. Tallamy's latest book, Nature's Best Hope, introduces the idea of a Homegrown National Park comprised of all of our gardens and private spaces stitched together to form corridors of wilderness...
2020-03-2248 minIn the WeedsGMOsNick Kaplinsky, Chair of Biology at Swarthmore College, and I discuss Nina Fedoroff's book Mendel in the Kitchen, on the genetic modification of food, going back the earliest domestication of crops such as wheat and corn, to foods currently labeled as “GMOs.” Kaplinsky surprises me with the statement that opposition to GMOs on the left ressembles climate change denial on the right. What is at the heart of this claim? To better understand genetically-modified foods, you have to delve into the science, which, Kaplinsky points out, very few of us have the education to properly understand, and you have to l...
2020-03-0243 minIn the WeedsFor the Love of PenguinsHow do baby birds learn their songs? Why does a female bird want a mate who knows his neighborhood songs? What impact does bird migration have on the 9/11 memorial “Tribute in Light”? These are some of the many fascinating issues that come up in my discussion with Alan Clark of Fordham University, a biologist and expert in bird vocalizations, whose career was inspired by the experience of falling in love at-first-sight with penguins he met during a research fellowship in New Zealand.
2020-02-0745 minIn the WeedsThe Hidden Cost of Clothes with Amy Hall, VP of Social Consciousness for Eileen FisherWe go down the rabbit hole of how clothes are made and contemplate the hidden social and environmental costs of fashion with Amy Hall, VP of Social Consciousness for the fashion brand Eileen Fisher, as our guide. When you return to the surface, you're likely to look at your clothes in a whole new way!More more info go to in-the-weeds.net
2020-01-1344 minIn the WeedsFashion Mash-UpListen to some giggly girls tell about the camp where they took old clothes, cut, patched and sewed them into new ones, flippy, sparkly....OMG. A little morsel of podcast to tide you over while I'm busy tending to our new puppy Coco and juggling kids and the general slobber of family life. Coming up... my interview with Amy Hall, VP of Social Consciousness for Eileen Fisher on fashion and the social and environmental cost of our clothes.More more info go to in-the-weeds.net
2019-12-2708 minIn the WeedsThe Pope's Encyclical on the EnvironmentIn “Laudato si,” known as the Encyclical on the Environment, Pope Francis presents an “urgent challenge” to protect our “common home,” the Earth. I discuss this letter addressed not just to Catholics but to all people, with Christiana Zenner, Associate Professor of Theology, Science and Ethics in the Department of Theology at Fordham University. We talk about Pope Francis’ folding together of his concern for the environment and for the lives of the poor; his framing of the issues in a language of ethics and spirituality and much more. For a link to the full text of the Encyclical and other epis...
2019-12-1357 minIn the WeedsGotham Coyote Project with Chris NagyUsing heat-sensitive cameras and radio collars, Gotham Coyote Project tracks coyotes, as they make a life for themselves in the Bronx, in parks and a golf course and, occasionally, show up in Central Park or trotting along the West Side Highway. This amazingly resilient animal challenges our understanding where “nature” resides and gives us a blueprint for how we might welcome wilderness into our suburbs and our cities.
2019-11-2937 minIn the WeedsCoyote America with Dan FloresPredators are a two-faced god for humans, according to Dan Flores, historian and author of Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. After all, we were once both predators and prey.With this episode, we continue to explore this complex relationship of humans and predators by looking to the song dogs of the prairie. Coyotes inspired several Aztec dieties, served as the model for the protagonist of the earliest American stories, and, in defiance of a concerted effort by federal and state agencies to wipe them off the face of the earth, thrive throughout the lo...
2019-11-151h 05In the WeedsGenesisIn 1967, medieval historian Lynn White published a now-infamous paper that traces the current environmental crisis back to a Judeo-Christian worldview… essentially, he blames the creation story in Genesis, especially the part in which God gives humans the task of “ruling” over animals. I wanted to take a closer look and knew the thing to do was to ask a rabbi.I got help from Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, rabbi-in-residence for Hazon, the Jewish lab for sustainability.We talk about Rabbi Rothstein’s own background - he grew up in a mixed-race family in an ultra-ort...
2019-11-0152 minIn the WeedsBonus Episode: The Twilight SagaI’m having trouble letting go of wolves…I’m fascinated with the way we use these predators as models for who we are, as humans, and who we are, as animals. So, before we move on to our next topic, I thought it would be fun to look at an example from popular culture. My friend Alisa Hartz and I discuss the Twilight movies, based on the YA novels by Stephenie Meyer, in which Bella, a teenage girl who has recently moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest to live with her father...
2019-10-2525 minIn the WeedsIn the Company of Actual WolvesLast time, we looked at Little Red Riding Hood and the “big, bad wolf” of the fairy-tale tradition. This time, we turn to actual wolves and their situation in North America today. I interview Maggie Howell, the Director of The Wolf Conservation Center. We talk about why wolves are important to the ecosystem (and how the Northeast has suffered in their absence) and what is being done to protect endangered wolf species, including a rather unusual approach to reintroducing captive wolves into the wild. For more information, go to in-the-weeds.net and nywolf.org.
2019-10-1930 minIn the WeedsThe Wolf in the WoodsHow did the wolf come to be “carnivore incarnate”? Why do we project our own beastliness onto wolves? With the help of Maria Tatar, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, and Aleksander Pluskowski, Associate Professor of Archeology at the University of Reading, I deconstruct the figure of the fairy-tale wolf.
2019-10-0527 minIn the WeedsOjai Olive OilHow do you shop for a good bottle of olive oil? What’s the difference between organic and conventional? 1 percent and .25% acidity? Learn this and much more from my conversation with Philip Asquith, Master Miller of Ojai Olive Oil - oh, and, my brother. We recorded this interview while exploring the olive grove and mill, on the edge of the Sespe Wilderness Area.
2019-09-2038 minIn the WeedsWhat is culture?Environmentalists tell us that to save our species - and many others that depend on us - we need a change in our culture, not just our technology, but what exactly is culture?With the help of Michael Ziser, Associate Professor of English at UC Davis, and Caleb Scoville, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley, I explore the history and meanings of the word culture. It turns out this history has a lot to tell us about our relationship to the natural world.
2019-09-0836 minIn the WeedsShade-Grown Isn't Good EnoughI'm traveling, so I don't have time to produce a full episode this week, but I hope you'll enjoy this segment of my interview with Doug Tallamy that didn't make it into my first episode.In this part of our conversation, Tallamy talks about his recent research on the impact of coffee production on bird habitat and the new "Bird Friendly" label he's developed with the Smithsonian.
2019-08-2305 minIn the WeedsThe ViolistPart 2 of my inquiry into the connections between wood and music and, by extension, trees and people. I interview Judy Nelson, violist for the New York Philharmonic, who tells me stories of violas, old and new, teaches me what makes an instrument "speak" and gives me insight into the dynamic relationship between a musician and her fiddle.For pictures and more info see in-the-weeds.net.
2019-08-0927 minIn the WeedsThe Violin MakerIn my quest to understand the relationship between trees and music, I seek out Brian Skarstad, an expert violin maker (he scoffs at the term "luthier") who makes violins by hand, employing many of the same techniques that violin makers have been using for hundreds of years. I talk to him about tonewood, how a violin is made and the myriad details that affect a violin’s sound and quality. It’s like opening a portal to a secret world.
2019-07-2630 minIn the WeedsThe Earth's Story with Marcia BjornerudI talk with Marcia Bjornerud about her recent book, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. We discuss how to read rocks (“rocks are not nouns but verbs”), the “developmental novel” in which the Earth is the main character, and the geologist’s perspective on climate change.
2019-07-1237 minIn the WeedsNative-Plant Gardening with Carolyn SummersA companion to the first episode with Doug Tallamy, this episode features Carolyn Summers, landscape architect, adjunct professor at the Native Plant Center at Westchester Community College and author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East. She helps us understand how to put Doug Tallamy's call to "Bring Nature Home" into practice. For pictures of the plants we discuss see in-the-weeds.net
2019-06-2835 minIn the WeedsGardening for Wildlife (and Human Life) with Doug TallamyDoug Tallamy, Professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, proposes a shift in our suburban gardening culture. To ensure the future of many species, including our own, Tallamy argues we must garden with more native plants to feed insects. For more information see in-the-weeds.net
2019-06-1433 min2019-06-0701 min