It’s the first episode of 2017. Happy new year! Alex interviews Duke University law professor Jedediah Purdy about the political history of nature and its uncertain future.

Anywhere you look on the planet, you will find evidence of human behaviour: metalloids in the soil, greenhouse gases in the air, a vortex of trash in the oceans. That is why some scientists have proposed that we are now living in a new geologic epoch. It’s called the Anthropocene: the age of humans. Now that we are a literal force of nature, what world will we make? Jedediah Purdy wrestles with that question in his book, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene (Harvard University Press).

Jedediah Purdy in Grayson Highlands State Park, Virginia.