This episode features Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien Scott, who co-launched the “Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative” at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University in fall of 2022. We talk about the initiative and its culminating conference, which took place in May of 2025. We discuss their interdisciplinary exploration into how plants and fungi help us rethink the nature of mind and matter and humans’ relationship to the more-than-human world. You can learn more about the initiative and conference here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/research-programming/thinking-plants-fungi
Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for an episode featuring Natalia and another episode featuring Rachael. They're doing exciting work at the forefront of the sort of issues addressed at the intersection of religion and ecology.