This month's episode is a podcast about a podcast! We sat down with Nate Otjen and Jessica Ng, two of the leaders of the audio story series "Mining for the Climate," to discuss the audio documentary series and its investigation of the rhetoric arguing for continued mining as essential to the "green transition." The first season, set in Gaston County, North Carolina, details the controversy surrounding a proposed lithium mine in the county, and the upcoming second season takes listeners to Nevada to discuss the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine. We discuss their creation process, how they constructed the narrative across five episodes, learn some updates on Gaston County since the first season, and explore the second season's auditory, photographic, and cartographic elements.

For more about Mining for the Climate:

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Guest Reading Recommendations:

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Episode recorded February 28, 2025

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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: [email protected]

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Episode recorded January 30, 2025

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Today's episode begins a slight turn toward ecoaesthetics in the next few episodes, and we begin with Carolyn Fornoff's new book Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Cultural Production in the Era of Climate Change (2024). Carolyn spoke to us about subjunctivity, a grammatical mood characterized by hypotheticals, and how its imaginative style has sprouted up in recent Mexican film, activism, and texts not to depict climate change in an "evidentiary" sense (a typical narrative style of eco-literature and scholarship to highlight society's quantifiable effect on the environment) but in a more conditional and conjectural sense of possibility. What might the future hold, and what might be done about it?

For more from Carolyn:

Website: https://carolynfornoff.wordpress.com/

Bluesky: @c4.noff.bsky.social

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Episode recorded December 12, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In the final episode of our extinction series, we chatted with two extinction biologists, Hope Sutton and Sara Schweitzer, who work for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Sara is the assistant chief and wildlife diversity program director and Hope is the eastern wildlife diversity supervisor. We discussed their challenges in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville and their triumphs in the successful rehabilitation of some of the more than 100 endangered animals under their purview! While their work is field-focused, they remind us that the stories told about the animals are extremely important to influence public support for the species.

For more on Sara and Hope, go to Ncwildlife.org, where the organization publishes quarterly reports.

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Episode recorded December 16, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this second episode of our ongoing extinction series, we sit down with Jean-Thomas Tremblay and Steven Swarbrick to discuss their thought-provoking co-written manuscript, Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction. Our conversation with them touches not only on the concrete topics of extinction and cinema, but also explores the theoretical potential of negations and contradictions as frameworks for understanding the relationship (or not) between humans and the more-than-human world. 

For more from Jean-Thomas and Steven:

https://jeanthomastremblay.carrd.co/

https://www.stevenswarbrick.com/

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded September 26, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this first episode of our extinction series, we met with Todd May to discuss his new book Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Times. This massive question is accessibly analyzed yet Todd also brings in issues underdiscussed in extinction discourse: Who is the inexact "we" behind the question, how do different humans contribute to ecological crisis and therefore human and nonhuman extinction, and what is the role of art in deciding whether humanity's existence should continue? Instead of concluding on one side or the other, Todd finds asking the question of humanity's extinction itself is a productive thought experiment for ourselves and our community.

For more on Todd May:

Website: https://www.toddmayphilosopher.com/

Email: [email protected]

Todd's Reading Recommendation: The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration by Peter Goldie (2002).

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded September 18, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this episode, we met with Nadia Colburn to discuss her new poetry collection I Say the Sky! Deeply engaged with the ecological collapse happening around us while also reinvesting in our own existence, her poems range from the simplicity in appreciating the beauty of an onion to reassessing childhood trauma. We also talk through her multi-hyphenate pursuits and the continual search for the "symphony inside you".

For more on Nadia:

Website: nadiacolburn.com

Email: [email protected]

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded July 22, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In our final episode of our polar environmental humanities series, we have Penn State English professor Hester Blum on to discuss her environmental humanities research on polar ecomedia! Dr. Blum discusses the ephemeral texts and productions aboard Arctic and Antarctic voyages including newspapers. Newspapers on polar voyages? Yes, you heard that right. These texts have contemporary and global lessons to teach in that their production took place while in extreme environments.

For more on Hester:

Twitter: @hesterblum

Email: [email protected]

Website: hesterblum.com

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded May 22, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In our second episode of our polar environmental humanities series, we jump from the landscape paintings of the circumpolar north to the southern continent of Antarctica and speak with Dr. Elizabeth Leane at the University of Tasmania! As a Professor of Antarctic Studies, we discuss her work on perceptions of Antarctica historically and also sensorially. From pandemic misconceptions of cleanliness and silence on the continent to science fiction and Antarctic tourism, Leane walks us through the complex histories of the South Pole. We have one more episode in the series coming out next month!

For more on Elizabeth:

Twitter: @elizabeth_leane

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-leane-ab10706b

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded March 26, 2024.

This is the first episode in our polar environmental humanities series with Dr. Isabelle Gapp from the University of Aberdeen! We met to discuss her new book, "A Circumpolar Landscape", and the fascinating comparisons between Scandinavian and Canadian landscape painting beyond national borders. We discuss the way the paintings can often exhibit masculine performativity in their erasures and how the painters are nostalgically reminiscing about a landscape changing in front of their eyes from colonial environmental degradation, making the landscapes they painted an "environmental history [that] had become a memory". Stay tuned for two more episodes in this series!

For more on Isabelle:

Twitter: @issy_gapp

Instagram: @isabellegapp

Website: https://isabellegapp.com/

Email: [email protected]

ASLE EcoCast:

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Episode recorded March 6, 2024.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0