Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Is the Earth Alive? (Ep. 39)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Is the Earth Alive? (Ep. 39)
Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is alive: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don’t just live on the earth– we are the Earth. We’re an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. In this episode, Ferris (a contributor to the New York Times and a bestselling author) explains how we and our environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates climate–and how the Earth isn’t merely a stage where life plays out, but is an actual swirling, bubbling body that’s alive in its own right. There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of “aliveness” in science. But in his new book, Becoming Earth, Ferris argues that this planet meets the mark. He points to the self-regulating chemistry of the atmosphere, to the vast networks of microscopic plankton that alter global climate, and to something as ordinary (and astonishing) as soil, which can turn dead matter into living things.
We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave?
We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave?
“Life is a planetary phenomenon. It’s not that Earth had life evolve on it, but rather that Earth came to life itself. It is a garden that made itself. It sewed itself. It nurtured itself. It waters itself. And we are all part of that large, living architecture.”
– Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth and contributing writer for the New York Times
Learn More About Ferris's Work
Ferris’s debut book, Becoming Earth (Penguin Random House, 2025), was a New York Times bestseller and has been selected as a “Best Book of the Year” choice by seven major sellers. You can ask your local independent bookstores to order it for you, take it out of the library, or purchase it here or anywhere linked on this page.
Ferris is a contributing writer to over a dozen major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. You can find links to his articles on his website here. For more of his writing about ideas from this episode, we recommend reading his piece “The Earth is Just As Alive As You Are” for The New York Times.
Other articles by Ferris that particularly piqued our interest include “The Story of Storytelling” and “The Social Life of Forest”
Sources of Inspiration Mentioned in the Episode
Ferris mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis, the name given to the idea that life on Earth not only emerged but also actively shaped and sustained its environment to support life itself. The theory originated in the 1960s, when James Lovelock, a British atmospheric chemist and inventor, first proposed the concept. At the time, Lovelock was consulting with NASA on a project to detect signs of life on Mars, which required identifying chemical signatures that might indicate a living planet, such as atmospheric composition. He observed that Earth’s atmosphere was far from chemical equilibrium (e.g., with gases like oxygen and methane coexisting), which led him to propose that life plays an active role in regulating planetary conditions. Evolutionary theorist and microbiologist Lynn Margulis later collaborated with Lovelock, helping to develop and support the Gaia Hypothesis with evidence from microbial evolution and Earth’s early biosphere. Watch this video of her presenting it to NASA.
At first, many scientists initially rejected or even ridiculed the Gaia Hypothesis; it was viewed by as seeming too anthropomorphic, or unscientific, or simply too mystical-sounding. But as Ferris notes in this episode, today scientists widely acknowledge that life and environment have coevolved, and that feedback loops do exist between biological and geophysical systems. The underlying idea has become much more mainstream.
The new scientific field that emerged from this work, and which Ferris mentioned in the episode, is called zoogeochemistry. Here is one article that further describes that field.
It’s also worth noting that well before modern Western science began to evolve, worldviews of indigenous people in various parts of the world expressed some similar concepts of the earth as being alive through myths, rituals, and stories.
Ferris mentioned one of his favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, who sometimes wrote quite directly about the connectivity of life. Here’s one passage from The Waves (1931), in which one of the central characters, Bernard, speaks to that idea:
“Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.”s
View all episodes
By Shape of the World Studios
4.9
4646 ratings
Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is alive: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don’t just live on the earth– we are the Earth. We’re an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. In this episode, Ferris (a contributor to the New York Times and a bestselling author) explains how we and our environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates climate–and how the Earth isn’t merely a stage where life plays out, but is an actual swirling, bubbling body that’s alive in its own right. There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of “aliveness” in science. But in his new book, Becoming Earth, Ferris argues that this planet meets the mark. He points to the self-regulating chemistry of the atmosphere, to the vast networks of microscopic plankton that alter global climate, and to something as ordinary (and astonishing) as soil, which can turn dead matter into living things.
We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave?
We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave?
“Life is a planetary phenomenon. It’s not that Earth had life evolve on it, but rather that Earth came to life itself. It is a garden that made itself. It sewed itself. It nurtured itself. It waters itself. And we are all part of that large, living architecture.”
– Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth and contributing writer for the New York Times
Learn More About Ferris's Work
Ferris’s debut book, Becoming Earth (Penguin Random House, 2025), was a New York Times bestseller and has been selected as a “Best Book of the Year” choice by seven major sellers. You can ask your local independent bookstores to order it for you, take it out of the library, or purchase it here or anywhere linked on this page.
Ferris is a contributing writer to over a dozen major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. You can find links to his articles on his website here. For more of his writing about ideas from this episode, we recommend reading his piece “The Earth is Just As Alive As You Are” for The New York Times.
Other articles by Ferris that particularly piqued our interest include “The Story of Storytelling” and “The Social Life of Forest”
Sources of Inspiration Mentioned in the Episode
Ferris mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis, the name given to the idea that life on Earth not only emerged but also actively shaped and sustained its environment to support life itself. The theory originated in the 1960s, when James Lovelock, a British atmospheric chemist and inventor, first proposed the concept. At the time, Lovelock was consulting with NASA on a project to detect signs of life on Mars, which required identifying chemical signatures that might indicate a living planet, such as atmospheric composition. He observed that Earth’s atmosphere was far from chemical equilibrium (e.g., with gases like oxygen and methane coexisting), which led him to propose that life plays an active role in regulating planetary conditions. Evolutionary theorist and microbiologist Lynn Margulis later collaborated with Lovelock, helping to develop and support the Gaia Hypothesis with evidence from microbial evolution and Earth’s early biosphere. Watch this video of her presenting it to NASA.
At first, many scientists initially rejected or even ridiculed the Gaia Hypothesis; it was viewed by as seeming too anthropomorphic, or unscientific, or simply too mystical-sounding. But as Ferris notes in this episode, today scientists widely acknowledge that life and environment have coevolved, and that feedback loops do exist between biological and geophysical systems. The underlying idea has become much more mainstream.
The new scientific field that emerged from this work, and which Ferris mentioned in the episode, is called zoogeochemistry. Here is one article that further describes that field.
It’s also worth noting that well before modern Western science began to evolve, worldviews of indigenous people in various parts of the world expressed some similar concepts of the earth as being alive through myths, rituals, and stories.
Ferris mentioned one of his favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, who sometimes wrote quite directly about the connectivity of life. Here’s one passage from The Waves (1931), in which one of the central characters, Bernard, speaks to that idea:
“Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.”s
More shows like The Shape of the World
View all
This American Life
91,124 Listeners
Hidden Brain
43,638 Listeners
On the Media
9,205 Listeners
The Daily
112,330 Listeners