Storytelling Animals

My guest for the 20th(!) episode is science journalist Hannah Seo--we talked about her reporting on the tragic demise of the Christmas Island forest skink and the Bramble Cay melomys, two extinct species she recently eulogized for the guardian. How did they die? Could we have stopped it? What was it like for the scientists who watched them fade away?

Hannah's extinction obituary of the skink: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/18/christmas-island-forest-skinks-lizard-extinct-aoe

And of the melomys: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/extinction-obituary-bramble-cay-melomys-climate-change-aoe

Follow Hannah on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ahannahseo

Sign up for my free weekly newsletter: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Support this podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/storytellingpod

For more information on the Storytelling Animals book club: https://daytonmartindale.com/book-club/

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaytonRMartind

Like this podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Storytelling-Animals-105986165338395

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philosopher Kate Soper explains why going beyond consumerism won't just help the environment--it will make us happier. Together we discuss a slower-paced world with fewer cars, less work, less stuff, and more pleasure.

Learn more about her book, Post Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism, here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3693-post-growth-living

If you like this episode, please sign up for the Storytelling Animals newsletter here to keep up with the podcast: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Support this podcast on Patreon here, and receive early access to episodes: https://patreon.com/storytellingpod

Subscribe at the Lorax Tier or above to join the Storytelling Animals Book Club, we have Zoom discussions the last Tuesday of the month at 5:30 Pacific.

Our next three meetings are:

5/31 - The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

6/28 - Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

7/26 - The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

To try out one meeting as a free trial, subscribe to my email list: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaytonRMartind

Like this podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Storytelling-Animals-105986165338395

To read more of Soper's work on alternative hedonism, look here: https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/new-hedonism-post-consumerism-vision

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week I took a 48+ hour Amtrak train from Los Angeles to Dearborn, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. It ended up taking even longer, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In this episode I talk about my experience and explain the climate impacts of aviation, rail, and buses, and explain why I think trains may be the future of long-distance transportation.

If you like this episode, please sign up for the Storytelling Animals newsletter here to keep up with the podcast: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Support this podcast on Patreon here, and receive early access to episodes: https://patreon.com/storytellingpod

Subscribe at the Lorax Tier or above to join the Storytelling Animals Book Club, we have Zoom discussions the last Tuesday of the month at 5:30 Pacific.

Our next three meetings are:

5/31 - The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

6/28 - Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

7/26 - The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

To try out one meeting as a free trial, subscribe to my email list: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaytonRMartind

Like this podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Storytelling-Animals-105986165338395

Relevant links from this episode below:

The Eric Holthaus article that started it all: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/02/why_a_meteorologist_took_the_bus_for_28_hours_instead_of_flying.html

"Getting There Greener" (still broadly useful, although some of these numbers are out of date): https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/greentravel_report.pdf

"The global scale, distribution and growth of aviation: Implications for climate change": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307779#b0300

My Jacobin article on overnight travel: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/greyhound-amtrak-hotel-stay-travel-vacation

My In These Times article making a leftist case for lowering your carbon footprint: https://inthesetimes.com/article/a-socialist-case-for-curbing-consumption-to-stop-climate-change

Oxfam report on inequality of carbon emissions: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity

"Grounded, and loving it. Can giving up air travel bring joy?":

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2022/0418/Grounded-and-loving-it.-Can-giving-up-air-travel-bring-joy

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of the new autobiographical nonfiction book The High Sierra: A Love Story. He's also written 20 novels, including Red Mars and The Ministry for the Future, and now he's appeared on this podcast! We talk about his love of rocky landscapes, how he started backpacking, and the need to make space for wildlife. We also talk about how his Sierra life has impacted his fiction, and how he came to love science fiction in the first place. And so much more!

Sign up for the Storytelling Animals newsletter here to keep up with the podcast: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Learn more about the book here: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/kim-stanley-robinson/the-high-sierra/9780316306812/

A reading list on the John Muir Sierra Club controversy, including both critical and positive assessments of his legacy:

1) https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club

2) https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/who-was-john-muir-really/

3) https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/sierra-club-racist-internal-fight-505407

4) https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2021-2-march-april/feature/john-muir-native-america

5) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sierra-club-muir-racism-board-vote_n_619548aae4b0f398aeff3677

6) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sierra-club-election-muir_n_624609f9e4b068157f74d448

Support this podcast on Patreon here, and receive early access to episodes: https://patreon.com/storytellingpod

Subscribe at the Lorax Tier or above to join the Storytelling Animals Book Club, we have Zoom discussions the last Tuesday of the month at 5:30 Pacific.

Our next three meetings are:

5/31 - The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

6/28 - Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

7/26 - The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

To try out one meeting as a free trial, subscribe to my email list: https://apple6.aweb.page/p/de4ee963-cd8d-4ced-9975-e13965236a7d

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaytonRMartind

Like this podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Storytelling-Animals-105986165338395

For more on Half-Earth, see my interview with Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/half-earth-socialism-planning-utopia-with-troy-vettese/id1604296764?i=1000556263826

For more on Ecuador's constitution and rights of nature, see my interview with Thea Riofrancos: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/resource-radicals-thea-riofrancos-on-democracy-our/id1604296764?i=1000551855853

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dylan Harris is an assistant professor and geographer at University of Colorado Colorado Springs, as well as an editor of Not Afraid of the Ruins, a collection of speculative eco-fiction. We talk about how stories can help us make sense of climate change, the use of the supernatural in climate fiction, and the power of deep geological time. Not Afraid of the Ruins can be found online below, and will soon be updated into a published volume edited by Dylan, Rut Elliot Blomqvist, Aaron Vansintjan, and Srđan Tunić.

Read Not Afraid of the Ruins

Read Dylan's story "Odetta, Odessa"

Follow Dylan on Twitter

Watch this video about horseshoe crabs

To keep up with this podcast and learn more about the Storytelling Animals Book Club:

Sign up for the Storytelling Animals Newsletter

Support this podcast on Patreon

Follow me on Twitter

Like this podcast on Facebook

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You may know that an asteroid drove the dinosaurs extinct, but do you know what happened after the asteroid hit, and how we got from T. rex's world to ours? Digging into these questions can reveal a lot about how ecology and evolution work, and perhaps help us make sense of humanity's place in the web of life. To explore all this and more, I speak with science writer and amateur paleontologist Riley Black, author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World.

Learn more about the book

Follow Riley on Twitter

Read about the "dinosauroid" thought experiment

Sign up for free weekly Storytelling Animals newsletter here

Support this podcast on Patreon here

The May 31 Storytelling Animals Book Club meetings will be about The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin. Join the book club at our Patreon page or (to attend one meeting as a free trial) by signing up for the newsletter.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guests are journalist Dahr Jamail and teacher of Native American literature Stan Rushworth, who edited the new volume We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth. We talk about how the way we see the world impacts how we act, and why it's so important to look at each other and all our nonhuman relations, past present and future, as our kin. There is a difference, Stan and Dahr point out, between an individualistic worldview focused on our personal rights and a more collective mindset focused on responsibilities and obligations to our fellow creatures and to the future. Only one of these outlooks, they believe, is well set up to respond to a challenge like climate change.

Learn more about the book here

Watch a talk that Stan and Dahr gave about the book here

Sign up for free weekly Storytelling Animals newsletter here

Support this podcast on Patreon here

Upcoming Storytelling Animals Book Club meetings:

4/26 - Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

5/31 - The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin

Join the book club at our Patreon page or (to attend one meeting as a free trial) by signing up for the newsletter.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As countries around the world fail to tackle climate change, many have begun to wonder whether democracy itself is up to the task. In her book Too Hot To Handle? The Democratic Challenge of Climate Change, Rebecca Willis argues that we need more democracy, not less--that we need to get everyday citizens more involved in the political process through citizen assemblies and other spaces for deliberation. Willis is a Professor in Energy & Climate Governance at Lancaster Environment Centre, where she leads the Climate Citizens project. 

Learn more about the book here

Read Rebecca's paper on deliberative democracy and the climate crisis

Read why I think long-distance bus and train travelers should get free lodging

Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get each new episode in your inbox, as well as to attend one meeting of the Storytelling Animals Book Club as a free trial. Our next two meetings are 4/26 discussing Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and 5/31 on N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, recently chosen by Esquire as the best fantasy novel of all time.

To help keep this podcast going, get early access to episode, and continue being part of the book club moving forward, please support this podcast on Patreon.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Environmental historian Troy Vettese and environmental engineer Drew Pendergrass worked together on the new book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future From Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics. I spoke with both of them about the problems with Marx's nature philosophy, why we need widespread veganism and energy quotas, and how central economic planning can help us chart a way through climate catastrophe.

Learn more about the book

Read the essay that inspired the book

Read my review of E.O. Wilson's book Half-Earth

Read a Smithsonian overview of the half-Earth concept

Read my essay "Nature Defends Itself" on the nature/culture binary

Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get each new episode in your inbox, as well as to attend one meeting of the Storytelling Animals Book Club as a free trial. Our next two meetings are 4/26 discussing Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and 5/31 on N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, recently chosen by Esquire as the best fantasy novel of all time.

To help keep this podcast going, get early access to episode, and continue being part of the book club moving forward, please support this podcast on Patreon.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

lauren Ornelas, founder of the Food Empowerment Project, talks about her decades in the animal rights movement, why our food choices matter, and why vegans should fight for farmworkers rights and racial justice. We discuss issues from duck farming's abuses to child labor in the chocolate industry to her organization's work increasing food access in communities of color.

Learn more about the Food Empowerment Project

The organization's new site on the dairy industry

Listen to lauren's TEDx talk here

Learn more about Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice

Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get each new episode in your inbox, as well as to attend one meeting of the Storytelling Animals Book Club as a free trial. Our next two meetings are 4/26 discussing Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and 5/31 on N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, recently chosen by Esquire as the best fantasy novel of all time.

To help keep this podcast going, get early access to episode, and continue being part of the book club moving forward, please support this podcast on Patreon.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.