The Bible and the Living World: Conversations with David Carr

A conversation about how the first chapter of Genesis helps us reflect on the created boundary between earth's creatures (grouped together as ruled by humans) and a human category (defined by a destiny to rule other creatures). Science highlights how nonhuman beings possess forms of intelligence and culture that undermine the typical justifications for separating 'humans' from all other animals. Meanwhile, fast-developing AI models threaten to surpass humans in intelligence, potentially putting humans on the animal side of an intelligence-defined human-animal divide. The conversation also turns to how the God of Genesis 1 is a domesticator-like figure and other biblical texts that might offer more to an eco-spirituality that is oriented toward modes of queer kinship, that can ground better human relations.

Referenced resources by Ken Stone:

(revised, updated edition of) ⁠Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective ⁠(available December 2026 from Bloomsbury Publishing)

⁠Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies⁠ (Stanford University Press, 2017)

Chapters

00:09 Introduction to the podcast and Ken Stone 

00:35 Ken Stone's background and influence of animal studies

02:54 Background on how Ken Stone (and David Carr) came to animals studies

08:37 Genesis 1 and the power dimension of the human-animal binary

14:09 How parts of Genesis 1 highlight a diversity in non-human life

17:49 Genesis 1 using lists to stretch toward a category of 'animal' in a culture that doesn't yet have on

18:50 Science of animal cognition and the human-animal divide

21:13 AI and the future of human-animal distinctions

24:29 God as domesticator, different biblical texts and eco-spirituality

33:34 Why David Carr keeps coming back to Genesis

37:32 What Ken Stone noticed was new in the final edition of Unmaking Eden

41:06 Indigenous and diverse perspectives in biblical interpretation

45:14 Directions in Ken Stone's Present Work

49:05 Loving Behemoth and queer eco-spirituality

Coordinated with the preface and intro to Unmaking Eden, this is a conversation with Indigenous Theologian Carmen Lansdowne about connecting Indigenous knowledge with Biblical interpretation. The episode corresponds to the preface and intro of Unmaking Eden. Topics include Indigenous forms of knowledge and storytelling, challenges of connecting to biblical interpretation in light of centuries of trauma, plurality of Indigenous perspectives, how much different Indigenous traditions have had a historic concept of a creator, assymetry in Indigenous - Eurochristian encounters, and Carmen Lansdowne's own work.

Referenced Resources:

Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission by Carmen Lansdowne. CMU Press, 2025.

⁠Research is Ceremony⁠: Indigenous Research Methods by Shawn Wilson. Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

⁠Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples⁠ by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

Chapters:

03:42 Colonial history, Indigenous experience and Unmaking Eden

06:27 The importance of storytelling and narrative in culture and faith

09:32 Indigenous knowledge, truth, and ways of knowing

13:30 The role of trauma and history in biblical interpretation

14:32 Plurality and diversity in Indigenous perspectives vis-a-vis EuroChristian ones

18:17 How much do different Indigenous cultures have a concept of a personal creator?

26:26 Healing  the fearful assymetry between EuroChristian and other perspectives

31:31 Suggested guidelines for EuroChristian listening to Indigenous Perspectives

39:18 Directions of Carmen Lansdowne's current and future work

3 minute intro to the first season of David Carr's podcast - the Bible and the Living World.