Threshold

How does the language we use affect our relationships with the rest of the living world? And what if by shifting the way we speak and write, we can open ourselves to more ways of thinking, to other ways of being? What if we thought of a river or a mountain as a “who” instead of a “what”?

Robert Macfarlane is a Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge. In his book Underland, published in 2019, he writes “words are world-makers and language is one of the great geological forces of the Anthropocene.” He has continued his pursuit of language that animates rather than deadens in subsequent books, including Is a River Alive? and most recently, The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss. In this conversation, Robert and Amy think together about words and metaphors that bring us more fully into relation with the world around us, and how these semantic choices might shape our collective future.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

Credits: Threshold Conversations is produced by Sam Moore. Our music is by Todd Sickafoose. Amy Martin is our host and executive producer. This episode was released in collaboration with Orion Magazine.

Resources and Links:

Robert’s books

A few of Robert’s pieces in Orion

The Silent Planet, the musical piece Robert mentions, by Delia Stevens and Will Pound

Right now, the Trump Administration is pushing hard to drill for oil and gas in places that were previously off-limits. One of those places is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and in June, the administration took another step forward in the process of opening this enormous protected area for drilling.

Season 3 of Threshold is actually all about this controversy: it’s called The Refuge, and today, we’re sharing a bit more from one of the most memorable people we spoke to back then. His name is Trimble Gilbert, and he’s a traditional chief and a deeply knowledgeable elder from the Gwich’in community of Arctic Village, just over the Refuge’s southern boundary.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

Credits: This extra was produced by Sam Moore, with music by Todd Sickafoose and Travis Yost. Amy Martin is our host and executive producer.

Resources and Links:

Amy’s Substack, Letters to Earthlings

A profile of Trimble Gilbert from the Tanana Chiefs Conference

Harvard Law School’s effort to track the political football over the Refuge across the past four administrations

Trump’s Executive Order: Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential

More about the Gwich’in, from the Gwich’in Tribal Council Dept of Heritage in Canada (Check out their “elder of the month” feature).

Recent related stories from the Alaska Beacon about the Trump administration canceling its support for the Arctic Report Card and relaxing rules for offshore drilling in Alaska.

We’ve been telling the story of the petrochemical industry in Louisiana, but this isn’t just a Louisiana issue, or even just an American one - petrochemicals are a global industry with a global impact. In this episode, we think about our collective future, and how we might begin to navigate living with all this plastic.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

For decades, the residents of St. John the Baptist Parish breathed in toxic chemicals from a massive complex that makes neoprene - a synthetic rubber. But while residents suspected something was wrong, they were still shocked when the EPA told them they had the highest risk of cancer in the nation. Why were they just now being warned? And what was the government going to do about it? In this episode, we follow one community’s search for justice.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

People have objected to the toxic side effects of industry in Louisiana and across the country for a long time. A swell of activism in the 70s and 80s connected civil rights with environmental issues and public health, so that by the 1990s, it seemed like the nation was entering an environmental justice renaissance. And yet, low income and minority communities have remained at risk. In this episode, we follow the history of environmental justice activism and how the corridor became a poster child for unevenly distributed pollution.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

We know that many of the chemicals being released by plants in the corridor can cause cancer. We also know that the cancer risk along this stretch of the Mississippi is unusually high. But how do we know for sure that these things are connected? In this episode, we explore what we know about pollution and disease.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the corridor began a transition from one deadly industry to another—from sugar to petrochemicals. This transition wasn’t a coincidence. The history of industry intersects with the history of race in Louisiana all the way up to the present day. In this episode, we look at how and why petrochemicals came to the corridor.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

Before gas, oil, and benzene, there was sugar. This is the story of the first industry that exploited people in the Corridor, an industry that brought the ancestors of today’s residents to the area and laid the foundations for the modern petrochemical industry.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

One of the largest concentrations of petrochemical plants in the country lies along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Petrochemicals are made from fossil fuels. We use them to make a huge range of synthetic materials that are found in almost every part of our daily lives — but petrochemicals are made where people live. Here, amidst houses, schools, and churches, more than 150 plants release toxic pollution into communities that are often poor and black. In this episode, we meet residents and explore what it’s like to live - and love - a place at the center of our modern consumer culture.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

Coming Tuesday, June 2nd: A podcast about history, pollution, and resistance on the frontlines of America’s petrochemical industry.

Over seven episodes, The Corridor examines how Louisiana became a center of industry and an epicenter of disease, with some communities facing cancer risks among the highest in the nation. Everything that’s happening in the industrial corridor today has been shaped by history - from slavery and segregation to huge technological breakthroughs and environmental change. Across the series, we explore how residents have pushed back - against the destruction of their past, the construction of more plants, the lax enforcement of environmental regulations, and further harm to people’s health as they seek to claim their right to a prosperous and healthy future.

Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.