TTBOOK Presents: Deep Time

Contemplating the infinite is a time-tested way to shrink the present down to size. But if you think about it for very long, infinity can really mess with your mind. There’s something fundamentally paradoxical about it, and beautiful.

Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives.

Original Air Date: June 07, 2025

Interviews In This Hour:
The glorious mathematics of infinity — Checking into the infinity hotel — Finding solace in the nature of space-time — The math and mysticism of Albert Einstein

Guests:
Jordan Ellenberg, Jon Halperin, Michelle Thaller, Kieran Fox

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The longest nights of the year are here, but how many of us will see them? The global spread of light pollution is making it harder to experience dark skies and natural darkness. Learning how to reconnect with the planet’s ancient nocturnal rhythms can be profoundly restorative. Nature writers and darkness activists tell us what we’re missing.

Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives.

Original Air Date: December 21, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Listening to the song of the night — Adjusting our eyes to wonders of the nocturnal world

Guests:
Sam Lee, Leigh Ann Henion

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Some artists work with pen and ink, some use brushes and paint. And some make art out of time. Meet some contemporary artists who are finding new ways to bridge the distance between us and the furthest reaches of time.

Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives.

Original Air Date: February 15, 2025

Interviews In This Hour:
Crafting cosmic art through deep time — What if clocks were synced to the flow of a river? — Capturing a symphony of time in a dawn chorus

Guests:
Katie Paterson, Jonathon Keats, Alex Braidwood

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The longest nights of the year are here, but how many of us will see them? The global spread of light pollution is making it harder to experience dark skies and natural darkness. Learning how to reconnect with the planet’s ancient nocturnal rhythms can be profoundly restorative. Nature writers and darkness activists tell us what we’re missing.

Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives.

Original Air Date: December 21, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Listening to the song of the night — Adjusting our eyes to wonders of the nocturnal world

Guests:
Sam Lee, Leigh Ann Henion

Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast.
Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Our lives are so rushed, so busy. Always on the clock. Counting the hours, minutes, seconds. Have you ever stopped to wonder: what are you counting? What is this thing, that’s all around us, invisible, inescapable, always running out? What is time?

Original Air Date: November 18, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Time, loss and the Big Bang — Finding solace in the vastness of space — Carlo Rovelli's white holes, where time dissolves

Guests:

Marcelo Gleiser, Marjolijn van Heemstra, Carlo Rovelli

Check out the full series at ttbook.org/deeptime

Are you ready to think in centuries instead of seconds? Eons instead of hours? It’s time to make thousand-year plans and appreciate how Earth keeps time.

For more from this series, visit ttbook.org/deeptime.

Original Air Date: August 19, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Shifting your mind to 'geologic' time — Discovering the wonders of ancient cave art — Making art inspired by the ancestors

Guests:

Marcia Bjornerud, Stephen Alvarez, Dustin Illetewahke Mater

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When you’re on the clock, you’re always running out of time – because in our culture, time is money. The relentless countdown is making us and the planet sick. But clock time isn’t the only kind. There are older, deeper rhythms of time that sustain life. What would it be like to live more in tune with nature’s clocks?

Original Air Date: June 03, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

How time came to rule our lives — and how we might free ourselves — The past and future of keeping time

Guests:

Jenny Odell, David Rooney

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Time rules our lives. We wake, eat, work, and sleep on the clock. Our days unfold in a standardized symphony of alarm clocks, school buzzers, and meeting timers. Meanwhile, global positioning satellites measure time in millionths of seconds, and financial trades circle the planet at the speed of light.

Time-keeping is among the greatest accomplishments of the human species – but somewhere along the way, we made a fundamental miscalculation: we began to mistake our clocks for time itself.

Learn more about the series at ttbook.org/deeptime

Ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan has been called the “father of the local food movement.” For decades he’s campaigned for seed diversity and sustainable food production. Some of his insights come from the farming practices of Indigenous people living near the U.S.-Mexico border, who’ve grown food in arid habitats for centuries. Originally from the Midwest, Nabhan moved to the Arizona desert several decades ago. He reflects on “the wisdom of the desert,” and also talks about his work to foster a “radical center” where ranchers and environmentalists can come together to find common ground.

Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.

To learn more about the Kinship series, head to ttbook.org/kinship.

Original Air Date: April 15, 2022

Guests: 

Gary Paul Nabhan

The fungal world is mind-bending. Mushrooms may look like plants, but taxonomically, fungi are more closely related to animals. They go inside their food to eat it and “play games with individuality,” says biologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of “Entangled Life.” One underground fungal network in Oregon spreads over four square miles, but genetically, it’s a single organism. As Sheldrake says, “they are everywhere at once and nowhere in particular.” He talks with Steve Paulson about his lifelong fascination with fungi, his experiments with ancient recipes for fermented alcohol, and the maverick Stoned Ape Theory, which claims that magic mushrooms sparked the evolution of human consciousness.

Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.

To learn more about the Kinship series, head to ttbook.org/kinship.

Original Air Date: April 08, 2022

Guests:

Merlin Sheldrake