Unwell to Begin With

Unwell to Begin With

By mholmbergSociety & CultureScienceNature
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Unwell to Begin With episodes

  • Episode 4: Trans studies speaks back to invasion biology, with Drs. Anita Simha and Banu Subramaniam

    “…the idea that there was some... kind of Edenic world before that we need to return to, and that, to me, is so caught up with immigration politics and the xenophobic politics. And so when you- and historians have shown this- when you are fighting xenophobia of humans, you also do that with animals and plants.”

    “…queer and trans people, you know, very naturally, have a lot to say about cis and heteronormative ideas about reproduction. They have a lot to say about good and bad bodies, about biological control. And so I think that there's kind of a nice dovetailing, maybe, between wanting to counter that… scarcity mindset, that's sort of already conceding that… we're gonna lose basically everything so whatever we have left, we have to hoard amongst ourselves (us being, you know, white nationalist basically Americans)… and bringing a queer and or trans perspective.”

     

    Mollie (she/her) sits down with Drs. Anita Simha (they/them) and Banu Subramaniam (any) to discuss why the concept of “invasive species” (and science more generally) is inherently political; how many of the same histories, discourses, technologies, and legal frameworks link human xenophobia with invasive species management; plants’ amazing biological plasticity over time and space; how queer and especially trans ecologies upend white nationalist, cisheteronormative categories and narratives at the core of mainstream ecology; how queer and trans ecologies radically expand the human and ecological futures we can envision as possible; why “invasiveness” isn’t a biological trait; interdisciplinary struggles working across feminist STS and biology; practical next steps (i.e., why joining your local union and removing data centers or military bases would probably do more for the environment than pulling weeds); and falling in love with the many gorgeous and incredible plants of the North American coastal plain.

     

    Anita is a plant community ecologist and postdoc currently based in the Department of Biology at Louisiana State University. To find out more about their work (including their co-authored chapters and articles with Banu), you can visit Anita’s website at https://anita-simha.github.io/. Banu is the Luella LaMer Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, and their latest book is Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press, 2024).

     

    Links to other work referenced in the show:

    • Banu’s award-winning book Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
    • Anita and Banu’s recent piece in the journal Area on trans studies and invasion science
    • Lenzner, B., et al. (2022). “Naturalized alien floras still carry the legacy of European colonialism.” Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6(11), 1723-1732. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01865-1.
    • For more reading on/an intro to trans ecologies, see Trans Studies Quarterly’s 2024 special issue on trans ecologies (also featuring a piece by Anita and Banu!)
    • More context for the famous ecology texts we critiqued in the episode: Garrett Hardin’s "Tragedy of the Commons"; Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb; Charles Elton’s The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants
    • For further reading on the Elwha River dam removals, see this overview by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
    • More info about the incredible biodiversity of the North American Coastal Plain
    • Banu's second book, Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019)
    • More information about the violence of Canada's recent anti-migrant Bill C-12, condemned by human rights groups

      •  

      If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at [email protected] 

       

      Transcript by Mollie Holmberg.

       

      Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

      57 min
    • Episode 3: Silicon Valley's TESCREAL eugenics cult with Dr. Émile Torres

      “Many people find these ideologies to be so risible and silly that they wonder why anyone would spend time talking about them. And… the best response I have is that the reason we should talk about these and take… precious time out of our day to understand them, is precisely because there are billions and billions of dollars backing this movement.”

      In this episode, host Mollie Holmberg (she/her) talks with Dr. Émile Torres about the pro-extinctionist TESCREAL worldviews driving the race to build artificial general intelligence; how these worldviews evolved directly out of Western Christianity and eugenics [ft. cameos by Julian Huxley and Peter Singer]; what the f*** TESCREALists actually mean by ‘artificial general intelligence’; why these ideologies are ludicrous if you think about them like an actual engineer (or from the perspective of any human person who has ever used a smartphone); why TESCREALists’ obsession with ‘existential risk’ spells very bad things not just for most of humanity, but also the planet; and holding climate pessimism alongside a commitment to keep fighting for a more just and livable future. To find out more about Dr. Torres’ work on Silicon Valley and the TESCREAL movement, you can visit their website at https://www.xriskology.com/ and check out their podcast Dystopia Now co-hosted with comedian Kate Willett.

      Émile’s latest book is Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation (Routledge).

      Links to other work and websites discussed in the show:

      • Gebru, T., & Torres, É. P. (2024). The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence. First Monday, 29(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v29i4.13636 
      • Nick Bostrom’s “Letter from Utopia”
      • Julian Huxley’s Religion without Revelation
      • Bertrand Russell’s 1903 essay “A free man’s worship”
      • Peter Singer’s essay “Famine, affluence, and morality” & his book with the cursed title I will not be repeating here [cw ableist violence]
      • The excellent recent Wired article "The Worm that No Computer Scientist Can Crack," on efforts to replicate C. elegans as a computer simulation
      • What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
      • University of Exeter study on global mortality associated with 1.5 degrees C warming
      • Naomi Oreskes on conservatism in the climate science community
        • Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy (University of Chicago Press) & summary of the book's arguments in Scientific American

          • Mutual aid links mentioned in the outro:

          • Distro Disco on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh land
          • Crips4esims
          • gazafunds.com
          • sudanfunds.com
          • The Sameer Project
          • Sudan Solidarity Collective

            • If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at [email protected]

            Transcript by Mollie Holmberg.

            Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

            1 hr 3 min
          • Episode 2: "Life is built on a rickety stool" with Dr. Haley Branch

            “When people think about evolutionary biology, they think of ‘survival of the fittest.’ It is the first thing that comes to people's minds, and it is a gross misconception of evolution, and it's consistently been weaponized against people, and that's specifically Black people, people of color, Indigenous folks and disabled people specifically… It was coined by a eugenicist. I will not say their name. It was not Darwin's theory.”

            For this second episode, host Mollie Holmberg (she/her) talks with Dr. Haley Branch (she/her) at the Yale School of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology about how her training in ballet informs her approach to studying plants; debunking “survival of the fittest” and other common misconceptions about evolution that are foundational to eugenics; publishing science that upsets the worst men on the internet; what caring for plants teaches us about disabled life; and her efforts to make field work in ecology and evolutionary biology more accessible for disabled scientists. To find out more about Dr. Branch’s work on desert plant ecophysiology, ableism in evolutionary biology, and building spaces for disabled scientists in higher ed, you can visit her website at https://haleyabranch.weebly.com/.

            Links to other work and websites discussed in the show:

            • Branch, H.A. et al. (2022) “Discussions of the “Not So Fit”: How Ableism Limits Diverse Thought and Investigative Potential in Evolutionary Biology.” The American Naturalist, 200(1), 101-113. https://doi.org/10.1086/720003
            • Turner, S.E. et al. (2014) “Social consequences of disability in a nonhuman primate.” Journal of human evolution, 68, 47-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.01.002 

              • If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at [email protected]

              Transcript by Mollie Holmberg.

              Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

               

              1 hr 3 min
            • Episode 1: Autistic Knowledge Ecologies with Dr. Audra Mitchell

              "These shared resonances which are often infantilized and dismissed as 'special interests' or 'infodumping' are actually intensities of knowledge and knowledge creation that we can sort of... refract off each other in ways that I think promote really interesting formations of knowledge."

              Welcome to Unwell to Begin With, a podcast about the eugenics problem in biology and the environmental movement, and what disabled people and others at the receiving end of this ideology have to say about it. Or, to put it less bleakly: where we talk to disabled people and others about what crip knowledge and care practices have to offer in this moment of intensifying social and ecological crisis. For this first episode, host Mollie Holmberg (she/her) talks to Audra Mitchell (she/her and they/them) at the Balsillie School of International Affairs about why crip knowledge systems belong in fields like International Relations and environmental studies; uncomfy feelings about the category of disability; how policing gets normalized in classroom spaces and leads to things like students sending selfies from the ER; and why crip politics is about a lot more than just disability.

              Audra's latest book is Revenant Ecologies: Defying the Violence of Extinction and Conservation (University of Minnesota Press).

              Links to other work and websites discussed in the show:

              • Audra's piece on ecolalia, Autistic worlding and alternative eco-political futures in Environment and Planning E (open access)
              • Nick Walker's work on neurotypicality, neurodiversity, and neuroqueering
              • Jasbir Puar's The Right to Maim
              • Mel Chen et al.'s Crip Genealogies
              • Sins Invalid's 10 Principles of Disability Justice
              • Sami Schalk's Black Disability Politics
              • Kathy Absolon's work on Indigenous resurgence
              • Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist
              • Robert McRuer's work on crip theory
              • Margaret Price's latest book on being disabled in academia
              • adrienne maree brown's writing on abolition
              • J. Logan Smilges's Crip Negativity
              • Sunaura Taylor's latest book
              • Clay Aldern's book on climate change and neurology
              • Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's books on crip survival and care strategies
              • Emi Koyama's work on "feminism, sexual and domestic violence, sex work/trade and trafficking, queer and trans liberation, intersex and disability issues"
              • Lauren Berlant on cruel optimism
              • Francesca Albanese's October 2024 report to the UN General Assembly
              • gazafunds.com
              • Investigative reporting by The Maple on the Canadian settler state's role in the global arms trade (1) (2) (3) (4)

                • If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at [email protected] 

                Transcript by Aadita Chaudhury, PhD Candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University.

                * Correction: This work is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, not a SSHRC Insight Development Grant

                Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

                58 min

              About Unwell to Begin With

              From the publisher's feed

              Biology and the environmental movement have a eugenics problem. Eugenics has also been gaining ground in public policy and discourse in many parts of the world lately, with scientists, policymakers, physicians, wellness influencers, and techbros alike increasingly posing it as a solution to intensifying socio-ecological crises. But what do disabled people and others in the crosshairs of this ideology — those of us who are ”unwell to begin with,” according to this logic — have to say about nature and the not-so-natural disasters reverberating across our communities? What lessons do crip knowledge, creativity, joy, and practices of interdependence offer urgently right now? Taking love for crip and allied communities as our starting place, we talk to people with diverse expertise about how they understand socio-ecological problems and challenge eugenic “solutions” in their environmental thinking and politics.