Wonder Cabinet

For thousands of years, flowers have threaded themselves through human life—into our rituals, our art, our language, even our names. We decorate our homes and altars with them, distill their scents, celebrate them in poetry and song. But what if we’ve misunderstood them entirely?

In How Flowers Made the World, biologist and writer David George Haskell invites us to see flowers not as delicate embellishments, but as one of the most powerful forces in Earth’s history. When flowering plants emerged more than 200 million years ago, they didn’t just adapt to the world—they transformed it. Through strategies of beauty, attraction, and reciprocity, they turned rivals into partners, reshaping ecosystems and making possible the rich diversity of life we know today.

In a lyrical, science-rich conversation, we explore:

— Why Haskell calls flowers “nature’s revolutionaries”
— How beauty, pleasure, and desire function as evolutionary strategies
— The deep interdependence between flowers, animals, and humans
— What flowers can teach us about resilience in a time of ecological crisis
— How re-centering flowers might change the story we tell about life on Earth

We live on a floral planet, Haskell says—and more than that, we are a floral species, utterly dependent on flowering plants for food, habitat, and survival. The lessons flowers offer—about creativity, cooperation, and transformation—may be exactly what we need to navigate a rapidly changing world.

What would it mean to tell the story of life not through predators and conquest, but through seduction, partnership and bloom?

00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:50 Flowers Remade the World
00:12:40 The Scent of Ancient Flowers
00:22:00 The Language of Perfume
00:30:30 Belonging to the Living World

What if a river is alive–but we’ve forgotten how to recognize it?

This is the radical idea at the heart of the global “rights of nature” movement, which seeks to grant rivers, forests and ecosystems legal standing. Rooted in ancient traditions and emerging in modern law, it challenges the notion of nature as property and a resource to be exploited.

In “Is a River Alive?”, acclaimed writer and explorer Robert Macfarlane travels to remote waterways in Ecuador, India and Canada, meeting mycologists, Indigenous river-keepers, and activists who see the natural world as animate and ensouled. Known for celebrated books like “Underland,” “The Old Ways,” and “Mountains of the Mind,” Macfarlane blends storytelling, natural history and philosophy in an invitation to reimagine our relationship with the living Earth.

If rivers have rights—and perhaps even a kind of consciousness—how would that change the way we see the world?

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00:00:00 Introduction

00:03:00 Is a River Alive?

00:10:50 Ecuador's Cloud Forest

00:19:40 Chennai's Dying Rivers

00:24:15 Wild River in Quebec

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin both saw nature as alive with mystery – and treated wonder as a way of knowing. Literary scholar and science historian Renee Bergland, author of "Natural Magic," is our guide to the forgotten kinship between the reclusive poet and the celebrated naturalist. 

Dickinson and Darwin never met, but they had at least one close friend in common. Both were both fascinated by fossils. Both wandered the woods and swamps near their homes, studying insects and documenting rare plants. They shared a vision of the interconnectedness of all life. We know that Dickinson, with her background in botany, geology, astronomy and chemistry, was enthralled by Darwin’s evolutionary theory. And it certainly seems possible that Darwin, with his degree in theology and his lifelong love of poetry and literature, might have admired the American poet whose close observations and delicate perceptions echoed his own. 

Bergland’s dual biography, just out in paper, is vivid, sparkling intellectual history – a window onto a time when scientific thinking still embraced emotion and wonder as modes of perception. Could the belief in “natural magic” that infused Dickinson’s and Darwin’s ideas restore our own faith in a universe alive with meaning? Our conversation about the poet who studied natural history and the naturalist who loved poetry suggests a way forward – by reclaiming their shared ecological wonder. 

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0:00 — Meeting Renee Bergland

9:00 — What Is Natural Magic?

20:00 — Beauty, Truth, and Evolution

34:00 — Hope and the Garden of Change

What if dying is not an ending, but a moment of radical clarity? In his new novel "Vigil," George Saunders conjures a strange and often comic world of bickering angels visiting a dying, deeply flawed man—debating and waiting to see whether he can face the truth about himself before it’s too late.

In this conversation, Steve Paulson talks with Saunders about the evolution of his ideas about death and the possibility of an afterlife. Dying, he says, may be “the ultimate experience of wonder,” and he believes ghost stories can open powerful imaginative spaces for novelists. Saunders reflects on his own Buddhist practice as he considers these life-and-death questions, and he tells us why he thinks fiction is uniquely suited to grappling with complex moral issues and why Tolstoy and Chekhov are his personal sources of inspiration.

Saunders is the author of such celebrated books as “Tenth of December,” “Pastoralia,” and the Booker Prize-winning “Lincoln in the Bardo.”  His nonfiction book about the great Russian writers is “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.”

This interview was recorded at the Central Library in downtown Madison shortly before Saunders spoke at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

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00:00:00 Introduction and Reading from Vigil

00:07:50 The Plane Crash and Death Obsession

00:15:00 The Writing Process and Wonder

00:24:30 Moral Accountability in Fiction

00:32:20 Chekhov, Succession, and Accuracy

00:40:00 Kindness, Criticism, and Final Thoughts

How do you deal with the emotional toll of living in a time of dissolution? Social scientists use the term "polycrisis" to describe the kind of cascading, overlapping failures that can lead to systemic collapse, and it’s hard not to see the symptoms of a dying world order in events unfolding around us.  But maybe what we’re witnessing is actually grounds for hope. In a forthcoming book "The Beginning Comes After the End," writer and activist Rebecca Solnit makes the case that something is dying, all right — because something better is being born. A rising worldview that embraces antiracism, feminism, environmental thinking, Indigenous and non-Western ideas, and a vision of a more interconnected, compassionate world.  

Solnit is an engaged writer and intellectual in the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan Sontag and George Orwell. Her new book picks up where her earlier bestseller “Hope in the Dark”  left off — with an argument against despair and historical amnesia. In this conversation, we explore the extraordinary scale of progressive social, political, scientific and cultural change over the past century, the roots of Solnit’s stance of “pragmatic, embodied hope,” her thoughts on “moral wonder, “ and her years in San Francisco’s underground punk rock scene.  She also tells us what she’d put in our own wonder cabinet: an AIDS Memorial Quilt square sewn by Rosa Parks. 

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00:00:00 Introduction 

00:04:00 A Land Back Ceremony 

00:08:05 Progress in Disguise 

00:18:35 Hope and Interconnection 

00:29:45 Defiant Hope

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Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson.

Find out more about the show at wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter. 

Carlo Rovelli’s quest to understand the nature of reality began not in a physics lab, but in youthful experiments with consciousness, political protest and a restless hunger for meaning—years before he “fell madly in love with physics.” Today, Rovelli is famous for his bestselling books, including "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" and "Reality Is Not What It Seems," and his pioneering work on some of the biggest mysteries in physics, including black holes and quantum gravity. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, Steve Paulson talks with Rovelli about his early, profound experiences with LSD; his discovery of the "spectacular" beauty of general relativity and quantum mechanics; his lifelong search for purpose in both the cosmos and his own life; and why scientists need to be politically engaged. Carlo also tells us about the big idea that he’d put in our own wonder cabinet.

This interview was recorded at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, a project supported by Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation. We also play a short excerpt from Anne Strainchamps’ earlier interview with Rovelli that originally aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge. 

This Wonder Cabinet episode was not funded, endorsed or affiliated with Wisconsin Public Media or the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

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00:00:00 Introduction & The Chirp of Black Holes

00:04:10 Early Years in Verona

00:10:00 Falling in Love with Physics

00:17:30 Search for Truth

00:25:05 Politics of Wonder

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Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson.

Find out more about the show at wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter. 

Writer and ecologist Sophie Strand thinks at a scale that can feel dizzying—in the best way. In a single conversation, she can move from the chemical structure of cells to mushroom spores, from ancient weather gods to mycorrhizal fungi, from Bronze Age collapse to the slow intelligence of soil.

In this episode of Wonder Cabinet, we talk with Strand about wonder that doesn’t float upward but roots downward—into bodies, ecosystems, decay, and deep time. We begin with her essay “Your Body Is an Ancestor,” published shortly before Halloween and the Day of the Dead, and follow her imagery into our shared prehistoric past. 

The conversation also explores how Strand’s experience of chronic illness reshaped her understanding of nature, selfhood, and health. Rather than seeing the sick body as broken, she turns to ecological metaphors: spider webs, soil structures, caterpillars dissolving inside cocoons. What might it mean to understand ourselves not as machines that fail, but as landscapes that change?

Along the way, we talk about fantasy and “romantasy,” Tolkien, Harry Potter, Dramione fan fiction and communal storytelling rituals. 

This is a conversation about wonder with dirt under its fingernails: embodied, mythic, ecological, and deeply alive to the cycles of death and regeneration that bind us all.

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00:00:00 Meet Sophie Strand
00:04:34 Body as Ancestor
00:10:08 Roots of Sin
00:18:21 Spores and Consciousness
00:27:49 Stories We Can't Explain
00:35:39 Science as Wonder

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Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson.

Find out more about the show at wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter. 

You know that moment of amazed surprise when you encounter something so unexpected that it feels almost magical? Welcome to “Wonder Cabinet,” the new podcast from the creators of the Peabody Award-winning public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” 

Each week, Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson host intimate conversations with leading scientists, poets and philosophers about the mystery of the cosmos, the deep intelligence of the Earth, and ideas to re-enchant everyday life. These are expansive interviews about experiences of wonder and transcendence – and ideas that open new doors. 

We’re living through a period of turbulent change, so there's a question we’re asking: what would happen if we let wonder be our guide -- not as an escape from reality, but as a way to inhabit it more deeply? 

The first two episodes of “Wonder Cabinet” premiere on January 31, and new editions will be released weekly on Saturdays. 

Visit https://wondercabinetproductions.com

Anne and Steve’s new podcast will be about nature, science and wonder – plus, myths, fairy tales, poetry and the unconscious. Anne gives us a quick preview and promises more to come.

Wonder Cabinet will drop right here in this feed in January 2026, so keep your subscription active!

To follow Wonder Cabinet, sign up here:  https://wondercabinetproductions.com/

You listened on car trips and overnight flights, in tents and canoes, kitchens and living rooms. You shared our love of ideas, our search for wonder, our curiosity and our belief in the future. Now, after 35 years, it’s time for us to say goodbye. In this hour, Anne talks with TTBOOK’s producers about some of their favorite interviews and why public radio is such a powerful medium.

Music in this hour was provided by the Aurora Principle, AurbanniAudio, Kai Engel, and Tom Blain.

Original Air Date: September 27, 2025

Interviews In This Hour:
Anne says goodbye and Steve reflects on Jane Goodall — Shannon Henry Kleiber on the poetry of the human voice — Angelo Bautista on going beyond skin deep — Charles Monroe Kane on intelligent optimism

Guests:
Anne Strainchamps, Steve Paulson, Shannon Henry Kleiber, Angelo Bautista, Charles Monroe-Kane

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