re: Wild

Dec 21 2022 5

re: Wild Podcast artwork

How do we live on this Earth? How should we? Our answers to these questions are shaped by our idea of "nature" as something separate from humanity. re: Wild is a series of conversations with people who are pushing the boundaries of that old idea. We'll talk to people who -- instead of conceiving of the wilderness as a place apart -- live, eat, and work in a more-than-human world. New episodes drop twice a month, on the first and third Wednesdays.

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Jessica Camille Aguirre: The View From Space

Dec 21 2022 37 mins

Jessica Camille Aguirre is a writer whose work focuses on climate change and extremes. * [01:41] AFAR Magazine: “The Promise and Peril of Space Tourism” [05:13] Frank White’s The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution [06:34] The Space Studies Institute: Gerard K. O’Neill [08:19] NASA: “Blue Marble” [08:23] NASA: “Earthrise” [08:58] Kenneth E. Bouldi

Justin Gregg: Us Dumb Humans

Dec 07 2022 29 mins

Justin Gregg is a science writer and animal cognition researcher. * [0:52] Justin Gregg's If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity [9:39] EuroNews: “Explained: Who has nuclear weapons in Europe and where are they?” [24:58] Arik Kirschenbaum's The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens—and Ourselv

Defending the Forest

Nov 02 2022 34 mins

May and Hadley identify as members of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. * [0:05] Atlanta City Studio’s Our Future City report (h/t Charles Bethea at the New Yorker) [1:18] Defend the Atlanta Forest [12:41] Resident Advisor: “Inside the American South’s Anti-Cop Raves” [19:23] Rolling Stone: “The Battle for ‘Cop City’”

Laura J. Martin: Designing the Wild

Oct 19 2022 31 mins

Laura J. Martin is a historian and ecologist who studies how people shape the habitats of other species. She is the author of Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration and an environmental studies professor at Williams College. * [1:21] Laura J. Martin’s Wild by Design [3:47] The Society for Ecological Restoration [7:49] “A New Global Framework for Managing Nature Thro

Wyatt Williams: Life and Death and Meat

Oct 05 2022 35 mins

Wyatt Williams is a writer and a former restaurant critic. * [1:19] Springer Mountain: Meditations on Killing and Eating [2:01] Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma [2:04] Food Inc. [9:45] “Will the Next Pandemic Start with Chickens?” (The New Republic) [10:58] “When the National Bird is a Burden” (The New York Times Magazine) [14:09] Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm [

Rien Fertel: The Pelican Holds Everything

Sep 21 2022 26 mins

Rien Fertel is the author of Brown Pelican and three previous books: Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera, The One True Barbecue, and Imagining the Creole City. He is currently a Visiting Professor of History at Tulane University. * Mentioned in this episode: [1:14] Rien Fertel’s Brown Pelican [2:25] Fantasy Birding [2:50] eBird [9:20] Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring [15:19]

Julia Rosen: We Are Grass People

Sep 07 2022 23 mins

If you're anything like me, when you think of nature the first image that comes to mind is a tree. But, as beautiful as forests are, another ecosystem is even more important to human history: grasslands. For centuries, grasslands have been ignored by Western scientists, sometimes even denigrated as wastelands. Julia Rosen says that's due in part to a bias against grasslands that em

Peter Alagona: The Nature of Cities

Aug 09 2022 37 mins

Cities and suburbs across the U.S. are filled with wildlife, from squirrels to hawks to coyotes and bears. Indeed, you're more likely to run into a bear outside of Newark, New Jersey, than outside of Anchorage. How did this come to be true? That's the subject of The Accidental Ecosystem by environmental historian Peter Alagona, the guest on this episode of re: Wild.

Lyndsie Bourgon: Tree Thieves

Jul 12 2022 37 mins

The act of carving up a tree on public land can seem like a desecration: our forests are our natural cathedrals, after all, at least according to the classic cliché. But as writer and oral historian Lyndsie Bourgon points out in her new book Tree Thieves, crime in the forest is a bit more complicated.

Marcia Bjornerud: Timefulness

Jun 21 2022 31 mins

Sometimes we like to seek landscapes that feel timeless, as if they've been set adrift from the tyranny of the clock. But perhaps we need to start seeing the world as timeful. Marcia Bjornerud is a professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University, and the author of two books, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, and Geopedia: A Br