Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab

Jan 22 2022 12 ep. 57 mins 33
Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab Podcast artwork

We are a podcast about climate change that engages with interdisciplinary perspectives on more-than-human worlds through interviews, field recordings, and experimental sound.

  Society & Culture  Arts  Science
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Shannon Mattern

Jan 22 2022 57 mins  
SHANNON MATTERN is a theorist and professor of media, design, architecture, and anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York. In this lively episode, Mattern asks: what metaphors, tools, and projects are needed to imagine ways of building and repairing our cities more collaboratively? She shares her expansive interests—from computation, interconnection, and urba

Una Chaudhuri & Marina Zurkow

Sep 01 2021 35 mins  
Friendship as method and medium is the heart of this conversation between Marina Zurkow and Una Chaudhuri, artists-academics behind "Dear Climate," a New York-based art collective that engages with climate change through public installations, design, experimental pedagogies, and playful toolkits for multispecies survival. Marina and Una share stories of early teaching in the field

Cecilia Vicuña and Sarah Lookofsky

Jul 01 2021 69 mins  
Two rivers situate our conversation with two friends, poet/artist Cecilia Vicuña and art historian/curator Sarah Lookofsky. El Río Mapocho begins in the Andes Mountains and runs through the city of Santiago, Chile where Cecilia was born, while the River Akerselva begins in Maridal Lake and flows through waterfalls and former industrial areas of Oslo where Sarah recently moved. Wh

Paul Sadowski

May 08 2021 66 mins  
PAUL SADOWSKI, mycologist and musician, shares stories about working with John Cage and sound, learning about fungi and trees with Gary Lincoff and NY Mycological Society, and going on fungi forays throughout New York. Paul is a mycologist, musician, and autographer based in New York City. He teaches at the New York Botanical Gardens and is a beloved member of the New York Mycologi

Lesley Green - Part 2

Mar 26 2021 41 mins  
Lesley Green, anthropologist and science studies scholar in Cape Town, discusses her new book Rock | Water | Life: Ecology and Humanities for a Decolonial South Africa (Duke/Wits Press 2020). Green develops an ecopolitical approach to critically engage with South Africa's history of racial oppression and environmental extraction, paying close attention to water conflicts, natural g

Lesley Green - Part 1

Mar 04 2021 48 mins  
How might humanists, social scientists, and natural scientists do "research that matters and matters politically" in the Anthropocene? Lesley Green is an anthropologist and science studies scholar based in Cape Town who invites us to inhabit the diverse ecologies, violent colonial histories, neoliberal logics, and possible futurities from within South Africa. Emphasizing the "relat

ZHENG Bo + Steven LAM

Jan 29 2021 57 mins  
How might weedy plants and creative practices break through extractivist logics of colonialism and industrial modernity? ZHENG BO and STEVEN LAM are artists and educators who are engaged with multispecies ecologies, chemical regimes, and social/environmental justice. In this episode, they discuss a shift away from the aesthetics and politics of representation and their moves toward

Heather Davis

Aug 20 2020 53 mins  
HEATHER DAVIS talks about plastic in the United States, discussing its materiality, geography, and toxic histories. Combining feminist and queer theory with chemistry, geology, history, and art, Davis unpacks the constitution of throwaway culture, petrochemical industries, pvc, feminized male bodies, human endocrine systems, multidisciplinary collaboration, mealworms, and mermaids�

Elizabeth Hénaff

Feb 04 2020 44 mins  
Elizabeth Hénaff discusses her collaborative investigations of microbial life in the waters of the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in Brooklyn, New York, as well as her interdisciplinary practice that brings together plant biology, metagenomics, and design. As a scientist, artist, and teacher, Henaff describes the various methods, apparatuses, and creative improvisations she uses

Ashley Dawson

Oct 02 2019 84 mins  
ASHLEY DAWSON talks about "extreme", or urban densities like New York City, where social inequalities and uneven effects of colonial violence and capitalist development are increasingly exacerbated by extreme weather and environmental degradation. He calls on the power of storytelling to radically imagine different futures. Dawson works across the fields of postcolonial studies, en