Tag: ecology

Ep. 30 – Sonia Shah on how animal microbes become human pandemics

Ep. 30 – Sonia Shah on how animal microbes become human pandemics

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Roughly two-thirds of emerging infectious diseases — including COVID-19 and almost all recent epidemics — originate in the bodies of animals. Microbes have spilled over from animals to humans for time immemorial, but, as our species dominates the biosphere and transforms the frequency and nature of human-animal interactions, the rate at which microbes are jumping the species barrier is rapidly accelerating. In this episode, we speak with investigative journalist Sonia Shah, author of “Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond,” about the history of viral infections and how our treatment of animals and the planet — via the burning of fossil fuels, biodiversity loss, deforestation, factory farming, the wildlife trade, and more — is fueling the eruption and spread of infectious diseases.

Ep. 28 – Bathsheba Demuth on capitalism, communism and arctic ecology

Ep. 28 – Bathsheba Demuth on capitalism, communism and arctic ecology

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:12 — 94.8MB) | Embed

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In her acclaimed first book, “Floating Coast,” historian Bathsheba Demuth explores how capitalism, communism and ecology have clashed for over 150 years in the remote region of Beringia, the Arctic lands and waters stretching between Russia and Canada. Demuth trekked through the landscape and historical archives in search of answers to questions such as: How did whales become known through the labor of their killing? What happened when human ideas of “progress” were subject to the pressures of arctic life? Why did the superpowers’ grand attempts to cultivate a reindeer farming industry fail? In this episode, we speak with Demuth about these questions and about how creatures like bowheads whales were understood, imagined, and treated vastly differently by three distinct groups of hunters over the past two centuries — indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist whalers, and communist whalers — and the fundamental role animals themselves played in how its history unfolded.

Ep. 26 – Ian Urbina on the Outlaw Ocean

Ep. 26 – Ian Urbina on the Outlaw Ocean

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Over 40 percent of the Earth’s surface is open ocean that is over 200 miles from the nearest shore. These waters exist outside national jurisdiction and are almost entirely beyond the reach of law. Our guest, investigative journalist Ian Urbina, spent five years risking his life in these anarchic places to chronicle the lives he witnessed there. He met shackled slaves on fishing boats, joined high-speed chases by vigilante conservationists, rode out violent storms, and observed near mutinies. He lived on a Thai vessel where Cambodian boys worked 20-hour days processing fish on a slippery deck, shadowed a Tanzanian stowaway who was cast overboard and left to die by an angry crew, and met men who had been drugged, kidnapped and forced to cast nets for catch that would become pet food and livestock feed. We speak with Ian about the sprawling and dystopian world he chronicles in his acclaimed book, The Outlaw Ocean.

Introducing the Yale Environmental Dialogue Podcast

Introducing the Yale Environmental Dialogue Podcast

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In this trailer, Dan Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale, introduces the Yale Environmental Dialogue, a new podcast from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies that will explore solutions to a sustainable future. In each episode, leading environmental thinkers from a range of disciplines, sectors, and political perspectives will share their ideas for addressing critical environmental challenges, and lead a discussion on these issues with colleagues and other experts on the likelihood of these ideas and innovations achieving meaningful change.

Ep. 24 – Christopher Ketcham on the abuse of the American West

Ep. 24 – Christopher Ketcham on the abuse of the American West

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For the past ten years, journalist Christopher Ketcham has documented the confluence of commercial exploitation and government misconduct on public lands across the West, the role of the livestock and energy industries in their despoliation, and the impact of rampant federal land management agency capture on wildlife. We speak with Ketcham about his fierce new book, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West, which Outside Magazine called “the Desert Solitaire of our time.” The national commons that Ketcham focuses on — hundreds of millions of acres stretching across 12 Western states — are managed on the public’s behalf by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. Both agencies operate with a “multiple use mandate.” This means they are required to strike a balance between using the land for purposes that generate economic profit and protecting the health of the ecosystem. But today, Ketcham says, “multiple use” is multiple abuse and our public lands — and the wild animals and plants that depend on them — are being pillaged, poisoned, and assaulted by industries and the government agencies captured by them.

Ep. 23 – David Rothenberg on playing music with whales and nightingales

Ep. 23 – David Rothenberg on playing music with whales and nightingales

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Philosopher and musician David Rothenberg has spent decades collecting and studying the calls of birds and whales. In the early 2000s, he began playing along with them, taking his clarinet and saxophone to some of the furthest corners of the planet. The result is a new form of music that invites us to question where art ends and science begins. We speak with David about his unorthodox project, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, and what it’s like to accompany the sounds and songs of beings who may vanish from the earth.

Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis

Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis

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In the 1970s, scientists proposed what has become known as the Gaia Hypothesis: the idea that earth is best understood not as a passive substrate or background to life but as a life form in its own right. Our guest, journalist Ferris Jabr, believes the time has come to revive that idea. To understand how sentient creatures have evolved on this planet, he suggests, is not only to grasp that animals—human and otherwise—are offshoots of an evolutionary tree; it’s to see the tree itself as one element of a dynamic, interrelated organism. We speak with Jabr about the art of science reporting, the limits of life, and what the white cliffs of Dover are made of.