Tag: Richard Prum

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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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:47 — 86.2MB) | Embed

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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.