Emergence Magazine Podcast

In this interview, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram discusses the animism, power, and potency of the living world. In our current moment of ecological and societal instability—rich with possibility and fraught with potential danger—he calls on us to remember the animacy of our own bodily senses and our inherent participation in the collective, embodied flesh of the Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We commissioned four authors to approach the theme of apocalypse through fiction, from the perspectives of past, present, and future. Our second installment, Ink, is a story by Sjón, an Icelandic poet and writer. He is the author of The Blue Fox, From The Mouth Of The Whale, and Moonstone—The Boy Who Never Was. In this short story—narrated by Sjón—we are introduced to Valur Sveinsson, a Chargé d’Affaires in London. Born with the gift of second sight, Valur encounters supernatural beings called the Inkborn and witnesses their telling of an apocalyptic vision of the future.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As part of our planned Apocalypse issue, we had commissioned four authors to approach this theme through fiction from the perspectives of past, present and future.  Our first installment in our fiction series, entitled Thylacine, is from the American novelist Lydia Millet, author of numerous books including A Children’s Bible; Love in Infant Monkeys, a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize; and My Happy Life, winner of the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. This short story, narrated by Lydia, explores historical endings as a man seeks the company and friendship of the last Tasmanian tiger housed in a failing zoo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the existence of the famed ivory-billed woodpecker is increasingly left to the realm of myth, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder explores the widespread disappearance of birds in the narratives of apocalyptic prophecy that run through our collective consciousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of The Birds of Opulence; Water Street; and Blackberries, Blackberries, and an Associate Professor of English in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Kentucky. At a time that is punctuated by the loss of breath—when we are increasingly gripped by the profound understanding that the right to breathe is the right to life—this essay from Crystal contemplates the intimacy of breathing as she considers how we live, die, and love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As part of our recent series of online conversations with our contributors, mythologist and storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw joined us to read from his new book, Courting the Wild Twin and talk about his recent op-eds for the magazine on the mythical response to the pandemic. In the moderated discussion that followed with Emergence executive editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Martin answered questions from the audience and shared his thoughts on initiation, agency, and the move into the mythical. Our task now, he said, is to look at the prayer rug of our own lives as the mythic ground that we each stand upon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this narrated essay, poet Jake Skeets explores apocalypse, time, and futurity from a Diné perspective. While colonial frames foretell a final apocalypse that will arrive in linear time, Indigenous people have experienced many beginnings and many endings. As he observes the grief that has arisen in his community during the coronavirus pandemic, he considers how hope might be reimagined. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this narrated essay, Roy Scranton asks what we mean when we say “the world is ending.” Examining the nature of the narratives we tell ourselves about the future, he explores what revelation may be before us. Roy Scranton is the author of I Heart Oklahoma!; Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature; We’re Doomed. Now What?; War Porn; and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of Darktown Follies, Red Summer, and Imperial Liquor. In this essay, Amaud explores the loneliness and fear that arise in the wake of inexplicable tragedy where personal losses highlight histories of suffering and the deep uncertainties of our time. This fact has always been true, but feels more so in the midst of a pandemic, massive job losses, food insecurity, climate chaos, and the national uprisings provoked by ongoing racial injustice and police brutality in the US. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Kalyanee Mam’s mother nourished and sustained her family with umami soups, chicken rice, and fried noodles. Years later, as Kalyanee cooks for her husband and mother-in-law who have fallen ill during the pandemic, she reflects on food as a conduit for healing and love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As sirens fill the streets of London, George Prochnik recalls a revolutionary poet’s account of the 1832 cholera pandemic that unfolded in Paris. While watching history repeat itself in devastating refrain, George wonders: What is hysteria? What is necessary passion and courage? How can we respond both lucidly and compassionately as this disaster progresses? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since lockdowns began, there has been an unprecedented reduction in human-created noise. Our movements have lessened, the circle of our existence is closer, we are more still. As the din of human activity has quieted down, the sounds of the living world have come to the forefront. Around the world people have reported hearing an increase in the songs of birds, the chirping of insects, and the myriad sounds of non-human life. A newfound silence is pervading many of our environments as cars, planes, and industries have increasingly been brought to a standstill. A couple of years ago, we spent a few days filming a virtual reality project in Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rain Forest with acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. Gordon has traveled the globe documenting the impacts of noise pollution on the natural world. His work has revealed that silence (which he describes as the absence of human generated noise) is on the verge of extinction and that even the most remote corners of the world are impacted by the noise

As part of our recent series of online offerings, the Emergence Magazine Book Club spent the month of April reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s celebrated, best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. For the Book Club’s last meeting, Robin joined us in a vibrant live video zoom conversation, hosted by acclaimed writer Robert Macfarlane. Responding to questions asked by readers from around the globe, Robin discussed dandelions as global citizens, the role of the writer as a conduit for story, and the spirit of reciprocity that lies at the heart of our relationship to place. It was just a conversation that was too rich not to be shared on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Self-quarantined and isolated in her apartment in Brooklyn, Hala Alyan is more aware than ever of humanity’s interdependence—suddenly exposed as a raw, pulsing nerve. With all of us inescapably together as we move through this pandemic, how, she asks, can we make room for grief, empathy, and hope? Hala is an award-winning Palestinian American poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in numerous journals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of COVID-19, Lisa Lee Herrick challenges the resurgence of dangerous historical frames of race and belonging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Facing the paradoxes and ambiguities enmeshed with the COVID-19 pandemic, David Abram finds beauty in the midst of shuddering terror. As we’re isolated in this uncertain time, he writes, we can turn to the more-than-human world to empower our empathy for each other. Read the essay on our site: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/our-unknowing/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Elie is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Reinventing Bach and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. As part of our celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day we invited Paul Elie to trace the literary history of the environmental movement from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment. Though the plight of the Earth has become a fixture of collective consciousness, he asks if we will live up to the promise of unified action on behalf of the Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this extended meditation on the relationship between place and intimacy, the body and the word, Carl Phillips walks among trees to explore what can and cannot be known. Carl is the author of numerous books including Wild Is the Wind, Reconnaisance, Riding Westward, and The Rest of Love. https://emergencemagazine.org/story/among-the-trees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The poet W.S. Merwin spent the last four decades of his life on Maui, restoring a plot of abandoned land that would become one of the most diverse and expansive palm tree gardens in the world. In this essay, staff writer Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder visits these lush nineteen acres, now home to more than 3,000 palm trees and more than 400 unique species. Merwin wrote poetry in the morning and spent his afternoons planting and tending to trees. His poems are living witness to the care he offered to this land. https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-poet-and-the-palm-tree/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this interview, science writer David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, speaks about the root causes underlying the current pandemic and explores the ways in which viruses are embedded in the same systems of ecology and evolutionary biology that we are. As we disrupt wild ecosystems and shake these viruses free, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to reimagine our relationship with the natural world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices