These are tough times for people who care about insects. Roughly 40 percent of insect species face extinction. Poet Heather Swan is haunted by this specter of ecosystem collapse, but she’s also determined to live with love and even hope in a perilous time.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Nature
It can be hard to enjoy the natural world these days without anxiety. The challenge is to live in this time of climate change – but still find joy and refuge in it.
Biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber says life is all about eating and being eaten, which may sound gruesome, but to him, it’s a miraculous process. He’s the author of “Being Edible: Toward a Mystical Biology.”
“Bad River” is Mary Mazzio’s documentary about a small tribe, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and their legal battle to get rid of an oil pipeline. She examines the conflicting ideas we have about how to live on the land and even whether it can be owned.
Just over 200 years ago, a group of renegade German writers and philosophers came together in a small town and forever changed who we think we are. Andrea Wulf tells this story in her book “Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self.”
Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson was born and raised on the island of Savai'i. Rising sea levels washed away the small barrier islands that protected her home, eventually, forcing people to move — just one example of climate change disappearing islands in the South Pacific.
Stephen Alvarez — a National Geographic photographer and founder of the Ancient Art Archive — has spent years documenting ancient rock art around the world. He takes Steve Paulson on a long hike in the Cumberland Plateau, where they find an "unnamed cave" with 2,000-year old engravings.
Geologist Marcia Bjornerud has a profound understanding of Earth's deep history. The author of "Timefulness," she says geologic literacy would give us a much healthier sense of time.
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