ROB NIXON

Rob Nixon is a nonfiction writer and the Barron Family Professor in Environmental Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, most recently Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon is currently writing a book on environmental martyrs and the defense of the great tropical forests. He writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon and elsewhere. Much of his writing engages environmental justice struggles in the global South. He has a particular interest in understanding the roles that artists can play in effecting change at the interface with social movements.

ROB NIXON

There are some recurrent threads in indigenous cultures across the world. One of those is–We don’t own the land. The land owns us. It’s not seen as property first. It’s seen as inalienable in that sense because you don’t own it in the first place. What we’re seeing now is a kind of movement where more and more indigenous people are living kind of amphibious lives. On the one hand, they have their indigenous cosmologies. And the other hand, in order to increase the likelihood that they can keep out big corporations, mining, logging, and so forth, their presence on the land needs to be bureaucratically recognized is to have recognition that “this is your property.” So in one sense many of these communities I find are both inside and outside private property regimes.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Phil Kehoe with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Phil Kehoe. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

(Highlights) MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Entangled Life won the Wainwright Prize 2021, and has been nominated for a number of other prizes. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, Head of Science and Communications Strategy for the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation.

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Humans have been partnering with fungi for an unknowably long time, no doubt for longer than we’ve been humans. Whether as foods, eating mushrooms, as medicines, dosing ourselves with moulds and other mushrooms that might help, parasites or others helpers with infection, mushrooms as tinder or ways to carry a spark, this very important thing that humans needed to do for a very long time, and as agents of fermentation, as in yeasts creating alcohol. So humans have partnered with fungi to solve all sorts of problems and so fungi have found themselves enveloped within human societies and cultures for a long time.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Cooper Berkoff with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cooper Berkoff. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Entangled Life won the Wainwright Prize 2021, and has been nominated for a number of other prizes. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, Head of Science and Communications Strategy for the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation.

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Humans have been partnering with fungi for an unknowably long time, no doubt for longer than we’ve been humans. Whether as foods, eating mushrooms, as medicines, dosing ourselves with moulds and other mushrooms that might help, parasites or others helpers with infection, mushrooms as tinder or ways to carry a spark, this very important thing that humans needed to do for a very long time, and as agents of fermentation, as in yeasts creating alcohol. So humans have partnered with fungi to solve all sorts of problems and so fungi have found themselves enveloped within human societies and cultures for a long time.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Cooper Berkoff with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cooper Berkoff. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).