ASLE Spotlight

This episode was recorded Friday, March 18, 2022

Co-Hosts: Brandon Galm and Joshua Calhoun

Janisse Ray, Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonder in a World Beyond Humans  (Use code ASLE25 valid now through 4/15/22 for a 25% discount)

Looking to honor life on earth, Janisse Ray has repeatedly immersed herself in wildness. From overwintering with butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, her stories capture the joys of heart-pounding amazement, reflect on the sights of explorers like Bartram and Sacagawea, and document experiences rare in an ...

This episode was recorded Friday, June 11, 2021. Guest Charles Pigott gratefully acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust (Early Career Fellowship) and the Isaac Newton Trust.

Co-Hosts: Laura Barbas-Rhoden, Gisela Heffes

Scott Edward Anderson, Azorean Suite: A Poem of the Moment/Suite Açoriana: Um Poema do Momento

“One can be born on an island in two ways,” wrote the poet and novelist Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto. “From the body of a woman or from the radiance of sensibility.” In this bilingual, book-length poem, Azorean Suite/Suite Açoriana, ...

This episode was recorded Friday, May 14, 2021

Co-Hosts: April Anson, Rahul Mukherjee

Hsuan L. Hsu, The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics

Smell has long been spurned by Western aesthetics as a lesser sense for its qualities of subjectivity, volatility, and materiality. But it is these very qualities that make olfaction a vital tool for sensing and staging environmental risk and inequality. Unlike the other senses, smell extends across space and reaches into our bodies. Hsu traces how writers, artists, and activists ...

This episode was recorded on Friday, April 16, 2021

Co-Hosts: Bethany Wiggin, Melody Jue

Steve Mentz, Ocean

The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the more than human world. Human engagements with the world’s ocean can be destructive, as with today’s deluges of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient ...

This episode was recorded on Friday, March 19, 2021

Co-Hosts: Laura Barbas-Rhoden, Heather Swan

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

World of Wonders is the New York Times bestselling collection of illustrated nature essays celebrating the way plants and animals can teach, support, and inspire us, and about the lessons learned growing up as an Asian American woman. The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to ...