PODCAST · science
Generation Anthropocene
by Generation Anthropocene
Exploring the connection between humans, nature, and the powers shaping our new geologic age.Hosted by Michael Osborne and produced by 14th Street Studios.
Episodes
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The Nature of Intelligence
Humans tend to think that our intelligence is the most distinguishing trait of our species. Collectively our intelligence has given us god-like powers. But what exactly is intelligence, and how did it evolve? How do we measure intelligence in other species, and how might we use that information…
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The Rescue Effect
The tone around conservation is often pretty heavy and it’s hard not to feel a sense of despair. But maybe there are opportunities in the world of conservation that we are not fully taking into account. The truth is, organisms and ecosystems have built-in defense mechanisms to respond to rapid...
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Planet Texas, Ep1
Today's episode is a cross-promotion with the Planet Texas podcast. We are featuring the first episode of the series. The Ogallala Aquifer is the biggest aquifer in North America, and it accounts for more than 30 percent of all agriculture in the United States. And… it’s running out of water....
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Human Origins
As a species, our intelligence is probably the single most important quality that sets us apart from every other organism that has ever lived. But it’s not so much our abilities as individuals, but rather it’s our collective and accumulated knowledge. All of the drivers of the Anthropocene are…
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Bunkers and Preppers
What the subcultures of Preppers can teach us about preparing for environmental destruction. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Cybel
On today’s episode we’re bringing you something special and a little different: A science fiction short story. It’s weird, and cool, and is, in a way, very much about the Anthropocene. Anyway, it’s fun! Written and sound designed by Brandon Buerk with help from Jackson Roach, and read by Nick...
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Famous and Gravy's Emblem of Dignity
Today's episode is a cross-promotion with a new podcast by Michael Osborne called Famous and Gravy. This person died in 2013 at age 95. His given name translates colloquially as “troublemaker.” The question most often asked about him was how, after all he’d been through, he could be so evidently...
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Elizabeth Kolbert
Support us on www.patreon.com/genanthro It's hard to avoid the sense of despair that surrounds the story of climate change – and for that matter the story of the Anthropocene. It can all feel so hopeless. So, who is responsible for the weight of these feelings? What responsibility lies with the...
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Christians and Climate Change
For as long as climate change has been an issue, the Evangelical Christian community has generally either downplayed the threat, or denied it altogether. In the last decade, however, more and more Evangelicals are coming around, and are even voicing support for meaningful action. So what's…
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Bill McKibben
Find merch and support the show through our Patreon: https://patreon.com/genanthro With his landmark book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben was one of the first journalists to start writing about climate change for a mass audience. He's since become one of the most prominent American...
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The Love Canal
In the late 1970s, in a neighborhood just downstream from Niagara Falls, an environmental disaster slowly came to light. In so many ways, it turned out to be a true life horror story. And, as it turns out, the story of the Love Canal also has a lot to teach us about the environmental crises we…
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Dark Green Religion
It's sometimes hard to square Darwinian evolution with the major religions of the world. According to Professor Bron Taylor, if you take our current scientific understanding of biological interconnectedness, and combine it with the reality of the global environmental crises, what you get is a…
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Infectious Disease: A Big History
The history of disease is really a story about humankind’s ever-changing relationship to the natural world. All of the momentous events in human history— the acquisition of fire, the development of farming, the Columbian exchange, rapid industrialization, and accelerated globalization— all…
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We Are As Gods
Humans have been shaping the course of evolution for a long time, but with today's gene editing technologies our power to determine the fate of life on Earth is reaching new levels. With the extinction crisis looming, should we use these new editing tools to rescue threatened organisms? Are we...
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Hurricane Lizards & Plastic Squid with Thor Hanson
All around the globe, biologists are discovering that organisms are ALREADY responding to climate change. They're moving, adapting, evolving, taking refuge – the whole darned thing is more unpredictable than we could've imagined. Climate change biology is here. Super weird, kind of a bummer, but...
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Shrinkage
What happens to Earth's biology when we heat up the planet? Weird stuff, that's what. For example, everything gets smaller. As in shrinkage. Weird, right? We talk to Jen Sheridan in this conversation about why warming = smaller. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy &…
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Explainer: The Impact of Climate Denialism
Sometimes it seems like the only reason we haven't had meaningful action on climate change is because of the decades-long effort to mislead the public. But is that true? Just how important is climate denialism? In this 3rd installment of our explainer series, Aaron Strong helps us tackle that...
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Explainer: Why Cows Are So Damned Bad for Warming
Cows are...a problem. Especially when it comes to global warming. With an assist from Zeke Hausfather, In this installment of our explainer seires we do our best to answer (quickly) why exactly cows and beef are such a big deal. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy &…
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Explainer: The Origin of 2 degrees
In this first in our new explainer series, we dive into the origins of the number 2 degrees C. How did that number come to be an international target, and what's its significance anyway? Professor Aaron Strong of Hamilton College explains. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands…
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Waste-Free World, with Ron Gonen
We all kinda know that the global waste stream is a crazy big problem, but, in terms of just bottom line dollars, most of the time we don’t think about what waste COSTS. So, where might there be big opportunities today to totally rethink everything we throw away? In today’s episode, Ron Gonen...
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Carbon Valley, Ep1
Today is a guest spot featuring Episode 1 of Carbon Valley, a new series from Wyoming Public Media. In the coal capital of the country, in the least-populated state in the union, leaders had to make a move. So, they turned to a silver bullet and brought in a $20 million competition to jumpstart a...
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Yum
Few things in life are better than savoring delicious food. We all know this to be true today... but we've never stopped to consider just how important flavor-seeking might've been in the distant past. It turns out that the science of flavor can teach us a lot about the story of human evolution,...
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Individual Reckoning
Climate change sometimes feels like a problem that can only be solved by governments, corporations, and large sectors of the economy. The truth, though, is that we as individuals can make an impact too. And, as it turns out, it's not all sacrifice. In her new book, Under the Sky We Make…
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Never A Catalytic Moment
At some point global warming will get so bad that the world will HAVE to take action, right? Well, maybe not. In this conversation with environmental journalist, David Roberts, we dive into the scary reality of shifting baselines syndrome. That's the human tendency to rationalize, normalize, and...
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The Magic and Science of Psilocybin
This episode is about magic mushrooms and the Anthropocene. Need I say more? Prepare to have mind = blown. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Zombies, Covid-19, and The Anthropocene
Are you afraid of the end of the world? Sure! Who isn’t?! Sometimes, though, it’s hard to unpack all the stories we tell ourselves about the looming apocalypse. So perhaps the most popular monster of the 21st century, the freakin’ ZOMBIE, can help us unearth and confront our collective fears.…
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Timefulness, with Marcia Bjornerud
When I fell in love with geology, I developed a new relationship with TIME. It’s not just the vastness of Earth history that blew my mind— it’s imagining all that’s happened, all that’s transpired to make the Earth what it is today. In her book, Timefulness, Marcia Bjornerud captures this idea as...
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2020 Earth Day Relaunch
It's been 3 years since our last episode – and we're (finally!) bringing GenAnthro back. On this episode, we learn how GenAnthro came to be, what happened, and where we go from here. Happy to be back, y'all – more episodes coming soon! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy &...
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Raw Data's Origins of Power: Prelude
Cross-promotion. Introducing Raw Data's Origins of Power in Silicon Valley. How did we get here? Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Sounds of the Ocean
When you imagine ocean sounds, maybe you hear the smooth arcing songs of the humpback whale, or the energetic, rhythmic clicks and snaps of dolphins. But it turns out the oceans are home to a much wider range and diversity of sounds than we could ever imagine, and today some of them are being...
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Telltale Signs
Two stories of ecological disruption: the great sea star wasting, and a graveyard of trembling aspens. As climate change unfolds, one of the scariest prospects is that we will witness large scale ecosystem collapse. So is that moment already upon us? Will we be able to recognize the symptoms in...
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Rising Seas in Silicon Valley
Sea level rise is a global concern, and on the whole, policy and funding for mitigation aren’t keeping pace. Today on Gen Anthro, producer Isha Salian shares a story about a unique mitigation method in the San Francisco Bay Area – wetlands restoration, which is happening right next door to…
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Interview: Kim Stanley Robinson (the sequel)
What will New York City look like in 2140? Scifi author Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel explores a possible future in which NYC is partly submerged, due to catastrophic sea level rise. In this conversation with producer Mike Osborne, KSR discusses the bedrock of science and economics in 'New...
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State of the Human's 'Crashing'
Once upon a time, Miles crashed a server with his project ‘Geology of Game of Thrones’. Today on the show, we're featuring a short piece in which Miles shares the backstory to the project (and the server hullaballoo), as well as the connection he sees between ‘Geology of GoT’ and the…
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Interview: Christian Parenti
Capitalocene – maybe it doesn’t roll off the tongue, but a group of thinkers argue the term is preferable to Anthropocene because it's more diagnostic of what underlies our environmental problems. One of those thinkers is Christian Parenti, a reporter and scholar. In 2011 Parenti published…
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Saving the Last Ocean
We hear a lot in the news about the Antarctic ice sheet melting – but other than climate change, it’s hard to imagine what else threatens a place so cold, so remote, and so seemingly barren. What other ecological protection could the southern continent possibly need? But Antarctica is...a really...
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Interview: Admiral Lee Gunn
How is climate change going to affect national security and the work of our armed forces? On today’s show, Admiral Lee Gunn shares his perspective on this overlooked topic. Now retired from the Navy, Admiral Gunn has been working on connections between climate and military intervention for many...
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Trump on Earth's 'The Climate of Mann'
‘Trump on Earth’ is a new podcast about the environment under the Trump administration. They’re doing a fantastic job keeping tabs on policy changes coming out of Washington, so today on Gen Anthro, we want to feature one of their episodes – an interview with renowned climate scientist Michael...
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Interview: Camille Dungy
How do cultural constructs, like race, influence our relationship to the natural world? Poet and professor Camille Dungy explores this question by highlighting African-American voices in her 2009 anthology, “Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.” In this conversation…
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Carbon Footprint of Superheroes
In the pursuit of justice, Superman leaps tall buildings in a single bound; Ironman uses incredible technology to defeat evil forces; and Batman outfits himself with everything a flying-vigilante-mammal needs to fight the corrupt underbelly of Gotham City. In their own way, every superhero is...
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Interview: Paul Shapiro
Are you a vegetarian, a vegan, or a lapsed vegetarian? Do you eat meat and feel a little conflicted about it? No matter where you fall on the spectrum, Paul Shapiro wants to welcome you into the conversation around animal agriculture. Shapiro is an animal rights activist and the Vice President of...
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Trash to Treasure
A story about accidental beauty, a changing landscape, disappointed tourists, and the complicated nature of conservation in the Anthropocene. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Interview: Odile Madden
One word: PLASTICS! Plastics get a bad rep when it comes to the environment, but at the same time, we all benefit from this often maligned material. Today on the show, producer Miles Traer talks to materials scientist Odile Madden of the Smithsonian. What plastic artifacts define the modern era,...
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Ginkgo
Today, Ginkgo biloba is a common street tree, found in cities all over the world. But believe it or not, it was once almost lost to extinction. This once global tree retreated into a tiny relic community, only found in a few valleys in China. But about 1,000 years ago, humans discovered ginkgo,...
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Interview: Ryan Kelly
What if you you could scoop up a jar of seawater and use it to figure out what species were in that part of the ocean? Today we’re able to do that with a new scientific technique analyzing environmental DNA, or eDNA for short. In this episode, we talk to Ryan Kelly, an ecologist and lawyer at the...
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How We Grow
Humans are a force radically reshaping the Earth’s surface – but what forces are shaping homo sapiens? Today on the show, we feature two stories. First we look at ongoing human evolution and genetic mutations (btw, we are still evolving). Our second piece is about a human and animal instinct that...
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Interview: John Holdren
John Holdren was President Obama’s senior advisor on science and technology for eight years. In this conversation with producer Mike Osborne, Holdren discusses Obama’s passion for science and its role in all aspects of American life. He also tells us what it’s like to testify in front of…
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Oh Right, the Animals
Today: border critters and beaked whales. Two stories about human actions disrupting the ecosystems and lives of other animals with whom we share the planet. First, a tale of how the U.S. Navy’s sonar activities created an acoustic storm in the Great Bahama Canyon, impacting a population of...
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Season Premier! Interview: Jonathan Foley
WE’RE BACK! I mean, OMG, right?! And it’s our 5th podcast birthday! So, on the eve of the Science March, we’re kicking off the new season with an interview featuring Jonathan Foley, Museum Director of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In this conversation,...
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The Biggest Stories
Andy Revkin is an award-winning journalist whose life work has centered on reporting about the environment and climate change. He spoke to producer Mike Osborne about his early seafaring adventures, how he got his start in journalism, and his view that climate change is a symptom of a much bigger...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Exploring the connection between humans, nature, and the powers shaping our new geologic age.Hosted by Michael Osborne and produced by 14th Street Studios.
HOSTED BY
Generation Anthropocene
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Generation Anthropocene have?
Generation Anthropocene currently has 97 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Generation Anthropocene about?
Exploring the connection between humans, nature, and the powers shaping our new geologic age.Hosted by Michael Osborne and produced by 14th Street Studios.
How often does Generation Anthropocene release new episodes?
Generation Anthropocene has 97 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Generation Anthropocene?
You can listen to Generation Anthropocene on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Generation Anthropocene?
Generation Anthropocene is created and hosted by Generation Anthropocene.
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