Swamped: What Experts Do When They No Longer Know What to Do

On this episode I speak with Vandana Singh, speculative fiction author, participle physicist, polymath, and wonderful person. She discusses how she came to see the enormity of the climate crisis, and  how it transformed her teaching, writing, scientific practice--and life. We also talk about uncertainty, colonization, wonder, and the beyond human world.

Sometimes things literally go off the charts. Especially with the climate in recent years. In this episode Michael Wehner, recently retired Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, talks about why he and his team decided it was time to change the Saffir-Simpson hurricane rating scale. Instead of category 5 hurricanes should now go to category 6, they argue! Michael also discusses climate modeling, uncertainty, risk, prediction, and the perils of inequality, poverty and life on warming planet.

Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray, Chair of Environmental Studies at Cal Poly, Humboldt knows a lot about climate anxiety and how people handle overwhelm. She is author of The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators and A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. She has spent a lot of time thinking about  working with people struggling to come to terms with our rapidly heating planet.In this episode visiting cohost neuroscientist, artist, and writer Suparna Choudhury and Swamped host Joshua Moses talk to Sarah about politics, brain science, youth anxiety, authoritarianism, and how to stay sane when it feels like the world just punched you in the gut and when you’re feeling anything but sane.

Carlo Rovelli is a physicist who asks big questions about the universe, life, love, uncertainty, time, poetry, psychedelics, black holes, and the climate crisis. In this episode cohost Suparna Choudhury and Joshua Moses have a far-ranging and sometimes personal conversation with Carlo. They even get to the root of a 7-year old’s existential terror of infinity…

Most of us find ourselves at points in our lives when we no  longer know what to do. We may feel uncertain, stuck – or swamped. In Swamped, host Joshua Moses talks to disaster responders, scientists, theologians, sanitation workers, poets, teachers, and morticians who face overwhelming situations.  This show is rooted in Joshua’s belief that we have a lot to learn from each other when we no longer know what to do. The more we share these stories, the more possibility we have for growing and collectively facing our seismic  social and ecological challenges. In this first episode we hear from Joseph Bruno, former commissioner of the NYC Office of Emergency Management, who headed the Hurricane Sandy response; Ed Shevlin, a sanitation worker who spent years cleaning up his neighborhood after Sandy; and poet Marie Howe who has a panic attack while driving on the Tappan Zee Bridge and discovers a group of everyday superheroes she calls The Bridge Guys.This episode was produced in partnership with Rowhome Productions.