Disasters Maybe

In this final episode, I talk with Australian author Rose Michael about how resilience can emerge not just from survival, but from reimagining normality itself. Her latest novel, Else , questions the arbitrariness of social acceptability and explores how neurodivergent experiences can be attuned to environmental collapse. Rose’s approach invites us to see disaster not only as an endpoint, but as a...

Eco-anxiety is a problem of our times and younger generations are the more affected. What is the role of narratives in mediating these emotions and in articulating a possible path for action? In this episode, I talk with Chiara Xausa about how young adult climate fiction can foster agency rather than helplessness, turning individual anguish into social mobilization. Chiara Xausa is a Marie Sklodow...

The climate crisis is known for inspiring many a dozen dystopian, disastrous futures, but what about fiction that could inspire hope instead of despair? This episode uncovers how solarpunk, an optimistic, community-driven branch of science fiction, reframes our relationship with disasters. We discuss Becky Chambers Monk and Robot series searching for ways to imagine how to inhabit better tomorrows...

While many works of climate fiction focus on spectacular scenes of destruction, Andrea Chapela's Todos los Fines del Mundo takes a different approach. Instead of depicting apocalyptic chaos, she explores how climate collapse is used to explore the desire for interpersonal connections, turning the focus inward to emotional distances, regrets, and the fragile ways we try to hold on to care. Andrea i...

Most stories about AI and disaster tend to fall into two camps: AI as an unstoppable solution or AI as an imminent threat. But what if the way fiction depicts AI suggests something deeper about our cultural fears and hopes? And how does AI imagine its role in a disaster provoked by itself when prompted to write a story about it? In this episode I talk with Marco Caracciolo, professor of English li...

Most stories about climate change fixate on dramatic disasters like floods, or fires to ignite our emotional response. But what if these catastrophes are just one side of a much bigger cultural story? In this first episode, I explore how fiction’s obsession with sudden disaster obscures the slow, invisible, and often societal nature of the ongoing environmental crisis. Works discussed: The Day Aft...