Chrysalis with John Fiege

The tires of your car have a chemical in them, called 6PPD, that slows tire degradation by binding with oxygen and ozone that could break down the rubber. But these same reactions that protect the rubber are also creating a new chemical, called 6PPD-quinone, which scientists just found in 2020 to be highly toxic to aquatic organisms. 6PPD is in essentially every tire made since the 1960s, and aqua...

There is a line in Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s poem, “When the Animals Leave this Place,” that I find haunting: “They said no one belongs here.” She’s writing about land that used to flood cyclically but that settlers used for farms and pastures, against the advice of Indigenous elders and without regard for the seasonality of the rain. Embedded in these six words—“They said no one belongs here”—i...

I love beautiful pictures of animals surrounded by their natural habitats. It’s exhilarating to see idyllic environments and the animals so amazingly well-adapted to live in them. It’s also comforting to know those places still exist, despite what we’re doing to the planet.  But there’s a danger in that exhilaration and comfort: these animals appear to live in a world so separate from our own, and...

Before I read Brian Teare’s poem, “Doomstead Days,” I had never heard of a doomstead. It’s a clever portmanteau, combining homestead with doomsday: an alternative universe where the homestead is a preparation for the climate apocalypse. The poem Brian weaves around his encounter with this word is a lyrical romp through our connection to land, water, and each other. Water flows, gender is fluid, an...

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultur...

Lichen is a strange presence on this planet. Traditionally, scientists have understood lichen as a new organism formed through symbiosis between a fungus and an algae. But the science is evolving. It seems that there may be more than one species of fungus involved in this symbiosis, and some scientists have suggested that lichen could be described as both an ecosystem and an organism. Lichen may e...

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destructio...

When we’re gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us? Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down. Elizabeth Bradfield is a poet and naturalist who sees first hand, in her work as a marine educator, the...

Art can show us the pain and trauma and suffering of the world, and often it does. But art can also go the other direction. It can reveal the beauty, harmony, and unity of the world. The canvasses in Salma Arastu’s series of paintings, We Are All One , are full of soft colors, continuous lines, immersive habitats that flow into one another, and—sometimes—two-dimensional representations of humans a...

I’m continually amazed by the immensity of the world that a small poem can conjure. In just a few lines or words, or even just a line break, a poem can travel across time and space. It can jump from the minuscule to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. And in these inventive leaps, it can create, in our minds, new ideas and images. It can help us see connections that were, before, invisi...

Modern society has removed many of us from an intimate connection to the land, the water, and the elements. Air conditioning in cars and artificial light in our homes allow us to carry on without paying much attention at all to the forces of nature around us. These relationships to ecological surroundings are something entirely different for those who fish artisanally along the coasts of Peru. Con...

Many assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw. Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with explosives in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal s...

We’re back! I’m super-excited about the new series of shows we’ve been recording over the past year here at the Chrysalis podcast. The new series focus on poets, artists, cooks, and community organizers, and we’ll be releasing them alongside more of our original Conversations series that spans a wide range of environmental thought and storytelling—engaging the climate crisis as a cultural crisis....

Here’s something we hear all the time: if only more people knew more about environmental problems, then they would certainly act in some ecologically beneficial way. But the problem is, it’s not true. We’re now deluged with data about the climate crisis; and yet, this abundance of available environmental information has not led to an abundance of environmental action. This deficit model of climate...

Each year, we celebrate Earth Day; and each year, our collective actions lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more habitat destruction, and more species extinctions. It’s hard for Earth Day not to feel like more of a superficial patting of ourselves on the back or a greenwashing opportunity for corporate sponsors than a serious call for transformative change.  The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1...

Environmental activists often focus on facts and data, as if more climate information will lead to more climate action. That strategy may be effective with some communities, but overall it hasn’t prevented global emissions from climbing year after year or habitats from being destroyed day after day. Many folks in the environmental movement are thinking a lot about how to make messaging more effect...

“Forthright but also full of grace”: that could be a mantra for how we should all live our lives. It’s also how Jacqui Patterson has described her ideal as she fights for environmental justice in a world that can feel like it’s submerged completely in environmental injustice. From the South Side of Chicago, to Jamaica, to South Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Jacqui has continually asked what d...

How do we collectively steer the ship of humanity in a completely different direction, away from path that brought us to this moment of climate chaos, mass extinction, and environmental injustice? How do we build a society that is socially just and ecologically vibrant? Join host John Fiege for conversations with a remarkable group of environmental thinkers about their paths through life. The show...