The Shape of the World
Hosted by Jill Riddell, The Shape of the World is a podcast about cities, nature and people. The Shape of the World shines a light on how we and other living things thrive and co-exist. We speak with scientists, artists, planners and philosophers about the shape of the world now and how it might be made better.
- Update frequency
- every 12 days
- Average duration
- 27 minutes
- Episodes
- 75
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
Is the Earth Alive?
“Life is a planetary phenomenon. It’s not that Earth had life evolve on it, but rather that Earth came to life itself. It is a garden that made itself. It sewed itself. It nurtured it…
Is the Earth Alive?
Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is alive: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don’t just live on the…
Zoned Out: Race, Property, and Ownership in America
Dr. Adrienne Brown reads cities the way professors read novels: carefully, and with lots of attention to what’s written between the lines. Adrienne teaches in the departments of English and Rac…
Zoned Out: Race, Property, and Ownership in America
“The stories of mid-20th-century authors were very much about a new silence around race, even as race continued to shape everyone’s lives in those emerging urban and suburban spaces.”…
Existential Risk: A User’s Guide
Daniel Holz studies black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology, all while also running the Existential Risk Laboratory at the University of Chicago. In this episode, Daniel helps us shed l…
Existential Risk: A User’s Guide
“When it’s all out in the open, you see that doom is not inevitable. There really are things that can be done, and there is a path forward. There’s definitely risk. Things are not gua…
The Secret Lives of Fireflies
“For me, paying attention to the natural world feeds my sense of wonder, and I actually think that’s one of the most important senses that we have–and that it may be underused.”
– Dr.…
The Secret Lives of Fireflies
Biologist Sara Lewis doesn’t just study fireflies—for her, fireflies are a living reminder that the world is pure magic. In this episode, the author of Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fire…
Cities and Wildlife: Frenemies or Friends?
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Can a Tiny Organism Transform Human Relations?
Artist Laurie Palmer believes they can. In her book, The Lichen Museum, Laurie explores what we can gain from learning to see life the way a lichen does. Laurie explains how our understanding o…
Season Six Coming Soon
Season Six will launch this Friday, May 9th
New episodes, new guests, and new insights about nature and our built environments coming soon with season 6 of Shape of the World. And more on how we …
Episode 33: Can Listening Be a Political and Moral Act?
The world is full of sound. Yet we happen to be a species who, at the moment, is directing most of our attention to our own voices and not so much to the voices of other living things. Biologis…
Episode 32: What Should We Fix First?
Many of us are anxious about everything related to nature and climate—and also worried about a slew of other social and political challenges. But what should we fix first? Author and New York T…
Episode 31: Who Trashed My River?
Humans started trashing rivers 7,000 years. Since then, century after century, the water quality of many rivers deteriorated. At first, changes occurred slowly. But by the time the Industrial R…
Episode 30: Privilege & Inequality in Animals
Guest Jenn Smith says that human concepts of intergenerational wealth and inequality occur also in the behaviors of animals. Privilege itself isn’t new–but it’s novel and shocking to learn that…
Episode 30: Privilege & Inequality in Animals
“We see privilege popping up across the tree of life, not just in humans. When there are these legacies of exclusion within human societies, there needs to be some structural change to be able to ad…
Episode 29: Disruption & Resilience
When Jane Watson encountered a ruined meadow of seagrass in the ocean, instead of getting furious, she grew curious. As a marine biologist, Jane knew that hidden in the story of decimated seagr…
Season Five Coming Soon
Season Five Will Launch July 2022
New episodes, new guests, new insights about nature and our built environments are coming soon. And more on how we can live together–with nature, with cities and wit…
Season Five Coming Soon
Season Five Will Launch July 2022
New episodes, new guests, new insights about nature and our built environments are coming soon. And more on how we can live together–with nature, with cities a…
Episode 28: The Wild Card
Sarah Cowles encourages radically rethinking the synthetic landscapes found in cities. When welcoming nature to our human cities, do we aim for an artificial remaking of what once was there? Or…