A stop sign scorched from the Hayman Fire of 2002 still marks an entry onto the 9J road in Pike National Forest.

Fire and the Impermanence of Landscape

Photography is both an act of memory and a way to perceive change. For one writer, returning home means facing a landscape transformed by fire, climate change, and time.

Kate Durbin, artist, takes a selfie while standing in thigh-height waves and wearing a yellow plastic dress with Hello Kitty icons and a long, green wavy wig. In the background, other women wearing white underwear and rainbow-hued long wigs also take selfies while standing in the waves.

The Pleasures of Teaching Plastic

Plastic shapes us even as it contributes to our destruction. A performance studies scholar shares her creative approach to teaching about plastic and identity in an unavoidably plastic world.

Kickapoo River covers a roadway in muddy water.

Wading out the Kickapoo River Flood

After historic floods devastate Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, a team of scientists reflects on their fieldwork in the Kickappo River Valley to make sense of an entangled, multispecies world.

piles of ivory tusks engulfed in flames

Should We Empathize with Poachers?

Globalization makes animals more vulnerable to illegal trafficking, even as regulations restricting poaching have increased. An ecologist reviews Rachel Nuwer’s new book and asks what role empathy should play in addressing animal trafficking.

A young man stands in front of a water landscape at sunset pointing a large microphone with a fluffy grey "dead cat" windscreen off to the right to record environmental sounds.

The Marketplace of Environmental Sounds

How is the musical history of animal imitation caught up in racism, sexism, and imperialist nostalgia? From classical music to whistling, this conversation explores the art and ethics of imitating, recording, and selling the sounds of the nonhuman world.