Wonder Cabinet

David George Haskell, biologist and lyrical nature writer, reframes flowers as world-changing actors. He explores how beauty, scent, and reciprocity rewired ecosystems and human culture. Short, vivid stories trace floral chemistry, lost aromas, and the sensory bridges between species. The conversation invites a new way of seeing life through attraction, cooperation, and belonging.

Robert Macfarlane, acclaimed British nature writer and explorer, reflects on rivers, animism, and the rights of nature. He travels to cloud forests, Chennai and wild Canadian waterways. Listens to mycologists and Indigenous river-keepers. Explores legal rights for ecosystems and what it means to sense a living river.

Renee Bergland, a literary scholar and historian of science, explores the surprising kinship between Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin. She traces their shared wonder of fossils, field observations, and a science that valued emotion. The conversation highlights natural magic, intertwined sensibilities, and how this outlook reshapes hope and care for the living world.

George Saunders, award-winning novelist known for Lincoln in the Bardo, reflects on death, wonder, and moral reckoning. He discusses a novel about bickering angels and a dying oil baron, how ghost stories enlarge imaginative space, the role of Buddhist practice in facing mortality, and why fiction probes complicated questions of repentance and moral judgment.

Rebecca Solnit, writer and activist known for books on feminism and environmentalism, reflects on hope amid systemic crisis. She discusses cultural shifts that precede political change. She explores wonder as a moral force, Indigenous and scientific interconnection, renewable energy advances, and personal roots in punk and activism.

Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist and bestselling author known for work on quantum gravity, reflects on LSD-altered perception, the “spectacular” beauty of general relativity and quantum mechanics, and his search for meaning. He traces political awakenings, pacifism, and why scientists should engage in public life. He also shares a provocative idea about the absence of ultimate reality.

Writer and ecologist Sophie Strand thinks at a scale that can feel dizzying—in the best way. In a single conversation, she can move from the chemical structure of cells to mushroom spores, from ancient weather gods to mycorrhizal fungi, from Bronze Age collapse to the slow intelligence of soil.In this episode of Wonder Cabinet, we talk with Strand about wonder that doesn’t float upward but roots downward—into bodies, ecosystems, decay, and deep time. We begin with her essay “Your Body Is an Ancestor,” published shortly before Halloween and the Day of the Dead, and follow her imagery into our shared prehistoric past. The conversation also explores how Strand’s experience of chronic illness reshaped her understanding of nature, selfhood, and health. Rather than seeing the sick body as broken, she turns to ecological metaphors: spider webs, soil structures, caterpillars dissolving inside cocoons. What might it mean to understand ourselves not as machines that fail, but as landscapes that change?Along the way, we talk about fantasy and “romantasy,” Tolkien, Harry Potter, Dramione fan fiction and communal storytelling rituals. This is a conversation about wonder with dirt under its fingernails: embodied, mythic, ecological, and deeply alive to the cycles of death and regeneration that bind us all.--- Substack: "Your Body is an Ancestor" Sophie Strand’s website  Follow her work on Instagram and Substack Order her memoir ---00:00:00 Meet Sophie Strand00:04:34 Body as Ancestor00:10:08 Roots of Sin00:18:21 Spores and Consciousness00:27:49 Stories We Can't Explain00:35:39 Science as Wonder---Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson.Find out more about the show at wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.  Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

You know that moment of amazed surprise when you encounter something so unexpected that it feels almost magical? Welcome to “Wonder Cabinet,” the new podcast from the creators of the Peabody Award-winning public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” Each week, Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson host intimate conversations with leading scientists, poets and philosophers about the mystery of the cosmos, the deep intelligence of the Earth, and ideas to re-enchant everyday life. These are expansive interviews about experiences of wonder and transcendence – and ideas that open new doors. We’re living through a period of turbulent change, so there's a question we’re asking: what would happen if we let wonder be our guide -- not as an escape from reality, but as a way to inhabit it more deeply? The first two episodes of “Wonder Cabinet” premiere on January 31, and new editions will be released weekly on Saturdays. Visit https://wondercabinetproductions.com Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.