Wonder Cabinet

Wonder Cabinet Productions

Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress. Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality. The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was still in conversation with older ways of knowing the world. Today, another shift is taking place, as mechanistic models give way to more holistic, relational understandings of life on a sentient planet. Wonder Cabinet lives at that threshold. About the hosts Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson co-founded To The Best Of Our Knowledge. Steve hosts Luminous, a podcast about the science and philosophy of psychedelics, and is the author of Atoms and Eden. Learn more at wondercabinetproductions.com.

Episodios

  1. Rebecca Solnit: Hope After the End

    HACE 15 H

    Rebecca Solnit: Hope After the End

    How do you deal with the emotional toll of living in a time of dissolution? Social scientists use the term "polycrisis" to describe the kind of cascading, overlapping failures that can lead to systemic collapse, and it’s hard not to see the symptoms of a dying world order in events unfolding around us.  But maybe what we’re witnessing is actually grounds for hope. In a forthcoming book "The Beginning Comes After the End," writer and activist Rebecca Solnit makes the case that something is dying, all right — because something better is being born. A rising worldview that embraces antiracism, feminism, environmental thinking, Indigenous and non-Western ideas, and a vision of a more interconnected, compassionate world.   Solnit is an engaged writer and intellectual in the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan Sontag and George Orwell. Her new book picks up where her earlier bestseller “Hope in the Dark”  left off — with an argument against despair and historical amnesia. In this conversation, we explore the extraordinary scale of progressive social, political, scientific and cultural change over the past century, the roots of Solnit’s stance of “pragmatic, embodied hope,” her thoughts on “moral wonder, “ and her years in San Francisco’s underground punk rock scene.  She also tells us what she’d put in our own wonder cabinet: an AIDS Memorial Quilt square sewn by Rosa Parks.   — To The Best Of Our Knowledge — Tending a wartime garden: what Orwell’s fascination with roses tells us about the human need for beauty  Rebecca Solnit’s newsletter  Pre-order “The Beginning Comes After the End," due out March 3, 2026.  — 00:00:00 Introduction  00:04:00 A Land Back Ceremony  00:08:05 Progress in Disguise  00:18:35 Hope and Interconnection  00:29:45 Defiant Hope — 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.

    38 min
  2. Carlo Rovelli: Cosmic Mysteries and the Politics of Wonder

    7 FEB

    Carlo Rovelli: Cosmic Mysteries and the Politics of Wonder

    Carlo Rovelli’s quest to understand the nature of reality began not in a physics lab, but in youthful experiments with consciousness, political protest and a restless hunger for meaning—years before he “fell madly in love with physics.” Today, Rovelli is famous for his bestselling books, including "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" and "Reality Is Not What It Seems," and his pioneering work on some of the biggest mysteries in physics, including black holes and quantum gravity.  In a wide-ranging conversation, Steve Paulson talks with Rovelli about his early, profound experiences with LSD; his discovery of the "spectacular" beauty of general relativity and quantum mechanics; his lifelong search for purpose in both the cosmos and his own life; and why scientists need to be politically engaged. Carlo also tells us about the big idea that he’d put in our own wonder cabinet. This interview was recorded at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, a project supported by Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation. We also play a short excerpt from Anne Strainchamps’ earlier interview with Rovelli that originally aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge.  This Wonder Cabinet episode was not funded, endorsed or affiliated with Wisconsin Public Media or the University of Wisconsin - Madison. — TTBOOK Interview — Deep time: Carlo Rovelli's white holes, where time dissolves Carlo Rovelli's Website — Official research and publications — 00:00:00 Introduction & The Chirp of Black Holes 00:04:10 Early Years in Verona 00:10:00 Falling in Love with Physics 00:17:30 Search for Truth 00:25:05 Politics of 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.

    38 min
  3. Sophie Strand: Ecological Storytelling and Mythic Imagination

    31 ENE

    Sophie Strand: Ecological Storytelling and Mythic Imagination

    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.

    39 min

Acerca de

Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress. Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality. The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was still in conversation with older ways of knowing the world. Today, another shift is taking place, as mechanistic models give way to more holistic, relational understandings of life on a sentient planet. Wonder Cabinet lives at that threshold. About the hosts Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson co-founded To The Best Of Our Knowledge. Steve hosts Luminous, a podcast about the science and philosophy of psychedelics, and is the author of Atoms and Eden. Learn more at wondercabinetproductions.com.

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