Earthbound

Thomas Schueneman
  • 4.6 (5)
  • Society & Culture
  • Biweekly

A podcast helping people like you who feel anxious about climate change challenge the narratives that fuel overwhelm and reconnect you with the natural world to help you stay grounded in what you’re protecting rather than consumed by what’s being lost. Earthbound is about what it means to be human on a warming planet. Host Thomas Schueneman, a climate writer, global freelance journalist, and audio producer, talks with scientists, philosophers, activists, artists, Indigenous leaders, policy experts, and everyday people about how a changing Earth is reshaping our lives—and how our choices, values, and imaginations are reshaping the planet in return. From climate politics and planetary health to environmental justice, mental well‑being, psychology, and philosophy, the show explores the quiet work of repairing our relationship with nature and each other. Earthbound offers clear‑eyed, human‑centered stories from the Anthropocene.

  1. 2d ago

    The Earth Said Remember Me - How to Restore Our Connection With the Natural World

    A Conversation with Jason Dove MarkHave you ever stood in a place you love and sensed something missing, without being able to say what? Author and journalist Jason Dove Mark has a name for why that happens: the great getting used to. Scientists call it shifting baseline syndrome. Each generation accepts the world it first noticed as normal, so the losses that came before never register as losses. Jason and I talk about his new book, The Earth Said Remember Me, and the four practices he offers as an antidote: go outside, bear witness, make a record, and pass it on. We start in my own backyard with the western monarchs of Pacific Grove, then travel to Wisconsin lake ice, Pacific Northwest salmon stories, and a fire-red sky over the Bay Area. In this episode Why the slowest losses are the hardest to seeHow the monarch “comeback” revealed what we’ve forgottenWhy a family nature diary can be a quiet act of resistanceHow oral history works like a web, not a game of telephoneSolastalgia, and why grief needs an accurate memoryLifting baselines: the bald eagle and the progress we fail to noticeWhy memory is where imagination comes from If we can learn to see slow loss, we can learn to see slow recovery too. The assignment is simple. Go stand somewhere you love, pay attention, write down what you see, and tell somebody about it. Links & Resources The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet, Jason Dove Mark (W. W. Norton, 2026)Jason Dove Mark: jasondovemark.comSatellites in the High Country, Jason Mark (Island Press, 2015)Western Monarch Count, Xerces Society: westernmonarchcount.orgCommunity Lake Ice Collaboration, York University: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lob.10560Dear Tomorrow project: https://www.deartomorrow.org/Related Earthbound episode: Charles Hood, Nature at Night [add episode link]Earthbound: earthboundpodcast.comGlobalWarmingIsReal.com

    The Earth Said Remember Me - How to Restore Our Connection With the Natural World

  2. Oct 17

    Fair Trade, Farmers, and the True Cost of Food: A Conversation with Brenda Huerta

    Who pays when the price on the shelf doesn't cover the cost of growing the food? Brenda Huerta, Senior Advisor for Climate and Environment at Fairtrade International, joins Earthbound to talk about what a label on a banana can promise, what it can never promise, and why the farmers who contributed least to the climate crisis stand on the most exposed ground. Brenda grew up in Mexico, where farming has long meant more than food production. From the milpa to cocoa agroforests in Ghana, she brings that view to her work translating between smallholder farmers and the companies that buy from them. She is also refreshingly honest about what a certification scheme can and can’t do. In this episode: Milpa, the Green Revolution, and criticizing the system that feeds usHow fair trade began, and why it treats poverty as a product of unfair tradeCooperatives, the Fairtrade Minimum Price, and the premium farmers spend as they chooseLabel fatigue, and why certification can’t fix a system-wide problemThe adaptation finance gap facing smallholder farmersEurope’s deforestation and green claims rules, and who pays to complyLiving income reference prices and the true cost of foodWhy the COP “year of implementation" never quite arrivesSankofa, dynamic agroforestry, and the future of cocoa Ask Brenda what she loves most about her work, and she doesn’t cite a statistic. She says she knows, by first and last name, the farmers the work reaches. Somebody pays for that cheap banana. Knowing who is a start. LinksFairtrade International: https://www.fairtrade.netMeet Brenda Huerta (Fairtrade International): https://www.fairtrade.net/en/get-involved/news/meet-brenda-huerta.htmlFairtrade Risk Map: https://riskmap.fairtrade.netFairtrade Living Income Reference Prices: https://www.fairtrade.net/en/why-fairtrade/why-we-do-it/decent-livelihoods/living-income/living-income-reference-prices.htmlSankofa: dynamic agroforestry for cocoa in Ghana: https://www.fairtrade.net/en/get-involved/news/sankofa--improving-incomes-and-building-climate-resilience-throu.htmlFLOCERT, Fairtrade’s independent auditor: https://www.flocert.netNDC Partnership: https://ndcpartnership.orgClimate Policy Initiative, Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2025: https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2025/Related Earthbound: Somebody Should Do Something (individual action vs. systemic change): https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/individual-action-vs-systemic-change/Earthbound: https://www.earthboundpodcast.comGlobal Warming Is Real: https://globalwarmingisreal.com

    Fair Trade, Farmers, and the True Cost of Food: A Conversation with Brenda Huerta

  3. Oct 10

    Mutually Assured Distraction: Why Worry About Climate Change When AI Will Get Us First?

    In the 1960s, schoolchildren practiced for the end of the world by hiding under their desks. Sixty years later, the desks are virtual, and the apocalypse has company. In this solo episode, host Thomas Schueneman reads a short essay from Thinking Out Loud, his column in the Global Warming Is Real newsletter. After nearly twenty years of warning about climate change, he watches artificial intelligence arrive to steal climate’s existential thunder. Then he takes the joke seriously enough to follow it somewhere useful, to the question beneath both crises: is our wisdom keeping pace with the complexity we keep building? In this episode Duck and cover, mutually assured destruction, and a magazine that asked: "What, me worry?"The virtual desks we hide under today, or mutually assured distractionAGI and AGW: two acronyms, two threats of our own makingThe irony of AI as both a burden on the climate and a hoped-for fixFinding the humor in hilarious times, and why it helpsWhy complexity does not imply resilience or wisdomThe question that matters more than any forecast: what kind of world do we want? Hope, Tom suggests, begins when we stop fooling ourselves, and that cuts both ways. The danger is real. So is our capacity to answer it. The way out isn't a better hiding place. It's climbing out from under the desk, long enough to imagine something better. Links Read the original essay and subscribe to the Global Warming Is Real newsletter: globalwarmingisreal.com https://globalwarmingisreal.com/2026/10/01/why-worry-climate-change-and-ai/Earthbound: https://www.earthboundpodcast.comApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1801556711Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1oTiYPa10UY9pqWgSwwEnFEarthbound on Substack: https://planetwatch.substack.comFurther reading: Energy and AI, International Energy Agency, 2025: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-aiRelated: Breaking the Chains: The Lust for Power vs. the Light of Energy: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/breaking-the-chains-the-lust-for-power-vs-the-light-of-energy/Related solo essay: Climate and Peace | Lessons of Minneapolis: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/climate-and-peace-lessons-of-minneapolis/Related solo essay: The Fourth Turning Meets the Ways of the Duck: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/the-fourth-turning-meets-the-ways-of-the-duck-responding-with-calm-in-a-chaotic-world/Support the show: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/support/

    Mutually Assured Distraction: Why Worry About Climate Change When AI Will Get Us First?

  4. Sep 28

    The Human Idea: Earth's Newest Ecosystem - A Conversation with Anne Riley

    What if human thought isn’t separate from nature, but Earth’s newest ecosystem? Anne Riley spent more than 30 years in accounting, high tech, and banking before walking away from a system built on one goal: maximize profit at all costs. Her book, The Human Idea: Earth’s Newest Ecosystem, starts inside a single cell and builds outward to us. Life runs in nested layers, DNA to cell to body to colony, all bound by one rule. Do what you need, but don’t harm your neighbor. Humans run the same design one layer up, built from ideas. The difference is choice. Our rules are whatever we decide, and a bad idea spreads as easily as a good one. In this conversation Why Riley left accounting, and the goal that crowds out every other goalThe ideasphere: idea, mind, body, institution, society“Amazing and dangerous”: how the takers outspread the live-and-let-liversGovernment as the body’s nervous system, and what money does to itNature’s one hundred percent tax systemSchools that compete for students, and healthcare split into wellness and catastropheMeasuring pollution the way a body reports a cut fingerAI as a possible form of life without life’s constraintsWhy a quiet person with a big idea keeps talking anyway Riley calls herself a super introvert and the wrong person to spread her own theory. Some people tell her it will never work. Others ask when we start. Links The Human Idea: Earth’s Newest Ecosystem by Anne Riley, 2nd ed., Ideasphere World Publishing, 2024: thehumanidea.comAnne Riley’s books, including DINA and Aerie: thehumanidea.com/booksBionomics: Economy as Ecosystem, Michael Rothschild, 1990: https://books.google.com/books/about/Bionomics.htmlNexus, Yuval Noah Harari, 2024, on AI as “alien intelligence”: https://www.ynharari.com/book/nexus/Earthbound: Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun: earthboundpodcast.com/bill-mckibben-here-comes-the-sun-and-how-renewables-can-power-the-futureEarthbound: Diana Colleen, They Could Be Saviors | Curing Billionaire-ism: earthboundpodcast.com/they-could-be-saviorsEarthbound: earthboundpodcast.comEarthbound Listener Survey: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/survey/2026/Global Warming Is Real: globalwarmingisreal.com

    The Human Idea: Earth's Newest Ecosystem - A Conversation with Anne Riley

  5. Sep 11

    Maya Lilly: Lifting the Veil - Storytelling as a Catalyst for Change

    Maya Lilly builds documentaries around one question: what makes a story move somebody to act? She trained at Juilliard, ran an environmental club there called the Juilliard Greens, then took an environmental studies degree and moved to Hollywood on purpose. The plan was to learn what the industry does well and either get climate storytelling inside it or carry the techniques back to organizers. She did both. She is now a lead producer for The Years Project. Her definition of a story is narrow and very old. Somebody has a problem, confronts it, and overcomes it. What the arc does, she says, is lift the veil on a run of events that would otherwise feel unconnected. That reorders the work. Instead of finishing a film and attaching an impact campaign to the end, she goes to communities that already have a campaign and builds the film in service of it. In East Palestine, Ohio, her first question to residents was what do you need. In Cancer Alley, she points to Sharon Lavigne, who confronted the petrochemical industry with one simple sentence. She argues the other side has won by hammering simple narratives, while her own side has often explained complex issues poorly. Her team’s working question is how to keep the film from going wonky, how, in doing so, they might swap “anthropocentric” or “greenhouse gas emissions” for something much simpler: pollution. She pushes funders too. One told her proudly that its overhead is only ten percent. Some of that, she said, needs to be for better communications. We also get into Ishmael, deep ecology, and the consequences of an economy built with little consideration for the ecology that underpins it. And we end in the water, with a twenty-minute swim to a platform in Jamaica and hundreds of jellyfish that let her pass. She looked them up later. There were so many because the ocean is warming. “Storytelling for me is like looking through a little peephole into a wider room. So often what I’m trying to do is find the smaller story that shows the bigger story within it.” · Maya Lilly Resources Maya Lilly and The Years ProjectHop Hopkins, “Racism Is Killing the Planet” Sierra, 8 June 2020:Sharon Lavigne, 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, North America:RISE St. James, founded by Sharon Lavigne in 2018Beyond PlasticsRare, and its Center for Behavior and the EnvironmentDaniel Quinn, IshmaelEarthbound PodcastGlobal Warming Is RealFull raw interview audio

    Maya Lilly: Lifting the Veil - Storytelling as a Catalyst for Change

  6. Aug 7

    The Ocean Is Confused: Connecting with Our Ocean for a Better Tomorrow

    The harbor master in Monterey once told me the ocean is confused. Scientists have a name for part of it: shifting baseline syndrome, where each generation inherits a diminished ocean and calls it normal. The loss happens underwater, unwitnessed. Andrew Lewin has built a career on making it visible. A marine biologist who started in marine protected areas, he now hosts How to Protect the Ocean and runs the Speak Up for Blue podcast network. His guiding lesson, borrowed from Randy Olson: scientists speak to the brain, but people are moved through the gut. Tell someone we have passed 1.5 degrees and they nod. Tell them about the basement that flooded twice and the insurance that will not cover it, and you have their attention. We talk about the state of the ocean and the state of the argument. The UN plastics treaty, still unfinished, still shadowed by industry lobbyists. The High Seas Treaty, now in force, and the distance between coming into force and being enforced. Deep-sea mining, and what a vacuum three thousand meters down would mean for animals that navigate by sound. And we talk about apathy. Lewin traces the industry's argument from denial, to reassurance, to something stranger: yes it is real, no there is nothing to be done, so carry on. They are banking on apathy, he says. Which makes exhaustion not a side effect of the crisis but a product of it. He finds his optimism in the long game, and in what the late Wallace J. Nichols called blue mind, the ocean's effect on our own. Worry less about the degrees, he suggests, and get people back to the water. You do not defend what you never loved. Resources Andrew Lewin, Speak Up for Blue podcast network: speakupforblue.comHow to Protect the Ocean podcast: speakupforblue.com/show/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blueBeyond Jaws, co-hosted with Dr. David Ebert: speakupforblue.com/show/beyond-jawsRandy Olson, Don’t Be Such a Scientist (Island Press, 2009; second edition 2018)(Little, Brown and Company, 2014)Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind (Little, Brown and Company, 2014)The BBNJ Agreement, or High Seas Treaty, entered into force 17 January 2026: High Seas AllianceUN plastics treaty negotiations (INC): unep.org/inc-plastic-pollutionInternational Seabed Authority: isa.org.jmDeep Sea News: deepseanews.com · Southern Fried Science: southernfriedscience.comEarthbound: earthboundpodcast.com · Global Warming Is Real: globalwarmingisreal.comEarthbound Listener Survey Takeaways The oceans are facing a crisis, with shifting baselines creating confusion about their health and future.As the ocean absorbs more pollution and climate impacts, it's vital to recognize our role in safeguarding marine ecosystems.Andrew Lewin’s work emphasizes the importance of storytelling in ocean conservation and the need for innovative approaches to engage the public.Deep-sea mining poses significant risks to marine biodiversity, and international agreements must be enforced to protect these vulnerable areas.Effective communication in science is crucial; we need to connect emotionally with audiences to inspire action for ocean conservation.The High Seas Treaty offers hope for better management of international waters, but enforcement remains a challenge that requires global cooperation.

    The Ocean Is Confused: Connecting with Our Ocean for a Better Tomorrow

  7. Jul 14

    Somebody Should Do Something | Individual Action vs. Systemic Change

    Bridging the Gap and Finding Agency in a Complex WorldWhat can one person actually do about problems as vast as climate change, racism, or inequality? For most of us, the honest answer feels like: not much. That sense of powerlessness is exactly what philosophers Michael Brownstein and Alex Madva set out to dismantle. In this episode, Tom talks with the co-authors of Somebody Should Do Something (written with Daniel Kelly) about the trap of either/or thinking, the false choice between fixing ourselves and fixing the system. The truth, they argue, is both/and. Our personal choices and our collective structures are woven together, and the most powerful thing any of us can do is act in ways that draw others in. Along the way: why the personal carbon footprint was a fossil-fuel PR invention, how the “Crying Indian” ad shifted blame from industry to individuals, what the NRA and the temperance movement understood about identity, and the startling fact that most Americans badly underestimate how many of their neighbors want climate action. It’s a conversation about social influence, honest hope, and the roles each of us already plays. If you’ve ever thought somebody should do something, this one is for you. It turns out that somebody is us. Links & Resources Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change (MIT Press, 2025), by Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly, mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049788/somebody-should-do-somethingMichael Brownstein, John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate CenterAlex Madva, Cal Poly Pomona, California Center for Ethics and PolicyDaniel Kelly, Purdue UniversityMary Annaïse Heglar, “I Work in the Environmental Movement. I Don’t Care if You Recycle,” Vox (2019)Pluralist Ignorance Ian Haney LopezRelated Earthbound episodes: Dana Fisher on the polycrisis; Bill McKibben; Travis Rieder on Catastrophe EthicsEarthbound: earthboundpodcast.com · Global Warming Is Real: globalwarmingisreal.com

    Somebody Should Do Something | Individual Action vs. Systemic Change

  8. Jun 21

    Breaking the Chains: The Lust for Power vs. the Light of Energy

    More Than Enough LightWhat is more addictive than fentanyl, cocaine, or heroin? Evan Jaqua’s answer is power. And once people have it, they will do almost anything to keep it. This is a solo episode, a short essay built around the ideas of Evan Jaqua and the Solutions Party, the political reform organization he founded. The interview tape didn’t meet the bar for broadcast, so I took his thinking and ran it through my own. I hope to have Evan back for a clean recording. For now, it’s just you and me. The throughline is power, and the strange double life the word leads. In physics, power is the flow of energy, the capacity to do work. In politics, it is the capacity to influence, coerce, and control. Jaqua’s argument is that nearly all of our social dysfunction, from energy policy to corruption, runs downstream of one addiction: the lust for that second kind of power. Energy is where the two meanings meet. Fossil fuels are scarce, contested, and easy to hoard, which is exactly why they translate so cleanly into political control. Sunlight asks no one’s permission. As Bill McKibben puts it, none of the ninety-three million miles light travels to reach us passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Solutions Party’s first move is disarmingly simple: eliminate re-election, and sever the link between holding power and seeking more of it. Abundant, decentralized energy severs that link everywhere else. We have the means. We are standing in them. What we lack is the will to stop guarding the old fire. Links and Resources The Solutions Party: https://www.solutionsparty.org/Bill McKibben, Third Act / writing on renewable energy: https://billmckibben.com/Listener survey: earthboundpodcast.com/surveyRate and review Earthbound: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/rate/Support the show: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/support/ Thanks to these sonic contributors Environment War 4 by mensageirocs -- https://freesound.org/s/232644/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 winter forest 125 PM 240125_0644 by klankbeeld -- https://freesound.org/s/726466/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

    Breaking the Chains: The Lust for Power vs. the Light of Energy
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A podcast helping people like you who feel anxious about climate change challenge the narratives that fuel overwhelm and reconnect you with the natural world to help you stay grounded in what you’re protecting rather than consumed by what’s being lost. Earthbound is about what it means to be human on a warming planet. Host Thomas Schueneman, a climate writer, global freelance journalist, and audio producer, talks with scientists, philosophers, activists, artists, Indigenous leaders, policy experts, and everyday people about how a changing Earth is reshaping our lives—and how our choices, values, and imaginations are reshaping the planet in return. From climate politics and planetary health to environmental justice, mental well‑being, psychology, and philosophy, the show explores the quiet work of repairing our relationship with nature and each other. Earthbound offers clear‑eyed, human‑centered stories from the Anthropocene.

Information

  • Creator
    Thomas Schueneman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    40
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Thomas Schueneman
  • Show Website
    Earthbound