3 podcasts that talk about the ecological emergency, because we need to talk about it

Solastalgie, a poem of urgency

The result of a collaboration between Les Others, Usbek & Rica and the Nouvelles Listening studio, the Solastalgie podcast is a gem. The title refers to the anguish one can feel in the face of the destruction of ecosystems, climate change and sometimes one’s own helplessness.

In each episode, journalist and documentary filmmaker Flora Trouilloud passes the microphone to a person who has seen a precious place change over the years and human interventions. We hear people describe and tell with love – because we can love the ecosystem that surrounds us – landscapes that are damaged, that wither, that sometimes become resistant. “To keep track of them, before they disappear. »

Immersive sound object that breaks the heart as much as instills hope, Solastalgie makes us feel the sounds of nature and the upheavals that condition it. To listen to to take the measure of the treasures that surround us, and of all we have to lose in inaction.

France Inter investigation into Total’s oil mega-project in Uganda and Tanzania

Surely you have already heard of this huge Total project: in Murchison Falls Park, Uganda, the French company has started work on a large-scale oil extraction plant, endangering a vital natural area for local flora and fauna. The project ? Extract the oil in Uganda, process it there, then move it through the longest heated pipeline in the world, skirting Lake Victoria and crossing Tanzania before arriving in the Indian Ocean, as explained in this audio report broadcast by France Inter.

Population displacements, endangerment of fragile ecosystems, deforestation, greenwashing attempts, there are a thousand and one aspects through which to grasp this project that some NGOs qualify as a “climate bomb”. To fully understand the environmental issues of this project and the communication counter-operation carried out by the company, which is one of the most polluting companies on the planet, this survey is a first-rate source.

Over the past 500 million years, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions that have all but seen life disappear. If the alarming disappearance of species around us is to be believed, the sixth has already begun, and it is due to human activity.

In The sixth extinction, a numerama audio series, science communicator Marie Treibert explores this unprecedented crisis with a little humor, a lot of rigor and a touch of hope. From kakapo to fossils via the axolotl, we decipher how humans appropriate the living things around them and how certain species find themselves endangered, but sometimes even saved. The target ? It arouses curiosity and interest, to “rekindle the flame of life”, and it works.

Photo credit: Dushawn Jovic / Unsplash