We're back with The Subverse. In this episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to writer and ecological thinker Aseem Shrivastava about the current crises in modern cosmology. Ecosophy, which acknowledges the living earth, is a way to address this arrythmia and our current alienation from the earth to which we belong. Aseem Shrivastava is a writer,
teacher, and ecological thinker with a doctorate in Economics from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. He has lectured across the world on ecological issues emanating
from globalisation. Shrivastava speaks of the present moment as an existential crisis, not just an intellectual crisis or a crisis of culture. During this fundamental upheaval in human affairs, the first thing you need to do is look at where your feet are. We need to ask fundamental questions about how we got here, and also address the terminal crisis in modern cosmology itself.

“Without Nature, we are not.”- This is the start of an article Shrivastava wrote in The Open
Magazine in 2021. He quotes Rilke and writes, “it appears that in the process of arising
within us, the earth has dreams for us!” This earth is our only home, so he asks, “Are we
ready to abandon her for the greener pastures of another planet that the space fantasists never
fail to promise us? In a gentle defiance of the European Enlightenment vision, let us seriously
consider the possibility that Rilke is right, that perhaps the Earth does have dreams for us, in
the manner that a mother has dreams for her children. And like a mother’s dreams, the earth’s
hopes for us must have power.”

Ecosophy, unlike environmentalism or ecology, fundamentally tackles things like earth
alienation and looks at the content of our vanishing relationship to the natural world in its full
physical and metaphysical depth. We need a new mythos, and we can learn from
Rabindranath Tagore in this context. Through his poetry, music, stories, plays and letter, the
mythos is all there and you don’t need to go to science to find the meaning of life.
We have a world that is arrhythmic, out of sync, not to mention suffering from psychic,
cognitive and spiritual arrhythmia too. We need to understand the real roots of the crises we
face, the limits of our knowledge, question our need to dominate and control and, in the end,
face some heart reckoning and atonement.

Aseem Shrivastava has taught at prestigious universities in India and the West and offered
courses on Global and Indian Ecosophy at Ashoka University. He has been guiding and
mentoring a number of graduate students and young people working in the realms of
Philosophy, Ecosophy, Ecology, and Economics. He is the author (with Ashish Kothari) of
the books ‘Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India’ (2012), and ‘Prithvi Manthan
(2016). He is currently at work on several books on Ecosophy:‘The Grammar of Greed:
Reflections on a Fatal Ecology’, ‘The Alphabet of Ecosophy: A Grammar for Twilight Modernity’, and ‘For Love of the Earth: Modernity, Ecosophy, Rabindranath Tagore’. All these works dialogue with the ecological challenges of 21st century global modernity.

The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine for episode details and show notes.

Vajra Chandrasekera returns to Arcx for our season finale. Since we last spoke, Vajra has won a Nebula award, as well as Crawford and Locus awards for his debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors. He has also been nominated for Le Guin, Ignyte, Hugo, Lammy, and British Fantasy Awards—and we’re sure there are more in the pipeline!

Vajra’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in many publications over the years, including Clarkesworld and West Branch. He has also worked as an editor for Strange Horizons, and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories.

In this episode, we delve into his second cross genre novel, Rakesfall, exploring the complexity of this fascinating novel that follows two characters across space, time, and life cycles and explores themes of power, resistance, and connections. We also discuss political oppression, genocidal playbooks, shifts in the publishing industry, South Asian writers, the flattened postcolonial world we live in, and much more.

You can follow Vajra Chandrasekera on X @_vajra

This week, host Anjali Alappat chats with SF author, physicist, and transdisciplinary scholar of climate change, Vandana Singh. A professor of physics, Vandana’s writing combines science and social issues in thought-provoking ways. In recent years, her work has been climate focused, a stark acknowledgment of the crisis we are currently enduring.

Her work includes Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (2018), the first work by a South Asian author to be a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award; The Woman Who Thought She was a Planet and Other Stories (2008), part of Zubaan's Classic series, and most recently Utopias of the Third Kind (2022). Vandana was a Climate Imagination Fellow at Arizona State University in 2021. In addition to her contributions to science fiction, she has also written for children, most notably her Younguncle books. She has also been recognised with Parallax and Otherwise Honor awards for her work.

In this episode, we discuss the micro and macro of the ever-evolving climate crisis, the commercialised space race, techno billionaires, writing character led stories, acknowledging privilege and learning from marginalised peoples, the capitalist desire to maintain the status quo, and socio-economic death cults.

You can follow Vandana Singh on X @singhvan.

Arcx is a mini series from the Subverse, the podcast of , a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagines futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media , or visit for episode details and show notes.