Agam the Climate Podcast

A moon child, a motorbike racer, and South African feminist writer and scholar, Malebo Sephodi is an award-winning writer. Malebo’s debut non-fiction book, Miss Behave (published by BlackBird Books, 2017), won her the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author (2018). Her interdisciplinary work focuses on human development policy, gender, and information communications technology for development. She is also a contributor to The Agam Agenda’s anthology Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis.

Listen to our conversation as Malebo speaks about writing, activism, feminism, and nurturing a relationship with nature. She also tells us how her interdisciplinary work within and beyond academe is something she learned from her ancestors, most specifically, her grandmother.

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Agam the Climate Podcast is part of the Agam Agenda: reimagining and widening storytelling circles on climate change.

How does science writer and journalist Natasha Vizcarra handle data and jargon when writing for a popular audience? How do we meaningfully communicate the science behind climate change towards action? Plus, how is science writing comparable to fiction or even poetry?

In this episode, we speak with Natasha Vizcarra, a science writer based in Colorado. Her work is published in several journals and magazines, including Forests News, Landscape News, and Science Findings. She was a writer and editor for Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features. She is also an award-winning children’s book author and has published several picture books. Her latest children’s book is SPIKEYS, PRICKLES & PRONGIES: A Coronavirus Discovery Story, out now in the Philippines, published by Tahanan Books for Young Readers.

Listen to our conversation with Natasha on science writing and more.

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Agam the Climate Podcast is part of the Agam Agenda: reimagining and widening the climate conversation through stories and art.

Letters from Nature began with us wondering: What would happen if we thought, felt, and wrote from the perspective of nature, or the more-than-human? What would nature have to say to humans? What would we have to say to each other?

As Earth Month draws to a close, listen to this special episode with Padma Perez, in conversation with Jen Horn, host of the podcast MUNI on This and one of our co-conspirators.

In our previous episodes, we asked our guests to answer the question: “What more-than-human species has a presence in your life?” Listen as Padma and Jen unpack some of the responses we’ve heard—from songbirds to algae—and share their thoughts on the importance of nature, reconnection, and more-than-human presence.

This episode features segments from our conversations with Agam contributors, María Faciolince, Swetha Ram, Luisa Igloria, Yuvan Aves, and Joti Tabula.

In this episode, we speak with writer, naturalist, educator, and activist Yuvan Aves, based in Chennai, India. After moving out of conventional schooling at the age of 16, Yuvan pursued his self-education and cultivated a deep relationship with nature throughout life.

We have a rich conversation with Yuvan on what it means to be a naturalist, his vast experiences and learnings in environmental activism, and how stories and art help to sow kinder futures for the planet. We also talk about the campaign to save Pulicat Lake, a sanctuary for biodiversity and the second largest brackish water ecosystem in India.

Yuvan is the author of A Naturalist’s Journal (Notion Press, 2017), a collection of essays. He is the recipient of the M.Krishnan Nature Writing Award, conferred by the Madras Naturalists’ Society. He also teaches at an alternative education space for children in Chennai, as he continues to reimagine an Earth-centric and child-centric education in schools. He is currently travelling and documenting stories along the Indian coastline.

He is a contributor to the forthcoming Agam anthology, Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis (out later in 2021).

Dr. Joti Tabula is a medical doctor and poet, hailing from San Antonio, Zambales in the Philippines. In this conversation, we talk to him about how he weaves together his medical and literary practices, how he deals with “sideline guilt” and the experience of living during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.