Plastic Worlds: From Synthetic Universality to Queer Kin
The Subverse
In this episode host Susan Mathews talks to Heather Davis, the author of Plastic Matter (2022) about plastic and how it has completely permeated our world. They cover a wide range of topics from synthetic universality, technocapitalism, chemical legacies, queer kin, reproductive questions raised by plastic, and hauntings created by the aftermath of slavery and settler colonialism. Davis is a member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, humanities scholars, and artists, who investigate and make visible plastic pollution in the Great...
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A Creature Called Earth: Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers
The Subverse
In this episode, host Susan Mathews is in conversation with Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life (2024), and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. The interview focused on the central question in the book: in what ways and to what extent has life changed the planet? From microbes to mammoths, life has transformed the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, turning a lump of orbiting rock into the world as we’ve known it. In the conversation, Jabr spoke of how Western science in particular has segregated geology from biology,...
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Earthly Matters: An Ecosophical Approach
The Subverse
We're back with The Subverse. In this episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to writer and ecological thinker 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...
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Arcx - Vajra Chandrasekera
The Subverse
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,...
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Arcx - Vandana Singh
The Subverse
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...
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Arcx - RR Virdi
The Subverse
In today's episode of Arcx, we're in conversation with sci-fi and fantasy author, R.R. Virdi. Virdi published his first book, Dangerous Ways, an urban fantasy novel, in 2016. He is also the author of the Grave Report series, and Star Shepherd, a space western. The First Binding, the first in his new epic high fantasy series, The Tales of Tremaine, was released in 2022. The sequel, The Doors of Midnight, will be out in August 2024. Join us as we discuss stories within stories, the beauty and breadth of South Asian myths, the high cost of becoming a legend, complex magic systems, and...
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Arcx - Kritika H.Rao
The Subverse
Kritika H. Rao, speculative fiction and children’s book author, joins us to discuss her critically acclaimed novel, The Surviving Sky, and its recently released sequel, The Unrelenting Earth. Having lived across the world in India, Australia, Canada, and the Sultanate of Oman, Kritika’s stories are heavily influenced by her own experiences. In her books, she often explores deep philosophical themes such as self vs. the world, the nature of consciousness, and the vagaries of identity. Join us as we discuss main character syndrome, toxic relationships, the importance...
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Arcx - Gourav Mohanty
The Subverse
In this episode, host Anjali Alappat sits down with Gourav Mohanty, lawyer, writer, and stand up comedian. Born in Bhubaneshwar, the City of Temples, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gourav seeks to reimagine and redefine the myths and magic of the past. In his first novel, Sons of Darkness, Gourav plunges headfirst into the grimdark genre with an epic retelling of the Mahabharata. Filled with political power plays, ambiguously grey characters, mythical monsters emerging from the mist, history being written by victors, and assassins who do yoga—it’s where India meets Westeros. Join...
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Arcx - Bina Shah
The Subverse
Today’s guest is award winning author and journalist, Bina Shah. Her first sci-fi novel Before She Sleeps was published in 2018, followed by the sequel The Monsoon War in 2023. Bina’s work explores women’s rights, societal issues, technology, education, and freedom of expression. Additionally, Bina has authored four novels as well as two collections of short stories. Her work has been translated into several languages including English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Vietnamese, Urdu, Sindhi and Italian. Bina’s writing has also been carried in major publications like The Guardian, Al...
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Arcx - Manjula Padmanabhan
The Subverse
Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In epiode two of this season, host Anjali Alappat speaks to Indian sci-fi legend, Manjula Padmanabhan. A prolific author, playwright, journalist, and comic strip artist, Manjula’s latest collection, Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities (2023), is filled with short stories written between 1984 and today - and more relevant than ever. We discuss the collection in depth, wherein a vampire discovers an endless feast in the subcontinent, an atheist reporter attends a divine conference, a man frozen in time catches a glimpse of the future, an...
info_outlineIn this episode, Susan Mathews speaks with Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat about the unequal distribution of the effects of heat. For this, we travel to 19th and early 20th century colonial India where heat is a persistent problem for the British empire and a burgeoning climate science is sutured to racial difference. These histories inform contemporary crises as knowledges of heat continue to evolve in an unequal world.
Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an associate professor at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics with joint appointments in the Departments of History and Anthropology. His current work focuses on the experience of thermal inequality in contemporary India and the United States, the history of how heat has been studied and its effects over the long twentieth century. He is also director of the UCLA Heat Lab.
With accelerating climate change, one of the fallouts is extreme heat. In this conversation, Dr. Venkat defined thermal inequality, which is not just the differential impact of heat, but the unequal distribution of heat effects. These effects are filtered or mediated by our environments, by our lives and by the social and political infrastructures that determine how vulnerable we are to heat. The UCLA Heat Lab employs interdisciplinary methods to study the experience of thermal inequality.
We spoke in some detail about a journal article he wrote in 2022 on race and thermal sensation in late colonial India. We discussed ‘tropicality’, how central the problems posed by heat were and how various kinds of bodies were understood to be differentially affected by heat, producing both biological variation and pathology. Meteorology and racial ideology intersect in the late 19th and early 20th century and climate science is sutured to racial difference.
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, or at for episode details and show notes.