Amitav GhoshEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

Today it is my immense pleasure and honor to welcome Amitav Ghosh to Speaking Out of Place to talk about his new novel, Ghost Eye . The novel is about reincarnation, but also a lot more. In our conversation we talk about the need to address the terrible set of environmental and other crises we face, and the seeming foreclosure of the imagination by the obsession with technology and the future it offers to us. Instead, we look to how we can fashion beginnings out of endings, aided by a renewed sense of wonder, curiosity, and awe. We tu...

In his book The Nutmeg’s Curse , scholar Amitav Ghosh writes, “the planet will never come alive for you unless your songs and stories give life to all the beings seen and unseen that inhabit a living Earth,”—seeding a shift in consciousness begins with the stories we tell. In this wide-ranging interview from our archives, Amitav explores the themes of his recent work, including the insidious philosophy that the Earth is inert and how this belief paved the way for the implementation of violent projects around the globe, such as the genocide of Indigenous people and the monolith of capitalism. Unpacking the rise and legacy of an ideology of mastery, Amitav asks, if such conquests were made possible by the narrative of an inanimate Earth, what stories can now be imagined to help us recognize the world as sacred and alive? Read the transcript Photo by Sumit Dayal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can stories return us to what is essential as we navigate an uncertain future? In this conversation with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis , he calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining—decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two months we’ll release a new chapter online. Experience “ Chapter Three: Roots .” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

" With literary precision, he delves into the history and culture of conquest, drawing a direct line from actions committed hundreds of years ago to the planet’s current predicament. A singular achievement and a title of its time, The Nutmeg’s Curse reminds us why the land is crying." –Booklist Sean Wilson sits down with Amitav Ghosh to discuss his latest, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis . In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, Amitav finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-born scholar, novelist, and nonfiction writer. His many books include The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable , in which he explores our imaginative failure in an age of ecological crisis. In this interview, Amitav speaks about his newest book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis , and how the widespread silencing of nonhuman voices is deeply entangled in capitalism and the geopolitical structures that sustain it. Storytellers, he says, must lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Amitav Ghosh, a novelist and essayist whose many books include the acclaimed Ibis Trilogy ( Sea of Poppies , River of Smoke , and Flood of Fire), Gun Island, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable . His latest book, The Nutmeg’s Curse (Parables For a Planet in Crisis) , is a powerful work that traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of Climate Change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation — of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces. In this episode host Michael Shields and Amitav Ghosh discuss the history of the nutmeg, a spice whose narrative is tied to colonialism in ways that relate to today’s Climate Crisis and particularly fossil fuels. They discuss terraforming, a term known in science-fiction writing that relates to the ways in which colonizers, both in days of yore and today, reshape landscapes to meet their covetous ways. They converse on the power of storytelling in fighting Climate Change, those who see the Earth as an inert body, the future of vitalist politics, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve heard Mumbai began on seven islands, before the sea in between them was filled in, and the city spread on top of it. Not many of us know just how much of the Western half of Mumbai is built on reclamations—from Colaba right up to Andheri and Mira Bhayandar. But every year, the monsoon reminds us that a lot of what seems like Mumbai's solid ground was once water—a place where rainstorms met rivers meeting the sea. In this episode, Raghu is joined by writer Amitav Ghosh, whose books are known for being filled with historical perspective, discovery and insight. The duo discusses the history of cyclones in the city, the toll climate change will take (on the middle-class especially), and what happens when The Big One comes.

Climate change is a very real issue that we as a society are grappling with. But interestingly enough, climate change denial is particularly strong in the Anglosphere — in English speaking countries. Indian author Amitav Ghosh found the link between movement, the English language, and climate change to be quite interesting, and that is the focus of his book The Great Derangement. This episode features Amitav in conversation with our host Am Johal and special guest host Olive Dempsey from the podcast Big Bright Dark. Amitav Ghosh was in Vancouver for a public talk at SFU as part of their 30th Anniversary of SFU's Vancouver campus, the Indian Summer Festival and SFU Public Square. You can watch an archived version of Amitav's talk on our Knowledge Mobilization A/V Gallery here: https://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards/community-engagement/audio-video-gallery.html You can learn more about Amitav Ghosh and his book The Great Derangement at his website, https://amitavghosh.com. You can learn more about the podcast Big Bright Dark by visiting their website at https://bigbrightdark.org/. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/25-amitav-ghosh.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/25-amitav-ghosh-olive-dempsey.html Bio: Amitav Ghosh is one of the world’s top South Asian literary stars. He was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. His most recent book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016. The Great Derangement was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2016 and was given the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities in 2018. Ghosh’s most recent novel, Gun Island, is due to be published in 2019., Olive Dempsey co-hosts the podcast Big Bright Dark, which explores the questions we face, the fears that haunt us and the possibilities that rise before us in this time of great human and planetary uncertainty all while exploring how these things might be reasons to create, to be in community, to be honest and vulnerable, to find the bright spots, and become wiser versions of ourselves in the process. Olive Dempsey co-hosts the podcast Big Bright Dark, which explores the questions we face, the fears that haunt us and the possibilities that rise before us in this time of great human and planetary uncertainty all while exploring how these things might be reasons to create, to be in community, to be honest and vulnerable, to find the bright spots, and become wiser versions of ourselves in the process. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The Great Derangement — with Amitav Ghosh & Olive Dempsey” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 16, 2019. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/25-amitav-ghosh.html

Amitav Ghosh talks about migration, cosmopolitanism, the lack of climate change in literature and his latest novel - The Gun Island.

Amitav Ghosh, a best-selling author whose work puts Asia at the center of global history, culture and environmental challenges, lectured on campus April 4 as part of Vanderbilt Asian Studies' 50th anniversary. Before his talk, Ghosh joined Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos on The Zeppos Report. Ghosh, whose books have been translated into more than 20 languages, is the author of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. On the podcast, he discusses why people are less interested today in issues surrounding climate change than 20 years ago. "For many years now we've taught young people that the economy will only get bigger," he said. "The world will produce more and more things. You'll have a bigger cell phone and car, for example. This other stuff (about climate change) doesn't fit into that framework." Zeppos discussed with Ghosh how the effects of climate change might make high-priced real estate in U.S. locations near water—like Miami Beach or New York City—uninhabitable in just a few decades. Their conversation also focused on how countries like China and India have taken steps to respond to the environmental impact of advances in industrialization. "China is a country which is actually adapting very, very fast," Ghosh said. "One of the reasons why that happening is precisely because they see commercial opportunities.” Ghosh stressed that Asian countries will not scale back on industrialization until the West does. Ghosh, who divides his time between homes in Brooklyn, Kolkata and rural Goa, noted that he has warned his own mother about the dangers of living in a high flood-prone area. She looked at him like he was "mad' to even suggest moving somewhere else. Ghosh said that is the problem that all of us face in dealing with climate change—inertia. The podcast is available on SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube and The Zeppos Report website For a transcript of this podcast please go to this link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/vu-wp0/wp-content/uploads/sites/79/2018/04/13185558/The_Zeppos_Report_21_Amitav_Ghosh-Transcript-Edited.docx Follow Vanderbilt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vanderbiltu, on Instagram: http://instagram.com/vanderbiltu and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanderbilt. See all Vanderbilt social media at http://social.vanderbilt.edu.