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Wonder CabinetPeabody Award-winning hosts Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson explore wonder through intimate conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers and artists. Author: Wonder Cabinet Productions
Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200 stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress.Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality.The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiositiesprivate collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was still in conversation with older ways of knowing the world. Today, another shift is taking place, as mechanistic models give way to more holistic, relational understandings of life on a sentient planet. Wonder Cabinet lives at that threshold.About the hostsAnne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson co-founded To The Best Of Our Knowledge. Steve hosts Luminous, a podcast about the science and philosophy of psychedelics, and is the author of Atoms and Eden.Learn more at wondercabinetproductions.com. Language: en Genres: Philosophy, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Being Alive with Melanie Challenger
Episode 24
Saturday, 3 October, 2026
Our obsession with the dream of artificial, disembodied intelligence is deadening our experience of life itself. Melanie Challenger — a philosopher, naturalist and National Geographic Explorer — says it’s time to let go of the centuries-old human history of pretending we’re not animals, of separating ourselves from the rest of the natural world. The essence of life, she says, is being a body — the source of the agency, purpose and intelligence that defines every living being, from the plant turning toward the sun to the hawk diving for its prey, to the child reaching for her mother. In two poetic and rigorously argued books, “How To Be Animal," and “Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Natural World," Challenger makes the case for restoring meaning to organisms — a project that is both scientific, philosophical, and profoundly moral. It also offers a path toward re-enchantment: a way to think about how to revive a sense of the pulsating aliveness that surrounds us, and about what might follow if we did. In this conversation, Challenger talks about her early work with survivors of genocide and war crimes, which led her to think deeply about the psychology of dehumanization. She recounts her first, lyrical trips as a naturalist and writer-in-residence in the Sub Antarctic and following blue whales off the coast of Costa Rica. And she talks about her re-discovery of Aristotle, the ancient philosopher whose concept of life as “en-soulment” showed her how to redefine what it means to be alive. This interview was recorded at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, a project supported by Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation.—00:00:00 Intro00:05:00 War Witness to Naturalist00:18:00 Beyond the Machine Body00:27:00 Sequoia Seed and Aristotle— Website Book: “How To Be Animal” Book: “Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Natural World” Essay: "On Death and Love" Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
