As a genre of science/speculative fiction, solarpunk sets stories in a future we’d actually like to live in, a future where we have engaged with the problems we’re facing today and made meaningful progress toward solving them. For how can we get to a better future if we haven’t imagined that it’s a possibility? This is ultimately a project of imaginative expansion to inspire listeners to incorporate solarpunk into their particular presents.
With that in mind, Ariel and Christina are bringing you stories of our solarpunk future in the now, by having discussions with people working to make the world a better place. So far, we have interviewed people working on building climate resilience in communities, strengthening democracy by participating in urban planning, soothing people’s climate grief, helping to decolonize wealth, and publishing solarpunk fiction. Check out our blog post “What Is Solarpunk To You, Anyway?” to learn more about how we use the term solarpunk.
The best way to reach us is to email us at solarpunkpresents at gmail dot com, or message us on Mastodon @solarpunkpresents@climatejustice.rocks. You can also find us on Twitter or Tumblr.
Schedule & Distribution
We generally post bi-weekly (no, not that one. The other one that means once every other week). We post episodes on our Patreon for early-access on the Mondays of the off-week, and then the episode goes into our regular podcast feed the Monday afterwards.
You can find us on all the big podcast distribution platforms (eg Apple, Google, TuneIn, Spotify), and we’re trying to expand out as much as we can to smaller ones; if you use one that we haven’t figured out yet, you can listen here or just directly c+p our RSS feed (https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/63d680c8ac7bb60011899189).
Support the Show
You can support the show by becoming a Patron, or by sharing our podcast with your friends & other solarpunks. Patrons get early access to episodes and occasional bonus material from us, and we’d love eventually to take interview suggestions and crowdsource our topics from our Patrons, once we’ve grown our audience and Patrons sufficiently. You can also make a one-time (or ongoing) donation to the pod via Paypal; help us to cover the cost of hosting, audio editing, recording, equipment, research, &tc.
Team
Christina De La Rocha (no preference), formerly a professor of biogeochemistry and marine sciences, is now trying out writing, podcasting, gardening, having a dog instead of cats, and helping out elderly relatives while also learning the ropes at a small solar panel and heat pump installation business. Christina’s non-academic nonfiction has appeared in Analog, Toasted Cheese, and Unsustainable Magazine and includes the book Silica Stories. You can find Christina on Twitter at @xtinadlr, on Mastodon @xtinadlr@wandering.shop, or at The Germanium Geranium.
Ariel Kroon (she/her), is an independent scholar and editor, a recent PhD graduate whose research focused on crisis narratives in Canadian post-apocalyptic science fiction 1948-1989, and how we can interpret (and hopefully learn from) these narratives in an age of climate catastrophe. Her thesis is available online here, and she was recently commissioned to write about queer utopian futurism for The Art Gallery at University of West Florida; she has also published on queer utopia in SFRA Review and the anthropocene in The Goose. You can get in touch with Ariel at her blog, where she offers academic editing & copywriting services as well as solarpunk writing and speaking, or connect with her on Mastodon @arielkroon@wandering.shop (her Twitter, @arielletje, is not super monitored, but it is there).
Land Acknowledgement
This podcast is produced and recorded in part in Germany and the traditional home of the Neutral, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples (aka Kitchener, Ontario, Canada). Whose land are you on? You can find out at native-land.ca.
Solarpunk Presents 