This episode of Navara FM was made possible by your donations, just like everything else we do in

Navara Media. If you can, please consider donating one hours wage per month or whatever you can

afford and help us build people-powered media. Just go to navara.media-support to set up a

regulation of any size. We couldn't do it without you. So thank you.

Hello and welcome to Navara FM. I'm Ellen Appeni. Here on Planet Earth we are facing some problems

on a monumentally large scale. From global temperature rises to nuclear radiation,

from deforestation to industrial diseases to the economic systems that cause them,

the mind-bending size of these issues sometimes makes it hard for us to wrap our heads around them,

let alone come up with solutions. So how do we start grappling with these systems

transforming the world around us? According to writer and researcher Jay Owens,

one answer might be to start thinking very, very small. In her new book Dust, Jay travels from

the Sierra Nevada of California to the dried up lake beds of the former Owl Sea, from nuclear test

zones in Algeria to the ice sheets of the Arctic. The book explores how these humble little particles

we call dust connect us to the deep past, the deep future and the metabolic systems of the Earth.

Why should we care about the dust on the roads, the dust in our lungs or the dust under our sofa?

Simply put, because it contains the world. I sat down with Jay to talk about coal, cotton,

soil and the work of salvaging the planet.

Hi Jay, thanks so much for joining us. Hi, thanks for bringing me in. So the big question

top of the 10 is why dust, like why dust is a methodology for telling these kind of

huge, sometimes that you're in navigable feeling stories about climate and capitalism and things

like that? Dust really found me as a method. I was in California in 2015, my friend Brad Garrett

had invited me on a road trip to go and see the strange rocks and strange places of the

...