Hi everyone, it's Anne.

Floods, wildfires, extreme temperatures, many of us are experiencing firsthand, the evidence of climate change.

But to really understand it, to imagine something this big, we're going to need more stories.

In this episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we turn to the writers who are capturing this moment in our time. Wisconsin Public Radio

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs.

The Earth's climate has changed in ways that can't be put back.

And now we're looking at a future that is beyond most people's

capacity even to imagine. So how do we come to terms with the unthinkable?

In part, through fiction.

Writer Alice Bell

kicks off today's show with a true story

of how just one summer of bad weather

changed the course of British literature.

There's the summer of 1816.

Lord Byron had taken a mansion by Lake Geneva,

Lord Byron, the poet,

probably to escape a bit of depth and scandal.

And he had his friend and doctor John Polidori had joined him.

Meanwhile, another friend of his, Percy Bish Shelley, is another poet, had brought

along his girlfriend, Mary Wollenscraft Goodwin, and her step-sister, Claire Claremont, who

had quite a crush on Lord Byron, I think.

They had all these lovely ideas of hanging out in Switzerland,

...