October 2, 2017 8:17 pm

Tuesday, Natalia Reagan and Her Fellow Anthropologists Talk Climate Change and Extinction

Some things are just always on the mind. Climate change is the hot-button issue of today, and it’s only going to get hotter. (Pun definitely intended.)

Primatologist Natalia Reagan is back in the hosting chair as she welcomes comic co-host Tim Alexander, biological anthropologist Todd Disotell, and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall in the studio to discuss climate change and its impact not just on humans, but on the rest of the biosphere.

Before we get to the rest of the biosphere, though, our trio of anthropologists discuss the impact of climate change on human life. This was the first time that I really put together the economical dangers human beings face from climate change. As pointed out in the episode, humans have such a reliance and vitality along coastlines and involving coastal-based infrastructure that the effects of climate change are already being felt along the coasts and are only going to be more prevalent. It’s getting more and more confusing why people still don’t believe in climate change, and Tim points out that maybe we should push the economic argument to reshape the conversation. There is also another, more basic argument that a colleague of mine pointed out: what’s so bad or wrong about saving the Earth?

Moving on from the impact of climate change on humans, we turn our attention towards other species. You’ll hear discussion on how climate change threatens the animal kingdom and how conservation biologists are helping stabilize the survival of species imperiled by climate change. You’ll also hear about how climate change may have affected early humans.

To some of you, it probably seems like we’re preaching to the choir with episodes on climate change. However, there are still people out there who are on the fence about climate change, and having more information at our disposal to help change the minds of deniers is not a bad thing. So, that being said, get out there and spread the science!

Please join us tomorrow night for Death by Climate Change, with Natalia Reagan at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too. And remember that you can also catch next week’s episode one week early on TuneIn, at tunein.com/startalkallstars.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen