Why truthful stories about nature should have neither beginnings nor endings: Martin Puchner on telling circular environmental stories
EPISODE 1691: In this special KEEN ON show from DLD Circular, Andrew talks to Martin Puchner, professor of literature at Harvard, about why truthful stories about nature should have neither beginnings nor endings
Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research. Puchner completed his BA at the Universität Konstanz; MA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at UC Irvine; and PhD at Harvard University. A recent fellow of both the Guggenheim Foundation and Cullman Center, he has published over a dozen books and anthologies, including Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, 2006), which won the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Award; The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010), awarded the Joe A. Callaway Prize and the Walter Channing Cabot Prize; and The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization (Random House, 2017). Puchner is the co-editor of Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage (Palgrave, 2006) and The Norton Anthology of Drama (2009), and the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
The China Paradox: Chris Schroeder on what America is Missing
That Was The Year in Tech: When Nothing Happened (except Everything, Everywhere, All at Once)
Morbid Symptoms Abundant: The Demolition of Pax Americana
From Munich to Mar-a-Lago: Is Trump Appeasing Putin in Ukraine?
Americans Actually Dislike Each Other: The Unsavory Truth Behind the Data
Cracked, Jagged and Leaderless: The World is No Longer Flat
2025: The AI Year Scripted by Gary Marcus in 2024
Justice is Round: Mussolini Couldn't Woo the World Cup, Neither Will Trump
Capitalism with a Nationalist Face: What Comes after Neoliberalism
Trump 0.2: The Failing Revolution
The Arrival of the American Future: Stephen Marche on the Crisis in 2025 United States
Bethanne's Best Books of 2025: Where Fact & Fiction Blur
2025 as the New 1925: Will Crypto be Trump's Teapot Dome Scandal?