Robert MacFarlane — Is a River Alive? - with Ross Andersen

<p>Hailed in the <em>New York Times</em> as &quot;a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,&quot; Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. <em>Is a River Alive?</em> is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.</p><p>Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada--imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, a stream who flows through his own years and days.</p><p>Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, <em><strong>Is a River Alive?</strong></em> will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has.</p><p><br /></p><p>PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780393242133?ic_referral=RgSMJ0CCK7bSyrZK8P00JKV2HbxHILwW4QFmHEYsu1MwM8whrCz5JlZam_KdBckHYLy62xwDVh4-lSqhCLvNdoKIQCDEPrPR8lnKUUvafXFTaxYzByNNyMisFzKtWLW3g0XK1g</p><p><br /></p><p><strong>Robert Macfarlane</strong> is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His best-selling books include <em>Underland</em>, <em>Landmarks</em>, <em>The Old Ways</em>, <em>The Wild Places</em>, and <em>Mountains of the Mind</em>; they have been translated into more than thirty languages, won many prizes around the world and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance. He has also written operas, plays, and films including <em>River</em> and <em>Mountain</em>, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally best-selling books of nature-poetry and art, <em>The Lost Words</em> and <em>The Lost Spells</em>. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.</p><p>Macfarlane is in conversation with <strong>Ross Andersen</strong>. Andersen is a staff writer at <em>The Atlantic</em>, where he covers science, technology, and culture. He is also at work on a book on the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe for Random House.</p><p>*recorded 6/5/2025</p>