Edge Effects

On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern train was rattling through the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, when an overheated bearing gave out and thirty-eight cars derailed. Twenty of these carried hazardous materials including vinyl chloride, ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and isobutylene. After rejecting other options, local emergency officials conducted a controlled burn of the vinyl chloride, breaching the car to relieve pressure and burning its contents.

This podcast interview is the twentieth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants.

This essay on the limits of translationand live art exhibits is thenineteenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants. Series editors: Laleh Ahmad, Tessa Archambault, Dylan Couch, Ellie Kincaid, Rebecca Laurent, Kayleigh Lobdell, Clare Michaud, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey Historically, Western philosophy has often placed humans at the center of meaning-making.

This essay on agroforestry and translation is the eighteenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants. Series editors: Laleh Ahmad, Tessa Archambault, Dylan Couch, Ellie Kincaid, Rebecca Laurent, Kayleigh Lobdell, Clare Michaud, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey We are in Brumadinho, a municipality in Brazil that was struck in January 2019 by the collapse of an iron ore tailings dam.

This podcast interview is the seventeenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants.

During the monsoons of 2025, one of us (Uddin), traveled to visit family members in Sitakunda, Bangladesh, home to the world’s largest beach-based shipbreaking yard. Over tea, Uddin’s cousins described how the shipbreaking industry, even from a distance, damages their farmlands. They dismantle the ships when the tide goes down. When the tide comes back in, oil from broken ships, plastic fragments, pieces of wood, and broken furniture drift into our farmlands.

This essay on roots reggae, plantation futures, and songs of resistance is the sixteenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants.

Este ensayo sobre la exposición a pesticidas entre trabajadores agrícolas migrantes constituye la cuarta entrega de la serieImaginación impura, que busca explorar y cuestionar las nociones de toxicidad, pureza, contaminación y restauración en un mundo siempre marcado por compromisos y contradicciones. Editores de la serie: Ben Iuliano, Kuhelika Ghosh y Richelle Wilson Original text in English.

This podcast interview is the fifteenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants. Series editors: Laleh Ahmad, Tessa Archambault, Dylan Couch, Ellie Kincaid, Rebecca Laurent, Kayleigh Lobdell, Clare Michaud, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey Michael Marder—author, professor, and philosopher of vegetal phenomenology—joins Ellie Kincaid and M.

This essay on Brussels’s “feral” wetlands and Japanese knotweed is the fourteenth installment of the Botanical Imaginations series, which complicates, diversifies, and proliferates the stories we tell about plants. Series editors: Laleh Ahmad, Tessa Archambault, Dylan Couch, Ellie Kincaid, Rebecca Laurent, Kayleigh Lobdell, Clare Michaud, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) took me on an unexpected journey.