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\u201cWhen I talk about extinction as a bio-cultural process, what I\u2019m seeing or what I\u2019m talking about is the fact that there\u2019s lots of different species who are alive and who are working within a cultural entanglement which is shaping their capacity to either thrive or perhaps become endangered and go into decline... I see art as giving people a way to engage with that grief, and to engage with that emotional connection with the subject, but also to engage with a sense of agency over it.\u201d

In this episode, we welcome Rosamund Portus, an artist, writer and researcher of environmental humanities. Drawn to bees at an early age, by way of her exposure to gardening, Rosamund conducted her undergraduate dissertation on humans\u2019 understanding of bee culture. She later pursued a Ph.D. in the social and cultural dimensions of bee population declines. In turn, Rosamund has gone on to complicate black and white \u201cwhodunit\u201d narratives around species extinction, while advocating for creativity and art as pathways of relational becoming.

Speaking from her context of living in the U.K., and through a lens of \u201cbio-culturalism,\u201d Rosamund is interested in how modern, consumerist, human culture (at least in the West) have become entangled with a perception of bee culture, particularly the trope and role honeybees in agricultural systems. She invites us to challenge what renders a \u201cmeaningful\u201d life and death, which species get to matter within mainstream extinction dialogues, and how storytelling plays an important role in enriching our capacities of engagement with bees, other species, and ourselves.

(The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok.)

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