BROADCASTS.com

How do we reconcile our own perception of time with the massive geological scale of the earth? To offer us an intersection between the human and the natural world, nature author Robert Macfarlane took Town Hall’s stage with a dive into his new book Underland: A Deep Time Journey. Macfarlane invited us on an epic exploration of Earth’s vast subterranean landscape in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself, into “deep time” to calculate the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present. He lead us on an exhilarating journey to Arctic sea caves, Bronze Age burial chambers, the catacombs of Paris, the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate, a dark matter research lab searching for the origins of the universe, and a deep-sunk “hiding place” designed to store nuclear waste for 100,000 years to come. Set out on an expedition with Macfarlane to explore our complex, crucial relationship with the worlds beneath our feet.

Robert Macfarlane is the author of bestselling, prize-winning books about nature, place, and people, including Mountains of the Mind, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and (with Jackie Morris) The Lost Words. In 2017 he was awarded the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Recorded live at the Forum at Town Hall Seattle on June 13, 2019.