Unwell to Begin With – Details, episodes & analysis

“When people think about evolutionary biology, they think of ‘survival of the fittest.’ It is the first thing that comes to people's minds, and it is a gross misconception of evolution, and it's consistently been weaponized against people, and that's specifically Black people, people of color, Indigenous folks and disabled people specifically… It was coined by a eugenicist. I will not say their name. It was not Darwin's theory.”

For this second episode, host Mollie Holmberg (she/her) talks with Dr. Haley Branch (she/her) at the Yale School of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology about how her training in ballet informs her approach to studying plants; debunking “survival of the fittest” and other common misconceptions about evolution that are foundational to eugenics; publishing science that upsets the worst men on the internet; what caring for plants teaches us about disabled life; and her efforts to make field work in ecology and evolutionary biology more accessible for disabled scientists. To find out more about Dr. Branch’s work on desert plant ecophysiology, ableism in evolutionary biology, and building spaces for disabled scientists in higher ed, you can visit her website at https://haleyabranch.weebly.com/.

Links to other work and websites discussed in the show:

• Branch, H.A. et al. (2022) “Discussions of the “Not So Fit”: How Ableism Limits Diverse Thought and Investigative Potential in Evolutionary Biology.” The American Naturalist, 200(1), 101-113. https://doi.org/10.1086/720003
• Turner, S.E. et al. (2014) “Social consequences of disability in a nonhuman primate.” Journal of human evolution, 68, 47-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.01.002 

If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at nomorelawnmowers@proton.me

Transcript by Mollie Holmberg.

Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.

"These shared resonances which are often infantilized and dismissed as 'special interests' or 'infodumping' are actually intensities of knowledge and knowledge creation that we can sort of... refract off each other in ways that I think promote really interesting formations of knowledge."

Welcome to Unwell to Begin With, a podcast about the eugenics problem in biology and the environmental movement, and what disabled people and others at the receiving end of this ideology have to say about it. Or, to put it less bleakly: where we talk to disabled people and others about what crip knowledge and care practices have to offer in this moment of intensifying social and ecological crisis. For this first episode, host Mollie Holmberg (she/her) talks to Audra Mitchell (she/her and they/them) at the Balsillie School of International Affairs about why crip knowledge systems belong in fields like International Relations and environmental studies; uncomfy feelings about the category of disability; how policing gets normalized in classroom spaces and leads to things like students sending selfies from the ER; and why crip politics is about a lot more than just disability.

Audra's latest book is Revenant Ecologies: Defying the Violence of Extinction and Conservation (University of Minnesota Press).

Links to other work and websites discussed in the show:

• Audra's piece on ecolalia, Autistic worlding and alternative eco-political futures in Environment and Planning E (open access)
• Nick Walker's work on neurotypicality, neurodiversity, and neuroqueering
• Jasbir Puar's The Right to Maim
• Mel Chen et al.'s Crip Genealogies
• Sins Invalid's 10 Principles of Disability Justice
• Sami Schalk's Black Disability Politics
• Kathy Absolon's work on Indigenous resurgence
• Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist
• Robert McRuer's work on crip theory
• Margaret Price's latest book on being disabled in academia
• adrienne maree brown's writing on abolition
• J. Logan Smilges's Crip Negativity
• Sunaura Taylor's latest book
• Clay Aldern's book on climate change and neurology
• Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's books on crip survival and care strategies
• Emi Koyama's work on "feminism, sexual and domestic violence, sex work/trade and trafficking, queer and trans liberation, intersex and disability issues"
• Lauren Berlant on cruel optimism
• Francesca Albanese's October 2024 report to the UN General Assembly
• gazafunds.com
• Investigative reporting by The Maple on the Canadian settler state's role in the global arms trade (1) (2) (3) (4)

If you have any comments or questions about the show, you can reach us at nomorelawnmowers@proton.me 

Transcript by Aadita Chaudhury, PhD Candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University.

* Correction: This work is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, not a SSHRC Insight Development Grant

Theme music for the show is roswell by Fog Lake off the Free Music Archive and licensed under CC BY 4.0.