Plastic Podcast Coming Soon

Have you seen Don't Look Up? The entire movie uses an asteroid as a metaphor for climate change and our global response to it. Jennifer Lawrence is a scientist who discovers the Earth-bound asteroid and she’s like, ‘guys look up!’  Meryl Streep is the president and she’s like ‘guys don’t look up!’ Spoiler alert: she wants to let the asteroid come closer so her donors can harvest and profit off its space minerals.

Anyways, go watch the movie. I’m just using it as my own metaphor. Pine Forest Media’s debut series, Plastic Podcast is an attempt to ‘look up’ when it comes to plastic. 

I’m the host by the way, Clark Marchese. 

Perhaps an asteroid isn’t actually the best metaphor for plastic… there’s no period of anticipation followed by a catastrophic boom. By 2024 plastic has crept all over the place in a major way and we don’t yet understand all the things that is going to mean for us. 

To answer all of the questions I have about plastic, I’m going to talk to a number of scientists to learn the latest on the usual suspects - straws and turtles, ocean garbage patches, and of course, climate change. 

But I want to go beyond what we see in the news all the time. I want to understand our relationship with this material from an anthropological point of view. I’ll talk to psychologists about how plastic affects our emotions, artists about how it inspires creation and protest, activists about environmental and social justice.

I don’t think it’s useful to panic and I also think that nothing good comes from giving up. That’s why Plastic Podcast is neither alarmist nor defeatist but an investigative piece. I want to understand where plastic came from, how it’s affecting us now, and how we should move forward. 

I hope you will join me - although I do know it’s a big ask. 

In 2024 the non-fiction media space is the opposite of uplifting, not only when it comes to environmental issues. It can be exhausting trying to keep up. That’s why, at the end of every interview I ask my guest if they share one piece of good news in the field of their research. 

I can share the first piece of good news with you now - Plastic Podcast will be available for streaming across all major podcast platforms on March 27th, 2024.