“Life is on the move, today as in the past,” journalist Sonia Shah writes in her book The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. “For centuries, we’ve suppressed the fact of the migration instinct, demonizing it as a harbinger of terror. We’ve constructed a story about our past, our bodies, and the natural world in which migration is the anomaly. It’s an illusion. And once it falls, the entire world shifts.”

This week on the podcast, Lewis H. Lapham and Shah discuss the many movements that define life on Earth, the naming trends that created the idea of invasive species, and the hope that the next great migration might be one we finally embrace as a fact of humanity and the natural world.

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Sonia Shah, author of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move.

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.