Peter speaks to the author and researcher Kat Hill about bothies and what they can teach us about histories of dwelling and place. Kat is the author of Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter, published in 2024 by William Collins.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:58) Who is Kat Hill?

(04:03) What is a bothy?

(05:08) How did your interest in bothies begin?

(09:18) What happens to old bothy guestbooks?

(11:16) When did you decide to write a book about bothies?

(14:08) What was the development of the book like?

(16:21) Why did you choose the title?

(18:42) How did bothies open a space for you to better understand yourself?

(23:58) What is it that defines a bothy?

(26:22) When we emphasise a bothy as a place of retreat what kind of meaning is being lost?

(28:59) What can the military history of Cape Wrath tell us about the meaning of wilderness?

(34:00) How can bothies help guide us through the environmental questions of our age?

(38:49) What can bothies tell us about what it means to dwell?

(44:06) How can bothies help inform new architectural models?

(53:20) Sandy, the Cape Wrath Hermit of Strathchailleach Bothy

(57:18) How can bothies open up the skies for us?

Peter speaks to the philosopher Ted Toadvine about a wide range of environmental themes and issues. Toadvine specialises in environmental ethics and contemporary European philosophy. His new book titled The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology explores the ethical and ecological implications of deep time from a phenomenological perspective and is available now via University of Minnesota Press.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelandbehind

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelandbehindpodcast

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:44) Episode begins

(09:57) Why Toadvine wrote The Memory of the World

(16:56) Toadvine’s earliest experiences of deep time

(23:27) Reconciling humanity and the natural environment

(40:57) Technology and nature

(46:00) The problem with the Anthropocene

(58:10) The problem with biodiversity

(01:05:52) The relationship between nature and language

(01:10:12) What is eco-phenomenology?

(01:15:10) Nature as the horizon of all things

(01:20:07) “Nature loves to hide”

(01:26:08) Edmund Husserl’s description of the natural world as a “correlate of consciousness”

(01:31:48) “The sun did not exist before human beings”

(01:42:45) The ethical problems of global sustainability

(01:52:23) The relationship between deep time and embodiment

(02:03:43) The animals that haunt our humanity from within

(02:20:38) Derrida at the end of the world

(02:29:06) The cultural obsession with doomsday

(02:36:39) The phenomenological perspective of the end of the world

(02:47:20) A phenomenology of the elements

(02:52:04) Art and the elements

Peter speaks to the philosopher Al Lingis about what we can learn by looking and the ethics of seeing. Described as one of the most original voices alive today in American philosophy, Al is a keen photographer, and many of his essays are accompanied by his own images. During the episode Al describes the significance of photography to the development of his own philosophical thinking.

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