Dust.

It’s really too small a thing to worry about, isn’t it? When we think about the environmental challenges we are facing in the 21st century, we tend to think big – global warming, the ozone hole, mega volcanoes, earth quakes, or perhaps the devastation brought by large scale conflicts - even, at the very worst, a nuclear explosion.

We tend not to think about the small things, the very smallest things, like dust.

This is perhaps because we usually imagine the modern world to be shiny and clean; dusty things are old.  But in this episode I will be talking with Jay Owens, who shows us how central dust is to the modern world, from the dust in our homes to the dust from nuclear fall out.

Jay's recent book, Dust: the world in a trillion particles, was published in 2023

Episode 5: Our dusty world.

What are the political consequences of the Fire Age?  What does dust tell us about the modern world?  Who should be driving international development?  Is green consumerism really leading to a cleaner world?  Why is it OK to tell women to stay off the streets at night to increase safety, but not men? 

These are some of the questions we will be exploring in the first few episodes of Beyond the Map – a podcast that looks beyond the obvious to understand the hidden geographies that make our world.

Your host is Jo Sharp, a professor of geography and Scotland’s Geographer Royal. 

Beyond the Map

I am Jo Sharp, a Professor of Geography and Scotland's Geographer Royal.