TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Wonder Cabinet

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3 episodes
2026
Median: 37 minutes
Collection: SciPhi-Adjacent

Description (podcaster-provided):

Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress.
Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality.
The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was still in conversation with older ways of knowing the world. Today, another shift is taking place, as mechanistic models give way to more holistic, relational understandings of life on a sentient planet. Wonder Cabinet lives at that threshold.
About the hosts
Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson co-founded To The Best Of Our Knowledge. Steve hosts Luminous, a podcast about the science and philosophy of psychedelics, and is the author of Atoms and Eden.
Learn more at wondercabinetproductions.com.

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

➤ long-form conversations • science, ecology, cosmology • myths, fairy tales, fantasy storytelling • wonder and transcendence • embodied illness metaphors • deep time, death–regeneration cycles • holistic, relational views of nature

This podcast centers on intimate, long-form conversations that bring together science, ecology, philosophy, literature, and the arts to explore how people make sense of a living planet. Guided by the tradition of “cabinets of curiosities,” it moves across disciplines and time scales—linking topics such as cosmology and the physics of reality with the biological complexity of forests, fungi, soil, and other interconnected ecosystems. The emphasis is on ideas that reframe human beings not as separate observers of nature, but as participants embedded in relational networks of life.

Across conversations, the show blends empirical inquiry with older and more symbolic ways of knowing. Guests draw on myth, fairy tales, and imaginative storytelling as tools for understanding change, mortality, and transformation, often treating wonder not as escapism but as a way to pay closer attention to the world. Themes include deep time, regeneration and decay, and the “intelligence” of natural systems—from cellular structures to mycelial networks—alongside questions about consciousness and what counts as knowledge.

The podcast also explores how personal experience can shape ecological thinking. Discussions can connect embodied realities such as illness and health to metaphors drawn from landscapes and living systems, inviting listeners to consider alternative models of selfhood beyond mechanical or purely biomedical frames. Popular and communal forms of narrative—fantasy literature, contemporary genre fiction, and participatory storytelling—appear alongside scientific concepts, highlighting the ways shared stories influence how cultures imagine nature and the cosmos.

Overall, this podcast offers conversations intended to expand how listeners think about reality, the Earth, and everyday life by placing scientific ideas in dialogue with poetry, mythic imagination, and environmental awareness.

Episodes:

Carlo Rovelli: Cosmic Mysteries and the Politics of Wonder
2026-Feb-07
37 minutes

Sophie Strand: Ecological Storytelling and Mythic Imagination
2026-Jan-31
38 minutes

Introducing 'Wonder Cabinet'
2026-Jan-24
2 minutes