Special - Interview with Ada Palmer: History of ideas and our climate imaginations

This is a special episode - instead of a regular writing prompt, it’s a recording of an interview with professor Ada Palmer from Bazyliszek convention in Warsaw, Poland in July 2025.

Professor Ada Palmer, a well-acclaimed historian of ideas, set the action of her science fiction series “Terra Ignota” several hundred years from now. The world she imagined presents vast societal and cultural changes, but the topic of climate change is treated much more implicitly. Within the context of professor’s books - and the now growing genre of climate fiction - let’s discuss why it’s so hard for us to imagine and describe the climate change of the XXI century.

Links and resources:

• Ada Palmer’s Homepage
• Apocalypses by Eugen Weber
• Against Purity by Alexis Shotwell
• Purity and Futures of Hard Work by Ada Palmer
• Daybreak Game
• Earth Rising Game
• alxd’s Homepage
• A History Of Saving The World - another interview with Ada Palmer
• Bazyliszek Homepage [PL]

Episode cover CC-BY 4.0 Henry Söderlund