MIXED FEELINGS. Episode 2. Feat.: Kristen Ghodsee, Dominik Mattes, Maren Wirth, Lioba Diez. Hosted by Polina Aronson.

“Utopian thinking is important, not because it’s happy or optimistic or even hopeful, but because it creates the preconditions for change.”

In the second episode of our Mixed Feelings podcast, we explore ecological despair and grief—and the role that utopian thinking, emotion, and faith can play in movements for climate justice. At a moment when catastrophic futures often seem easier to imagine than transformative ones, the episode asks what it takes to envision change without denying loss, exhaustion, or fear.

In this conversation, our moderator Polina Aronson is joined by Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning author whose work looks at lived utopias; Maren Wirth and Dominik Mattes from the CRC Affective Societies, who explore the emotional life of climate activism; and Lioba Diez, a spiritual coach working at the intersection of theology, ecology, ritual, and grief. Rather than offering easy optimism, the conversation makes space for despair—while insisting that other ways of living, organizing, and caring for the world are not only imaginable, but already taking shape.

To find out more, check out Kristen Ghodsee’s book on the necessity of utopian thinking:

Ghodsee, K. R. (2023). Everyday utopia: What 2000 years of wild experiments can teach us about the good life. Simon & Schuster.