When I designed my podcasting course „Gras wachsen hören“ (or „To Hear the Grass Grow“) at the department of Media Ecology at the University of Potsdam in Germany, I had actually planned to teach my students about John Cage and musical collaborations between humans and fungi, and then go on to do some tricky recordings with them. However, Fridays for Future and the thousands of students striking worldwide each week to stop climate change did not make my students all that interested in aesthetic research, as I had to learn.

Deeply impressed by Greta Thunberg and her committed, inspiring fight for immediate changes in climate policy, the end of fossil fuels, and the reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2035, the participants in my course preferred to make something more concrete. So we decided to produce a climate-activism podcast. This decision coincided with Thunberg’s visit to Berlin and her support of the local Fridays for Future demonstration on Friday, July 19.