Marcia Bjornerud on the Profound Wisdom of Rocks

To the majority of humankind, rocks may appear to be static, timeless objects, but not to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud. In her mind, rocks are rich pieces of text that have evolved (and continue to evolve) across millennia, and are therefore incredibly timeful. “They almost demand reading,” Bjornerud says on this episode of Time Sensitive. “You have the feeling that you’re communicating with some larger, wilder, more ancient wisdom.” A two-time Senior Fulbright Scholar, a professor of geology at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and an expert on the geophysics of earthquakes and mountain building, Bjornerud serves as a sort of geological translator of these “texts,” reading their encrypted messages and stories—tracing their etymologies, essentially—and from there inferring why things are the way they are. Bjornerud’s translations shine across her four books, including the newly published Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks.

On the episode, she discusses the power of looking at the world through a Deep Time lens, why we’re currently in what she considers a “golden age” of geoscience, and what a “time literate” society would mean for humanity and the planet.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Marcia Bjornerud

[15:18] Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

[07:16] Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks

[07:16] “Studying Stones Can Rock Your World”

[07:16] Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities

[07:16] Carbon cycle

[09:47] Rock deformation

[13:54] The overview effect

[17:42] “Geology Is Like Augmented Reality for the Planet”

[21:28] Colonization of Mars

[21:28] Anthropocene

[29:06] Planned obsolescence

[29:06] Green technology revolution

[31:40] Seventh Generation Principle

[34:01] Stonehenge

[38:29] University of Minnesota

[41:02] Svalbard, Norway

[41:02] Norwegian Polar Institute

[44:15] Yoshihide Ohta

[50:06] “Lost Time in Amatrice”

[54:19] Kola Superdeep Borehole