Stone as Story, Earth as Kin: A Geologist’s Invitation to Relearn the Planet with Marcia Bjornerud

My guest today is a woman who listens to stone the way others listen to music, hearing the layered rhythms, ancient memory, and hidden messages beneath our feet.

Dr. Marcia Bjornerud is a structural geologist, writer, and professor at Lawrence University whose work explores the physics of earthquakes, the architecture of mountains, and the deep time story of our living planet. She is the author of several beloved books for popular audiences, including Reading the Rocks, Timefulness, Geopedia, and most recently, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, which won the 2025 John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing.

In today’s conversation, we explore Earth as an animate, dynamic system, one that has been reinventing itself for over 4 billion years, leaving records of her great experiments in stone. We dive into Marcia’s life’s work of decoding that record and into her belief that rocks are not inert, they are narrators of Earth’s evolving story. Marcia invites us to understand the language of stone, to foster a “geo-centric” worldview that reconnects us with the rhythms and relationships of this planet, and to step into a deeper kinship with the Earth as home.

We also speak about her travels to remote parts of the world, such as Svalbard, Norway, her reflections on the Anthropocene, how thinking like a geologist can help save the world, and what she may have learned from Indigenous wisdom traditions in her dialogue with land and rock.

This is a conversation about time, transformation, and the quiet, enduring truths that live in stone.

Episode Highlights:

02:30 – Dr. Bjornerud’s early fascination with rocks from glacial deposits in Wisconsin.

04:00 – Structuring her latest book Turning to Stone around autobiographical chapters, each linked to a specific rock.

06:00 – Defining the term "timefulness" and how seeing in geologic time alters our perception of the present.

07:30 – Rocks as palimpsests: ancient stories overwritten but still traceable.

08:45 – Rocks as verbs, not nouns: dynamic participants in Earth's ongoing transformation.

10:30 – Witnessing the radical evolution of geoscience: from fixed continents to dynamic tectonics and complex climate models.

13:00 – Paradigm shifts: from denying catastrophes to accepting extinction events like the one that ended the dinosaurs.

16:00 – Ice age floods and possible global correlations to catastrophic water events.

18:00 – Reflections on flat-earthers, epistemology, and failures in science education.

20:30 – Dr. Bjornerud’s spiritual and emotional connection with rocks and their silent companionship.

22:30 – Working in rapidly changing Arctic landscapes and observing real-time geology in motion.

24:00 – The language of stone: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks as dialects.

26:00 – What would change if Western culture viewed the Earth as animate rather than mechanical?

29:00 – Critiquing techno-optimism and misplaced hubris in dreams of colonizing Mars.

32:00 – Hidden infrastructures of rock: aquifers, basalt weathering, and climate regulation.

35:00 – Collaborating with Indigenous scientists and tribal legal teams to protect ecosystems.

38:00 – Thinking like a geologist: embracing humility, interconnectedness, and a long-term perspective.

40:00 – Letting go of narcissism and rediscovering our place in Earth’s continuum.

42:00 – Why colonizing Mars is scientifically implausible and ethically evasive.

45:00 – Message for the seventh generation: the Earth abides—if we listen.

47:00 – Closing reflection: stone as story, Earth as ancestor, and ourselves as part of a resilient and sacred cycle of becoming.

Resources mentioned:

Books by Dr. Marcia Bjornerud

Turning to Stone – https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781324093494

Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World – https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780691202631

Reading the Rocks – https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780465009335

Geopedia – https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780691217109

Lawrence University Faculty Page – https://www.lawrence.edu/offices/faculty/marcia-bjornerud

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