Join The Explorers Club on March 9th for a close look at the natural and cultural history of fire, from millennia-old indigenous practices to modern wildfire fighting.
Wildfires have become a symbol of climate apocalypse, frequently cited as unambiguous evidence of fossil-fuel induced ecological disaster. But get close enough to a fire on the landscape and you may discover a far more complicated and fascinating story about evolution, biology, history, and culture. Join award-winning journalist and author M.R. O’Connor on this infinitely more hopeful journey of discovery as she recounts her intrepid reporting into some of the world’s most remote and beautiful places to understand the powerful and ancient element of wildfire. O’Connor will discuss the fascinating natural and cultural history of fire, her process of becoming a “student of fire,” and what it is like to embed with firefighting crews on some of the biggest megafires in recent history including the Dixie Fire and Eaton Fire. O’Connor will also introduce you to the incredible fire practitioners working today–ranchers, tribal leaders, and land managers–who are purposefully igniting fires to restore their landscapes and communities. Weaving first-hand reportage, photography, and stories from the fireline, this event offers an inspiring and fresh perspective on a critical global issue.
This in-person event at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $20 for Members, and $35 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
M.R. O'Connor
M. R. O’Connor is a journalist who writes about the politics and philosophy of science, technology and conservation. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and her reporting has appeared in The Atavist, Slate, Foreign Policy, and Harper’s. She is the author most recently of Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World, which Kirkus called an “intricate examination of the relationship humans once shared with fire in the past and what it can become in the future.” Her first book, Resurrection Science, was one of Library Journal and Amazon’s Best Books of The Year. Her second book, Wayfinding, is an exploration of navigation traditions, neuroscience, and the diversity of human relationships to space, time and memory. Its writing was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan’s Program for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, & Economics. Her investigative reporting on topics like disappearances in Sri Lanka’s civil war, global agriculture trade in Haiti, and American development enterprises in Afghanistan have been funded by institutions such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Phillips Foundation, and The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and was a 2016/17 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She lives in Queens, NY with her partner and their three sons.
