[0:10 ‘Meet the Flintstones, they’re a modern stone age family…]
Ava: Alright, Burgess, why are we watching the Flintstones?
Burgess: Alright okay, bear with me. So I was reading this article and it was written by an archaeologist. They were talking about how we define periods in human history by our relationship to materials. It’s why we call it the bronze age, the iron age…
Ava: Okay, I get it. The Stone Age.
Burgess: Exactly, Ava, the Stone Age.
[Fred Flintstone: Yabba Dabba Doo!]
Burgess: Anyway, it got me thinking about how archaeologists in the future would define our current age.
Ava: Okay, I think I know where you’re going with this. But, you know, my sister-in-law is actually an archeologist.
Burgess: Oh, perfect! Can we call her up?
Ava: Sure yeah. Let’s do it.
[Phone/Skype sound]
Kelsey: Hello!
Ava: Kelsey, Burgess, Burgess, Kelsey.
Burgess: Hi Kelsey.
Kelsey: Hi. Nice to meet you.
Ava: So Kelsey, first can you explain what exactly an archeologist does?
Kelsey: Basically what archeologists do is study human behavior, using the stuff that people make and leave behind.
Burgess: We were talking about what future archeologists might dig up on our present day society. What do you think they’d find?
Kelsey: They would find so much compared to, you know, what we find in the Mediterranean. They would find just a gargantuan amount.
Ava: So we started in the stone age, then we went to the iron age. What do you think archeologists are going to call the time we’re living in now?
Kelsey: In theory, we’re still living in the iron age, though I think a lot of people would say we’re living in the plastic age. But I imagine that thousands of years from now, archaeologists might dub it the plastics age, just for the sheer amount of plastics you'd be digging out of the ground if you were excavating our civilization. Plastic is the technology that defines our economy and our standard of life in such a profound way that I think it would be difficult to call it anything other than the plastics age. You know, if we’re thinking about materials that define a culture, for us, plastics is really it.
[Music]
Ava: Join us this summer for season 2 of Trace Material: Stories from the Plastics Age. In just a century, this material has completely changed our bodies, our homes, and our culture.
Burgess: We’re going to explore things like the intersection of the Tupperware party and the feminist movement, trash incineration and environmental racism, bioplastics and gen z angst!
Ava: Mostly though we’re going to be telling stories about people. People who have molded and have been molded by plastic. You’ll hear from activists, Tupperware saleswomen, and state assemblymen.
Burgess: Together we’ll uncover just how we got into this crisis.
Ava: Season 2 launches on June 16th and you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.