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- [00:00]
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- [02:27]
Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. What if the ground beneath our feet could tell us who we are, where we've come from, and what we've forgotten? In today's episode, Earth scientist Dr. Anjana Katwa joins us to explore the deep histories encoded in the landscapes around us. In conversation with Caroline Dodds Pannock, she reveals how rocks and minerals are far more than inert material. They are living archives of time, climate, catastrophe, culture and community. Together, they discussed how geology preserves indigenous voices, marks geopolitical borders, shapes human societies and offers vital clues for understanding both our planet and ourselves. Let's join our host, Caroline Dodds. Panic now with more.
- [03:15]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Professor Caroline Dodds Pennock. Our guest today is Dr. Anjana Katwa. Anjana is an award winning Earth scientist who specializes in bringing stories about the origins and formation of natural landscapes to life. She's appeared as a regular contributor on programs for the BBC, ITV and Channel 5. And of course, she's the author of the Whispers of Stories from the Earth, which I was privileged to read recently. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Angela.
- [03:45]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Oh, thank you for having me, Caroline. It's lovely to be here.
- [03:47]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Thank you. It's such a personal book and so interesting about your own journey as well as the stories that you're telling. You began as an academic and earth scientist, as we mentioned, but then you say in the book that at the age of 29, you chose a new pathway to become a teller of the stories of rocks. And that journey is kind of really central to the book, isn't it? So, for example, you describe your early childhood collection of rocks as something that maybe your family were a little bit confused by or bemused at. Why is it you think that rocks, or maybe geology more specifically, got that response from your family?
- [04:23]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
I think geology has a real image problem, if I'm being honest. I think people really struggle to engage with rocks are and what they mean to our lives. And I think partly that's the way we've communicated the science to people. But also rocks are almost invisible in front of our own eyes. You know, we exist in a world which wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the rocks, but they're ubiquitous and they're so inanimate to some people, they form this backdrop to our lives. And I think when I started off, you know, on this journey of, of centering rocks within my professional and my personal life, people were naturally confused because I think they didn't really understand what benefit it would bring to my life. What journey would I go on, what kind of job would I have? And I think the more I've kind of spent in this space professionally about 25 years, I found that actually they have affected our lives, our society, our histories, and indeed it will be our future in ways that we can't even imagine.
- [05:25]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And one of the starting points for the book is attempting to break down that disconnect people have with these stories, of course. And one way you do that is thinking of rocks as part of the natural world, nature being something we often think of as personified or romanticized or cyclical. And we tell them as stories, don't we? We tell stories about nature so Gaia or the Earth Mother people might know of. Why do you think rocks have been left out of these stories? Seen as kind of boring or neutral? And what makes them central to you, to those stories, if that makes sense?
- [05:59]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Yeah, I think rocks are seen as these kind of inaccessible parts of the natural world because they don't change at timescales that we can imagine. I mean, when you look at the. Now you're walking through the woods, it's autumn, you can sense that the trees are undergoing a change. The leaves have turned from green to orange, you know, to. To red. So there is a visible experience, a visceral experience of seasonality with the rest of nature. Birds migrate, you know, other animals will hibernate with rocks. They don't have that. They are always there. They seem the same. They have a constancy that. That seems to become rather, you know, ineffective in terms of the way we engage with them. I really see rocks as part of the natural world because their existence allows everything to be possible for life on Earth to exist. And I'm holding this rock in my hand, which is a green schist from Norway, and I think this. This rock has an incredible story that if we dig deeper and we explore it, it has a chance to transform the way we think about the world and where it comes from. I think when we think about the natural world, perhaps the reason why rocks aren't regarded as part of that kind of natural cyclicity of life is because they need additional knowledge and understanding to really appreciate the benefits and the value they give us, not just economically, but also spiritually as well. And I think for me, when I hold rocks like this, this in my hand, this green schist, if I was going to get very technical and scientific and tell you about the origins of this rock, I think I'd lose you immediately. But the minute I tell you that, you know this green schist, which is green in color, it has this incredible chevron texture to it. When I'm holding this rock in my hand, if I told you I was holding the moment when a mountain was born, then suddenly something stirs in your heart and you want to know more about it. And I think that's what rocks mean to me on a very personal, emotional level. I see there's easy. I see them as these ancient story keepers of time. They hold our memories, they hold our experiences, but they also hold Extraordinary moments of planetary change that have happened on Earth.
- [08:21]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And of course, we're saying that people find these stories alienating, but actually, that's a really specific Western scientific understanding, isn't it? And one of the things the book does really deliberately is to blend scientific understanding and spirituality is maybe what we'd call Western knowledge, with traditional or indigenous ways of knowing, which really speaks to me as a historian of the indigenous Americas. You write really beautifully that to touch a rock and hear its whispers is to feel the privilege of a time and space that now only exists in our heart and mind. I wondered if you could say a bit more about what you meant by that.
- [08:56]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Yeah. Because when I hold a rock, I guess I'm enacting, you know, and here is a silt stone from Cornwall. Buzzcastle in Cornwall, when I'm holding a rock in my hand like this, I'm enacting an action that people have been doing for tens of thousands of years, particularly in indigenous communities. And when we look back at those cultures, as you say, you've been in those spaces, you know, and you've experienced what landscapes mean to indigenous people. It's all about sensing that connection and that grounding with what the rocks have meant over time. And for some. Some people, they have looked at landscapes and rocks and viewed them as. As their ancestors, and particularly indigenous peoples who've lived in spaces for tens of thousands of years, they built relationships with peaks of granite or mountains or even erupting volcanoes. And what's happened over time is that they've looked at the natural landscape and they've looked at the rocks as the story keepers of their own memories and their experiences. And through imbuing their. The physical presence of the rocks within the landscape with their. Their. Their stories, their emotions, their feelings of frustration or despair or even love for each other, the rocks imbue the spirit of that meaning that they, you know, that they've given them. And I think in that way, for all of these cultures across the world, the rocks become alive. And that's where the animacy of their existence lies.
- [10:28]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And it's very much, isn't it, for indigenous people this idea that rocks are part of all our relations. That famous phrase, they're a part of that natural cycle. But you make the case that that can be true across the world and in all kinds of places. I was really struck by the idea of geologists as time travelers. You know, the voices of the past have become silent, but rock can somehow keep those stories alive. And you explore through the book numerous Sites and peoples where rocks played a key role in local mythologies, identities relig daily lives. How have people's relationships with rocks and the minerals around us changed over time? Like, how could can places like Stonehenge, for example, which would be very relatable to a British audience, how can they still capture our imagination today?
- [11:13]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
I think it's just a simple case of going out and actually beginning to open your eyes as to the rocks around you. They exist everywhere. They can be in a paving slab in your local town, or it could be a rock up on your bookshelf that you collected on a holiday last year. And the most remarkable thing is that that's your own story, that's your experience. And for me, that is just as valid as. As my own experience of, for example, picking up this rock that I collected from southern Kenya when I was a teenager. And that moment when you picked up that rock and you. You gave it a memory and it gave you a memory, I think that's incredibly powerful and that helps us in terms of our connection with the geological world. And then if you're so minded, you can then go away and explore the scientific origin of how it was created. Because what that then does is it adds on that additional layer of meaning and understanding and grounding with who you are and where you are. And I think the minute we begin to layer these stories, one upon the other, the scientific, traditional knowledge, but also your own experience, I think it brings rocks to life in a way that. That we've never thought of.
- [12:29]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And because, as you say, rocks are so ubiquitous, aren't they? So everywhere in our daily life, in our experience, and they actually shape our world, not just in spiritual ways, but in material ways. They're the foundations of islands. They're some of the oldest borders. They're really essential to a lot of our industries. You talk about being in a quarry and it being a kind of abandoned library of ancient knowledge. Could you say a bit more about maybe how rocks are still really essential in modern historical narratives and experiences?
- [13:00]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Well, in my hand, I'm holding perhaps the greatest protagonist of all. It's a piece of coal. And this is a piece of coal that I picked up in Shropshire at Bliss Village, which I speak about in the book from Ironbridge Gorge. And Ironbridge Gorge was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. And within the kind of geological environment there, we had the holy trinity of rocks. We had limestone, we had iron ore, and we had coal. And what they're all used for. So coal, as we know, is a fuel source. It was used to fuel the forges of fire that would have been used in the furnaces where iron ore was melted down. And what's interesting is that the limestone was used in order to purify the process of melting the iron ore. And when we think about kind of the contemporary effects of 200 years or so of burning coal at an industrial level, we know where that's led. Now we're dealing with the impacts of climate warming. And I think all the way through the book, I try to really frame our dependency, economic dependency, on rocks like coal. And I think that relationship is very, very complex because we still do need geological and mineral resources for the lives that we lead today, from petroleum, so crude oil all the way through to cobalt and lithium. We do need those minerals and we do need those geological resources. And I think what we have to ask ourselves is, is how much are we willing to wound the earth in order to live in the lifestyles that we're used to? And I think it's a question that I've really struggled with, if I'm honest, because, you know, I'm speaking to you using a computer. With all of the minerals that have been sourced, you know, from very difficult places on Earth, it's very difficult to extract these minerals. And the impact on the natural environment is rather significant. So where would we be if we didn't have all of those minerals? And I think what I'm asking readers to perhaps step into is a world of empathy and ethical thinking. Like if we are going to dig up the ground and destroy a part of the natural world to extract that mineral, can it be done for a purpose that furthers our life in a more sustainable way?
- [15:27]
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- [18:06]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
What's really interesting about this is the way in which that you get us to think about rocks as one of the finite natural resources that we're so aware of now. We talk about wood, don't we talk about rainforests? We talk about oil. But we rarely think about rocks as finite resources for building, for coal, as you've mentioned, for processing. And you want a reader to try and reframe themselves as a custodian of the natural world rather than just an owner or an observer of it. How can people go about reframing that relationship with the natural world and with rocks, especially at this really critical time?
- [18:42]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
I think it all starts with seeking an emotion, perhaps the most unifying emotion that we have on the planet with each other. And that's love. And I wanted to show you this rock because I think it does start from a joy and a passion for recognizing the value that these ancient beings give us. I'm holding a piece of granite in my hand and it's probably One of the most commonly used building stones across, across the UK and indeed the world. Actually, granite is an igneous rock. You can see it's sparkling with all sorts of different minerals. Once we realize that actually rocks are a very finite resource, then I think we begin to look at them in a far more careful way. So this granite formed from a magma plume that intruded, that rose up from the very depths of the mantle, breached the Earth, Earth's crust, and then got trapped in a magma chamber of. And this all happened in Cornwall. And this granite in particular, which is from Bodmin Moor, the magma plume that got trapped in this magma chamber took about 2 to 3 million years to cool down. And as it cooled down, the minerals within that semi molten mass separated out. And as they separated, they cooled to form this beautiful crystalline structure. Now, for us to realize that rocks like granite, it takes immense planetary forces for them to be formed. That gives us a sense of gravitas, it gives us a sense of awe and wonder that actually we as humanity, we can't recreate, we can't grow these rocks, we can't manufacture them, and we can create some kind of modified version of them, but they're never like the real thing. And I think once we begin to reach out and understand the origins of these rocks and realize the immense time and force and scope that it takes to form these ancient beings, then I think something in your heart begins to shift. You think? Actually, yes, it has taken a very, very long time. Immense time scales, immense forces, and that means that it deserves our respect, or at least I believe it deserves our respect. And I think through linking that kind of immense scale of deep time with the forces that it takes to create the rocks, I think if we can create a shift in our heart and our mind to emotionally connect with them, to understand their value, I think that's when that journey begins to start.
- [21:13]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
That longevity is just awesome, isn't it? When you start to think about the things that the rocks have witnessed or experienced, then you get this sense of a deep time, which is so important, as we've said, maybe not to our modern society, but to many other cultures. And for example, you talk about Stonehenge as an expression of how prehistoric people related to the land and also to the cosmos. How did some of the cultures you explored use rocks to try and answer these central existential questions about human identity?
- [21:46]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Yeah, Stonehenge is a really beautiful example because it represents that coming together of the land, the landscape that these ancient people lived in, and the celestial sphere and they wanted to mirror that connection there. And as I've kind of spoken with and consulted with indigenous people from across the world, I've been struck by how unified our feelings and our connection with landscapes and rock are. And one group in particular, the stories from the Lakota in South Dakota, in the United States, that was a really beautiful but tragic story because they were the ancestral custodians of the landscape around the Black Hills in South Dakota. They'd lived there for thousands of years. And in fact, there is a granitic peak within the Black Hills that's known as Six Grandfathers Mountain that was incredibly sacred to the Lakota. They saw it as the heart of everything that is. And in their language, it's Pahasapa. And it's the place where the universe, where their world was created, where humankind was born from. And when we think about that particular landscape, which is a granitic peak, it's where magma has risen up into the Earth's crust. It's intruded into those upper rock layers, it's become trapped and then cooled to form these huge granite peaks. What it also brought with it was gold. And in the history of the Lakota, their lands were seized by the US Federal government because of the gold, and it still exists like that today. And when we think of Six Grandfathers Mountain in its current state, it's actually known as Mount Rushmore, with the President's heads carved into the mountain. So within that story is. Is this immense sense of loss, this immense tragedy that these ancestral lands that held so much value and sacred worship for the Lakota has been taken away from them. So some of the stories that I explore are very much grounded in the fact that rocks and land are at the central core of certain belief systems. And then in other places, the rocks allow for the stories and the movement of people to be traced back several thousand years. If we go to Aotearoa in New Zealand, the presence of the sacred greenstone known as Ponamu occurs all the way along the western coast of Te Waipunamu, South Island. And the beautiful story of how that was discovered by the Maori is retold in one of, well, perhaps one of the most, you know, enigmatic stories about a water spirit called Putini who's fleeing an angry husband because he's whisked away his wife. And each time he stops, you know, the story is an oral history map of where the Maori can actually locate the greenstones. It's. It's utterly stunning.
- [24:49]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And that awareness of powerful histories is something that's really one of the central metaphors of the book, of course, one of this idea of rocks as keepers of whispers from the past. And as you've just mentioned, one of the. The themes that comes up repeatedly is how often there are painful and colonial histories embedded and evidenced in the rocks. As well as being amazing and inspiring. I wonder if you could talk about how these memories of the past sometimes also preserve ideas around exploitation and destruction and dispossession.
- [25:28]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Yeah, I'm actually thinking of a rather personal story to me, actually, when you bring that up. And I'm thinking of the Taj Mahal in India. The Taj Mahal is built from a rock called the Makrana marble, which is sourced from quarries in Rajasthan. And my heritage, although my parents are from Kenya, my ancestral heritage is from Rajasthan in India. And when I was researching this story, because I thought, well, the Taj Mahal is one of the most iconic structures, building structures in the world. And what makes it so beautiful is the purity of the marble. The marble is almost 98% calcite, which makes it incredibly white. It's sparkling it. And, you know, and I held a sample of it in my hand that another geologist gave to me. It was like holding a clutch of diamonds. It was so beautiful. And when I started to research into some of the uses of Makrana marble, particularly during British colonial times in India, you know, I came across this really bizarre story that, you know, Lord Curzon, who was Viceroy of India at the time, he was, you know, quite keen to build a memorial to Queen Victoria, and he wanted to use European marbles because he thought they were. They were superior, frankly, to the Indian rocks. And what turned out is that he tasked the Indian Geological Survey to conduct tests, you know, test the Indian marble against the European marble, because he believed that the European marble was superior. And I think that goes back into those very difficult colonial histories of. Of people and landscape to be there to be exploited, but also to be subjugated. And what I found at the end of this bit of research about that period of when he was commissioning the Victorian memorial, was that the Macrana marble actually won over the European marble. And so it was this, like, moment of, well, it's actually science, it's actually geology. The rock spoke for itself. And, you know, that's just one example of some of the. The colonial violence and, you know, those type of subjugating attitudes that I picked out in order to illustrate how rock and minerals and resources are often used to subjugate not just nature itself, but also people.
- [27:45]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
It must have been quite difficult in a way to balance those competing constraints, the difficult stories as well as the inspiring stories and these different forms of knowledge. Because you start in the book by introducing your positionality, saying that you are not an Indigenous person, but that Indigenous knowledge is really central to your book, as well as personal stories like the one you were just telling, and personal connections. I wonder why do you think that positionality is so important? I was really interested. Not that many British writers actually put their positionality up front. It's a lot more common in other countries. But it was really fascinating to see you do that. I wonder why you thought that was so important and also how you managed to back balance these legacies and voices in writing the book.
- [28:30]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
The statement of positionality was my choice. And that comes from a position where, as a woman of color, and particularly a woman of color living in the west and being educated in a Western kind of society, I was very aware of the privilege that I had coming into a space to retell stories from Indigenous people. And as someone who is kind of an expert on inclusion and diversity, I felt it was absolutely necessary to put that. That privilege that I held up front and center and not to be seen in a way that I was extracting or exploiting knowledge and histories from Indigenous people and also the rocks themselves. It's funny, isn't it? Because when we talk about extraction and exploitation, this is what makes geology as a science. This is what geology is grounded in. And I wanted. I wanted to especially start the book off from a point of equity. And so writing that statement of positionality was vital for the reader to understand that although I am from a South Asian background, and I do come from a background that has experienced the violence of colonialism, I wanted the reader to understand that, you know, actually I. I have that privilege of being in the west. And that does not excuse my kind of position to go in and retell stories, however and whenever I would like to. I think positionality in terms of retelling stories from any culture is really vital. It's not something I believe that a lot of British writers do, perhaps because they don't know how or they're a bit terrified of doing that. I'm not quite sure. But for me it was vital because what it does is it sets the tone of the book in a position of equity. And. And the book opens with a. With a poem from a Native American professor. And again, I wanted that to center the voices of Indigenous people because I don't believe that Indigenous peoples across the world have Ever been voiceless or. It's just the fact that we've never stopped to listen to their stories. We've never stopped to give their story space. And that's absolutely what I wanted to do throughout the book.
- [30:45]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
I really appreciated that, the foregrounding of indigenous voices and of the multiplicity of voices that you foregrounded, as well as putting a positional statement, which I think some people, as you say, are hesitant to do. They think that people will denounce them as being slightly too woke or too concerned about other people's points, where for me, that balance, that equity, as you say, that inclusion of voices, and also the realizing. And again, I rarely see this in British writers, the realizing when perhaps knowledge isn't supposed to. To be shared, that it is personal to a particular community. Perhaps we should, in kind of concluding, come back to the other side, though, which is how people who are likely to read the book, people in the west, people in the uk, can grapple with these stories on their doorstep. Are there things you think that people can do to feel closer to the natural world around them or to feel closer to their local geologies?
- [31:40]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Yeah, I think it's quite simple, really. I think it's. It's either reaching out and holding the rock that you picked up last summer when you went on. On a walk on the beach or along the river and you thought, oh, I like that pebble. I'll pick that up. And I think it's time to just reach out and. And touch that rock that has that memory that you hold quite dear to yourself. Or it's about taking a walk in anywhere, actually. It can be in. In the town that you live in, or it can be in a really beautiful natural space, like. Like close to me is the coast. And I think it's about opening your heart and your mind and having a very sensual sensory experience of what that rock is giving you. And I think it just starts with a touch, actually. And obviously I have a house littered with rocks, as you can see. One of the rocks that I reach for most often is this one here. This is a piece of basalt, and I picked it up when I was 13 years old, and it's the one that started off this whole journey. I wouldn't be sitting, sitting here talking to you about rocks if it wasn't for this piece of Basel I picked up in Kenya. And I think that's the power that rocks have because they are such great holders of history and deep time, whether we're talking geologically or whether we're talking Personally, I think it just starts with that simple touch.
- [33:00]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
I think people who are interested in the geology itself or indeed landscape as a whole, will find something in the book. My mum, actually we have a. I grew up in a house full of rocks because my mum trained in geology. She was one of the few women on a geology degree in the 60s. So at a time when it was something petrochemical geology, I think it was at a time when women didn't tend to do that then. So they have a house full of beautiful minerals as well. And there's something about them as an evocation of those wider landscapes, isn't there as well?
- [33:35]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
There is, because I'm sure your mum feels like this. When you look at your rocks or any, any kind of pebble or stone that you've picked up, you will have imbued it with the memory of that moment. And I think that is an incredible thing to have in your hand, isn't it? Because I think we do see other parts of the natural world, like trees or plants or birds. They can seem quite ephemeral sometimes and they are, they can seem quite transient. But the rocks, the rocks are always there. They have a solidity to them that I don't think any part of the natural world does and they are simply beautiful to look at.
- [34:14]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
And it's a really, really beautiful book. I appreciated that, that eloquence. I think it comes through really wonderfully. I'm going to buy it for my mum for Christmas. Thank you. Anjana, thank you so much for coming on Intelligence squared. That was Dr. Anjana Katwa, author of the Whispers of Stories from the Earth, which is available now online or at a good book bookshop near you. I'm sure I've been. Professor Caroline Dodspinnock, you've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you for joining us.
- [34:45]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpato and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at live events, head to to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
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Dr. Anjana Katwa
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [36:26]
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- [37:01]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Welcome to our PE Pathways Podcast series where experienced dealmakers share their thoughts on current private equity and M and A trends and developments.
- [37:10]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Thank you for listening to our podcast.
- [37:12]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
Please keep an eye out for additional episodes of PE Pathways, where we bring.
- [37:16]
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Experienced dealmakers together to share their thoughts.
- [37:19]
Dr. Anjana Katwa
On current private equity and M and A trends.