Director emerita Lorraine Daston contributes an essay to the current issue of the London Review of Books. In Kaboom!, she reviews the book Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction by Sadiah Qureshi.

Daston then joins Thomas Jones on The LRB Podcast to discuss Vanished, her essay, and how people throughout history tried to make sense of natural disaster and extinction.

"Extinction is a protracted, uneven process, and hard to square with our mental picture of abrupt catastrophe."