Plastic is all around us: our electronics, our furniture, our clothes, our shoes—and even our food. It’s hard to imagine a world without plastic. So what do we do with all of it?

On today’s show, we take a closer look at plastic through the lens of culture, health, and the environment with scholar and artist Katie Schaag, who taught a class on plastic at UW–Madison last year, and David Pinsky with Greenpeace USA. They discuss the ethics of global plastic production and pollution, microplastics and health, the growing movement to ditch plastic straws, and much more.

Katie Schaag is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. She is currently working on a book project, American Plasticity, which draws upon eco-criticism, queer theory, and neuroscience to theorize synthetic plastic aesthetics in contemporary performance art, visual art, and pop culture

David Pinsky is a senior oceans campaigner with Greenpeace USA, where he produces the annual Carting Away the Oceans report. He recently co-authored the report Packaging Away the Planet, which ranks supermarkets nationwide on their efforts to address single-use plastics.