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Our glaciers are starving, but there’s a solution! Says glaciologist, National Geographic Explorer and TED Fellow Dr. M Jackson on the Climate Curious podcast. In conversation with Maryam Pasha, M breaks down why our glaciers are currently starving and how they have the remarkable ability to grow back, if we give them the right conditions! From the “isostatic rebound” of the springing Earth, to 40 generations of human breath captured in an ice core, we hear why glaciers will not be lost to history. Recorded live at TED 2026.
Find more about M: http://www.drmjackson.com
Artwork Photography by Jake Dyson
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Snowflakes to glaciers
00:50 Glaciologist credentials
01:31 Writing on a phone
01:52 What is a glacier
02:48 Why glaciers matter
03:44 Community of snowflakes
05:04 Her path into science
05:54 Making science accessible
08:15 Ice loss and hope
09:48 Water states and weather
10:57 Sea ice vs glaciers
11:54 Glaciers and sea level
12:09 Melting ice raises seas
12:30 Sponge earth rebound
12:56 Isostatic rebound explained
13:50 Glacier tipping points
14:45 Three ingredients glaciers
15:34 Starving glaciers warming
17:14 Long game climate work
19:03 Snowflake cathedral thinking
20:29 Ice cores hold time
21:11 Favorite glacier penguins
22:07 Where to find her
22:42 Podcast wrap credits
Snowflakes to glaciers
[00:00:00] M Jackson: The most powerful force on this planet, a community of the most vulnerable, most alone things are standing together and they are shaping the landscapes and lives and futures [00:00:15] of almost every person on this planet.
[00:00:17] Ben Hurst: This is Climate Curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared, or confused by climate change.
[00:00:24] Maryam Pasha: I’m Marion Pasha, the director and curator at Telex London, and the co-host of this podcast alongside the amazing [00:00:30] Ben.
[00:00:30] Ben Hurst: Hi, I’m Ben Hurst, activist and advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like and self-confessed climate normie.
[00:00:42] Maryam Pasha: We’re very excited. We’ve got Dr. M Jackson [00:00:45] here with us to Chad. I’m excited. Excited. I’m too you. I’m gonna tell you. Tell you about yourself. Oh, go on. Okay. Go on.
Glaciologist credentials
[00:00:50] Maryam Pasha: So you’re a geographer. You’re a glacial, no, I can’t say it. You say it.
[00:00:54] M Jackson: Glaciologist.
[00:00:55] Maryam Pasha: Glac. Glaciologist. Mm-hmm. It’s gonna take me a bit of time.
[00:00:57] Maryam Pasha: Mm-hmm. Science communicator. You spent [00:01:00] two decades studying ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Um. Wow. Okay. Let’s just, I’m not gonna read your whole bio because it’s long and I wanna talk to you, so,
[00:01:09] M Jackson: but it sounds so great.
[00:01:11] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, we
[00:01:11] M Jackson: could do, we could do highlights like ravishingly. Good looking.
[00:01:14] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:01:14] Maryam Pasha: Ravaging, [00:01:15] good looking. Uh, an expert for National Geographic Expeditions. You are a Ted fellow. We’re gonna talk about more about that.
[00:01:21] M Jackson: Let’s, uh, let’s throw in four books and I have a PhD.
[00:01:24] Maryam Pasha: Okay. I like
[00:01:24] M Jackson: that. That just, that’s credentials right there.
[00:01:26] Maryam Pasha: Right. Okay. Right. That’s a lot of writing.
[00:01:28] M Jackson: I spend a long [00:01:30] time looking at a glacier in a tent.
Writing on a Phone
[00:01:31] M Jackson: Um, I think it’s really common for young people to be told, get off your phone. My message is, get on your phone. I’ve written almost every one of my books on my phone in my notes app.
[00:01:40] Maryam Pasha: That is, I mean, okay. We have to have that. We have to get Jonathan here [00:01:45] and tell him the phone’s. Okay. If people are writing.
[00:01:47] M Jackson: Yeah. I just look like I’m texting and really, I’ve got deep thoughts and I’m writing them
[00:01:51] Maryam Pasha: down. Right.
What is a glacier
[00:01:52] Maryam Pasha: Um, I wanna hear, we, I wanna start at the very, very, very beginning. What is a glacier?
[00:01:58] M Jackson: Okay. What do you [00:02:00] think a glacier is?
[00:02:01] Maryam Pasha: Okay. Um, a glacier for me, I I, I drove through the Rockies when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:07] Maryam Pasha: And so I saw in the Canadian Rockies and I saw just a big, massive sheet of ice, like almost like what you would see at the top of a [00:02:15] mountain, but it wasn’t at the mountain top.
[00:02:16] M Jackson: Yeah, yeah,
[00:02:17] Maryam Pasha: yeah. And I remember people were trying to walk on it a
[00:02:19] M Jackson: hundred percent. So we’re there.
[00:02:20] Maryam Pasha: That’s what I’ve got for you.
[00:02:21] M Jackson: No, I love that. So you saw something big and white. Yes. And it could have been ice or it could have been snow, but it was all part of what we call the cryos. Here, [00:02:30] think cryo, think ice cold, freezing. Right, right, right. All of that glaciers are a component of that. So we say glaciers are these moving rivers of land, ice that persist year after year, made from snow, and they gotta move, they gotta flow.[00:02:45]
[00:02:45] M Jackson: Yeah, I love that. Okay. So that’s our definition. Okay.
Why glaciers matter
[00:02:48] M Jackson: But in there, there’s all this complexity because if you think about it, the majority of our world population, which is a fancy academic way of saying, you, me, your mom, the people we talk to all over the world. Yeah. The majority of our world’s population, they live in a landscape that has been impacted, created by glaciers, by ice, by our cryosphere.
[00:03:12] M Jackson: So think about this. It could be the landscape [00:03:15] they live in. So mountainous landscape that is shaped by ice. It could be a place they live in that is fed by ice. Think here are big rivers that are coming down and feeding crops. Or it could be a place that their [00:03:30] weather is impacted by the glaciers that might be countries away, kilometers away, miles away.
[00:03:36] M Jackson: Most of the people on the planet. Live in a place that is impacted by glaciers. But here’s what I want you to think about. Okay? ’cause you asked, what’s a glacier?
Community of snowflakes
[00:03:44] M Jackson: And I gave you the fancy academic definition, but do you really know what a glacier is made of?
[00:03:50] Maryam Pasha: I mean, for me, I just assume it’s made of ice.
[00:03:52] Maryam Pasha: But I think that’s
[00:03:52] M Jackson: what we brought. But how did we get to the ice? It Glaciers are made from snowflakes. And here’s what I want you to think about. Snowflakes. [00:04:00] You’ve seen single one snowflake. It’s the most fragile, the most vulnerable, the most alone thing on the planet. When it falls through the sky and lands in your hand
[00:04:09] Maryam Pasha: gone,
[00:04:10] M Jackson: it could be gone.
[00:04:11] M Jackson: But a glacier is full of one single snowflake [00:04:15] that fell to the ground, reached out. And held hands with the next snowflake, and the next snowflake and the next snowflake. The millions and billions and trillions of snowflakes that are literally holding branches so tightly, they have [00:04:30] become through this community of snowflakes.
[00:04:32] M Jackson: The most powerful force on this planet, a community of the most vulnerable, most alone things are standing together, and they are shaping the landscapes and lives and [00:04:45] futures of almost every person on this planet.
[00:04:47] Maryam Pasha: I wanna ask you how you came to that understanding.
[00:04:49] M Jackson: Yeah.
[00:04:51] Maryam Pasha: Tell us a little bit about you, because the way you talk about this is very, it’s very beautiful.
[00:04:56] M Jackson: Mm.
[00:04:56] Maryam Pasha: Um, and I, and I wanna understand like, how did you [00:05:00] come to, to work on this? And, and yeah. Just tell us a bit more about you.
[00:05:03] M Jackson: Okay.
Her path into science
[00:05:04] M Jackson: So Miriam, I. I grew up Alaska and in Washington state, I’d never met a scientist, let alone a female scientist. Right, right. I didn’t think science was an option for me. And I did a lot of backcountry guiding and search and rescue, and I ended up with all these questions of the ice systems I’m guiding on.
[00:05:23] M Jackson: It didn’t occur to me for a really long time that I could answer those questions. Oh
[00:05:28] Maryam Pasha: wow. Okay.
[00:05:29] M Jackson: And so [00:05:30] right when I started my career, right. When I was like very beginning, learning to be a scientist, learning to measure, monitor, predicting, learning the language
[00:05:38] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:05:38] M Jackson: Of science. I write about this a lot in my very first book, the Secret Lives of Glaciers.
[00:05:44] M Jackson: [00:05:45] Pardon? I write a lot about this in my very first book. Uh, while glaciers slept, I’ve, I have four books I’m working on. The other one. They all get confused sometimes.
Making science accessible
[00:05:54] M Jackson: Um, right when I was learning to be a scientist, my family died. And what I realized is that the language we use, yeah. For environmental change, for landscape change, it is the same language we use for family change for our lives.
[00:06:11] M Jackson: Okay? And as scientists, I can exclude [00:06:15] you immediately by telling you how I measure and monitor and all the numbers on breather yoga and VA yoga, and all these ice systems I work on. I can exclude you by using very specialized language. Or I can invite you in by using the same language that you [00:06:30] and I are gonna use over a coffee.
[00:06:31] M Jackson: When you tell me this new thing, this new drama in your family or in your life or in work, that language it, it tells us the same processes. And I think that as scientists, we need to learn and use the language that [00:06:45] everybody accesses and can understand and move with.
[00:06:50] Maryam Pasha: I mean, that’s that insight itself. I guess it does, it, it, some of it must come from the fact that you didn’t feel like this was something you could do.
[00:06:57] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. Um, and that it felt like [00:07:00] inaccessible to you. Or it was made to feel inaccessible to you and And you don’t wanna do that in your own work.
[00:07:08] M Jackson: I still find it rather shocking that I have a PhD and a postdoc and all these books.
[00:07:13] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:07:13] M Jackson: I remember in [00:07:15] 2017 I was named an explorer to the National Geographic Society.
[00:07:18] M Jackson: Yeah. And I walked into the National Geographic headquarters in M Street. In Washington DC and I walked in and knew instantly I did not belong. I was around some of the world’s EST people, [00:07:30] but there was another scientist, Paula Khumbu. She saw me, she walked up to me. She said, tell me about your work. I’m so glad you’re here.
[00:07:38] M Jackson: Oh, it is other people to choosing to invite us in.
[00:07:41] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:42] M Jackson: And it’s our responsibility then to do that to [00:07:45] others, whether they’re in science. I could talk to other scientists all day long. Right. I mean, we could.
[00:07:50] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:07:51] M Jackson: But my job is actually to speak to everybody else who is thinking about science, who is science questions, science inquisitive.
[00:07:57] Maryam Pasha: And I mean, you, you mentioned [00:08:00] earlier about how, you know all the different ways that glaciers impact people’s lives. Can you tell us a bit about your research and your work and what you, what are the things that you have discovered? What should we, you know, if we’re new to thinking about this Yeah. What are some essential things we need to know?[00:08:15]
Ice loss and hope
[00:08:15] M Jackson: The most important thing that my work wants us to know about glaciers. Is that we are experiencing today significant and unnatural mass loss.
[00:08:25] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:08:26] M Jackson: We are losing our world’s ice. Yeah. And that’s gonna have impacts on you and me and everyone on [00:08:30] the planet.
[00:08:30] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:08:30] M Jackson: Yes. But we also have a single story that we are losing our world’s glaciers.
[00:08:36] M Jackson: Full stop.
[00:08:37] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
[00:08:38] M Jackson: My dream, my metric is a scientist, is that when I walk into a room one of these days, someone doesn’t tell me the joke. Oh, [00:08:45] you study ice. Pretty soon you’re gonna be a historian.
[00:08:49] Maryam Pasha: Oh,
[00:08:49] M Jackson: I hate that joke. Right. And I fake laugh at it all the time. ’cause I’m like, people are not, it’s new.
[00:08:54] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:08:55] M Jackson: People are thoughtful when it comes to meeting lady scientists.
[00:08:58] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:08:58] M Jackson: But. [00:09:00] I want people to realize that we are not in the last chapter of our world’s ice. Our glaciers have the ability to grow back.
[00:09:08] Maryam Pasha: Mm.
[00:09:08] M Jackson: Our glaciers have the ability to have a thriving system that they live within and live in balance with us.
[00:09:14] M Jackson: But the [00:09:15] only way that happens. There are days, I’ll tell you what I wish I had focused on. Like save an animal, right? Or save a species of tree. Yeah.
[00:09:23] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:09:23] M Jackson: Because then I,
[00:09:24] Maryam Pasha: what do we call it? Charismatic megafauna?
[00:09:26] M Jackson: Yeah. If I’d gone into like save the whales, yeah, that would’ve been amazing [00:09:30] because then I can say, we have five more whales this year.
[00:09:32] M Jackson: We have five more of this. The only way we get ahead of ourselves and start slowing glacier change and then allowing our glaciers to respond over time and grow back. [00:09:45] Is a group effort, it’s gonna be a community effort.
[00:09:47] Maryam Pasha: What is ha?
Water states and weather
[00:09:48] Maryam Pasha: What is the impact of losing our glaciers?
[00:09:51] M Jackson: Or we have a finite amount of water on our planet.
[00:09:53] M Jackson: Yeah. And that water is either gonna be in a liquid form. Think about all our river’s. Oceans. It’s gonna be in a solid form. Think about [00:10:00] our glaciers. Yeah. It can be in a gas form. Think about all of the water vapor in our atmosphere. Yeah. We know that when we have more water held it in the solid form. So think about our last ice age.
[00:10:11] M Jackson: Yeah. Our planet is drier. Right? Less [00:10:15] storms, less fuel in the system. But when we have more water in a liquid or gas form, so our planet is warmer right now. Our solid ice is melting. It’s gas or water. All the weather that we naturally experience gets bigger.
[00:10:28] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:10:29] M Jackson: We have more [00:10:30] fuel for our, uh, for our hurricanes.
[00:10:32] M Jackson: We have bigger droughts, we have higher sea levels, so we’re gonna be living in a much more unstable planet with much less easily accessible liquid drinking water.
[00:10:42] Maryam Pasha: And so that is why, I mean, that is such a, [00:10:45] I mean, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone describe it so simply, but that, so that is why as we, when we talk about climate change, creating extreme weather events, it’s because in a way there’s more fuel in this.
[00:10:56] Maryam Pasha: Because we are losing this.
Sea ice vs glaciers
[00:10:57] Maryam Pasha: Is it, are glaciers the same thing as Arctic sea ice? ’cause people talk about that. Is that, is it the same system? Is it the same kind of thing or is it different?
[00:11:07] M Jackson: I love that you’re thinking about this. So remember I said that we have this cryosphere, this system, right? So sea ice is part of the cryosphere.
[00:11:14] M Jackson: Okay? [00:11:15] But sea ice is frozen. Uh, seawater.
[00:11:17] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
[00:11:19] M Jackson: Glaciers are built from snow. They are glaciers are our banks. Okay? Right. They’re gonna persist year after year, decade after decade, century after century. So if we put all our [00:11:30] money, you and I are told the same darn thing. Gosh. I was like 10 years old. My dad was like, save your money.
[00:11:34] M Jackson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are saving our snowflakes. We need more of our water in solid form so you and I can live in be better weather.
[00:11:41] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
[00:11:41] M Jackson: Right now though, the banks are wide open.
[00:11:44] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:11:44] M Jackson: We don’t [00:11:45] need a robber. We have basically just have you and me coming on in, taking all our snowflakes. And that is meaning that everybody on the planet lives in a more erratic system.
Glaciers and sea level
[00:11:54] Maryam Pasha: And, and does this also contribute to like, what, when, when people talk about, um, [00:12:00] the rise of sea levels, is this also contributing, can contribute to that? A
[00:12:04] M Jackson: hundred percent. So when we have, what’s I mean in nerd dom, we’re gonna call this phase change. Okay.
Melting ice raises seas
[00:12:09] M Jackson: When we have water go from, that’s solid and then it goes into a liquid or a gas.
[00:12:13] M Jackson: Yeah. We’re seeing. Well, when [00:12:15] it goes as a liquid, it flows from a glacier. It melts into a river system, into something. So some hydro system. It will eventually end up in our ocean.
[00:12:24] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:12:24] M Jackson: And our ocean’s like, yes, please. I’ll get bigger depending on if it’s cold water or warm water. And then our seas [00:12:30] rise.
Sponge Earth rebound
[00:12:30] M Jackson: But I want you to think about one other thing. Geography matters for sea level rise. Okay?
[00:12:35] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:35] M Jackson: I want you to imagine for just a second you have a sponge in your hand. You press that. I
[00:12:40] Maryam Pasha: mean, I do have a sponge.
[00:12:41] M Jackson: Oh yeah. Well then press that one down. We got a sponge right here. You press it down, right?
[00:12:44] M Jackson: What [00:12:45] happens? It goes down. Yeah. This is simple science. What happens when you take your finger away?
[00:12:48] Maryam Pasha: It comes back up.
[00:12:49] M Jackson: It springs back up. Do you wanna know what a million, billion, billion billion snowflakes way? A lot is the technical answer.
Isostatic rebound explained
[00:12:56] M Jackson: So it starts to press down our earth’s surface wherever we have ice.
[00:13:00] M Jackson: Think about places like Greenland, Iceland, the antic, the Antarctic. These are land masses. Iceland’s the fun one to imagine. We have so much glacier eyes that presses it down. But when that glacier ice starts to melt, oh my God, here comes the finger, [00:13:15] it goes away. So the land will rise back up at something called Isostatic Rebound.
[00:13:20] M Jackson: So places that had ice, Iceland, Greenland. Our poles are volcanoes like Mount Rainier. If we’re here in the Pacific Northwest, they’re gonna [00:13:30] spring back up. Iceland is rising out of the water quicker than sea level is catching it. Greenland is rising out of our seas quicker than the seas are rising. So sea level rise is part of our cryo spheric impacts, but it is not [00:13:45] the same everywhere.
[00:13:46] Maryam Pasha: Wow.
[00:13:47] M Jackson: I’m here for your explanations.
[00:13:49] Maryam Pasha: Right.
Glacier tipping points
[00:13:50] Maryam Pasha: Okay, so here’s another one, another question. ’cause you hear all these things and is. You mentioned that we can get them back the glaciers. Yeah. So that’s interesting because I guess I was under the impression that if we lose, if we everything melts Yeah. We can’t get it back.
[00:14:07] Maryam Pasha: Like it’s one of the tipping points talk. Can you tell, explain, like, is, is. There a tipping point when it comes to glaciers after [00:14:15] which we can’t recover? Or can we always recover or do we not know?
[00:14:18] M Jackson: I guess there’s a lot of, let me answer that in three ways. Okay. Three parts. Here we go. It’s gonna be great.
[00:14:23] M Jackson: Okay. Right now we’re living on a farm, and you and I are in the house. Our house, it’s fallen down, but the farm [00:14:30] itself, our planet has got a lot of other things happening. Right. But can you and I continue to live in the house?
[00:14:37] Maryam Pasha: Maybe not.
[00:14:37] M Jackson: Maybe not. I think of the roof’s coming down, we’re gonna have to do a lot of work to repair, so that’s a great way to think about it.
[00:14:43] M Jackson: When it comes to [00:14:45] glaciers.
Three ingredients glaciers
[00:14:45] M Jackson: If you decided in your backyard, Maryam, where do you live?
[00:14:49] Maryam Pasha: I’m in London.
[00:14:49] M Jackson: Okay. You wanna have a hanging basket glacier on your front door, right?
[00:14:53] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:14:53] M Jackson: Glaciers need three things to grow. Any guesses? You already know one of them because Like Wil.
[00:14:59] Maryam Pasha: Snowflakes.
[00:14:59] M Jackson: [00:15:00] Snowflakes. Yes. We’re there.
[00:15:01] M Jackson: They need two other things.
[00:15:02] Maryam Pasha: Cold
[00:15:03] M Jackson: temperatures. Yep. Nailed it. Nailed it. So we need snowflakes, we need cold temperatures and
[00:15:08] Maryam Pasha: space. No.
[00:15:09] M Jackson: Do we talk about glaciers that’s going faster, slow. Do they need to slow over long, big time [00:15:15] periods? See, there we Okay. Anytime. So glaciers just need three things. They need a lot of snow.
[00:15:19] M Jackson: They need a lot of cold temperatures to make that snow stick around. Okay. And, and then they turn into glaciers over time.
[00:15:24] Maryam Pasha: Right.
[00:15:24] M Jackson: Okay. That. Is just what happens and that doesn’t
[00:15:27] Maryam Pasha: change. That’s what they always
[00:15:28] M Jackson: do. Those are the variables, [00:15:30] right? What have we done to change that? We’ve taken those cold temperatures away.
[00:15:33] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
[00:15:33] M Jackson: Right. Okay.
Starving glaciers warming
[00:15:34] M Jackson: So when I’m looking at a glacier, everyone talks about the terminus, the edge of a glacier, and how much it’s maybe melted away, receded away. That’s important. That is. But I’m also looking up in the refrigerator. I’m looking up in the mountains where all the snow is, which turns into glacier ice turns into the food.
[00:15:50] M Jackson: Every teenager, like Robs at 2:00 AM in the morning. That snow. Turns into glacier ice over cold temperatures in time.
[00:15:57] Maryam Pasha: Right.
[00:15:58] M Jackson: We take the cold temperatures away. [00:16:00] All the snowflakes that are gonna feed my glacier, they just melt. They don’t turn into glacier ice. Yeah. Like
[00:16:04] Maryam Pasha: seasonally.
[00:16:05] M Jackson: Yeah. Our glaciers across the planet, they are starving.
[00:16:08] M Jackson: So what do we need to do? We need to fix our cold temperatures so our glaciers can thrive. That is something. [00:16:15] I’ll get, I mean, just to be very real with you. Yeah. I spent a lot of my time advocating and teaching about Glacier ice. Even if today we got our CO2 emissions under control and our temperature started to drop, our glaciers are probably gonna take a couple decades [00:16:30] to respond.
[00:16:31] M Jackson: I am never gonna see the results of the work that I do in my lifetime. Right. That doesn’t make my my work any less critical though. Yes, because. I’m in this for the long game. I’m in this for the next generation. The next generation, we [00:16:45] can get ahead of our CO twos and our water vapors. Yes, we can get our temperatures down.
[00:16:52] M Jackson: And when we do that. Our glaciers begin to grow again. That’s possible. So your tipping point question at [00:17:00] the very beginning, tipping points are something that people can get their heads around,
[00:17:04] Maryam Pasha: right?
[00:17:06] M Jackson: It maybe will get more people to act.
[00:17:08] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:17:08] M Jackson: I don’t know. Our ice is gonna be on this planet for a long time.
Long game climate work
[00:17:14] Maryam Pasha: I have a, I [00:17:15] guess like a meta question for you, based on what you’ve just said, not specifically about glaciers, but how does it feel to work on something that is bigger than you where you, like you said, you might not see the, [00:17:30] the, the, the impact of the work you’re trying to do. I mean, I feel like, yeah. How does that feel?
[00:17:39] M Jackson: There are days, to be entirely honest with you, I’m not getting outta bed.
[00:17:43] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:17:44] M Jackson: That’s a lot of [00:17:45] weight.
[00:17:45] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:17:46] M Jackson: But most days I am out of bed because I think our planet’s worth it. Yeah. And more importantly, I think we are worth it. I can’t tell you much about medical science. I can’t tell you much about [00:18:00] design infrastructure I have in this brain.
[00:18:03] M Jackson: Everything there is to know about ice and then everything I’m about to learn over my lifetime.
[00:18:07] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:18:08] M Jackson: And that’s how I contribute and can be of service to humanity. That’s a very challenging job because I don’t [00:18:15] know any university organization or institute that’s gonna hire a glacier storyteller. Mm. But it is still the work I do because of my job.
[00:18:22] M Jackson: Is to amplify, to inform, to educate, to build community around ice because we need it [00:18:30] in the decades and in the shared futures to come. I think a lot about that. And then I cut my eyes over to my toddler and I think damnit my toddler’s worth it. How,
[00:18:42] Maryam Pasha: how old?
[00:18:42] M Jackson: He’s four.
[00:18:44] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
[00:18:44] M Jackson: And. [00:18:45] He can say the names of a lot of our planet glaciers.
[00:18:49] M Jackson: Oh,
[00:18:49] Maryam Pasha: that’s brilliant.
[00:18:49] M Jackson: I don’t wanna use the word genius, but I already did. But he’s worth it.
[00:18:54] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:18:55] M Jackson: And then the next generations are worth it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so that’s how I center myself. That’s how I [00:19:00] think about this, and that’s how I make sure I keep working forward.
Snowflake cathedral thinking
[00:19:03] Maryam Pasha: I, I, I ask, I, I appreciate that answer and I ask it because I think, as we’ve done this podcast over the years, one of the things that’s really become more evident to me is how in order to [00:19:15] address something as big as climate change.
[00:19:17] Maryam Pasha: We need this kind of, they call it cathedral thinking.
[00:19:20] M Jackson: Yeah. Oh, I like that.
[00:19:21] Maryam Pasha: Um, it’s not my term.
[00:19:22] M Jackson: There we are.
[00:19:23] Maryam Pasha: Um. And yet everything around us is, is designed to not encourage us to have that kind of thinking. [00:19:30] Everything is like this quarter, this year, you know, whether it’s like in business or whether it’s your grant funding or whatever.
[00:19:36] Maryam Pasha: No one is encouraging us to do that. And yet time and time again, the people we have on this podcast, they have found their own ways to have that kind of thinking [00:19:45] so they can have the impact they need to have.
[00:19:46] M Jackson: Miriam, I want everyone who’s listening to us talk today. To take back the idea of a snowflake.
[00:19:55] M Jackson: We are all taught that a snowflake is this really fragile, sensitive thing.
[00:19:59] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, [00:20:00]
[00:20:00] M Jackson: it is. It is also the most powerful force on our planet, and if we start thinking collectively in community as a snowflake, I really doubt that a single damn snowflake knows the impact it’s having.
[00:20:14] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:20:14] M Jackson: [00:20:15] But what it is doing is reaching out and holding.
[00:20:18] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:20:18] M Jackson: And through that act of humanity.
[00:20:21] Maryam Pasha: Yeah,
[00:20:22] M Jackson: it’s changing the, the very surface of our planet, the very outcome of generation after generation.
Ice cores hold time
[00:20:29] M Jackson: Everything as a TED fellow here. Yeah. I got to bring in ice core, right? Yes. From the highest point in Canada, from the Logan, uh, Logan Mountain and that whole ice system that is there.
[00:20:39] M Jackson: We brought this ice core because we want people to understand time. We want people to [00:20:45] understand that when we stand together, we have 40 generations of humanity that we can catch in a single. Glacier. Every air, every breath humanity ever took over the last 40 generations. I can show you that because Snowflake’s captured [00:21:00] that and held that in glacier ice.
[00:21:01] Maryam Pasha: That’s gorgeous.
[00:21:02] M Jackson: How can we not stand in awe of that? That’s worth saving. Thinking about preserving, and that’s worth inspiring ourselves with. That’s beautiful.
Favorite glacier penguins
[00:21:11] M Jackson: Okay, last
[00:21:11] Maryam Pasha: question.
[00:21:12] M Jackson: You asked us this when we walked in, so I have to ask it to you. [00:21:15] Yeah, yeah. What’s your favorite glacier, or how do we know the glaciers aren’t listening right now and then they’re, someone’s gonna throw me into a C, you know?
[00:21:23] M Jackson: Um. Down south in Antarctica is an island called South Georgia, and there’s a [00:21:30] glacier called the Haney. But to work on the Haney, you gotta walk through a hundred thousand pairs of breeding king penguins.
[00:21:37] Maryam Pasha: Wow.
[00:21:37] M Jackson: The smell is unbelievable. The sound is even worse, and it is just this absolute visceral [00:21:45] experience.
[00:21:45] M Jackson: I have worked on so many of our planets glaciers each one of them. You could blindfold me and drop them on them, and I can tell you where I am because each one of them is different. They sound different. They smell different, right? They flow different. Something about that [00:22:00] Heney Glacier down there with all those penguins.
[00:22:02] M Jackson: Ooh, it sits right here in my brain, but I would not dare to use the word favorite. Favorite.
Where to find her
[00:22:07] Maryam Pasha: Um, it is been such a delight to chat with you. Thank you. I hope that this has inspired people to go check out their
[00:22:12] M Jackson: glaciers. They’re, or at least [00:22:15] reach out to me and I can tell
[00:22:16] Maryam Pasha: them
[00:22:16] M Jackson: where they are and how, and actually where
[00:22:18] Maryam Pasha: can people find you in your work?
[00:22:19] M Jackson: You know, I am most active on Instagram. They can definitely find me Instagram, or they can come to my website, which is drmjackson.com. And what’s your Instagram handle? It’s the letters ML. Jackson [00:22:30] and they are certain to ask me all about glaciers ’cause there is nothing I love more than answering glacier inquisitive questions.
[00:22:36] M Jackson: You could be glacier curious. Ooh, absolutely.
[00:22:40] Maryam Pasha: Thank you so much for your time. Thank you
[00:22:41] M Jackson: so much for coming on.
Podcast Wrap Credits
[00:22:42] Maryam Pasha: Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope you’ve [00:22:45] enjoyed this episode.
[00:22:46] Ben Hurst: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure that you get next week’s release. While you’re at it, please leave a rating and a review.
[00:22:54] Maryam Pasha: Now, let’s shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod
[00:22:57] Ben Hurst: Executive produced by Josie Colter,
[00:22:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:23:00] produced by Ben Beheshty
[00:23:01] Ben Hurst: Music, also by Ben Beheshty,
[00:23:03] Maryam Pasha: Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston,
[00:23:06] Ben Hurst: Curation by Deesha Chandra.
[00:23:08] Maryam Pasha: Hosted by Ben Hurst.
[00:23:10] Ben Hurst: I’m Maryam Pasha.
[00:23:11] Maryam Pasha: And remember,
[00:23:12] Ben Hurst: stay [00:23:15] curious.
