Clouds running out of juice: A special podcast episode featuring Tim Winton’s climate fiction

Authors

Rumen Rachev, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Jo Pollitt, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Emma Nicoletti, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Author Identifier

Rumen Rachev: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2560-2011

Jo Pollitt: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2821-7768

Emma Nicoletti: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2342-6512

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Australian Journal of Environmental Education

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

School

Centre for People, Place and Planet / School of Arts and Humanities / Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)

RAS ID

82489

Comments

Rachev, R., Pollitt, J., & Nicoletti, E. (2025). Clouds running out of juice: A special podcast episode featuring Tim Winton’s climate fiction. Australian Journal of Environmental Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2025.10050

Abstract

This paper presents a pedagogical experiment in the form of a fictional podcast episode that “aired” in January 2025, featuring Tim Winton’s climate fiction novel Juice (2024). Emerging from a dialogical reading collaboration between three interdisciplinary “scholars, resisters and ordinary grafters” (Winton, 2024, p.116) — Rumen Rachev, Jo Pollitt, and Emma Nicoletti — the paper and podcast operate together through a method we term papercast, centring on three key themes: clouds, atmospheric frictions, and the significance of critically engaging with climate fiction, specifically Juice, amid ongoing climate instability. Simultaneously paper and podcast (papercast), we invite the reader to “listen” visually to the printed material that follows. Through discussion and excerpts from Clouds Running Out of Juice, a creative nonfiction episode of the fictional Ecosophic Generator podcast, the work incorporates AI-generated responses from “listeners” who inhabit the liminal space between present imaginings and future realities. This papercast emerged through asynchronous reading practices and collaborative dialogue, culminating in a three-way conversation that traverses multiple theoretical terrains. Rachev’s investigation as an atmospheric economist into the future-proofing of clouds, Pollitt’s choreographic exploration of everyday weather and experiences of weathering instability, and Nicoletti’s examination of human-atmospheric binaries collectively generate productive tensions between scientific knowledge and creative uncertainty.

DOI

10.1017/aee.2025.10050

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.