The Next Great Migration

The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

By: Sonia Shah

Narrated by: Sonia Shah

This program is read by the author

A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting--predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change.

The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet's migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous.

But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis--it is the solution.

Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today's anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

A Macmillan Audio production

WOW I learned so much

Great book, it's a history lesson, incredible wonder of plants and animals

We've always been on the move and she teaches you, step by step

Great book for our Relevant Readers bookclub

Thank you for your wonderful book

Challenging what we know and how we know it.

Great journey of exploring how all plants and animals move around the world over time.

A Reminder that we are not in control

A new look at evolution. We can read, we can learn, but in the end, we are just trying to survive

Important story

Made me reconsider many of my biases. My own family’s migration and introduced species like feral cats.
Thank you

BRAVA!!!!

I Knew from the first 5 minutes of listening to this book that i was going to be considerably smarter in 10 hours and 14 minutes. I was not wrong, i am smarter. thank you for challenging our ideas about "us" and "them" and teaching us where such notions come from.
This book is meticulously researched & well-organized. it makes for easy reading & comprehension. I very much enjoyed the authors' narration as well. thank you for this wonderful book- i feel it has opened my eyes- BRAVA. Sincerely, Liz Jardine