‘Lean into the YIKES’: Caring intimate counterpublics and climate justice podcasting

Abstract

This article explores the ways an intersectional feminist climate justice podcast YIKES offers possibilities for intimate counterpublics and forms of engagement that centre on caring and activist connections. Bringing together theories of intimacy, care and counterpublics together to examine the specific ways YIKES fosters affective attachment and political interest in ways that allow for open-ended and non-linear forms of communication. This article offers a close reading of an episode that explores the caring dynamics of friendship as an intimate space through which difficult topics related to climate justice, power and inclusion are opened up for discussion and sharing. I argue the podcast enacts an ethos of interpersonal care while elaborating complex conditions for social and political intimacy within broader networked publics.