Cymene and Dominic discuss extraterrestrial lavatology, evil corporate accounting software, skyfarms and chinchillas on this week’s intro. Then (14:15) we are so delighted to welcome David Farrier (U Edinburgh) to the podcast to discuss his justly acclaimed latest book, Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (FSG, 2020). David talks about how the Anthropocene has distorted our sense of time and new relations with deep time inspired him to wonder about what humanity’s material legacy will look l...
Feb 17, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Cymene and Dominic talk about the vine that’s taking over their house and then (12:30) we welcome the New School’s magnificent Shannon Mattern to the podcast We discuss her new book A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton UP, 2021) which explores the limits of computational models for understanding knowledge in urban contexts. We begin with the deep history of urban intelligence and the role of cybernetics in offering computation as a universal analogy. We talk about other...
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Aaaaand we’re back! Cymene and Dominic start off with their usual nonsense, which culminates in a lively discussion of the missile silo now listed on the real estate site Zillow (we were wrong on some of the specs btw, it’s in Abilene, Kansas and only $380,000, survivalist bargain hunters can find all the deets here: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2432-Fair-Rd-Abilene-KS-67410/113177058_zpid/?utm_source=zillowgonewild&utm_medium=zillowgonewild&utm_campaign=zillowgonewild ) Then (15:3...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Wow, we made it to 200 episodes and 250k downloads this week. Thank you everyone for listening for the past nearly four years. It also seems like a good milestone for a change of pace. Your tireless cohosts need to take an extended break from weekly podcasting in order to commit ourselves more fully to a couple of other creative opportunities that have emerged during our time away from Rice. But please know that Cultures of Energy has been a project that brought us much joy (and helped us to mee...
Oct 24, 2019•58 min
Your co-hosts talk clonal trees and dispense important advice about relationships, breakups, and having “the conversation” with your children on this week’s podcast. Then (17:16) we talk to Brown University’s Bathsheba Demuth ( http://www.brdemuth.com ) about her new book Floating Coast ( https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635164 ) a beautifully conceived and written environmental history of the Bering Strait from the 18ththrough the 20thcenturies. We start with how American and Soviet modernist ...
Oct 17, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Dominic and Cymene discuss Swiss silence and whether soup can be a meal on this week’s podcast. Then (13:53) we sit down with Christoph Rosol and Tom Turnbull, two of the organizers of the baroque and fascinating project of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt ( https://www.hkw.de/de/index.php ) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science ( https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de ), Mississippi: An Anthropocene River . Christoph and Tom talk with us about this project evolved out of the celebrated...
Oct 10, 2019•56 min
In this week's special guest episode, Leah Stokes (UC Santa Barbara) and Bina Venkataraman take over the Cultures of Energy podcast to discuss Bina's new book, The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age ( https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780735219472?aff=penguinrandom ). This interview is part of the Twitter discussion, #climatebookclub, which is an informal group that Leah runs to get people to talk about climate books on Twitter. We will be discussing the book on Twitter on Wed...
Oct 01, 2019•45 min
Cymene and Dominic wonder whether Brexit or Impeachment will make for better political theater in the months ahead. Then (14:22) we talk to three wonderful folks who are in the process of assembling the Routledge Handbook of Energy Democracy, an interdisciplinary gathering of contributions spanning scholarly and activist engagements. Our three guests are Danielle Endres ( https://www.danielleendres.com ), Andrea Feldpausch-Parker ( https://andreafeldpausch-parker.weebly.com ) and Tarla Peterson ...
Sep 26, 2019•58 min
Cymene and Dominic tease a family revelation and describe a museum full of caricatures of East Germany (a regime that tbh itself kinda caricatured socialism). Then (17:03) we welcome back to the podcast the one and only Laura Watts ( https://sand14.com ), now at Edinburgh, who has a marvelous new book out with MIT Press, Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga . We start there and talk about how the remains of a Neolithic city first brought her Orkney and inspired her with its arc...
Sep 19, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Dominic and Cymene take a trip down MTV memory lane to the romantic 1990s on this week’s podcast. Then (16:00) we welcome the brilliant Christine Folch from Duke U to the pod to talk about her brand new book, Hydropolitics: The Itaipú Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America (Princeton U Press, 2019 - https://press.princeton.edu/titles/30066.html ). We start with the dam itself; Itaipú is both the largest dam in the world and the world’s largest power plant. Christine explai...
Sep 12, 2019•1 hr 4 min
Your cohosts talk chihuahuas and squirrels on the verge on this week’s podcast. Then (14:56) we are delighted to welcome Orrin Pilkey Jr., Professor Emeritus at Duke University, to the podcast. Orrin is one of the world’s foremost experts on sea level rise and has just co-authored a new book with his son Keith Pilkey called Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America’s Shores (Duke U Press, 2019; https://www.dukeupress.edu/sea-level-rise ). Orrin tells us how it was a hurricane that first prompted...
Sep 06, 2019•56 min
Cymene and Dominic talk about Jakarta sinking and Greta rising in this week’s intro. Then (14:32) we are thrilled to welcome Elizabeth DeLoughrey ( https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/elizabeth-deloughrey/ ) to the conversation! We start with her latest book, Allegories of the Anthropocene (Duke UP 2019), and its effort to provincialize Anthropocene concept by taking more seriously the history of empire which produced some of its more problematic universalisms. Liz talks about the need to br...
Aug 29, 2019•59 min
Dominic and Cymene compare denialist and evangelical hate mail on this week’s podcast and then share a few reflections on Sunday’s trip to the top of Ok mountain. Then (16:53) we welcome the marvelous Amanda Boetzkes ( https://amandaboetzkes.com ) to the conversation so we can talk about her terrific new book, Plastic Capitalism (MIT Press, 2019). What is “waste art,” when did it take shape and with what motivations? We talk about how waste relates to energy and how “zero waste” sustainability d...
Aug 23, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Dominic and Cymene talk airbnb for flies, slime-mold residencies and close encounters with hypothermia to get things going. Then (11:36), hey, it’s primary debate season and if you’re like your co-hosts you probably find evaluating the sprawling field of Democratic candidates for the U.S. Presidency fairly bewildering. So in this week’s pod we drill down into climate policy among the Democrats. Where do the various candidates stand? Who is recognizing climate change as a political priority? Who ...
Aug 15, 2019•52 min
Addled by cleaning products and dustballs, Cymene and Dominic imagine what a multispecies Ph.D. program might look like on this week’s podcast. Then (13:59) we welcome Queen of Feminist Petrocultural Studies ™ Sheena Wilson to the podcast! We start with how growing up in Alberta helped attune her to the need for feminist and decolonial energy transitions and then turn to her critical take on petrofeminism and how feminist infrastructural theory can help to unmake the (petro) energy infrastructur...
Aug 09, 2019•1 hr 6 min
Dominic and Cymene talk about the Democratic debates on this week’s podcast. Then (13:57) we are humbled and thrilled to have legendary journalist Andrew Revkin join the conversation. We chat with Andrew about the environment beat back in the 1980s and how he became one of the first American journalists to take on the topic of climate change. We talk about the struggle for both reality and nuance in climate coverage, how to get people to connect emotionally to climate issues, and Andrew shares e...
Aug 01, 2019•1 hr 7 min
Cymene and Dominic talk about Ok glacier’s 15 minutes of fame on this week’s podcast (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/okjokull-iceland-glacier-death-plaque.html), ridiculous hate mail, and what it feels like being in the middle of the news maelstrom. And the first ever Cultures of Energy Everyday Climate Warrior ™ award is bestowed upon Daisy Hernandez from Popular Mechanics. Then (15:52) we welcome the marvelous Mark Nuttall (http://marknuttall.com) to the podcast to discuss all that ...
Jul 25, 2019•58 min
Cymene talks about her exciting new life as a contractor on this week’s podcast. Then (10:14) we welcome the brilliant theorist, artist and curator, Joanna Zylinska ( http://www.joannazylinska.net ) to the podcast to discuss her excellent new book, The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse (U Minnesota Press, 2018). We start with the central argument of the book that there is an intimate relationship between Silicon Valley technicism on the one hand and alt-right white supremacist populism on...
Jul 18, 2019•55 min
Co-host Cymene reminisces this week about being the first intern hired by Wired magazine waaaay back in the day. Then (14:42) we are joined by journalist Andrew Blum ( https://www.andrewblum.net )—the celebrated author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet —to talk about his new book, The Weather Machine (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019). We dive deep into it, beginning with our “golden age” of meteorology, and its improved computer simulations. We talk about human presence within massive i...
Jul 11, 2019•1 hr 11 min
Dominic and Cymene celebrate the one thing the USA ever did right—Mr. Rogers. And we wonder whether there is such a thing as Canadian BBQ. Then (13:02) the delightful Natalie Loveless ( http://loveless.ca/about ) joins the pod. She is the author of a forthcoming book with Duke University Press, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation , and that’s where we begin the conversation with a discussion of the relatively new domain of “research-creation” in Canadian hi...
Jul 04, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Cymene and Dominic cover the stress (and joy!) of center directorships and sandwich-making on this week’s podcast. Then (13:53) Dustin Mulvaney ( http://www.dustinmulvaney.com ) visits the pod to tell us all the things we need to know about solar energy but were afraid to ask. He’s the author of the excellent new book, Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability and Environmental Justice (U California Press, 2019). We start by talking about whether it’s possible to make a solar power revolution both...
Jun 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Your cohosts report on the adventures of Cymene’s birthday week. We then (10:41) revel in the glory of having the most excellent Heather Davis ( https://heathermdavis.com )—co-editor of Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (London: Open Humanities Press, 2015) and editor of Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada (MAWA and McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017)—from the New School on the podcast. We begin with her new book project, Plastic:...
Jun 21, 2019•1 hr
Cymene and Dominic discuss a strange effort to police sugar packet play on this week’s podcast. Then (15:52) we are delighted to welcome Nigel Clark to the conversation. Nigel is Chair of Social Sustainability and Human Geography at Lancaster University (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/about-us/people/nigel-clark ). He is the author of Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet (2011) and co-editor of Atlas: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World (2012), Material Ge...
Jun 13, 2019•1 hr 4 min
It’s a dazzling display of randomness to open this week’s podcast as your co-hosts discuss the Inslee/DNC fracas, writing memoirs in the forest, whether “in the danceline” can sub for “in the pipeline” and then Cymene coins the word “heteropuntal.” Then (18:03) we are very fortunate to welcome Max Liboiron ( https://maxliboiron.com ) to the podcast. Max is Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) and Assistant Professor of Geography at Memorial University of New...
Jun 06, 2019•1 hr 4 min
On this week’s pod, we firstly recall the happy days of After Oil School 2: Solarity. Then (14:31) your co-hosts share their conversation with the amazing Nicole “NicStar” Starosielski (NYU) about about her fascinating new book project Media Hot and Cold ,which offers a deep dive into all things thermocultural. We talk with Nicole about how her earlier work on undersea cables led to a broader interest in temperature as a medium and mode of communication. We talk about the importance of queering ...
May 30, 2019•59 min
Dominic and Cymene talk about HBO's Chernobyl and discuss whether humans will eventually try to breed chihuahua-scale alligators. Then (18:45) we welcome the multitalented Chris Kelty to the podcast to talk about his forthcoming book, The Participant ( https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo44520895.html ) and his recent fieldwork on animal control in Los Angeles. Chris explains how the challenge of describing experience is at the heart of participant-observation and how that ...
May 23, 2019•1 hr 6 min
We give Mexican President AMLO a piece of our minds on this week’s podcast for doubling down on extractivist petronationalism. Then (15:43) Cymene and Dominic report back from the “Recentering Energy Justice” symposium at UC Santa Barbara, which was the culminating event of UCSB’s Mellon Foundation funded Sawyer Seminar on “Energy Justice in Global Perspective” ( https://energyjustice.global.ucsb.edu/about ). We sit down with the project leads, Javiera Barandarian and Mona Damluji, together with...
May 16, 2019•1 hr 14 min
In a time- and perspective-bending intro segment possibly designed by friend of the pod Chris Nolan, Cymene and Dominic are joined by Jason Cons (jasoncons.net) from the University of Texas who helps us to introduce his own interview in order that we can talk about the impact of last week’s Cyclone Fani on Bangladesh. The news, as it happens, is surprisingly encouraging. From there (18:33) we travel back in a time a week to the main part of the interview. We start with how Austin is adapting to ...
May 09, 2019•1 hr 12 min
Cymene and Dominic talk about homemade treadmills and the virtues of wasting time on this week’s podcast. Then (15:33) we welcome the one and only Kathryn Yusoff, Professor of Inhuman Geography (best job title ever!) at Queen Mary University of London. Her title mojo is virtually unstoppable because her latest book is called A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (U Minnesota Press, 2019). We begin with how she became interested in the grammars that underlie geology in the context of colonial his...
May 02, 2019•59 min
FINALLY an episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast that is for once totally wholesome and family-friendly and appropriate to listen to with your kids! Cymene and Dominic share their own thoughts about talking to children about climate change. And then (13:51) we welcome an author that will be well known (especially to listeners aged 8-12 and their families), Stuart Gibbs, the author of the very popular FunJungle, Spy School and Moonbase Alpha middle grade series. Stuart has thematized both cli...
Apr 25, 2019•58 min
