When Hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, their destructive force further devastated an archipelago already pommeled by economic austerity, political upheaval, and environmental calamities. To navigate these ongoing multiple crises, Afro-Puerto Rican women have drawn from their cultural knowledge to engage in daily improvisations that enable their communities to survive and thrive. Their life-affirming practices, developed and passed down through generations,...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 154
“An atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” is how UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the IPCC report published in February 2022. But what did the report have to say about climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in Southeast Asian cities? What are the greatest climate risks for the region and where are we in terms of adapting to them? And why are the concepts of maladaptation and climate resilient development important as we focus our a...
Apr 04, 2022•37 min•Ep. 115
Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022) edited by Ilan Kelman Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is experienced around the continent and by those watching from afar. These understandings explain how the Antarctic is viewed and managed while identifyi...
Mar 29, 2022•42 min•Ep. 55
As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implement...
Mar 29, 2022•52 min•Ep. 215
This episode we speak with Sophie Chao , author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua (Duke University Press, 2022). Her new book examines the lives of Marind people in West Papua as they are transformed by Indonesian colonialism. These transformations are epitomized in Marind relations to two species of trees: Sago palm, a source of subsistence which is profoundly meaningful to them, and oil palm, an introduced species grown in mono-crop plantations which are de...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 151
Georges River Blues: Swamps, Mangroves, and Resident Action, 1945-1980 (ANU Press, 2022) by Heather Goodall The lower Georges River, on Dharawal and Dharug lands, was a place of fishing grounds, swimming holes and picnics in the early twentieth century. But this all changed after World War II, when rapidly expanding industry and increasing population fell heaviest on this river, polluting its waters and destroying its bush. Local people campaigned to defend their river. They battled municipal co...
Mar 25, 2022•52 min•Ep. 54
It is slowly becoming clear that we are heading towards a deep ecological catastrophe. Our societies carbon footprint and its impact have been known for some time, and already we are starting to see the effects in terms of melting ice, warming oceans and more frequent extreme weather. This will contribute to food and water shortages, political unrest and migration crises that we are ill-prepared for. In a context such as this, it has become urgent that we rethink the natural world and our relati...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 271
Our future diet will be shaped by diverse forces. It will be shaped by novel technologies, by geopolitical tensions, and the evolution of cultural preferences, by shocks to the status quo-- pandemics and economic strife, the escalation of the climate and ecological crises--and by how we choose to respond. It will also be shaped by our emotions. It will be shaped by the meat paradox. "Should we eat animals?" was, until recently, a question reserved for moral philosophers and an ethically minded m...
Mar 23, 2022•47 min•Ep. 32
In her book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Oxford UP, 2022), Cambridge academic Helen Thompson gets beyond the ephemeral and analyses instead the role of more fundamental drivers of events – including the energy markets and the international monetary system. That’s one way in which her book is distinctive. It’s also a very broad book. While much of academic output has a very narrow focus, this book is unusual in attempting a sweeping overview of what’s happening in the world. What rol...
Mar 22, 2022•47 min•Ep. 5
In The Profits of Nature: Colonial Development and the Quest for Resources in Nineteenth-Century China (Columbia UP, 2020), Peter Lavelle offers a fascinating narrative history of natural resource development in China during the tumultuous 19th-century. Faced with an unprecedented confluence of natural disasters, wars, rebellions, foreign incursions and social problems, Qing Dynasty officials and elites looked to the natural world as a source of wealth, security and power. Lavelle grounds his na...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 434
All Is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State (Oxford UP, 2022) attempts to answer one of the most urgent questions of our time: what is the relationship between modern states and disasters? Disasters are commonly understood as exceptional occurrences that ruin societies and inspire ad hoc rituals of legal, administrative, and scientific control called 'disaster management.' States and the international institutions perform disaster management to protect society. The book challenge...
Mar 18, 2022•42 min•Ep. 53
Herring are vital to the productivity and health of marine systems, and socio-ecologically Pacific herring ( Clupea pallasii ) is one of the most important fish species in the Northern Hemisphere. Human dependence on herring has evolved for millennia through interactions with key spawning areas, but humans have also significantly impacted the species’ distribution and abundance. Combining ethnological, historical, archaeological, and political perspectives with comparative reference to other Nor...
Mar 16, 2022•55 min•Ep. 147
Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating eighteenth-century scientific knowledge leading up to the first International Polar Year in 1882. In her new book, Explorations in the Icy North: How Travel Narratives Shaped Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Country (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund demonstrates the instability of nineteenth-century scientific practices and the challenges of producing travel n...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 100
In A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford UP, 2021), Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza examine public relations as a social and political force that shapes both our understanding of the environmental crises we now face and our responses to them. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnography, and archival research, Aronczyk and Espinoza document the evolution of PR techniques to control public perception of the environment since the beginning...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 269
For today’s episode of How To Be Wrong we welcome Dr. Ken Wisian, who is geophysicist and Associate Director in the Environmental Division of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, Ken was a senior state executive responsible for disaster recovery, oil spill prevention and response, and coastal infrastructure and environmental protection for Texas. And as a military officer, he participated or lead military disaster response efforts for the Shuttle Colum...
Mar 14, 2022•57 min•Ep. 5
A World without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet (Yale University Press, 2021) by celebrated biologist Jo Handelsman lays bare the complex connections among climate change, soil erosion, food and water security, and drug discovery. Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United States, China, and India, vast tracts of farmland will be barren of topsoil within this century. The comb...
Mar 07, 2022•54 min•Ep. 98
These are dark and darkening times, challenging us to look deeper to grasp the roots and dynamics of the looming civilizational crisis. Chronic illness of the planet calls for radically new thinking if there is to be any hope of renewal. When We Are Human: Notes from the Age of Pandemics (Feral House, 2021) offers thought at a necessary and primal level. All previous civilizations have failed, and now there's just one global civilization, which is starkly, grandly failing. To deny or avoid this ...
Mar 04, 2022•58 min•Ep. 146
Migration and architecture have emerged as a new topic of research at a global level. Migrant worker dormitories in Singapore, for example, are sites where structural inequities in architecture and legal regulations have had a significant impact on the living conditions of migrant workers, and they hit the headlines in 2020 as sites for the rapid spread of COVID. Dr Jennifer Ferng joins Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories to talk about the relationship between architecture and labour, arguing tha...
Mar 03, 2022•21 min•Ep. 52
Michael Méndez: Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement (Yale University Press, 2020) An urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy. Although the science of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and impleme...
Mar 02, 2022•45 min•Ep. 51
Would a claim that human possession and property rights as merely temporary seem outlandish to a 21st-century thinker? How would this idea be received in Early Modern England? In today's NBN podcast, Dr. Erin Drew addresses this question in our discussion about her new book: The Usufructuary Ethos: Power, Politics, and Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century (University of Virginia Press, 2021). Using an environmental lens to analyze popular theology, moral philosophy, law, Drew also uses the...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 97
From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the propulsive and vividly told story of how Yellowstone became the world’s first national park amid the nationwide turmoil and racial violence of the Reconstruction era. Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park—one of the most popular of all national parks—but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferd...
Mar 01, 2022•42 min•Ep. 97
Today I talked to Sequoia Nagamatsu about his novel How High We Go in the Dark (William Morrow, 2022). In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for gener...
Mar 01, 2022•28 min•Ep. 7
In this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Sean Kelly, professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), about his 2021 book Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation (Integral Imprint, 2020). Along with his abiding interest in the work of Jung, Hegel, and Edgar Morin, Kelly’s current research areas include the evolution of consciousness, integral ecologies, and transpersonal and integral theory. In Becoming Gaia ...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 41
In Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy (Cambridge UP, 2021), Julia Dehm provides a critical analysis of how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South, in ways that benefit the interests of some actors while further marginalising others. In accessible prose that draws on interdisciplinary insights, Dehm demonst...
Feb 28, 2022•28 min•Ep. 214
Join Dr. Mary Menton and Dr. Philippe Le Billon as they dive into their new edited volume , Environmental Defenders: Deadly Struggle for Life and Territory , published by Routledge as a part of their Explorations in Environmental Studies Series in 2021. The interview explores what/who defenders are, what threats they face, and what can be done to help support and protect them. Broken up into three parts: On Defenders, Dirty Projects, Green Projects , Environmental Defenders provides into insight...
Feb 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 95
Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (MIT Press, 2021), Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam—and the mobilization of community groups to fight the perceived injustices a...
Feb 17, 2022•34 min•Ep. 65
In Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Rockies (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North American ecological region: the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. All or parts of modern-day Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba form the center of this transnational region. As children, the first postc...
Feb 11, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 86
In Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2020), Mimi Sheller delves into the ecological crises and reconstruction challenges affecting the entire Caribbean region during a time of climate catastrophe. Drawing on fieldwork on postearthquake reconstruction in Haiti, flooding on the Haitian-Dominican border, and recent hurricanes, Sheller shows how ecological vulnerability and the quest for a "just recovery" in the Caribbean emerge from specific transnational political, e...
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 77
The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap! Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we've created to do so--from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today--has also done considerable damage to the earth's ecology. Now scientists tell us: we've been wastin...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 112
The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas (NYU Press, 2021) tells the story of the founding of American Christianity against the backdrop of devastating disease, and of the Indigenous survivors who kept the nascent faith alive Many scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered ...
Jan 31, 2022•58 min•Ep. 94
