Cultures of Energy

On this academic application edition of the Cultures of Energy podcast we are thrilled (16:57) to welcome old friend Leah Stokes back to the program to talk about her new book, The Carbon Wave : A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026). We start with the problematic paradigm of the carbon footprint and why it doesn't model carbon responsibility either...

Cymene offers an epic #CymRant  against AI-gone-wild on this week's podcast. Then (17:07) we welcome Ting Hui Lau to the podcast to talk about her fascinating and moving new book, Decolonial Endurance , which focuses on how Lisu communities straddling Southwestern China and Myanmar maintain their Indigenous culture and sovereignty despite the developmental and ethnocolonial schemes targeting them....

Dominic and Cymene enjoy a confetti-free trip to Philadelphia on this special Labor Day edition of the podcast. To keep us company (12:24) we welcome Conor Harrison to the program to talk about his new book, Brokers of Power: The Financialization of the US Electricity System (U Minnesota Press, 2026).   We start by discussing the variety of finance industry players operating in the energy sector a...

Cymene recounts her visit to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and we wonder whether students can be convinced that academic writing will improve their social lives. Then (17:30) we sit down with the marvelous Helen Kapstein to talk about her new book Petroforms : Oil and the Shaping of Nigerian Aesthetics (West Virginia UP, 2025). We begin with how oil seeks to evade both the commodity form and aesth...

The Queen and King of Jetlag recount tales of airplane toilets, surprise geckos and AI abominations on this week's episode. Then (16:32) Billy Fleming saves the podcast by joining us to talk about his marvelous new book, Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026). We start with the legacy of the New Deal and how what actually happened...

Your cohosts' electric  summer adventure has brought them to Thailand! Dominic wonders if he will be allowed to eat Thai spicy food and Cymene reports about feeding baby elephants. Then (13:44) we welcome Mona Damluji to the podcast to discuss her new book, Pipeline Cinema: The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq (U California Press, 2025) av ailable as open access and paper...

The China adventure continues for your two co-hosts. Cymene and Dominic report from Zhangzhou, a small city of five million in Fujian province, and talk about party hotel life and what might have been the first energy humanities workshop in the country. And then (9:02) we welcome Ryan Cecil Jobson to the podcast to discuss his groundbreaking book, The Petro-State Masquerade : Oil, Sovereignty, and...

Cymene and Dominic report from the first week of their trip to China. And then (11:22) we welcome legal scholar Ann Carlson to the podcast to talk to us about battling smog in one of our favorite cities, Los Angeles. Ann has just published a new book, Smog and Sunshine (U California Press, 2026) that tells the remarkable and often inspiring story of how Los Angeles radically improved its air quali...

It's World Cup season and so your co-hosts deliver their first ever sports corner. And then (9:38) drum roll please, we welcome the one and only Tim Mitchell back to the podcast to talk about his latest masterpiece, The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow (Verso, 2026). We start with Tim's model of the shareholder corporation as a machin...

Cymene goes shopping with Beyoncé in this episode's dream sequence and if that weren't dreamy enough your co-hosts also break down the new film, Backrooms . Then (17:01) we welcome Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry to the podcast to talk about their amazing Land Art Generator Initiative ( LAGI ), a remarkable effort to surface the potential beauty of renewable energy. As a unique kind of public a...

Dominic and Cymene eat crepes, share limericks and wonder whether dogs and rabbits might hold the secret to world peace on this week's episode. Then (13:09) we welcome Ciruce Mohavedi-Lankarani to the pod to talk about his new book Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran newly out from Stanford U Press. We begin with how natural gas overcame its second-class...

Cymene and Dominic talk about shrinky dinks, tiny sweaters, miniaturized submarines and elemental ethnography during this week's intro segment. Then (12:12) we welcome Fernando Ortiz-Moya to the conversation to talk about his excellent new book We're Still Here : Regenerating Shrinking Cities from the Ground Up (U California Press, 2026). Fernando explains his lifelong fascination with cities with...

Dominic and Cymene marvel at April snow and the ice cream stylings of Ben and Jerry. Then (8:28) we welcome Dan Sosna to the podcast to discuss his new book, Europe's Disappearing Waste (Berghahn, 2026). We dive into his background in archaeology and what attracted him to landfill in the first place, how wastepicking can be viewed as a practice of "quiet sustainability", and the differences betwee...

Cymene and Dominic discuss what happened when ten art school kids were given a disney princess baking challenge on this week's episode of the podcast. Then (14:48) we welcome Casper Bruun Jensen to the pod to talk about a new collaboration and book project he organized called Southern Anthropocenes (Routledge, 2026). We begin with the Anthropocene concept and why Casper and his collaborators felt...

Cymene and Dominic lament what is happening in Iran and explore what kinds of dogs they would be on this episode of the podcast. Then (15:47) we welcome to the podcast the amazing multitalented multimedia artist Zina Saro-Wiwa to talk about her work. We begin with her father Ken Saro-Wiwa's courageous activism on behalf of the Ogoni people and tragic death at the hands of Nigeria's Abacha dictator...

Dominic and Cymene celebrate the 250 th episode of the podcast with tales of steamy avian encounter. And then (16:14) we welcome Nikki Luke to the podcast, author of the brand-new book Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). We start with what energy democracy means to Nikki in the context of her work on utility regulation and then move to her case s...

Dominic and Cymene talk about their Cathostant (or is it Protelic?) families in this week's intro segment. And then (11:59) we are thrilled to be joined by Jennifer Mae Hamilton and Astrida Neimanis to discuss their work as the Weathering Collective, especially their inspiring new book How to Weather Together: Feminist Practice for Climate Change (Bloomsbury, 2026). We begin with their collaborati...

Cymene and Dominic share pirate tales from the Sundance Film Festival and reimagine Heated Rivalry with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as the lead lovers. Then (15:34) we welcome Jérôme Denis and David Pontille to the podcast to discuss not one but two new books, The Care of Things: Ethics and Politics of Maintenance (Wiley, 2025) and Fragilities: Essays on the Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Mainten...

We kick things off this week with a short but heartfelt celebration of the tenth anniversary of the podcast. Several friends—Geoff Bowker, Heather Davis, Imre Szeman, John Grzinich, Karen Pinkus and Tim Morton—drop in to share thoughts about what's urgent to think and feel in energy and environmental humanities these days. Then (34:00) Cymene welcomes lawyer-scholar-activist Nicole Negowetti to sp...

Happy 2026! It's been quite a year so far and your co-hosts talk about their recent trip to Nicaragua and Shadow's reinvention as a fly assassin. Then (17:18) we welcome Maxime Polleri to the conversation to talk about his fascinating new book Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan (NYU Press, 2025). We begin with the 2011 Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and n...

Neither headcolds nor hangovers will keep your plucky co-hosts from bringing you one more episode for 2025. Since this is supposedly the year of AI, we let ChatGPT create a Year in Review episode structure and ask us questions about energy and environmental matters in 2025. The whole thing goes off the rails pretty quickly, descending into what Cymene calls "technocratic Mad Libs". And then compou...

In honor of cookie week, your co-hosts tackle an age-old question: are brownies cookies are not? Then we process the fact that next month will be the 10 th anniversary of Cultures of Energy (wow!) Thereafter (11:51) we welcome the terrific Jean-Baptiste Fressoz to the podcast to discuss his provocative and fascinating new book More and More and More : An All-Consuming History of Energy (Penguin, 2...

Cymene and Dominic recount a pleasant business trip to New Orleans including a mild bout of Satanic panic. Then (9:10) we are joined by the delightful Chelsea Schields to talk about her recent book, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean (U California Press, 2023). We begin with how research in Aruba and Curacao led her to contemplate the ubiquity of oil's presence in the Caribbea...

Dominic and Cymene begin with the war on Chicago and Kelly Hayes's amazing essay, " In Chicago, We Run Toward Danger Together " which everyone should read. Then (15:20) we welcome Javiera Barandiarán to the podcast to talk about her new book, Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium (MIT Press, 2025), and what Javiera loves about the element of lithium. We discuss lithium'...

Dominic and Cymene talk about AI and other chowhounds to kick off this week's podcast. Then (12:46) we welcome the wonderful Alice Lovejoy to talk about her new book Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (U California Press, 2025). We begin with the materiality of early film and how it became intertwined with the industry of chemical warfare. At stake in the making of t...