New Books in Environmental Studies

Mar 10 2025 1006 ep. 54 mins 1.6k

New Books in Environmental Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Environmental Scientists about their New Books

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On Barak, "Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet" (U California Press, 2024)

Mar 10 2025 42 mins

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet (U California Press, 2024) s

Nir Arielli, "The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year History" (Yale UP, 2025)

Mar 07 2025 66 mins

The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and

Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)

Mar 07 2025 69 mins

California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns and regions frequently contend with destruction caused by earthquakes, floods, landslides and debris flows, and sea-level rise and coastal erosion. As Dr. Gary Griggs demonstrates in California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster Histo

Andrew Boyd, "I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor" (New Society, 2023)

Mar 03 2025 50 mins

Andrew Boyd is a humorist and long-time veteran of creative campaigns for social change. He led the decade-long satirical media campaign “Billionaires for Bush,” and is co-founder of both Agit-Pop Communications, an award-winning creative agency and the netroots powerhouse The Other 98%, which specializes in winning the battle of the ‘story’ through meme warfare with some o

David N. Livingstone, "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Mar 02 2025 51 mins

Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the

Marcia Bjornerud, "Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks" (Flatiron Books, 2024)

Mar 02 2025 36 mins

Today I talked to Marcia Bjornerud about Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks (Flatiron Books, 2024). Rocks are the record of our creative planet reinventing itself for four billion years. Nothing is ever lost, just transformed. Marcia Bjornerud’s life as a geologist has coincided with an extraordinary period of discovery. From an insular girlhood in rural Wis

Dawn Day Biehler, "Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History" (U Washington Press, 2024)

Mar 01 2025 54 mins

From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abundance of animals. In 1858, the city adopted the Greensward Plan and began the long process of reshaping the 843 acres of land into a park where everything—from the trees to the trails to the inhabitants—would be meticulously planne

Ellen Fenzel Arnold, "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, C. 300-1100" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Mar 01 2025 53 mins

Jana Byars talks to Ellen Arnold about Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, 300 - 1100 (Cambridge UP, 2024). Fishermen, monks, saints, and dragons met in medieval riverscapes; their interactions reveal a rich and complex world. Using religious narrative sources to evaluate the environmental mentalities of medieval communities, Ellen F. Arnold explores t

Omar Dahbour, "Ecosovereignty: A Political Principle for the Environmental Crisis" (Routledge, 2024)

Mar 01 2025 67 mins

Part of what makes the challenges that collectively are called the “environmental crisis” so difficult is that the vocabulary we deploy in thinking and discussing the issues emerged under social conditions that are far removed from our present. The familiar idiom of nation states, borders, jurisdiction, and so on seems inadequate for addressing a crisis that concerns global con

Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell, "Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene" (Routledge, 2024)

Feb 28 2025 52 mins

Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2024) presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis. The Australian continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there