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PODCAST

New Books in Environmental Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

48:24

Patrick Nunn, "Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/26

What if the legends of submerged cities, land-making witches and sea-crossing bishops are not mere inventions but echoes of real events? Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe (Reaktion Books, 2026) by Professor Patrick Nunn at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia revisits coastal traditions from the Celtic fringes of northwest Europe, showing how they preserve memories of dramatic environmental change—floods, land loss and shifting

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64:39

Victoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/26

Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East(Daunt Books Publishing, 2025)is a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale invasion. Seen through a deeply empathetic lens of conversations with local curators, historians, museum workers, and artists, the

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49:56

Andrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/24

Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his grandmother’s overflowing backyard garden, author Andrew Flachs has embarked on a multi-continent, decades-long look at agriculture and its value. The dominant view of agriculture has focused only on what we produce. It sees value in terms of capital gains or yield efficiency, masking how our global

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0:00

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/21

In Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival(University of North Carolina Press, 2026), naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto uncovers strange and beautiful connections between the natural and human worlds, mingling reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers’ domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles, to the possibility that

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60:13

Timothy Mitchell, "The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/21

Stealing the future and concealing the theft—capitalism’s method, as examined by the author of the acclaimed Carbon Democracy Today, extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from nowhere. The trick of conjuring this unearned wealth is, in fact, the key to understanding capitalism’s origins and a clue to why the catastrophe of climate collapse is upon us: value is created by consuming the future. In The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow

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41:12

Elana Resnick, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/19

Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025) presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the country's waste workers,

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36:16

Angela Frederick, "Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/19

A call to place disability at the center of climate and disaster responsesEvery disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick.Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster(NYU Press, 2025)tells the stories of Texans with disabilities who endured the 2021 Texas power crisis, which forced millions of Texas residents to endure a dayslong winter storm without heat or water. Based on 58 in-depth interviews with disabled Texans and parents of disabled children,

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59:50

Georgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/18

Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond(UEdinburghPress, 2025)outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable development, and marine conservation to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) and beyond. Ocean Heritage—spanning tangible sites,such as shipwrecks or submerged harbours, and intangible connections such as traditional practices and knowledge systems—remains

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50:09

Gretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/18

Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave

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0:00

Spirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/16

Who is Shennong, the Divine Farmer? And how can he help us understand the intricate relationships between spirituality, science and environmentalism in Taiwan today? These questions are at the heart of new research by the University of Oslo’s Koen Wellens and Mette Halskov Hansen. In this episode, we are joined by Koen Wellens for a conversation on religious responses to environmental change, community temples, and reconnecting to nature via the Divine Farmer in the context of contemporary

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53:59

Mary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/11

As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University assistant professor Mary Mendoza inDeadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border (University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes, insects, and animals which, in

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43:17

Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/10

Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and

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61:50

Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/08

Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options? Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles:

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39:46

Sadiah Qureshi, "Vanished: An Unnatural History of...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/04

Anyone alive today is among a tiny fraction of the once living: over 90% of species that ever existed are now extinct. How did we come to think of ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish forever, or as capable of pushing our planet to the verge of a sixth mass extinction? Extinction, Professor Sadiah Qureshi shows us, is a surprisingly modern concept—and a phenomenon that’s not as natural as we might think. In Europe until the late eighteenth century, species were

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40:54

Making Microbes Explicit

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/03

This episode takes listeners into the latest issues of Gastronomica, with a special feature on microbes. Sarah Elton and Maya Hey talk with Dan Bender of the Gastronomica Editorial Collective about their special section on microbes and food. In a conversation that spans food systems, environment, health, dietetics, and culture, they explore human microbial relationships from the soil to the processing plant, at the grocery store, in home kitchens, and beyond. Sarah and Maya share how they each came

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52:34

Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/03

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio and Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In

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48:10

Susannah Crockford, "A Perturbed System: Religion and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/06/29

Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we’ve built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but the end of the world, an apocalypse with all its biblical trappings. Why? In A Perturbed System: Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World, anthropologist Susannah Crockford argues that we must understand the climate emergency as a spiritual crisis, a result of Christian colonialism that we

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40:24

Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/06/29

A century after the Pan-American Highway was first conceived, its story remains largely unknown—even to the hundreds of motorists who annually attempt the 30,000-kilometer drive from far northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. There is more to the highway, however, than the persistent allure of the open road. In Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway (University of California Press, 2026), historian Dr. Shawn William Miller unveils a larger tale

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0:00

Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/06/26

Why has the Catholic Church in India become so engaged in environmental initiatives? And what does the wider Indian political context defined by an assertive Hindu nationalism mean for the ability of church actors to pursue environmental agendas? In this episode, we are joined by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Nihar Gokhale who have examined these questions in the Indian state of Goa, focusing on church activities and outreach in the domain of sustainable agriculture and agroecology. You can read more

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24:32

Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/06/25

1. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals 2. Clare E. B. Cannon; Advancing sustainable transitions: A spatial analysis of socio-environmental dynamics of landfills across the United States. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 12 January 2024; 12 (1): 00101: Link 3. Morrison, Matthew D. Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. Available at: UC Press Bookstore 4. Matthew D

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