Loading...

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:

science natural sciences

All Episodes

51:34

Peter S. Soppelsa, "Paris After Haussmann: Living...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/10

Modern Paris is often hailed as a capital of urban infrastructure. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris in 1853–1870, branded “Haussmannization,” helped define urban modernity for cities worldwide. But even as infrastructures expanded and modernized, some Parisians were left behind: as late as 1928, 18 percent of houses still lacked direct sewerage. Haussmannization often hid infrastructures behind walls and floors, under streets, or in peripheral districts. In the forty years after

en

53:00

Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/07

As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to Japan inspired to build her own Japanese garden. As might be expected from a woman who thought nothing of travelling to the other side of the world in search of the unusual, Ella’s approach to developing the garden was trailblazing. She chose a female designer – the gifted Taki Handa – to create the

en

37:59

What Waltham Does When the Water Rises: Rachel McKane...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/07

Permafrost melts, desert cities boil, inland lakes dry up; but Waltham too in its own way has become one of the dark places of the earth. Adverse manmade climate change is seeping into basements everywhere, and a wonderful new research project, “Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory” (that website launches very soon) counts some of the ways.John is joined by two Brandeis colleagues who spearheaded the project and supplied some of the local interviews that bring climate change

en

52:35

Malcolm Sen, "Irish Anthropocene: Literature, Climate...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/04

In Irish Anthropocene, Malcolm Sen traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature responds to climate breakdown. Drawing upon concepts of sovereignty, precarity, and disaster, Sen examines Irish literary works to reveal how they engage with the entangled relations between ecology, economy, and politics. Irish writers not only critique the association of greenness with Ireland and the corporatization of sustainability discourses, they also illuminate the acute challenges that the climate

en

38:33

Cooking Sections, "Waves Lost at Sea" (Spector Books,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/02

Waves Lost at Sea (Spector Books, 2026) traces the evolving practice of Cooking Sections, whose work spans visual arts, architecture, and ecology. Since 2013, they have been investigating anthropogenic infrastructures, industrial food systems, and human-made climates: from artificially colored farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed under EU regulations. Their research-based practice exposes the legal, environmental, and metabolic

en

37:59

Caroline Kuzemko, "Climate Politics: Can't Live with...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/05/01

By exploring the dynamic relationships between politics, policymaking, and policy over time, Climate Politics: Can't Live with It, Can't Mitigate without It (Cambridge UP, 2026) aims to explain why climate change mitigation is so political, and why politics is also indispensable in enacting real change. It argues that politics is poorly understood and often sidelined in research and policy circles, which is an omission that must be rectified, because the policies that we rely on to drive down

en

83:49

Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/27

Despite it's centrality to a hippie counterculture which claimed an environmentalist ethos, California's "green rush" of cannabis growing from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been anything but. In Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such

en

0:00

Oil and Militancy in Nigeria: A Conversation with Noo...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/26

Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York.Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012; named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012; shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2013; nominated by The Financial

en

33:16

Masako Ichihara, "Climate Change Litigation in Japan:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/19

Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law (Brill, 2026) provides the details of Japanese climate litigation, positioning them both within the global trends of climate litigation and on the trajectory of Japanese past pollution lawsuits. It identifies the barriers that hinders the number of climate cases in Japan, a country known with a significant low litigation use. It then discusses the future prospects for climate change litigation in Japan by

en

63:01

Andrew W. M. Smith, "Make Cheese Not War:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/16

In 1971, the French government announced a massive extension of its military base on the Larzac plateau in southern France. Land was to be expropriated from 107 farms around the small town of La Cavalerie. Limited resistance was expected, but what happened next exceeded all expectations.Local sheep farmers set up protest camps and occupied the land. They soon attracted an astonishing level of support, pioneering a form of regional radicalism with global implications. Drawing out the international

en

43:35

Nabil Ali, "Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/14

Flowering currant, ivy, Portuguese laurel, and woad might all have grown in a medieval garden, but it would have taken special expertise to extract and create rich blue and purple pigments from them. Humans have been extracting dyes and inks from natural materials for millennia, and the practice was firmly established during the medieval era, recorded in manuscripts that survive today. Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes (Princeton UP, 2026) by Nabil

en

36:32

Clifton Crais, "The Killing Age: How Violence Made...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/12

A bracing account of how our current planetary crisis emerged from the worst cataclysmic destruction in human history, which Clifton Crais terms the Mortecene—the killing age.We are used to speaking of the Anthropocene and the outsized impact humans have had on the planet. But we sometimes lose sight of a fundamental truth at the heart of modern world history: the legacy of human predation, slavery, and imperialism that has devastated the natural world and led us to our present moment. As

en

43:12

Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic with...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/11

Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. In this episode, Mia Bennett—co-author with Kalus Dodds of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic (Yale UP, 2025)—discusses the state of the Arctic today, highlighting

en

41:59

The Green Transition and the Politics of Lithium...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/10

Lithium is necessary for the green transition but its mining comes with significant environmental and social harms. This is the conundrum at the core of decarbonisation, which host Licia Cianetti discusses with Thea Riofrancos. They talk about how Riofrancos’s book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (published by W.W. Norton in 2025) helps us understand the local and global politics of lithium extraction and the lessons it holds for a more just green transition. Transcript here Thea

en

33:37

Katharine K. Wilkinson, "Climate Wayfinding: Healing...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/08

When maps come up short and the path ahead is uncertain, how do we find our way? Visionary climate leader Katharine K. Wilkinson offers a compassionate and empowering guide to navigating from ache to action, doubt to possibility.Through transformational programs and books, including the national bestseller All We Can Save, Wilkinson has inspired hundreds of thousands of climate journeys. In Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home (Amber Lotus, 2026) she shares a proven

en

53:53

Priyanka Kumar, "Light Between Apple Trees:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/06

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit--especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree--and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple

en

60:36

Tim Altenhof, "Breathing Space: The Architecture of...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/05

Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings (Zone Books, 2026) is a compelling and wide-ranging analysis of pneumatic phenomena in modern culture. Architect and historian Dr. Tim Altenhof brilliantly explores the physiology of breathing and its reciprocal relationship to bodies and buildings, both of which share a common atmosphere. Because breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and cannot be willfully overridden, it takes place unconsciously and involuntarily—most of the

en

77:36

Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/04

Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Leuven UP, 2026) by Dr. Wout Saelens explores how the homes of ordinary city dwellers sparked our modern dependence on fossil fuels. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, including probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises and contemporary artwork, it reveals how households in the early modern Low Countries embraced peat and coal to fuel new standards of warmth, light and

en

46:13

Caroline Tracey, "Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History"...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/04/03

Salt lakes are some of the most beautiful and unusual landscapes that you can find on this planet, even as they can be quite alien to people used to fresh bodies of water. They're also uniquely threatened, both by everyday human activity such as farming and industry and by the looming problem of anthropogenic climate change. As the lakes dry up, the consequences to the surrounding ecosystems can be devastating; meanwhile, people who live nearby can suffer from declining air quality, toxic levels of

en

37:27

Vojta Hybl, "Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/03/30

What is that rock you’ve just picked up? Which minerals is it made of, what’s unique about it and what can it reveal about Earth’s deeper story?Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell (Frances Lincoln, 2026) gives you the tools to answer these questions. Geologist and science illustrator Vojta Hybl guides you through more than 100 rock types, explaining how they form, what they look like and the geological processes they represent.This authoritative yet accessible guide

en

450 results

Similar Podcasts

Planetterrian Daily

Patrick · Nerra Network

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

New Books Network

Scifi Friday

Radio Memories Network

The Bio Report

Levine Media Group

Waterlines: How Water Shapes Our World

jaywen