Cultures of Energy

Cymene gives us part one of a two-part story about her imminent return to the world of being tattooed and defends USAID while Dominic rants for a while about Democrats’ spinelessness as BigTechMaga organizes to eliminate both marginalized communities and the educated classes. Then (19:50) we welcome Myles Lennon (Brown University) to the podcast to talk about his new book, Subjects of the Sun. We start with the politics of sunlight and the built environment in New York City. We discuss how the ubiquity of screenwork influences how climate professionals think about solar energy by removing that energy from the social and material contexts in which it is made and deployed. From there we talk about the visual media associated with solar energy, the relationship between electricity and capitalism, the affective infrastructures of energy and we close discussing his new work on the paradox of liberation on stolen lands through Black land stewardship. Hang in there, good people of the pod, peace and love ❤️

Cultures of Energy is back and biweekly for 2025! Half interviews with bright and shiny people, half unlicensed therapy (for us anyway), half everything related to energy and environment issues. Today it’s podcasting against fascism with the spiritual guidance of our dear friend Timothy Morton. Dominic and Cymene see if they can think of something positive to say and then discuss Taylor Sheridan’s Landman so you don’t have to watch it very carefully. Then (17:00) Tim joins us to talk about the quiet truth of snowfall and how the sociopathy of cars led to the Internet. Next, we turn to how to reimagine communism as planet-scale collectivity while dealing with the narcissists who want to devour the world. We close with a few words on David Lynch and what his ability to juxtapose, vividly, beauty and nightmare might teach us about how to make paradise despite the hell of fascism. Hang in there, folks, peace and love 😊 PS Soul Train to Communism playlist now ready! Check it out at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VjbVDQw0dz1VH3t9gOF1K?si=fmDpMfT3TsyWwb-AzyuYfw&pi=6lp9H1kWT6ie8

Dominic and Cymene are beaming to you this week from a European Cup-addled Berlin. They share a few reflections on their time in Cape Town and then ruminate on why it is it doesn’t seem possible to hate anyone from California. Is it the sunshine? As if to underscore this point about the essential good of Californians, we welcome to the podcast (15:55) two brilliant residents of the Golden State, Berggruen Institute based political philosophers Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman to talk about their new book, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (Stanford UP, 2024). We start with the concept of subsidiarity and why they view it as crucial to creating new kinds of political institutions capable of managing planetary challenges like climate change and health crises. They explain why it’s problematic that so much sovereignty is bound to the nation-state when the scale of planetary challenges exceeds nation-states. Similarly, we talk about how that disables multilateral institutions like the United Nations from engaging planetary challenges effectively too. From there we turn to the need for new supranational institutions to reign in corporate power, why they are not calling for a world government, the importance of planetary sapience and remote sensing and close with a discussion of why they emphasize the importance of multispecies flourishing in the project. Please listen, read and share!! ps Special shout out to Alex Gardels from Berggruen for engineering the recording of this week’s interview.

Cymene and Dominic recap last week’s Petrocultures Los Angeles conference and discuss the new climate lawsuit filed in France seeking to press criminal charges against the CEO and directors of the French oil major TotalEnergies. Then (15:27) we welcome the brilliant and megatalented Rania Ghosn to the podcast. We start with the work of Design Earth, Rania’s practice together with El Hadi Jazairy and how the collaboration began. Rania explains how Design Earth seeks to explore how design can help respond to the climate crisis and why they tend to work in a narrative or speculative mode. We discuss their strategies for cultivating what she calls “geostories” at the intersection of art, science and design. From there we move to talking about what energy means in the context of design, how the ruins of carbon modernity will haunt urbanism and landscapes for many years to come, speculative ecofeminist storytelling, and the art of making exquisite corpses. We close talking about what it means to inherit the world in all its crisis and how to learn to live in a time of collapse.

Dominic and Cymene react to the police violence sweeping across US university campuses. Then (15:11) we are thrilled to welcome CNN’s Chief Climate Correspondent, Bill Weir, to the podcast. We begin with the big news of the day—the landmark legal ruling by the European court of human rights that Switzerland had violated the human rights of more than 2,000 older Swiss women by failing to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions. Then, we dive into Bill’s great new book, Life as We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World (Chronicle Books 2024). We talk about how to balance nightmares and dreams in climate storytelling, techniques for building effective story arcs, the five stages of climate grief, and disrupting the idea that consumption leads to happiness. Bill explains the ideas of protopia and YIMBYism to us and emphasizes the need to act locally and with humility as he shares with us some of the more encouraging stories he’s encountered in his travels as a reporter. We close by discussing what Bill thinks has changed in terms of news coverage of climate change during the course of his long and storied career. Please listen and share!!

Cymene tries to convince Dominic to join the Freemasons on this episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast. Plus, a shallow dive into Buzkashi, the national sport of Tajikistan, the country that helped convince the UN to designate 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. Then (13:22) we are thrilled to welcome Siddharth Sareen from U Stavanger, author of The Sun Also Rises in Portugal (Bristol U Press, 2024) and the winner of this year’s Nils Klim Prize in Norway (go Sid!) We start with how Sid’s interests in energy research shifted from India to Portugal, an underappreciated star in solarity. We talk about the struggle between large scale solar and community solar in the context of aspirations toward a just energy transition. We discuss the environmental impact of solar and how it can be improved, and Sid explains why standards matter as solar becomes a more mature industry and how standards of commoning could help to constitute a better future for solar power. Finally, we discuss the need to pursue prefigurative politics as way of bringing more energy utopias into the world and allowing them to flourish.

Cymene accounts for her mysterious conversion from a coffee-drinker to a tea-drinker but [spoiler alert] it turns out she’s not a doppelganger after all. Then after some EV road trip talk (16:06) we are delighted to have Cristián Simonetti join us from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. We start with Cris’s research on concrete, one of the most abundant contemporary materials, and what it reveals about the course of the Anthropocene trajectory. From there we talk about the debate over the Anthropocene designation and how stratigraphers tend to petrify earth processes by valuing solids over fluids. From there we move to talking about ice and his interest in the viscosity of glaciers and soil. We circle back to concrete and how the Romans conceived of it as a solid fluid and as a conversation between the elements. Finally, we talk about the special role glaciers have played in the Chilean Anthropocene. Glaciers move like ketchup? Concrete is a colloid? For those and further revelations, please listen on!

Cymene arrives at the Covid party on this week’s episode and she’s got the sultry radio voice to prove it. We share a few words about a magnificent pug named Doug and Cymene discovers  Russell Brand’s rightward "grift drift" to her horror. Then (18:58) we welcome Laurie Parsons to the podcast to talk about his excellent new book, Carbon Colonialism (Manchester U Press, 2023), which originated from his long-term research on the Cambodian garment industry. Laurie explains how when it comes to climate change we’re really not all in it together: carbon colonialism creates northern resource feasts and luxury at the expense of great climate and social vulnerability in the Global South. From this discussion of the deep inequalities in climate impacts, we move to the way the COP process has been perverted in recent years, the contested landscape of climate resilience, the low profitability of extraction, ignorance as green capital, and whether there is a pathway toward a non-extractive global economy. Laurie explains to us his skepticism about the idea of sustainable consumption and his feeling that we’ve entered the age of environmental sophistry. Finally, we discuss six myths that Laurie has identified that help to keep carbon colonialism going. Enjoy!

The Cultures of Energy podcast is back with the first of several new episodes for 2024. First, Cymene and Dominic share what they've learned from their very late arrival to watching the show Survivor and why Shadow, their 75% chihuahua, has never worked a day in her life and proudly so. Then (11:40) the main part of this week's episode is a conversation between Dominic and Cara Daggett (https://www.caranewdaggett.com) about his latest book No More Fossils (online Open Access edition here: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/no-more-fossils. Many thanks to Maggie Sattler from U Minnesota Press for organizing the conversation and for a wonderful job of producing and editing the interview. Next episode coming soon: a report on a cross-country electric adventure and a conversation with Laurie Parsons about his new book Carbon Colonialism.

Dominic and Cymene start off with a review of the new Apple TV Cli-Fi series Extrapolations especially its killer walruses and then recap a chat with German climate activist Luisa Neubauer and former US National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy about how civilizational change is coming, either by design or by disaster. Then [23:51] we are thrilled to have USC’s Christina Dunbar-Hester join us on the podcast to talk about her new book Oil Beach (U Chicago Press, 2023), a study of toxic infrastructure and more-than-human relations in the Los Angeles port complex. We begin with how her interests in media became interests in energy and climate and how underneath silicon there is petroleum. Then, we turn to the challenges of seeing organismic life under the “lethal sublime” of petro/military/industrial infrastructure and to Christina’s concept of “infrastructural vitalism.” We ask: What if pipelines carried water instead of oil? How much of LA’s “green port” mythology is real? We close talking about what Christina means by trans-species supply chain justice” and how one of the LA ports’ greatest products is the making of scale itself. Enjoy, dear listeners, and remember that walruses will save us from all the evil villains of the Anthropocene.