Episodes

  • Sadiah Qureshi, "Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction" (Penguin, 2025)

    Sadiah Qureshi, "Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction" (Penguin, 2025)
    Jul 4 2026
    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 considered perfect and unchanging creations of God. Then in the age of revolutions, scientists gathered enough fossil evidence to determine that mammoth bones, for example, were not just large elephants but a lost species that once roamed the Earth alongside ancient humans. Extinction went from being regarded as theologically dangerous to pervasive, and even inevitable. Yet Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Penguin, 2025) shows us that extinction is more than a scientific idea; it’s a political choice that has led to devasting consequences. Europeans and Americans quickly used the notion that extinction was a natural process to justify persecution and genocide, predicting that nations from Newfoundland’s Beothuk to Aboriginal Australians were doomed to die out from imperial expansion. Exploring the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire, Vanished weaves together pioneering original research and breath-taking storytelling to show us extinction is both an evolutionary process and a human act: one which illuminates our past, and may alter our future. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    40 mins
  • Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne

    Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne
    Jul 3 2026
    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 the third panel, Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne discussed the relationship between podcasting and science. Carruth is a professor at Princeton’s Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. At Princeton, she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads Blue Lab, an environmental media and storytelling studio. Her research and teaching areas include climate storytelling, environmental art and narrative, contemporary food movements and the evolving relationships between technology and environmentalism in American culture. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food. Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her research is focused on performance, documentation, the perception of authority in voice, labor and production in audio and podcasting. Horne was producer for Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, a 13-episode investigative podcast that told the story of shocking misconduct at a Virginia state crime lab. Admissible won the Gold Award for Best Documentary at the Signal Awards; an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the Public Media Award NETA for Best Podcast. Horne was an executive producer at Audible and an executive producer for WNYC’s Radiolab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    53 mins
  • Making Microbes Explicit

    Making Microbes Explicit
    Jul 3 2026
    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 to the study of microbes, discuss what microbes are and what it means to center microbes in food studies research, and reflect on some of the policy implications. Their two-part special section in the Spring and Summer 2026 issues of Gastronomica brings together 11 articles on microbes in food and food systems from researchers around the world. Listeners can find "Making Microbes Explicit: Introduction to Microbes, Food, and Food Systems" by Maya Hey and Sarah Elton, and their co-written follow-up piece, "Finding the Microbes in Food Studies” in Gastronomica (issues 26.1 and 26.2). Sarah Elton is an assistant professor and Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She has published widely, with her research appearing most recently in journals such as Nature Cities, Social & Cultural Geography, Qualitative Inquiry and Gastronomica. She is also the author of Locavore (HarperCollins Canada 2010) and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Maya Hey is based in Stockholm at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she is a postdoctoral researcher with the Environmental Humanities Laboratory. Her interdisciplinary work on microbes draws on her background in food studies, dietetics, and communication. Her new book, Singing with Invisible Worlds: Fermenting Sake on Microbial Time will be published later this year by the University of Minnesota Press. Daniel E. Bender is a professor of food studies, environmental studies, and history at the University of Toronto, the President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS), and Co-Chair of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    41 mins
  • Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway" (U California Press, 2026)

    Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway" (U California Press, 2026)
    Jun 29 2026
    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 of lofty ideals and bedrock greed, romantic adventure and pragmatic diplomacy, immigrant desperation and Indigenous resistance. This book journeys to the early 1920s when everyday Americans invented the idea of a road that would spread fraternity, democracy, and prosperity across the hemisphere. It looks at the commercial and geopolitical interests that shaped the highway—often with little concern for those living along its margins—and explains why the road became an escape route for millions of migrants rather than a corridor for tourists. Dr. Miller contends that the highway’s troubled past points to an unresolved future, offering insights into the growing costs of continuing down well-worn paths. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    40 mins
  • Susannah Crockford, "A Perturbed System: Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

    Susannah Crockford, "A Perturbed System: Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
    Jun 29 2026
    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 (religious or not) still struggle to describe without religious language. Climate discourse in the United States and northern Europe, Crockford shows, is framed by the same theological motifs that drove extraction, including ideas about prophecy, mediation, sacrifice, original sin, cult, messiah, and apocalypse. By listening to people on the edge of the crisis, A Perturbed System reveals a world in transition, what happens when worlds end—ecologically, socially, politically, and personally—and how we might live through these endings together.  Susannah Crockford is a lecturer at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Ripples of the Universe: Spirituality in Sedona, Arizona, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Buy the book: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    48 mins
  • Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context

    Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context
    Jun 26 2026
    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 about their research on the relationship between Christian environmentalism, agroecology and the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in the edited volume Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia, published by Leiden University Press. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Oslo in Norway. Nihar Gokhale is a DPhil student in International Development at the Oxford Department of International Development. Mette Halskov Hansen, your host, is a Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano

    Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano
    Jun 25 2026
    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. Morrison; Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 December 2019; 72 (3): 781–823: Link 6. Jennifer Lynn Peterson; Scenes of Destruction and Beauty: Sponsored Film, Women Reformers, and the Save-the-Redwoods League. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2023; 9 (2): 43–75: Link If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press Website. David Famiano is the Journals Director at the University of California Press Jessica Chesnutt is the Journals Manager at the University of California Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    25 mins
  • Ciruce A. Movahedi-Lankarani, "Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran" (Stanford UP, 2026)

    Ciruce A. Movahedi-Lankarani, "Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran" (Stanford UP, 2026)
    Jun 24 2026
    Between the late 1940s and the end of the twentieth century, natural gas became Iran's bedrock energy source. Billed as a futuristic fuel for a future world power, gas became an avenue for the country's developmentalist ambitions. The ability to build technologically sophisticated infrastructures served as a powerful tool of state legitimation, both before and after the 1979 Revolution, and tied top-down politics of modernization to bottom-up feelings of national belonging. Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran (Stanford UP, 2026) analyzes the interwoven histories of energy, development, and the environment inIran. Following the movement of natural gas from underground deposits, through infrastructures of refining and distribution, and into everyday life, Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani explores the roles of development planners, oil firms, industrialists, engineers, and consumers—as well as the mountain ranges, sedimentary rock, and natural gas itself—to show how natural gas emerged as a crucial enabler of industrialization and a strong impetus for resource nationalism. Tracing the transformation of gas from a waste product into a vital resource, this book offers a history of anticolonial developmentalism in Iran—revealing a key driver toward intensified energy use that suggests why and how societies in the Global South became voracious consumers of fossil fuel energy. Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani is the Farhang Foundation Early Career Chair in Iranian Studies and Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California.Filippo De Chirico is a Ph.D. Candidate in Energy History at Roma Tre University. His research focuses on the history of the Italian natural gas sector. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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    54 mins