245 - 2025 Year in Review (feat. AI ;)
Cultures of Energy
Neither headcolds nor hangovers will keep your plucky co-hosts from bringing you one more episode for 2025. Since this is supposedly the year of AI, we let ChatGPT create a Year in Review episode structure and ask us questions about energy and environmental matters in 2025. The whole thing goes off the rails pretty quickly, descending into what Cymene calls “technocratic Mad Libs”. And then compounding that error, we also invited an AI voice editor program to help edit the episode. That program obviously didn’t like our laughter or our banter or the critical things we kept saying about...
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244 – Energy Transition (feat. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz)
Cultures of Energy
In honor of cookie week, your co-hosts tackle an age-old question: are brownies cookies are not? Then we process the fact that next month will be the 10th anniversary of Cultures of Energy (wow!) Thereafter (11:51) we welcome the terrific Jean-Baptiste Fressoz to the podcast to discuss his provocative and fascinating new book : An All-Consuming History of Energy (Penguin, 2025) and its core argument that “energy transition” is a fiction. We begin with JB’s unease with the dominant historiography of energy and its tendency to focus on change rather than accumulation and move from there to...
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243 - Oil and Intimacy (feat. Chelsea Schields)
Cultures of Energy
Cymene and Dominic recount a pleasant business trip to New Orleans including a mild bout of Satanic panic. Then (9:10) we are joined by the delightful to talk about her recent book, (U California Press, 2023). We begin with how research in Aruba and Curacao led her to contemplate the ubiquity of oil’s presence in the Caribbean and to shine a spotlight on refineries alongside sites of extraction. We talk about how the management of sexuality and desire became key to the organization of oil labor in the region as well as to the protection of middle-class whiteness and its nuclear family...
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242 – Living Minerals (feat. Javiera Barandiarán)
Cultures of Energy
Dominic and Cymene begin with the war on Chicago and Kelly Hayes’s amazing essay, “” which everyone should read. Then (15:20) we welcome Javiera Barandiarán to the podcast to talk about her new book, (MIT Press, 2025), and what Javiera loves about the element of lithium. We discuss lithium’s futurity and multiplicity, why Javiera thinks it’s wrong to think about lithium as a single thing. From there, we talk about lithium’s role in nuclear fusion, what rights of nature minerals should enjoy, and why so many people believe minerals create wealth. Then we wrap up with Javiera’s...
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241 - Militant Chemistry (feat. Alice Lovejoy)
Cultures of Energy
Dominic and Cymene talk about AI and other chowhounds to kick off this week’s podcast. Then (12:46) we welcome the wonderful to talk about her new book (U California Press, 2025). We begin with the materiality of early film and how it became intertwined with the industry of chemical warfare. At stake in the making of this militant chemical complex was chemistry’s fundamental principle of transformation, which brought materials like film into close alignment with a burgeoning plastics industry. We move from there to talking about the forms of expertise involved in militant chemistry, the...
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240 - Carbon Banking (feat. Ben Luzzatto & Gustav Peebles)
Cultures of Energy
We begin this episode with a shoutout to our friends at the Canadian Centre for Architecture () and try to settle once and for all the Montreal vs New York bagel question. Then (13:58) we welcome to the pod old friends and new co-authors and to talk about their new book, (MIT Press, 2025). We start with their that the history of the monetary gold standard could be reconceived as a beta test for a new carbon banking paradigm to draw down atmospheric carbon, convert it into biochar and sequester it in a Fort Knox of sorts. But what about carbon’s earthly abundance and lack of charismatic...
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239 - Carbon Capital (feat. Sean Field)
Cultures of Energy
There be tales of two Sean Fields on this week’s podcast. Happily, we are only welcoming (8:56) the smart and accomplished to the podcast to talk about his pathbreaking new ethnography of oil and finance, (NYU Press, 2025). We begin with why it matters to understand the moral landscape and ethical values of oil investment. From there, the conversation evolves to include oil and Christianity, the intersection of value and values, why the oil industry “inhales capital” and how private equity firms helped US oil and gas industry explode in size. We dig into how both finance and oil...
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238 - Thinking Like a Climate (feat. Hannah Knox)
Cultures of Energy
Cymene and Dominic talk about screamo music and the band Phish and how you can’t fake the feels on this week’s intro to the podcast. Then (13:07) expert in all things Mancunian, the great and wondrous Hannah Knox joins the conversation to discuss her recent book : Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change (Duke UP). Hannah explains to us how climate change has challenged both the concepts and methods of urban governance and how governmental and non-governmental experts in Manchester have sought to come to terms with the scope of the problem. We talk carbon footprints, emissions...
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237 - The Canyon (feat. Robert Savino Oventile)
Cultures of Energy
Cymene returns to the pod at long last (yay!) and we discuss recent events and how climate science probably caused wildfires and bears to happen. Then (13:17) Robert Savino Oventile joins the podcast to share his new collection of poems, , the proceeds from which support the rebuilding of the destroyed by the Eaton Fire and which for maximum positive synergy can be purchased from the wonderful Pasadena independent bookstore, Vroman’s (link ). In the conversation, Robert talks about his long relationship to Eaton Canyon and his experience during this January’s devastating Eaton Fire which...
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236 – Ethical Pessimism (feat. Roy Scranton)
Cultures of Energy
Dominic reports from a delayed birthday trip to Los Angeles and we learn about how Mike Brady (of Brady Brunch fame) nearly perished in a helicopter crash. Then (5:55) Roy Scranton returns to the podcast after nearly eight years away. We’re talking about his provocative and important new book, Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress (Stanford UP, 2025). We begin with the philosophical origins of the concepts of optimism and pessimism in debates over Leibniz and Voltaire and from there explore what Roy means by “ethical pessimism.” Roy explains how pessimism might do more for...
info_outlineCymene and Dominic advise universities on how to handle blackmailers and wish a certain daughter a happy birthday on this sweet sixteen episode of the podcast. Then (13:40) Dominic chats with the brilliant Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (now available for pre-order from WW Norton here). We start with extraction as a difficult topic for the Left and then turn toward why people are talking so much about "critical minerals" of late. We discuss her travels to lithium frontiers like Chile and Nevada and Thea puts forth an important distinction between extraction and extractivism. Thea explains how resistance can be world-making, and how writing for broad audiences makes you a sharper theorist. We close with the backstory to one of her latest collaborative projects, the Climate and Community Institute, how it grew out of pandemic-era efforts to catalyze a green stimulus, and how it now acts, among other things, to shape green policy and build supply-chain solidarity.