251 - Deep Listening (feat. Zina Saro-Wiwa)
Cultures of Energy
Cymene and Dominic lament what is happening in Iran and explore what kinds of dogs they would be on this episode of the podcast. Then (15:47) we welcome to the podcast the amazing multitalented multimedia artist to talk about her work. We begin with her father Ken Saro-Wiwa’s courageous activism on behalf of the Ogoni people and tragic death at the hands of Nigeria’s Abacha dictatorship. We then talk about her career in journalism and how coming to terms with the past eventually propelled her toward art. We turn from there to her creative practice. Zina explains to us what she means by...
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250 - Energy Democracy (feat. Nikki Luke)
Cultures of Energy
Dominic and Cymene celebrate the 250th episode of the podcast with tales of steamy avian encounter. And then (16:14) we welcome Nikki Luke to the podcast, author of the brand-new book (MIT Press, 2026). We start with what energy democracy means to Nikki in the context of her work on utility regulation and then move to her case study of the famously recalcitrant utility, Georgia Power, and how the history of electricity in the American South has long been entangled with white supremacist politics. We talk about the politics of setting electricity rates, how and why investor-owned utilities...
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249 - Weathering (feat. Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton)
Cultures of Energy
Dominic and Cymene talk about their Cathostant (or is it Protelic?) families in this week’s intro segment. And then (11:59) we are thrilled to be joined by and to discuss their work as the Weathering Collective, especially their inspiring new book (Bloomsbury, 2026). We begin with their collaborative relationship, how it began and has evolved over the past decade, and how they learned to balance theory and practice together. We discuss how both climate science and feminist theory are best considered as works in progress and then turn to weather and why its capacity to attune to constant...
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248 - Maintenance & Repair (feat. Jérôme Denis & David Pontille)
Cultures of Energy
Cymene and Dominic share pirate tales from the Sundance Film Festival and reimagine Heated Rivalry with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as the lead lovers. Then (15:34) we welcome and to the podcast to discuss not one but two new books, (Wiley, 2025) and (MIT Press, 2025). We begin with how they became interested in the concept of fragility through their fieldwork with people responsible for maintaining and caring for infrastructure. From there, we turn toward the distinction between repair and maintenance and how their fieldwork led them to pay attention to attention as an aspect of the...
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247 - Feeding the Future (feat. Nicole Negowetti)
Cultures of Energy
We kick things off this week with a short but heartfelt celebration of the tenth anniversary of the podcast. Several friends—Geoff Bowker, Heather Davis, Imre Szeman, John Grzinich, Karen Pinkus and Tim Morton—drop in to share thoughts about what’s urgent to think and feel in energy and environmental humanities these days. Then (34:00) Cymene welcomes lawyer-scholar-activist to speak about her new book, (Georgtown U Press, 2026) and its spotlight on regenerative food practices and the role that communities worldwide are playing in transforming the global food system. Hang in there,...
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246 - Radioactive Governance (feat. Maxime Polleri)
Cultures of Energy
Happy 2026! It’s been quite a year so far and your co-hosts talk about their recent trip to Nicaragua and Shadow’s reinvention as a fly assassin. Then (17:18) we welcome to the conversation to talk about his fascinating new book The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan (NYU Press, 2025). We begin with the 2011 Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster and the role that luck played in preventing 14 core meltdowns instead of the 3 that actually happened. From there, Maxime takes us into the center of his argument about the politics of post-disaster recovery in...
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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...
info_outlineDominic and Cymene celebrate the 250th episode of the podcast with tales of steamy avian encounter. And then (16:14) we welcome Nikki Luke to the podcast, author of the brand-new book Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). We start with what energy democracy means to Nikki in the context of her work on utility regulation and then move to her case study of the famously recalcitrant utility, Georgia Power, and how the history of electricity in the American South has long been entangled with white supremacist politics. We talk about the politics of setting electricity rates, how and why investor-owned utilities undermine energy transition, and the intensifying grid politics of data centers. We touch on the poverty of imagination that electrical utilities so often display and then close with a discussion of what Nikki’s analytics of feminist urban political ecology reveal about the quotidian labors involved in keeping the lights on. Check out your co-hosts at SXSW on a panel with Fire of Love and Time and Water director Sara Dosa (Friday, March 13, 530p-630p, 304 E 3rd Texas House, Austin) and Cymene’s presentation on elemental attentions to the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz (Monday, March 9, 1p). More details here! Hang in there, everyone, peace and love.