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 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.

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 Jennifer Mae Hamilton and Astrida Neimanis to discuss their work as the Weathering Collective, especially their inspiring new book How to Weather Together: Feminist Practice for Climate Change (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 change helps us to grapple with the larger existential challenges of the climate crisis. From there, we talk about their concept of weathering as the ability to redistribute shelter and vulnerability in a climate changing world in ways that run counter to settler colonial legacies. Finally, we turn toward why they are happy to be ecofeminist again, how weathering meets undercommoning and how to cultivate and practice 'low stakes vulnerability' through games. Check out Jen's blog here and a recent publication here. Also stop by the FEELed Lab for a visit. Hang in there, everyone, peace and love.

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 Jérôme Denis and David Pontille to the podcast to discuss not one but two new books, The Care of Things: Ethics and Politics of Maintenance (Wiley, 2025) and Fragilities: Essays on the Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Maintenance and Repair (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 phenomenology of care work. We talk about how to think about the flux and power of matter and close by discussing maintenance as a subversive practice in the era of planned obsolescence and their interest in the right to repair movement.

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 Nicole Negowetti to speak about her new book, Feeding the Future: Restoring the Planet and Healing Ourselves (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, everyone, peace and love.

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 Maxime Polleri to the conversation to talk about his fascinating new book Radioactive Governance: 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 Japan and the myriad state efforts to downplay the severity of nuclear aftermath in order to encourage its citizens to restart their lives (and reactors). We talk about the long history of efforts to improve the image of nuclear energy, the politics of measuring radiation, state performances of radiation knowledge (including efforts to produce nuclear cuteness), and why it is so hard for some to accept that the Fukushima disaster isn't in the past but rather our future. In closing, we turn to the place of nuclear energy and disasters in the Anthropocene. Can we still speak of disaster events in the heterogeneous toxicity of the Anthropcene?