500 episodes listed below
Serious books for a changing planet.
New Books in Environmental Studies is an interview-led channel for serious environmental reading. Recent conversations move from Japanese climate litigation and Arctic geopolitics to lithium extraction, apple ecology, natural dyes, rocks, and the long histories of violence that shape modern life.
PRESS PLAY
New Books in Environmental Studies is a scholarly interview channel with a broad view of what environmental study can mean. It is not limited to climate policy. Recent episodes connect law, history, political economy, ecology, art materials, agriculture, geology, and geopolitics. The conversations usually begin with a book and then widen outward. A discussion of climate change litigation in Japan becomes a careful account of coal plants, air pollution claims, biodiversity loss, and conservative courtroom standards. The Sendai case appears not as a headline but as a test of how new environmental arguments enter legal systems. Another episode follows the Larzac in modern France, where farmers, trade unions, regional marches, and transnational resistance meet on contested ground. The local stays local, then becomes something larger. The show is especially strong when it asks how big transitions actually work in practice. Lithium, for example, is treated as central to decarbonisation, but also as a mineral extracted in socially and environmentally precarious contexts. That tension gives the green transition a political texture. The range can be striking. One conversation moves through medieval and historical recipes for inks, paints, and dyes, asking what plants such as woad, weld, and madder can still teach through fieldwork and experiment. Another returns to apples, Johnny Appleseed, grafting, cross-pollination, and the uneasy boundary between cultivated fruit and the wild. The show also handles grave material, including slavery, debt, and violence, when books demand that history. Its interview style is calm and guided. Questions are often framed with enough context to help a non-specialist enter the subject, while guests are given room to explain the structure of their arguments. Listeners should expect patient development rather than quick takes. The reward is an unusually capacious environmental bookshelf in audio form.
Made for: For listeners who want environmental questions explained through scholarship, not slogans. It suits readers, students, researchers, and curious generalists who are comfortable with patient interviews and complex historical context.
What sets it apart: The show treats environmental studies as a meeting point for law, politics, ecology, history, and material culture. Its strength is the book-length frame: each conversation lets an author trace evidence, cases, and consequences with unusual room to breathe.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-stud…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Author interviews connect environmental history to legal systems, political movements, scientific practice, and the material life of plants and rocks.
New Books in Environmental Studies turns author interviews into close examinations of how people understand and alter the natural world. Its reach runs from resistance in modern France and the history of apple cultivation to Arctic governance, natural pigments, geology, and…
Sandstone is 'fossilized movement'; your curiosity can travel from there to Japan's climate lawsuits.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
The Sendai case shows how a lost climate lawsuit can still clarify the path later cases must navigate.
Japan's climate litigation story lands here as a careful account of how environmental arguments enter courts accustomed to more established pollution claims.
A steady look at the Larzac struggle, from trade unions to tractors and the politics between them.
Dr. Miranda Melcher and Dr. Andrew Smith shape a clear account of the Larzac as a local struggle that widens into national and transnational politics.
A grounded look at historical color recipes, garden testing, and the patience behind the process.
Nabil Ali and Miranda Melcher talk through historical recipes for natural inks, paints, and dyes, then follow those recipes into practice. The episode stays close to source material and hands-on testing, with Ali describing a structured approach in the garden that uses seasonal…
A sharp conversation about the Morticine, slavery, debt, and the violence built into credit chains.
Clifton Krase's The Killing Age begins with the Morticine, or Age of Death, his answer to what he finds insufficient in the Anthropocene. Speaking with Eleonora Mattiaci, Krase puts violence at the center of modern life and follows how it shapes human conduct.
An apple story that turns folklore into ecology without losing sight of the fruit.
The episode frames Priyanka Kumar's book as both cultural history and ecological inquiry, with Caleb Zacharin moving from Johnny Appleseed lore to grafting, varieties, and the gap between orchard memory and grocery-store apples.
Rocks become a map of movement, from deep sea pigment to volcanic ash.
Vojta Hybl builds a larger argument about motion out of rock, moving from igneous material at the surface to sedimentary grains that have already traveled before they settle.
East Asian Arctic ambitions meet climate change, shipping lanes, and indigenous partnership.
Mia Bennett's conversation presents the Arctic as a zone where climate research, shipping lanes, fishing grounds, and regional governance all meet.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
Patrick Radden Keefe investigates whether the CIA secretly wrote a Scorpions hit.
Jake Halpern and the Snowball team track a con artist who defrauded a family.
A city-by-city true-crime documentary, from Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick scandal to mob confessions.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
An interview with anthropologist Jason Cons about his book exploring how climate change and development projects reshape territory and time in Bangladesh's Ganges-Brahmaputra delta.
Geologist and illustrator Vojta Hybl discusses his 2026 book 'Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell' with host Dr.
Hosts Jessica DiCarlo and Seth Schindler interview Mia Bennett, co-author of 'Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic'.
Jana Byers interviews Lee Raye about Creatures of Story and Song (Reaktion, 2026), which traces 14 lost British species through old stories, poetry, songs and pictures.
Nsah Mala explains why the 2025 volume Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere uses "Francosphere" to foreground colonial power relations beyond France, Belgium, and Quebec.
Editors Amit Ranjan and Agnieszka Nica-Makowska explain why their book examines leadership and responsibility in climate governance across the Asian Global South.
Misako Ichihara's Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law looks at coal-related disputes in a country still tied to imported coal and coal-fired plants after Fukushima.
On New Books Network, Dr.
Miranda Melcher speaks with Nabil Ali about Gold from Newton's Apple Tree and his study of historical recipes for inks, paints, and dyes.
Eleonora Mattiaci interviews Emory University historian Clifton Krase about *The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World* (University of Chicago Press, 2025), a book about slavery, empire, and environmental destruction.
This episode discusses the geopolitical and environmental issues surrounding the Arctic, focusing on U.S.
This episode features an interview with Thierry O'Francois about her book on the politics of lithium extraction, exploring its role in the green transition and associated environmental and social challenges.
Caleb Zacharin speaks with naturalist Priyanka Kumar about apples.
This episode features an interview with Vojta Hybl about his book on rocks, but begins with a promo for another podcast discussing an Epstein survivor's story and a survey for the NewBooks Network audience.
This episode features an interview about a veterinarian's adventures with animals in the remote South Atlantic region.