coe146_daggett.mp3 Speaker1: [00:00:24] Ok. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the cultures of energy. You are in podcast heaven right now because you're about to enjoy a riveting intro that my co-host Dominic Speaker2: [00:00:35] Boyer and I are about are about to serve up. Speaker3: [00:00:38] You know that last podcast you're listening to? That was podcast Speaker2: [00:00:41] Purgatory. That was no good, Speaker3: [00:00:43] But because you suffered through that and several Speaker2: [00:00:45] Other podcasts, now, now you've arrived. Now you're one of the elect, Speaker3: [00:00:49] The elect in the Promised Land. Oh my god. Well, thank you. Everyone who wrote some kind notes about last week's episode and our rant about the Kavanaugh situation. I have to say that as of right, this moment when we're recording, which is midday on Thursday, it Speaker2: [00:01:03] Sure looks like that fucker is going to get confirmed. Speaker3: [00:01:06] Yeah, it sure looks like they have. Just like done the the lamest FBI investigation in history, like the fact that it closed two days earlier or something and they were just like, oh, couldn't find anyone else to talk to. I guess that's it, you know, I guess he must be really squeaky clean guy. And meanwhile, all of these Yale classmate like writing desperately to Speaker2: [00:01:24] The begging, begging to Speaker3: [00:01:26] Write, tell the story about the time he got drunk and threw up all over me and then beat the crap out of me because he's a violent Speaker2: [00:01:32] Drunk. Oh my Speaker1: [00:01:33] God. Yeah. Well, there was some stuff about some some brawling, right? Some fights. There was a story of one where there a fight ensued that ended up with one of the fighters, I guess, in jail. So that's a pretty serious like confrontation. Speaker3: [00:01:48] Yeah, yeah. Speaker1: [00:01:50] I'm not saying Brett Kavanaugh put, you know, caused that, but I think he was there for it. I don't know. I should have my facts straight. No, no. We live in a world of tight facts. It's important. It's important to have. It's important to be accurate and truthful in every utterance. Speaker3: [00:02:06] If we were on radio these days, you would be right if we were on TV or writing for a newspaper. But the good thing about a podcast is you can just make up Speaker2: [00:02:14] Anything you like. Speaker3: [00:02:16] We're just going to make it up, and I like your version of reality, so I'm just going to go with that. Speaker1: [00:02:20] Ok, good. Well, there was a I guess there was a petition submitted by a thousand legal scholars, professors of law, saying that, you know, it's unclear whether he committed the sexual assault. And in light of that, it shouldn't prevent him from being confirmed. But but but but but which what should prevent him from being confirmed is the fact that he showed really overt and hostile partisan bias during his testimony. Speaker2: [00:02:47] And how about the long Speaker1: [00:02:48] Hearing and the lying? I mean, that's see, that's the other thing. Well, a lot of lying about the drinking. I don't know why he just didn't suck it up and be like, Yeah, well, yeah, I was partying too hard. I drank too much. I didn't, you know, quite understood in Speaker2: [00:03:01] Alcohol affected my buddy. I was a young man. Speaker1: [00:03:05] I had hormones. There's so many. There's so many bullshit ways that he could like wiggle his way out of it, but he decided to be this kind of holy like he wants to be holier than thou tried to take this holy roller position of like, Oh no, I never do anything bad. I think I had a beer once. What are you drink, senator? What do you drink? Speaker3: [00:03:23] Dominick Boyer? I drink cough syrup every day. That is how I get through the day. That's how I'm getting through today. Right now, it's like big old bottle of NyQuil. Ok, well enough on the Kavanaugh business moving right along. I had a list of things I want to talk about today. We're kind of pressed for time, so I won't go Speaker1: [00:03:38] Into this the first most. The most important thing to talk about is the new game that we invented the other night. Speaker2: [00:03:43] Ok, go ahead. It's called Speaker1: [00:03:45] Ok. I decided that the name of the game, the name of the game is called pencil plant. Speaker2: [00:03:52] The reason it's called pencil plant is because it involves a pencil and a plate. And so the way the game is played is you get Speaker1: [00:04:02] You take one of your houseplants. Speaker2: [00:04:04] Yeah. Speaker1: [00:04:05] Well, in our case, it was one that's sitting on the floor like across the living room. Speaker2: [00:04:09] Yeah. And then you get it, Speaker1: [00:04:10] And then you somehow manage to get one of the dog's toys like installed in the plant. I think you had someone tied that dog's toy onto the the branches Speaker2: [00:04:21] Of the plant. I didn't do that. I don't know who did that. Speaker3: [00:04:24] Clear the many dog Speaker2: [00:04:26] Toys, OK, middle of the living room. So he decided to turn them around, so you decided to tie it onto the stage. One of them Speaker3: [00:04:32] Went up in the air and it landed in a Speaker2: [00:04:33] Plant. And no, like a. Oh, OK. That's how it Speaker1: [00:04:36] Happened. So it's just lodged there. It looks like it was tied on there purposely. But so then the aim of the game is you go get some pencil, sharp pencils, four of them Speaker2: [00:04:46] And you sit on the couch and Speaker1: [00:04:48] You throw you throw pencils and try and hit the dog toy Speaker2: [00:04:52] In the plant. Speaker3: [00:04:54] And there were two big theories about how to do it. Speaker2: [00:04:55] One was several techniques dirt that's I tried that. I tried with you. I was throwing it like a dart. Like, That's not going to work because lived because it doesn't have any, you know, sort of Speaker1: [00:05:07] What would you call those things on a dart, the wings or whatever, those the Speaker3: [00:05:10] Little fluffy things at the end Speaker1: [00:05:11] Or the fluffy things or the little plastic things kind of like fins and help it go through the air. Plus, darts are weighted right there, weighted heavy in the front. Yeah, pencils are a little less predictable and. Speaker3: [00:05:23] Flight, but it's kind of fun to like you would like line up a nice start shot and then it would go five feet of land on the carpet. Speaker2: [00:05:29] Anyway, it was funny. Speaker1: [00:05:30] Well, your idea was to throw it like a knife, like you were in a circus or something to Speaker2: [00:05:35] Like to remember and over end. Speaker3: [00:05:38] Remember, I said, I want you to go now, put that plant on your head and let me try to throw it at you as though I were taking an apple off right? Speaker1: [00:05:45] And also install yourself against the wall and then rotate upside down Speaker2: [00:05:50] And keep spinning. Speaker3: [00:05:51] Right, exactly. So yeah, it was. Speaker1: [00:05:53] And then we tried about there was a belt. There was a bounce technique to you kind of throw it down and it bounces off the carpet. Speaker3: [00:06:00] Look, I'm going to bounce it like Speaker2: [00:06:01] Bump just stays there. Speaker3: [00:06:04] It's it you had to. You had to be there, dear listeners. Yeah, but Speaker2: [00:06:08] It was fun. But hey, you know what? Speaker1: [00:06:09] It's a drinking game. Speaker2: [00:06:10] It was a drinking game. Yeah, but I Speaker3: [00:06:12] Think, yeah, I don't think anyone drank after the game, but there may have been Speaker2: [00:06:15] Some drinks Speaker3: [00:06:15] That got us thinking the game Speaker1: [00:06:17] Was. The sad thing is, I think only one of us hit. Speaker3: [00:06:20] Yeah, it took a long time to get really long time pencil skip flying over over the side of the wall down the stairs. Yeah, yeah. And then the next day, the dog and the child found all these pencils all over the place and they're like, What's going on? Speaker2: [00:06:31] We were just pencil plant people. We're just doing pencil plant, doing Speaker3: [00:06:35] Some practice sats and using our number two pencils. Anyway, the other thing that I wanted to mention briefly is that we were talking yesterday about trying to come up with a list of things we liked about Houston. It took us a little while, but one high on the list was diversity. And another thing was the Speaker2: [00:06:53] Lack of the lack of Speaker1: [00:06:56] Open prostitution on street Speaker2: [00:06:58] Corners. And it's true. Speaker1: [00:07:00] I don't think I've ever seen any woman or man standing on a street corner at night like apparently inventing sex, although we did see that cute like Twinkie Boy. That's what got me thinking about it is there's that cute boy on the corner. We were driving over here and there's a beagle. Speaker3: [00:07:16] He was holding a beagle. Speaker1: [00:07:16] Nobody's wearing those really short shorts. Speaker3: [00:07:18] I think he was just a Twinkie. Speaker2: [00:07:20] I don't know. I thought he was a Speaker1: [00:07:21] Cute like little boy hooker, I Speaker2: [00:07:22] Think, but with a beagle? Speaker1: [00:07:24] Yeah, sure. It's kind of interesting. It's a variation. Speaker3: [00:07:28] There's a lot of boutique sex work here in Houston. Yeah, no. Part of the reason, I think, is because it's hot. But the other reason is that there are all these massage parlors. Speaker2: [00:07:35] Yeah, there's plenty of places to go. Speaker1: [00:07:36] Yeah, you don't need to walk the streets because you can just have your customers drive up to the front door of the massage parlor and, you know, enjoy themselves in the air. Speaker3: [00:07:46] There are many more things to like about Houston than these two things. The reason I'm getting, Speaker2: [00:07:52] You know, that kind of captures for me, huge, no more. But there are more. Speaker3: [00:07:58] But the reason I wanted to get to the story is I wrote a story. I think it was last week that Houston was going to be the site of the first robot sex brothel in the United States. Speaker2: [00:08:06] Oh, did you see that? Yeah, I Speaker3: [00:08:08] It's got a license and everything. There's one in Toronto and then this one in Houston, but it's causing some consternation because I think people are a they feel weirded out by the concept of it. And the mayor went on record saying he didn't really want Houston associated with this type of work. But then I was thinking about it and open question to our sexuality studies scholar in the room. Here is the automation of sex work long term a good thing or a bad thing? Speaker1: [00:08:32] You know it's so funny. Talk about like a robot brothel in Toronto. It sounds like a cool thing, but then if I like when I put it here in Houston, it Speaker2: [00:08:41] Sounds like a revolting, dirty and nasty. Speaker1: [00:08:43] It sounds really nasty, but I mean, OK, well, basically, this is Speaker3: [00:08:48] Sort of interesting. The city in which the brothel is is really what determines how it is. Speaker1: [00:08:53] Isn't that ridiculous? So that's what it seems like. Like, if I hear it in Toronto, I'm like, Oh, that's so cool. And like, arty Speaker2: [00:08:59] Kind of right? Speaker1: [00:09:00] I hear it here in Houston. I'm like, Oh, that's disgusting. Of course, like, we would have something as revolting as that. But you know, I don't know, is it revolting? I'm not sure. It's probably much more hygienic. You don't have to worry about diseases, I guess, if you keep everything really clean. I just think it's like fairly kinky because the robots, it's not going to be like Westworld style robots, you know? And basically, it's like ripping off the Westworld idea because those figures are basically sex robots, sex and violence robots. And but they went through all this engineering to try and get, you know, so that they breathe and they have soft skin that feels like a human like where we don't have that technology. So these robots that these guys are going to be fucking Speaker2: [00:09:42] Are going to be like Roombas. We're going to be Speaker1: [00:09:44] Like robots are going to be like Wall-E, but with like a with like a wig on Speaker2: [00:09:50] Or something like R2-D2. Typekit, yeah, like an R2-D2. I mean, that's interesting. Speaker1: [00:09:54] But the thing is, is that you Speaker2: [00:09:55] Could Speaker3: [00:09:56] Say, don't even think they're going to make them look like humans, they're just going to be robots. Speaker2: [00:10:01] I don't. I mean, I just don't think they OK. Speaker1: [00:10:04] I mean, the Japanese Speaker2: [00:10:06] And the Japanese have Speaker3: [00:10:07] C-3po fetish, something like that. Speaker1: [00:10:09] That would be I think it has to be pretty Speaker2: [00:10:10] Fetishized, OK? Speaker1: [00:10:12] I mean, you know, all those all those emotive robots that they have developed in Japan are quite lifelike Speaker2: [00:10:20] Looking, but I don't know what they feel. Speaker3: [00:10:22] Now where they are a little too lifelike. Yeah. Yes, because we went to that Speaker2: [00:10:27] And they Speaker1: [00:10:28] They blink in certain ways and turn their heads and they're, you know, highly programmed to replicate human habits, I guess, and to and to do like open their eyes wide when they hear something interesting and stuff like that. They're super sophisticated, but I don't know what they feel like. And the thing is is like, they look pretty real from behind glass. But what would they feel like? Because it's Speaker2: [00:10:50] So you think if you're Speaker1: [00:10:51] Having sex with something, you would want it to, it would matter, like what its texture was like, what its weight was like. Speaker3: [00:10:58] And I guess I'm trying to put my mind into the mindset of somebody who's going to a robot sex brothel. Like that's what their evening is. That's their evening plan is to go to a robot sex brothel. Speaker2: [00:11:08] Well, it's kind of interesting, I guess. I mean, it's not. It's it's novel. Speaker3: [00:11:12] It's novelty. Maybe it's, you know, some kind of even more profound level of misogyny where you don't, Speaker2: [00:11:19] You know, you don't even want to even Speaker1: [00:11:21] Touch a woman, right? The other thing is is it's no reason to think this is going to be a hetero space. Speaker2: [00:11:26] It could be quite mixed. That's right. That's right. Speaker1: [00:11:28] You wouldn't have to worry about pregnancy. That's right. I think, yeah, if you kept it all clean, you wouldn't have to worry about diseases, venereal diseases. You wouldn't have to worry about, you know, someone coming forward with a tell all book about their encounter with you at the brothel. In case in case you decide you want to become like a judge, the Supreme Court or something. I mean, all of the robot can't really narc on you in Speaker2: [00:11:51] The same way Speaker3: [00:11:52] I've seen in sci fi movies all have, you know, recording devices in their eyes. Speaker2: [00:11:56] Oh, well, they should. Yeah, well, that's true. I don't think you're going to be OK. Speaker1: [00:11:59] So you OK? So you could get you could get blackmailed by a robot or at least the owner of the robot. Speaker3: [00:12:04] Anyway, this is important. Speaker2: [00:12:05] Houston is too late. It's a labor question to a Speaker3: [00:12:08] Labor question and we have to wrap up. But before we wrap up, we want to say a few words about our guest. Speaker2: [00:12:15] Ok, what are your diet? Yes. Oh, I love Kara. Kara, this is a really good conversation. Speaker3: [00:12:19] It's a really good interview. And we're discussing her new fourth forthcoming book, The Birth of Energy, which is coming out with deuk next year. It's definitely worth pre-ordering. This is a really, really good book. We give it five, five, five and a half stars on a five star. Speaker1: [00:12:34] So yeah, it's very well written and there's a lot of good detail and some revelations. Speaker3: [00:12:39] Yeah, and really, it caused me to rethink a lot of things about energy and especially thinking about energies. Are the concept of energies kind of theological substrate to and how it's wrapped up in a certain Presbyterian worldview that I think no one really wants to replicate and how it's how it's kind of bleeding over into our thinking about renewable energy futures in ways that we could actually challenge right now as we're in the process of making those new futures so erudite. Brava. Excellent work and somebody to get to know she's at Virginia Tech. And what else do you call tech? Speaker2: [00:13:12] Vtec vtec vtec. Speaker1: [00:13:14] I had. Then I tell you this all my like cute gay girl friends love to attack because there was like a sort of an insider's name for vagina. We just call it love because it sounds a little like a little bit more polite, I guess, in mixed company. And so then it was like, Viva Tech, get it like I'm a VA technician. Oh yeah. So it was like a real hot. Like, I remember someone was going out to Virginia and everyone's like, You had to bring back the T-shirts. Speaker2: [00:13:42] Oh, really? Yeah, it was a thing. Speaker3: [00:13:44] That's a nice, subcultural insight. Speaker2: [00:13:46] Yeah. Well, you're welcome. Speaker3: [00:13:48] Yeah, yeah. You're welcome, listeners. You've heard about all sorts of interesting now. Speaker1: [00:13:53] Now, Karen knows something about her university that Speaker2: [00:13:55] She might not have known before. So all kinds of weird, Speaker1: [00:13:59] Small troupes of lesbians in the desert wearing Vitek Speaker2: [00:14:02] T-shirts, all kinds of sexual Virata you didn't know you Speaker3: [00:14:05] Needed to know about Houston, about Virginia Tech. Anyway, Kara, we're sorry. We're sorry to everyone when we put a crazy intro like this in front of their delightful interview, but you're going to transcend it. Kara, don't worry. Speaker1: [00:14:18] Indeed. So shall we say, go, Kara? Speaker3: [00:14:40] Welcome back, everyone, to the Cultures of Energy podcast, we are just delighted and honored to have on the line with us from Blacksburg, Virginia. A new professor at Virginia Tech. The one and only Carol Daggett. Kara Welcome. Speaker4: [00:14:53] Thank you. I'm a big fan of this podcast, so it's an honor to be here. Speaker1: [00:14:59] We're late that promotional material right up front. Speaker2: [00:15:02] Thank you. And you know where we where we just Speaker3: [00:15:04] Saw you was in Glasgow, Scotland, Speaker2: [00:15:06] Which is kind Speaker3: [00:15:08] Of an important place in your research. And we're going to talk to you about a wonderful and I don't say that lightly. I think this is a really, really important work and it's one that's going to move our little fledgling field of energy humanities forward. A big jump. It's called the birth of energy, fossil fuels, thermodynamics and the politics of work, and it's a great book. I learned so much from it. It also synthesizes many things in a really, really effective way, and it's a book that I think is going to communicate really well because there are these marvelous turns of phrase. So just with that general praise in mind, I'm going to hand the mic over to my co-host here who may have some more specific penetrating insights to offer. Speaker1: [00:15:49] Well, I will echo what Dominic said that it's elegantly written and a very sophisticated analysis of what you call the genealogy or undertaking a genealogy of energy itself. And so I love how you've put energy in brackets and called our attention to the fact that this was not a universal sort of ever existing preeminent condition of human consciousness, but that it really came to be at certain points in Western time and through the acts of certain scholars and thinkers and industrialists, among others. And so we get this really robust portrait of how energy Quanta Energy came to be through thermodynamics. So I wanted to kind of step back a bit and have you guide us through what is kind of the sort of beginnings of the book in part one where you really do take. Walk us through this history of thermodynamics as a science, as a field of inquiry. Because as you point out, during this Victorian era, in the mid-19th century, energy, you know, prior to that time was really kind of a word for poets. It was something that was a kind of a magical, almost mystical sort of force until it became captured through physics. So can you kind of walk us through some of those, some of these beginnings? Speaker4: [00:17:13] Yeah, I think the book for me really started with I'm coming out of political science, and I just noticed that political scientists thought that they all knew what they were talking about when they said energy, but they just understood that meant we're studying fuel and usually coal or oil. And I studied science at one point in my life that was my undergrad major, and so I was thinking, how did that come to be? How did energy come to be fuel in politics? And frankly, I was surprised at how recent the science is, which, you know, I think maybe all those of us in energy humanities are no longer surprised because we're learning this history better now. But for me, having studied physics and got and taken pretty advanced physics courses, I just was so ignorant about the actual history. So to learn that in 1800, if you said this is an energy company that would have no meaning or it wouldn't make sense, really. And so that was very exciting at the beginning of the research, just to notice that this concept is very much a modern concept and to think about what that meant in terms of what, what kind of capriciousness the word had before that, how it was so fluid and messy sort of and poetic and what we've lost in terms of how the dominant logic through which we now think about energy. Speaker3: [00:19:01] So if I can just follow up on that, one of the things I've heard a lot and this is, I think and also most of the physics textbooks is, you know, people will say, well, energy is work. And of course, Aristotle first described energy as work. And I think one of the things your book really clarifies that was really helpful for me is you really differentiate the Aristotelian association between energy and work. And then this more Victorian or modern association that really is the crux of of the kind of energy work nexus that we, the world that we operate in today. So could you maybe just tell us a little bit about that? I mean, how is how was the Aristotelian conception different from the Victorian conception of energy? Speaker4: [00:19:39] Right, yeah, so I think what Aristotle had, maybe that we still would recognize is a preference for dynamism, a preference for activity and action. But for Aristotle, this notion and you'll have to excuse my Greek, I'm not really sure how to pronounce it, but the Energia, which he really invents. This word that later becomes energy meant being at work towards goodness. And and for Aristotle, it was very much dynamism. But to indicate that goodness was not a static achievement, that you were good and then you just stayed good. The goodness was an activity, a process of being at work towards it. And the difference with, I think actually the adoption of the word energy is is really trying to build upon that sense of dynamic virtue. But what it does is it very much narrows what is meant by work. So in the case of physics and engineering, we can get a much more tidy definition of work, which is about moving matter in many cases. So it's something that you could actually then measure, whereas you couldn't measure what Aristotle was meaning by work. So I think it is important to differentiate that and also which sort of unfolds through my book. To put it crudely, it's very much that the actual doing of the work becomes in itself the measure of the person or the end, whereas that certainly wasn't the case for earlier philosophies of energy or dynamism that that the actual activity itself wasn't the end. Wasn't the the virtue, right? Speaker1: [00:21:39] I like the way you put it here to the work bound logic of energy, which you've been charting out from the origins in the Greek context. But let me just quote a couple of lines here that I really appreciate. So you say the western epistemology of energy attached fuel systems to the gospel of Labor and its veneration of productivity. The energy work nexus was so friendly to the spread of fossil capital, so conducive to concealing its violence and so minutely sutured as to leave little trace of its contingent pairing. And then you go on to talk about the intertwining of energy and this Western ethos, and I would say even as aesthetic and maybe at times obsession about dynamism, productivity and and connecting those those practices, but moreover, those philosophies to the value of human intention and human labor. And I think one of the most brilliant parts about the book is the way you tie energy as thermodynamic process, energy as physical process to the kind of values of well in largely through the Protestant case, but this kind of valuing of human labor. And so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about how that human labor became so integral the laboring person became so integral to the unfolding of the science of thermodynamics as it as it came to be, you know, through the 19th century primarily. Speaker4: [00:23:17] Right. So I mean, I'll back up and say, I actually when I first was asking these questions about energy and starting to learn more about it, I never even imagined I would be talking about work. So it really came out of just reading about it and becoming immersed in it. I didn't even frankly have a big interest in work or labor. And now of course, it's it's kind of charted a lot of my future projects, political economy and and really taking that approach. So what I had to be careful to do was to make sure I communicated that this was not the invention of the work ethic or that it was new for the first time that productivity or efficiency or the working body were important to European imperialism or to philosophy. It was that. And I think that quote you pulled out sort of has it in there. It was that these became sutured together. They were very conducive. And I think out of that pairing in the 19th century, not just the science of energy, but also the machines that in the fossil fuels with this older and and really evolving sentiment about work. Speaker4: [00:24:38] I think did create something new out of that, and and I would say in terms of you asked about the laboring body, what was interesting too was to recognize that it wasn't even labor in human bodies. It was really a conception that interpreted the entire world as as laboring parts or laboring kind of assemblages. And so it's almost reading ecosystems or valuing and judging them and tinkering with them as laboring things. So it's not just human bodies that get governed, it's waterfalls and forests and machines. Also, of course, and it seems to me that it really starts with this drive to sort of figure out the steam engine. And then once once the steam engine gets improved and understood better, you got the emergence of thermodynamics, which understands it because now we all of a sudden know what heat is doing and how heat is working in the engine. This then becomes a really useful metaphor that can travel and be mapped onto all different kinds of laboring bodies. Speaker1: [00:25:50] And I'm glad that you brought up ecology as well, because this was another science of the time a very influential set of scientific views in any case, along with evolution and Darwinian evolutionary biology and its nascent state that that really were kind of the cutting edge and preeminent kinds of ways of thinking through quote unquote natural systems at the time. And thermodynamics during this period wasn't quite emergent, or it was, you know, it was on his way to kind of blossom into what it was as a scientific field of study. But there was a kind of hegemony of these other two paradigms right of ecology and evolution, however much we want to separate those. But there's these paradigms at work that kind of had their own internal logics, which may or may not have shaped the way that thermodynamics was coaxed or coaxed into existence or allowed to proceed as a scientific discourse. Speaker4: [00:26:49] Well, I think what was interesting is actually I it feels to us like maybe especially evolution was hegemonic and it was I mean, it was the preeminent scientific discipline of the period. But I think what was helpful is to see people reflecting upon the physics, the new physics that was really centered upon energy and thermodynamics as being in the scientific world equally influential and important. But what happens is the language of physics doesn't really translate as smoothly or or feel like it shows up as readily in some of the political philosophies and texts. Although part of what I'm arguing is that it does show up. It's just we kind of we kind of miss it. We kind of miss its influence. So that was something that I was really interested in following is I was so familiar with how all of the biological sciences, especially evolution, the king of of these new paradigms, but also ecology. How there's this really great literature about how evolutionary thinking, scientific Darwinism and racism and all this. All of these tactics and tools for imperial thinking at the time drew upon biology. And there were even many people I found saying these scholars of this period saying, Oh well, physics didn't really have much to do with it or it wasn't as influential. But I think to the contrary that the way energy flowed through these systems and the way that different organisms used energy was very influential to thinking about what the meaning of evolution or ecology was for explaining political outcomes. So you had evolution and ecological sciences helping to understand empires as organisms or to understand how you could rank different civilizations, but how you would actually rank them, or how you would actually understand if an organism was doing well as a state or an empire was according to how well it was using energy efficiently and productively. And that was sort of the evidence for evolutionary superiority. Speaker3: [00:29:16] Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. And, you know, even the concept of System City itself is so often kind of a crypto thermodynamic idea in ways that I think we've lost touch with. You do a great job of resurfacing these connections and just on the energy and work topic again, you know, I think that what's so fascinating and I hadn't really thought about this. I read your book was, you know, I've thought about. Work in terms of the origins of liberalism and how important it is in political, liberal political philosophy, that labor plays a really pivotal role because it's what allows us to take private property from the Commons without becoming immoral subjects, right? It's the idea that we have capacities to work on things and improve them that makes private property allowable for people like John Locke. And in a way you've shown with energy, the energy is kind of an ontology extended beyond the human to the rest of the universe. All of these little working bodies improving things, you know? And but what's fascinating is that you also say that in some ways, as thermodynamic science develops in a context, not exclusively, but I think largely in the context of Protestantism and especially Scottish Presbyterian ism, you say it's kind of a blow to man at the same time, I think you quote Freud on that to this idea that actually the problem of dissipating energy becomes a really significant one. And so what do we do about heat death? What do we do about the fact that these systems are leaking and seems like and so I think in a way, it becomes the license to not just this relentless pursuit of productivity and efficiency that you've just been talking about, but also to empire, right? I mean that the idea that, you know, we can extend ourselves across the world and take our improving efficient civilizational qualities to all these places that otherwise would just be dissipated, just wasted space. Speaker4: [00:31:03] Right. There was a real urgency there in the 19th century with like Darwin sort of confronting this new Earth that had fossils and apparently have been around before humans were around and apparently could change dramatically. And wasn't this sort of safe backdrop for human dramas? And what I really enjoyed, or I don't know if enjoyed, is the right word, but to the extent that you can enjoy archival research Speaker2: [00:31:37] About Speaker4: [00:31:38] Destroying the planet? Yeah, I sort of enjoyed the way that you had this tragic sentiment from someone like Lucretius, about death and about decay as being this inherent quality of life sort of paired with everything that's creative. There's always destruction to that. You have this kind of re-emerge in the science of energy. But for many of the energy scientists and European imperial managers who interpreted the sciences in sort of how political structures were set up, this leaves room for God again in this kind of strange way. And someone like Engels even saw this when he when he was first thinking about entropy, he was like, This is the doorway through which God is going to come back because, you know, you had it seemed like in the Enlightenment you were starting to really develop this more secular reading of science. And here we have energy, which all of a sudden many of these Scottish Presbyterian scientists were seeing entropy as as the sort of mysterious, unknowable, tragic truth that kind of made room for there to be a god in the sense that God alone might be exempt from decay. God alone could create without being paired with this sort of tragic death. And then this gives this new impetus to the project of work. Because work is if we're faced with decay, then the only thing we have is this knowledge of of how best to put energy to use in the time that we have it. Because if we don't, it can be lost to us forever. We don't have these nice little cycles in nature. We might just lose energy and never have it back. Speaker3: [00:33:42] But this also became an opportunity for for human intervention in the sense that Earth is a kind of flawed system, then that that humans perhaps to, you know, prove their role among the elect, you know, the Presbyterians, that they could improve the Earth through their industry, right? They could make of this this flawed system something better and that sort of gave us restored our apex species role. Is that right? Speaker4: [00:34:07] Also, yeah, that the Earth was not a nice reflection of divinity. It was prone to decay. And that in itself made it something that could be improved upon if you had the right knowledge. So then, yeah, there's a license for looking at, for example, a waterfall and being able to say that that's wasteful because look at all that energy that is just pouring over the side of a cliff and. And it's lost once it gets to the bottom, and it hasn't been used. That's lost forever. Speaker1: [00:34:45] Right? So this turn of consciousness to the the waste potential, the wastefulness of energy is a really, really important element of the genealogy that you draw out through the book. And it certainly, as we've been talking about, the kind of intersection between labor and energy is critical. But you also say that the relationship between energy and waste is equally important and in one of the chapters that I'm not sure which one right now where you say, like, you know, don't be fooled into thinking that it was about the sort of leftover waste of energy, you know, the sort of tailings left from a from a coal refinery or the sludge left the detritus of fuel extraction, that kind of waste that we might think of normatively now. But it really was about this the kind of waterfall metaphor that you just shared, like it's about the way the energy or potential energy is quote unquote wasted and the way that the world could then be captured sort of philosophically or intellectually as a place of a dual system of energy and waste and waste is the is the stuff that leaks. It's stuff that is always sort of escaping human capacity to control it, to capture it, to refine it, to channel it in particular ways, it lingers. But I think another important point that you make is that it also, as you as Dominic was just saying, like it's waste is also an indicator of how the human capacity to understand this really vast and newly weird world in the 19th century in terms of understanding the science. It opens up a space to free human beings to recognize that they can't really capture it all, that they don't really understand what's happening. So I wonder if you want to say a little bit more about that. I guess it's sort of a trifecta of waste and how it how it coordinates with these ideas of energy that are emerging, right? Speaker4: [00:36:47] Yeah, I think I think the existence of entropy meant that way that in a way waste was just inevitable. So there was some recognition of that, but that that is even more than an impetus to minimize it or appropriately manage it. And then, like you said, waste is not just pollution, which of course, is that, but it's also anything that really stands in the way of putting things to work. And that, of course, is mapped onto racialised and gendered bodies as this sort of energetic racism or energetic sexism about propensity ability to work effectively laziness. But it keeps, as I do research now on especially even renewable energy projects. I see this waterfall example just lingering and that that example was actually somebody describing a waterfall as wasteful in the 19th century. But I was just reading about the massive solar projects in North Africa that are being developed to potentially serve Europe's renewable energy needs. And in the text of the company, and I think this was Morocco sort of describing why this project is a good thing. There's all these references to the desert as just sitting there with all the sun just coming down, and right now it's not being used. It's just all of that is just going to waste if we're not catching it. So it's remarkable that even when we think about solar projects, we still have this logic of like, think of all the sun that's following everywhere that we're not that we're not capturing. Speaker3: [00:38:36] And that's that's one of the really great things about this book is you kind of put your finger on there's something pernicious in the concept of energy itself and in the way we use it, there's something built into that. The idea of energy that is intimately connected to this idea of the need for work, the need for improvement, the need for it, for productivity. You know, and I've often wondered, it's just, you know, a random observation, but I find that there is a way in which this is in the scholarship is is is gendered. And you know, you get, you know, frankly, a lot of guys who are interested in energy, right? Talking about energy and is this weird kind of reinforcement of that older, that older, patriarchal Christian tradition there, too in a weird way. But I think you really you put the pieces together in a really marvelous way that lets us look at this and go, Aha. All right. Ok, so now if we want to if we want to talk about renewable energy, we might find ourselves just, you know, switching the source but still not getting rid of that. That kind of Presbyterian logics at some level, right? It can. It can travel with us in. To a solar future as well. But before we get there, can I ask you to say a little bit about the Anthropocene because you make some really interesting remarks about how the Victorian period was also the one in which in some ways we get the first reckonings with what is not yet called the Anthropocene. But I think somebody, this Italian guy, Stepney was calling it like the Anthropocene or something. I mean, there was some analogous terms that were being tossed around out there so that, you know, Paul Crichton's work in the late 20th century is not actually the origin point that it has these Victorian roots. Do you want to tell us that part of this story, Carol? Speaker4: [00:40:12] Yeah, sure. So of course, we've got all many, so many words now proposes alternatives to the Anthropocene, which I think is a really positive thing that we don't have to choose. And and even within the field of science or the field of geology people are talking about, is it the is it the invention of fire? Is it agriculture? Is it the spread to the new world? And is it something around the steam engine? Is it? Can we market in the nuclear period of the great acceleration in the middle of the 20th century? So I very much don't want to say, Oh, I have the answer, and it should be this word. But I do think that the Victorian era is really at the heart of any story that we're going to tell about, whatever it is that we want to call the Anthropocene. And I think we all intuit that because it's when the fossil fuel era really gets going. But what I found? I feel like the other reason it's so important is because it's also when the Earth becomes this place that is older than humans and could outlast humans. So in the 19th century, they didn't necessarily know or think in terms of planetary destruction ensuing from coal. Speaker4: [00:41:38] Although, of course, we can trace back greenhouse gas knowledge and sort of early Earth systems knowledge, perhaps back into the 19th century. But there wasn't there wasn't really a public or big widespread sentiment that, oh, now we're burning coal and we're we're going to really damage planetary systems. But I think there was an acknowledgement that the Earth is both older and more powerful than humans could really grasp and at the same time, potentially fragile or vulnerable or prone to dramatic change and the explosion of new scientific and social science disciplines in that period. I really think many of them are responding to this new disorientation about what is nature. Mm hmm. So in that sense, I think it's important to start or at least root any story in the Victorian period. And and it's really connected with using steam engines because at the same time that you're thinking that about the Earth in Europe, you're you're rapidly urbanising and economic and labor systems are changing and politics are changing. I mean, there's just a sense of acceleration that is too fast to make, sense of which now we're totally familiar with. That's just our life. But I think was really was really remarkable and novel then. Yeah. Speaker3: [00:43:08] And in some ways, steampunk, you know, is right. You know, what are your chapter? Speaker1: [00:43:13] Well, that's a great job to a title, Kyra. Speaker4: [00:43:15] I have I've always been strangely drawn to the 19th century to literature really from the 19th century, and I don't think I ever understood why. But now I really feel like I always make this joke. In this class. I teach about energy because it seems like almost everything you can say and in the 19th century, because everything kind of enters this point of dramatic change then. And that's not to say everything starts then, but certainly there's sort of a turning of the screw to use a great literature term from then. There's something that happens then that is that is important. And I think the other reason I really want to emphasize that period and tell what is sort of a Eurocentric story or sort of parochial rising Europe, at least, is that I think it is important to place accountability in a smaller group than just humans writ large. Speaker1: [00:44:14] But yeah, well, can I just quote here because I really appreciate that you say extending the Anthropocene into the Victorian era is useful to contemporary climate politics, in that it provides evidence of the ecological culpability of a relatively small group of industrial capitalists in the global north. And I think that that is a really it's it's an important it's an. An intervention in the sense that it really draws attention to, you know, actual figures that we can trace to some degree in the archival record, and it's really, Speaker2: [00:44:49] I Speaker1: [00:44:50] Mean, I write it, I think a little more bluntly in this in this next book that's coming out. It's really the work of a few men with certain powers. Ultimately, that kind of get many of these things into motion, if you will. And I think, you know, we see some of those people here in your book, there are others. But I think really being explicit about, I mean, no one likes to be culpable, but they're dead now. So maybe they can. Speaker2: [00:45:18] Maybe they can handle it. Are they really? Now there's a good point there. Yeah, that's right. They're phantoms linger with us to be nice. Speaker4: [00:45:29] I've spoken with colleagues who do postcolonial research, and you know, I'm really sensitive to the risk that focusing on domination is perhaps not making visible the fact that there was resistance and friction, and also that when these projects spread, it wasn't just Europeans spread what they had invented in Europe around. I mean, they very much learned from picked up from hybridized things elsewhere. So I think it's a, you know, it's a shame that I didn't have room to tell that story, and I want to make sure I say, you know, I try my best not to have it be a story about from the core to the periphery, which is the risk of saying it's a few men who did this. But I still think it's important to say it's just it really was a small group of people who who sort of propagated and profited from it. Speaker1: [00:46:34] They had helpers. They had helpers. Speaker2: [00:46:37] It's true. And then Speaker1: [00:46:39] But the origins were were Speaker4: [00:46:42] And being in that any of these archives is just a really dark place to be Speaker1: [00:46:48] Spiritually dark. I take it. Speaker3: [00:46:50] Yeah, yeah, they built and defined a whole, you know, civilization, which was very white and patriarchal, but but brought a lot of more people online. And then, you know, if you've got a community of faith that's behind this too and is convinced there's a kind of a narrow theological, you know, dimension to this, that that pushes it further. Speaker1: [00:47:10] But they also invented haggis. Speaker2: [00:47:11] So. Yeah, that's right. Speaker3: [00:47:13] Ok, we've been saying all nice things about the Glaswegians of late. Speaker2: [00:47:16] So now we really get to the dark about haggis. So you get to the dark ever Speaker4: [00:47:21] Coming full circle because I had not been to Glasgow. So it was it was like coming to see an old friend that I had only been a pen pal with. Speaker1: [00:47:30] Oh, that's Speaker4: [00:47:30] Cool. And I went and saw the exhibit on Kelvyn and spent so long there. I'm sure the the museum worker was wondering what I was doing. I took a picture of every single thing. Speaker2: [00:47:43] Yeah, that's great. Speaker1: [00:47:44] You're the reason they build these museums. I'm sure the work, I loved it. Speaker2: [00:47:48] Yeah. Speaker3: [00:47:50] Well, I wanted to talk a little bit. I mean, there's a lot to say and I'll have Speaker1: [00:47:53] To talk about the concluding chapter Speaker3: [00:47:55] We do. But we also have to note the Chapter five is the most important chapter. Speaker2: [00:47:58] Oh God, oh my God, Speaker3: [00:48:00] Somebody is not going to let Speaker2: [00:48:01] Me get it, but let me get out the duct tape. It's obviously important out there Speaker3: [00:48:06] And it's it's a huge it's a huge boon to that concepts, hopefully further life that you've put it in there and such a central role. But let me say this because I agree the conclusion is where we need to go. The provocative kind of move you make in the conclusion is to say, You know what, we've been, what we've been telling ourselves. Maybe the whole way along is, you know, energy is a necessity. Energy is what gives us modernity. Energy is what gives us all our pleasures and happiness. But you're showing us that what energy really gives us is tireless, endless soul crushing work. And that that's what we are kind of hooked on is this alignment of energy and work. And maybe there's something more to be said about how pleasure is the is the necessary companion of this idea of relentless work as you get to like, you know, get blackout drunk a couple of days a week, you know, that's that's that's fun times for Speaker2: [00:48:56] Everyone, as we know. I don't Speaker1: [00:48:58] Know. Have you ever done that? Have you ever done that minutes? Speaker2: [00:49:01] You ever blacked out? You're talking about blackout drunk beer. Do you like beer? How much have you like? Speaker3: [00:49:07] Have you got demons? I'm a half Speaker2: [00:49:09] Half full kind of guy. Speaker3: [00:49:12] I'll stipulate that I like beer, but I actually don't think I've ever blacked out from it. But regardless of the point, I think we're talking about a whole worldview here. We're talking about, right? I mean, but isn't that where you're pushing us is to really reexamine that? Speaker4: [00:49:24] Well, also what I want to do, though, is sort of free energy, because right now, when we think about energy freedom, it's like, Oh, we have our own power source, right? But I think we. So it's not just that energy always has. To be shackled to work, but rather that there's one logic of energy that has captured the whole concept and to allow us to start to think about other relationships and epistemology of energy that are actually all around us. So it's not even like I have to invent them for people. And they're really all around us in science as well there, especially in more of the biological sciences. Energy is couched within different conceptions of what it means to thrive as as an organism or an ecosystem, rather than energy in terms of moving matter being the be all and end all. So it really is about thinking about energy as capable of of having different ways of knowing it. And I mean, it's just remarkable that we have the evidence that energy does not have a linear relationship to well-being. And yet it's like, we can't stop, we can't stop thinking about it that way. And I think the environment, all environmental movements get backed into this corner of, well, if you don't give everyone more and more energy, you must be for sacrifice. And I think they play. We often play along with that game about how we have to give up things and how we have to. You know, thinking about new ways of living always seems very dour and sour. Yeah, yeah. So I don't end with all the answers, but I just end with trying to trying to convince us that there isn't even a scientific justification for this logic of energy. Speaker1: [00:51:21] So in the conclusion, and I love that you and I'm a very political note and also in an optimistic and a kind of it's not exactly a program, but it's a set of ideas for thinking about how we might get through this impasse of the coupling of work, the work practice and the energy imaginary. And so you argue that we really need we do need to decouple work and energy kind of philosophically, but also practically. And you suggest that there might be alliances between environmentalists or other people who see themselves as A. Anthropocene or post carbon or trying to move beyond the kind of fossil fuel, industrial economy and feminist post-work politics that imagine, you know, a different way of being in the world that's not specifically focused on production, but that has reproductive orientations as well. And I don't necessarily mean that in the kind of biological sense, but in a sense of care and in the sense of maintaining relationships that aren't necessarily tied to explicit, productive values that we find in so many forms of work. So can you tell us a bit more about how you came to this realization or how if you want to, how you kind of see it going forward? Speaker4: [00:52:47] Right? I came to the end serendipitously. I'm not sure there's any other way with research, really, if we're all honest with ourselves. But through writing, work became the central figure of the cast, and I already really approach things through feminist methods and and practice. And so I wanted to learn more about, OK, well, what's going on in debates about work in the world of work and sort of educate myself? And part of that, in doing that, Cathy Weekes book The Problem with Work was recommended to me, and it just it blew me away. What a fantastic book. And I think she really synthesizes the movement of anti-worker post-work and especially as it has happened in women's movements and feminist politics. But in her book, she doesn't really think about environmental dimensions, which is fine. She doesn't have to. She has enough to do with with what her intent and project is. So I I really saw that here. On the one side, we have people who have done so much work to think about the human relationship to energy in the world in terms of political ecology. And then we have this remarkable body of movements and work of people who have been thinking about work and humans relationship to work. They I think they are starting to talk to each other a little bit, but not always and not much. And I think there's so much room not to have to reinvent the wheel, but to be able to see the way that that those alliances could come together. Speaker4: [00:54:33] And so for me, just turning to weeks, I could already have someone. Who's thought through what does it mean to problema ties work? What does it mean to sort of disconnect ourselves from all of these common sense ideas about you have to work to earn a living and if you don't work, you don't really deserve this kind of full citizenship from a feminist perspective. I see in that this kind of very practical set of tools even really policy relevant set of tools for movements that I think could open up some space for new ways of imagining and living with energy, because I really think it is about carving time and and kind of a liberation from work in order to be able to think about pleasure and energy differently. Yeah. So I took up just weeks. I mean, her proposals are things like a shorter working week and a basic living income, which when I wrote this book, was not on the scene, and I'm very pleased to see how much that has become a matter of really popular debate. Even in the U.S., I never would have imagined the extent to which we have actually socialist arguments happening in the public sphere here. But still, you don't see those connected to what? What would that mean in terms of climate change, in terms of energy? Speaker3: [00:56:00] Yeah. And that's that's there's a lot of work to be done on making those connections, I think, but this is a really, really helpful contribution the way that you've aligned, you know, kind of post carbon transitions with post-work politics and you discuss the UBI proposals in there, too, which are seem to be something that's rapidly gaining traction, which you know again amazes me, somebody my age growing up and what I thought I knew the United States was, which was something in which socialist ideas were anathema. And here they are. Speaker2: [00:56:26] They're coming. Speaker1: [00:56:27] Ok, well, don't worry, it won't happen. Speaker2: [00:56:29] This is good. Speaker3: [00:56:29] Well, no. It's like the younger generation is pushing, and it's great to see that. And I love I love that there's a politically oriented younger generation who really have a kind of fuck it attitude about a Speaker2: [00:56:40] Lot of right you. I'm sorry. He was right. It was cursing. Yeah, you have. Speaker3: [00:56:45] You have your curse blockers probably on you. Speaker2: [00:56:48] Have you censor headphones? Speaker3: [00:56:50] I think it's fine. It's probably better that way now. I just said they have a kind of fuck it attitude about received wisdom about, you know, the necessity of capitalism. And people are reexamining things. And I think it's great. It's an exciting moment, even though it's a terrible moment, too. And we talk about that a lot of the podcast, as you know. So do you want to tell us a little bit where your work is turning now? I mean, now that the book is off and it's going to come out next year and just to remind everyone of the title, it's the birth of energy. Fossil fuels, thermodynamics and the politics of work. Look for it with Duke University Press in 2019. What's next for Cara Daggett? What are you going to work on? Because, of course, and the very asking that Speaker2: [00:57:26] Question is the problem. It's like asking Speaker1: [00:57:28] You, you can't pursue Speaker2: [00:57:30] The other way. You can't just Speaker3: [00:57:31] Hang out and say, and I think the mic drop would be to say, I'm not even doing anything ever again. This is a Speaker4: [00:57:37] No. I got so much mileage out of those jokes with when I was on the job market. I'm here today to talk to you about not doing work. Speaker2: [00:57:48] Nice. That's great. Speaker4: [00:57:49] So I just had an article come out called Petro Masculinity, and in some ways it was extending these thoughts about domination and energy into the contemporary period and thinking about how the MeToo movement essentially and also sort of the misogynist elements of proto authoritarian movements are connected to climate denial and support for fossil fuels, which I think they're often treated as these separate problems. But I was showing or in the article really exploring how gender trouble and climate trouble get interpreted similarly using a sort of psychoanalytic model of politics so both of them both climate trouble and gender trouble as as being perceived as threats to this kind of white supremacist patriarchal model of rule. And then those threats having to be dealt with, whether it's in supporting and continuing extraction of fossil fuels or misogyny, or to think about the way that burning fossil fuels is misogynist in terms of if you think of misogyny as a way of policing deviants and people who are threatening to the order. Speaker1: [00:59:11] Yes. So Kara, I think this is the article for which you got a lot of trouble from the radical right. Do you want to share that or is that too scary to put on the air? I don't know. Speaker4: [00:59:25] Well, I think I mean, it's already it's out there if anyone in the far right wanted to find it. So I don't know that, you know, I'm not sure they're really Speaker2: [00:59:36] Listening to this podcast. He said, let's hope not. No people Speaker1: [00:59:40] Would be interested to hear what happened, Speaker2: [00:59:42] Tell us the story, though Speaker1: [00:59:42] Dominic doesn't know, and I was, you know, horrified upon hearing it Speaker4: [00:59:47] Pretty much right when it went online. I got an email from Campus Reform, which I since learned is a website that sort of targets particular academic work or academics by kind of just repeating, Oh, this person said this and then that sort of points far right elements in the right direction in terms of starting these little viral outrage storms. And so once campus reform published something about the article, there was a week or two of receiving some threats and some other weird emails, but also just tweet storms. And I mean, sort of watching this article explode. And for my own, I mean, I laugh about it now because it was pretty short lived, and I was told by colleagues who have been through this that these things are that there's sort of a novelty factor and then the next person is becomes a target and you get left behind. But at the time, it was really more frightening than I thought, and not necessarily because I fortunately, I never actually feared that I was going to be attacked imminently. It was frightening to have that kind of visibility and exposure in the world that we inhabit, where everything is online and to sort of feel not in control of that and also to feel like I didn't write this article for a public for that audience. Speaker4: [01:01:25] You know, I wrote the article for an academic journal, for a certain, for a certain audience of people and and I might have written it differently, especially the abstract, you know, thinking about how many it's behind a paywall, although I think the journal has since unlocked it. Maybe so that it could be widely read, but I think it's a new world now where we have to realize that there are groups out there that I don't know how they find it if they just are searching for keywords. But people are reading our work and there could be consequences to that if it's read with with bad intentions. Yeah. But a lot of the emails I got were sort of empirical evidence for exactly what I was saying. So I thought, Wow, I need to add some footnotes like reference this email where I'm threatened or this email where someone's like, they're going to turn me on with their pickup truck, and they even sent me a picture of themselves. Wow. By the truck. Speaker1: [01:02:32] I think I want you to write an article like, you know, maybe it's more for like, popular like a wider audience. But I think you should write about this experience, you know, because as you as you pointed out, as everything is mediated online and as these as these things like this little token of the article, which is the abstract, is that the thing that got most widely read and it's just fascinating and spooky to hear you talk about how that unfolded, but I think it'd be interesting for other people to hear about that experience. Speaker4: [01:03:04] Yeah. And it's also you don't know how seriously to take things like the professor watch list. I mean, I take it very seriously, but I also, you know, want to just part of me, wants to dismiss it and say, Oh, these people are just this is ridiculous. And you know, this is nothing like hunting down intellectuals. But at the same time, there is a professor watch list. I don't know if you all are on it yet, but do you know if you're? Speaker1: [01:03:32] I don't know, and I'll be disappointed if I'm not, I guess. Speaker2: [01:03:35] But I don't. I don't know. Speaker3: [01:03:36] There's a way in which it's kind of a badge of honor, even though I understand it's not a pleasant experience. Speaker2: [01:03:41] Yeah. Well, but Speaker4: [01:03:43] Yeah, so it's like that that is not a really great thing for or a reflection of where we are politically. Yeah, that that exists. And then it doesn't exist in some corner that no one goes to it. Actually, it actually has a lot of readers and followers. Yeah, that was another really dark set of texts to live with in terms of doing research in the far right for that article. So I maybe need to. The other project I'm working on, I think, has been much more pleasurable to work on, which is I have two colleagues here at Virginia Tech, a sociologist named Shannon Bell and a colleague in women's and gender studies named Christine Lebowski. Speaker2: [01:04:30] Oh my god, Chris Christie. And she was our Utah Speaker3: [01:04:33] Curator, right? Yeah, say hi to her. Speaker1: [01:04:36] She was a post-doc in. Swigs, I that was I think she was here the first year that I was here, Speaker2: [01:04:41] Yeah, saying I say Speaker4: [01:04:43] Hi to an anthropologist. Speaker1: [01:04:44] Yeah, she was someplace in upstate New York, but now she's is that right, huh? Speaker4: [01:04:50] Anyway, maybe she's been at Virginia Tech a while, several years at least. Speaker1: [01:04:56] But yeah, well, tell her. Tell her, hi, that's a surprise. I didn't know she was there. That's cool. Speaker4: [01:05:00] Yeah, so we came together. I think Christine had read something I wrote about drones, and then Shannon and I ended up being neighbors in our little co-housing community here. Again, Serendipity and Shannon has done work on coal and Appalachia, and we all started talking and are starting a feminist energy collective. Speaker2: [01:05:25] Awesome. Oh, awesome. That sounds great. Speaker4: [01:05:29] And we want to think of I think Shannon and I have both in particular done this work about fossil fuels and domination and how it's tied up with toxic masculinity. But we're really starting to think about what can a feminist perspective tell us about designing energy systems that are truly just and sustainable? Like, what would a feminist energy system even look like? How would we know if we saw it right? So we're just at the beginning of that thinking about finding some resources to do that together, writing, writing an article to kind of announce that intention. And then I was really excited to meet Sheena Wilson. Oh yeah, and learn that she is doing that work. She already has a big project up in Canada, doing work on feminist energy. So I think in terms of having research that does not make me feel really dark thoughts about the future of the world that is that's going to be a nice, a nice project. Speaker3: [01:06:33] That's great. You have to keep us posted about that because we are eagerly awaiting that information. Speaker2: [01:06:38] Yeah. The first time Speaker1: [01:06:40] An excellent and important, super timely, yeah, critical. We're going to Speaker3: [01:06:45] Have to bring you and your group back down to Houston again, where we could dearly use a feminist dose of wisdom, dose of feminist wisdom. Speaker2: [01:06:52] Thanks. Well, you live with one, but yeah, you don't need it. I don't. I feel like you get dosed all the time. I feel like I've got two Speaker1: [01:06:59] People in Houston doing it. Speaker3: [01:07:01] I feel like I've got a I've got a sufficient and excellent amount of feminism Speaker2: [01:07:05] In my life. I would hope so. Speaker3: [01:07:06] But not everyone has that in Houston. Speaker2: [01:07:08] Yeah. Speaker4: [01:07:09] Well, part of what we want to do is just try to think about how to talk about feminism in a way that makes it feel like this is really a broadly useful perspective on energy. That it's not just about do women have equal access to fuel or are women on the engineering team that's making the system? But actually, of course, as anyone who is familiar with feminism would know, just thinking about gender as a way to understand power, both political power and fuel power. And if something is feminist, I think a just energy system would be a feminist energy system already. So it's sort of one way to think about how you evaluate whether whether we're interacting with energy, you know, more pleasurably post-work. Yeah, apart from this dominant logic that we're stuck with. Speaker3: [01:08:09] Yeah, and that seems that seems like a good note on which to to end and just to thank you for the good work you're doing and the purest Aristotelian sense of being dynamic and amazing. But just moving things towards the good in your own way and doing it with a great deal of brilliant insight. And it's just it's been fabulous. We're so glad to have met you a few years ago. Two cultures of energy and just to watch as this project has developed, I think we knew it was going to be great, but I'd say the book exceeded my expectations, which were high. So congratulations. And just again, if it isn't obvious from the enthusiasm in our voice, everyone should go read the birth of energy. Speaker1: [01:08:46] Yes, mean to come into it. Speaker4: [01:08:48] And I thank you too for convening this field really or for being leaders in it. Because when I started out on this research, I had no idea who my people were and who is doing this, and where were they and what did that look like? And really going to that rice event was so important. And then having this podcast where in addition to just being interesting, it really does bring together and point you in the direction of this is the community. These are the different people, and we're spread all over the place in terms of discipline and location. And I just think that's a great service to the academic world what you're doing. So I really appreciate it. Speaker3: [01:09:34] Well, thank you. I feel like it's like, Yeah, it's very kind. We have hoped to kind of build a beacon because we knew that there were just a couple of people in every, every university, every department who are doing this work, and there wasn't a critical mass of of us enough anywhere to really feel like you had a local community so you can create a virtual community. That's one way of doing it. Speaker1: [01:09:54] That's right. That's the other. That's a good side of the digital world. One of the good sites. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker2: [01:10:00] Cool. Speaker3: [01:10:01] Well, Kara, with that, we will wish you very well looking forward to staying in touch and just to, you know, the book coming out and everything. So, so. Brava. Speaker4: [01:10:12] Thank you. I really enjoyed talking to you guys.