What is ecofascism and who "is" ecofascist or "does" ecofascism? Alex Menrisky walks us through why his new book is titled "Everyday Ecofascism," or the ways that ecofascism is not solely a far-right governmental structure but a genre, a mode of storytelling. This means that ecofascism emerges through not just laws and political leaders but through quotidian acts and utterances by citizens and politicians alike. Listen in as he walks us through representations of land, food, drugs, tools, and more that often utilize both ecological visions of catastrophe and alarm with fascist thought.   For more of Alex Menrisky:   Email: amenrisky@uconn.edu Uconn Faculty Page: https://english.uconn.edu/person/alex-menrisky/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded October 17, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month we had a fascinating conversation with Bart Welling, whose presentation at the ASLE Conference this last summer was caught by Lindsay! Bart's research was informed by his own road trip around the country, a month-long, 12,000-mile trip. This chat was particularly special as Bart is still completing his book project, and we aim to have more episodes in the future with more research-in-progress!   Bart walked us through his new book project, "Resisting Energy: The Long Struggle Against Irresponsible Power," that looks at the modern debates over fossil fuels and energy, arguing we need to rethink energy (including "clean" energy) with the laborers who are often treated as dispensable.     For more of Bart Welling:   Email: bhwellin@unf.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded September 26nd, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month we sat down with Jon Pitt to discuss his new book "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan." The book spans Japanese writers and filmmakers from the 1930s to today whose works all ask a similar question: What would it mean for humans to be more like plants? Looking at the ways that this question informed critiques of colonialism and even today immigration in these works, Pitt labels how these authors take up the plasticity of plants "becoming botanical."   This episode is a great companion piece to our last episode with Rachel DiNitto on Japanese Ecocinema!   For more of Jon Pitt:   Email: jpitt@uci.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded August 22nd, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

For this month’s episode, we sat down with Rachel DiNitto to discuss the pioneering edited volume Eco-Disasters in Japanese Cinema (2024) and her own chapter in it on "Toxicoscapes." With thematic coverage that ranges from contaminated childhoods, to nuclear anxiety, and all the way to apocalyptic futures, this manuscript both expands the overall definition of “eco-disaster” and focuses in on the specificity of the Japanese context. Join us for a conversation that offers new perspectives to ecocinema enthusiasts in general and scholars of Japanese environments alike! For more from Rachel: https://www.racheldinitto.com/ ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer Bluesky: @asleecocast.bsky.social If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded June 13th, 2025. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this episode, Alex sat down with Amanda Baugh to chat about her new book, Falling in Love with Nature: The Values of Latinx Catholic Environmentalism. An ethnographic study of Hispanic Catholics, Baugh's book argues to widen the definition of environmentalism to include those who commit more sustainable actions (recycling, public transportation) not because of an express desire to be an environmentalist, but because of pious attention to loving nature in order to uphold one's faith. Spurred by a Public Religion Research Institute survey that found that Hispanic Catholics were more concerned about climate change than any other religious focus group, Baugh pushes against notions of the environmentalism of the poor. The idea that impoverished people practice more sustainable living due to their class, Baugh instead analyzes their faith. Recorded on the day of the conclave for a new Pope, this is a perfect companion piece to last month's episode with Kate Rigby!   For more of Amanda Baugh:   Website: amandajbaugh.com   Email: amanda.baugh@csun.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded May 7, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

For this episode, we sat down with Kate Rigby to discuss her new book Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction. The text is a reclaiming of the ancient theological meditation form, the hexameron, to consider the climate crisis and mass extinction. Meditating on a day of creation in each chapter, she tells us about the insights each day of creation has for the Anthropocene like contemplative practices in the First Day and the move from a "Kingdom" to a "Kindom" of species in the Fifth Day. This episode and the next will be on religion and ecology, a fitting focus on the topic at a time of a new Pope!   For more of Kate Rigby:   Website: https://mesh.uni-koeln.de/   Guest Magpie Recommendation: Magpie Whisperer - https://www.shop.themagpiewhisperer.com/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded April 25, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We sat down with Melody Jue for a second episode to discuss her new work Coralations, a fascinating deep dive into the coral we know and the coral we need to know. Though tropical corals inundate perceptions of coral, there are other deep water and cold water coral that have different connections or coralations to anthropogenic climate change. By rethinking "normative coral," new media across photography, sci fi, and more come into the light.   For more about Melody Jue:   Website: Melodyjue.info Email: mjue@ucsb.edu   Guest Reading Recommendations:  a book of waves - Stefan Helmreich   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded March 17, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month's episode is a podcast about a podcast! We sat down with Nate Otjen and Jessica Ng, two of the leaders of the audio story series "Mining for the Climate," to discuss the audio documentary series and its investigation of the rhetoric arguing for continued mining as essential to the "green transition." The first season, set in Gaston County, North Carolina, details the controversy surrounding a proposed lithium mine in the county, and the upcoming second season takes listeners to Nevada to discuss the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine. We discuss their creation process, how they constructed the narrative across five episodes, learn some updates on Gaston County since the first season, and explore the second season's auditory, photographic, and cartographic elements.   For more about Mining for the Climate:   Email: Jessica.ng@princeton.edu notjen@ramapo.edu Website: Bluelabmedia.org   Guest Reading Recommendations: Benedetta Brevini's AI Scholarship Kohei Saito's Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded February 28, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this month's episode, we spoke with Sarah Dimick about her new book Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures. It connects literature and the environment through an idea of seasonality and rhythm. Climate change can be understood as a time of unseasonableness, of environmental events and cycles being outside normal rhythms of time. Living today is defined by this arrhythmia, and Sarah charts new territory in studying literature for its reflections of this cyclicality, what she calls literary phenology.   For more from Sarah Dimick:   Email: sarah.dimick@northwestern.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded January 30, 2025   CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Today's episode begins a slight turn toward ecoaesthetics in the next few episodes, and we begin with Carolyn Fornoff's new book Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Cultural Production in the Era of Climate Change (2024). Carolyn spoke to us about subjunctivity, a grammatical mood characterized by hypotheticals, and how its imaginative style has sprouted up in recent Mexican film, activism, and texts not to depict climate change in an "evidentiary" sense (a typical narrative style of eco-literature and scholarship to highlight society's quantifiable effect on the environment) but in a more conditional and conjectural sense of possibility. What might the future hold, and what might be done about it?   For more from Carolyn:   Website: https://carolynfornoff.wordpress.com/ Bluesky: @c4.noff.bsky.social   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded December 12, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In the final episode of our extinction series, we chatted with two extinction biologists, Hope Sutton and Sara Schweitzer, who work for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Sara is the assistant chief and wildlife diversity program director and Hope is the eastern wildlife diversity supervisor. We discussed their challenges in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville and their triumphs in the successful rehabilitation of some of the more than 100 endangered animals under their purview! While their work is field-focused, they remind us that the stories told about the animals are extremely important to influence public support for the species.   For more on Sara and Hope, go to Ncwildlife.org, where the organization publishes quarterly reports.   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded December 16, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this second episode of our ongoing extinction series, we sit down with Jean-Thomas Tremblay and Steven Swarbrick to discuss their thought-provoking co-written manuscript, Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction. Our conversation with them touches not only on the concrete topics of extinction and cinema, but also explores the theoretical potential of negations and contradictions as frameworks for understanding the relationship (or not) between humans and the more-than-human world.    For more from Jean-Thomas and Steven:   https://jeanthomastremblay.carrd.co/ https://www.stevenswarbrick.com/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded September 26, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this first episode of our extinction series, we met with Todd May to discuss his new book Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Times. This massive question is accessibly analyzed yet Todd also brings in issues underdiscussed in extinction discourse: Who is the inexact "we" behind the question, how do different humans contribute to ecological crisis and therefore human and nonhuman extinction, and what is the role of art in deciding whether humanity's existence should continue? Instead of concluding on one side or the other, Todd finds asking the question of humanity's extinction itself is a productive thought experiment for ourselves and our community.   For more on Todd May: Website: https://www.toddmayphilosopher.com/ Email: todd-may@warren-wilson.edu   Todd's Reading Recommendation: The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration by Peter Goldie (2002).   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded September 18, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this episode, we met with Nadia Colburn to discuss her new poetry collection I Say the Sky! Deeply engaged with the ecological collapse happening around us while also reinvesting in our own existence, her poems range from the simplicity in appreciating the beauty of an onion to reassessing childhood trauma. We also talk through her multi-hyphenate pursuits and the continual search for the "symphony inside you".   For more on Nadia: Website: nadiacolburn.com Email: nadia@nadiacolburn.com   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded July 22, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In our final episode of our polar environmental humanities series, we have Penn State English professor Hester Blum on to discuss her environmental humanities research on polar ecomedia! Dr. Blum discusses the ephemeral texts and productions aboard Arctic and Antarctic voyages including newspapers. Newspapers on polar voyages? Yes, you heard that right. These texts have contemporary and global lessons to teach in that their production took place while in extreme environments.   For more on Hester:   Twitter: @hesterblum Email: hester.blum@psu.edu Website: hesterblum.com   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded May 22, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In our second episode of our polar environmental humanities series, we jump from the landscape paintings of the circumpolar north to the southern continent of Antarctica and speak with Dr. Elizabeth Leane at the University of Tasmania! As a Professor of Antarctic Studies, we discuss her work on perceptions of Antarctica historically and also sensorially. From pandemic misconceptions of cleanliness and silence on the continent to science fiction and Antarctic tourism, Leane walks us through the complex histories of the South Pole. We have one more episode in the series coming out next month!   For more on Elizabeth:   Twitter: @elizabeth_leane Email: Elizabeth.Leane@utas.edu.au LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-leane-ab10706b   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded March 26, 2024.

This is the first episode in our polar environmental humanities series with Dr. Isabelle Gapp from the University of Aberdeen! We met to discuss her new book, "A Circumpolar Landscape", and the fascinating comparisons between Scandinavian and Canadian landscape painting beyond national borders. We discuss the way the paintings can often exhibit masculine performativity in their erasures and how the painters are nostalgically reminiscing about a landscape changing in front of their eyes from colonial environmental degradation, making the landscapes they painted an "environmental history [that] had become a memory". Stay tuned for two more episodes in this series!   For more on Isabelle: Twitter: @issy_gapp Instagram: @isabellegapp Website: https://isabellegapp.com/ Email: isabelle.gapp@abdn.ac.uk   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded March 6, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Our conversation with Professor Angus discusses her brand-new book Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography. As the title suggests, Angus connects photography with the materials that make it possible: bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements. Each has been used at various points in photography's history to physically produce an image, and Siobhan tells us how photography doesn't exist without the mine and extraction. If, in Rob Nixon's words, capitalism "extract[s] in order to abstract", then Camera Geologica is undermining this abstraction by enmeshing photography with its material origin.     For more on Siobhan Angus:   Twitter: https://twitter.com/siobhanangus Website: https://www.siobhanangus.com/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded March 22, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Our conversation with Professor Goode explores her recent book Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability. Two recent phrases form the impetus of her book: "We Can't Solve the Climate Crisis Unless Black Lives Matter" and "Climate Change Is also a Racial Justice Problem". Goode traces these back to the enigmatic Thomas Jefferson to illuminate and enmesh the supposedly protoecological American past with its racist and eugenic histories by analyzing agrotopias. She defines agrotopias as "seemingly ideal worlds of agrarian stability and productive labor" (3).   Below are the three texts Goode offers as examples of alternatives to Agrotopian thinking:   Earth Democracy - Vandana Shiva Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World - Wangari Maathai (As part of the Green Belt Movement)   For more on Abby Goode:   https://abbygoode.wordpress.com/     ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded February 5, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This episode is a goodbye and a hello. Brandon Galm, the creator of EcoCast in 2020 and co-host since its inception, is now stepping away from the podcast to make more time for his new roles at Cloud County Community College in North Central Kansas. We say hello to Alex Tischer, a recent graduate from Wright State in English who is now applying to English Ph.D. programs. Brandon and Alex are on either side of the Ph.D. process, and this episode discusses the co-host transition, Brandon's next endeavors, and even recounts the origin story of the podcast four years ago. Don't fret, Brandon will still be involved with the podcast here and there. Goodbyes are never easy, but Lindsay and Alex have new episodes coming soon! Stay tuned for new environmental conversations in novel and exciting fields.   For more on Brandon:   Email: brandonjgalm@gmail.com   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded January 14, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0