Podcast appearances and mentions of Stephen J Pyne

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world?  Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades.  In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world?  Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades.  In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world?  Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades.  In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world?  Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades.  In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world?  Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a team of researchers took into the park's backcountry as part of a program examining the effects of changing fire regimes over the last several decades.  In the process, Pyne explains how and why the human abolition - and reignition - of fires in the park have had dramatic effects on a place which is 95% wilderness. People, Pyne argues, have a strange relationship with fire, at once keeping the elemental process at arm's length while simultaneously being intertwined culturally and even physically with fire and its effects. As fires grow and the planet warms, Pyne asks readers to consider Yosemite as both a warning about the dangers of misunderstanding fire, and an example of how to respect fire as the ecological necessity it has always been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

O filósofo e ambientalista Viriato Soromenho-Marques tem dedicado a sua vida a acompanhar os fenómenos de distopia humana, entre os quais o das alterações climáticas e o da grande aceleração do progresso. Nesse podcast Biosfera analisa o impacto da obra de Stephen J. Pyne, autor de “Piroceno. De Como a Humanidade criou uma Idade do Fogo e o que virá a Seguir”, lançado em Portugal pela editora Zigurate. Viriato deixa-nos ainda um vislumbre sobre as consequências da incapacidade humana em alterar o rumo dos acontecimentos. E a seguir ouvimos o próprio autor, Stephen J.Pyne, numa entrevista exclusiva para o Biosfera.

This week's episode is the third in a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change in the United States and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Kimi Barrett, a research and policy analyst at Headwaters Economics, about wildfires in the American West. Barrett discusses the growing wildfire problem in the West; how climate change is affecting wildfire in the region; the ecological function of wildfire; and how local and state governments in the West are mitigating wildfire risk. References and recommendations: “Building for Wildfire” from Headwaters Economics; https://headwaterseconomics.org/headwaters/building-for-wildfire/ Books by Stephen J. Pyne; https://www.stephenpyne.com/works.htm “The Big Burn” by Timothy Egan; https://www.timothyeganbooks.com/the-big-burn “How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface” by David E. Calkin, Jack D. Cohen, Mark A. Finney, and Matthew P. Thompson; https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1315088111

In Season 3 of The Subverse, we are journeying into ‘fire'. In this opening episode, we speak with Prof. Stephen J. Pyne, a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, U.S.A. Pyne has written over 40 books, most of which are centred around fire. In this conversation, we focus on his book The Pyrocene: How we Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next, published in 2021. Apart from being such a prolific scholar of fire, Stephen J. Pyne spent 15 seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park, 12 as crew boss, with another three seasons writing fire plans for other national parks.  He lives in Queen Creek, Arizona. His next book is a fire history of Mexico. Susan and Stephen discuss how fire is, for humans, our defining ecological trait. We are unique fire creatures on a unique fire planet, and as keepers of the flame, we need to somehow get the right mix of fire in the world to balance our interests and those of others. In his book, Pyne proposes a fire-centric perspective on how humans continue to shape the Earth. The book renames and redefines the so-called Anthropocene according to humanity's primary ecological signature, which is our ability to manipulate fire. As he states in the book, “the sum of our fire practices is creating a fire age that is equivalent in stature to the ice ages of the Pleistocene.” In the narrative he lays out, the pyric prism he uses is what he terms as an ecological three-body problem. The history that Pyne narrates chronicles three fires. First-fire is the fire of nature that appeared as soon as plants colonised continents, about 420 million years ago. Thanks to cooking, a dependence on fire became coded into hominin DNA. Second-fire was an act of domestication, perhaps the model for all pyrotechnologies, in which people had transformed wildfire into hearth and torch. Third-fire is qualitatively different. Pyne points out that third-fire burns lithic landscapes no longer bounded by ecological limits. With a source of combustibles, which are essentially unbounded, inadequate sinks for the effluent, from cooking food and landscapes, we are now cooking planets. The sum of Earth's three fires is creating the fire-informed equivalent of an ice age, and instead of ice amassing more ice, fire is generating more fire. This pyric transition also means that fire vanished as a serious object of inquiry. Fire with its flame, glow, heat, and crackle has been reduced to the most elemental chemical and physical expressions, each isolated and engineered, so that what had been ‘fire' became ‘combustion,' and combustion has become only its constituent parts. What we erased were traditional and indigenous knowledges of living with fire. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Stephen J. Pyne's new book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (U California Press, 2021) tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet. Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Prominent research ecologist Dr. Paul Hessburg began his career decades ago as a U.S. Forest Service entomologist, studying the insects that kill trees on the grandest scale. Over the years, Hessburg broadened his scope, delving deeper into the greatest force for ecological change on Earth: fire and the age we live now in, the Age of Megafire, or the Pyrocene. Listen to this fascinating deep dive into how we got here and where we must go – if we hope to survive. To get the absolute most out of this conversation, revisit BHA Podcast & Blast Episode 66, our interview with fire historian Dr. Stephen J. Pyne, who coined the term “the Pyrocene.”

A very rare and highly insightful conversation with the worlds foremost fire historian, Stephen J Pyne. We dive deeper into our relationship with fire and touch on our modern day, largely dysfunctional and reductionist, approach. Steve Pyne is an emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He has been at ASU since 1985. In 1986 he joined the charter faculty at ASU West, where he remained for 10 years. He transferred to the School of Life Sciences in 1999. Stephen J Pyne is a HUGELY prodigious writer, he has published 35 books, most of them dealing with fire, including extensive historical fire surveys of America, Australia, Canada, Europe (including Russia), and the Earth. What could be called his magnum opus a 5 book series collectively called Cycles Of Fire, constructs a highly detailed and deeply nuanced history of fire and most uniquely and importantly our relationship to it. His latest book on Fire: A Brief History. Condenses and distills thousands of published pages on fire elegantly in one volume. I knew from the first lecture i heard of Stephen's that I must share his work with you. As someone deeply invested ecology from a 'living' standpoint, Fire was never something I considered or looked into to much depth. But I found Stephen's message of our need to engage and reassess our relationship with fire so resonating that it led me into a rich world that we interact with everyday and know very little about. His Extensive academic work would be impressive on its own before you find that Stephen Pyne spent 15 seasons as a remote forestry fire fighter. Learning and living with fire since the age of 18. This combination of two worlds lends Stephen's words and concepts a depth and subtlety beyond facts and figures, physics and chemistry. Hate it or love it, fire is a part of our world now and forever. A relationship like fire is not easily or wisely ignored. It was an honour and and treat to learn another perspective on this ever present relationship. Be prepared to change what you think about fire. It changed me. Hope you enjoy it Favourite timestamp: 32:57 3:45 The clarifying power of writing everyday 5:35 Living two lives between fire and academia 11:30 Telling stories of fire 12:47 Fire up and over the rim. 15:00 Expanding the history of fire 15:45 A relationship with fire 20:50 A shift from burning landscape to burning fossil fuels. changing patterns. 23:14 Traditional hunting societies and fire 25:00 Ignition points. Aboriginal Australia 27:43 Another wonderful Mollison story remains just that. sorry guys 30:36 Getting back to the right fire patterns in Arnhem Land Australia. 32:57 Its not just “too much fuel” 48:55 Fire is not just physics and chemistry

“Photosynthesis puts things together. Fire takes them apart.” – Dr. Stephen J. Pyne. While many people talk of the “Anthropocene” – the age of humankind, when nearly every natural process seems to be affected by the actions of billions of individual people – Stephen Pyne reminds us that we also are living in the Pyrocene, the age of fire, and that the history of humankind is inextricable from the history of fire, the most elemental and implacable force on this planet. Join Hal in Queen Creek, Arizona, for a conversation with Dr. Pyne, 15 years a firefighter on the crew of Grand Canyon National Park; a renowned writer, speaker and teacher; author of 35 books; and the world’s foremost scholar and historian of fire, about the Pyrocene, about forests and public lands, and about the future of life on this Earth.

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Judson Boomhower, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Boomhower and Raimi discuss the recent public safety power shutoffs that affected over one million people in northern California, what led to the shutoffs, the effects of the shutoffs, and how planned shutoffs might become more common in the future. The shutoffs have gotten a lot of attention, but Boomhower brings unique expertise to the issue, including a deep understanding of the electricity system, wildfire, and—crucially—the economics of liability. References and recommendations: "Earth as Art" from the US Geological Survey; https://eros.usgs.gov/image-gallery/earth-art "Between Two Fires" by Stephen J. Pyne; https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/between-two-fires