DeepSummary
The podcast features an interview with Dr. Sean Xu, author of the book 'Air Conditioning' from the Object Lessons series. Xu discusses how air conditioning has quietly shaped our world, from influencing architectural designs and cultural norms to intensifying racial inequalities and contributing to climate change. He explores how the technology conditions our physical, mental, and emotional experiences by sealing us off from the natural fluctuations of temperature.
Xu delves into the history of thermal comfort research and how it marketed a narrow temperature range as ideal for health and productivity. He examines air conditioning's role in preserving cultural artifacts in museums and archives while acknowledging its colonial biases. The book also explores how the lack of air conditioning affects marginalized communities, such as in redlined neighborhoods and prisons.
Xu encourages readers to question how air conditioning shapes our ways of living and thinking, and how it can be distributed more equitably. He suggests that experiencing thermal variation and discomfort might foster a deeper connection with our surroundings and promote collective action against environmental injustice.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Air conditioning has profoundly shaped our built environments, cultural practices, and ways of thinking, often in unnoticed ways.
- The technology has contributed to reinforcing racial inequalities and exacerbating environmental issues, such as climate change and urban heat island effects.
- The concept of 'thermal comfort' has been narrowly defined and marketed as an ideal, largely based on studies conducted on white, middle-class men.
- Air conditioning has influenced our sensory perception of temperature, disconnecting us from natural temperature fluctuations and embodied knowledge.
- The book encourages readers to question how air conditioning shapes our lives, who it benefits and harms, and how it can be distributed more equitably.
- Experiencing thermal variation and discomfort can foster a deeper connection with our surroundings and promote collective action against environmental injustice.
- Museums and archives rely heavily on air conditioning for preservation, but this comes at a significant environmental cost and perpetuates colonial biases.
- Cultural representations of air conditioning, such as in literature and film, can offer insights into the technology's social impacts and inequalities.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “Experiencing some thermal variation and even discomfort might put us in a better position to know more intimately what it's like to be interdependent with the planet and the air and to share that air with others, humans and non humans.“ by Sean Xu
- “I hope the book will help readers see air conditioning differently, and that would include seeing air conditioning effects where we wouldn't maybe have expected to find them, and also maybe even to feel it differently, as the technology designed to disconnect us from the air around us and from the humans and non humans who live in it with us.“ by Sean Xu
- “The idea isn't to do away with air conditioning or to make readers feel guilty about it. As I said, I use it, too, but to raise questions about how it shapes our ways of living and thinking, who it benefits and who it harms, and how it can be distributed in more just and equitable ways.“ by Sean Xu
- “Maybe what we need is something like hot knowledge, right? So knowledge that's not sealed off from its surroundings, and thinking that centers the experiences of people who have more intimate and extensive knowledge of temperature variations than those of us who spend most of our lives in air condition bubbles.“ by Sean Xu
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Episode Information
New Books in Environmental Studies
Marshall Poe
3/8/24