Rudy sits down with Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, author of Socialist States and the Environment, for a discussion on environmental history of socialist states, as well as on doing science from a socialist standpoint. We cover what studying soils reveals, why they had an impact on Marx, and what the history of soils shows about economic transitions in Hungary. We talk about the unfairness of comparisons done in current scholarship, the environmental record of the USSR and what happened after the collapse of the Soviet union, the effects of the economic transition of China on its environment, and the heroic achievements in Cuba to overcome the legacies of colonialism in the environment.

We apologize for the lower than usual quality on this audio. We had sound issues which are unfortunately reflected throughout the episode.