Then & Now - The Los Angeles Wildfires in the Age of the Pyrocene: A Conversation with Fire Scholar Stephen Pyne.

The Los Angeles Wildfires in the Age of the Pyrocene: A Conversation with Fire Scholar Stephen Pyne.

01/29/25 • 46 min

This week’s episode of then & now is the first in a series examining one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, the Los Angeles wildfires. Joined by Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University Stephen Pyne, one of the country’s leading thinkers about fire, we discuss the history of urban fire to understand what is unfolding in Los Angeles—where lives, communities, histories, and large swaths of nature are being destroyed before our eyes. Informed by his wide-ranging perspective on fire management, Stephen situates the L.A. wildfires within a broader historical perspective. He describes the current era as the Pyrocene, the age of the Fire. He suggests that while nuisance fires have decreased, we now face dire conditions worsened by factors such as climate change, land use, and the burning of fossil fuels—all of which highlight the need for a fundamental reorganization of our lives. To conclude, he stresses the importance of avoiding the conditions that cause massive destruction, especially the burning of fossil fuels, and advocates for a thoughtful reassessment of our relationship with fire that minimizes the risk of future destructive events.
Stephen Pyne is an Emeritus Professor of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He spent 15 seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a Grand Canyon National Park fire crew. Out of those seasons emerged a scholarly interest in the history and management of fire, with major surveys for America, Australia, Canada, Europe (including Russia), and the Earth. He has written 40 books, mostly on the history and management of wildland and rural fire, including a multi-volume fire history of the U.S. and its regions since 1960 (University of Arizona Press).
Further Reading
Human use of fire has produced an era of uncontrolled burning: Welcome to the Pyrocene
2025 Los Angeles Fires

Previous Episode

Domestic Violence, Title IX, and the Stories We Don’t Tell: A Conversation with Joy Neumeyer

**Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual and domestic violence.
In this week’s episode of then & now, guest host Professor Jared McBride is joined by Dr. Joy Neumeyer to discuss her recent book, A Survivor’s Education. In the book, as well as this episode, Joy interweaves her own experiences of domestic abuse and the bureaucracy surrounding Title IX with Soviet and Russian history and examines gender and violence norms within the profession of history and academia writ large. Within the context of the #MeToo movement, Joy reflects on the enduring struggle that victims of abuse face due to the common propensity to amplify and repeat the narratives that are spread by perpetrators of violence. Informed by her extensive research on the history and application of Title IX—including the procedural tribulations of her own case—Joy intertwines the past and present and challenges the postmodernist approach to historical methodology with regard to truth narrativity and meaning. Joy concludes with the sentiment that historians can never be truly objective. Instead, they must expose their positionality and the personal, political, and social factors shaping their narrative about the past.
If you are experiencing abuse or are concerned about someone you know, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) or visit http://www.thehotline.org.
Joy Neumeyer is a journalist and historian of Russia and Eastern Europe. She received a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Russia and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She has also worked as a reporter in Moscow and Warsaw. Her first book, A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’t Tell (PublicAffairs, 2024), is an investigative memoir about abuse and the tension between narrative and evidence in understanding the past. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, New Left Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Jared McBride is an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of History and is an expert on the history of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. His research examines mass violence, the Holocaust, interethnic conflict, nationalist movements, and war crimes prosecution. McBride’s research has been supported by fellowships, including the Guggenheim, SSRC, and Fulbright-Hays.
Further Reading
Darkness at Noon: On History, Narrative, and Domestic Violence
Title IX
Bernice Sandler
#MeToo Movement

Next Episode

Europe Without Borders: The Rise and Partial Fall of the Schengen Zone. A Conversation with Isaac Stanley-Becker.

In this week’s episode of then & now, we are joined by Dr. Isaac Stanley-Becker, a reporter on intelligence and national security issues for The Washington Post, to examine the rise and partial fall of the Schengen Zone amid ongoing and polarizing debates regarding immigration policy. Through the lens of his dual expertise as a journalist and a historian, Isaac explores the origins and historical progression of the Schengen Zone in his recent publication, Europe Without Borders. Established in 1985, the Schengen Zone was created as an area facilitating free movement across Europe in the aftermath of World War II, symbolizing European unity and liberal internationalism. However, contemporary discourse frequently associates it with Europe’s migration crisis, fueling a backlash against globalization. While the Schengen Zone has significantly transformed European society, it has also consistently excluded non-Europeans, particularly migrants of color from former colonies of the Schengen member states. Isaac concludes with the assertion that the Schengen Zone is currently facing a precarious situation. Highlighting the rising prevalence of illiberal populism and anti-immigrant fury in both Europe and the United States, he posits that if Europe can develop and implement a more effective burden-sharing system for asylum seekers, the viability of the Schengen Zone could be maintained in a more coherent manner.

Isaac Stanley-Becker is a staff writer for The Washington Post, focusing on intelligence and national security. With a PhD in history from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar, he has been an investigative reporter on the national staff and reported from across Europe. He recently published Europe without Borders: A History (Princeton University Press 2025), an investigation into the origins and development of the Schengen area of Europe. He was also part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2024 for “American Icon,” a series exploring the role of the AR-15 in American life.

Further Reading

The Schengen Area

2015: The year of Europe's refugee crisis