In this episode, Sayd Randle joins us from Kathmandu, Nepal, to talk about her fascinating new book, Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2025). We discuss her ethnographic approach to water and the challenges and opportunities of localizing urban water supplies. She also gives us a peek at what she's now working on halfway around the world.

Dr. Randle is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Singapore Management University.

Paul Brown joins the Water Shelf Podcast to discuss his unique, entertaining, and self-published book, Too Good to Be True: Scottsdale and Privatization in the 1980s (2020). His detailed account of a water treatment plant public-private partnership evokes both a specific time and place and larger themes of professional development and learning from your mistakes.

Mr. Brown is President of Paul Redvers Brown Inc., having previously served for 37 years at CDM Smith, including as Executive Vice President and Board Member. He is a Fellow of the International Water Association, a member of the Urban Water Institute's Board of Directors, and previously served on the Boards of Kennedy/Jenks Consultants, the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, and the Council for Watershed Health.

Giulio Boccaletti provides a master class on water, politics, and social organization in this fascinating discussion of his book Water: A Biography (Pantheon Books, 2021). His "story of people and water" traces the historical dialectic between the practical realities of water management and the development of political ideologies, and he argues for republicanism over authoritarianism in addressing climate change.

Dr. Boccaletti is the Scientific Director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Foundation, Honorary Research Associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and Executive Producer of the upcoming PBS/BBC Studios series “The Future of Nature.”