I read Paul Greenberg’s American Catch a few months ago and while I enjoyed the whole thing, the most striking section to me was the material about oysters and New York City. The combination of food history, the interface between built and natural environments, and the marine pushed a lot of my buttons.
A recent 99% Invisible episode entitled “Oyster-tecture” takes the same material as a jumping off point to dive more specifically into the oyster reef construction efforts of one of Greenberg’s subjects. The episode is great—as 99% Invisible so often is—but I hope it will also encourage more people to read Greenberg’s book.
In a similar vein, another of my favorite podcasts Track Changes has an interview episode with Kim Stanley Robinson on which he discusses his novel New York 2140 (which I still need to read) and speculated on the consequences of rising sea levels for the built environment and urban geography of New York City.
