Jess DiCarlo joins Juliet and Keren for a dynamic discussion about China's identity as an infrastructural state, the myth of the debt trap narrative, cycling as method (and Jess's experience biking along the China-Laos train route), the impact of the BRI in Laos, and much more.

Dr. Jess DiCarlo is an assistant professor in Geography, Environment, and Asian Studies at the University of Utah. She has been a Wilson China Fellow, a Public Intellectual Program Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the Chevalier Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transportation and Development in China at the University of British Columbia's Institute of Asian Research in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Colorado Boulder and a masters in development studies from the University of California Berkeley.

Her research focuses on China, its borderlands, infrastructure, issues at the environment-society nexus, and China's global integration. DiCarlo is on the editorial board of The People’s Map of Global China (the launch of which we covered on this show) and its related Global China Pulse journal, and the co-founder of the Second Cold War Observatory and co-host of its podcast, The Roundtable podcast.

Recommendations:

Jess:

• Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China by Jesse Rodenbiker

Juliet:

• The Three Body Problem series on Netflix, adapted from the trilogy by Cixin Liu

Keren:

• Peter Hessler's writings, specifically River Town, Oracle Bones, Country Driving