David Zetland gives a powerhouse interview on his many decades of writing on water, the commons, and climate change. He discusses his recently reissued book Living with Water Scarcity (2014/2023) which does a wonderful job explaining water economics to the general reader. We also get into why water managers fail and, in his opinion, why academic publishing has lost its luster.

Professor Zetland is a senior university lecturer in political-economy at Leiden University College in the Netherlands. In addition to Living, he has published The End of Abundance (2011), The Best of Aguanomics (2018), and The Little Book of The Commons (2022) - all freely available for download at kysq.org.

Note to listeners: The interview recording contains minor sound quality issues, probably due to the long-distance conversation.

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, trailblazing, and entertaining 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.