Turds, Trash and Tweets: A Conversation with Raul Pacheco-Vega

SHHH: The Poopcast (aka S**t and Shame with Shawn)

In this fast-paced hour, Shawn Shafner (The Puru) sits down with water and wastewater governance expert Raul Pacheco-Vega for a discussion that leapfrogs from the culture of flushing and bottled water, to the politics of poverty and what it means to pick trash for a living. Remember that kid who took their ball and went home when they didn’t get their way? Little Raul wanted to know how to keep the game going. Two Masters degrees, one PhD (with a double major in political science and human geography), and 15,848 Twitter followers later, Raul is one of the world’s foremost experts on sharing. He takes a holistic approach to studying how and why people, communities and governments do or don’t cooperate, and the tension caused by our competing desires to both shun the stranger and work together. You’ll also find out Raul’s number one secret for being productive, how he “obviously” drank sewer water, and why fear may be the worst advisor of all.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

Assistant Professor, Public Administration Division of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, CIDE, AC), Aguascalientes, Mexico, Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, Human Geography, Chemical Engineer, closed system of recirculation, solution to pollution is dilution, EPA, Jamie Benidickson, University of Ottawa, Barbara Penner, Bathroom, Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, Common Pool Resources (CPR), Nobel prize, public policy, recycling, queer identities, dignity of a toilet, India, Donald Trump, Jurassic Park, Cristina Guggeri, Sarah Jewitt, geographies of shit, waste categories and continuums, valuable vs nonvaluable, production vs excretion, bio-political undertones, Daniel Gerling, Cuba, Mao Zedong, hazardous waste, landfill, NIMBY, informal settlement, slum, negative commons, single stream recycling, compassion, open defecation, Joshua Reno, health, human right to water, Jack Sim, World Toilet Day, Institutional Analysis and Development Framework, Social Ecological Systems Framework, Urine Diversion Summit, Rich Earth Summit, Lillian Volat, cewas Middle East, Syria, Palestine, Bill Gates, omni-processor, social media