Gretchen Bakke
Cultural anthropologist and author of The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy. Studies the social, technical, and regulatory systems that make electric power possible.
Best podcasts with Gretchen Bakke
Ranked by the Snipd community
62 snips
Apr 3, 2026 • 33min
Service Request #4: How Does the Grid in Phoenix Work?
Angie Bond-Simpson, SRP resource planner, and Gretchen Bakke, anthropologist and grid author, unpack how Phoenix keeps power flowing when extreme heat makes outages dangerous. They trace electricity from plant to plug. They explore the Western Grid, real-time balancing at 60 hertz, day-ahead forecasting, and why balloons, crashes, and brutal heat can threaten a city’s fragile margin for error.
Sep 16, 2021 • 40min
How We Got our Grid and How We Get a Better One
Anthropologist Gretchen Bakke discusses the barriers to using renewable energies, focusing on the challenges of the electricity grid. The episode explores the history of the grid system, the transition from competitive markets to regulated monopolies, and the evolution of the energy industry towards renewable sources.
