Outside/In

With the ubiquity of plastic products, it’s maybe no surprise that a growing body of research shows tiny pieces of plastic are getting inside of us.  But what is all this plastic doing to our bodies? And once it’s there… is there any way to get it out?  Producer Haleema Shah looks at what the research says (and doesn’t say) about plastic and health, and explores a new trend in wellness: the microplastics cleanse.  Featuring Charmaine Dahlenburg, Marcus Garcia, Yael Cohen, and Sarah Morath. Produced by Haleema Shah. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zeyneb Magavi is a bona fide climate nerd; she drives an electric car, has solar panels on her roof, and worries about natural gas leaks because they’re a major source of planet-warming emissions. Bill Akley is a lifelong natural gas guy; he grew up smelling heating oil in his kitchen, spent decades in the energy industry, and eventually became head of New England’s largest gas utility.  So what brought this improbable duo together? The answer is under your feet. In this episode, how a geothermal pilot project in Massachusetts is bringing together unlikely alliances that might be key to our clean energy future. Featuring Zeyneb Magavi, Bill Akley, and Kevin Kircher. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Learn more about the networked geothermal pilot in Framingham, MA, and how it works.Learn more about the “gas-to-geo transition” that HEET advocates for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2009, the state of Maine ordered farmer Dan Brown to stop selling his raw milk. It kicked off a five-year legal battle that stoked the flames of Maine’s dairy wars. But, after Farmer Brown lost his case and hung up his milking hat, things quieted down.  Twenty years later, raw milk has surged back into the zeitgeist. Influencers are saying it tastes like ice cream, RFK Jr. is taking shots of it at the White House, and Gwyneth Paltrow is putting it in her coffee. All of which makes for a pretty obvious question… What’s the appeal? Is raw milk some kind of superfood? Or something to avoid at all costs?  Featuring Dan Brown, Andy Bisson, Danny Bisson, Nicole Martin, Pamela Ruegg, and Mary McGonigle-Martin. SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS For a comprehensive history of dairy check out Milk! A 10,000 Year History by Mark Kurlansky. During the height of Dan Brown’s case he gave a speech to a rousing crowd in Blue Hill. You can watch that here.  The debate over raw vs. pasteurized milk has been happening for a long time. The Milk Question by Milton Joseph Rosenau is a fascinating (we daresay, poetic) read.  The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance is a nearly 500-page document that outlines the intricacies of milk regulation in the U.S. Here’s its most current version.  The FDA fact-checks many different raw milk claims ⁠on this page⁠, including pasteurization's affect on vitamin content and potential probiotic benefit. CREDITS  Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2023, dozens of strangers gathered together in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York for three straight days. Their mission? Teach people of color how to kill, gut, and butcher a deer for the first time. Producer Felix Poon was there as a first-time hunter. He wanted to know: what does it feel like to take an animal's life to sustain your own? Given the opportunity… would he pull the trigger? In this episode we follow Felix out of his depth and into the woods, to find out if one weekend can convert a longtime city-dweller into a dedicated deer hunter. This episode was first published in early 2024, and was produced by Felix Poon. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.com. Featuring Dorothy Ren, Brandon Dale, and Brant MacDuff. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. ⁠Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. ⁠ Follow Outside/In on ⁠Instagram⁠ or join our private ⁠discussion group on Facebook⁠. LINKS⁠ Lydia Parker, executive director of Hunters of Color, discusses how to make the outdoors more equitable⁠. (The Nature Conservancy)⁠ Melissa Harris-Perry talks to Brandon Dale⁠, the New York ambassador for the Hunters of Color organization, on WNYC’s The Takeaway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fishing tycoon is arrested in an elaborate sting operation, but claims he’s the real hero fighting back against an overbearing state. So who is Carlos “The Codfather” Rafael really – a folk hero, a crook, a righteous rebel, or a selfish conman? This week we’re sharing the first episode from “Catching The Codfather,” the third season of GBH’s hit podcast The Big Dig.  It’s a series about fishing regulations disguised as a true crime caper unlike any you’ve heard before.  Produced by Ian Coss and Isabel Hibbard. To hear the rest of the series, subscribe to The Big Dig wherever you get your podcasts.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s few certainties in life. But the sun will always rise, the seasons will change, and the Outside/Inbox will forever remain answered.  From lighthouse paint hues to polar bear lovers, this week the team takes up your questions on all things red.  What makes cardinals red?  Why do albino animals have red eyes? ⁠ ⁠Why are so many lighthouses painted red? ⁠ Do our dogs love us?  ⁠Do some animals have same-sex relationships?⁠ ⁠How do environmental changes affect pair-bonding? ⁠ Featuring Alex Funk, Jeremy D'Entremont, Karyn Anderson, and Francesco Ventura.  Thanks to Outside/In listeners Liz, Tyler, Monica and Lera for their questions. We’re looking for new submissions to the Outside/Inbox! Give us your weirdest, nichest, most bizarre questions you can think of. Send us those questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at [email protected].  Or you can call our hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. ⁠Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. ⁠ Follow Outside/In on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠BlueSky⁠, or join our private ⁠discussion group on Facebook⁠. LINKS Here’s Karyn’s paper on how ⁠same-sex behavior⁠ in animals is far more common than previously thought.  Olney, Illinois is known as “the home of the white squirrels.” Learn more about ⁠how they’re trying to protect these rare albino animals⁠ in this small Midwest town. Here’s the ⁠Northeast District’s 2025 US Light List⁠, which lists an astounding 40,000 different lights, sound signals, and other visual aids to navigation. Francesco Ventura’s paper analyzing divorce rates in albatrosses came out in 2021. ⁠You can find it here⁠.   CREDITS Produced by Marina Henke, Felix Poon and Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hemp used to be a staple of life in America. King James I demanded that colonists produce it. Hemp rope and fabric were ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The USDA even produced a WWII newsreel called “Hemp for Victory.” But other materials came to replace hemp – wood pulp for paper, and cotton and synthetics for fabric. Why? For that matter, what is hemp? Is it different from weed? And does it actually have 25,000 uses as its proponents claim? Featuring Hector “Freedom” Gerardo, David Suchoff, John Fike, and Danny Desjarlais. Note: This episode originally aired in April, 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks ago, Nate gathered a group of storytellers in front of a live audience in Portsmouth, N.H. to celebrate 10 years of Outside/In. From goats to ghosts and ill-fated coloring book pages, this motley crew of storytellers explored the theme of metamorphosis in a changing world.   If you’ve got a special moment or episode from Outside/In’s long history, we’d love to hear about it. Send us a note at [email protected].   Featuring Gretchen Legler, Kianny Antigua, Sara Lamagna, Jake Lewis, Aubrey Nelson, Dave Anderson  Produced by Taylor Quimby and Zoë Mitchell. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Check out Gretchen Legler’s blog, where she writes about all sorts of nature and farm-inspired subjects, here.  More on the work of Kianny Antigua can be found on her website.  Listen to Sarah Lamagna’s interview for a previous episode of Outside/In, where she and Taylor talk about tricking kids into loving hiking.  Interested in learning more about Aubrey Nelson's call for "more purposeful, real-world education?" You can contact her "Ecosystem of Educationeers" via this form.  Listen to more musings from naturalist Dave Anderson on NHPR’s Something Wild.  If you want to hear more of Nate’s music, check out “Snoweater on Bandcamp.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ravens get a bad rap in western culture. They’re an ominous symbol of death, considered “unclean” by the bible, and star in Edgar Allen Poe’s haunting gothic poem, “The Raven.” A group of ravens is called an “unkindness.” What a burn. But host Nate Hegyi is on a mission to show that we should give the raven a bit more credit. It’s one of the most intelligent creatures on earth — an animal that can use tools like a chimpanzee, speak like a parrot, do tricks like a dog, and investigate murders like Sherlock Holmes.  So today on the show, another edition of our ongoing series, Holy Scat: raven edition. Featuring Sophie Nilles and Will Geiger. Produced by Nate Hegyi. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to ⁠outsideinradio.org⁠.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Dr. Kaeli Swift is one of the foremost corvid researchers on the planet, and she’s done a deep dive into corvid funerals.  Here’s the study that shows ravens parallel great apes in terms of intelligence. If you want a real creepy experience, you should watch Vincent Price recite Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven.’ Need more raven stories from southeast Alaska? The Sealaska Heritage Institute just published a collection.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the Irish fought for and won their independence from the British in 1921, they had a problem. Centuries of exploitation had left the island one of the least forested nations in Europe, with less than 2% tree cover.  So, they started planting a non-native American tree: fast-growing Sitka spruce capable of rebuilding their timber resources in record time. And it worked. Today, about 17% of the island is forested. But in the rural areas where iconic rolling hills have been replaced by rows and rows of conifers, farmers are not happy.  Outside/In host Nate Hegyi takes us to County Leitrim, an area of Ireland hit hard by the Troubles and the Great Famine, to meet the townspeople who are fighting what they say is a new wave of colonialism: Sitka spruce plantations. Featuring Justin Warnock, Brian Smyth, Donal Magner, Liam Byrne and Jodie Asselin. This episode originally aired in March 2025. Produced by Nate Hegyi. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Donal Magner wrote a book covering the history of Ireland’s forests and timber industry.  Sitka spruce plantations are controversial in other parts of Ireland as well, including Cork.  There are also efforts to rewild parts of Ireland with entirely native trees and to protect and restore carbon-sequestering bogs.  It can be really tough to figure out exactly what was growing in Ireland thousands of years ago – but these scientists used ancient pollen counts to figure it out. Researchers at University College Dublin produced a detailed socio-economic impact report on Sitka spruce plantations and County Leitrim in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A New Hampshire town finds out its water has been contaminated by a chemical. The most basic question — whether the water is safe to drink — doesn’t have a clear answer. Nobody seems to know much about this so-called forever chemical, which is weird… because all of this has all happened before. From the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, Safe to Drink is a four-part series about a water contamination story that keeps repeating in town after town — and about the people who fought for answers through a maze of chemistry, regulations, and illnesses. You can binge the whole series now: subscribe to Safe to Drink on Apple Podcasts, or check out their page on NHPR’s website.  Reported by Mara Hoplamazian. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Celebrate our 10th anniversary with us! Join the Outside/In team for Stories from Outside on Friday, Feb. 6, at 7 p.m. at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. Tickets are available here. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week, we talked about the ethics and regulations around sending private citizens to space, but one thing we didn’t linger on much was the lasting impact of Christa McAuliffe; the teacher slated to become the first private citizen to space before she was killed in the Challenger disaster.  So today, we’ve got a series of stories and interviews that are all part of NHPR’s series “Remembering Christa: 40 Years After the Challenger.”   We’ll hear from a local journalist that covered her story, the students she mentored, and the community charged with remembering her legacy.  Produced by Patrick McNameeKing. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Grab a ticket for our 10 year anniversary live show here!  Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1985, high school teacher Christa McAuliffe was selected to become the first private citizen to travel to space. After the Challenger explosion that killed her and 6 other astronauts, NASA scrapped its Teacher in Space Project; it was still too risky to send private citizens to space.   40 years later, things are looking very different.  Today, celebrities and billionaires are buying trips on commercial rockets. Private companies are designing new, private space stations. How is safety being regulated for these private space companies? And what happens if – or when – something goes wrong?  Featuring Kim Bleier, Ben Miller, Doug Ligor, Peggy Whitson, and Dana Tulodziecki. Produced by Daniel Ackerman. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Grab a ticket for our 10 year anniversary live show here! Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Listen to NHPR’s multi-part series honoring Christa McAuliffe 40 years after the Challenger shuttle disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the very first books for the general public about climate change was written and published by Bill McKibben in 1989. In The End of Nature, Bill wrote that continuing to burn fossil fuels would “lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a similar temperature.” Bill was right. The planet is hotter. Climate disasters are everywhere. You’d think he’d be more upset now than ever. But in his latest book, Here Comes the Sun, Bill sounds optimistic. In it he writes “For the first time, I can see a path forward. A path lit by the sun.” Host Nate Hegyi talks to journalist and activist Bill McKibben, about how he’s changed, how he’s stayed the same, and what his story tells us about the state of the climate crisis. Featuring Bill McKibben Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Grab a ticket for our 10 year anniversary live show here! Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Listen to Studs Terkel’s 1989 interview with Bill about his first book, The End of Nature. Read Bill’s latest book, Here Comes the Sun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might not think much about the sticky bottle of vanilla sitting in the back of your pantry. But that flavor – one of the most common in the world – has a fascinating history, involving a fickle orchid and a 12-year-old enslaved boy who made the discovery of a lifetime.  That’s the sort of tale that attracts poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. From peacock feathers to the sounds of garden insects, her work is known for magnifying the wonders of the natural world. Her latest book of essays, “Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees,” explores the unexpected connections between food, memory, and community. So take a seat and pour yourself an aperitif, as Aimee Nezhukumatathil shares a few of these miniature morsels with Outside/In host Nate Hegyi: a three-course meal of grape jelly, sweet nostalgia, and just a hint of vanilla bean.   Featuring Aimee Nezhukumatathil This episode originally aired in 2024.  SUPPORT Grab a ticket for our 10 year anniversary live show here! To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS You can find Aimee’s book of essays, Bite by Bite, at your local bookstore or online.  CREDITS Produced by Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

** We’re celebrating our 10 year anniversary and want you to come! Join us in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a night of storytelling, featuring former Outside/In guests and hosted by our very own Nate Hegyi. Get your tickets here! **  In celebration of Outside/In’s 10th anniversary we’re looking back at our very first episode: “The Kiwi Apocalypse,” first published in December of 2015. Afterwards, we’ll get an update to the story and talk about how weird it is to have a podcast old enough to be in middle school.  Here’s our original description for The Kiwi Apocalypse:  Iago Hale has a vision: it’s one where the economy of the North Country is revitalized by local farmers selling delicious cold hardy kiwi berries to the masses. Meanwhile, Tom Lautzenheiser has been battling a hardy kiwi infestation in Massachusetts for years, and is afraid that this fight will soon be coming to the rest of New England. Should we worry about the cold hardy kiwi and what does the quest to bring it to market tell us about what an invasive species is? Featuring Iago Hale, Tom Lautzenheiser and Bryan Connolly. This episode was produced by our original host, Sam Evans-Brown. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Grab a ticket for our 10 year anniversary live show here!  Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past few decades, CGI has allowed directors to put virtually anything they can imagine onto the big screen. But in the world of theater, practical effects still rule supreme.  So how do these special effects wizards make it snow, rain, and gust inside the confines of a theater, where real live audiences are sitting just feet away? And what are the challenges to dumping more than 100 gallons of water indoors, or coating the stage in slippery fake snow?  We tour a Brooklyn warehouse that houses the secrets behind Broadway’s wildest special effects, where one engineer is inventing new ways to wow audiences with the magic of the elements. Featuring Jeremy Chernick. Produced by Taylor Quimby. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS To see some of the effects we mention in action, check out Jeremy Chernick’s website gallery of shows he’s worked on. ALSO! Did Operation Night Cat leave you wanting more? Make a year-end gift to NHPR, and we’ll invite you to a special Operation Night Cat Virtual Q&A on January 8th 6PM EST, featuring our very own Nate Hegyi!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Avatar came out in 2009, it shattered box-office records.  And even though it was billed as a sci-fi epic featuring blue aliens on a far-away moon, the movie didn’t shy away from a pretty Earth-based message of environmental conservation. So, with a third Avatar hitting theaters this weekend, we were inspired to bust out the popcorn, dim the lights, and play the part of pop culture critics.  How do movies – from blockbusters to documentaries to Disney films –  shape our conception of the natural world? Featuring Alyssa Vitale, David Whitley, Salma Monani, and Erin Trahan.  SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Similar to Avatar, the animation required to pull off Finding Nemo was a technological feat for its time. Here’s a documentary showing you behind the scenes. Listen to all of “Little April Showers” (that catchy tune from Bambi) here.   You can find Alyssa Vitale’s movie reviews on her Youtube channel, Mainely Movies.  Salma Monani’s academic work within ecocinema extends far beyond that of FernGully. Her faculty page at Gettysburg College can be found here. Find some of Erin Trahan’s recent work on her website, including a recent documentary following Michael Dukakis. You can find David Whitley’s book on Disney animation here.  CREDITS  Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits, transcript, and a list of movies mentioned in this episode visit outsideinradio.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that some species of worms can be cut into multiple pieces and each piece will make a new worm? Some can even make a whole new brain. Wild, right? While not all forms of healing are quite as miraculous as this, the body’s ability to repair itself is pretty darned cool. So today, we’re answering your questions about healing. Like… Why do we pick at scabs? Why do animals lick their wounds? How does breath work affect the nervous system? What's the best outdoor activity to help heal from heartbreak? For our next Outside/Inbox roundup, we’re looking for questions all about love! From what happens in our bodies when we fall in and out of love, to whether animals fall in love. Send us your questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at [email protected]. Or you can call our hotline: 844-GO-OTTER. Featuring Mansi Srivastava, Mona Gohara, Susan Taylor, Henk Brand, Jane Sykes, Aditi Garg, Carolina Estêvão, and Sandra Langeslag. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At any given time, millions of lab mice are being used in research facilities nationwide. And yet nearly all of them can be connected back to a single source: The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where the modern lab mouse was invented. What started as a research project aimed at understanding heredity is now a global business. Research on lab mice has led to more than two dozen Nobel prizes, helped save countless human lives, and has pushed science and medicine to new heights. But behind it all is a cost that’s rarely discussed outside of the ethics boards that determine how lab mice are used.    In this episode, we hear the story of how a leading eugenicist turned the humble mouse from a household pest into science’s number one guinea pig. Plus, we get a rare peek inside the Jackson Laboratory - where over 10,000 strains of lab mice DNA are kept cryogenically frozen.  Featuring Bethany Brookshire, Kristin Blanchette, Lon Cardon, Rachael Pelletier, Karen Rader, Nadia Rosenthal and Mark Wanner. Produced by Jeongyoon Han. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  Note: This episode originally aired in April, 2023.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). LINKS Karen Rader’s book, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955, is a definitive source on the birth of the lab mouse… Curious to learn more about pests? Take a look at Bethany Brookshire’s book, Pests: How Humans Create Villains. This piece from the New Yorker questions the assumptions and ethical choices scientists have made by using lab mice in sterilized lab environments. In this New York Times essay, Brandon Keim explores how some ethicists want to reduce harm to animals used for research through a new model: repaying them.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The garment industry has a giant carbon footprint, labor issues, and a massive waste problem. We have the power to change how and where we shop, but there’s another way to shift our consumption: the practice of repairing our clothes. After all, the most sustainable garment is always the one already hanging in your closet.  But mending is more than a household chore: it can also infuse new joy in our habits, skills, perspective, and community. Outside/In producer Justine Paradis talked to a few repair pros and came up with 8 tips on embracing a repair mindset, lengthening the life of our clothes, and getting the practice of mending into the rhythm of our lives.    Featuring Emilia Petrarca, Dante Zagros Gonzalez, Steve Foss, Arounna Khounnoraj, Sonali Diddi, Vrylena Olney, Ely Spencer, and Ali Mann. This episode was produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.  LINKS A few extraordinary examples of mending: Celia Pym’s Norwegian Sweater, a Japanese fisherman’s jacket constructed with sashiko, wool coats repaired with lavish embroidery, and a plain white t-shirt mended by Maya Skylark. Look for mending classes at your local library, thrift stores, knitting shops, or other community gathering places. Remote classes are also offered at places like Tatter. You can also find a repair cafe near you, explore starting your own, or try throwing a repair party with friends. “Why Do Clothes Suck Now” – a great primer on Culture Study A striking visual demonstrating the decline in sweater quality since the ‘90s.  How to buy a sweater that doesn’t suck (Defector) “Repair Month” on Emilia Petrarca’s newsletter Shop Rat, including laundry tips and her crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet of repair specialists in NYC and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Operation Night Cat” is a special three-part series from NHPR’s Document team and Outside/In. Episode 3: A Duck’s a Duck Two sets of potential crimes, investigated by more than five sets of law enforcement agencies. Why most of them never took a shot at accountability. News audio clip credit: WMUR. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.    SUPPORT Operation Night Cat is made possible with listener support. Click here to support independent, investigative journalism.  To hear more of Document's investigative journalism, including their three-part series on New Hampshire's YDC scandal, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Operation Night Cat” is a special three-part series from NHPR’s Document team and Outside/In. Episode 2: Behind the Brick Wall The poaching investigation takes a surprising turn when it reveals another set of potential crimes – this time, behind the brick walls of New Hampshire’s State Prison for Men. This episode contains strong language that may not be suitable for all listeners. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Operation Night Cat is made possible with listener support. Click here to support independent, investigative journalism.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Operation Night Cat” is a special three-part series from NHPR’s Document team and Outside/In. Episode 1: Why Did the Deer Cross the Road?  A New Hampshire Fish and Game warden follows a tip to a man’s backyard. He finds a twisted game of one-upmanship with digital trophy rooms. This episode contains strong language. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Operation Night Cat is made possible with listener support. Click here to support independent, investigative journalism.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing a special three-part series from NHPR’s Document team and Outside/In: Operation Night Cat.  A New Hampshire Fish and Game warden follows a tip to a man’s backyard. He finds a twisted game of one-upmanship, digital trophy rooms, and one of the biggest poaching cases in recent state history. Then, the hunting investigation takes a surprising turn when it reveals another set of potential crimes – this time, behind the brick walls of New Hampshire’s State Prison for Men.  Host Nate Hegyi has spent the past year digging into what happened next. Catch the first episode right here, on November 5th.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to our unscientific office poll, the annual changing of the clocks has all the popularity of a root canal. With few exceptions, people described the shift to and from Daylight Saving Time as disorienting, arbitrary, and unwelcome. On a more existential level, winding the clocks back and forth reminds us that no matter how concrete minutes and hours may feel, the way we perceive time is fluid. Time flies when you’re having fun. A watched pot never boils.  So to celebrate (or perhaps protest) another year setting back the clocks, the Outside/In team has uncovered four mini-stories that will poke at, stretch, or even obliterate your perception of time. From “time expansion experiences”, to time-space synaesthesia, to the slow-motion life of a fly, prepare for a totally different type of time warp. Featuring Steve Taylor, Rhitu Chatterjee, Kevin Healy, Katherine Akey, and Patricia Lynne Duffy. This episode was produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS “To reignite the joy of childhood, learn to live on ‘toddler time’,” by Rhitu Chatterjee, is part of NPR’s special series “Finding Time.” “Can you see time?” (BBC News), by Victoria Gill, includes a drawing depicting an example of what a year might look like to a synesthete. Research reveals which animals perceive time the fastest (ScienceDirect) “When Seconds Turn Into Minutes: Time Expansion Experiences in Altered States of Consciousness,” by Steve Taylor (ResearchGate) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every so often, oak trees go into overdrive. During these so-called mast years, the gentle patter of falling acorns grows into a mighty downpour and ripples across and over ecosystems like a flood.  What happens when a small thing goes from scarce to plentiful? When a player usually hidden behind the scenes vaults onto the main stage?   From swimming squirrels and bug-infested weddings, to an explosion in babies named Oaklee, we investigate the myriad ways a sudden surge in abundance can trigger unexpected consequences.  This episode is part of a playful exercise in community podcasting, with 6 different shows each producing their own stories about or inspired by the mystery of masting, and releasing them at (approximately) the same time.  For other masting stories, check out: Future Ecologies Golden State Naturalist Jumpstart Nature Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast Nature's Archive We’ll populate this Spotify Playlist with all our stories as they come out! Featuring Jim Salge, Dave Kelly, Lorén Spears, DeAnna Beasley, Claire Adas, David Wilson, Amelia Pruiett, and Cleveland Evans. This episode was produced by Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.Editor's Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to "the Church of Latter-day Saints." Their correct title is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out the “Who remembers The Great Squirrel Apocalypse of 2018?” Reddit thread. You can watch the home video from David and Claire’s wedding. The US Forest Service keeps a helpful map of active cicada broods in North America, and their expected emergences. Nameberry’s 2024 list of the “Reddest and Bluest Baby Names” NPR’s coverage of the “Oakley, Oakley, Oakleigh” trend . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is massive, bigger than the state of Florida. If it collapses, it could reshape every coast on this planet during this century. That’s why it’s sometimes known as “the Doomsday Glacier.” And yet, until recently, we knew very little about it. Because Thwaites is extremely remote, reachable only by crossing the wildest ocean on the planet, scientists had never observed its calving edge firsthand.  In 2019, a ground-breaking international mission set out to change that, and writer Elizabeth Rush was on board to document the voyage.  We caught up with her to learn about life on an Antarctic icebreaker, how she grappled with classic Antarctic narratives about exploration (and domination), and how she summons hope even after coming face-to-face with Thwaites.      This episode was first published in early 2024. Featuring Elizabeth Rush.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS If you’re interested in reading more about the journey to Thwaites, check out Elizabeth’s book, “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth”. A paper published in Nature with some of the findings from Elizabeth's voyage, showing that Thwaites has historically retreated two to three times faster than we’ve ever observed. Here’s the one detailing findings about Thwaites’ past extent, extrapolated from their study of ancient penguin bones, and another sharing observations about water currents beneath its ice shelf. The Trump administration has pulled funding for the US’s only Antarctic icebreaker dedicated to scientific research. Read about the fate of the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer in Scientific American.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since a tornado tore through one of St. Louis, Missouri’s poorest neighborhoods, there are piles of bricks all over the place.  It’s not just a debris problem. Bricks in St. Louis have a long and complicated history here – the darling of many historic preservationists and a good source of profit to just as many demolition crews.  Producer Marina Henke spent a week in North City, tagging along with a brick layer who’s racing against the clock to build back homes. Can North City keep its bricks? Should they even try? Featuring Natalie Hughes, RJ Koscielniak, and Rasheen Aldridge. Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS The STL Vacancy Collaborative runs a Demolition Dashboard, showing all approved and completed demolitions in St. Louis City.  The 2011 documentary Brick By Chance and Fortune provides a more in-depth look at brick’s history in St. Louis, including its architectural variance.  For a comprehensive social and economic history of St. Louis check out Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America. The apocryphal headline and its report of a struggling St. Louis still exists in the New York Times’ archives: In St. Louis Even the Old Bricks Are Leaving Town.  In 2017, the podcast 99% Invisible took a closer look at St. Louis brick theft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do pastries have to do with environmental justice? Cat butts with the climate crisis? And what US president ate a half-chewed piece of salmon leftover from a bear on reality TV? Grab a pencil (and maybe a pint?) and get ready for the inaugural Outside/In trivia episode we’re calling “Natural Selection.” We’ve got a game called “Guess That Animal!” We’re testing our panel’s knowledge on the environment in movies and music. And, maybe, we’ll learn a thing or two along the way about environmental policy, past and present. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When designer Matt Leacock decided to make a board game about climate action, he knew he wanted to make it – first and foremost – fun to play. “If we sold anything as an educational game… people would run screaming and running for the hills,” he told us.  But can simulating the climate crisis really make for a good Friday night with your friends? What are the limits to gamifying social issues as complex as global warming? In this episode, we speak with Matt about what it took to design an entertaining game about one of the most challenging topics of our time, and enlist a few friends to playtest his game: “Daybreak.”  Featuring Matt Leacock, with appearances from NHPR’s Marina Henke, Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy. This episode was produced by Taylor Quimby. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Read game designer Matt Leacock’s 2020 NYT opinion piece about his game, Pandemic, and what it says about social cooperation during an actual pandemic.  One of Daybreak’s inspirations was “The 100% Solution” by Solomon Goldstein-Rose. Here’s his TED Talk about building a new global electricity system.  For more insight into how Daybreak was made, check out Matt and co-designer Matteo Menapace’s design diaries.  A climate scientist/board gamer’s break down of the science and gameplay of Daybreak Listen to Civics 101’s great episode on civics-centered board games.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For humans, roads epitomize freedom. For wildlife, it’s a different story: a million animals are killed by cars every day in the US alone. How did our infrastructure turn so deadly? And what are people trying to do about it? In this episode, we look at how two very different species are impacted by roads. Along the way, we visit a turtle rescue clinic, and hear about a celebrity cougar that was trapped in the Hollywood Hills. This episode was first produced in 2023. Right now, the Trump administration is planning to rescind the Roadless Rule – a regulation that restricts the building of new roads in nearly 60 million acres of US forests. Conservationists warn that this will fragment forests and threaten endangered species. A public comment period on the plan is open until September 19th. Featuring Ben Goldfarb, Alexxia Bell, Natasha Nowick, and Michaela Conder. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS September 19, 2025 is the deadline to submit a comment about the potential effects of rescinding the Roadless Rule. Check out Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb. Read more about The Turtle Rescue League in Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, by Sy Montgomery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 1900s, people didn’t trust refrigerated food. Fruits and vegetables, cuts of meat… these things are supposed to decay, right? As Nicola Twilley writes, “What kind of unnatural technology could deliver a two-year old chicken carcass that still looked as though it was slaughtered yesterday?” But just a few decades later, Americans have done a full one-eighty. Livestock can be slaughtered thousands of miles away, and taste just as good (or better) by the time it hits your plate.  Apples can be stored for over a year without any noticeable change. A network called the “cold-chain” criss-crosses the country, and at home our refrigerators are fooling us into thinking we waste less food than we actually do.  Today, refrigeration has reshaped what we eat, how we cook it, and even warped our very definition of what is and isn’t “fresh.”  Featuring Nicola Twilley. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS You can find Nicola’s new book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves,” at your local bookstore or online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re catching some air this week, and talking things with wings!   Quandaries range from the practical (how do different animal and insect wings differ?) to the ethereal (this includes dragons). Here’s the questions we’ll be answering… What makes wings different? How have wings in nature inspired human flight?  Did we ever solve the colony collapse problem with bees? Why do so many cultures have dragon myths? Featuring Jonathan Rader, Tim Burbery, Lauren Ponisio, and Andrew Howley.  For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. For our next Outside/Inbox roundup, we’re looking for questions about healing! We’re casting a wide net here: homeopathy, neuroplasticity, chronic disease, plant resiliency. Send us your questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at [email protected].  Or you can call our hotline: 844-GO-OTTER. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS The video of the sandhill crane landing lives on TikTok.  Here’s that video of an albatross walking on land after years at sea.  Timothy Burbery is the author of Geomythology: How Common Stories Reflect Earth Events. The hypothesis connecting the mythical griffin and Protoceratops fossils was popularized by Adrienne Mayor, author of The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Here's a paper critiquing Mayor's interpretations, "Did the horned dinosaur Protoceratops inspire the griffin?" A USGS volcanologist on what geologists missed for so long in the stories of Pele, from indigenous Hawaiian oral tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shipwrecks captivate our imagination, and are the subject of many books, academic papers, and movies—from the world-famous Titanic, to sunken World War II warships, to ancient fishing canoes. Some describe them as time capsules of our maritime history, waiting to be discovered and opened. But there’s a group of people who are drawn to shipwrecks for very different reasons, and it sometimes leads to the demise of the wrecks themselves: fishermen. In this episode, why archaeologists and fishermen have sometimes been at odds over shipwrecks, and the federal government program that’s bringing them together under one common cause. Featuring Ben Roberts, Mike Bailey, Tom Hill, Calvin Meyers, and Ben Haskell. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Learn more about the many known shipwrecks of Stellwagen Bank, including the Portland, known as “New England’s Titanic.” Check out some of the other research projects at Stellwagen Bank  on topics as varied as whales, sand lances, and seabirds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GPS is essential these days. We use it for everything, from a hunter figuring out where the heck they are in the backcountry, to a delivery truck finding a grocery store, to keeping clocks in sync. But our reliance on GPS may also be changing our brains. Old school navigation strengthens the hippocampus, and multiple studies suggest that our new reliance on satellite navigation may put us at higher risk for conditions like dementia. In this episode (first released in 2024), we map out how GPS took over our world—from Sputnik’s Doppler effect to the airplane crash that led to its widespread adoption—and share everyday stories of getting lost and found again. Featuring Dana Goward, M.R. O’Connor, Christina Phillips, Michelle Liu, Julia Furukawa, and Taylor Quimby. Produced by Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.  LINKS In 2023, Google Maps rerouted dozens of drivers in Los Angeles down a dirt road to the middle of nowhere to avoid a dust storm.  Maura O’Connor traveled from rural Alaska to the Australian bush to better understand how people navigate without GPS—and sometimes even maps.  Here’s the peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, that found that young people who relied on GPS for daily driving had poorer spatial memories.  Another study out of Japan found that people who use smartphone apps like Google Maps to get around had a tougher time retracing their steps or remembering how they got to a place compared to people who use paper maps or landmarks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fungi used to be considered plants. Bad plants. Carl Linnaeus even referred to them as “the poorest peasants” of the vegetable class. This reputation stuck, and fungi were considered a nuisance in the Western world well into the 20th century. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is trying to rewrite that narrative. Her new book, Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature catalogs fungi that sprout from the shells of beetles, morph with their sexual partners into one being and exhibit as many as 23,000 mating types.  Patty believes that fungi’s ability to defy our cut and dry assumptions about the natural world is actually their superpower. All it takes is to first accept that they’re queer as heck.  Featuring Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian.  Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS You can find Patty’s new book Forest Euphoria at your local bookstore or online.  Local to Albany? Visit the fungi exhibit that Marina toured at the New York State Museum: Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms. Patty has had the chance to name several new species of fungi. In 2021 she published an article documenting those species, with some pretty great photos of laboulbeniales (those are the fungi that grow from arthropod shells).  Check out C. L. Porter’s 1969 address to the Indiana Academy of Sciences where he critiques fellow mycologists for being “meek.” It’s brutal. One of Patty’s favorite films is Microcosmos, a 1996 French documentary that investigates the daily interactions of insects. It’s not direct mushroom content per se, but it is beautiful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last spring, a curious listener called with an unusual question about coyote urine. Is it – as advertised by companies who sell it – an effective, all natural pest deterrent? And more importantly: “Who are the coyotes that are providing this urine?” Since then, producer Taylor Quimby has been trying to find out… and with literal gallons of the stuff available online, he discovered the answers aren’t pretty.  Today on Outside/In, we peek inside the unregulated Pandora’s box of urine farming. Does it work? Is it ethical? And is anybody willing to actually talk about it?  Featuring Jeannie Bartlett, Caroline Long, Ed Brookmyer, Laura Koivula.  Produced by Taylor Quimby. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS This 1998 study assessed coyote urine as a deterrent for deer, and found (with some caveats) a 15-24% reduction in deer browsing after exposure to the urine.  However, coyote urine had no measurable effect on the deer browsing of yew saplings in this more recent study.  Websites for some coyote urine brands, like PredatorPee.com and Shake-away animal repellents, claim that they source urine from regulated farms that treat animals humanely, but did not provide more information when asked.  This article from Cleveland.com  details the conditions at The Grand River Fur Exchange, a fur and urine farm where hundreds of animals were found in poor condition after the owner’s death.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a weird time to be an environmental scientist. The proposed cuts to federal science funding in the United States are profound, and if they come to pass, it’s not clear what American science will look like on the other side. But for many researchers, science is much more than a career: it’s a community, lifestyle, and sometimes even a family business.  Outside/In producer Justine Paradis tagged along with researchers in the field to learn what it’s like to be a scientist right now. We visit one of the oldest atmospheric monitoring stations in the country, and venture onto the Finger Lakes with an ad-hoc group of researchers struggling to understand an emerging threat to water quality: harmful algal blooms. This is a glimpse of the people behind the headlines, navigating questions both personal and professional, and trying to find ways to continue their work, even as much of their funding is simultaneously collapsing around them.  Featuring Bob Howarth, Joshua Thienpont, Irena Creed, Nico Trick, Anita Dedić, and Tom Butler, with appearances from Roxanne Marino, Renee Santoro, and Garreth Smith.    SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS NY67, one of the oldest atmospheric monitoring stations in the U.S., was established by Gene Likens, who helped discover acid rain in the 1960s (The Guardian).  More on the cuts to the National Science Foundation from The Guardian. It references a Federal Reserve Bank analysis, finding that for every dollar spent on R&D by the major federal agencies, there’s been a return to U.S. taxpayers of $1.50-$3.00—in other words, 150-300%. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has been tracking the federal science budget for decades, and publishes an ongoing analysis breaking down the proposed cuts. A map tracking harmful algal blooms in New York State.  In the early 2000s, some wondered if seeding the ocean with iron could be a climate solution. They hoped that the iron would trigger the growth of marine phytoplankton and sequester carbon in the ocean. But when Charlie Trick and his colleagues studied it, they learned it had unintended consequences: it triggered the growth of highly toxic algal blooms. A paper on the rise of ammonia, using data from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and co-authored by Tom Butler. A letter condemning the proposed cuts to science in FY26, signed by more than 1200 members of the National Academy of Sciences.   CREDITS  Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helium is full of contradictions. It’s the second most abundant element in the universe, but is relatively rare on Earth. It’s non-reactive, totally inert—yet the most valuable helium isotope is sourced from thermonuclear warheads.  And even though we treat it as a disposable gas, often for making funny voices and single-use party balloons, our global supply of helium will eventually run out. That’s because, at a rate of about 50 grams per second, this non-renewable resource is escaping the atmosphere for good.  In this edition of The Element of Surprise, our occasional series about the hidden histories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, we examine the incredible properties and baffling economics of our most notable noble gas.  Featuring Anjali Tripathi and William Halperin.  This episode was produced by Taylor Quimby and first released in 2024. For a full list of credits and a transcript, go to outsideinradio.org.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter to get occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Read John Paul Merkle’s petition arguing to change the name of helium to “helion.” Despite being about a quarter century old, this passage from “The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve” has a pretty comprehensive list of the uses and properties of helium. More on the recent sale of the Federal Helium Reserve (NBC News) Physicist William Halperin said the idea of mining helium-3 on the moon was… unlikely… but that hasn’t stopped this startup company from trying it. (Wired) Want to learn more about the weird history of American airships? Check out this film produced by the U.S. government in 1937, when they were still hoping to keep our airship program afloat.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for those who would climb through the hole in the sky.” That’s the first line of the poem “A Map to the Next World” by Muscogee writer and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. It’s a piece that’s inspired Aquinnah Wampanoag writer Joseph Lee as he undertakes one of journalism's most nuanced beats: covering hundreds of unique tribal communities.  Sometimes those stories fit into neat narratives – about how tribes are restoring nature and winning back land – but that’s not always the case. What's it like covering Indigenous communities responding and adapting to climate change? And how are these tribes thinking about their futures? We talk to Joseph Lee about some of the stories he’s covered, and his own attempt to make a map to the next world.  Featuring Joseph Lee. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS “A Map to the Next World,” is the title of a poem by Muscogee poet Joy Harjo. Nothing More of This Land is a new book from award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, about Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world. Read Joseph Lee’s reporting on: The Northwestern Shoshone’s restoration work to the Bear River (Vox) The controversy over a proposed gold mine in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta (Grist) The Shinnecock tribe’s response to sea-level rise in the Hamptons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1970, marine architect Charlie Canby got an odd assignment: Design a 600-foot ship for an undisclosed purpose and an undisclosed customer. Only after it was built did he finally find out what it was for.  “I was dumbfounded,” he said. “I drove away in a daze. I could not believe what we were really doing.” In this episode, reporter Daniel Ackerman tells the unbelievable story of a boat, a government conspiracy, and the birth of a new industry that could change the way we look at oceans forever.  Featuring Charlie Canby, Andrew Thaler, Wernher Krutein, and Hank Philippi Ryan Produced by Daniel Ackerman. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Check out this 1975 New York Times article published after reporters discovered the true mission of the Glomar Explorer. A corporate update for shareholders detailing The Metals Company’s recent test of deep-sea mining.  Another archival report from The New York Times details the SEC investigation into whether investors in the Glomar Explorer were misled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Outside/In, we’re sharing an episode from our friends and partners at Common Land. Common Land explores the creation stories behind protected land. Each season takes a deep dive into the history, science and politics behind the creation of one particular patch of protected, common land. Season two of Common Land, produced in partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio, follows documentarian Matthew Podolsky as he attempts to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail with his 65-year-old mom, Candy. Matt and his mom face extreme weather, illness, and injury as they trek 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine. Along the way, Matt shares stories of remarkable people, surprising history, and the modern challenges facing the Appalachian Trail — all as the iconic footpath marks its 100th anniversary. You can listen to episode two of the new season right now, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the smash-success Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993, it inspired a generation of dinophiliacs and helped to usher in a new “golden age of paleontology.”  But it also froze the public’s perception of dinosaurs in time, and popularized inaccuracies that people still believe are true today.  So what happens when the biggest source of information on a scientific field comes from a fictional monster movie? In this episode, three Jurassic Park super-fans (one paleontologist and two podcasters) try to sort it all out.  Featuring Gabriel-Philip Santos. This episode was originally published in 2022. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram, BlueSky, Tiktok, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKSWant to learn more about dinosaurs? Check the publish date before you check it out from the library!  And here are some good options: Smithsonian’s The Dinosaur Book (pretty much all of the Smithsonian books are good for younger readers) Want to get a more global perspective of where dinosaurs have been discovered? Check out a dinosaur atlas book.  For older readers, or anybody who loves a good coffee table book, check out this entry featuring a number of excellent paleoartists: Dinosaur Art II (Taylor has the first one and loves to show it off). Also: A truly disheartening read about people who think feathered dinosaurs are an attack on masculinity.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we’re taking your questions on the subject of sound. We talk about tinnitus, “the mind’s ear,” and the celebrity voices we have strong feelings about, from Bob Ross to President Obama, Michael Barbaro to Ira Glass. So strap your earbuds in, we’re going for a ride! What are tintinnabula, and the first wind chimes in the world? What exactly is ASMR, and what makes it feel good? Why does my cat make twitter sounds when she sees birds? Why do frogs sing together around the same tiny pond? If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Does the environment influence the evolution of a language? If we have a “mind’s eye” do we have a “mind’s ear?” What’s tinnitus? Featuring Ilija Dankovic, Craig Richard, Alejandro Vélez, Seán Roberts, Sarah Theodoroff, and Tara Zaugg. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Check out these 3D models of a tintinnabulum held by the British Museum. The ASMR clips used in this episode are from @CelainesASMR, Coromo Sara. ASMR, @ASMRCrinkle, and @marlenaasmr481. If you want to listen to Craig Richard’s ASMR podcasts, they are Sleep Whispers, and Calm History. Learn more about the effect drier climates might have on language, especially tonal ones, and about the overlap between biodiversity and language diversity. For more information about tinnitus from the VA, check out the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Green grass grows everywhere: on baseball fields, in backyards, in front of strip malls. Collectively, we spend billions of dollars every year keeping them fertilized and watered. But lawns cost more than money in Western states like Utah. Despite a severe drought, residents of Utah’s towns and cities use more water per capita than any other place in the nation, and a majority of that water goes right into lawns. That’s helping fuel an environmental disaster that could wipe out one of America’s largest inland seas. In this episode, first produced in 2022, we trace the 600-year history of lawns, explore how they became a symbol of power, wealth, and Whiteness in America, and share tips on how to make a yard more environmentally responsible. Featuring: Malin Curry, Ira Curry, Kelly Kopp, Zach Frankel, Karen Stenehjel  Produced by Nate Hegyi. For a full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This summer, more than 100 cruise ships will visit the small city of Portland, Maine, dropping thousands of passengers onto the city’s commercial waterfront for lobster rolls, local souvenirs and a quintessential New England experience.  But as Portland has rapidly become a landmark destination for cruise lines, a group of activists are calling into question the long held narrative that cruise ships provide a dependable economic boom.  Producer Marina Henke spent the months leading up to the 2025 cruise season charting these muddy waters. For small coastal cities like Portland, are cruise ships really the economic generator that the industry claims them to be?  Featuring JoAnn Locktov, Jack Humeniuk, Joe Redman, Jacques de Villier, Zach Rand, Brian Fournier, Kevin Rodriquez, Martha Honey and Dan Kraus. Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Martha Honey is the co-founder of the Center for Responsible Travel. She’s the editor of the book “Cruise Tourism in the Caribbean: Selling Sunshine” which includes much of her own research on the economics of cruise ships.  You can find Portland Cruise Control on Bluesky or at their website portlandcruisecontrolmaine.org.  In 2019, Colin Woodward published “Pier Pressure”, a three-part series out of The Portland Press Herald documenting the rise of the cruise ship industry across Maine.  Are you a Portland local? You can see a schedule of all cruise ship arrivals at maine.portcall.com Portland is not the only city to face rapid cruise growth. Check out Cruise Boom, a PBS documentary focused on the cruise industry's footprint in Sitka, Alaska.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up, Kiese Laymon thought of himself as a city kid. But he spent his childhood with a foot in two worlds: his mom’s house in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi and his grandma’s house in a rural country town. It wasn’t until Kiese left Mississippi that he came to understand that this question of city versus country actually meant a lot more. It carries a lot of baggage: the tensions between north and south, tectonic historical forces, and the contradictions of life in Mississippi. In this episode, our producer Justine Paradis sits down with writer Kiese Laymon for a conversation on this question of country versus city, what that has to do with the history of Black life in this country, and the story of Kiese’s first children’s picture book, his latest in a lifelong exploration of a complicated love of Mississippi. Featuring Kiese Laymon. Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram, BlueSky, Tiktok, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Kiese Laymon’s first children’s book, City Summer, Country Summer.  If you’d like to read more by Kiese, we recommend “Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)”, his essay about Outkast, his grandmother, and stank. (Oxford American) Kiese adapted City Summer, Country Summer from this 2020 prose-poem essay. (New York Times) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of our listeners is in a pickle. He’s looking to buy an engagement ring but wants to make sure the diamond comes from an ethical and sustainable source. So he sent us an email asking for help.  This is our latest addition of “This, That, or the Other Thing.” It's a series about the choices we make in our lives to try and build a more sustainable world, whether they have any effect, and what we can do instead if they don't. Today… Host Nate Hegyi looks into the most sustainable ways to source that big, sparkly rock. Should it be a diamond from the ground? A diamond grown in a lab? Or maybe a different gemstone altogether?  Featuring Saleem Ali, Rachelle Bergstein and Anna Provost. Produced by Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Visit our website to see Justine's sapphire engagement ring. You can find a copy of Rachelle Bergstein’s book here. She was also featured on this episode about diamonds, from 99% Invisible.  The Kimberley Process helped reduce the number of conflict diamonds in the world – here’s a list of countries that are participants.  Anna Provost features a lot of her really cool Montana-mined sapphires on Instagram.  A recent study in the journal Nature found that mining diamonds produces millions times more greenhouse gas emissions than growing them in a lab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexis Nikole Nelson, better known to her millions of fans as @blackforager, was raised by a mother who is an avid gardener and a father who loves to cook. Foraging allowed Alexis to fuse her love for wild plants and food from a very young age. But before Alexis became the @blackforager many know today, there was a period in her life where Alexis lost that love and connection to foraging, and where food became very much the enemy. This episode comes to us from our friends at Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, a podcast about the human drama behind saving animals. From a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones, to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison, show host and wildlife biologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant takes us inside the work of the extraordinary people who are protecting wildlife. Featuring Alexis Nikole Nelson. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS You can find Alexis Nikole Nelson’s videos on Tik Tok and Instagram. Also, be sure to check out Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Strizki drives the only hydrogen-powered car on the East Coast. That’s because he’s the only person with access to fuel… which he makes, by himself, in his backyard in New Jersey.  And it’s not just his car. Mike’s house, his lawnmower, even his bicycle are all powered by hydrogen. He’s convinced that this element could be the single most important solution to the climate crisis, if only people and governments would just get on board. But he’s been screaming this from the rooftop of his hydrogen house for two decades. And today, fewer than 0.2% of cars in the US run on hydrogen. What’s it like to be the earliest early adopter of a technology that never catches on? And does Mike still have a chance to be proven right? Featuring Mike Strizki. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS In the race to decarbonize cars, battery electric vehicles have proven more popular than hydrogen. But debate still rages on which is the better zero-emission technology. Some say hydrogen cars cannot catch up to battery-electric vehicles, whereas others claim EVs aren’t the future, hydrogen is. Mike Strizki and his hydrogen-powered house have been featured on The Wall Street Journal, ABC World News, and a number of New York Times articles including “The Zero-Energy Solution,” and “The Gospel of Hydrogen Power.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lead is a study in contradictions. It’s dense enough to stop an X-ray, but soft enough to scratch with your fingernail. It’s heavier than steel and iron, but also more flexible.  And, despite evidence of its toxicity, humans have been using it for all sorts of things for thousands of years.  In this edition of our series “The Element of Surprise,” we hone in on this notorious heavy metal. What chemical properties make lead so harmful? How did something so dangerous become so ubiquitous? And if medical authorities acknowledge no amount of lead exposure is safe – especially for children – why do so many of us have lead in our water and our homes? Featuring Justin Richardson, Bruce Lanphear, and Chakena Perry. This episode was produced by Kate Dario. For the full credits and transcript, go to outsideinradio.org.  SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Radiolab dedicated an episode to the scientist that was trying to estimate the earth’s age, and unintentionally helped get rid of leaded gasoline in the process. It’s wild and worth a listen.  A comprehensive history of leaded gasoline and an in-depth investigation of how the lead industry lobbied cities to use lead pipes.  Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner have published numerous books covering the American lead industry and lead’s lasting public health impacts.  The EPA has robust resources about how to deal with lead exposure and how to minimize your risk.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 1950s, engineer Herb Ueda Sr. traveled to a remote Arctic military base. His mission? To drill through nearly a mile of ice, and extract the world’s first complete ice core. To finish the job, he and his team would endure sub-zero weather, toxic chemicals, and life inside a military base… which was slowly being crushed by the glacier from which it was carved.  In this episode (first released in 2023) Daniel Ackerman takes us inside Camp Century, and explains how a foundational moment in climate science was inextricably linked with the United State's military interest in Greenland. Featuring Curt La Bombard, Julie Brigham-Grette, Herb Ueda Jr., Don Garfield, and Aleqa Hammond. Produced by Daniel Ackerman. For a full list of credits and transcript, go to outsidinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A magician spins a black top hat to show their audience it’s empty. Then, with the wave of a wand and a few magic words, PRESTO: a snow white rabbit pokes its ears over the brim.  Compared to sawing a person in half, pulling a rabbit out of a hat is a joyful bit of magic that entertainers have been doing for more than 200 years. But after the applause dies down, one is left wondering: where did the rabbit come from? And where did it go?  Today, in honor of the Easter Bunny (who doesn’t actually appear in this episode), we’re pulling a handful of rabbit stories out of our proverbial hat. But be warned: these are dark tales of disappearing pets, occult eugenicists, and animal sacrifice. The secrets behind some magic tricks are more shocking than others.  Featuring Nicole Cardoza, Gwyne Henke, Suzanne Loui, Sally Master, Ana DiMaria, Tanya Singer, and Meg Crane.  Produced by Nate Hegyi, Marina Henke, Kate Dario, and Justine Paradis. For full credits, photos, and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Join us for NHPR’s 3rd Annual Climate Summit! The theme is “Healthy Connections,” and we’ve got a great lineup of speakers and breakout sessions PLUS a trivia night. And the best part? It’s all FREE. Learn more and register here.  Check out this video of magician and storyteller Nicole Cardoza performing for a group in Chicago in 2024.  You can check out Gwyne Henke’s childhood rabbit poetry on our website.  Tanya Singer reported on the history of Project Angora for Tablet. You can also learn more about Helena Weinrauch and her blue sweater here.  Read more about the history of pregnancy testing in this paper on Egyptian grain method, rabbit tests, and more, and in A Woman’s Right to Know by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, available as a free ebook from MIT Press. The story of Meg Crane’s Predictor test can also be found in the excellent Designing Motherhood, a book and exhibit on human reproduction through the lens of design. Pagan Kennedy’s New York Times article, which prompted Meg Crane to start sharing her story—and Pagan’s follow-up, which does include Meg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Allergies have been documented in historical records dating as far back as 2,400 years ago, when Hippocrates wrote about “hostile humors” in some people who suffered badly after eating cheese. But why do we experience them to begin with? What even is an allergy? Are allergies on the rise? And why are some mere nuisances, while others are deadly? This episode is a roundup of allergy stories—from the mundane to the frightful—and a round up of allergy questions we’re asking Dr. Theresa MacPhail, author of Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World, to answer for us. Featuring Beni Osei Duker, Theresa MacPhail, Dwayne Smith, and Lily Ko. Produced by Felix Poon. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org. Correction: An earlier version of this episode suggested that bee pollen and local honey could only be effective as a form of immunotherapy at the site of the allergy, i.e. in your nose. In fact, immunotherapy is commonly administered as a subcutaneous (under the skin) injection to treat nasal allergy symptoms. A more relevant reason why they don’t work as immunotherapy is that hay fever is caused primarily by wind-carried pollens rather than insect-carried pollens that bees gather, among other reasons.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out Theresa MacPhail’s book, Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World. Read up on the different hypotheses on why we get allergies in the first place: The parasite hypothesis The toxin hypothesis The hygiene hypothesis The old friends hypothesis Learn about the history of the EpiPen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Venom is full of dualities. According to the UN’s World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming causes somewhere between 81,000 and 138,000 deaths per year, and even that is likely an undercount. Yet research into venom has yielded treatments for diabetes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, and even the celebrity favorite diabetes slash diet drug, Ozempic.  In this episode, we explore the world of venom, where fear and fascination go hand-in-hand, and the potential for healing comes with deadly stakes.  This is part II of our “Things That Can Kill You” miniseries, which also explores poison and allergies. Featuring Sakthi Vaiyapuri. Thanks to Iva Tatić for her question. Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram, BlueSky, Tiktok, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Here’s more on Sakthi Vaiyapuri’s community awareness programs in India and his team’s research on the socioeconomic impacts on rural populations in Tamil Nadu The UN’s World Health Organization’s fact sheet on snake envenoming as a high-priority neglected tropical disease A great breakdown on why snakebite deaths are undercounted and the problem of missing data, written by global health researcher Saloni Dattani on Substack A Nature article on potential advances in antivenom Check out this Science Friday film on the cool research on cone snails and the non-opoiod painkillers derived from their venom.  More on Ozempic and lots of other innovations with roots in venom research (New York Times)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few months ago we got an email from a listener who tried a bit of a very poisonous apple and lived to tell the tale. Ultimately, he was fine, but the incident left him full of questions.  We figured, why not run with that curiosity? We put a call out for all of your poison related queries and you delivered: How much should you worry about those green potatoes in your pantry? Could our car tires be poisoning the environment? It’s another Outside/Inbox roundup on the show this week. Buckle up.  This is the first part of a “Things That Can Kill You” mini-series. Up next we tackle venom and allergies. Featuring Hussein Elgridly, Deborah Blum, Andy Robinson, Angela Mech, Kyle Lombard and Heejung Jung. Are green potatoes toxic? Are invasive browntail moths expanding their range? Is hydroxyapatite an effective substitute for fluoride? How much toxic airborne pollution is contributed by vehicle tires? For our next Outside/Inbox roundup, we’re looking for questions about sound! Dream big here: we’re talking animal sounds, traffic noise, the sounds of space… Send us your questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at [email protected].  Or you can call our hotline: 844-GO-OTTER. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sgt. Tibbs, a fluffy, 19-year-old Maine Coon with tiger stripes, soft eyes, and a chipped tooth, is missing on the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire. His owner, Rose, fears the worst. But when she finds out her cat was never missing at all – the truth turns out to be worse than she feared. From our friends over at the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, this is the first in a four-part series about what we owe our pets – and what we owe our neighbors. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.   Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the Irish fought for and won their independence from the British in 1921, they had a problem. Centuries of exploitation had left the island one of the least forested nations in Europe, with less than 2% tree cover.  So, they started planting a non-native American tree: fast-growing Sitka spruce capable of rebuilding their timber resources in record time. And it worked. Today, about 12% of the island is forested. But in the rural areas where iconic rolling hills have been replaced by rows and rows of conifers, farmers are not happy.  Outside/In host Nate Hegyi takes us to County Leitrim, an area of Ireland hit hard by the Troubles and the Great Famine, to meet the townspeople who are fighting what they say is a new wave of colonialism: Sitka spruce plantations.  Produced by Nate Hegyi. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  Featuring: Justin Warnock, Brian Smyth, Donal Magner, Liam Byrne and Jodie Asselin   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Donal Magner wrote a book covering the history of Ireland’s forests and timber industry.  Sitka spruce plantations are controversial in other parts of Ireland as well, including Cork.  There are also efforts to rewild parts of Ireland with entirely native trees and to protect and restore carbon-sequestering bogs.  It can be really tough to figure out exactly what was growing in Ireland thousands of years ago – but these scientists used ancient pollen counts to figure it out.  Researchers at University College Dublin produced  a detailed socio-economic impact report on sitka spruce plantations and County Leitrim in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, our producer Justine Paradis noticed something. Humans really like to sing together in groups: birthday parties, sports games, church hymns, protest chants, singing along to Taylor Swift at the Eras concert… the list could get very long. But… why? Did singing play a part in human evolution? Why does singing together make us feel so good? Featuring Hannah Mayree, Ani Patel, Dor Shilton, and Arla Good.  For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Bobby McFerrin in 2009 at the World Science Festival, demonstrating the intuitive power of the pentatonic scale, and in 2010, improvising in a stadium in Germany with 60,000 singers. A short documentary about Sing For Your Life! and OneVoice Circle Singers. Check out Hannah Mayree’s music and work. Dor Shilton and Ani Patel collaborated on a paper (currently preprint) examining four societies where collective music-making is rare. Dor Shilton’s paper on the evolution of music as an “interactive technology” and open-access analysis of patterns in group singing. This journal presented the hypothesis of music as a mechanism for social bonding as part of an ongoing conversation.  SingWell’s forthcoming research on group singing, aging, and Parkinson’s disease. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re used to seeing dogs and cats play with toys or get the zoomies… but do animals like rats and bumblebees play too? What is animal play for? How do scientists even decide what counts as play? Today, we’re taking a serious look at goofy behavior. We’ll discover the five-part checklist that many scientists use to recognize play in nature, and find out why taking turns is so important for healthy brain development.  This episode is a collaboration between Outside/In and Tumble, the science podcast for kids.  Featuring Junyi Chu and Jackson Ham Produced by Lindsay Patterson, Marshall Escamilla, and Taylor Quimby. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Love this episode? Looking for family-friendly podcasts to listen to? There are over 150 episodes of Tumble to check out, including a few of our favorites:  Do Trees Fart? The Swift Quake Why Are Sloths Slow Are Cats Evil?  The five-part play checklist mentioned in the episode was developed by play researcher Gordon M. Burghardt. His paper, “Play in fishes, frogs and reptiles,” answers some other really interesting questions about animal play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In New Hampshire, the most beloved swath of public land is the White Mountain National Forest. People interact with it as they would a national park – hiking, swimming, camping, and more. But a national forest is NOT a national park.  The difference comes down to a fundamental concept: the “multiple-use” land mandate. In the WMNF, you’ll find parts of the forest preserved for wildlife conservation, recreation, climate resilience, and, most controversially, logging.  This episode looks at one patch of forest from three different perspectives: a conservationist who would like to see cutting halted in the WMNF, loggers who would like to see it ramped up, and the US Forest Service that has to somehow appease them both.  Featuring Zack Porter, Jeremy Turner, Charlie Niebling, Jasen Stock, Jim Innes, and Luke Sawyer. SUPPORT To share questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Zack Porter references this study that shows the potential carbon storage in Eastern forests by 2100.  Conservation groups and logging advocates filed an amicus brief together against Standing Tree’s lawsuits.  In 2024, the Southern Environmental Law Center sued the Forest Service over its timber targets.  NHPR has been covering the legal fight in the White Mountain National Forest over the past year. You can read some of our previous coverage here and here.  CREDITS Produced by Kate Dario. Full credits and transcript available on outsideinradio.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems like every morning, another arm of the federal government is being reformed, eliminated, or downsized. That might wind up including an agency that a lot of Americans rely on when disaster strikes: FEMA. President Trump has called FEMA a “disaster.” His new head of homeland security, Kristi Noem, has signaled it’s time to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.” FEMA is a big agency, and understanding its role can be difficult in the abstract. So this week, we’re playing an episode from one of our favorite public radio podcasts: Sea Change.   It’s all about something called the “50% Rule.” Host Carlyle Calhoun travels to two towns to discover how this obscure federal policy designed to stop the cycle of flood damage is leading to opposite destinies. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.   Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 1980s, an animal rights group airlifted nearly 600 wild burros out of Grand Canyon National Park.  The media ate it up – magazines sold full-page ads advertising the cause and families from the East Coast clamored to adopt the rescued animals. But conflict around wild burros in the West still exists today. What does one of the flashiest rescue stories of the last century tell us about the power of animal activism to make enduring change?  Featuring Rebbel Clayton, Abbie Harlow, John MacPete, Dave Sharrow, Travis Ericsson, and Eric Claman.  For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  LINKS You can read Abbie Harlow’s paper, “The Burro Evil” here.  If you’re interested in learning more about the burro adoption process, Cynthia Brannigan outlined her experience as an employee of the Fund for Animals in her book, “The Last Diving Horse in America.”  Research for this episode was also sourced from Julie Hoffman Marshall’s Making Burros Fly and Cleveland Amory’s Ranch of Dreams.  Black Beauty Ranch currently houses more than 600 animals. You can read more about their work here.  Check out dozens of archival shots from the rescue, via Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library.   And yes, you can watch Brighty of the Grand Canyon on Youtube.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America. It may also be the most hated. Tennis and basketball players are complaining about losing court space because of an “invasion” of pickleballers. Residents are losing sleep because of the incessant noise. Fights over pickleball have led to a slew of petitions, calls to the police, and even lawsuits. So why do pickleball players love this sport so much? Just how annoying is it to everyone else? And what will it take for everyone to just get along?  Producer Felix Poon visits one of the most popular courts in Boston to see how the drama is unfolding there. Featuring Kemardo Henry, Martha Merson, Soren Whited, and Zariyah Cherise. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Want to play pickleball, but don’t want to annoy the neighbors? Check out this guide to quiet pickleball paddles. Read the petition that first raised concerns over the popularity of pickleball at the South Street Courts in Jamaica Plain. Learn more about the history of pickleball, which was invented near Seattle in Bainbridge Island, WA. For more on the various conflicts arising from pickleball’s growing popularity, read One Man’s Lonely War on Central Park Pickleball (NYTimes), and Shattered Nerves, Sleepless Nights: Pickleball Noise Is Driving Everyone Nuts (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since fluoridation became widespread in the 1950s, cavities in kids have fallen drastically. The effort is considered one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. But it’s also one of the most controversial.  At really high doses, fluoride is toxic – it can calcify your ligaments and joints and even fuse your spine. It also potentially has impacts on our brains. There’s a small but growing body of research suggesting that fluoride can inhibit intelligence in children.  This is still unsettled and hotly debated science but, as host Nate Hegyi finds out, in our polarized and increasingly digital world… unsettled science can quickly become doctrine.  Featuring Rene Najera, Philippe Grandjean and Mark Hartzler For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS The CDC has a website that tells you how much fluoride is in your drinking water.  Here’s the reasoning behind the U.S. Public Health Service’s recommended limit for artificially fluoridating water.  The National Toxicology Program suggests that a child’s IQ could be impacted if they or their pregnant mother ingests more than 1.5 ppm of fluoride in their water.  Philippe Grandjean’s peer-reviewed study suggests that the safe level of fluoride in water for pregnant women is much lower than what the U.S. Public Health Service recommends. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dental Association have cast doubt on the National Toxicology Program’s conclusions and say that the fluoride levels in U.S. waters are safe.  A U.S. district court judge ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take a second look at its limits for fluoride in the water, citing the National Toxicology Program’s monograph.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What has Donald Trump claimed he would do when it comes to environmental policy in the U.S.? What happened during his last administration?  And what are the limits on executive powers when it comes to treaties and global agreements? Just days before Trump’s inauguration, this episode comes to us from our friends over at Civics 101.  Featuring Elizabeth Bomberg. This episode was produced by Hannah McCarthy with help from Nick Capodice and Marina Henke. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.    LINKS Check out Nate’s episode on Biden’s climate legacy  — “Is Biden a Good Climate President?”    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sardines are in vogue. Literally. They are in Vogue magazine. They’re delicious (subjectively), good for you, and sustainable… right?  Recently, a listener called into the show asking about just that. “I've always had this sense that they're a more environmentally friendly fish, perhaps because of being low on the food chain. But I'm realizing I really have no sense of what it looks like to actually fish for sardines,” Jeannie told us. The Outside/In team got together to look beyond the sunny illustrations on the fish tins. Is there bycatch? What about emissions? Are sardines overfished? If we care about the health of the ocean, can we keep eating sardines? Featuring Jeannie Bartlett, Malin Pinsky, and Zach Koehn. To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS If you’re interested in finding sustainable fisheries, our sources recommended checking out Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch and the Marine Stewardship Council. Sardines (specifically, Fishwife) in Vogue.  Why are tinned fishes in every boutique store, and why do all of those stores feel exactly the same? For Grub Street, Emily Sundberg reported on the digital marketplace behind the “shoppy shop.”  The documentary about the epic South African sardine run is “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast” on PBS. Zach Koehn’s paper, “The role of seafood in sustainable diets.”  Malin Pinsky’s research found that small pelagic fish (like sardines, anchovies, and herring) are just as vulnerable to population collapse as larger, slower-growing species like tuna.  Explore the designs of historical Portuguese fish tins (Hyperallergic). An animated reading of The Mousehole Cat The last sardine cannery in the United States closed in 2010. But you can explore this archive of oral histories with former workers in Maine factories (many of them women and children). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The next blue moon isn’t until May 2026, but luckily for you, you won’t have to wait that long to hear the Outside/In team answering listeners’ questions. This time, we’re exploring why blue moons are cool (or even what the heck a blue moon even is) and other seasonably appropriate curiosities. What’s all the fuss about a blue moon? Should we leave the leaves? Which is a more sustainable choice: real or fake Christmas trees? What happens to Christmas tree stumps? What does all that road salt do to the environment? Featuring Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Tim Gaudreau, Victoria Meert, and Sujay Kaushal. Thanks to Outside/In listeners Zoe, Janet, Gio, Alexi, Prudence, Wendy, Mo, and Devon for their questions and contributions.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out this study on the long-term impacts of leaf litter removal in suburban yards. Looking for a creative and cute way to keep leaves in your lawn or garden? Consider building a “bug snug.” Read about the mad dash for salt that rescued the 2014 Sochi Olympics’ ski events (NYT). Learn more about the turn to beet juice and beer-based de-icers to reduce the harm of excess salt to the environment (AP News)   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon, Justine Paradis, and Marina Henke. Edited by Taylor Quimby, Rebecca Lavoie, and Justine Paradis. Our staff includes Kate Dario. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Jules Gaia, and Jharee. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Appalachia is Bigfoot territory. In a big way. This week, we look at the mythical beast's legend, lore and sizable economic impact in the region. And we follow one reporter’s journey through the mountains and foothills of western North Carolina in search of Sasquatch. This episode comes to us from the wonderful folks at The Broadside from North Carolina Public Radio, a weekly podcast exploring stories happening in their home at the crossroads of the American South. Other topics include how the world ‘y’all’ is taking over the world, the impact of dangerous heat on workers, and why cola became the king of beverages. Featuring Emily Cataneo and Jerry Millwood.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out Emily Cataneo’s story on Appalachian Bigfoot culture at The Assembly here.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Outside/In team: Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario. Executive Producer: Taylor Quimby  Intro music by bomull.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coyotes are a sort of goldilocks animal. They can be active during the day, and at night. They can hunt in groups, or survive solo. They’re wolfish enough to survive in the wild, dog-like enough to blossom in the big city.   That adaptability has arguably made coyotes one of the most successful mammalian predators on the planet. It’s also given them a reputation as opportunistic villains that prey on neighborhood garbage, livestock,  and (occasionally) household pets.  So what makes these animals so special? And if coyotes are so good at living amongst us, how do we get better at living amongst them?  Featuring: Daniel Proux, Dan Flores, Christine Wilkinson, Stan Gehrt, and Kieon Halona SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS If you enjoyed learning about coyote vocalizations, check out Janet Kessler’s blog about San Francisco coyotes, or her YouTube page, where you can find dozens of videos showing the diversity of coyote yips, yowls, barks, grows, and more . Read about coyotes in the Massachusetts town of Nahant, where municipal officials asked the federal government to help kill them in 2022. (New York Times)  CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Kate Dario Mixed by Kate Dario and Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Marina Henke Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just a few weeks after we released the What Remains series, news broke that the Penn Museum discovered additional remains of 1985 MOVE bombing victims in the museum. How did this happen? And what's next for the thousands of other human remains still in their possession? Producer Felix Poon knew just the person to talk to for answers. Featuring Rachel Watkins.  MORE ABOUT “WHAT REMAINS” Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.  But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. 19th and 20th-century physicians and anthropologists took unclaimed bodies from poorhouses and hospitals, robbed graves, and looted Indigenous bones from sacred sites. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.  In this series from Outside/In, producer Felix Poon takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.  Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology. Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next? LINKS Read the Penn Museum’s statement about the latest discovery of additional MOVE remains at the museum. Listen to WHYY’s news report, Penn Museum discovers another set of human remains from the MOVE bombing. You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hear ye, hear ye! Winter is fast approaching, and it is time for our fifth annual ‘surthrival’ special, in which the Outside/In team reframes the endurance sport that is winter. We’ve got suggestions for thriving during the cold-season, which we hope will help you positively look forward to dirty snow banks and single-digit temperatures. This year, though, there’s a twist. A listener asked us for advice on what to do before the snow starts to fall, when it’s gray and bleak. This is that dingy in-between period, known in New England as ‘stick season.’  Host Nate Hegyi is joined by Kate Dario, Taylor Quimby, and special guest Zoey Knox, offering suggestions for indoors and out, on-screen and off, and both serious and silly.  Featuring Eric Diven and special guest Zoey Knox. You can find our Outside/In 'Stick Season' Spotify playlist here. For a full list of this year’s recommendations visit our website. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Produced and mixed by Taylor Quimby.  Additional panelists: Kate Dario and Zoey Knox.  Edited by Rebecca Lavoie Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Marina Henke. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans are noisy. The National Park Service estimates that all of our whirring, grinding, and revving machines are doubling or even tripling global noise pollution every 30 years.  A lot of that noise is negatively affecting wildlife and human health. Maybe that’s why we’re so consumed with managing our sonic environments, with noise-cancelling headphones and white noise machines — and sometimes, we get into spats with our neighbors, as one of our guests did… So for this episode, producer Jeongyoon Han takes us on an exploration of three sonic landscapes: noise, silence, and something in between.  Featuring Rachel Buxton, Jim Connell, Stan Ellis, Mercede Erfanian, Nora Ma, and Rob Steadman. This episode originally aired  in July, 2023.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jeongyoon Han Mixed by Jeongyoon Han and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Special thanks to Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Edvard Grieg, and Mike Franklyn. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Appalachia, Hurricane Helene was a thousand-year-flood. It flattened towns and forests, washed roads away, and killed hundreds. But this story is not about the flood. It’s about what happened after. A month after Hurricane Helene, our producer Justine Paradis visited Marshall, a tiny town in the Black Mountains of western North Carolina, a region renowned for its biodiversity, music, and art. She went to see what it really looks like on the ground in the wake of a disaster, and how people create systems to help each other. But what she found there wasn’t just a model of mutual aid: it was a glimpse of another way to live with one another. Featuring Josh Copus, Becca Nicholson, Rachel Bennett, Steve Matlack, Keith Majeroni, and Ian Montgomery. Appearances by Meredith Silver, Anna Thompson, Kenneth Satterfield, Reid Creswell, Jim Purkerson, Jazz Maltz, Melanie Risch, and Alexandra Barao. Songs performed by Sheila Kay Adams, Analo Phillips, Leah Song and Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia, and William Ritter.   LINKS An excerpt of “A Paradise Built in Hell” by Rebecca Solnit (quoted in this episode) is available on Lithub. “You know our systems are broke when 5 gay DJs can bring 10k of supplies back before the national guard does.” (Them) The folks behind the Instagram account @photosfromhelene find, clean, and share lost hurricane photos, aiming to reunite the hurricane survivors with their photo memories.  A great essay on mutual aid by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)  CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, written, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario. NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Special thanks to  Poder Emma and Collaborativa La Milpa in Asheville. Thanks also to Rural Organizing and Resilience (ROAR). Music by  Doctor Turtle, Guustavv, Blue Dot Sessions, Cody High, and Silver Maple. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few months ago, producer Marina Henke saw two skunks sprint under her porch. Since then, she can’t stop wondering what’s really going on beneath her feet. And as it turns out, she’s not the only one. Every day across the country, homeowners are waging wars with the animals who stake out our porches, decks and crawl spaces. Have we as humans inadvertently designed luxury apartments for “unwelcome” wildlife? And is that necessarily a bad thing?  In a new edition of our (long-retired!) 10x10 series we’re going under the porch. So, grab your headlamps, put on a different pair of pants and watch out for skunks.  Featuring Christopher Schell, Kieran Lindsey, Josh Sparks and Maynard Stanley. LINKS Want more 10x10s? We’ve got ‘em! Listen here for traffic circles, gutters, sand beaches, kettle bogs and vernal pools.  You can read more about the “biological deserts fallacy” here.  The Schell Lab at UC Berkeley is up to all kinds of urban ecology research.     CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced and mixed by Marina Henke Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon and Kate Dario Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions, El Flaco Collective and Spring Gang Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio We want to hear from you! Hate what’s under your porch? Love what’s under your porch? You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over ten years, biologist Mark Higley has been stalking the forests of the Hoopa Valley Reservation with a shotgun. His mission? To save the northern spotted owl. The threat? The more aggressive barred owl, which has spread from eastern forests into the Pacific Northwest. The federal government plans to scale up these efforts and kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls across multiple states. But can the plan really save the northern spotted owl? And is the barred owl really “invasive”… or just expanding its range?  In this episode, Nate Hegyi dons a headlamp and heads into the forest with Mark Higley to catch a glimpse of these two rivals, and find out what it takes to kill these charismatic raptors, night after night, in the name of conservation. Featuring Mark Higley, Tom Wheeler, and Wayne Pacelle.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS The federal government’s barred owl management plan is very long but they have a helpful list of frequently asked questions. Check out some beautiful photos of Mark Higley’s work in this Audubon magazine story from a few years ago.  Curious about the timber wars? Oregon Public Broadcasting has an excellent podcast miniseries you should listen to.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Mixed by Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio   Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the issue of human remains collections for our miniseries, “What Remains.” Today, we want to share another excellent series that has covered some similar, but also, very different ground. Introducing “Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard,” the latest season of Last Seen from WBUR.  In this first episode, the police find buckets of body parts in a basement in Pennsylvania. Throughout the series, WBUR reporter Ally Jarmanning tells us what happened at Harvard, and how an elite university became a stop on a nationwide network of human remains trading. It’s an excellent series, and a perfect follow-up to What Remains. If you want to hear the rest of the episodes afterwards, listen and follow Last Seen wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Last Seen: Postmortem was hosted and reported by Ally Jarmanning. It was edited by Dave Shaw and Beth Healy, with additional editing from Katelyn Harrop and Frannie Monahan Mixing and sound design. Paul Vaitkus. Last Seen’s Managing Producer is Samati Joshi. Executive Producer is Ben Brock Johnson.  Also, we have something new from NHPR’s award-winning Document team.  Listen to “Emilia’s Thing,” a story of survival and resilience in the wake of January 6th. To listen, click here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A scholar and an activist make an uncompromising ultimatum. A forgotten burial ground is discovered under the streets of New York City. In Philadelphia, two groups fight over the definition of “descendant community.”  Featuring Michael Blakey, Lyra Monteiro, Chris Woods, aAliy Muhammad, Wendell Mapson, Sacharja Cunningham, Jazmin Benton, Amrah Salomon, and Aja Lans.    MORE ABOUT “WHAT REMAINS” Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.  But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. 19th and 20th-century physicians and anthropologists took unclaimed bodies from poorhouses and hospitals, robbed graves, and looted Indigenous bones from sacred sites. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.  Outside/In producer Felix Poon has informally gained a reputation as the podcast’s “death beat” correspondent. He’s visited a human decomposition facility (aka, “body farm”), reported on the growing trend of “green burial,” and explored the use of psychedelic mushrooms to help terminal cancer patients confront death. In this three-episode series from Outside/In, Felix takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.  Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology. Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next?    LINKS Archival tape of protests for the African Burial Ground came from the documentary The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery (1994). Learn more about the African Burial Ground National Monument. A recently published report, co-authored by bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey for the American Anthropological Association, recommends that research involving the handling of ancestral remains must include collaboration with descendant communities. Learn more about Finding Ceremony, the repatriation organization started by aAliy Muhammad and Lyra Monteiro. Read the Penn Museum’s statement about the Morton Cranial Collection and the 19 Black Philadelphians they interred at Eden Cemetery in early 2024. You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A classroom display of human skulls sparks a reckoning at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. A movement grows to “abolish the collection.” The Penn Museum relents to pressure. More skeletons in the closet. This episode contains swears. MORE ABOUT "WHAT REMAINS" Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.  But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.  In this three-episode series from Outside/In, producer Felix Poon takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.  Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology. Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next?  ADDITIONAL MATERIAL The Morton Cranial Collection The Penn & Slavery Project Symposium in 2019 included a presentation on the Morton Cranial Collection. aAliy Muhammad’s 2019 opinion piece: “As reparations debate continues, the University of Pennsylvania has a role to play” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) Mar Portillo Alvarado’s 2020 opinion piece: “The Penn Museum must end abuse of the Morton collection” (The Daily Pennsylvanian) Paul Wolff Mitchell’s 2021 report: “Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection” The Penn Museum’s 2021 press release: “Museum Announces the Repatriation of the Morton Cranial Collection” The MOVE bombing and MOVE remains controversy Archival tape of the MOVE bombing came from the documentary Let the Fire Burn, and Democracy Now! She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum? (NY Times) In 2021-2022 three independent investigations reported on the MOVE remains controversy: one commissioned by the Penn Museum, one by the City of Philadelphia, and one by Princeton University. Lyra Monteiro's piece on Medium, "What the photos from 2014 reveal about Penn Museum's possession of the remains of multiple victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing." You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A 1,500 year old skeleton is diagnosed with tuberculosis. A visit to a modern-day bone library. A fight over the future of ethical science. MORE ABOUT "WHAT REMAINS" Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.  But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. 19th and 20th-century physicians and anthropologists took unclaimed bodies from poorhouses and hospitals, robbed graves, and looted Indigenous bones from sacred sites. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.  Outside/In producer Felix Poon has informally gained a reputation as the podcast’s “death beat” correspondent. He’s visited a human decomposition facility (aka, “body farm”), reported on the growing trend of “green burial,” and explored the use of psychedelic mushrooms to help terminal cancer patients confront death. In this three-episode series from Outside/In, Felix takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.  Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology. Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next?    ADDITIONAL MATERIAL The Smithsonian’s ‘Bone Doctor’ scavenged thousands of body parts (Washington Post) Medical, scientific racism revealed in century-old plaque from Black man’s teeth (Science) America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains (ProPublica) Read about Maria Pearson, the “Rosa Parks of NAGPRA” and how she sparked a movement. (Library of Congress Blogs) Read Olga Spekker’s paper on SPF15, “The first probable case with tuberculous meningitis from the Hun period of the Carpathian Basin.” Listen to our episode about so-called body farms, “Life and Death at a Human Decomposition Facility.”   You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalogue, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When KALW’s Marissa Ortega-Welch hit the Pacific Crest Trail, she used her preferred method of navigation: an old-fashioned trail map. But along the way, she met a couple who only used phones to guide them, a Search and Rescue team that welcomes the power of GPS, and a woman who has been told her adaptive wheelchair isn't allowed in official wilderness areas (not actually true). So… does technology help people access wilderness? Or does it get in the way?  This week’s episode comes to us from “How Wild” produced by our friends at KALW Public Media. In this seven-part series, host Marissa Ortega-Welch charts the complex meaning of “wilderness” in the United States and how it’s changing. Marissa criss-crosses the country to speak with hikers, land managers, scientists and Indigenous leaders – people who spend every day grappling with how ideas about wilderness play out in the hundreds of designated wilderness areas across the U.S.  LINKS Check out more episodes of “How Wild” here. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook HOW WILD CREDITS How Wild is created and executive produced by Marissa Ortega-Welch.  Edited by Lisa Morehouse. Additional editing and sound design by Gabe Grabin.  Life coaching by Shereen Adel. Fact-checking by Mark Armao.  How Wild is produced in partnership with KALW Public Media, distributed by NPR and made possible with support from California Humanities, a partner of the NEH. This podcast is produced in Oakland, California…on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ohlone. Learn more about the Indigenous communities where you live at native-land.ca OUTSIDE/IN CREDITS Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Taylor Quimby NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio is Rebecca Lavoie Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Kate Dario and Marina Henke.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Perhaps you’re familiar with our Outside/Inbox hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. Anyone can leave us a voicemail sharing questions about the natural world, and we periodically answer them on the show.  A few weeks ago, it came to our attention that we hadn't gotten a new voicemail in some time. Turns out our hotline has been bugging out for at least six months, and we have a lot of catching up to do.   So, we present: Outside/Inbox, the lost voicemails edition.  Featuring Stephanie Spera, with contributions from Ariel, Joe, Carolyn, Maverick, Jarrett, Eben, a rooster, and a closet (?) full of snakes.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our newsletter for occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS This is the study Marina mentioned with a comparative life cycle assessment of hand dryers vs. paper towel dispensers.  If you want to learn more about chronic wasting disease, Nate recommends listening to Bent Out of Shape, a three-part series from KUNC. For a quick read, here’s a fact sheet from the CDC. Listen to Outside/In’s behind-the-scenes journey into a human decomposition facility, aka “body farm,” reported by Felix Poon. If you’ve been to Acadia National Park in Maine and taken photos of the fall foliage anytime since 1950, you can participate in research about how climate change is shifting the timing of peak foliage. Contribute your pictures of the autumn leaves to the Acadia National Park Fall Foliage Project here. Many are predicting that fall 2024 will be a banner season for spectacular foliage, including our colleagues at NHPR’s Something Wild. Plus, here’s more on the dynamics of fall foliage, precipitation, and anthocyanin.    CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported by Justine Paradis, Nate Hegyi, and Marina Henke.  Produced and mixed by Justine Paradis. Edited by Taylor Quimby NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Our staff also includes Kate Dario. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Brigham Orchestra, Guustavv, Katori Walker, John B. Lund, and Bonkers Beat Club. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.   Editor's note: A previous version of this episode incorrectly stated that Forest Park is the biggest public park in the United States. It is the biggest in St. Louis, Missouri and arguably bigger than Central Park. The audio and transcript have been updated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 1900s, people didn’t trust refrigerated food. Fruits and vegetables, cuts of meat… these things are supposed to decay, right? As Nicola Twilley writes, “What kind of unnatural technology could deliver a two-year old chicken carcass that still looked as though it was slaughtered yesterday?” But just a few decades later, Americans have done a full one-eighty. Livestock can be slaughtered thousands of miles away, and taste just as good (or better) by the time it hits your plate.  Apples can be stored for over a year without any noticeable change. A network called the “cold-chain” criss-crosses the country, and at home our refrigerators are fooling us into thinking we waste less food than we actually do.  Today, refrigeration has reshaped what we eat, how we cook it, and even warped our very definition of what is and isn’t “fresh.”  Featuring Nicola Twilley.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS You can find Nicola’s new book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves,” at your local bookstore or online.    CREDITS Our host is Nate Hegyi. Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby. Mixed by Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Kate Dario and Marina Henke. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For more than two hundred years Americans have tried to tame the Mississippi River. And, for that entire time, the river has fought back.  Journalist and author Boyce Upholt has spent dozens of nights camping along the Lower Mississippi and knows the river for what it is: both a water-moving machine and a supremely wild place. His recent book, “The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi River” tells the story of how engineers have made the Mississippi into one of the most engineered waterways in the world, and in turn have transformed it into a bit of a cyborg — half mechanical, half natural.  In this episode, host Nate Hegyi and Upholt take us from the flood ravaged town of Greenville, Mississippi, to the small office of a group of army engineers, in a tale of faulty science, big egos and a river that will ultimately do what it wants.  Featuring Boyce Upholt.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS You can find Boyce’s new book The Great River, at your local bookstore or online.  The 2018 study which attributed increased engineering of the Mississippi as a greater influence to worsening floods on the river than climate change.  Check out Harold Fisk's 1944 now famous maps of a meandering and ever-changing Mississippi watershed. The Mississippi Department of Archives & History has a remarkable collection of digitized photos from the 1927 flood. To get a sense of the type of work being done on the Mississippi in modern day, a US Army Corps of Engineers video detailing concrete revetment on the Lower Mississippi.  Curious about recent controversy on the Mississippi? Read up on the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion – a $3 billion coastal restoration project that will divert portions of the Mississippi’s flow in hopes of rebuilding lost land via sediment deposition.  CREDITS Our host is Nate Hegyi. Written and mixed by Marina Henke. Editing by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi.  Our staff also includes Felix Poon and Justine Paradis. Our executive producer is Taylor Quimby. Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions, Martin Landstrom, and Chris Zabriskie. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helium is full of contradictions. It’s the second most abundant element in the universe, but is relatively rare on Earth. It’s non-reactive, totally inert—yet the most valuable helium isotope is sourced from thermonuclear warheads.  And even though we treat it as a disposable gas, often for making funny voices and single-use party balloons, our global supply of helium will eventually run out. That’s because, at a rate of about 50 grams per second, this non-renewable resource is escaping the atmosphere for good.  In this edition of The Element of Surprise, our occasional series about the hidden histories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, we examine the incredible properties and baffling economics of our most notable noble gas.  Featuring Anjali Tripathi and William Halperin.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter to get occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Read John Paul Merkle’s petition arguing to change the name of helium to “helion.” Despite being about a quarter century old, this passage from “The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve” has a pretty comprehensive list of the uses and properties of helium. More on the recent sale of the Federal Helium Reserve (NBC News) Physicist William Halperin said the idea of mining helium-3 on the moon was… unlikely… but that hasn’t stopped this startup company from trying it. (Wired) Want to learn more about the weird history of American airships? Check out this film produced by the U.S. government in 1937, when they were still hoping to keep our airship program afloat.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie, with help from Marina Henke and Justine Paradis Our staff includes  Felix Poon Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Ryan James Carr. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jack Rodolico knows exactly what scares him. Sharks.  But here’s what he doesn’t get: if he’s so freaked out, why can’t he stop incessantly watching online videos of bloody shark attacks?  Why would he deliberately seek out the very thing that spooks him? To figure it out, Jack enlists the help of other scaredy-cats: our listeners, who shared their fears about nature with us. Together, Jack and the gang consider the spectrum of fear, from phobia to terror, and what it might mean when we don’t look away. Featuring Lauren Passell, Arash Javanbakht, Nile Carrethers, and Sushmitha Madaboosi. This episode originally aired in October 2022.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter for occasional merch drops and updates. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Lauren Passell’s Podcast the Newsletter. Related: why people love horror movies. The ubiquity of smartphones means plenty of hair-raising amateur videos of shark attacks to get you started on your doomscrolling (warning: a couple of these are bloody). If this image of an octopus freaks you out, you might share Lauren’s “fear of holes,” or trypophobia. Learn more about augmented reality technology and other projects at Arash Javanbakht’s clinic.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jack Rodolico Mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Nate Hegy, and Jessica Hunt. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie  Music for this episode by Silver Maple, Matt Large, Luella Gren, John Abbot and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to everyone who sent in voicemails and memos, even the ones we didn’t play: Erin Partridge, Lauren Passell, Nile Carrethers, Michelle MacKay, Alec from Nashville, and Hillary from Washington.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the perspective of Western science, plants have long been considered unaware, passive life forms; essentially, rocks that happen to grow.  But there’s something in the air in the world of plant science. New research suggests that plants are aware of the world around them to a far greater extent than previously understood. Plants may be able to sense acoustics, communicate with each other, and make choices… all this without a brain. These findings are fueling a debate, perhaps even a scientific revolution, which challenges our fundamental definitions of life, intelligence, and consciousness. Featuring Zoë Schlanger.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our newsletter for occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Zoë Schlanger’s book is called The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth.  “Everything Will Be Vine” is a great podcast episode from Future Ecologies featuring Zoë’s journey into the Chilean rainforest, where researchers are mystified by a once-overlooked vine.  Jagadish Chandra Bose was an Indian scientist who challenged the Western view of plants in the early 20th century. He studied electrical signaling in plants and argued that plants use language. Read about his life and work in Orion. This is the now famous study by David Rhoades. Rhoades was derided for his “talking trees” theory, and only was proved correct after his death. Here’s an audio story which goes deeper on Rhoades. Lilach Hadany, the scientist who likened a field of flowers to a “field of ears,” also recently found that plants produce sounds when stressed. The study which found that plants respond to the sound of caterpillars chewing, a collaboration between Rex Cocroft and Heidi Appel. The organization of the octopus nervous system is fascinating.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis. Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon and Marina Henke. NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Special thanks to Rex Cocroft for sharing the recordings of leafhopper mating calls and chewing caterpillars.   Music by Mochas, Hanna Lindgren, Alec Slayne, Sarah the Illstrumentalist, Brendan Moeller, Nul Tiel Records, Blue Dot Sessions, and Chris Zabriskie. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GPS is essential these days. We use it for everything – from a hunter figuring out where the heck they are in the backcountry, to a delivery truck finding a grocery store, to keeping clocks in sync. But our reliance on GPS may also be changing our brains. Old school navigation strengthens the hippocampus, and multiple studies suggest that our new reliance on satellite navigation may put us at higher risk for diseases like dementia.  In this episode, we map out how GPS took over our world – from Sputnik’s doppler effect, to the airplane crash that led to its widespread adoption – and share everyday stories of getting lost and found again.  Featuring: Dana Goward, M.R. O’Connor, Christina Phillips, Michelle Liu, Julia Furukawa, and Taylor Quimby   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS In 2023, Google Maps rerouted dozens of drivers in Los Angeles down a dirt road to the middle of nowhere to avoid a dust storm.  Maura O’Connor traveled from rural Alaska to the Australian bush to better understand how people navigate without GPS – and sometimes even maps.  Here’s the peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, that found that young people who relied on GPS for daily driving had poorer spatial memories.  Another study, out of Japan, found that people who use smartphone apps like Google Maps to get around had a tougher time retracing their steps or remembering how they got to a place compared to people who use paper maps or landmarks.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby and Katie Colaneri  Our team includes Marina Henke, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once again, it’s that wonderful time when scientists everywhere hold their breath as the team opens the Outside/Inbox to answer listener questions about the natural world. Today’s theme is smell: how it works in the nose, the mind, and how much is still unknown about the fifth sense. Question 1: Does it gross you out to know that every time you smell something, a little bit of that thing… is in your nose? What happens to the molecules we smell? Question 2: Why do smells have such a powerful connection to memory? Question 3: How do pheromones work in humans? Do ‘ideal mates’ really ‘smell better’ to us? Question 4: Why does the smell of florals sometimes precede a migraine? Question 5: What’s anosmia? Featuring Rachel Herz, Bob Datta, Katie Boetang, and Tristram Wyatt, with thanks to Stephanie Hunter.     Outside/In seeks your questions for an upcoming Outside/Inbox.   What questions should the Outside/In team explore about the U.S. presidential election? What do you want to know about what this election means for climate change or environmental regulation? Maybe you’ve got questions about Project 2025, or maybe you’re curious about presidential transitions more generally. You can send your questions to [email protected] or leave a voicemail on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our newsletter for occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Rachel Herz is the author of several books, including “Why You Eat What You Eat” and “The Scent of Desire.” Tristram Wyatt is the author of “Pheromones and Animal Behavior.” Katie Boetang hosts The Smell Podcast. More on the connections between smell, memory, emotion, and health, featuring Bob Datta and Herz. In the 1990s, one company claimed to have found human sex pheromones and tried to market them for use in perfumes. Research on the connection between olfactory loss and depression, smell triggers for migraines, and an explanation of how COVID-19 causes loss of smell.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis, Catherine Hurley, and Felix Poon, with help from Marina Henke. Edited by Taylor Quimby NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music by Daniel Fridell, Caro Luna, Lofive, bomull, Jahzarr, Mindme, and John B. Lund.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Redwood National and State Parks are home to giants: coast redwoods that can grow as tall as a thirty-story building. These ancient California forests support hundreds of different species, and store more carbon than any other forest on the planet. But in the last century, 95% of them were felled by loggers.  Now, scientists have discovered a surprising strategy to foster the next generation of old-growth redwoods… and it involves chopping some of the younger trees down. This week’s episode comes to us from “THE WILD with Chris Morgan,” produced by our friends at KUOW. Chris has got an infectious enthusiasm for the natural world, and the podcast has an immersive sound that makes it feel like you’re standing right under the redwoods with him.   LINKS Check out more episodes of THE WILD at https://www.kuow.org/podcasts/thewild   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   THE WILD CREDITS THE WILD is a production of KUOW and Chris Morgan Wildlife, with support from Wildlife Media. It is produced by Matt Martin and Lucy Soucek. It is edited by Jim Gates. It is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Theme music is by Michael Parker.   OUTSIDE/IN CREDITS Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Taylor Quimby NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio is Rebecca Lavoie Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Marina Henke. Our intern is Catherine Hurley.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Will Simone Biles live up to her moniker as greatest gymnast of all time? Will Lebron James and Team USA continue to dominate men's  basketball? And will the Paris 2024 Games be the most sustainable in modern Olympic history? While billions of viewers tune in for the drama of athletes competing on a global stage, climate scientists are tuning in to Paris's climate promises – from the locally sourced catering and carbon neutral Olympic cauldron, to head-scratching “solutions” like a sidewalk made of seashells, and not installing air conditioning in athletes’ housing. Are these solutions making a difference? Or is it plain and simple greenwashing? We put these questions to the test in this episode on the XXXIII Olympiad. Let the games begin! Featuring Martin Müller.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Read Martin Muller’s paper evaluating the sustainability of summer and winter Olympic games from the past 3 decades. Listen to Civics 101’s episode on the politics of the Olympic Games. Check out scenes from Olympic opening ceremonies from London 1908 to Rio 2016. Watch a timelapse video of construction of the temporary beach volleyball venue in front of the Eiffel Tower. Read up on fun Olympics trivia, like what the most common surname of athletes is, and about the time two athletes who tied for second place cut their silver and bronze medals and fused them together to make two “friendship medals.”   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby. Our staff includes Justine Paradis and Marina Henke. Our intern is Catherine Hurley. Our Executive producer is Taylor Quimby. Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR's Director of On-Demand Audio. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Joe E. Lee, Jay Varton, Arthur Benson, Philip Ayers, Kikoru, Trabant 33, and Phoenix Tail. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might not think much about the sticky bottle of vanilla sitting in the back of your pantry. But that flavor – one of the most common in the world – has a fascinating history, involving a fickle orchid and a 12-year-old enslaved boy who made the discovery of a lifetime.  That’s the sort of tale that attracts poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. From peacock feathers to the sounds of garden insects, her work is known for magnifying the wonders of the natural world. Her latest book of essays, “Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees,” explores the unexpected connections between food, memory, and community. So take a seat and pour yourself an aperitif, as Aimee Nezhukumatathil shares a few of these miniature morsels with Outside/In host Nate Hegyi: a three-course meal of grape jelly, sweet nostalgia, and just a hint of vanilla bean.   Featuring Aimee Nezhukumatathil  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.  CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, Felix Poon and Catherine Hurley Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the newest series from NHPR’s award-winning Document team: “The Youth Development Center.” New Hampshire has sent its most troubled kids to the same juvenile detention center for more than a century. It's a place that was supposed to nurture them, that instead hurt them – in some of the worst ways imaginable. It's now at the center of one of the biggest youth detention scandals in American history. How did this happen – and how did it finally come to light? The rest of the series is available now: listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts.  This episode includes content that may not be suitable for young listeners. If you have suffered abuse and need someone to talk to, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. If you’re in a mental health crisis, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maybe you’ve looked at the sky on a clear night and spotted the International Space Station, a tiny white dot gliding through the stars. Maybe it felt special, a rare glimpse of a human-made satellite in space.  But what if you were to look up at the sky and see more visible satellites than stars? What if the Big Dipper and Orion were drowned out by  a satellite traffic jam, criss-crossing through space?  A growing number of astronomers are sounding the alarm about such a possibility, even within the next decade. A new space race is already well underway. Commercial satellite traffic in low Earth orbit has skyrocketed in recent years, with more satellites launched into space than ever before. The majority of these satellites are owned and operated by a single company: Starlink.  Featuring Samantha Lawler, Jonathan McDowell, Aaron Boley, and Roohi Dalal, with thanks to Edward Oughton.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our newsletter to get occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Here’s a link to the most popular proceedings in the FCC docket, and a step-by-step guide for submitting your own comments (this guide was compiled for a previous filing by an advocacy group which includes Samantha Lawler). COMPASSE, or the Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment, also stays up-to-date on FCC procedures. In this episode, Nate and Justine looked at this 3D rendering of satellite constellations around the globe, including GPS and Starlink.  Space Data Navigator has nice visualizations of the number of launches, satellites, and debris over time, which relies in part on Jonathan McDowell’s data.  Aaron Boley’s article in Nature, “Satellite mega-constellations create risks in Low Earth Orbit, the atmosphere and on Earth.” A talk by Samantha Lawler about Kuiper belt objects and the challenges to astronomy posed by sharp increase in satellites.  An open-access paper which found that internet from satellite mega-constellations could be up to 12-14 times more emission-intensive than terrestrial broadband. For more from Outside/In on the “earth-space environmental system,” check out our episode on property rights in airspace and space-space, this one on the element of aluminum, and an oldie-but-a-goodie on geoengineering. A piece on the cutting room floor: the risk that you’ll get hit by satellite debris falling back to Earth is quite low… but the risk that someone will get hit is rising.  Here’s a global map of light pollution, and a tool to find dark sky sites near you. On the issue of orbital crowding, there have been a couple notable traffic jams in space. Last month, a decommissioned Russian satellite disintegrated in low Earth orbit, posing potential risks to astronauts on board the ISS. In 2019, an important weather-monitoring satellite had to dodge a Starlink satellite, a fuel-expensive maneuver. In 2021, Starlink and OneWeb debated what really happened when their satellites passed within 190 feet of each other in orbit.  A note on space regulation Our episode did not cover all the groups regulating space. At a global level, this includes the UN’s International Telecommunication Union and the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs. Within the United States, the Office of Space Commerce also plays a role, in addition to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music in this episode came from Victor Lundberg, Lofive, Harbours & Oceans, Spiegelstadt, Curved Mirror, Silver Maple, Wave Saver, Cobby Costa, and From Now On. The blue whale calls were recorded by NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consider the potato.  The typical potato is not all that pretty. They can be beige and lumpy, dusty and speckled, and on top of that, they even sprout alien-like tentacles. Further, no one really knows what to make of the potato. Is it a vegetable, or so starchy that we should really consider it a grain?  It’s time for answers. The Outside/In team ventures into the potato patch and presents three stories on this “fifth most important crop worldwide.”  Part 1: An artist vaults the humble potato to luxury status. Part 2: A deliberation on the potato’s true place in the food pyramid – or, that is, on “MyPlate.” Part 3: When his mom was diagnosed with cancer, producer Felix Poon’s dad found a way to help her: fresh-squeezed potato juice.  Featuring Laila Gohar, Kristina Peterson, and Paul Poon.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Subscribe to our newsletter for occasional updates and special announcements.   LINKS Laila Gohar wrote about her potato party, and the Marie-Antoinette-era rebrand of the potato, in her column for the Financial Times.  For more details on the French pharmacist who transformed the potato’s image, check out this Atlas Obscura piece. For a vinegary and vegetable-forward potato salad, Justine recommends this recipe from the great Deb Perelman. Taylor recommends these vegan Bombay potatoes and peas (this is the closest recipe he could find online to the book recipe he uses at home). Felix recommends trying Sichuan stir-fried potatoes from an authentic Sichuan Chinese restaurant if you haven’t had it before, and then give this Woks of Life recipe a try. If you find yourself near the U.S.-Mexico border, Nate recommends you try some carne asada fries. Here’s a good recipe if you want to try them at home.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon Mixed by Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon. Editing by Executive Producer Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Our intern is Catherine Hurley. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Patrick Patrikios. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public RadioSubmit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Episode art courtesy of Laila Gohar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Yong’s writing about the pandemic in Atlantic Magazine was read by millions of Americans. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for his coverage.  But behind the scenes, he was struggling with burnout, anxiety and depression.  Host Nate Hegyi sits down with Ed for a conversation about how he decided to step back from pandemic reporting, the benefits (and possible drawbacks) of birdwatching for mental health, and the unexpected club that’s bringing two halves of his life together.  Featuring Ed Yong.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Ed wrote an eerily predictive story about how America was not prepared for a pandemic in 2018.  You can find a link to all of Ed’s reporting for Atlantic Magazine here.  A description of “spoon theory” in Psychology Today. For more information about the Spoonbill Club, check out Ed’s newsletter.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Mixed by Taylor Quimby, with help from our intern, Catherine Hurley Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradise and Felix Poon Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During their twelve seasons as winter rangers in Yosemite National Park, Rob and Laura Pilewski have learned a thing or two about what it means to love a place – and a person. This episode comes to us from the wonderful folks at The Dirtbag Diaries, another podcast that features stories about conservation, epic adventures, and more.  Featuring Rob and Laura Pilewski   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   CREDITS Host of The Dirtbag Diaries: Fitz Cahall This episode was reported, produced and edited by Lauren DeLaunay Miller Mixing by Evan Phillips The Dirtbag Diaries Executive Producer: Becca Cahall Music from Jacob Bain & Nis Kotto, Brian Bombadil, Joya, Roma 49, Garland, and Brendan O’Connell Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Our staff includes Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon. Catherine Hurley is our intern.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do wolves, waste-water treatment plants, and the Gulf Stream have in common? This episode, that’s what! It’s that wonderful time when we comb through all your wonderful questions and call up some scientists to help us answer them. Some of the more unlikely things that get brought up include dinosaur pee, abandoned shopping carts, and wolves preying on cheese curds.  Here’s what’s on the docket: Why is dog saliva slimier than human saliva?  Why do wolves get relocated in the middle of winter? What if the Gulf Stream “shut down?” How do wastewater treatment plants work?  Featuring Eric Odell, Alice Ren, and Sri Vedachalam.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Baegul, Hatamitsunami, and King Sis. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every December, during the Christmas Bird Count, tens of thousands of volunteers look to the skies for an international census of wild birds.  But during migration season, a much smaller squad of New York City volunteers take on a more sobering experience: counting dead birds that have collided with glass buildings and fallen back to Earth.  In this episode, we find out what kind of people volunteer for this grisly job, visit the New York City rehab center that takes in injured pigeons, and find out how to stop glass from killing an estimated one billion birds nationwide every year.  Featuring Melissa Breyer, Linda LaBella, Gitanjali Bhattacharjee, Katherine Chen, and Tristan Higginbotham   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Want to see the migration forecast? Check out Birdcast.  Want to be a citizen scientist and report dead birds? Check out dBird.  Want to see volunteer Melissa Breyer’s photos of dead birds? Check out Sad Birding. More about Project Safe Flight.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie and Nate Hegyi. Our staff includes Justine Paradis and Felix Poon  Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC is sometimes called “the people’s zoo.” That’s because it’s the only zoo in the country to be created by an act of US Congress, and admission is free. But why did our federal government create a national zoo in the first place? Producer Felix Poon has the scoop – from its surprising origins in the near-extinction of bison, to a look at its modern-day mission of conservation, we’re going on a field trip to learn all about the National Zoo. Featuring Kara Ingraham, Daniel Frank, and Ellie Tahmaseb.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS William Hornaday founded the National Zoo, but his legacy is complicated, to say the least. Environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis contemplates whether he’s a “villainous hero or heroic villain” (PBS). “A Chinese cigarette tin launched D.C.’s 50-year love affair with pandas” tells the origin story of pandas at the National Zoo (The Washington Post). The story of Ota Benga, the man who was caged by William Hornaday in the Bronx Zoo (The Guardian). Environmental writer Emma Marris imagines a world without zoos in her opinion essay, “Modern Zoos Are Not Worth the Moral Cost” (NYTimes). We looked at the court case of Happy the elephant in our 2022 Outside/In episode, “Et Tu, Brute? The Case for Human Rights for Animals.”   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby. Our staff includes Justine Paradis Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Thanks to Nick Capodice for performing William Hornaday voiceovers. Music by Bluedot Sessions and Jules Gaia Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While digging a well in 1750, a group of workers accidentally discovered an ancient Roman villa containing over a thousand papyrus scrolls. This was a stunning discovery: the only library from antiquity ever found in situ. But the scrolls were blackened and fragile, turned almost to ash by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Over the centuries, scholars’ many attempts to unroll the fragile scrolls have mostly been catastrophic. But now, scientists are trying again, this time with the help of Silicon Valley and some of the most advanced technology we’ve got: particle accelerators, CT scanners, and AI. After two thousand years, will we finally be able to read the scrolls? Featuring Federica Nicolardi, Brent Seales, Youssef Nader, Arefeh Sherafati, and Julian Schilliger.    SUPPORT Donate $10 per month and get our new “I axolotl questions” mug! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS The Vesuvius Challenge is not over. Find out more here.  Check out more pictures of the scrolls and the process of “virtual unwrapping” at the Digital Restoration Initiative website, or watch Brent Seales lecture about his technique. A 60 Minutes story (2018) focusing on the conflict between Seales and scholars Vito Mocella and Graziano Ranocchia. A replica of the marble floor discovered by Italian farmworkers in 1750.  A video illustrating the process of “virtual unwrapping” with a jelly roll. Contestant Casey Handmer’s blog post detailing his identification of the “crackle signal” to the ink.  CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music in this episode came from Silver Maple, Xavy Rusan, bomull, Young Community, Bio Unit, Konrad OldMoney, Chris Zabriski, and Blue Dot Sessions. Volcano recordings came from daveincamas on Freesound.org, License Attribution 4.0 and  felix.blume on freesound.org, Creative Commons 0. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Colorado River – and the people that rely on it – are in a state of crisis. Climate change and overuse are taking a significant toll. Seven states must compromise and reach a solution to prevent the river from collapsing. In late 2023, tensions were running high between the major players in the water world as they convened at the annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas. LAist Correspondent Emily Guerin was there, seeking to learn as much as she can about the people with the most power on the river, including a sharply-dressed 28-year-old from California.  This episode comes to us from the podcast Imperfect Paradise, which is releasing a whole series on the Colorado River water crisis.    SUPPORT Donate $10 per month and get our new “I axolotl questions” mug! Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Agriculture uses a lot of the Colorado River - what if we replaced that farmland with solar panels?  Speaking of farms, most of the crops raised with Colorado River water don’t go to people. They go to cows.   CREDITS This episode was written and reported by Emily Guerin Imperfect Paradise host: Antonia Cereijido Fact-checking by Gabriel Dunatov.  Mixing and Imperfect Paradise theme music by E. Scott Kelly with additional music by Andrew Eapen. Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Outside/In Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis and Felix Poon Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might associate it with the foil that wraps leftover pizza and the shiny craft beer cans sold in breweries, but aluminum is literally everywhere. Scoop up a handful of soil or gravel anywhere on Earth, and you’ll find atoms of bonded aluminum hidden inside. Over the past 150 years, that abundance has led production of the silvery metal to skyrocket (pun intended) and created an industry responsible for 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  But even before it was used in everything from airplanes to deodorant, the trade of aluminum minerals helped color the world, finance the Vatican, and led to the mass collection of human urine. In this episode, we’re piloting a new segment called “The Element of Surprise.” It’s all about the hidden histories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, isotopes, and molecules. And we’re kicking things off with aluminum. Editor's note: A previous version of this episode misstated the number of  Allied casualties during a 1943 bombing campaign against a German cryolite factory, claiming all but one of 180 bombers were destroyed. In actuality, all but one of 180 bombers returned home safely.  The episode has been corrected.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS The World Economic Forum has published a number of studies and articles on the need to decarbonize the aluminum industry and the promising technologies that might help us get there.  A few years ago, Alcoa announced plans to build a new aluminum smelting plant in Maniitsoq, Greenland. PBS’s POV released a documentary about how people there reckoned with the island’s colonial past as the project progressed, stalled, and eventually collapsed.  The National Park Service has a fun little read about the Washington Monument’s aluminum tip.  Sean Adams, at the University of Florida, wrote an excellent recap of the U.S. government’s antitrust case against aluminum giant Alcoa.  Here’s another one from Foreign Policy about how industrial cartels and monopolies helped Hitler gain power.  Check out Charlie Halloran’s “The Alcoa Sessions,” to imagine what kind of music might have been played during Alcoa’s cruise voyages between New Orleans and Jamaica between 1949 and 1959.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, mixed, and produced by Taylor Quimby Mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie, with help from Nate Hegyi and Felix Poon Our staff includes Justine Paradis  Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Ryan James Carr, and L.M. Styles Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When officials commissioned a set of updated hazard maps for Juneau, Alaska, they thought the information would help save lives and spur new development. Instead, the new maps drew public outcry from people who woke up to discover their homes were at risk of being wiped out by landslides. What’s followed has been a multiyear project – not to address the challenges posed by climate-fueled landslides – but to alter, ignore, or otherwise shelve the maps that outline the threat in the first place. Host Nate Hegyi visits Juneau to see one example of why, across the country, even the most progressive Americans are rejecting tough truths about climate change when it comes knocking at their own back door. Featuring: Tom Mattice, Christine Woll, Eve Soutiere, and Lloyd Dixon.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS You can check out Juneau’s new hazard maps, along with many of its neighborhood meetings, on their website.  Dive into why the insurance industry stopped providing landslide coverage to Southeast Alaska. KTOO had a wonderful story on how a 1936 landslide that killed 15 people in Juneau became a faded memory. Zach Provant, a researcher at the University of Oregon, spent months investigating the rollout of Juneau’s hazard maps.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby and Katie Colaneri Editing help from Felix Poon and Justine Paradis Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to protecting the biodiversity of Planet Earth, there is no greater failure than extinction. Thankfully, only a few dozen species have been officially declared extinct by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the half-century since the passage of the Endangered Species Act.  But, hold on. Aren’t we in the middle of the sixth mass extinction? Shouldn’t the list of extinct species be… way longer? Well, yeah. Maybe. Producer Taylor Quimby sets out to understand why it’s so difficult to officially declare an animal extinct. Along the way, he compares rare animals to missing socks, finds a way to invoke Lizzo during an investigation of an endangered species of crabgrass, and learns about the disturbing concept of “dark extinctions.”  Editor's Note: This episode was first published in October 2022. Since then, the US Fish and Wildlife Service officially delisted 21 of 23 proposed species due to extinction. The ivory-billed woodpecker was not one of them.  Featuring Sharon Marino, Arne Mooers, Sean O’Brien, Bill Nichols, and Wes Knapp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shirtless influencers on TikTok and Instagram have acquired millions of followers promoting the carnivore diet. They say studies linking meat consumption and heart disease are flawed — and plant foods are making people sick. "Western medicine is lying to you," says content-creator Dr. Paul Saladino, who co-owns a company selling desiccated cattle organs. The online popularity of the carnivore diet is undeniable. Yet, no controlled studies have been published confirming its advertised benefits.  Our friends at WBUR’s podcast Endless Thread look at how social media cooked up the anti-establishment wellness trend.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS "Red Shift" (The New Yorker) "The 'You’re doing it wrong'-ification of TikTok" (Vox) "The Evolution of Diet" (National Geographic) "Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered" (New York Times) "Against Meatposting" (Heated) Endless Thread's unedited interview with Dr. Paul Saladino (WBUR)   CREDITS Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Outside/In Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio This episode of Endless Thread was written and produced by Dean Russell and Ben Brock Johnson.  Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.  Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hemp used to be a staple of life in America. King James I demanded that colonists produce it. Hemp rope and fabric were ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The USDA even produced a WWII newsreel called “Hemp for Victory.” But other materials came to replace hemp – wood pulp for paper, and cotton and synthetics for fabric. Why? For that matter, what is hemp? Is it different from weed? And does it actually have 25,000 uses as its proponents claim? Featuring Hector “Freedom” Gerardo, David Suchoff, John Fike, and Danny Desjarlais.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Learn more about how the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation has worked with hempcrete, and how they hope it’ll transform their economy (Grist). The 2018 Farm Bill inadvertently led to a multibillion-dollar market of hemp-derived THC products. Twenty-two AGs are now calling on congress to fix the legal loophole that has “[forced] cannabis-equivalent products into our economies regardless of states’ intentions to legalize cannabis use.” (The Hill) Cannabis sativa in the US only came to be called “marijuana” in the early 1900s, when the anti-cannabis movement wanted to link it to its “Mexican-ness.” But, as The Mysterious History Of 'Marijuana' (NPR Code Switch) explains, the etymological origins of “marijuana” are still debated: does it come from the Chinese word ma ren hua? Or the Bantu word for cannabis: ma-kaña? Or something else? Hemp for Victory! (YouTube)   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, mixed, and produced by Felix Poon. Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Rebecca Lavoie Our staff includes Justine Paradis. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Special thanks to Fitsum Tariku, Director of the Building Science Centre of Excellence. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Mike Franklyn, Jules Gaia, Dusty Decks, and Rocket Jr. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s that special time again! Scientists everywhere hold their breath as the team opens the Outside/Inbox and answers listener questions about the natural world. In this episode, we consider Flaco the Eurasian eagle owl, an impulsive goat purchase, and a big night for salamanders. Plus, we’re graced with Nate’s rendition of a Tom Waits song.  Questions: What would NYC look like in 50 years if humans disappeared? What if the earth had no moon? Could humans survive a worst-case climate scenario? Do birds have regional accents? How do we keep wildlife safe when crossing the road? Featuring Stephon Alexander, Luke Kemp, Chris Sturdy, and Sandi Houghton.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out these gorgeous visualizations created by the Mannahatta Project, which has since been renamed the Welikia Project. Flaco the Eurasian eagle owl died after crashing into a building earlier this month. His autopsy revealed his body to be riddled with rodenticide and pigeon herpes, cementing his status as “a real New Yorker” for some observers. Still, building collisions, rat poison, and disease are all major risks for birds of prey in urban environments.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon, Taylor Quimby, and Justine Paradis  Mixed by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor Quimby and Rebecca Lavoie NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music by blacksona, Katori Walker, Bisou, Young Community, Diamond Ortiz, Brightarm Orchestra, Kevin MacLeod, Tellsonic, Walt Adams, and ProleteR.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To save for retirement, common knowledge says to “diversify your portfolio.” Give your cash to a company so they can invest it into hundreds of other companies on the stock market. But unless you’ve gone out of your way to change it, your portfolio probably has little to do with your values.  For example, there are climate activists invested in fossil fuel companies. Staunch vegans putting some of their hard-earned income into Tyson Foods. On the flip side, there are climate deniers with money in Tesla! So is there a way to save for retirement that’s both good for your pocketbook… and good for the planet? Featuring: Timothy Yee, Clara Vondrich, Kelly Shue   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Divestment helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the coal industry, according to this white paper from the Harvard Business School. However, divestment can also backfire, according to this study from Yale.  Got a lot of time to kill? You can watch the recent SEC commissioner meeting where they voted to pass a weakened version of the climate disclosure rule.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Mixed by Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby Our staff includes Justine Paradis and Felix Poon  Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor's Note: This episode first aired in July, 2023 With 'Oppenheimer,' director Christopher Nolan turned the Manhattan Project into an Academy-Award-winning blockbuster. The film is set in Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was tested. But few people know the history of Carrizozo, a rural farming area downwind of the test. Radioactive fallout from the bomb settled on everything: the soil, gardens, and drinking water. Cow’s milk became radioactive. Later, hundreds of people developed radiogenic cancers.  The people of Carrizozo were among the first people in the world exposed to a nuclear blast. More than 75 years later, their families are still fighting for medical compensation from the federal government. Host Nate Hegyi traveled to New Mexico to visit the Trinity Site, and to hear the stories of so-called ‘downwinders.' Featuring: Paul Pino, Tina Cordova, Ben Ray Lujan   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Read more about RECA (the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act) which passed in the U.S. Senate this March.  (Idaho Capital Sun) The federal government has produced a few studies on the fallout from Trinity. This one from Los Alamos found that there was still contamination in the area in 1985.  Another, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, produced one of the most in-depth histories of the fallout from Trinity and the government’s reaction. The National Cancer Institute found that hundreds of people likely developed cancer because of the fallout.  The history of Trinity is full of strange little details, like the desert toads that were croaking all night.  You can find affidavits and first-hand accounts of the fallout from Trinity at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium website.  This review by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why it’s so hard to determine a definitive death toll for the USI bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jeongyoon Han Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you grew up with family members who pushed (or dragged) you onto the trail, chances are you have strong memories associated with hiking. Epic vistas… swarms of black flies… and your dad’s terrible homemade gorp.  Whether you grow up to see them as personal triumphs or family fiascos, those early adventures can shape your perception of the outdoors for life.Can parents shape kids into hardcore hikers? And what happens when your best-laid plans go off the map? Featuring Sarah Lamagna, Nick Capodice, Daisy Curtin, Niles Lashway, Sarah Raiche, Tiffany Raiche, and Phineas Quimby SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS If you liked Sarah Lamagna’s tips on how to hike with children, you’ll find more in her recently published guidebook.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Rebecca Lavoie Our staff includes Justine Paradis and Felix Poon. Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions, The New Fools, and SINY.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A century ago, coastal dunes threatened to overwhelm the city of Florence, Oregon. The sand swallowed roads, highways, and houses. When “Dune” author Frank Herbert visited the area in 1957, he was stunned by the awesome power of the sand. Eventually, it inspired his fictional desert planet, Arrakis. But now, the dunes that inspired “Dune” are disappearing.  To solve the sand problem, the US Forest Service planted dunes with non-native beachgrass, hoping its strong roots would keep the dunes in place. The strategy worked… too well. The grass spread, out-competing native species and transforming the dunes. At one popular spot, roughly 60% of what was once open sand is now gone. Producer Justine Paradis traveled to the Oregon Coast to see the mountains of sand which inspired a sci-fi classic, and meet the people working to save them. Featuring Dina Pavlis, Patty Whereat Phillips, and Jesse Beers.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS These aerial photos demonstrate the dramatic changes in the Oregon dunes since 1941. Dina Pavlis’ Secrets of the Oregon Dunes Facebook page The Oregon dunes are the setting of an episode of “Lassie” (1964), in which a little girl gets lost in a sand storm. New hires at the Forest Service in Florence are shown this film during orientation. The Siuslaw Public Library in Florence is home to the eclectic Frank Herbert collection, as reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting. These are books donated by Herbert’s daughter which he was reading at the time he wrote ‘Dune,’ and are available to the public. Fans make the pilgrimage to browse the collection, which includes titles on the desert, politics in the Middle East, computation, Scottish folk singing, rug hooking, and much more. Frank Herbert originally visited Florence to research a proposed magazine article on the Forest Service’s dune, as reported on the Siuslaw News. His (unsuccessful) proposal, “They Stopped the Moving Sands,” can be read in “The Road to Dune.” An episode of Endless Thread about the time a six-year-old boy fell into a tree hole (he’s fine now) in Michigan City, Indiana.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby and Katie Colaneri Our team also includes Felix Poon.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Special thanks to Meg Spencer, Kegen Benson, Armand Rebischke, and Kevin Mittge.  Music by Sarah the Illstrumentalist, Elm Lake, Chris Zabriskie, and Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, dozens of strangers gathered together in the woods for three straight days. Their mission? Teach people of color how to kill, gut, and butcher a deer for the first time. Producer Felix Poon was there as a first-time hunter. He wanted to know: what does it feel like to take an animal's life to sustain your own? Given the opportunity… would he pull the trigger? In this episode we follow Felix out of his depth and into the woods, to find out if one weekend can convert a longtime city-dweller into a dedicated deer hunter. Featuring Dorothy Ren, Brandon Dale, and Brant MacDuff.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Lydia Parker, executive director of Hunters of Color, discusses how to make the outdoors more equitable. (The Nature Conservancy) Melissa Harris-Perry talks to Brandon Dale, the New York ambassador for the Hunters of Color organization, on WNYC’s The Takeaway. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Rebecca Lavoie. Our staff also includes Justine Paradis Taylor Quimby is our Executive Producer Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Hanna Lindgren, and Walt Adams. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor's note: This episode was first published in July, 2022.Humans have had an impressive run thus far; we’ve explored most of the planet (the parts that aren’t underwater anyway), landed on the moon, created art and music, and made some pretty entertaining Tik Toks.  But we’ve survived on the planet for just a fraction of the time horseshoe crabs and alligators have. And we’re vastly outnumbered by many species of bacteria and insects.  So what is the most successful species on Earth? And how do you measure that, anyway?  From longevity and happiness, to sheer numbers, we put a handful of different organisms under the microscope in hopes of better understanding what exactly it means to succeed at life on a collective and individual scale.    Featuring: Stephen Giovannoni, Rashidah Farid, and Steward Pickett SUPPORT Check out Stephen Giovannoni’s paper: “SAR11 Bacteria: The Most Abundant Plankton in the Oceans” An interesting treatise on adaptability: “Why crocodiles still look the same as they did 200 million years ago” From the NSF: “The most common organism in the oceans harbors a virus in its DNA” More food for thought: “The non-human living inside you"   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Taylor Quimby Editing by: Nate Hegyi, Rebecca Lavoie Additional editing help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to everybody who answered our question at the top of the show: Josemar Ochoa, m Carey Grant, Butter Wilson, Tim Blagden, Robert Baker, Sheila Rydel, and Bob Beaulac. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, and Jules Gaia Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is massive, bigger than the state of Florida. If it collapses, it could reshape every coast on this planet during this century. That’s why it’s sometimes known as “the Doomsday Glacier.” And yet, until recently, we knew very little about it. Because Thwaites is extremely remote, reachable only by crossing the wildest ocean on the planet, scientists had never observed its calving edge firsthand.  In 2019, a ground-breaking international mission set out to change that, and writer Elizabeth Rush was on board to document the voyage.  We caught up with her to learn about life on an Antarctic icebreaker, how she grappled with classic Antarctic narratives about exploration (and domination), and how she summons hope even after coming face-to-face with Thwaites.      Featuring Elizabeth Rush.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Our 2022 episode featuring Elizabeth Rush about community responses to sea level rise in Staten Island and Louisiana. If you’re interested in reading more about the journey to Thwaites, check out Elizabeth’s book, “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth”. A paper published in Nature with some of the findings from this voyage, showing that Thwaites has historically retreated two to three times faster than we’ve ever observed. Here’s the one detailing findings about Thwaites’ past extent, extrapolated from their study of ancient penguin bones, and another sharing observations about water currents beneath its ice shelf. We also recommend “Encounters at the End of the World,” Werner Herzog’s (2007) documentary about science and community in Antarctica.   CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Nctrnm, Sometimes Why, FLYIN, Silver Maple, Chris Zabriskie, Ooyy, and the Weddell seals of Antarctica. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lot of discussion about sustainability revolves around the trash and waste we leave behind.  But at some point, every human being will die and leave behind a body.  So what should we do with it? Casket? Cremation? Compost? And does our choice actually have a meaningful impact on the soils and skies around us? Today, we’ve got another edition of our segment, “This, That, or the Other Thing”, where Outside/In’s unofficial decomposition correspondent Felix Poon investigates how we can more sustainably rest in peace. Featuring Regina Harrison, Katrina Spade, and Matt Scott   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Find how you can help with climate solutions by drawing your Climate Action Venn Diagram. Learn more about Project Drawdown’s Drawdown Solutions Library. Tag along on a visit to the Recompose human composting facility (Youtube).   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team includes Justine Paradis. Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once in a blue moon the Outside/In team opens up the mailbag and answers your questions about the natural world. This time, they all share a preoccupation with a particular hue: blue.  Come along as we learn about the differences between European and Aztec conceptions of the color blue, how construction workers build offshore turbine foundations under the deep blue sea, and why the most exciting picture astronauts took during Apollo 8 wasn’t of the lunar surface.  Questions: I’ve heard the color blue is rare in nature. Is that true?  Are blue eyes disappearing? How do we build things underwater?  Why is the sky blue? What is the etymology of the color blue?  Featuring Kai Kupferschmidt and Justin Alves.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Check out science journalist Kai Kupferscmidt’s book, “Blue: In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color”   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby, Felix Poon, and Nate Hegyi Mixed by Taylor Quimby and Felix Poon Our team also includes Justine Paradis Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Rebecca Lavoie Executive producer: Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio Music by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of NHPR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support Outside/In before February 5th, and your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar! Donate $8 per month, and we’ll send you a pair of NH-made Merino wool socks from Minus33.  For many, wild horses are a symbol of freedom, strength, and the American West. But to some they’re a symbol of colonialism and an ecological nuisance.  Host Nate Hegyi visits a rancher on the Blackfeet Reservation, where free-ranging horses have become more plentiful than deer. They’re outcompeting cattle for forage and putting livelihoods at risk. One potential solution? Slaughter. In this episode, we dive deep into the history of eating horses – or not eating horses – and find out why this symbol of the American West is more divisive than you probably realized.  Featuring: Craig Iron Pipe, Tolani Francisco, Susanna Forrest LINKS Susanna Forrest has written all about the relationship between humans and horses – from riding them to eating them.  The Virginia Range wild horse herd has seen a substantial drop in population because of a fertility control campaign financed by a wild horse advocacy group.  There’s some great research from the University of New Mexico that shows how the domesticated horse made its way north from tribe to tribe in the 1500s.  You can learn all about how folks can adopt wild horses from the federal government here.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby The Outside/In team includes Felix Poon and Justine Paradise.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support Outside/In during our Jan/Feb fundraiser and your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar! Plus, if you donate $10 per month we’ll send you a pair of NH-made Merino wool socks from Minus33.  Did you know that the humble pigeon is related to the dodo, makes milk (pigeon cheese, anyone?) and even played a role in the French Revolution? Surely this often-dismissed bird deserves some recognition.  Well, on this episode we’re diving deep into the biology and history of Nate’s favorite overlooked animal, as explored by the brilliantly titled (and produced) podcast, What The Duck?! This absolute gem is from the Australian Broadcast Company and hosted by Ann Jones. It is so chock-full of wild animal facts that it’s a miracle they can all be contained in less than 30 minutes.  So sit back and prepare to be wowed by a bird that haters love to hate, and a podcast so fun it could make you fall in love with a speck of dust.  Featuring Rosemary Mosco, Nathan Finger, Dr Robin Leppitt, April Broadbent, and pigeon fanciers Aaron and Aria.    SUPPORT Listen to other episodes of What the Duck?! on Apple podcasts Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi. Our team includes Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon.  What the Duck?! Is produced and presented by Ann Jones, with Petria Ladgrove and additional mastering by Hamish Camilleri.  Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1994, the world’s first oat milk company was born in Sweden. Three decades later, Oatly is on a high-stakes mission to defeat the dairy industry by becoming the biggest plant-based brand the world has ever seen.  So…can a start-up from Malmö save us all through capitalism? And how much damage is our affection for dairy doing to the planet? This week, we’re featuring the first of a three-part series from the wonderful folks over at The Europeans podcast.    SUPPORT Listen to the rest of The Europeans series on Oatly here.  Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS This episode was reported, written and produced by Katz Laszlo.  It was edited by Katy Lee and Justine Paradis, with editorial support from Margot Gibbs, Dominic Kraemer and Wojciech Oleksiak. Mastering, scoring and sound design by Wojciech.  Artwork by RTiiiKA. Outside/In’s staff includes Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even though you can explore its entirety from the comfort of a living room beanbag, the world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (commonly just referred to as 'Skyrim') is vast. The video game contains cities, villages, high waterfalls that cascade into deep pools, and packs of wolves that roam the edges of misty alpine forests. Skyrim is celebrated for the intricacy of its environment and is one of the top-selling video games of all time. But if you spend enough time in a fantasy, it might change how you relate to the real world. In this favorite Outside/In episode, first released at the start of the pandemic, producer Justine Paradis speaks with the environmental artist tasked with creating one of the video game world’s most iconic landscapes, the limits of environmental design, and how Skyrim shaped his view of the actual outdoors.  Featuring Megan Sawyer, Ana Diaz, and Noah Berry.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis Editing help from Taylor Quimby, Erika Janik, Sam Evans-Brown, and Felix Poon NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio is Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s Outside/In’s annual winter “Surthrival” show, in which a panel of podcast and radio journalists serve up their personal tips for staying warm, cozy, and active all winter long. From ice-fishing to spicy novels, we’ve got suggestions that’ll get you outside when the adventurous spirit takes hold, and others for days when it’s too darn cold out.  This year, we’re joined by Berly McCoy, producer of NPR’s Shortwave podcast, Olivia Richardson, reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, and Nick Capodice, co-host of Civics 101.  You can read our full list of suggestions on our website. We’d also love to hear from you! Send your suggestions, ideally as a voice recording, to [email protected], or call our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. We might even play them on the podcast or share your tips in our (free) newsletter.  Featuring Francis Tarasiewicz, Weather Observer at Mount Washington Observatory.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Learn more about the science and history behind wind chill. Go to our website to read our full list of 12 tips for embracing winter.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Produced and mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Justine Paradis. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer. Music for this episode by Fasion, Jules Gaia, Thea Tyler, Real Heroes, Mike Franklyn, Josef Bel Habib, Jharee, Jay Varton, DJ Denz The Rooster, Frigga, Ballpoint, Dusty Decks, and Arthur Benson. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s tough to see your hometown portrayed in television and movies. New Englanders roll their eyes at overly quaint shots of church steeples and fall foliage. Minnesotans balk at the over-the-top accents in ‘Fargo.’ And now Montanans are struggling with the way the state is portrayed in the hit television series ‘Yellowstone.’ The show stars Kevin Costner as the gravelly-voiced patriarch of the Dutton ranching family. They own a sprawling cattle operation on the edge of Yellowstone National Park and they will do whatever it takes – including a whole lot of murder – to protect their way of life from wealthy outsiders.  But in the real world, Montanans are accusing the show of attracting wealthy outsiders to move to the state and change their way of life. Since the show first aired in 2018, home prices have nearly doubled, and – anecdotally – real estate agents are leaning on Yellowstone’s appeal to sell property.  Host Nate Hegyi and Rebecca Lavoie, television critic and head of podcasts at NHPR, dive deep into how a fake show is changing a very real place and what ‘Yellowstone’ gets right – and wrong – about Native Americans, women, and the West.  Featuring: Taylar Stagner, Maggie Slepian   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS As of December 2023, Certain Women is currently streaming for free on Tubi.  You can find Taylar Stagner’s criticism on books, television and more at High Country News.  Maggie Slepian wrote an essay about the impact of ‘Yellowstone’ on her hometown of Bozeman for Outside magazine.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby The Outside/In team includes Felix Poon and Justine Paradise. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Northside and Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some people think artificial intelligence is the best thing since sliced bread. Others say it’s the beginning of a science-fiction apocalypse. At COP28 – the U.N. Climate Change Conference – tech companies are saying AI is key to unlocking a more efficient future.  But what if the truth is less sensational than all that?  In this episode, how AI tools are helping and hurting efforts to curb climate change. From satellite-based flood maps to the growing energy cost of programs like ChatGPT, we’ll survey the use of artificial intelligence as a tool for climate action… and for climate distraction.  Featuring David Rolnick and Karen Hao   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS David Rolnick is one of the lead authors of this paper, called “Climate Change and AI: Recommendations for government action.” Check out ChatNetZero, an AI climate chatbot that gives you references when it answers your questions.  A University of Washington researcher estimates the energy usage of ChatGPT (UW News) After a Greenpeace report outlined how tech giants have worked with the fossil fuel industry, Google said it would no longer make AI tools to “facilitate upstream extraction” for oil and gas firms. (CNBC) The Climate Summit Embraces A.I., With Reservations (New York Times) COP28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels (The Guardian)   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced and mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Rebecca Lavoie, NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio.  Special thanks to Angel Hsu, and Sajjad Moazeni. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most Americans can look down at their phone and see a prediction of the future. How is that even possible? Well, this episode from Civics 101 is all about the weather – from early predictive methods and almanacs to the National Weather Service's modern-day practices of collecting, analyzing, and sharing a staggering amount of data. Featuring Kris Harper and Felicia Bowser   SUPPORT Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Check out more episodes from Civics 101. Follow Outside/In on Instagram and X, or discuss episodes in our private listener group on Facebook.   CREDITS This episode of Civics 101 was produced by Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice and Christina Phillips. Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi. The team also includes Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon.  The executive producer of Civics 101 and Outside/In is Rebecca Lavoie. Civics 101 and Outside/In are productions of New Hampshire Public Radio. If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For humans, roads epitomize freedom. For wildlife, it’s a different story: a million animals are killed by cars every day in the US alone. How did our infrastructure turn so deadly? And what are people trying to do about it? In this episode, we look at how two very different species are impacted by roads. Along the way, we visit a turtle rescue clinic, hear about a celebrity cougar that was trapped in the Hollywood Hills, and find out what it took to fund what will soon be the world’s largest wildlife bridge. Featuring Ben Goldfarb, Alexxia Bell, Natasha Nowick, and Michaela Conder.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.    LINKS From bears to badgers, and crocodiles in Florida to salamanders in Vermont – check out these videos of wildlife crossings in action across the country. (NYTimes) Check out Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb. Read more about The Turtle Rescue League in Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, by Sy Montgomery. Engross yourself in the stories of the National Park Service’s Puma Profiles of the Santa Monica Mountains.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon. Edited by Taylor Quimby. Our team also includes Justine Paradis. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer. Music for this episode by Jay Varton, Rand Aldo, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s time again for our listener mail roundup, and this week, the theme is bugs, bugs, and more bugs. We discover what’s happening inside the chrysalis of a monarch butterfly, find out why fruit flies seem to spontaneously generate from over-ripe fruit, and ask if meat-eaters really are sweeter to mosquitoes. Plus, a cautionary tale about leaving the window screens open.  What happens inside a chrysalis during metamorphosis? How does bioluminescence work? Are mosquitoes good for anything? Featuring Karen Oberhauser, Deidre Gibson, and Lyric Bartholomay.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Learn more about our mosquito expert, Lyric Bartholomay, in this video about her and her work. This National Geographic article has a good overview of bioluminescence, plus some great photos. Consumer Reports details how it tests bug spray and lists some high-performing products.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio   Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forget about beer, or even water; it was hard apple cider that was THE drink of choice in colonial America. Even kids drank it! And since it’s made from apples – the “all-American” fruit – what could be more American than cider? But apples aren’t native to America. They’re originally from Kazakhstan. In this episode we look at the immigration story of Malus domestica, the domesticated apple, from its roots in the wild forests of Central Asia, to its current status as an American icon. And we look at how apples and cider were used in some of America’s biggest migrations – from Indigenous tribes who first brought apples west across the continent, to the new immigrants who are using hard cider to bridge cultures and find belonging.   Featuring Soham Bhatt and Susan Sleeper Smith. Special thanks to everyone Felix spoke to at the Cider Days Festival, including Judith Maloney, Carol Hillman, Ben Clark, Ben Watson, Charlie Olchowski, William Grote, and Bob Sabolefski. Editor’s Note: This episode first aired in February of 2022.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram, or discuss episodes in our private listener group on Facebook.   LINKS How to Make Hard Cider George and Ursula Granger: The Erasure of Enslaved Black Cidermakers, by Darlene Hayes. An Apple Commons, reflections by Melissa Maddens on what it means to forage from wild apple orchards – relics of this country’s history of dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands. Open Spaces Cider – Melissa Maddens’ cidery focuses on reparations and reconciliation for living off a land that was taken from Indigenous peoples.   CREDITS Reported, produced and mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Rebecca Lavoie. Host: Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music for this episode by Jharee, Kevin MacLeod and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to our unscientific office poll, the annual changing of the clocks has all the popularity of a root canal. With few exceptions, people described the shift to and from Daylight Saving Time as disorienting, arbitrary, and unwelcome. On a more existential level, winding the clocks back and forth reminds us that no matter how concrete minutes and hours may feel, the way we perceive time is fluid. Time flies when you’re having fun. A watched pot never boils.  So to celebrate (or perhaps protest) another year setting back the clocks, the Outside/In team has uncovered four mini-stories that will poke at, stretch, or even obliterate your perception of time. From “time expansion experiences,” to time-space synesthesia, to the slow-motion life of a fly, prepare for a totally different type of time warp. Featuring Steve Taylor, Rhitu Chatterjee, Kevin Healy, Katherine Akey, and Patricia Lynne Duffy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Depending on who you ask bats are either a favorite mascot of spooky season, a dangerous nuisance and vector for rabies, or a charismatic group of nocturnal mammals in need of protection.  So when Outside/In host Nate Hegyi moved to the countryside of Montana and discovered a colony of bats living in the siding of his new house, he was forced to make a decision. Evict the bats that pest control people suggest could be endangering his family? Or try and embrace his inner Bruce Wayne?  Featuring: Susan Tsang, Steph Holt, Mike Hegyi, Penny Hegyi, Christine Bellis   SUPPORT Outside/In is listener-supported. Become a sustaining member today for $5 a month, and we'll send you an Outside/In baseball cap.   Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon and Justine ParadisRebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During disasters, people flock to social media to share warnings, coordinate in real time, and share images of the destruction. But others use the chaos of breaking news events to spread false information.  On today’s episode, we’re exploring the rise of fake news in the environmental space, from #HawaiiNotUkraine, to a news site spreading climate disinformation in Wyoming. Plus, we speak to the people fighting back, including a community fact-checker correcting earthquake disinformation on X.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS This article, written before Elon Musk took over X, profiled Celeste Labedz and some other folks fighting diisonfmration on social media (Poynter) Check out Caroline Orr Bueno’s substack newsletter, Weaponized, and her piece about the #HawaiiNotUkraine hashtag.  Jem Bartholomew’s story about the sudden growth of a Wyoming news site that’s rife with climate disinformation (CJR)    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jeongyoon Han Mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi and Felix Poon.  Our staff also includes Justine Paradis. Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio. Music by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Become a sustaining member today. For $5 a month, we'll send you an Outside/In baseball cap. The first 250 people to donate during our fall fund drive will also receive a "ginkgo love" sticker.  Support Outside/In today! Flying is a mess. Underserved airports, a global pilot shortage, and incessant extra fees… not to mention, of course, the emissions.  But, in 2022, an aviation start-up debuted “the world’s first all-electric passenger plane.” They say that electric flight can help address not only emissions, but also entrenched problems in the entire aviation system. Can it?  Featuring Noah Karberg, Lynnette Dray, Dan Wolf, and Greg Davis, with appearances by Jim Goddard, Scott Genthner, Joe Urbanski, and Bill Guinee.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Why do airlines try to sell you credit cards? Because “airlines are just banks now.” (The Atlantic) Experts told us the aviation system is, by and large, quite safe… but it might be more complicated. (New York Times)    CREDITS Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon.  NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie Music by bomull, Bill Vortex, Guustavv, Xavy Rusan, Bonkers Beat Club, Nul Tiel Records, Adelyn Paik, Shiruky, Uncle Bibby, Scott Gratton, and Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Become a sustaining member today. For $5 a month, we'll send you an Outside/In baseball cap. The first 250 people to donate during our fall fund drive will also receive a "ginkgo love" sticker.  Support Outside/In today! As of late, Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson has been obsessed with a rock in Wyoming, a lot like the protagonist of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  But you won't find Ben in the kitchen, making a replica of the rock out of mud and chicken wire. Instead, you'll find him and co-host Amory Sivertson in this episode, traversing Reddit and TikTok, YouTube, and the actual state of Wyoming to find out why hundreds of thousands of people have been drawn to a monolith that has so many names and meanings. This episode is part of Endless Thread’s latest 4-part series called Parks!   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi. Our team includes Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon. Our Executive Producer is Rebecca Lavoie. This episode of Endless Thread was produced by Ben Brock Johnson, co-hosted by Amory Sivertson, and produced by Samata Joshi, Grace Tatter, and Quincy Walters It was mixed and sound-designed by Paul Vaitkus. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR.  Outside/In is a production of NHPR.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Become a sustaining member today. For $5 a month, we'll send you an Outside/In baseball cap. The first 250 people to donate during our fall fund drive will also receive a "ginkgo love" sticker.  Support Outside/In today!Earlier this year, our host Nate Hegyi picked a fight with Ryan Zinke.  Zinke is the former Interior Secretary under Trump – the guy who rode into office on horseback.  In the midst of an awful few days in June, when Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed the entire east coast, Zinke took to Twitter and argued that the solution was “active forest management.”  Nate assumed that was a political code word for more logging, something Republicans have been pushing for years. But instead of firing back, he decided to fact-check his assumptions and study up. Why are Canadian wildfires getting so intense? Is it possible to stop the smoke by logging the boreal forest? And what would Teddy Roosevelt have to say about this?! Featuring Phil Higuera, John Vaillant, Ryan Zinke, and Courtney Shultz.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support.   Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Check out our episode about prescribed burns (10X10: Pine Barrens). The NPS has a good overview of how indigenous fire practices shaped North America. “As Canada reels from wildfire, First Nations hope for larger role” (Al Jazeera)   CREDITS Hosted, reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby and Rebecca Lavoie Our team also includes Justine Paradis, Jeongyoon Han, and Felix Poon.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help us celebrate our 250th episode by becoming a sustaining member today. For $5 a month, we'll send you an Outside/In baseball cap. The first 250 people to donate during our fall fund drive will also receive a "ginkgo love" sticker.  Support Outside/In today!   From Dante’s Peak and Twister, to the twin apocalypse movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, Outside/In senior producer Taylor Quimby was raised on disaster movies.   But with real climate-related catastrophes popping up more and more, one has to wonder:... what is it about disaster stories that were so appealing in the first place? Do they have anything redeeming to teach us about ourselves or our planet?  Taylor attempts to answer that question (and weirdly enough, to celebrate Outside/In’s 250th episode) by looking back at one of the planet’s all-time worst disasters: The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, or as it’s sometimes called “The Great Dying.”  Featuring Michael Benton.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support.   Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby Mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie and Nate Hegyi. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the midst of a battle with cancer, Kathy Kral found herself facing another diagnosis: major depression. So, Kathy signed up for a clinical study to see if psilocybin – the psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms” – could help her confront her fears about cancer and death, as well as her deepest inner demons. Featuring Kathleen Kral, Manish Agrawal, and Norma Stevens.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.  Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Can Psychedelic Therapy Offer a Sense of Peace for the Dying? The Sunstone Psilocybin Playlist patients listen to during their psychedelic trips Citations In the psilocybin study Kathy Kral participated in, 80% of participants experienced a significant reduction in depression, and half were no longer depressed at all. These results were persistent even a year and a half after their psilocybin sessions. Psychedelics cause hallucinations because they compromise the part of the brain that processes what you see, and promote communication between different parts of your brain that usually don’t talk to each other. Risks associated with psilocybin range from nausea and increased heart rate, to Hallucination Persisting Perception Disorder where people continue having hallucinations for months or years after the trip has ended. But magic mushrooms had the lowest rates of associated emergency room visits out of any drug surveyed by the Global Drug Survey in 2019, 2020, and 2021. And researchers have found that psychedelics are not addictive in lab animals, and the lethal dose of psilocybin is so high that overdoses are impractical and rare.    CREDITS Host: Nate HegyiReported, produced, and mixed by Felix PoonEdited by Taylor Quimby with help from Rebecca Lavoie, Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Jeongyoon Han.Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive ProducerSpecial thanks to Evan Craig, Heather Honstein, Kathryn Tucker, and Erinn Baldeshwiler.Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Pawan Krishna, the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, and Paul De Bra.Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s time again for our listener mail round-up, and this week, the theme is borders and boundaries. We learn what it means to define the “end of an era,” explore how close is too close to a black hole, and discuss the power of animal urine. Plus, we hear the story about the time the U.S. and Great Britain almost fought a border war… because of a pig.  How do different animals mark their territory? How does surveying work? How close do you have to be to get pulled in by a black hole? How do historians decide how to categorize chunks of time? Featuring Eric Salovich, Naoufal Souitat, Dagomar Degroot, and Christine Wilkinson.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.  Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon and Jeongyoon Han.  Edited by Taylor Quimby Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a bluebird day, in April of 2019, Snow Ranger Frank Carus set out to investigate a reported avalanche in the backcountry of Mt. Washington. He found a lone skier, buried several feet under the snow. He was severely hypothermic but alive. Wilderness EMTs can work for decades and never encounter this particular situation. And what happened next was an attempted rescue that people in Northern New England are still learning from.  What happens when a rescue goes wrong? And how do first responders cope when an opportunity to save someone’s life slips through their fingers? Editor’s Note: This episode first aired in May of 2022, and was later honored with a National Edward R. Murrow Award for News Documentary.  Featuring: Denise Butler, Frank Carus, Jeff Fongemie, Nicholas Weinberg SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram and Twitter, or discuss episodes in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). LINKS Learn more about avalanche safety here. Read the Wilderness Medical Society Journal article about this incident here. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Jessica Hunt Mixer: Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi, with help and feedback from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Erika Janik, Sam Evans-Brown, Jimmy Gutierrez, and Christina Philips. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special Thanks to: Matt Dustin, Ty Gagne, Frank Hubbell, and Andrew Parrella.  Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At any given time, millions of lab mice are being used in research facilities nationwide. And yet nearly all of them can be connected back to a single source: The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where the modern lab mouse was invented. What started as a research project aimed at understanding heredity is now a global business. Research on lab mice has led to more than two dozen Nobel prizes, helped save countless human lives, and has pushed science and medicine to new heights. But behind it all is a cost that’s rarely discussed outside of the ethics boards that determine how lab mice are used.    In this episode, we hear the story of how a leading eugenicist turned the humble mouse from a household pest into science’s number one guinea pig. Plus, we get a rare peek inside the Jackson Laboratory - where over 10,000 strains of lab mice DNA are kept cryogenically frozen.  Featuring Bethany Brookshire, Kristin Blanchette, Lon Cardon, Rachael Pelletier, Karen Rader, Nadia Rosenthal and Mark Wanner. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). LINKS Karen Rader’s book, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955, is a definitive source on the birth of the lab mouse… Curious to learn more about pests? Take a look at Bethany Brookshire’s book, Pests: How Humans Create Villains. This piece from the New Yorker questions the assumptions and ethical choices scientists have made by using lab mice in sterilized lab environments. In this New York Times essay, Brandon Keim explores how some ethicists want to reduce harm to animals used for research through a new model: repaying them.  CREDITS Produced by Jeongyoon Han Mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Spring Gang, and El Flaco Collective.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In case you hadn’t heard, El Niño is back in the news, and this time it’s pushing global temperatures to the 1.5-degree climate threshold, giving us a sneak preview of a world scorched by global warming. But when it comes to El Niño, the first question on people’s minds is usually…wait…what the heck is El Niño again? Well, today on Outside/In we’ve got answers. Plus, we ask how to tell if extreme weather events are caused by climate change or by El Niño, and consider what this El Niño can tell us about our climate future. Featuring Kim Cobb, Emily Becker, and Ángel Muñoz.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.  Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Read Kim Cobb’s 2016 article, A bittersweet victory for an El Niño chaser – Cobb explains how her research on corals gives us a surprisingly accurate history of El Niño events going back as far as 7,000 years ago. The National Weather Service for the UK has a great video explainer of El Nino, as well as over a hundred other short videos on their YouTube channel explaining various weather and climate phenomena like jet streams, global circulation, and the Coriolis effect. For more science-talk on El Nino, check out the ENSO Blog, where climate scientist Emily Becker is a lead writer.   CREDITS Host: Nate HegyiReported and produced by Felix PoonEdited by Taylor Quimby with help from Justine Paradis and Nate Hegyi.Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive ProducerSpecial thanks to Jeongyoon Han for playing the violin, and Michael Prentky for the timpani recording.Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Walt Adams, and Brightarm Orchestra.Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Outside/In, we often talk about the challenge of covering climate in a way that doesn’t leave us feeling hopeless or overwhelmed. For us, that’s often meant staying curious and keeping a sense of humor.  But a few years ago, investigative journalist Amy Westervelt had another idea. Why not use one of podcasting’s most popular genres—true crime—to tell the story of climate change?  From greenwashing to climate denialism and corporate propaganda, Drilled makes accountability journalism a thrill to listen to, while consistently being one of the most informative sources for in-depth climate news. So today, we’re featuring the first episode of their latest three-part series: “Herb.” This is the story of Herb Schmertz, the political strategist-turned-oil-man who popularized corporate personhood, and how it's become one of the biggest problems facing climate action today.  Featuring Robert Kerr and Robert Bruhl Read the episode transcript.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS This episode of Drilled was written and reported by Amy Westervelt.  It was produced and sound designed by Martin Zaltz Ostwick.  Sound engineer: Peter Doff  Additional reporting by Julia Manepela Fact checking: Wudan Yan Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi. The team also includes Tayor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jeongyoon Han.  Outside/In’s executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s our listener mail round up, and this week it’s all about communication in the natural world, like: how do migratory animals teach their young how to migrate and where to go? Do sharks smell underwater? And, are plants talking to each other? Plus, a mini-story about a lost baby squirrel and a Bluetooth speaker. Take a listen! How do young animals know how to migrate? Can plants talk to each other? What makes an animal a pest? How do shark noses work underwater? Featuring: Patrik Byholm, Richard Karban, Bethany Brookshire, and Stephen Kajiura.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.  Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Visit outsideinradio.org for video of a Bluetooth speaker-assisted baby squirrel rescue. On animal migration: A magnetic compass aids monarch butterfly migration Paternal transmission of migration knowledge in a long-distance bird migrant On plants talking: Rumor Has It…: Relay Communication of Stress Cues in Plants Towards understanding plant bioacoustics On what makes an animal a pest: The long history of speed at Reuters about carrier pigeons and The Tastiest Bird You Can Legally Eat about the tastiness of pigeon meat, also known as squab Burmese Pythons: The Giant Invasive Snake at Risk in Its Native Land On sharks: Check out the Shark Lab at Florida Atlantic University. Scientists believe sharks came into existence about 400 million years ago.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon, Jeongyoon Han, Taylor Quimby, and Jessica Hunt Edited by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to Lani Asuncion and Angus Murphy Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wine is considered to be an expression of a place and climate, a reflection of centuries-old traditions. But these days, a lot of wine is a product of an industrialized agricultural system, and just as processed as the bulk of products in the grocery store.  Today on Outside/In, we take a look at what really goes into your wine, and at a growing movement exploring just how “natural” wine can be.  Featuring Julia Furukawa, Helen Johannesen, and Lee Campbell, with appearances by Lucy Leske, Steve Paradis, Jenny Paradis, Elsie Turner Matthews, and Samuel Golding.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Lee Campbell is a partner in a Virginia winery called Common Wealth Crush.  Helen Johannesen is a partner in Jon & Vinny’s and Helen’s Wines, a wine shop and delivery club in Los Angeles. She’s also the host of Wineface podcast, with episodes covering the basics of natural wine, a deeper dive on the specific grapes (like pinot noir), and an introduction to certain styles, like orange wine.  Julia Furukawa is the host of All Things Considered at New Hampshire Public Radio. Check out her investigative reporting on a lack of evidence for some claims of Abenaki ancestry in New England.    5 tips for navigating the world of natural wine 1. As Helen Johannesen likes to say, “wine is for enjoying and wine is for everyone,” but it’s also a luxury. Still, you can get natural  wines for $20 a bottle or less. The hard part is finding them. 2. If you’re trying to figure out whether a wine is natural or not, turn the bottle around and look at the importer on the back. There are certain importers who seek out small producers who are aligned with the natural wine movement. A couple of importers with such a reputation are Zev Rovine and Jenny & Francois. 3. If possible, find a local brick-and-mortar wine shop. They’re more likely to help you find a natural wine. Plus, wine shops often offer free or low-cost tastings, which can help you figure out what you like without spending a ton of money. There are online wine subscription services that have natural wines as well. 4. If you’re just dipping your toe into the natural wine world, start with what you like. If you love Sauvignon Blanc, try a natural bottle of the same variety. 5. Last, have a good time! Don’t get intimidated or think that you have to be completely pure about it. Again, in the end, wine is supposed to be fun. -Justine P.  CREDITS Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Hosted, reported, written, and produced by Justine Paradis  Mixed and edited by Taylor Quimby Our team also includes Felix Poon and Jeongyoon Han.  Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Matt Large and Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With 'Oppenheimer,' director Christopher Nolan has turned the Manhattan Project into a summer blockbuster. The film is set in Los Alamos, one of the primary places where the first atomic bomb was developed. But fewer people know the history of Carrizozo, a rural farming area downwind of the Trinity test — and a community still dealing with the fallout to this day. Radioactive fallout from the bomb settled on everything: the soil, gardens, and drinking water. Cow’s milk became radioactive. Later, hundreds of people developed radiogenic cancers.  The people of Carrizozo were among the first people in the world exposed to a nuclear blast. More than 75 years later, their families are still fighting for medical compensation from the federal government. Host Nate Hegyi traveled to New Mexico to visit the Trinity Site, and to hear the stories of so-called ‘downwinders.' Featuring: Paul Pino, Tina Cordova, Ben Ray Lujan Editor's note: A previous version of this description incorrectly described Los Alamos as the site of the first atomic bomb test. The actual test took place in the White Sands Missle Range. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS The federal government has produced a few studies on the fallout from Trinity. This one from Los Alamos found that there was still contamination in the area in 1985.  Another, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, produced one of the most in-depth histories of the fallout from Trinity and the government’s reaction. The National Cancer Institute found that hundreds of people likely developed cancer because of the fallout.  The history of Trinity is full of strange little details, like the desert toads that were croaking all night.  You can find affidavits and first-hand accounts of the fallout from Trinity at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium website.  This review by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why it’s so hard to determine a definitive death toll for the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jeongyoon Han Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans are noisy. The National Park Service estimates that all of our whirring, grinding, and revving machines are doubling or even tripling global noise pollution every 30 years.  A lot of that noise is negatively affecting wildlife and human health. Maybe that’s why we’re so consumed with managing our sonic environments, with noise-cancelling headphones and white noise machines — and sometimes, we get into spats with our neighbors, as one of our guests did… So for this episode, producer Jeongyoon Han takes us on an exploration of three sonic landscapes: noise, silence, and something in between.  Featuring Rachel Buxton, Jim Connell, Stan Ellis, Mercede Erfanian, Nora Ma, and Rob Steadman.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Behavioral ecologist Miya Warrington and her colleagues found that Savannah sparrows changed the tune of their love songs as a result of noisy oil fields in Alberta, Canada (The New York Times) Bats have changed their day-to-day habits because of traffic noise, according to research conducted in the U.K. Natural sounds are proven to improve health, lower stress, and have positive effects on humans. Rachel Buxton and her colleagues wrote about that in their study from 2021. Erica Walker’s organization, the Community Noise Lab, monitors noise levels in Boston, Providence, and Jackson, Mississippi. You can read more about her work in this article from Harvard Magazine. Are you interested in going to a Quiet Parks International-designated quiet park? The organization has a list of spaces across the world that they’ve certified.  Here’s a radio story from NPR that serves as an homage to John Cage’s 4’33”.  If you were ever curious about why bird songs are good for you… This article from the Washington Post should be on the top of your reading list! This New Yorker piece from 2019 outlines how noise pollution might be the next public health crisis. Since that article, there’s been even more research showing that noise can take years off of our lives.  So, you’ve heard lots of sounds in this episode. But do you want to see what sounds look like? Click here — and this is not clickbait! Ethan Kross, who is a psychologist and neuroscientist, wrote a whole book about noise — the noise in your head, to be precise. It’s called Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. Mercede Erfanian’s research into misophonia and soundscapes is fascinating. You can hear her speak on the subject of different kinds of sounds in a show aired from 1A, or watch her presentation on the effects that soundscapes have on humans.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jeongyoon Han Mixed by Jeongyoon Han and Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Jessica Hunt, and Felix PoonExecutive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Edvard Greeg, and Mike Franklyn. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We love shrimp in the United States. As a country, we eat over 2 billion pounds a year, making it the most consumed seafood in the country. So times should be really good for shrimpers, right? In this episode, our friends at the Sea Change podcast from WWNO and WRKF head to the docks and out in the bayous with shrimpers fighting for a livelihood and a culture that has been here for centuries.  This narrative episode goes on a journey from the fishing docks to shrimping in the bayous exploring land loss, climate change, and other issues endangering the future of the Gulf shrimp industry. We also uncover the threats imported shrimp pose to a way of life and human health. Featuring Justin Kennedy, Thomas Gonzales, Acy Cooper, Gary Mayfield, Eddy Hayes, Donald Dardar, and Steve Morris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most dog owners know they’re supposed to scoop the poop.  But when a pup does the deed off the trail, a lot of otherwise responsible citizens find themselves wondering… Is it really better to pick it up in a plastic bag and throw it in the garbage? Isn’t dog poop… natural? Listen to the latest edition of This, That, or The Other Thing: our series about the little decisions we make in life to try and build a more sustainable world – whether they have any effect and what we can do instead if they don’t.  This time, we’re wrestling with a major ick factor:  should I leave my dog’s poop in the woods, or put it in a plastic bag and entomb it forever in a landfill? And why do otherwise environmentally-minded folks look the other way when it comes to the impact of our furry friends? Featuring Stephanie Chow, Anthony Drouin, Ben Goldfarb, Rebecca Perlstein, Forrest Schwartz, Jennifer Williams SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or discuss episodes in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). LINKS The Leave No Trace organization studied how to get more people to pick up after their dogs in Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks. Dog waste is a major source of water pollution. “Dogs are a beach’s worst nightmare” according to Ben Goldfarb in Hakkai Magazine. Stephanie Chow of Pet Poo Skiddoo breaks down which dog waste bags are truly compostable here. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jessica Hunt. Mixed by Taylor Quimby. Edited by Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis and Rebecca Lavoie. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Spring Gang, El Flaco Collective, and Daniel Fridell. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[Editor's Note: This episode first aired in April 2022]Last year our host, Nate Hegyi, was on the edge of a very high cliff in Utah’s Zion National Park when he heard a little voice inside his head whisper… “jump.”   He didn’t heed the call, thankfully, and when he got down safely he discovered that more than a third of all people might feel this urge, ominously known as “the call of the void.”  Most of us can wave off these impulses. But what if you couldn’t? What if the call of the void was so intense that you almost acted? Is there a cure?  This episode contains a contextual reference to suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, anxiety, or just needs someone to talk to, reach out to the folks at the Crisis Text Line, a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential. Featuring: Jennifer Hames, Stephen Hunt   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS This 2020 study, in BMC Psychiatry, looks at the prevalence of high place phenomenon and whether it’s connected to suicidal ideation.  Read Jennifer Hames’ paper in The Journal of Affective Disorders on the “call of the void”: “An urge to jump affirms the urge to live: an empirical examination of the high place phenomenon.” The Imp of the Perverse, by Edgar Allen Poe Marconi Union, “Weightless” Listen to our previous episode “Even Hikers Get The Blues”    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Nate Hegyi. Mixer: Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, Felix Poon and Rebecca Lavoie. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Marconi Union, Sour Mash, Dew of Light, Gavin Luke, and Christopher Moe Ditlevsen. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to the environment, are natural fabrics better than synthetics? The answer might surprise you. It’s the latest installment of This, That, Or The Other Thing, a series about the decisions we make to build a more sustainable world, and to make a difference in our communities. In this episode we compare the carbon footprints of polyester versus cotton, we ask the experts whether our waterproof clothes are killing us, and for those of us who find this all too overwhelming, we talk about the number one thing you can do to make more sustainable clothing choices. Featuring: Lucy Allosso, Jessian Choy, Joel Svedlund, and Akiera Charles.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837), or email us at [email protected].   LINKS Lucky Sweater is an app for trading clothes, and they’ve also got an “approved brand” list of companies that make more high-quality garments and provide livable wages across the supply chain. There’s lots of other buy/sell/trade sites online like noihsafbazaar.com and Sell Trade Slow Fashion on Instagram. You can also use gem.app to search many resale sites at once, but you’re also likely to find local groups near you by simply searching for clothes swaps, Buy Nothing, or buy/sell/trade on Facebook and Google. If you’re looking for slow fashion brands, some companies take preorders and only manufacture the amount ordered, reducing waste from unsold clothing. Elizabeth Suzann and Gustin are examples of this model. Here are other actions you can take for a safer and more sustainable wardrobe: Look for third-party certifications, like GOTS 7.0, OEKO-TEX (specifically Made in Green, Standard 100, or Leather Standard), Bluesign, ZDHC, and Cradle to Cradle Certified. Consider brands that source from countries with cleaner energy grids. According to the Amplifying Misinformation report, the average factory in Bangladesh, Turkey, Vietnam, and Cambodia will have a Greenhouse Gas impact about 20% lower than brands sourcing from India, Indonesia, and China. And brands sourcing from the average factory in Pakistan, Italy, and Portugal will have an impact that’s 50-60% lower. Learn more about The Fashion Act and, if you’re a resident of New York, contact your assembly members and senators about it. Check out the best devices (according to recent research) for filtering microplastics from your laundry before they get into the oceans – including the Guppyfriend washing bag, and the XFiltra filter that manufacturers can add to machines.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Produced and mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer. Special thanks to Natascha van der Velden, and Gustav Sandin Albertsson. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the gathering at Standing Rock, legislators across the United States passed laws in the name of “protecting critical infrastructure,” especially pipelines.  At the same time, attacks on the electrical grid have increased almost 300%. But that threat isn’t coming from environmental activists.  It’s coming from neo-Nazis.  This is the second episode in our series examining the landscape of environmental protest in the United States, from Standing Rock to Cop City and beyond. Listen to the first episode here. As the space for protest in the United States shrinks, this year marked a major escalation: the first police killing of an environmental protestor in the United States, plus the arrests of dozens of people at protests under the charge of domestic terrorism.  Featuring Naomi Dix, Lauren Mathers, Jon Wellinghoff, Will Potter, Hannah Gais, Alex Amend, Aurielle Marie, and Madeline Thigpen. Special thanks to Micah Herskind, Mike German, Yessenia Funes, Clark White.    SUPPORT Our free newsletter is just as fun to read as this podcast is to listen to. Sign-up here. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of the show.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to the Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Further reading on the ideology of far-right accelerationism by Alex Amend  Hannah Gais’ reporting on Atomwaffen and the planned Baltimore grid attack  Check out this excellent explainer on Cop City in Scalawag Magazine, written by Micah Herskind. Read “The Forest for the Trees” in The Bitter Southerner, a profile of life in the “forest defender” camp in the Weelaunee Forest. It includes a conversation with the late Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, better known at Tortuguita. More than 60 human rights and environmental organizations signed this letter condemning the domestic terrorism charges in Atlanta, Georgia. Unicorn Riot’s livestream of the police action at the concert. Two activists face felony charges for distributing flyers which identified a police officer linked to Tortuguita’s killing. Plus, leaders of a bail fund were arrested on charges of charity fraud for their support of the people recently charged with domestic terrorism – as the Atlanta Press Collective reports, the history of bail funds in the United States goes back to the Civil Rights movement.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Justine Paradis  Mixed by Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Jack Rodolico, Rebecca Lavoie, Felix Poon, Jessica Hunt, Jeongyoon Han, and Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music came from Blue Dot Sessions, Autohacker, Blacksona, The Big Let Down, and Hatamitsunami.  Audio of the events after the concert in the South River Forest was recorded in a livestream by Unicorn Riot and shared under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When members of the Oceti Sakowin gathered near the Standing Rock Reservation to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, they decided on a strategy of nonviolent direct action. No violence… against people. But sabotage of property – well, that’s another question entirely.  Since the gathering at Standing Rock, anti-protest legislation backed by the fossil fuel industry has swept across the country. What happened? When is environmental protest considered acceptable… and when is it seen as a threat?  This is the first of two episodes exploring the changing landscape of environmental protest in the United States, from Standing Rock to Cop City and beyond. Part II will be released on June 8.  Featuring Chase Iron Eyes, Tokata Iron Eyes, Lesley Wood, Elly Page, and Connor Gibson. Special thanks to Phyllis Young and everyone at the Lakota People’s Law Project, especially Daniel Nelson and Jesse Phelps. Thanks also to Soundings Mindful Media.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS We highly recommend the podcast Burn Wild, investigative reporter Leah Sottile’s excellent series on the Earth Liberation Front. It centers on the question, “How far is too far to stop the planet burning?” Use the ICNL’s US Protest Law Tracker to look up anti-protest and critical infrastructure bills by state or by issue. “Exploring the sound of the American Indian occupation of Alcatraz”, produced by the Berkeley Voices program, and footage of the occupation, compiled by the Bay Area TV Archive.  For even more context on AIM, we recommend listening to Buffy, a podcast series on Buffy Sainte Marie, a Piapot Cree Nation singer-songwriter whose record “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” was an anthem during the occupation of Alcatraz.  The Intercept’s reported extensively on Standing Rock and TigerSwan. They’ve also made the leaked documents available for anyone to read, and recently published this investigation on TigerSwan’s strategy of misinformation, in collaboration with Grist. This critique of How to Blow Up a Pipeline calls the book “reckless,” arguing that Andreas Malm “has a tendency of rehashing many well-established anarchist ideas.”   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, written, and produced by Justine Paradis  Mixed by Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie, and Jessica Hunt Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Podington Bear, Skylines, Cory Gray, Cooper Cannell, and Blue Dot Sessions. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a candidate, Joe Biden called himself a climate change pioneer. He promised a green energy revolution. More renewables, way less fossil fuels, and a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. So two years in, how’s he doing? Outside/In host Nate Hegyi speaks with a political scientist and an environmental activist to figure out where Biden has pushed his climate agenda, where he hasn’t, and whether he’s an octopus or a bighorn sheep.  Featuring: Aseem Prakash, Jean Su   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Mixed by Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby The Outside/In team also includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are few physical challenges more uncomfortable than holding your breath underwater as long as you can.  But if your duty is to pull downed military personnel from waters all over the world, you need to prove your ability to perform in the most hostile and unforgiving conditions. That’s why the Air Force has long made breath holds part of its training programs for parajumpers, or parachute rescue specialists.  This week, we’re featuring an episode from our friends at the Outside Podcast (not to be confused with Outside/In) about a parajumper candidate who finds himself facing elimination from training for the most surprising reason: he can hold his breath way too long. Featuring Travis Morgan and Alex Hutchinson Listen to more from the Outside Podcast here.  SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook CREDITS This episode of the Outside Podcast was produced and hosted by Peter Frick-Wright. Editing and music by Robbie Carver.  Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi Outside/In Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While the taps are running dry and reservoirs are disappearing in Arizona, a corporate farm from Saudi Arabia is pumping massive amounts of groundwater to grow alfalfa  for cows back in the Middle East. Now, after years of inaction, Arizonans are pointing the finger at what they see  as a foreign invader slurping up the last gulps of a diminishing water supply. But the truth is more complicated.  In this episode, we dig deep into the history of Arizona’s water crisis and uncover a tale of dates, camels and dairy cows, and try to find out who’s really to blame for the West’s water crisis. Featuring: Natalie Koch.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837), or email us at [email protected].   LINKS Read Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia, by Natalie Koch. Listen to the six-part podcast series Thirst Gap: Learning to live with less on the Colorado River, by KUNC. Listen to Parched, a podcast about people who rely on the river that shaped the West, and have ideas to save it, by Colorado Public Radio.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Produced by Felix Poon and Nate Hegyi Mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The team peers into the Outside/Inbox to answer listener questions on the theme of “green,” a prompt which sends us exploring the hanging gardens of Babylon, xeriscaping, and the evolution of the human eye. 1: What’s the benefit of being evergreen? 2: How water-friendly is my lawn? 3: How many city buildings have green roofs? 4: Why did we evolve to see so many different shades of green? Featuring Georgia Silvera Seamans, Rubab Saher, Kate England, Abraham Wu, and Adriana Briscoe. Special thanks to Steven Peck.  How to submit a question to the Outside/Inbox Call our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER, and leave a voicemail. Send a voice recording to [email protected]. We also post regular call-outs for questions in our stories on Instagram. We’re seeking questions on a new theme for an upcoming episode: “the deeps.” Think caves, life underground, geothermal energy, and deep existential questions about our life on earth.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Check out the Washington Square Park Eco Projects, which includes a map of city trees, a seasonal change monitoring project, and bird surveys. Project Drawdown on green roofs as a key climate solution Abraham Wu’s research on mapping green roofs Exploring the relationship between turfgrass and city heat Our own reporting on the American love of lawns, and the impact on the desert   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Justine Paradis, Jeongyoon Han, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Edited by Taylor Quimby and Justine Paradis. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by spring gang, Molife, Apollo, Autohacker, Diamond Ortiz, and Chris Zabriskie.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 1950s, engineer Herb Ueda Sr. traveled to a remote Arctic military base. His mission? To drill through nearly a mile of ice, and extract the world’s first complete ice core. To finish the job, he and his team would endure sub-zero weather, toxic chemicals, and life inside a military base… which was slowly being crushed by the glacier from which it was carved.  Producer Daniel Ackerman takes us inside Camp Century, and explains how a foundational moment in climate science is inextricably linked with the story of the United States military.  Featuring Curt La Bombard, Julie Brigham-Grette, Herb Ueda Jr., Don Garfield, and Aleqa Hammond.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of the show. Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS If you want to see footage from inside Camp Century, check out this Department of Defense archival film, “Research and Development Progress Report No. 6.” For a little Cold War context, watch this 1951 Civil Defense Film called “Duck and Cover”, featuring Bert the Turtle.  Here's a book about the history of Camp Century, which includes a chapter on the ice core drilling project. To see some amazing photos, and read about how scientists are still learning new things from the Camp Century core after rediscovering sediment samples in 2017, check out this blog post from the European Geosciences Union. Learn more about the NSF Ice Core Facility in Colorado, where sections of the Camp Century ice core are currently stored.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Daniel Ackerman Mixed and edited by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Justine Paradis and Felix Poon Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks today to Carrie Harris, Holly Ueda, Chester Langway, Nancy Langway, Laura Kissel, and the Polar Archives at The Ohio State University Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Music by Amaranth Cove and Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right now, we’re investing billions of dollars into charging infrastructure in order to speed up the transition to electric cars and decarbonize transportation.  But there are all sorts of problems that EVs won’t solve: bumper-to-bumper traffic, extractive metal mining, and car collisions that kill tens of thousands of drivers, passengers, cyclists, and pedestrians every year in the US.  That’s why transit activists say we need to rethink the way we get around. Because learning to drive less isn’t just about safer streets and better quality of life – it’s also key to winning the race to net zero.  Featuring: Effie Kong, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, LaShea Johnson, Alex Hudson, Edwin Lindo, Thea Riofrancos.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Read more about Boston’s 3-year plan to expand the city’s biking infrastructure, make crosswalks safer for pedestrians, and offer biking classes to women and gender-diverse adults. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is in the middle of getting feedback on the Seattle Transportation Plan on how to build a safer and more efficient transportation system. Read about Cul De Sac Tempe, a new car-free community in Arizona, where residents are contractually forbidden from parking within a quarter-mile radius of the site. (Bloomberg) According to studies in Cambridge, MA and Toronto, Canada, bike lanes have a neutral or even positive impact on local businesses, even if some parking spaces are taken away. A paper in the journal Energy Research & Social Science describes the EV transition  as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and argues that private vehicle electrification is neither effective, nor equitable. This LA Times Op-ed argues that switching  to electric cars isn’t enough to solve climate change. Studies say pedestrians and bikers are more likely to be hit by EVs and cause more damage because they’re quieter and heavier than gas cars. Archival audio in this episode come from the 1953 film The American Road funded by Ford Motor Company, and Futurama at the 1939 NY World’s Fair.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon Mixed by Felix Poon and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca lavoie, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Mara Haplamazian Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, and Roy Edwin Williams Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transitioning to electric vehicles is essential to meeting our climate goals. But there are so many barriers to overcome – from expanding EV charging infrastructure, to updating the power grid, to mining the metals that make batteries go. In the first of a two-part series on decarbonizing transportation, we try to answer the critical question: is it all happening fast enough to avoid the worst climate impacts? Featuring: Craig Bentley, Nora Naughton, Sara Baldwin, Thea Riofrancos If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837), or email us at [email protected].   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS EV transition predictive models The 2035 report (Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley) The long road to electric cars (Reuters) Consumer education and survey findings EV charging levels explained (US DOT) GM EV Live In a Consumer Report's survey and a Reuters/Ipsos survey, more than a third of Americans say they'd consider buying an EV for their next car. Charging infrastructure The Electric Vehicle Road Test (Wall Street Journal) Federal money is now headed to states for building up fast EV chargers on highways (NPR) The grid Why Electric Vehicles Won’t Break the Grid (Scientific American An explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses (NY Times) Metal extraction Listen to our episode The lithium gold rush, an in-depth look at where lithium comes from, and who’s being affected by mining it. Read the Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining report by Thea Riofrancos.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon Mixed by Felix Poon and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca lavoie, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Mara Haplamazian Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, and Roy Edwin Williams Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Underdogs Ep3: You sell your soul What caused the Peranos to abandon their dogs and screw so many people over? Nate enlists the help of a New Zealand journalist to find out.  More about Outside/In presents The Underdogs:  A few months ago, Outside/In host Nate Hegyi got a tip from the highest levels of the dog sledding community. It was about the first team from New Zealand to complete the Iditarod, a 1,000-mile race across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain. Over the past decade, Curt and Fleur Perano have transformed their success on the trail into a flourishing mushing tourism business in their home country’s south island. Some of their dogs have even appeared in a Marvel movie and a Taylor Swift music video.  But behind the scenes, in the usually-guarded world of competitive dog sledding, the Peranos have burned bridges, destroyed friendships, and left a trail of debt totaling tens of thousands of dollars.  In this special Outside/In mini-series, Nate investigates a story one musher describes as “one dead body away from Tiger King,” and exposes the singular culture within the world of elite mushing. Featuring: Amanda Hasenauer, Jodi Bailey, Jenn Fisher, Jeff Fisher, Tony Turner, Gemma Nave, Tim Brown   SUPPORT Outside/In presents The Underdogs is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check out the history of working dogs here.  More than a dozen tourists have written bad reviews about Underdog sled dog tours on Tripadvisor and Google.  That bicycle ride Nate mentioned? It was part of an award-winning reporting project about the 2020 election.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited and mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Jack Rodolico, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Dylan Sitts, Joseph Beg, Hanna Lindgren, and Amaranth Cove.  Outside/In presents The Underdogs  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Underdogs Ep2: It has to be earned Nate flies to Minnesota to follow a new lead about the New Zealand racing team. Advisory: This episode contains brief descriptions of injured animals and animal abuse that may be disturbing to some listeners.    More about Outside/In presents The Underdogs:  A few months ago, Outside/In host Nate Hegyi got a tip from the highest levels of the dog sledding community. It was about the first team from New Zealand to complete the Iditarod, a 1,000-mile race across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain. Over the past decade, Curt and Fleur Perano have transformed their success on the trail into a flourishing mushing tourism business in their home country’s south island. Some of their dogs have even appeared in a Marvel movie and a Taylor Swift music video.  But behind the scenes, in the usually-guarded world of competitive dog sledding, the Peranos have burned bridges, destroyed friendships, and left a trail of debt totaling tens of thousands of dollars.  In this special Outside/In mini-series, Nate investigates a story one musher describes as “one dead body away from Tiger King,” and exposes the singular culture within the world of elite mushing. Featuring: Jamie Nelson, Jodi Bailey, Mike Williams Sr., and Amanda Hasenauer   SUPPORT Outside/In presents The Underdogs is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Humane Mushing (an advocacy group whose motto is “dog first, sport second”) used to compile an annual list of Iditarod sled dog deaths and injuries. Their information is taken from official race reports and Iditarod media advisories. (Humane Mushing) Check it out: Alaska Natives took the top three spots in the 2023 Iditarod. (NPR) An in-depth profile of Dallas Seavey, a five-time Iditarod winner who was publicly accused – and then publicly cleared – of doping his dogs. (GQ)   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited and mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Jack Rodolico, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Graphics by Sara Plourde Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Dylan Sitts, Joseph Beg, Hanna Lindgren, and Amaranth Cove.  Outside/In presents The Underdogs  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Underdogs Ep1: Honey and vinegar Outside/In host Nate Hegyi gets a surprising tip that leads him into the frozen and tight-knit world of competitive sled dog racing in Alaska. More about Outside/In presents The Underdogs:  A few months ago, Outside/In host Nate Hegyi got a tip from the highest levels of the dog sledding community. It was about the first team from New Zealand to complete the Iditarod, a 1,000-mile race across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain. Over the past decade, Curt and Fleur Perano have transformed their success on the trail into a flourishing mushing tourism business in their home country’s south island. Some of their dogs have even appeared in a Marvel movie and a Taylor Swift music video.  But behind the scenes, in the usually-guarded world of competitive dog sledding, the Peranos have burned bridges, destroyed friendships, and left a trail of debt totaling tens of thousands of dollars.  In this special Outside/In mini-series, Nate investigates a story one musher describes as “one dead body away from Tiger King,” and exposes the singular culture within the world of elite mushing. Featuring: Jodi Bailey, Austin Sorem, Dan Kaduce, Jamie Nelson, and Marine Kuhn.  SUPPORT Outside/In presents The Underdogs is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check out the results from the 2023 Iditarod Read the actual Iditarod rule (Rule 34) that states wild game animals killed in self-defense must be gutted and reported to a race official at the next checkpoint.  To learn more about the physiology of Alaskan huskies, check out this TEDx talk from Michael Davis: “Canines in Combat and Competition” Read a review of Blair Braverman’s memoir, “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube”.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Edited and mixed by Taylor Quimby Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Jack Rodolico, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Dylan Sitts, Rand Aldo, and Amaranth Cove.  Outside/In presents The Underdogs is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few months ago, Outside/In host Nate Hegyi got a tip from the highest levels of the dog sledding community. It was about the first team from New Zealand to complete the Iditarod, a 1,000-mile race across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain; a pair of mushers that have transformed their success on the trail into a flourishing tourism business in their home country’s south island.  But behind the scenes, in the usually-guarded world of competitive dog sledding, they've burned bridges, destroyed friendships, and left a trail of debt totaling tens of thousands of dollars.  In this trailer, get a first look at our upcoming three-part series: Outside/In presents The Underdogs. Look for the first episode in your feeds next week, March 16th.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once upon a time, potpourri was a popular way to freshen up a space. Now, for some, it feels a bit like the lava lamp of fragrance: an outdated fad from a bygone decade. So, why was potpourri so popular in the 1980’s, and what happened to it? Did the trend dry up… or just evolve? We explore the transformation of potpourri, from the fermented mush of the Victorian era to the perfumed and colorful bag of pine cones of the eighties, and talk to a few of the people still making potpourri today. This episode was originally published in September 2021. Featuring Yvette Weaver, Carly Still, Laure Moutet, Autumn Anderson, Paulus, and Ednita Tingle. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter. LINKS An 1895 recipe from Sweet from Sweet Scented Flowers and Fragrant Leaves for 50-year moist potpourri (the recipe begins on page 42). From Death Scents: more fascinating info on the history of medieval trends that predate potpourri and the rise of “rotten pot” potpourri. Fragrant Potpourri Preserves the Floral Scents of Summer: A 1975 NYT article that bridges the gap between moist and dried potpourri recipes. A 1988 Glade Potpourri Spray commercial CREDITS Hosted by Justine Paradis Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby Edited by Justine Paradis Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Mixed by Taylor Quimby Additional editing by Felix Poon and Jessica Hunt Special thanks to Rosalyn LaPier, Mark Nesbit, and to NHPR’s voices from the ‘80s: Nick Capodice, Josh Rogers, Emily Quirk, Patricia McLaughlin, Rick Ganley, and Rebecca Lavoie. Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Ben Nestor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you own land in the United States, do you also own the airspace above it? In other words, who owns the sky? The answer begins with a medieval Roman principle of property rights, which made it all the way to American courts: “Whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell."  We asked our friends Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy, cohosts of Civics 101, to join us to explore the uniquely American philosophy of property, to the moon and back. Featuring Colin Jerolmack, Michael Heller, George Anthony Long, and Deondre Smiles, with special guests Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.  Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!) for extras from the cutting room floor and behind-the-scenes dispatches from our reporters. Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook.  Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox – we answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS This article by Laura Donohue poses the same question we ask – “who owns the skies?” – in the context of property rights, state rights, and drones. Deondre Smiles’ essay on how manifest destiny is showing up as we explore beyond this planet, “The Settler Logics of (Outer) Space” The Civics 101 episodes mentioned were “Is Santa a Criminal?” and “What’s Up With the US Space Force?” Also relevant: their two-part series on “The Government and Housing.” A great podcast episode on diamonds and De Beers via Articles of Interest + 99% Invisible More on United States v. Causby (1946) By the way, the 2015 U.S. law about commercialization of space only refers to abiotic resources like minerals. If someone discovers alien life (even microbial), this law doesn’t cover it. Japan, Luxembourg, and the UAE have passed similar laws.  To learn about the fascinating question of who owns the space beyond your airplane seat, check out Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives by Michael Heller and coauthor James Salzman Read more about the uniquely American interpretation of “ad coelum” in the introduction to Colin Jerolmack’s book, Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby and Rebecca Lavoie with help from Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Lobo Loco, ProleteR, Triple Bacon, Larry Poppinz, Gabriel Lewis, Ben Elson, Bonkers Beat Club, bomull, Anthony Earls, David Szesztay, and Chris Zabriskie. Outside/In and Civics 101  are productions of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Nora Saks learned that a "toxic, self-cloning worm that poops out of its mouth was invading Maine", she started sounding the alarm about the impending eco-doom. Until, that is, state experts clued her into the "real threat"; a different creepy crawly wriggling towards The Pine Tree State's gardens and precious forests, and fast. In an attempt to find out more about this real threat, Ben Brock Johnson and Nora tunnel down a wormhole, encountering a long history of xenophobic rhetoric about so-called invasive species, and some hard truths about the field of invasion biology itself.  This week we’re featuring a story from our friend at WBUR’s Endless Thread, a podcast that digs into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL. Featuring: Banu Subramaniam, Dov Sax, Bob McNally,  Gary Fish, and Regina Smith   SUPPORT Donate to support the show before February 22nd and get your hands on a limited edition Outside/In opossum camp mug! Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Endless Thread (WBUR) "A toxic, self-cloning worm that poops out of its mouth is invading Maine" (Bangor Daily News) Reddit post on r/oddlyterrifying about hammerhead worms lindsaynikole's viral TikTok video on hammerhead worms "The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions",  Banu Subramaniam The Sax Research Lab at Brown University Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry fact sheet on jumping worms "Identify and Report Jumping Worms in Maine", UMaine Cooperative Forestry Research Unit informational video Cornell University fact sheet on Asian Jumping Worms UMass Extension Invasive Jumping Worm FAQ "Cancel Earthworms" (The Atlantic) "Invasive 'Jumping Worms' Threaten Trees in Maine and Elsewhere"  (NECN) "Scientists Sound The Alarm About Invasive 'Crazy Worms' Found in Maine" (Maine Public) "Maine Gardener: Invasion of the jumping worms" (Portland Press Herald)   CREDITS This episode was produced by Nora Saks and Dean Russell of WBUR’s Endless Thread Co-hosts: Nora Saks and Ben Brock Johnson.  Mix and sound design: Matt Reed Endless Thread’s team includes Amory Sivertson, Dean Russell, Quincy Walters, Grace Tatter,  Amy Gorel, Paul Vaitkus, and Emily Jankowski Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi, and produced by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite being the only rodent with a holiday to its name, groundhogs are often considered pests. However, these natural-born diggers have unearthed rare artifacts, play a pivotal role in shaping ecosystems, and are tied to important breakthroughs in hepatitis B treatments. Plus they’re pretty cute.  So in this episode, a special Groundhog Day edition of our Holy Scat series, we’re digging up as many amazing factoids about these creatures as we possibly can.  Featuring: David Scofield, Amanda Gillen, Eric D’Aleo, Joe Bruchac, and Sandra Sexton SUPPORT Donate to support the show and get your hands on a limited edition Outside/In opossum camp mug! Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Youtube video of a whistling groundhog NBC News video of Groundhog Day 2022 prediction Read more about the Meadowcroft Rockshelter – the oldest known site of human habitation in North America, discovered by a groundhog. Read this 1996 article about hepatitis B research using the woodchuck animal model at Cornell University.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s the slowest heartbeat on the planet? What’s it like to live with zero sunlight?  If you’ve ever picked up a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, you know that people are drawn to extremes, be they geographical, philosophical, or biological.  So this week, we’re cracking open the Outside/Inbox to answer your questions about the outer limits of life on Earth. We’ll learn about how landslides are way more common than you might think, why frogs are practically undead, and how researchers stay motivated through an Antarctic winter.  Submit your own question (the weirder the better) on Instagram, via email at [email protected], or by calling our Outside/Inbox hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER.  Question 1: How low can an animal’s heartbeat go?  Question 2: What happens to your body if you get ZERO sunlight? Question 3: Is climate change making landslides happen more often?  Question 4: What is a “wet-bulb” temperature?  Featuring: Carmen Possnig, Kira Mauseth, Corina Cerovski-Darriau, Daniel Vecellio, and Avikal Somvanshi. Donate to support the show, and get your hands on a limited edition Outside/In opossum camp mug! Here's the link: https://bit.ly/3PvIzWy   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby with help from Justine Paradis Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In each essay in their debut collection, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, science writer Sabrina Imbler shares the story of an undersea organism and a story of their own journey as someone who, as they put it, came out twice in adulthood.  In one essay, they reflect on how a shape-shifting cephalopod helped them navigate their own questions about gender. In another, they celebrate queer dance clubs through the lens of the Yeti crab, a creature who “dances to live” in the crushing conditions around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. “I really wanted to sort of take these creatures very seriously… to think about both of us as organisms,” said Sabrina.  “The creature’s existence in the world, and also the ways in which I am just, at the end of the day, another organism moving through the world, trying to eat and mate and survive.” Outside/In host Nate Hegyi and producer Justine Paradis sat down with Sabrina Imbler to talk about their blend of science and personal writing, and about what we might be able to learn by looking closely at the lives—perhaps very different, very strange-to-us lives—of creatures in the sea.   Donate to support the show, and to get your hands on a limited edition Outside/In opossum camp mug! Here's the link: https://bit.ly/3PvIzWy   MORE OUTSIDE/IN Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Find How Far the Light Reaches at your local bookstore Sabrina Imbler’s articles on Defector Media Read “We Swarm” on The Rumpus “It’s always ourselves we find in the sea” is a line from this poem by E.E. Cummings.   CREDITS Hosted by Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Felix Poon Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music in this episode by Loving Caliber, Autohacker, Valante, Silver Maple, Moon Crater, and So Vea. Theme music: Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some folks promote local food. Others swear by veganism. But what is the most environmentally-friendly diet? And does it really matter what we eat? Or are there bigger fish to fry when it comes to climate activism? Outside/In is trying out a new segment called This, That, Or The Other Thing. It’s all about the little decisions we make to try and build a more sustainable world—whether they have any effect, and what we can do instead if they don’t.  For our inaugural edition, we’re focusing on food. From Brazilian beef and tofu tacos to food waste and composting, host Nate Hegyi talks with experts to understand how our choices impact the planet… and how we can make a difference in our communities.  Featuring Umair Irfan, Tamar Haspel, and Ben Halpern.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Give a listen to Tamar Haspel’s podcast, Climavores. Vox reporter Umair Irfan wrote about how individual action actually does matter in the fight against climate change.  Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara put together a big study on the cumulative environmental pressures of different foods.  Want to tackle food waste? The Environmental Protection Agency has a great, down-to-earth guide on what you can do.    CREDITS Hosted, reported, produced, and mixed by Nate Hegyi Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Sven Lindvall, El Flaco Collective, Future Joust, Spring Gang, Eight Bits, and Awlee. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the first day of January, people all over the world dive into the water as a way to start the new year fresh. It’s often referred to as a “polar plunge”.  But cold water dipping is different. It’s not a breathless in-and-out plunge, but a slow submersion: lingering in the cold water for 5 or 10 minutes. No wetsuit.  This fall, Outside/In producer Justine Paradis got to know a community of dippers along the coast of Maine. Many of them described something happening once they’re in their water.. Something which they say changes their relationship to the cold, the ocean, and themselves.  In this episode, we’re ringing in the new year by sharing a little more from those conversations. Featuring Kelsy Hartley, Caitlin Hopkins, Puranjot Kaur, Betsy Dawkins, and Judy Greene-Janse.  Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for winter surthrival. We featured ideas from James in Bend, Oregon; Kyra in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and Annie in Portland, Maine.  Thanks also to Gin Majka, Guenola Lefeuvre, and Annie Ropeik.   A word on the risks of cold water immersion People engage in cold water dipping and swimming around the world. Many claim health benefits, like a boosted immune system and reduced inflammation. But it’s not a risk-free activity.  "I'm not sitting here as the fun police stopping people doing what they want to do. It's just we would encourage them to do it safely,” said Mike Tipton, a professor of Human and Applied Physiology at the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth. He shared a couple risks to consider before jumping in. Cold shock response, which occurs as you enter cold water and lasts a couple minutes. This prompts an involuntary gasp and hyperventilation – bad news if you’re underwater or in choppy water. Cardiac triggers. Cold water shock sends a signal to your heart telling it to beat faster, but face immersion tells your heart to slow down. These competing signals to your heart can potentially cause cardiac arrhythmia, especially when plunging and breath holding. On top of that, the cold water constricts your blood vessels, pushes up blood pressure, and makes your heart work harder. Swim failure, the result of direct cooling of the superficial nerves and muscles (especially in the limbs). This can occur before other effects of hypothermia. “This is where we see people swimming out to sea offshore, turning around and finding they can't get back because they become physically incapacitated… one of the obvious bits of safety advice is don't swim out of your depth and swim parallel to the shore, not away from it,” Mike said. A few basic safety tips:  Don’t go alone. As one cold water swimmer put it, “Keep your feet on the ground.” Get yourself checked for any pre-existing conditions that might be triggered by a sudden change in blood pressure.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Caitlin Hopkins and Kelsy Hartley are also known as Ebb and Flow, the founders of Two Maine Mermaids.  Puranjot Kaur is a member of Cold T**s, Warm Hearts on Mount Desert Island. There’s also another group in midcoast Maine called Wicked Nippy Dippahs. In addition to dipping, many of the women featured are open water swimmers. Puranjot Kaur wrote this account of her second attempt to swim around Mount Desert Island, fueled by congee and community. Check out these gorgeous photos by Greta Rybus of a community dip in an ice-hole in York, Maine, and these photos of some of the dippers in our episode. A good interview with a “wild swimming” scientist on both the risks and benefits of immersion     CREDITS Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis  Edited by Taylor Quimby The Outside/In team also includes our host Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Quesa, and Autohacker Theme music: Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s an unfortunate paradox for environmental podcasts; data shows a lot of people skip segments about the climate. But also… it’s the CLIMATE! We can’t NOT talk about it, right?  So how do we break through the malaise and make climate news feel less overwhelming? More surprising? Less depressing? In this episode, we round-up a handful of stories that we hope break the mold and make climate a more approachable topic for everyday discussion.  We’ll look at a third-rail of environmental activism, hear about an unlikely, middle-of-the-night climate deal at COP27, and learn about one place where producing less renewable energy might just be the best thing for the environment. Featuring Cara Buckley, Naveena Sadasivam, and Gillian Flaccus   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Earth Now Has 8 Billion Humans. This Man Wishes There Were None. By Cara Buckley for The New York Times.(For more on population, you can read Are 8 billion people too many — or too few? and Should you not have kids because of climate change? It’s complicated. And you should also listen to our two-parter on this very subject: So Over Population [Part 1] and So Over Population [Part 2]) Inside the COP27 fight to get wealthy nations to pay climate reparations, by Naveena Sadasivam for Grist ‘Momentous:’ US advances largest dam demolition in history, by Gillian Flaccus for the Associated Press News Roundup: U.S. reaches a fusion power milestone. Will it be enough to save the planet? (NPR) The surprising player in the rail strike fight: Fossil fuel companies (Grist) Why knowing your neighbors could save you in the next climate disaster (The Guardian)   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Jessica Hunt.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Jharee, and Blackout Memories.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the beginning of the pandemic, we published an episode about “how to be a backyard birder.”  Everybody was understandably freaking out, and we wanted to put something sweet, calming, and hopeful into the world. In that episode, we heard from ornithologist Dr. J. Drew Lanham, who shared some great tips for beginners, like what to watch and listen for, and how to make binoculars from toilet paper tubes.  But what we didn’t get into was Dr. Lanham’s own remarkable story, including the moment when the humble chicken pulled him away from a life in the military and onto the path to ornithological stardom.  This episode comes from our friends at Going Wild, with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, a podcast from PBS that’s more about the people that study wild animals than it is about the animals themselves.   Their latest season also includes the story of a shark researcher struggling with the whiteness of academia, a herpetologist who pushed to change the language of the field, and Dr. Rae-Wynn’s own journey as a field researcher slash newly single mom. Featuring Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant and Dr. J. Drew Lanham.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Read “9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher”, Dr. J. Drew Lanham’s breakthrough piece for Orion Magazine.  Listen to a South Carolina Public Radio interview with Dr. J. Drew Lanham after he won a MacArthur Fellowship.    CREDITS  Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi and produced by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.  Going Wild is hosted by Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. Production by Caroline Hadilaksono, Danielle Broza, Nathan Tobey, and Great Feeling Studios. Editing by Rachel Aronoff and Jakob Lewis. Sound design by Cariad Harmon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s Outside/In’s annual winter show, in which the team gathers around the proverbial fire to share our best ideas towards becoming better friends with winter. The dream is to not just survive, but thrive – dare we say, to “surthrive” – and embrace the season, both the cold and the cozy. This year, we’re joined by the wonderful Mara Hoplamazian, climate and environment reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio.  You can read our list here. We’d also love to hear your recommendations! We might even play them on the podcast or share your tips in our (free) newsletter.  Send your suggestions, ideally as a voice recording, to [email protected] or call our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. Featuring a few of the cold-water dippers of Maine, including Betsy Lou Dawkins, Cholla Foot, Juliet Cox, Anne Buckwalter, and the crowd at a Two Maine Mermaids full moon dip.   A word on cold water immersion People engage in cold water dipping or swimming around the world. Many claim health benefits, like a boosted immune system and reduced inflammation. But it’s obviously not a risk-free activity.  Physiologist Michael Tipton told us a couple things to be aware of: 1) cold water shock, which prompts an involuntary gasp – bad news if you’re underwater 2) cold water exposure can send competing signals to your heart, potentially causing cardiac arrhythmia.  But he also said,  "I'm not sitting here as the fun police stopping people doing what they want to do. It's just we would encourage them to do it safely." Here’s another overview of benefits and risks of cold-water swimming.    Support the show Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   Credits Host: Nate Hegyi Produced and mixed by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor Quimby Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie  Music for this episode by Autohacker, Nul Tiel Records, John Runefelt, Blue Dot Sessions, Smartface, Xavy Rasan, Iso Indie, and Vaain. Special thanks to Michael Tipton, Kelsy Hartley, Caitlin Hopkins, and Judith Greene-Janse. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s high time to shine a light on an under-appreciated nocturnal visitor to America’s backyards and garbage cans: the opossum. The opossum is the only marsupial in North America, and they’ve been snuffling around since before the dinosaurs died. It faints at the slightest threat, yet can be struck by a venomous snake and, unfazed, turn right around and eat it.  Also, they have two vaginas, and an extra pseudo-vagina. What more do you need? The opossum’s superpower is its reproductive system, and the thing that’s really going to make you say “holy scat!” is what’s going on in that pouch.  So…what’s it going to take to get some respect for the opossum? Featuring: Jessica Anderson, Joseph Bruchac, Danielle Draback, and Frannie Greenberg  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The premise of History’s reality TV show Alone is about as straightforward as it gets. Ten people are dropped into the remote wilderness with nothing but a handful of tools, a supply of GoPro cameras, and instructions to document their entire experience.  As contestants put their wilderness skills to the test, they face some of reality television’s most intense physical and emotional stakes; struggling with isolation, cold, wild animals, and even starvation. The last person standing wins the grand prize: half a million dollars.  But while the contestants must leave the comforts of home behind, the show still carries societal baggage.  In this episode, two critics explore the subtext of History’s Alone, and the messages it might be sending about class, gender, entertainment, and human relationships with the natural world.  Featuring Eric Martin and Tracy Clark-Flory.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our free newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check our Eric Martin’s article: ALONE — What is this reality tv show really about? And Tracy Clark-Flory’s piece for Jezebel: A Woman Alone: On History’s Survival Show, There’s No Escaping Gender, Not Even In The Woods.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi Mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Rebecca Lavoie and Nate Hegyi, with help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, The New Fools, Guy Trevino and Friends, Ambientalism, 91 nova, and Sarah the Illstrumentalist.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s time to open our mailbag and answer your questions about fall – and not just the season. We’ve interpreted the theme to include everything from dreams about falling to fallout shelters and, um, tornadoes.  Plus, we reveal the long-anticipated winner of our poll on best alternatives for replacing the term “leaf-peeping.” Question 1: Why do so many have recurring dreams about falling? Question 2: How do tornadoes figure in myths around the world?  Question 3: How deep does a fallout shelter need to be?  Question 4: Are berries ripening earlier because of climate change? Do you have a question about the natural world? Submit it to the Outside/Inbox! Send a voice memo to [email protected] or call our hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back. Featuring: Abhinav Singh, Nani Pybus, David Monteyne, Shaheen Dewji, Richard Primack, Nicole Herman-Mercer, Katie Spellman.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS On dreams German chemist August Kekulé claimed to have pictured the ring structure of benzene, after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail A study on the threat simulation theory of dreaming On Fallout Shelters Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War by David Monteyne A calculator to estimate your personal annual radiation dose Fallout Five Zero, a photographic chronicle of the Boston area’s now defunct shelters On Berries Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods by Richard Primack A study on Indigenous knowledge on climate-related changes to berry production in Alaska   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced and mixed by Felix Poon, Justine Paradis, Taylor Quimby, and Jessica Hunt Edited by Taylor Quimby and Justine Paradis. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie  Music for this episode by Jharee, Thea Tyler, and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jack Rodolico knows exactly what scares him. Sharks.  But here’s what he doesn’t get: if he’s so freaked out, why can’t he stop incessantly watching online videos of bloody shark attacks?  Why would he deliberately seek out the very thing that spooks him? To figure it out, Jack enlists the help of other scaredy-cats: our listeners, who shared their fears about nature with us. Together, Jack and the gang consider the spectrum of fear, from phobia to terror, and what it might mean when we don’t look away. Featuring Lauren Passell, Arash Javanbakht, Nile Carrethers, and Sushmitha Madaboosi.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Lauren Passell’s Podcast the Newsletter. Related: why people love horror movies. The ubiquity of smartphones means plenty of hair-raising amateur videos of shark attacks to get you started on your doomscrolling (warning: a couple of these are bloody). If this image of an octopus freaks you out, you might share Lauren’s “fear of holes,” or trypophobia. Learn more about augmented reality technology and other projects at Arash Javanbakht’s clinic.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Jack Rodolico Mixed by Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Nate Hegy, and Jessica Hunt. Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie  Music for this episode by Silver Maple, Matt Large, Luella Gren, John Abbot and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to everyone who sent in voicemails and memos, even the ones we didn’t play: Erin Partridge, Lauren Passell, Nile Carrethers, Michelle MacKay, Alec from Nashville, and Hillary from Washington.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to protecting the biodiversity of Planet Earth, there is no greater failure than extinction.  Thankfully, only a few dozen species have been officially declared extinct by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the half century since the passage of the Endangered Species Act.  But, hold on. Aren’t we in the middle of the sixth mass extinction? Shouldn’t the list of extinct species be… way longer?  Well, yeah. Maybe. Producer Taylor Quimby sets out to understand why it’s so difficult to officially declare an animal extinct. Along the way, he compares rare animals to missing socks, finds a way to invoke Lizzo during an investigation of an endangered species of crabgrass, and learns about the disturbing concept of “dark extinctions.”  Featuring Sharon Marino, Arne Mooers, Sean O’Brien, Bill Nichols, and Wes Knapp.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check out this 2005 feature from the CBS Sunday Morning archives: In search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker…  …and this one from 60 minutes, also from 2005, pulled from the archive and rebroadcast after the proposed delisting. Nate’s favorite ivory-billed story came from NPR, and featured songwriter Sufjan Stevens. Watch the US Fish and Wildlife Service virtual public meeting about the proposed delisting of the ivory-billed woodpecker on January 26, 2022. Read this 2016 paper that outlines, among other things, the consequences of being wait-listed under the ESA: “Taxa, petitioning agency, and lawsuits affect time spent awaiting listing under the US Endangered Species Act.” From Simon Fraser University, “Lost or extinct? Study finds the existence of 562 animal species remains uncertain.” More on the unknown status of Cambodia’s national mammal, the kouprey. Wes Knapps’ paper on “Dark Extinctions” among vascular plants in the continental United States and Canada. Read about the extinction of smooth slender crabgrass, the first documented extinction in New Hampshire.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Taylor Quimby Mixer: Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie and Nate Hegyi, with help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to Noah Greenwald, Jonathan Reichard, Tom Martin, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Music for this episode by Silver Maple and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've been having trouble getting in with a veterinarian, you're not imagining it. Across the country, pet care is increasingly hard to come by, and more vets are leaving the job. Alaska’s capital city, Juneau, has lost roughly half of its veterinarians since the pandemic began. Pet owners often have to wait several weeks for an appointment, surgery is scarce, and 24/7 emergency care doesn’t exist. Now, a local animal shelter is stepping up to try and fill the gap for desperate pet owners, who often have nowhere else to turn.  In an industry rife with burnout, turnover, and high suicide rates, veterinarians and vet technicians are being forced to choose between taking care of animals and taking care of themselves. Featuring: Tracy Ward, Jocelyn Andrea, Krista Miller, Sam Smith, Sam Blankenship If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, reach out to the folks at the Crisis Text Line, a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential. LINKS A professor at Auburn University looked into the role pentobarbital plays in suicides among veterinarians and vet techs.  The American Veterinary Medical Association broke down the reasons why it’s tough to find veterinary care these days.  The USDA has a cool map of places that are experiencing a shortage in veterinary care.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby Additional editing help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie and Jessica Hunt.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planting a tree often becomes almost a shorthand for doing a good deed. But such an act is not always neutral. In some places, certain trees can become windows into history, tools of erasure, or symbols of resistance. This episode originally aired in October of 2020.  Featuring: Liat Berdugo, Irus Braverman, Jonathan Kuttab, Noga Kadman, Iyad Hadad, Raja Shehadeh, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, and Nidal Waleed Rabie and his granddaughter Samera.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS & BIBLIOGRAPHY Berdugo, Liat. “A Situation: A Tree in Palestine.”Places Journal. January 2020. Braverman, Irus. Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel Palestine. Cambridge University Press: 2009.Kadman, Noga. Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Indiana University Press: 2015.Long, Joanna. “(En)planting Israel: Jewish national fund forestry and the naturalisation of Zionism.” University of British Columbia: 2005.”Our History.” Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Jewish National Fund. Accessed 8 October 2020.Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. One World Oxford: 2006.Shehadeh, Raja. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. Scribner: 2007.Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel. University of California Press: 2002.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Justine Paradis Mixer: Justine Paradis Editing by Taylor Quimby, Sam Evans-Brown, and Erika Janik Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to Yehoshua Shkedy, Amit Gilutz, Eliana Passentin, and Vered Ben Saadon. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s that time again when we open our mailbag to answer your (oh-so-delightful) questions. This time, we deliberate over what seagulls are doing so far from the sea, the reason that staring at fire is so compelling, why dogs kick up dirt after they poo, and other timeless inquiries.Submit your own question (the weirder the better) on Instagram, via email at [email protected], or by calling our Outside/Inbox hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER.  Question 1: Would ice age humans still think of ice as ‘cold?’ Question 2: Why do we like to stare at fire? Question 3: Why do dogs scratch the ground after pooping? Question 4: Shouldn’t seagulls be at sea?  Question 5: Do animals get seasonal allergies?    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Taylor Quimby & Felix Poon Mixers: Taylor Quimby & Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Rebecca Lavoie Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Felix Johansson Carne, Stationary Sign, Jules Gaia, Yomoti, and Flouw.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever have an unexpected animal encounter that leaves you filled with adrenaline? Or awed by the natural world? Or filled with fear?  On this episode, we hand over the reins to the folks at Every Little Thing, a Spotify-exclusive podcast hosted by Flora Lichtman. They asked their listeners for stories about extreme animal run-ins, and boy did folks deliver…. From a tangled antlers conundrum, to a life-altering encounter with jellyfish, these are animal stories that will make you laugh, sweat, and want to stay on the boat.  Thanks to Cory, Sara, Geoff and everyone who called in to Every Little Thing with a wild animal tale. Every Little Thing is made by Flora Lichtman, Annette Heist, Phoebe Flanigan, Hadley Robinson, Stephanie Werner and Carla Javier. Outside/In is produced by Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon    AFRAID OF NATURE? SEND US YOUR STORIES! Halloween is coming up, and we want to know what natural thing scares the bejeezus out of you. Is there a particular animal, insect, or encounter that just absolutely creeps you out? Or maybe it’s just an idea: like you’re afraid of the dark, or the ocean, or thunderstorms?  Submit your fear, and we may feature it on a future episode of the show - or call you up to talk about whatever it is that freaks you out.  Here are some prompts: What scares you?  How does that fear manifest in your life? Where do you think that fear stems from?  Tell us a specific anecdote or story related to your fear. Submit your story by sending a voice memo to [email protected]. Or by calling our hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER.    MORE ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING Why do news anchors all sound the same? Do wolves really howl at the moon? How did Elvis imitators take over Las Vegas wedding chapels? On ELT, you call with a question, they find you an answer.  Their helpline is open 24-7. Call 833-RING-ELT or send an audio message to [email protected].   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some people see something special happening at the Berkeley Community Garden in Boston’s South End: a multicultural garden community built from the rubble of a demolished city block; a green oasis of Chinese plants like bitter melon, cultivated here for over half a century. But others… well, all they see is a trash pile. In the final installment of Yardwork, the story of how a predominantly immigrant community garden is shaping the built environment, even as gentrification threatened its existence. Featuring: Arlene Ng, Kim Szeto, Chun Lee, Sue Fong Lee, Helen Ng, Fanny, Ada, Sarah Hutt, Jeremy Liu, Betsy Johnson, Ann McQueen, Valerie Burns   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Official Berkeley Community Garden Website Adversity Can Help A Garden To Grow (NYTimes) Berkeley Community Gardeners Master Growing...Up (WBUR) The Trustees of Reservations now owns and manages the Berkeley Community Garden. But many organizations have supported the garden through the decades, including: Boston Natural Areas Network (Wikipedia) South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust (Wikipedia) Boston Urban Gardeners Mel King was instrumental in making community gardens in Boston possible. In 1974 he sponsored the MA Gardening and Farm Act, which passed into law and allowed people to farm and garden on vacant public land. He was honored in 2021 by then acting mayor of Boston, Kim Janey.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi Additional editing help from Jessica Hunt and Justine Paradis. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to Michelle Slater, Julie Stone, Zach Nowak, Mark Gardner, Michelle de Lima, Vidya Tikku, Peter Bowne, Jessica Holden, Lauren Chooljian Nick Capodice, Jason Moon, Christina Phillips, and Eileen Poon. Music for this episode by Walt Adams, Blue Dot Sessions, and Airae Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Yardwork, a summer yard and garden miniseries from Outside/In. We’re sharing three stories about our relationships with the land around us: the front yard, the backyard, and down the block. This is part two. Sometimes, when Maureen McMurray is digging in her backyard garden, she encounters something she didn’t expect: a lump of coal. She’s planted vegetables in the same soil for a few years now. But as she prepared for an upcoming growing season, she wondered: is her homegrown produce poisoning her family? The answer is nicer than you might think. Featuring Maureen McMurray, Nate Bernitz, and Ganga Hettiarachchi.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram + Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Find your state’s cooperative extension and soil testing service in this directory. Cornell Small Farms Program offers a guide to soil contamination, including ranges of safe levels, with the caveat that toxicity depends on factors like soil texture, pH, and organic matter.  The EPA’s primer to lead in soil. More information on managing the health risks of lead in New Hampshire soils from the UNH Cooperative Extension.  This open source paper goes even deeper on issues of urban gardening, soil contamination, and public awareness.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Justine Paradis Edited by Taylor Quimby Additional editing help from Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie and Jessica Hunt.  Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Title art and photo: Justine Paradis Special thanks to Tom Lemien, Anna Paltseva, and Jim Garvin. Music by Walt Adams, Nul Tiel Records, Alexandra Woodward, Martin Gauffin, Blue Dot Sessions, and Arthur Benson. Outside/In theme by Breakmaster Cylinder Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Yardwork, a summer yard and garden miniseries from Outside/In. We’re sharing three stories about our relationships with the land around us: the front yard, the backyard, and down the block. This is part one. Americans love a lawn. Green grass grows everywhere: on baseball fields, in backyards, in front of strip malls. Collectively, we spend billions of dollars every year keeping them fertilized and watered. But lawns cost more than money in Western states like Utah. Despite a severe drought, residents of Utah’s towns and cities use more water per capita than any other place in the nation, and a majority of that water goes right into lawns. That’s helping fuel an environmental disaster that could wipe out one of America’s largest inland seas. In part one of Yardwork, we trace the 600-year history of lawns, explore how they became a symbol of power, wealth, and Whiteness in America, and share tips on how to make a yard more environmentally responsible. Featuring: Malin Curry, Ira Curry, Kelly Kopp, Zach Frankel, Karen Stenehjel   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check out Malin Curry’s essay on the history of Black Americans and yard work.  To read more about how agriculture and outdoor watering is contributing to the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake, take a look at these two studies.   ProPublica published an excellent investigation into why one of the West’s driest states often rejects aggressive water conservation efforts.  For some great history on lawns, read Paul Robbins’ Lawn People and Virginia Scott Jenkins’ The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby Additional editing help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie and Jessica Hunt. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to Sherry Lund, Zach Renstrom, Karry Rathje and Ken Fox.  Music for this episode by Walt Adams, Sture Zetterberg, OTE, Headlund, Roy Edwin Williams, El Flaco Collective, Pulsed, Jimmy Wahlsteen, Both Are Infinite, Airae, and Alfie-Jay Winters. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans have had an impressive run thus far; we’ve explored most of the planet (the parts that aren’t underwater anyway), landed on the moon, created art and music, and some pretty entertaining Tik Toks.  But we’ve survived on the planet for just a fraction of the time horseshoe crabs and alligators have. And we’re vastly outnumbered by many species of bacteria and insects.  So what is the most successful species on Earth? And how do you measure that, anyway?  From longevity, to happiness, to sheer numbers, we put a handful of different organisms under the microscope in hopes of better understanding what exactly it means to succeed at life on a collective and individual scale.    Featuring: Stephen Giovannoni, Rashidah Farid, and Steward Pickett SUPPORT Check out Stephen Giovannoni’s paper: “SAR11 Bacteria: The Most Abundant Plankton in the Oceans” An interesting treatise on adaptability: “Why crocodiles still look the same as they did 200 million years ago” From the NSF: “The most common organism in the oceans harbors a virus in its DNA” More food for thought: “The non-human living inside you"   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Taylor Quimby Editing by: Nate Hegyi, Rebecca Lavoie Additional editing help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to everybody who answered our question at the top of the show: Josemar Ochoa, m Carey Grant, Butter Wilson, Tim Blagden, Robert Baker, Sheila Rydel, and Bob Beaulac. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, and Jules Gaia Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The National Park Service has changed immensely since its days of keeping poachers out of Yellowstone. So has its approach to telling the story of America.  Kirsten Talken-Spaulding of the NPS and Will Shafroth of the National Parks Foundation help us understand how this colossal system actually works and what it's doing to tell the true story of the United States. This episode was reported and produced by our friends at the wonderful podcast Civics 101.   LINKS For more about the history of national parks and state-backed conservation, we’ve got episodes!  We’ve also delved into the history of Yellowstone, with a focus on the original conservation strategy behind it and many other parks, a strategy pejoratively called “fortress conservation.” “Himalayan Land Grab” tells the story of what happened when park developers applied the same “fortress conservation” strategy in northern India. “Thin Green Line” is an exploration of the role of conservation law enforcement through the reality TV show North Woods Law. We’ve also featured “The Problem with America’s National Parks,” an episode of the podcast The Experiment (no longer being produced) which asked: why not simply give the national parks back to Native people?   CREDITS Hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice Produced by Hannah McCarthy with help from Nick Capodice Senior Producer: Christina Phillips Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Civics 101 staff includes Jacqui Fulton. Outside/In team: Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Music (National Park Service): Nul Tiel Records, Evan Schaefer, Kesha, Walt Adams, Site of Wonders, Dusty Decks, HoliznaRAPS and Margareta. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The land had been cultivated and lived on for millennia when geologist Ferdinand Hayden came upon the astounding Yellowstone "wilderness." It wasn't long before the federal government declared it a national park, to be preserved in perpetuity for the enjoyment of all. Ostensibly. How did Yellowstone go from being an important home, hunting ground, thoroughfare and meeting place to being a park?  This episode was reported and produced by our friends at the wonderful podcast Civics 101.  Featuring: Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone, Mark David Spence, author of Dispossessing the Wilderness and Alexandra E. Stern, historian of Native peoples and Reconstruction are our guides to this rocky start.    LINKS For more about the history of national parks and state-backed conservation, we’ve got episodes!  We’ve also delved into the history of Yellowstone, with a focus on the original conservation strategy behind it and many other parks, a strategy pejoratively called “fortress conservation.” “Himalayan Land Grab” tells the story of what happened when park developers applied the same “fortress conservation” strategy in northern India. “Thin Green Line” is an exploration of the role of conservation law enforcement through the reality TV show North Woods Law. We’ve also featured “The Problem with America’s National Parks,” an episode of the podcast The Experiment (no longer being produced) which asked: why not simply give the national parks back to Native Americans?   CREDITS Hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice Produced by Hannah McCarthy with help from Nick Capodice Senior Producer: Christina Phillips Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Civics 101 staff includes Jacqui Fulton. Outside/In team: Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. Music: Walt Adams, Silver Maple, Arthur Benson, Alexandra Woodward and Rocky Marciano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last summer, former Outside/In host Sam Evans-Brown quit journalism to become a lobbyist for clean energy. He’s not alone. Millions of people left their jobs or changed careers in the past couple years. But is the field of climate journalism going through its own “Great Resignation?” In a moment when the stakes are so high, are the people who cover the climate crisis leaving journalism to try to help solve it? Producer Justine Paradis talks with two reporters who recently found themselves re-evaluating their personal and professional priorities: one who left journalism, and another who stayed. Featuring Sophie Gilbert, Sam Evans-Brown, Stephen Lacey, Julia Pyper, Meaghan Parker, and Kendra Pierre-Louis.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our (free) newsletter.Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS The podcast episode of Warm Regards that Justine mentions is “Apocalyptic Narratives, Climate Data, and Hope, with Zeke Hausfather and Diego Arguedas Ortiz” The history of objectivity is arguably one of the “great confusions of journalism.” In the early 20th century, reporter Walter Lippman and editor Charles Merz contended that objectivity is a practice akin to the scientific method. “The method is objective, not the journalist.” More recently, plenty of folks have commented on problems with “bias” in journalism, including Lewis Raven Wallace, Wesley Lowery, and Sam Sanders, who wrote, “The avoidance of the ‘perception’ of ‘bias’ ultimately means the only reporters to be trusted are those whose lives haven’t been directly touched by the issues and struggles they’re covering. And you [know] what that means.” Julia Pyper’s podcast Political Climate Post Script Media, Stephen Lacey’s podcast company How cable TV covered climate change in 2021. Nate Johnson, a former journalist who left Grist to become an electrician, featured on How to Save a Planet. Kendra Pierre-Louis spoke in greater depth about her career and what it’s like to be a Black woman in journalism with Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt on Hot Take. The Yale Climate Opinion Maps find that 72% of Americans believe in global warming, although just 33% report hearing about climate in the media at least once a week. You can explore the data and see how climate attitudes vary by state and county. For Sarah Miller, all the right words on climate have already been said. “I could end this story by saying ‘We kept swimming and it was beautiful even if it will all be gone someday,’ or some shit, but I already ended another climate story that way. I have, several times, really nailed that ending… Writing is stupid. I just want to be alive.”   CREDITS Special thanks to Nate Johnson and Peter Howe Host: Nate Hegyi Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis Editing and additional mixing by Taylor Quimby Additional editing: Rebecca Lavoie, Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music: Sarah the Illstrumentalist, Daniel Fridell, baegel, FLYIN, Smartface, Silver Maple, By Lotus, 91nova, Moon Craters, Pandaraps, and Blue Dot Sessions Theme Music: Breakmaster Cylinder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few bear witness to human decomposition. We embalm and seal bodies in caskets, and bury them six feet underground. Decomposition happens out of sight and out of mind, or in the case of cremation, is skipped over entirely. But at human decomposition facilities, sometimes known as "body farms," students and researchers see rotting corpses every day. They watch as scavengers and bacteria feast on them. And when it's all over, they clean the skeletons, and file them away in a collection. In this episode, producer Felix Poon visits a human decomposition facility in North Carolina to  see what the people who work there have learned about death, find out how a human body decomposes, and why a person might choose to wind up there in the first place.  Featuring: Nick Passalacqua, Rebecca George, Carter Unger, Maggie Klemm, Carlee Green, Victoria Deal, Kadri Greene, Mackenzie Gascon, Reagan Baechle, Leigh Irwin, and Lucinda Denton   LINKS You can watch Bill Bass tell the story of Colonel William Shy and the time since death estimation he got so wrong that led to him founding the first ever “Body Farm.” If you want to hear from pre-registered donors about their decision to donate their bodies, you can watch a WBIR-TV segment, The Body Farm: A donor explains why she’s ready to hand off her corpse to the forensic center about Lucinda Denton, who we feature in this episode. And you can read Fawn Fitter’s article, My Afterlife on the Body Farm (NY Times), about how she intends to help solve crimes as part of a world-renowned criminal justice program after she dies. If you’re curious to read more about the “CSI Effect,” check this article out: ‘CSI effect’ draws more women to forensics. And if you want to read up on how the field of forensics is talking about evolving their concepts of race and gender, you can read Decolonizing ancestry estimation in the United States, and Centering Transgender Individuals in Forensic Anthropology and Expanding Binary Sex Estimation in Casework and Research.   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Felix Poon Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help and feedback from Nate Hegyi, Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, and Jessica Hunt.Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special Thanks to: Fawn Fitter, Katie Zejdlik, Jimmy Holt, Carter Unger, Maggie Klemm, Carlee Green, Victoria Deal, Kadri Greene, Mackenzie Gascon, Reagan Baechle, and Leigh Irwin. Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, and will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker.Click here to donate to Outside/In right now.    A few weeks ago, we teamed up with the Civics 101 podcast to bring you the story of Happy, an Asian elephant living in the Bronx Zoo. Lawyers had petitioned the New York State Court of Appeals for a writ of Habeas Corpus; a legal maneuver that could have freed Happy and set a new precedent for animal rights. But in a ruling out this week, the court has decided: Happy isn’t going anywhere. In this quick update to our previous episode (listen here if you haven’t already)  Nate and Hannah debrief on the 5-2 split decision, and what it means for the future of animal rights.  Featuring: Maneesha Deckha   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Read more about this week’s ruling, and what it may mean for animal rights, in this article  from Slate.   CREDITS   Hosts: Nate Hegyi and Hannah McCarthy Reported and produced by: Nate Hegyi Mixer: Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Fabien Tell, Bill Ferngren, Sarah the Illstrumentalist, and Alexandra Woodward Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, and will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker.Click here to donate to Outside/In right now. When the smash-success Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993, it inspired a generation of dinophiliacs and helped to usher in a new “golden age of paleontology.”  But it also froze the public’s perception of dinosaurs in time, and popularized inaccuracies that people still believe are true today.  So what happens when the biggest source of information on a scientific field comes from a fictional monster movie? In this episode, three Jurassic Park super-fans (one paleontologist, and two podcasters) try to sort it all out.  Featuring: Gabriel-Philip Santos   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKSWant to learn more about dinosaurs? Check the publish date before you check it out from the library!  And here are some good options: Smithsonian’s The Dinosaur Book (pretty much all of the Smithsonian books are good for younger readers) Want to get a more global perspective of where dinosaurs have been discovered? Check out a dinosaur atlas book.  For older readers, or anybody who loves a good coffee table book, check out this entry featuring a number of excellent paleoartists: Dinosaur Art II (Taylor has the first one and loves to show it off). Also: A truly disheartening read about people who think feathered dinosaurs are an attack on masculinity.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby Mixer: Taylor Quimby Editing by Rebecca Lavoie, with help from Nate Hegyi and Justine Paradis Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Sarah the Illstrumentalist, Pandaraps, Matt Large, Ballpoint, and Valante. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anybody who supports the show RIGHT NOW, during our June 2020 Fund Drive, will be entered to win a $500 Airbnb gift card, AND will receive an adorable limited-edition Outside/In axolotl sticker.Click here to donate to Outside/In right now. Happy has lived in New York City’s Bronx Zoo for years. To visitors, she’s a lone Asian elephant. But to a team of animal rights lawyers, she’s a prisoner. They’ve petitioned state courts for a writ of Habeas Corpus; a legal maneuver that, if granted, would declare Happy a legal person who deserves to be freed. It’s the latest case in an ongoing fight to extend basic human rights to animals – one that could have big repercussions in the natural world.  Because this is a case that deals with animals AND the law, two podcasts from New Hampshire Public Radio have teamed up to take it on: Outside/In and Civics 101. We always hear about the animal rights movement… but what rights do animals actually have?  Featuring: Maneesha Deckha, Kevin Schneider   SUPPORTOutside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKSListen and subscribe to Civics 101! Check out which animals don’t get covered by the country’s biggest anti-cruelty law, the Animal Welfare Act, here. Nonhuman Rights Project founder, Steven Wise, explained why he compares the plight of nonhuman animals to the plight of enslaved people in a wide-ranging interview with University of Toronto law professor Angela Fernandez in 2018.  The New Yorker wrote about Happy the elephant’s legal case earlier this year.  You can rent the HBO Documentary about Tommy the chimpanzee, Unlocking the Cage, on Apple TV. We weren’t able to dive into it in this episode, but Maneesha has made a compelling case for not fighting for personhood for animals – instead, there should be a distinct third classification known as “legal beings.” Check out her lecture on it here.    CREDITS Hosts: Nate Hegyi, Hannah McCarthy, Nick Capodice Reported and produced by: Nate Hegyi Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help and feedback from Nick Capodice, Hannah McCarthy, Rebecca Lavoie, and Nate Hegyi Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by El Flaco Collective, The Fly Guy Five, Jules Gaia, and Peerless.  Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s that time again, when scientists everywhere hold their breath as we open our listener mailbag. It’s spring in the northern hemisphere, so the theme of the questions in this episode is “growth” — with the exception of the last question, which is… kind of the opposite. Question 1: Um, what are those frogs doing? (go to our website to see the picture) Question 2: What’s that white foam that forms on trees when it rains? Question 3: Does moss get damaged when you walk on it? Question 4: What’s the best filling for raised beds in the garden? Question 5: How long does it take for a dead squirrel to decompose? [insert image] Thanks for the excellent questions, Louise, Mihaela, Tricia, Kevin, and Nicolas! Do you have a question about the natural world? Submit it to the Outside/Inbox! Send a voice memo to [email protected] or call our hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back. Featuring: Nat Cleavitt, Rebecca Roy, Yolanda Burrell, and Sibyl Bucheli   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Check out one of many salacious articles about frog sex, or read the somewhat less sensational study about underwater breeding chambers.  And here’s one more study about frog sex; specifically simultaneous polyandry.    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt Mixed by Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon  Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Rebecca Lavoie and Justine Paradis  Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a bluebird day in April of 2019, Snow Ranger Frank Carus set out to investigate a reported avalanche in the backcountry of Mt. Washington. He found a lone skier, buried several feet under the snow. The man was severely hypothermic, but alive. Wilderness EMTS can work for decades and never encounter this particular situation, and what happened next was an attempted rescue that people in Northern New England are still learning from.  What happens when a rescue goes wrong? And how do first responders cope when an opportunity to save someone’s life slips through their fingers? Featuring:  Denise Butler, Frank Carus, Jeff Fongemie, Nicholas Weinberg   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Read the Mount Washington Avalanche Center’s final report on Nick Benedix’s death. Learn more about avalanche safety here. Read the Wilderness Medical Society Journal article about this incident here.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Jessica Hunt Mixer: Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi, with help and feedback from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Erika Janik, Sam Evans-Brown, Jimmy Gutierrez, and Christina Philips. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special Thanks to: Matt Dustin, Ty Gagne, Frank Hubbell, and Andrew Parrella.  Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks ago our host, Nate Hegyi, was on the edge of a very high cliff in Utah’s Zion National Park when he heard a little voice inside his head whisper… “jump.”   He didn’t heed the call, thankfully, and when he got down safely he discovered that more than a third of all people might feel this urge, ominously known as “the call of the void.”  Most of us can wave off these impulses. But what if you couldn’t? What if the call of the void was so intense that you almost acted? Is there a cure?  This episode contains a contextual reference to suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, anxiety, or just needs someone to talk to, reach out to the folks at the Crisis Text Line, a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential. Featuring: Jennifer Hames, Stephen Hunt   ELECTRIC VEHICLE SURVEY Hey folks – we’re working on some stories about electric vehicles, and we’re looking to hear from you. Are you interested in going electric? Wish there was better charging infrastructure where you are? Or would you prefer sticking with the car/truck you’re used to?  Tell us what you think about EVs, and help inform our reporting by filling out this survey. It’ll only take a couple minutes, and it really helps us produce the show. Thanks so much!   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS This 2020 study, in BMC Psychiatry, looks at the prevalence of high place phenomenon and whether it’s connected to suicidal ideation.  Read Jennifer Hames’ paper in The Journal of Affective Disorders on the “call of the void”: “An urge to jump affirms the urge to live: an empirical examination of the high place phenomenon.” The Imp of the Perverse, by Edgar Allen Poe Marconi Union, “Weightless” Listen to our previous episode “Even Hikers Get The Blues”    CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by: Nate Hegyi. Mixer: Nate Hegyi and Taylor Quimby Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, Felix Poon and Rebecca Lavoie. Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Music for this episode by Marconi Union, Sour Mash, Dew of Light, Gavin Luke, and Christopher Moe Ditlevsen. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three hundred years ago on Easter Sunday, 1722, European explorers landed on a South Pacific island that they called “Easter Island.” And they were shocked to see nearly one-thousand giant statues of stoic faces, called “moai”, placed all over the island. Who moved them? And how did they do it? The most popular theory was that this remote civilization destroyed itself – cutting down all the trees to make contraptions for moving statues. But according to the Indigenous people of Rapa Nui, their ancestors didn’t need to cut down any trees to transport the statues. In fact, their oral history has always been clear about how the moai were transported. The real mystery is, why hasn’t anyone been listening? This story originally ran in  October 2021, and was updated for the 300th anniversary of first contact between Rapanui and European peoples. Featuring: Sergio Rapu Haoa, Carl Lipo, Terry Hunt, Sergio Mata’u Rapu, and Gina Pakarati   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our newsletter.   LINKS A profile of Sergio Rapu Haoa for the 2002 Rotary World Peace Scholars program at Berkeley Eating Up Easter -- a documentary film produced by Sergio Mata’u Rapu, about how the people of Rapa Nui are grappling with environmental and social changes brought on by tourism and economic development. The NOVA-National Geographic Documentary A team of 18 volunteers move a 10-foot 5-ton statue for the NOVA-National Geographic documentary, Mystery of Easter Island A figurine animation demonstrating five different theories of moai-transport through the years. Mystery of Easter Island -- The NOVA-National Geographic Documentary in its entirety Lectures by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo National Geographic Live Lecture -- Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo: The Statues That Walked Long Now Foundation Lecture: The Statues Walked -- What Really Happened on Easter Island | Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo   CREDITS Reported and produced by Felix Poon Edited by Taylor Quimby Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Mixed by Felix Poon Additional Editing: Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, Rebecca Lavoie, and Erika Janik Special thanks to Effie Kong, and Daniela Allee for her Spanish and Rapanui voiceovers. Theme: Breakmaster Cylinder Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like most modern publications, Low-tech Magazine has a website. But when you scroll through theirs, you’ll notice an icon in the corner: the weather forecast in Barcelona. That’s because Kris Decker, the creator of Low-tech Magazine, powers the site off a solar panel on his balcony. When the weather gets bad, the website just… goes offline. In a way, the solar-powered website is an experiment: an attempt to peel back the curtain and to reveal the infrastructure behind it, and to raise questions about our relationship with technology. Should everything on the internet be accessible, all the time? Could progress mean choosing to live with less? Featuring Kris De Decker.   ELECTRIC VEHICLE SURVEY We’re working on a series about electric vehicles, and we’re looking to hear from you. Would you consider going electric? What do you think about the EV transition?   Help inform our reporting by filling out this survey. It’ll only take a couple minutes, and it really helps us produce the show. Thanks so much!   SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our (free) newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook   LINKS Low-tech Magazine has published instructions on how to build a low tech or solar-powered site.  Solar Protocol, a solar-powered platform designed with the idea that “it’s always sunny somewhere!” HTTP Archive tracks the history of web performance. Re: that time it rained inside the data center. This website lets you measure the emissions of any website (including this one). Photographer Trevor Paglen’s images of undersea Internet cables (reportedly wiretapped by the NSA), and a video of sharks nipping at them. Another example of the natural world interfering with computers, from the cutting room floor: the world’s first computer bug was a literal bug. When Senator Ted Stevens described the internet as a “series of tubes,” many have opined that he actually wasn’t wrong.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Producer: Justine Paradis Editor: Taylor Quimby Additional editing: Nate Hegyi, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon  Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Special thanks to Melanie Risch. Music: Pandaraps, Damma Beatz, Dusty Decks, Harry Edvino, Sarah the Illstrumentalist (sic), and Blue Dot Sessions. The “Internet is a Series of Tubes” remix was created by superfunky59 on Youtube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lake trout are on life support in Lake Michigan. They rely on intense breeding and stocking by federal fisheries. There was a breakthrough last summer, though, that could help bolster the lake trout’s recovery. A geneticist successfully mapped the lake trout genome: an outline of the fish’s genetic makeup. The genome will help biologists understand why some “strains” of trout have a higher survival rate.  But could it also be used to create a sort of super-trout? And is that a good thing? Or is conservation-based gene editing a step too far?  Featuring: Mark Walton, Roger Gordon, Chuck Madenjian, Seth Smith, Marty Kardos and Kim Scribner.   ELECTRIC VEHICLE SURVEY Hey folks – we’re working on some stories about electric vehicles, and we’re looking to hear from you. Are you interested in going electric? Wish there was better charging infrastructure where you are? Or would you prefer sticking with the car/truck you’re used to?  Tell us what you think about EVs, and help inform our reporting by filling out this survey. It’ll only take a couple minutes, and it really helps us produce the show. Thanks so much! SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Subscribe to our FREE newsletter. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or join our private discussion group on Facebook LINKS Check out more episodes of Points North, and their special series: [Un]Natural Selection  Listen to our previous episode “The Particular Sadness of Trout Fishing in America”   CREDITS This episode of Points North was written and produced by Patrick Shea Hosts: Dan wanschura and Morgan Springer Editor: Morgan Springer  Consulting editor: Peter Payette  Music for this episode by Max Dragoo, Marlin Ledin, Santah, and Blue Dot Sessions  Outside/In is produced by Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices