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Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson looking out over green mountains from a patch of trail.
How to Save a Planet co-host Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, left, with “All We Can Save” co-author Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson. (Photo: Jennifer Robinson)

These Climate Podcasts Focus on Stories, Not Statistics

Tiffany Jow

October 17, 2020
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Reporting on the climate crisis is a balancing act, where journalists must convey a sense of urgency without provoking despair—or risk losing audiences entirely. Two podcasts, Hot Take and How to Save a Planet, forgo the subject’s usual doom-and-gloom approach in favor of storytelling, where emotion and calls to action engage listeners in ways that statistics about their carbon footprints never could.

Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt launched Hot Take last year, with the aim of capturing the range of reactions triggered by climate change. “Hope doesn’t cut it for everyone,” Westervelt says, in a track for the show. “There’s a lot of pain, a lot of anger—” “And spite,” Heglar says, adding that the topic isn’t only for scientists—women, people of color, and residents of the global South have tales to tell, too. Guests include The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff, who talks about the “climate bois club,” and Cherokee reporter Rebecca Nagle, who explains why tribal sovereignty is vital to climate action. Its newsletter extends the episodes with bonus content, keeping subscribers’ wheels turning.

The new, equally compelling How to Save a Planet podcast, hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and co-author of the book All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, and Gimlet Media founder Alex Blumberg, offers another roadmap for facilitating change. At the end of each broadcast, it details specific steps that listeners can take on the subject they’ve just explored, which have included unnatural disasters and the #TeamTrees fundraiser started by YouTuber MrBeast. The optimistic show—its presenters, who refer to listeners as “earthlings,” laugh, joke, and even cry on air—recasts the climate crisis as a conquerable, soul-enhancing challenge. We suggest indulging in both programs, and acting accordingly.

# Climate# Podcasts# Science# The Future

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It’s late August, and I’m walking on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan. It’s one of those summer evenings that’s cooler than expected, a pleasant foreshadowing of fall. I’m on my way to discuss compost with the artist Alex Tatarsky, and as I head east from the subway, I pass through the dense, networked scents of the edge of Chinatown: the briny tang of fish markets, the sweet snatch of a fresh egg waffle from a rolled ice cream shop, the yeasty cloud that floats around the famous bialy shop. Approaching Abrons Art Center, where Tatarsky is doing pick-up rehearsals for an out-of-town run of their show Dirt Trip, this close-packed olfactory landscape opens up into something with more space: a faint vegetal whiff from a small vacant lot, the not unpleasant chemical tang from a passing truck, and beyond these, the smell of a certain rot rolling in from the East River.

Courtesy Blue Note Records

culture

An Album of Cover Songs Honors the Legacy of Leonard Cohen

Though nearly six years have gone by since Leonard Cohen’s passing, the long shadow cast by his legacy as one of the 20th century’s most esteemed and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters shows no signs of lifting from the public’s imagination anytime soon. From the enveloping warmth of “Suzanne,” to the high drama of “Hallelujah,” to the chilling minimalist and gospel juxtaposition of his swansong “You Want it Darker,” Cohen managed to constantly reinvent himself, leaving behind the rare achievement of a musical body of work whose most impressive moments exist across eras.