The climate crisis is escalating. We have to decarbonize our economy, but we’re moving too slowly. So, what’s the backup plan?

This season of “How We Survive” is about engineering nature: large-scale interventions that could be our last hope. We’ll explore technology that could alter our weather patterns, transform our planet, and possibly save us all from the worst outcomes of the climate crisis. Or lead to catastrophic, unintended consequences. In this episode, Amy explores one of the wildest climate interventions to date: de-extinction. She takes a tour of Colossal Labs, the $10 billion Dallas startup betting it can reverse-engineer extinction itself, to see how they plan to turn pigeons into dodos and Asian elephants into woolly mammoths. But whether it’s bringing back the woolly mammoth from extinction or shooting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, just because we can mess with nature, does that mean we should? 

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Scene on Radio is a two-time Peabody-nominated podcast that dares to ask big, hard questions about who we are—really—and how we got this way. Their new season, The News, asks: what’s really wrong with the news? Some have called the news media the oxygen of a functioning democracy. But if that’s true, America’s lungs are in rough shape. Most Americans say they don’t trust the media. The business model for local journalism has all but collapsed. And we all know about the barrage of misinformation that flows from our splintered mediascape. You can’t separate the state of our news media from the other profound crises that America keeps on failing to solve. John Biewen explores the roots of this crises. Here's episode 1. Find The News, from Scene on Radio, wherever you get podcasts.

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Hosted and reported by Indigenous author Rebecca Nagle (with production by Critical Frequency!) and featuring leading Native historians, First America shares the true story of how the United States came to be, and how our current political moment was 250 years in the making. 

We’ve all been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How did we all miss that? Rebecca sits down with historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) to talk about how hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution.

Find more episodes of First America wherever you get podcasts. Get episodes early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up on the First America show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

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Treating climate solutions like an infinite money cheat might not be a great way to actually solve the problem, though it's sure to make plenty of "green" entrepreneurs rich. It makes sense that businessmen would stay focused on profits, but why do climate advocates keep supporting these ideas?

This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/

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With the sustainable aviation fuel industry set to explode, carbon capture has thrown the corn ethanol industry a lifeline...but what does another corn ethanol boom mean for everyone else?

This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/

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Industrial agriculture has wrapped itself in a green cloak in Mato Grosso, promising jobs, money and endless opportunities, all in the name of "sustainability." But the good times are only happening for a select few. Local residents are dealing with extreme weather, lack of access to fresh food, and a pesticide overload that has increased the risk of birth defects and lowered lifespans. Meanwhile, Bruce and the guys have now ventured into new territory: the Amazon.

This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/

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Bruce's Brazilian business partners run the state of Mato Grosso and the town the company is headquartered in. So while he fights endless pushback to his pipeline project in Iowa, business in Brazil is booming. This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil.

You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/

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Bruce's venture in Brazil isn't the first time he tried to go global. What an earlier attempt tells us about him, his business, and what's ahead for both Iowa and "the Brazilian Midwest."

This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/

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As his American company Summit Carbon Solutions struggles with backlash to a carbon capture pipeline linking corn ethanol plants across the Midwest, Bruce Rastetter is not slowing down. Instead, he’s celebrating some big wins for his Brazilian company, FS Fueling Sustainability, from new ethanol-friendly climate policy to government funding for their carbon capture project.

Pushkin+ subscribers can hear episodes early and ad-free. Find Pushkin+ on the Drilled show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Additional resources:

The link between corn ethanol and deforestation

Peer-reviewed research on the climate problems associated with corn ethanol 

An explainer on BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration) 

Reading list on enhanced oil recovery (EOR) 

Read more about the Summit Pipeline project

Carbon Herald on the push to connect Midwest ethanol plants to carbon capture 

Brazilian government document on technical mission to US midwest 

Travel schedule of Brazilian government officials while in the Midwest 

Read more about the explosion of corn ethanol in Brazil: https://drilled.media/news/ethanol-story1

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For decades we’ve heard that “the markets” will solve the climate crisis. On Drilled: Carbon Cowboys, we put that theory to the test, following Bruce Rastetter, a corn ethanol kingpin-turned-carbon entrepreneur from Iowa to Brazil, and asking the big questions: Are these “climate solutions” actually reducing emissions? Is CO2 increasing or decreasing as carbon becomes a commodity? Or is green colonialism just as extractive as the regular sort?

Drilled: Carbon Cowboys begins on May 12th. Pushkin+ subscribers can hear episodes early and ad-free. Find Pushkin+ on the Drilled show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. 

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