Hot Takes by the UCLA Heat Lab

This long-awaited season finale is here! We’ll be continuing our conversation with Drs. Matthew Baldacchino and Noé Hernandez on rising heat across the globe, albeit from a different perspective. Tune in to hear about the upstream interventions and mitigating strategies to subvert the heat, including strategies for climate policy and planning. Recorded May 2026.

In this first part of our long-awaited season finale, join us as we take a step back to look at heat from a broader perspective. This episode, we discuss the downstream impacts of global warming with Drs. Matthew Baldacchino and Noé Hernandez, two medical doctors currently working in global health and policy. Rising heat presents as a continuously urgent issue to address in the global health sphere, though its negative impacts are largely predictable and preventable with proper management. Tune in to explore the adaptation strategies (and more!) currently being implemented in Malta, Mexico, and abroad. Recorded on Zoom, May 2026.

This episode, join us as we explore heat in the city with Dr. Daniel Cumming, a postdoctoral fellow at Queens College. As an urban and environmental historian of the 20th-century United States, Dr. Cumming examines the powerful intersection of housing and heat and the inequalities that emerged in post-World War II New York City. Through his research and his involvement in the international collaborative project Melting Metropolis, we’ll uncover how heat shapes urban environments, influences infrastructure, and deepens social divides. Tune in as we rethink temperature as a force embedded in the history of the modern city. Stay cool, and stay tuned for our next episode. Recorded on Zoom, February 2026.

Check out our show notes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakesS2-E3

As extreme heat becomes more frequent and severe, certain medications increase vulnerability during these times. Older populations, in particular, continue to face this interference with their thermoregulation, with their layered vulnerability in a warming climate. Using county-level data across California, the Pharma Heat team created a more granular assessment of pharmaceutical risks using demographic and social factors that are not often analyzed together in existing literature. The Hot Takes podcast sits down with UCLA's Heat Lab's Pharmaceutical Heat Team to discuss their research on why older adults face compounded risks shaped by climate change intersecting pharmaceutical use and extreme heat. 

As temperatures continue to rise, high school student-athletes are among the populations most vulnerable to extreme heat. In today's episode, the UCLA Heat Lab explores how heat affects athletes across multiple sports through the perspectives of athletes themselves. We discuss football and cross country, where athletes face intense outdoor heat exposure, and explore how heat can also impact indoor spaces through sports like volleyball. We even explore swimming, an unexpected but important context for understanding heat risk. As hot seasons intensify, understanding these challenges is essential to protecting the health and safety of student-athletes. 

Check out our show notes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakesS2-E1

In this Hot Takes special mini-episode, we take a look at the concerning weather events of 2025, and how they led to the heartbreaking destruction within the Los Angeles community due to the wildfires that ignited in early January. Walking through the history of Los Angeles weather events and how we have seen the loss of our seasons in recent years, we try to better understand the causes and effects behind these destructive fires, and how we as a community can not only rebuild, but learn to prevent them in the future. Narrated through an educational lens, the Hot Takes podcast hopes to bring awareness to the catalysts and lasting effects of wildfires and Southern California’s “winter warmerland.”

Co-Hosts and Writers: Tiana Hoang, Natalie Gurzeler, and Isaac Lee

Additional writing support from Yasmine Qushair

Check out shownotes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakes7

This episode, join us as we learn more about heat through a sensorial and historical lens from our guest Dr. Kara Schlichting. Through her research, Dr. Schlichting delves into the individual’s experience with temperature through a holistic standpoint, particularly with how heat manifests in metropolitan areas. Highlighting her work with Melting Metropolis, a project which examines temperatures in the urban climates of New York, London, and Paris, Dr. Schlichting offers insight into the history of heat, as well as a hopeful perspective on warmer weather. Remember to stay cool, eat some ice cream, and stay tuned for our next episode. Recorded on Zoom, April 2024.

Check out shownotes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakes6 

There is a critical need for more in-depth environmental curricula to prepare students for the climate-impacted world they'll soon inherit. The UCLA Heat Lab's education team creates digestible lesson plans about thermal inequality for students ranging from 4th graders to high schoolers. From mapping schoolyard shade to brainstorming cool inventions, join us for a behind-the-scenes look on the trials and triumphs of inspiring the next generation of climate leaders.

Check out shownotes at: https://tinyurl.com/hottakes5

Although many of us are familiar with mass incarceration and environmental injustice as separate issues, we often don’t put the two together. Through his Carceral Ecologies lab, Dr. Nicholas Shapiro does just that - examining unjust environmental conditions in the prison industrial complex. Join us, Dr. Shapiro, and special guest Kate McInerny we discuss the lab’s community driven research and delve into abolitionism.

Check out shownotes at: http://tinyurl.com/hottakes4

Many of us love food trucks, but the food we enjoy often conceal a hidden reality—the workers enduring extreme heat. This is thermal inequality, the idea that some people bear the heat so others don't have to. Join us in an episode with Sofia Sabra and Olivia Toledo as we unravel the often-overlooked challenges faced by food truck workers and brainstorm potential solutions.

Check out shownotes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakes3