Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me about your conflicted loves.

And, of course, visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.

Root beer is the tastiest thing ever! But like all comforts and pleasures, it comes with a cost. How do we love something that's not good for us or for our planet?

For an account of my adventures brewing my own traditional root beer with foraged ingredients check out this article that wrote for the fantastic Northern Woodlands magazine. And if you want to read more about my early adventures in foraging, check out my old blog, The Foraging Family.

If you're interested in foraging yourself, I highly recommend the incomparable works of Samuel Thayer as a place to get started.

Check out this New York Times Magazine article on the barbaric history of sugar.

Here's a source for John Muir's quote, "Eat bread in the mountains ..."

Libraries are magical places. In this episode we celebrate the work, time, effort, and love that it takes to keep them magical.

Check out some of my favorite libraries:

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Check out the wild architecture of this place--an enormous glass-encased tower of rare books and manuscripts (including the Voynich Manuscript), housed in an exoskeleton of translucent marble.

The library where I grew up--Southington Public.

The library where I had the best job ever (and where I still go to work and write)--Landmark College Library.

My current library--Putney Public.

And of course the magical library that starts off this episode--the Williston Library at Mount Holyoke College.

Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me your stories of library love.

Visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.

The sky is blue!

It's the easiest thing to take for granted. But there is no guarantee that a planet gets a blue sky. How did we get so lucky? We look at the science behind our blue sky and end up amazed and grateful.

For more information check out That Time Oxygen Almost Killed Everything from the awesome folks at PBS Eons.

Carbon dioxide deepens the color of the atmosphere in the infrared portion of the spectrum (both by increasing the atmosphere's opacity and reradiating energy in the infrared part of the spectrum). Check out this cool data visualization to see how carbon dioxide and other gases affect the "color" of the atmosphere.

Send me a message. ([email protected]) Tell me what you love about Earth's blue sky.

Visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.

Hey!

Thanks for checking out "I Heart This." I hope you find lots of things to love here.

I'm always on the look-out for new things to be thankful for. Want to share one with me? Send me a message at [email protected] and tell me your stories.

You can also visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love. hopefully by the time you do, there will actually something there.