Non-Toxic

Researchers are starting to discover surprising links between loneliness and biophobia. Why are people avoiding social interactions and staying inside so much? Why does an indoor life make the natural world seem so scary and gross? And how do these two trends affect men in particular, who are already more lonely than women? We talk to journalist Hannah Seo to find out.

⁠Support Non-toxic today.⁠

Links:

Recent findings on "the vicious cycle of biophobia"

How spending time in ⁠green spaces is linked to social cohesion and improved mental health⁠

How American's are spending more time alone than ever before

Men are ⁠four times more likely than women to die by suicide⁠ but ten percentage points less likely than women to access mental health care.

A YouGov poll in 2019 concluded that one in five British men have no close friends, twice as many as women.

Guest Bio:

Hannah Seo is a Korean-Canadian freelance journalist, writer, editor, fact-checker and poet based in Brooklyn. She recently completed a reporting fellowship with The New York Times, and her other journalism can be found in The Atlantic, Vox, and The Guardian, among others. Her beats include the oceans, climate change, and mental health. The article we discuss in this episode, called "⁠America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That’s Not a Coincidence,"⁠ was published in the Atlantic.

When it comes to sustainability, something is popping in the state of Denmark. In this bonus episode, recorded in the offices of Ganni during Copenhagen Fashion Week, we talk with former Ganni CEO Nicolaj Reffstrup and (di)vision Creative Director Simon Wick about how Denmark has positioned itself as a global sustainability leader, what it takes to run a sustainable fashion company, and whether sustainability in the fashion industry is even possible.

Further reading:

My article for The New York Times on Copenhagen Fashion Week’s revolutionary sustainability commitments.

A full account of just how much pollution the fashion industry emits, and the solutions we need to implement to clean it up

Read the Ganni 2022 Responsibility Report

Vogue goes inside the studio with Simon Wick

It’s the season finale of Non-toxic, and we’re thinking about endings. In this case, what happens to our bodies when we die. We’re asking why do we cremate people or pump them full of formaldehyde and then trap them in a casket six feet under? Bob Hendrikx, inventor and founder of Loop, thinks there’s a better way to return to the place from whence we came: Mycelium coffins that can compost a human body in a matter of weeks. As Bob likes to say, we’re all going to die one day. Do you want your body to become waste or compost?

Links

The surprising environmental toll of cremation

How the death industry could soon go green.

Mycelium’s newly discovered carbon sink capacities.

Guest bio:
Bob Hendrikx is a bio-designer, architect, and founder of Loop, a green burial company that produces living coffins made of molded mycelium.

There’s a better way to landscape your garden. That's the message Jordan "JP Charisma" Parker is preaching on YouTube and TikTok, where he's teaching his tens of thousands of followers the lost art of native plant gardening. In our conversation with JP, we learn why native species are better than imports for your local environment (and your water bill) and how they can help fragile species, like butterflies and bees, to keep doing their thing.

JP also reflects on his interesting — and sometimes difficult — social media journey, from sports car critic to #BlackButterflyMan, and what it means to be a young BIPOC gardener in a space that is often lily white.

Show notes:

Here's a great guide to native planting 

Explore the Florida Native Plant Society 

What is OE? 

Guest bio:

Jordan "JP Charisma" Parker, aka BlackButterflyMan

JP is a social media influencer whose mission is to rehabilitate natural areas for butterflies nationwide. He also has a native plant online store at jpcharisma.com

Find him on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram @jpcharisma

Did you know that illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest criminal enterprise in the world? Though it touches every corner of the globe–there is no international agency devoted to stopping it–so ex-intelligence operative Andrea Crosta stepped in. As head of Earth League International, Andrea has spent the past ten years investigating and exposing the people who get rich wiping out rare species and despoiling our planet.

And he’s got a lot of stories to tell. In this episode, Non-toxic goes undercover with Andrea to see how greedy traffickers take advantage of desperate poachers, how Latin American jaguar teeth are passed off as Asian tiger fangs, and how South African rhino horns are ground up for increasingly expensive virility cures.

Become a Patron

To keep detoxifying the discourse, Non-toxic needs your help. If you want to see a second season of this groundbreaking podcast, show your support by and become a patron today. And don’t forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts to new listeners find us.

Links

Read Earth League International’s recent report on the Jaguar fang trade. 

Read this recent profile of Andrea in the New Yorker.

Check out this overview on the economics of the illegal wildlife trade.

Check out this graphic novel about ELI’s efforts to save the vaquita.

Watch this Netflix documentary about the illegal ivory trade and this Nat Geo doc ‘Sea of Shadows’, about illegal fishing and the potential extinction of the Vaquita porpoise.

Guest bio

Andrea Crosta, Executive Director and Board Member

Andrea is the founder of Earth League International (ELI), among the founding members of the Wildlife Justice Commission, in The Netherlands, a Member of the Board of  The Africa Conservancy Foundation, and the creator and project manager of WildLeaks, the world’s first wildlife crime whistleblower initiative.

He has been working for almost two decades as an international consultant to companies and governmental agencies on high-end security technologies & services, homeland security, anti-piracy, investigations and risk management. He now applies this unique knowledge to conservation, environmental crime, and wildlife protection.

Fire up the grill, fellas… This week, Andrew talks to journalist and author Joe Fassler, who went undercover for The Guardian to investigate an invite-only “beefluencer” training program created by America’s biggest beef lobby. What he uncovered was a complex public messaging machine funneling beef industry climate denialism through university-affiliated research groups and into the Facebook feeds of your unsuspecting friends and neighbors. How do you like your psy-ops: rare, medium, or well done?

To keep going, Non-toxic needs your help. If you want to see a second season of this groundbreaking podcast, show your support by and become a patron today. And don’t forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

For further reading, you can find Joe’s article and other links below.

Read Joe’s article, “Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay”

Read the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nation’s report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”

Watch an early “Beef, It’s What’s For Dinner” TV commercial 

Read this study on the cumulative impacts of industrial beef production

Guest bio:

Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Colorado, USA. His writing on food, environmental issues, books, and culture has been published in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Best American Food Writing. He’s currently at work on a novel, forthcoming from Penguin Books, called The Sky Was Ours.

Get your personal protection gear on as we dive into the second of a two-part conversation about the history of the air conditioning with author Eric Dean Wilson. We learn how researchers in Antarctica proved there really was a big hole in the ozone layer and how one Reagan administration official suggested Americans should just wear hats and sunglasses to avoid the worst of the sun’s UV radiation.

Listen to Part 1 of our conversation here.

Get yourself a copy of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort.

For more on how the Montreal Protocol came to be, check out Richard Elliot’s Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet

Read the Project Drawdown report on CFCs

And if you’re going to get rid of your old A/C, read the EPA’s advice on how to safely dispose of it first.

Guest bio:

Eric Dean Wilson is the author of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort. His essays have appeared in Time, Orion, The Baffler, Tin House, and elsewhere. A resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn, he teaches creative writing and American literature at Wagner College.

Brrrr. It’s cold in here.

In the first part of a two-part conversation with author Eric Dean Wilson, we journey into the shady underworld of used refrigerant sales, take a look back at the history of air conditioning, and wonder how we almost managed to destroy all life on earth in our quest for personal comfort.

Get yourself a copy of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort. 

Read Eric’s recent essay in Orion about this summer’s endless plumes of wildfire smoke. 

Read the Project Drawdown report on CFCs

And if you’re going to get rid of your old A/C, read the EPA’s advice on how to safely dispose of it first.  

Guest bio:

Eric Dean Wilson is the author of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort. His essays have appeared in Time, Orion, The Baffler, Tin House, and elsewhere. A resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn, he teaches creative writing and American literature at Wagner College.

In this episode, it’s Man vs Pig, and Man is losing. We head to the hill country of Texas with journalist Lauren Larson to understand why scientists, hunters, and even conservationists are so concerned about the scourge of feral hogs destroying crops, polluting water, and even eating baby deer. Discussing her recent article on the pig problem for Texas Monthly, Larson unpacks all the weird dynamics of this man-made ecological disaster and what humans can learn from our remarkable hubris.

To support the show, ⁠visit our Patreon ⁠and become a patron today. You can also sign up for our free monthly newsletter. Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram for climate news and dank memes. You can find Lauren’s article and other links below.

Read Lauren’s feature for Texas Monthly, “Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion?”

The various risks of feral pigs

Sid Miller’s “Pork Chopper” bill

Ted Nugent and Brian “Pigman” Quaca go feral pig hunting

“Hog-dogger” Jonathan Dempsey and the Song of the Hounds podcast

Christy Hinterman’s Atlasta Home Sanctuary

Bio: Lauren Larson is a magazine writer based in Austin, Texas. She has worked as an editor at Texas Monthly and is a regular contributor to GQ. She often writes about lifestyle and culture, and every so often, she publishes a fantastic celebrity profile.

In this explosive episode, we talk with the filmmakers behind How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a new movie adapted from Andreas Malm’s political manifesto about why we should all start sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure. Featuring director Daniel Goldhaber, writer Jordan Sjol, and editor Dan Garber, we talk about why eco-thrillers usually end in tears, the political uses of direct action, and how to stay off the FBI’s terrorist watch list by not showing every step of the bomb-making process.

Further reading and viewing:

Stream How to Blow Up a Pipeline in the usual places or find it in a cinema near you.

You can buy the book that inspired the movie from lefty publisher, Verso.

Read about when U.S oil prices fell below zero for the first time in history. 

Watch this Democracy Now interview with Jessica Resnick and Ruby Montoya, who were sentenced for sabotaging the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Guest bios:

Daniel Goldhaber is an American director, screenwriter, and producer. In 2018, he directed Cam, a psychological horror film set in the world of webcam pornography. In 2022, he co-wrote, directed, and produced the thriller film How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and is currently working on a new project.

Jordan Sjol is a cinema and media studies scholar with a PhD in the Program in Literature from Duke University. His research is broadly focused on media technologies and global power regimes.

Daniel Garber is a filmmaker and editor based in Brooklyn, NY.