Outside/In

Picture this: thousands of wind turbines off the Atlantic coast, each one taller than the Washington Monument. Offshore wind is seen as an essential solution to climate change, and it’s poised for explosive growth in the United States. How did we get to a moment of such dramatic change?

Windfall is the story of a promising renewable technology and the potential of wind power in a changing climate. It’s a story about who has the power to reshape our energy future.

Featuring: Henrik Stiesdal, Bryan Wilson, and Bob Grace.

Part 1 of 5. Listen to the rest of the series here.

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Windfall is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

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A note about our reporting

A video from the power company, Orsted, detailing the decommissioning of Vindeby, the world’s first offshore wind farm. 

How a turbine works

Written and reported by Sam Evans-Brown

Senior Producer: Jack Rodolico

Executive Producer: Erika Janik

Mixed by Taylor Quimby

Fact-checker: Sara Sneath

Editors: Erika Janik, Annie Ropeik, Justine Paradis, Taylor Quimby, Felix Poon, and Hannah McCarthy

Special thanks to Sarah Mizes-Tan and WCAI for the audio of the Block Island Wind Farm Tour, and to Vincent Schellings, Walter Musial, Michael Taylor and Dan Shreve

Music: Ben Cosgrove, Blue Dot Sessions, and Breakmaster Cylinder

Windfall Graphic Design: Sara Plourde

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A new series and an announcement.

After 20 years of politicization and red tape, the U.S. is moving full speed ahead on plans to install thousands of wind turbines off the Atlantic coast.

Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of a special five-part series exploring this story. It’s called Windfall, and it follows the birth of a brand new industry in the U.S., one that will invest billions of dollars in our economy and reshape our coastal communities.  

Giant corporations are retooling their business models, setting their sights on the climate problem and hoping to capitalize on offshore wind. But some of these corporations — including BP and Shell — are the same companies arguably responsible for climate change in the first place.

Windfall is the story of a promising green technology and the potential of wind power in a changing climate. And it’s a story about power… and who has the power to reshape our energy future.

The first episode will debut on the Outside/In feed on June 24th, with new episodes weekly through July 22nd.  Learn more at windfallpodcast.org

Also, we share a big announcement about the staffing of Outside/In – a change that not only informs our reporting and transparency for the upcoming Windfall series, but impacts the future of the show as a whole.

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We’re exposed to plenty of invisible risks in our daily life: toxic compounds in the fabric of our couches, contaminants in the water, and pollutants in the air. A lot of the time, we don’t think too much about them.

But sometimes, the invisible becomes suddenly, acutely visible.

A story about the air we breathe, the risks we can live with, and what it means to become a citizen of a place.

Featuring Susan Scott Peterson, Stella Peleato, Dr. Deborah Gentile, Rashmi Baliga, and Linda Wigington.

Links and Resources

To learn ways to improve your indoor air quality wherever you are, here’s a link to the ROCIS guide.

For open-source air quality data in your location, visit the Purple Air monitoring network map.

For more on air quality in the Pittsburgh region, start with Breathe Project and the Smell PGH and Plume PGH apps by Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab.

To learn more about air quality activism in Pittsburgh, visit the Group Against Smog and Pollution and Breathe Project.

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Outside/In is a member-supported production of New Hampshire Public Radio. To support work like this, please consider a donation to the show.

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Geologist and writer Lauret Savoy considers fossil hunting and historical inquiry to be versions of the same pursuit.

In Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, Lauret uses the search for her family story as a lens to better understand American history, and the landscape as a lens to better understand her past.

Her memoir is a winding journey from southern California to Puritan New England, from Lake Superior to the U.S.- Mexico Border, and finally to Washington, D.C., where she grew up. For Lauret, identifying the geologic story in the American landscape was often easier than finding  answers about her own family.

The next Outside/In book club pick is *Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age* by Annalee Newitz. Look for that episode in late summer.

We want to see you reading your books! Share a picture of yourself #ReadingOutsideIn, and don’t forget to tag us @OutsideInRadio on Twitter and Instagram. Plus, if you’ve got a thought about Trace or a question for Annalee Newitz, send ‘em our way! 

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While sand beaches comprise just over 30% of the world’s ice-free shorelines, the collective idea of the sand beach can sometimes cast a much bigger shadow.

That imagined beach can even have an influence on other fields of science — like plastic pollution.

Featuring Dr. Max Liboiron.

Links

Liboiron’s essay, “Plastics in the Gut,” published in Orion Magazine.

Outside/In Book Club

The pick for the first book is Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by geologist and writer Lauret Savoy.

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When composer and traveling musician Ben Cosgrove was just 7 years old, he wrote a song called “Waves”. Since then, he’s made a career out of music inspired by landscape, place, and wilderness.

But if an artist has an environmental brand... do they also represent an environmental ethic?

Over the years, Ben began to wrestle with what his music was really saying about the natural world.

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Read “The Trouble with Wilderness” by William Cronon.

More on Ben Cosgrove’s new album, also called “The Trouble with Wilderness”.

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Even in the quietest of times, sand beaches are defined by movement and change.

“I think it's fair to say the beach is one of the most flexible or dynamic, if you will, habitats in the world. It’s super geologically unstable,” said coastal ecologist Dr. Bianca Charbonneau, also known as “the Dune Goon.”

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On this edition of 10x10, we explore how beaches move. Producer Justine Paradis examines the systems and feedback loops on and around the sand beach, the science taking place there, and how the way beaches are changing is itself changing in a changing world.

Support great storytelling by making a donation to Outside/In.

Links

Hawaii’s Beaches are Disappearing, a report from ProPublica and Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Announcing: the Outside/In Book Club

Heads-up! In May, we will be debuting the O/I Book Club. The pick for the first book, selected by our listeners, is Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by geologist and writer Lauret Savoy. It is so good: she tells hidden stories of American landscapes, sometimes starting from the bedrock, and explores the interplay between geography, history, and culture.

if you don’t get a chance to read the book we think you’ll still enjoy the conversation. But if you want to read along with us, here’s a link to buy the book from your local independent bookseller, or you can always check it out from the library. 

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This week, we’re featuring an episode from How To Save A Planet, a podcast about climate change hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg.

Heating and powering buildings takes a lot of energy, which is why a full thirty percent of U.S. greenhouse gasses can be traced back to the indoor environments in which we live and work. Lowering that number on a collective scale - by increasing their efficiency - is no easy feat.

In this episode, Ayana and Alex speak with Donnel Baird, founder of BlocPower, about his mission to tighten up one of the leakiest contributors to climate change: our buildings.

How To Save A Planet is produced and reported by Rachel Waldholz, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Anna Ladd and Felix Poon. Their senior producer is Lauren Silverman. Their editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design, mixing and original music by Emma Munger. Additional music by Catherine Anderson and Bobby Lord. This episode was fact-checked by Claudia Geib.

Outside/In theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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Support Outside/In by making a donation in our year end fund drive

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This special BONUS episode of Outside/In was sponsored and selected by our lovely donors. Thank you for your support!

Gutters can refer to the curbside drainage channels that lead into storm drains, to the metal or plastic troughs that line some rooftops, or really to any low area designed to move water from one place to another.

They are, by design, fairly ordinary examples of human engineering. But look closer, and you’ll find extraordinary objects and ecosystems hidden within.

Starting at the curb and working our way up, we spend this episode learning about which creatures take advantage of our waste-water systems; find evidence of extraterrestrial travel on our rooftops; and look at how gutters function…or don’t… for the very species that designed them.

Featuring Ken Belt, Carlos Goller, Menno Schilthuizen, Doug Hartman, Matthew Genge, Fushcia Hoover, and Joyce Hwang.

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Read more about the Parisian Gutter study. 

Check out Jon Larsen’s Facebook Group for urban micrometeorite hobbyists, Project Stardust.

See a United States map of cities with Combined Sewer Systems.

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In the early 1900s, an Ohlone woman named Isabel Meadows was recorded describing her longing to eat acorn bread again. She detailed the bread’s flavor; the jelly-like texture; the crispy edges; the people who made it. And she talked about the bread’s place in the creation story of her tribe. A century later, a young Ohlone man named Louis Trevino came across the recordings and recognized Meadows as an ancestor from his community. Today, Trevino and his Ohlone partner, Vincent Medina, are on a journey to bring acorn bread, and the language and traditions connected to it, back to the Ohlone people.

The Acorn: An Ohlone Love Story is a documentary about Ohlone food, language, and history. But, ultimately, it is a story about Ohlone strength and homeland, the landscape that stretches from the Bay Area of California to Monterey and Big Sur. And at the heart of this story are acorns.

Links

Michelle Macklem

Zoe Tennant

Cafe Ohlone

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