Outside/In

Every so often, oak trees go into overdrive. During these so-called mast years, the gentle patter of falling acorns grows into a mighty downpour and ripples across and over ecosystems like a flood. 

What happens when a small thing goes from scarce to plentiful? When a player usually hidden behind the scenes vaults onto the main stage?  

From swimming squirrels and bug-infested weddings, to an explosion in babies named Oaklee, we investigate the myriad ways a sudden surge in abundance can trigger unexpected consequences. 

This episode is part of a playful exercise in community podcasting, with 6 different shows each producing their own stories about or inspired by the mystery of masting, and releasing them at (approximately) the same time. 

For other masting stories, check out:

We’ll populate this Spotify Playlist with all our stories as they come out!

Featuring Jim Salge, Dave Kelly, Lorén Spears, DeAnna Beasley, Claire Adas, David Wilson, Amelia Pruiett, and Cleveland Evans.

This episode was produced by Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to "the Church of Latter-day Saints." Their correct title is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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LINKS

Check out the “Who remembers The Great Squirrel Apocalypse of 2018?” Reddit thread.

You can watch the home video from David and Claire’s wedding.

The US Forest Service keeps a helpful map of active cicada broods in North America, and their expected emergences.

Nameberry’s 2024 list of the “Reddest and Bluest Baby Names”

NPR’s coverage of the “Oakley, Oakley, Oakleigh” trend

.

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Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is massive, bigger than the state of Florida. If it collapses, it could reshape every coast on this planet during this century. That’s why it’s sometimes known as “the Doomsday Glacier.”

And yet, until recently, we knew very little about it. Because Thwaites is extremely remote, reachable only by crossing the wildest ocean on the planet, scientists had never observed its calving edge firsthand. 

In 2019, a ground-breaking international mission set out to change that, and writer Elizabeth Rush was on board to document the voyage.  We caught up with her to learn about life on an Antarctic icebreaker, how she grappled with classic Antarctic narratives about exploration (and domination), and how she summons hope even after coming face-to-face with Thwaites.     

This episode was first published in early 2024. Featuring Elizabeth Rush.

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If you’re interested in reading more about the journey to Thwaites, check out Elizabeth’s book, “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth”.

A paper published in Nature with some of the findings from Elizabeth's voyage, showing that Thwaites has historically retreated two to three times faster than we’ve ever observed. Here’s the one detailing findings about Thwaites’ past extent, extrapolated from their study of ancient penguin bones, and another sharing observations about water currents beneath its ice shelf.

The Trump administration has pulled funding for the US’s only Antarctic icebreaker dedicated to scientific research. Read about the fate of the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer in Scientific American. 

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Ever since a tornado tore through one of St. Louis, Missouri’s poorest neighborhoods, there are piles of bricks all over the place. 

It’s not just a debris problem. Bricks in St. Louis have a long and complicated history here – the darling of many historic preservationists and a good source of profit to just as many demolition crews. 

Producer Marina Henke spent a week in North City, tagging along with a brick layer who’s racing against the clock to build back homes. Can North City keep its bricks? Should they even try?

Featuring Natalie Hughes, RJ Koscielniak, and Rasheen Aldridge.

Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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The STL Vacancy Collaborative runs a Demolition Dashboard, showing all approved and completed demolitions in St. Louis City. 

The 2011 documentary Brick By Chance and Fortune provides a more in-depth look at brick’s history in St. Louis, including its architectural variance. 

For a comprehensive social and economic history of St. Louis check out Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America.

The apocryphal headline and its report of a struggling St. Louis still exists in the New York Times’ archives: In St. Louis Even the Old Bricks Are Leaving Town. 

In 2017, the podcast 99% Invisible took a closer look at St. Louis brick theft.

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What do pastries have to do with environmental justice? Cat butts with the climate crisis? And what US president ate a half-chewed piece of salmon leftover from a bear on reality TV?

Grab a pencil (and maybe a pint?) and get ready for the inaugural Outside/In trivia episode we’re calling “Natural Selection.” We’ve got a game called “Guess That Animal!” We’re testing our panel’s knowledge on the environment in movies and music. And, maybe, we’ll learn a thing or two along the way about environmental policy, past and present.

Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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When designer Matt Leacock decided to make a board game about climate action, he knew he wanted to make it – first and foremost – fun to play. “If we sold anything as an educational game… people would run screaming and running for the hills,” he told us. 

But can simulating the climate crisis really make for a good Friday night with your friends? What are the limits to gamifying social issues as complex as global warming?

In this episode, we speak with Matt about what it took to design an entertaining game about one of the most challenging topics of our time, and enlist a few friends to playtest his game: “Daybreak.” 

Featuring Matt Leacock, with appearances from NHPR’s Marina Henke, Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy. This episode was produced by Taylor Quimby. For a full list of credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org

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To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.

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Read game designer Matt Leacock’s 2020 NYT opinion piece about his game, Pandemic, and what it says about social cooperation during an actual pandemic. 

One of Daybreak’s inspirations was “The 100% Solution” by Solomon Goldstein-Rose. Here’s his TED Talk about building a new global electricity system. 

For more insight into how Daybreak was made, check out Matt and co-designer Matteo Menapace’s design diaries. 

A climate scientist/board gamer’s break down of the science and gameplay of Daybreak

Listen to Civics 101’s great episode on civics-centered board games. 

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For humans, roads epitomize freedom. For wildlife, it’s a different story: a million animals are killed by cars every day in the US alone. How did our infrastructure turn so deadly? And what are people trying to do about it?

In this episode, we look at how two very different species are impacted by roads. Along the way, we visit a turtle rescue clinic, and hear about a celebrity cougar that was trapped in the Hollywood Hills.

This episode was first produced in 2023.

Right now, the Trump administration is planning to rescind the Roadless Rule – a regulation that restricts the building of new roads in nearly 60 million acres of US forests. Conservationists warn that this will fragment forests and threaten endangered species. A public comment period on the plan is open until September 19th.

Featuring Ben Goldfarb, Alexxia Bell, Natasha Nowick, and Michaela Conder.

For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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September 19, 2025 is the deadline to submit a comment about the potential effects of rescinding the Roadless Rule.

Check out Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb.

Read more about The Turtle Rescue League in Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, by Sy Montgomery.

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In the early 1900s, people didn’t trust refrigerated food. Fruits and vegetables, cuts of meat… these things are supposed to decay, right? As Nicola Twilley writes, “What kind of unnatural technology could deliver a two-year old chicken carcass that still looked as though it was slaughtered yesterday?”

But just a few decades later, Americans have done a full one-eighty. Livestock can be slaughtered thousands of miles away, and taste just as good (or better) by the time it hits your plate.  Apples can be stored for over a year without any noticeable change. A network called the “cold-chain” criss-crosses the country, and at home our refrigerators are fooling us into thinking we waste less food than we actually do. 

Today, refrigeration has reshaped what we eat, how we cook it, and even warped our very definition of what is and isn’t “fresh.” 

Featuring Nicola Twilley.

For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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You can find Nicola’s new book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves,” at your local bookstore or online.

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We’re catching some air this week, and talking things with wings!  

Quandaries range from the practical (how do different animal and insect wings differ?) to the ethereal (this includes dragons). Here’s the questions we’ll be answering…

Featuring Jonathan Rader, Tim Burbery, Lauren Ponisio, and Andrew Howley. 

For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

For our next Outside/Inbox roundup, we’re looking for questions about healing! We’re casting a wide net here: homeopathy, neuroplasticity, chronic disease, plant resiliency. Send us your questions by recording yourself on a voice memo, and emailing that to us at [email protected].  Or you can call our hotline: 844-GO-OTTER.

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The video of the sandhill crane landing lives on TikTok. 

Here’s that video of an albatross walking on land after years at sea. 

Timothy Burbery is the author of Geomythology: How Common Stories Reflect Earth Events.

The hypothesis connecting the mythical griffin and Protoceratops fossils was popularized by Adrienne Mayor, author of The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times.

Here's a paper critiquing Mayor's interpretations, "Did the horned dinosaur Protoceratops inspire the griffin?"

A USGS volcanologist on what geologists missed for so long in the stories of Pele, from indigenous Hawaiian oral tradition.

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Shipwrecks captivate our imagination, and are the subject of many books, academic papers, and movies—from the world-famous Titanic, to sunken World War II warships, to ancient fishing canoes. Some describe them as time capsules of our maritime history, waiting to be discovered and opened.

But there’s a group of people who are drawn to shipwrecks for very different reasons, and it sometimes leads to the demise of the wrecks themselves: fishermen.

In this episode, why archaeologists and fishermen have sometimes been at odds over shipwrecks, and the federal government program that’s bringing them together under one common cause.

Featuring Ben Roberts, Mike Bailey, Tom Hill, Calvin Meyers, and Ben Haskell.

Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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Learn more about the many known shipwrecks of Stellwagen Bank, including the Portland, known as “New England’s Titanic.”

Check out some of the other research projects at Stellwagen Bank

 on topics as varied as whales, sand lances, and seabirds.

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GPS is essential these days. We use it for everything, from a hunter figuring out where the heck they are in the backcountry, to a delivery truck finding a grocery store, to keeping clocks in sync.

But our reliance on GPS may also be changing our brains. Old school navigation strengthens the hippocampus, and multiple studies suggest that our new reliance on satellite navigation may put us at higher risk for conditions like dementia.

In this episode (first released in 2024), we map out how GPS took over our world—from Sputnik’s Doppler effect to the airplane crash that led to its widespread adoption—and share everyday stories of getting lost and found again.

Featuring Dana Goward, M.R. O’Connor, Christina Phillips, Michelle Liu, Julia Furukawa, and Taylor Quimby.

Produced by Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. 

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In 2023, Google Maps rerouted dozens of drivers in Los Angeles down a dirt road to the middle of nowhere to avoid a dust storm. 

Maura O’Connor traveled from rural Alaska to the Australian bush to better understand how people navigate without GPS—and sometimes even maps. 

Here’s the peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, that found that young people who relied on GPS for daily driving had poorer spatial memories. 

Another study out of Japan found that people who use smartphone apps like Google Maps to get around had a tougher time retracing their steps or remembering how they got to a place compared to people who use paper maps or landmarks.

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