World Is Burning

After we learned about the climate and cultural impacts of non-native lawn grass in North America, we were left wondering: what's up with golf? In this minisode, Elise tells us why golf might be one of the rare resource-intensive problems that could actually be on its way to solving itself. Topics include creative land use, solar farms, and affordable housing.

Listen to Episode 28 - Lawn Culture and Mushroom Scams for more on America's longtime obsession with grass.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

This week we're exploring ways to cope with climate despair. Maybe you're experiencing it for the first time in the wake of the new IPCC report, or as wildfire smoke makes its way to your doorstep. Maybe you've been around the block a few times. In this short episode we define what exactly climate despair is, where we struggle with it, and how to frame it as a valid emotion that guides us to transformative climate action. We take some notes from our favorite artists, writers, and scientists. If you don't know what to do or where to look, come join our club! It's only 30 minutes.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

World Is Burning is hosted by Olivia Hamilton and Elise Nye. Our theme music is by Kaycie Satterfield, and our logo was made by Sonja Katanic.

What would a decolonized world look like? How can we spend more time building the world we want to live in, while still fighting back against oppressive systems? This week we're focusing on the work of two Indigenous environmental leaders, Winona LaDuke and Sherri Mitchell. We discuss teenage Winona's decision to use her high school debate skills at the U.N. Conference in Geneva, how to learn from Indigenous wisdom without extraction, and ways to dismantle white supremacist and colonial capitalist practices in our lives, even those that have benefitted us. Other topics include the 80/10/10 rule, the dandelion insurrection, and the song of the summer as decided by Elise's cat.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

World Is Burning is hosted by Olivia Hamilton and Elise Nye. 

Our theme music is by Kaycie Satterfield, and our logo was made by Sonja Katanic.

At the peak of 19th-century hat culture, an ounce of feathers was worth more than an ounce of gold. This extravagant trend, however, was putting once-flourishing bird populations in peril. Enter the bird lady: Harriet Hemenway, a controversial Boston socialite who co-founded the Massachusetts Audubon Society and used posh tea parties to protest the overhunting of birds. Elise recalls Harriet's story and the bird species that didn't make it. Then Olivia tells the story of Lady Bird Johnson, former U.S. First Lady during the Johnson administration, who pushed a forward-thinking environmental agenda through seemingly superficial beautification projects. And she also might have sent the CIA after a beloved outspoken singer... Other topics include organizing among friends, easy access to climate change basics, and anti-car sneakers?

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

On this week's no-frills episode, we're telling you how to prepare for extreme heat, what to do in the middle of a heatwave, and how to recognize heat-related illness to keep you and your loved ones safe.

01:30 - How to prepare your home for extreme heat

05:52 - How to plan according to the weather

10:55 - How to read important heat indicators

15:08 - What to do if you're dealing with extreme heat now

25:17 - How to recognize heat-related illness

Stay damp, stay hydrated, and stay cool!

Full resources and expert source list for this episode here. The Zoolander gif is there too, don't worry.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

Once upon a time, Coca-Cola ran one of the world's most successful reusable bottle systems. Their decentralized network boasted an over 95% return rate, with some glass bottles being used upwards of fifty times before being recycled. Today, they're the biggest plastic polluter on the planet. What the hell? This week Olivia's telling us the story of Coca-Cola, the rise of the single-use mindset, and how promises to "keep America beautiful" managed to put the blame on individual consumers and governments instead of on the producers of that trash. Plus, Elise's cool new project that tackles packaging waste, how Prohibition ruined everything, and what new media is giving us hope.

Follow @Repackagemailers for more packaging waste facts and to learn more about Elise's Austin mailer reuse program. Plus the cutest little raccoon.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

On this week’s episode Elise tells the story of the regretful inventor of Keurig and the single-use pod coffee phenomenon. Other topics include the overwhelming news of the last few weeks, drinking 30-40 cups of coffee a day, and plans for future mini-series.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

File this episode under things you never thought about but that will now haunt you... sorry! This week we're talking about the darker side of two things you've probably encountered this week: vanilla flavoring and customer receipts. Elise takes us through the unlikely ways that vanilla flavoring is being made, including petroleum-based artificial flavors that are already likely in your cupboard. Then Olivia tells the story of the CVS receipt meme and how consumer demand and environmental activism have gotten major retailers to skip the slip. Plus, how not to act at your first post-lockdown comedy show.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

What's up with America's obsession with cow's milk? Olivia tells the story of the famous Got Milk campaign that brought deprivation marketing and milk mustaches to a generation of young dairy consumers. Then Elise takes us through the meteoric rise of Oatly oat milk during the pandemic, their controversial investors, and one healthy way we should treat our food like technology.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.

This week we're talking about ego, allyship, and debriefing Olivia's time at the Treaty People Gathering on White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. The gathering was organized as part of the Indigenous-led effort to stop Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline. For more on the pipeline and why it needs to be stopped, check out our minisode on the issue. In this episode, we're talking about what happened, dismantling white supremacy in activist spaces, respecting security culture, and finding your role in a movement.

Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos.