Outside/In

Billions of dollars in investment will rain down on the cities that are best positioned to launch America’s offshore wind industry. But not every city can become the “wind capital of America.” Where is it gonna drizzle, and where is it gonna pour? 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...

The promise of the nascent American offshore wind industry meets an unlikely foe: squid fishermen in Rhode Island. Forces collide — like the enduring symbol of the American blue-collar worker, the big money of global energy interests, and the volatility of American politics. We ask: what is the nature of power? Windfall is the story of a promising renewable technology and the potential of wind pow...

Ten years ago, a Kennedy and a Koch shared the same goal: stop Cape Wind, America’s would-be first offshore wind farm. Despite nearly two decades of effort, Cape Wind was never built, and its failure had huge consequences for the offshore wind industry. But it also laid the groundwork for the next wave of offshore wind and the explosive growth to come. Windfall is the story of a promising renewabl...

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....

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 d...

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. Featuri...

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 N...

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 f...

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. Subscribe to...

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.” Sign up for the Outside/In newsletter for biweekly reading lists, episode extras, and chances...

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...

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....

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 a...

Another edition of Ask Sam, where Sam answers listener questions about the natural world. This time, questions about hugging trees, bumpy roads, objects stuck on power lines, and epic hummingbird battles. Featuring special guests, Maddie Sofia, host of NPR's Short Wave, and Kendra Pierre-Louis, climate journalist with Gimlet's How to Save a Planet. Also featuring Ferris Jabr, Stephen Morris, Greg...

A lot of us may feel like our time and attention is not our own, and can easily disappear into the ether of work and the internet. But rather than merely suggesting a digital detox, Jenny Odell presents a third way. In her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny draws on ecology, art, labor history, and literature, seeking a deeper kind of attention: an attention that probes...

When producer/reporter Dan Taberski collected data about the long-running reality TV show Cops, he found that it depicts a distorted version of America: Where nearly all crime is associated with violence, drugs, or prostitution, and nearly every police encounter ends in arrest. There’s another reality TV show about law enforcement called North Woods Law. It follows state conservation officers empl...

For many of us during the pandemic, the dark and cold of winter brings a special sense of dread. But it’s not just this year: the seasonal darkness often collectively takes us by surprise. Like clockwork, we forget how dark and cold it gets - and it turns out, there are reasons for that. But our perception of the seasonal darkness can also be influenced by our attitudes about it. In Norway, cultur...

This week, we’re featuring an episode from A Matter of Degrees, a podcast about climate change hosted by Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Katherine Wilkinson. This episode was reported by Julian Brave NoiseCat. The energy transition isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all process. In this episode, a broad lesson gleaned from a very specific story: the effort to move from coal to solar in the Navajo nation. S...

In the coming decades, the scale of climate migration could be dizzying. In one projection, four million people in the United States could find themselves “living at the fringe,” outside ideal conditions for human life. In collaboration with By Degrees, NHPR’s climate change reporting initiative, we’re devoting the entire episode to answering one question: if you’re worried about climate, where sh...

Marty, Maine coon cat, 12-year resident of the Mount Washington Observatory, and the highest-altitude feline in the Northeastern United states, died after a sudden illness on November 9th, 2020. In this Outside/In extra, producer Taylor Quimby remembers Marty, beloved companion and a dignified veteran of the Presidential Range. Featuring Ryan Knapp. This Outside/In extra was originally broadcast o...

A carbon offset is a simple premise: if you take a cross-country flight and are responsible for a half ton of carbon emissions, spend a few dollars to fund the growth of a half ton worth of carbon in the form of a forest. A fossil fuel company can do the same: buy offsets to write off emissions and call it green. But is this just another form of greenwashing? Do carbon offsets bring us closer to c...

Throughout the 20th century, conservationists and environmentalists have looked to protect wildlife and biodiversity through the creation of parks and other forms of exclusionary wildlife zones. Zones that seek to preserve spaces devoid of human impact - or to create them, by displacing indigenous and poor people who already live there. Today, some academics call this strategy by a pejorative name...

Another year… another record-breaking wildfire season. Thanks to climate change the fire season now starts sooner and ends later.  Scientists also say climate change will make lightning more frequent, and winds more powerful. Basically, the world is a tinderbox. But maybe the problem with these big, out-of-control fires is actually *not enough* fire. Get more Outside/In in your inbox - sign up for...

Planting a tree often becomes almost a shorthand for doing a good deed. But such an act is not always neutral. In some places, certain trees can become windows into history, tools of erasure, or symbols of resistance. Featuring Liat Berdugo, Irus Braverman, Jonathan Kuttab, Noga Kadman, Iyad Hadad, Raja Shehadeh, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, and Nidal Waleed Rabie and his granddaughter...

Listeners submit their cases for the best fruit ever, and we explore the intersections of fruit, food, and colonialism. Featuring Alicia Kennedy, Coral Lee, Lauren Baker, Grant Bosse, and Hallie Casey. Sign-up for the Outside/In newsletter Links “On Luxury” by Alicia Kennedy “C is for Colonialism’s Effect on How and What We Eat” by Coral Lee Here’s the 2013 Scientific American article Taylor menti...