Outside/In

In one version of a sustainable, carbon-neutral future, the world’s cars will transition from fossil fuels to electricity. Right now that vision absolutely depends on lithium, a primary component of the lithium-ion battery. But there is no “Lithium Central Planning Committee” balancing supply and demand or making sure that lithium is mined in environmentally and socially responsible ways. In fact,...

Fred Tutman is a voice for Maryland’s Patuxent River. In 2004, he founded Patuxent Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy organization. His mission is to protect and preserve all 110 miles of the Patuxent—a mission that takes him to the courtroom and to the riverbank. Fred is also the only African-American "Riverkeeper" in the Waterkeeper Alliance in the U.S., which he sees as an indicator of an e...

There are places on the map where roads end. The Darién Gap, or el Tapon del Darién, is one of them. It’s a stretch of rainforest in southern Panama, right on the edge of Central and South America. From a globetrotter’s perspective, the Darién Gap might seem to exist mostly as an obstacle to tourists dreaming of a truly epic road trip from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego. But, while a road is a way mov...

Are snow-making machines an example of climate adaptation, or an example of an emissions feedback loop? Does the fire risk posed by planting trees outweigh the benefits of their use as a carbon sink? Can the team talk big planet problems and still leave room for bad puns? We’ll answer these questions and more climate queries on this special edition of Ask Sam. Check out NHPR’s new climate reportin...

The world of Skyrim is vast. The video game contains cities, villages, and rugged wilderness: high waterfalls cascading into deep pools, packs of wolves roaming the edges of misty alpine forests, echoes in the canyons. The game is celebrated for the intricacy of its environment, and is one of the top-selling video games of all time. “The world itself was almost the main character of the game, in a...

In this update, we tally your votes and announce the winner of our fruit fight. What seed-bearing plant ovary will be crowned the GFOAT, or Greatest Fruit of All Time? The pepper? The coconut? The gourd? The vanilla bean? Or… none of the above? One listener challenges our candidates with a fruit of his own. Listen to his full 5 minute argument for the grape on the episode page for Fruit Fight. And...

In 2016, we produced an episode about the ginkgo tree titled "Ginkgo Stink." With its fan-shaped leaves and golden fall foliage, the Ginkgo biloba is a beautiful tree with an incredible history dating back millions of years. It’s also a popular street tree among urban foresters, despite the fact that some ginkgoes produce malodorous cones. The episode was meant to be a celebration of the incredibl...

For months, producer Taylor Quimby has been trying to craft a story about spicy peppers. Every one of his pitches has been shot down…until now. On this episode of Outside/In, a CULINARY challenge, a DELICIOUS debate, a FANTASTIC food fight in which four producers argue about which seed-bearing delicacy is the ABSOLUTE best. Of course these fruits aren’t the ones you typically think of when you’re...

The experience of public outdoor spaces isn't the same for everyone. Today, we explore birding while Black (and #blackbirdersweek) and how racist housing policies drive unequal exposure to climate-driven heat waves. Find more Outside/In on our website We need your help! Take our short audience survey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the show, we’re bringing you inside what may be the most important environmental Supreme Court Decision in history. Massachusetts v. EPA declared that greenhouse gases are pollution under the definition set out by one of the nation’s oldest and most successful environmental laws, the 1970 Clean Air Act. The case determined that if the executive branch wanted to do so, it could** **confron...

With so many of our favorite outdoor activities currently off-limits, we’re look for accessible ways to explore the magic of the nature from the safety of our homes our neighborhoods. In this edition of Inside/In, we discover the magic and wonder of two often ignored or reviled organisms. Find more Outside/In on our website: outsideinradio.org Outside/In is supported by Ben's. Click here to learn...

Being stuck at home for an extended period of time, worrying about the safety of yourself and your loved ones takes a toll on your mental health. “For the first time, it seems, the entire world knows what it’s like to live inside my head,” writes Stephanie Foo, who was diagnosed with complex PTSD in 2018. We talk to her about how to keep yourself on an even keel when the whole world feels like a d...

You know that scene in every disaster movie, where the frantic and panicky science nerd unsuccessfully tries to warn the powers that be that something terrible is about to happen? In this episode, we explore a historic storm of cosmic proportions, which, if it happened today, experts say could turn out to be a disaster the likes of which our modern world has never seen. So…how do you prepare for a...

With so many of our favorite outdoor activities currently off-limits, we’re look for accessible ways to explore the magic of the nature from the safety of our homes our neighborhoods. This is the first in a series of short episodes for families and individuals who want to discover how, even when we’re stuck inside, the natural world ties us together. Find more Outside/In on our website: outsideinr...

Cat People is a podcast series by Longreads that examines the strange relationships people have with big cats and the legal loopholes that have made America home to more captive tigers than there are left in the wild. It also serves as an important corrective to some of the irresponsible journalistic choices made by the creators of the hit Netflix series "Tiger King.” Learn more about your ad choi...

On today’s show, we are addressing a question we have seen A LOT. As we’re all adjusting to life with the coronavirus, the advice is to stay home and stay safe. But depending on where you are in the world, that advice gets a little blurrier when it comes to exercise and outdoor recreation. Is it safe to go outside? Is it safe… to go on a hike in the woods? What about a neighborhood in the city? Wh...

In our series 10X10, we examine ordinary places that are more interesting than they might initially appear; and few places hold more unexpected mysteries beneath the wet, mossy surfaces than the dark and muddy places we explored for this episode. We call them by a multitude of names: mires, muskegs, moorlands, or kettle bogs. This time, Outside/In digs beneath the shrubs, sedges, rushes and moss o...

The passenger pigeon is one of the world’s most symbolic extinction stories. It’s a cautionary tale of how in just a few short generations, one of the wonders of the world could be completely eradicated. But when that narrative was questioned in a popular book, *1491 *by Charles Mann, what does the response tell us about the conservation movement as a whole? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

The winner of our “Battle of Tiny Proportions” is revealed! Plus, one of our favorite episodes about the pace of technology: The Forest for the Treesap. Mysteries are brewing in the sugar shack. Changes are coming to New England’s sugar bushes. And the very identity of a product that we’ve been crafting in basically the same way for centuries, could be on the verge of a radical shift. But a shift...

In New England, the Waterman name is like mountain royalty. But beyond a tight circle of outdoors-people, they're not a household name. Today, we tell the story of one of the most influential voices in American wilderness philosophy, Laura Waterman, and how she has changed following the death of her husband. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A government bureaucrat builds a website that saves a billion gallons in gas. The minuscule Irish invention that enables the industrial revolution. An innovation for doctor’s gloves kicks off women’s liberation. An ill wind leads to America being stuck with the gallon forever. On this episode, we present a series of small “nudges” (but not actual nudges) that have had profound impacts for the envi...

Depending on who you ask, astrology is a science, an art, a form of therapy… or, a pseudo-science, fortune-telling, a scam.  But astrology is way more than a horoscope. Check us out online, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the ancient charcoal animals of France's Chauvet Cave, to 17th century Dutch windmill paintings, art history can tell us a lot about our evolving view of the natural world. In this episode, producer Taylor Quimby (a self-described art-world neophyte) searches for individual works and genres through history that reveal something interesting about human society and the outdoors. This episode ha...

As extreme weather wreaks havoc around the globe NPR's Throughline looks at a natural disaster more than 200 hundred years ago that had far-reaching effects. This week, how the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki awed, terrified and disrupted millions around the world and changed the course of history. Outside/In needs your help. Click here to find out how you can support the show. There's lots...

Before Hurricane Maria hit in September of 2017, Puerto Rico's rickety electric grid was a notorious headache. After the storm, it was a crisis. This is the story of how a pair of star-crossed lovers came to see nuclear as the unlikely solution to Puerto Rico's energy woes, and how their vision for the island might be changing the way we approach power... even if their plan never comes to pass. Ou...