Second Nature

It seems that the modern world is in its isolation era, leaving us craving the easy comfort of irl camaraderie. Ideally, the kind that comes without the need to buy a ticket or split a bill. Because becoming a villager isn't just a salve for loneliness, it's a rebellion against consumerism. After a whole season of following the money, we're wrapping up our finale contemplating how we can create co...

When data centers come to town, power bills go up, the water supply gets squeezed, and emissions start to rise. It's no wonder seven in ten Americans don't want one in their backyard. In the midst of this AI gold rush, many tech companies are taking advantage of communities, health, wealth, and safety for promises of a better future. But communities aren't taking the bait. In this episode, we talk...

You don't have to look much further than your grocery receipt to see how climate change can affect our food supply chain. But some of the key drivers of climate change are sitting right in our carts. It's a chicken-or-egg debacle that we're happy to explore on this episode if it means understanding how we can create a more adaptable, equitable food supply chain.   Farms are dealing with historic h...

Government seems to move slower than the pace of climate change, so do our votes for climate candidates and policies actually make a difference?  ‍ In this episode, we're connecting the dots between climate and policy and hearing from people around the world about how their governments’ policies are affecting their lives and their regions. We're also catching up with HEATED editor-in-chief Emily A...

The word "clean" on your shampoo bottle means exactly nothing — legally, anyway. The U.S. has taken so long to update regulations that it's created a huge gap between what consumers want — products without toxic chemicals — and what the government regulates. This means only a small portion of toxic chemicals used in manufacturing are actually regulated at a national level. Folks like advocate and...

Your workout leggings, your morning commute, and the fertilizer to grow your food — what do they have in common? They're all fossil fuel legacies of war. In this episode, we connect the dots between the military and the climate crisis, tracing how wartime decisions made decades ago still shape and pollute our everyday lives. We sit down with Neta C. Crawford, professor of international relations a...

[This episode originally aired June 19, 2024] Composting is one of the easiest, most rewarding climate actions. You get to repurpose food waste, save money on fertilizer, and give back to the soil. Plus, there are so many ways to do it! On this episode, you'll get a straightforward explanation of how composting works and all the inspiration and guidance you need to start composting — no matter whe...

In a world that tries to get us to shop fast, slowing down our shopping is an act of resistance. In this community episode, our listeners share how slowing down their shopping habits saved them money, cut down on waste, and made them appreciate their stuff any more.   Episode rundown: (00:00) - Why is slow shopping important? (03:07) - Slow shopping tips from our community (11:25) - Reflections on...

The aviation industry has gotten twice as fuel-efficient since 1990, and emissions have still quadrupled. In this episode, we reckon with the guilt of flying, tracing it from economy class all the way up to private jets, where a handful of ultra-wealthy passengers emit up to 500 times more carbon than the average person annually. Plus, we dig into sustainable aviation fuel with Alyssa Norris from...

Lawns cover more American soil than any other irrigated crop — but who decided they should look this way, and at what cost? In this episode, we trace the centuries-old aristocratic tradition behind the modern lawn, expose the billion-dollar industry profiting from invasive grasses and toxic chemicals, and with the help of nature educator Jason Wise (aka Journeyman), we’ll explore how your patch of...

Season 5 is coming very soon and this season, we're talking about the thing that's on everyone's mind (whether we like or not) — money.  Maybe you've heard that Native American proverb, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” But, the way we spend our money matters, and as a mindful consumer, financi...

Have you always wanted to be one of the worldwide community of voices you hear on Second Nature? Now's the time! We're accepting submissions for season 5 and we can't wait to hear from you. For the best shot at getting on season 5, please send in your submissions by April 3. But feel free to continue submitting through April as well.  Submitting to the show is easy! Fill out this form to start you...

All season, we’ve rooted ourselves in community. Inspired by vast, underground webs of mycellium we’ve shared ways to create local networks of support, information, and resilience. We’ve talked about how we can use our collective power to prep for climate disasters, protect the water, and use our dollars to resist consumption and combat greenwashing.  On this episode, we're ending the season by re...

Humans have a way of abstracting nature so far from its source that we take something as huge and powerful as water and isolate it, viewing it only as a resource for ourselves rather than an integral part of something much, much bigger than our sinks, showers, and dishwashers. ‍ On this episode, we’re going to try to shrink the distance between ourselves and the water that keeps us alive, we’re go...

The chemical industry is a cornerstone of modern American farming. It helps grow the food billions of people eat. It’s also causing vast environmental damage. In this episode of REAP/SOW, produced in collaboration with WWNO’s Sea Change podcast, you’re going to hear the story of synthetic fertilizer, and how this powerful concoction of chemicals has radically reshaped how we farm and what we eat –...

With the price of everything on the rise, can you live sustainably without spending more money? In fact, frugal living has always been sustainable. Clothes drying on the line, a cookie tin reused as a sewing kit, a Cool Whip tub filled with leftovers.  Choosing stuff that lasts over stuff that's designed to be trashed, choosing to reuse before buying new, and choosing to skip stuff that doesn't se...

[This episode originally aired October 16, 2024] Plant-based cheese is better than ever, but can we expand our expectations of cheese to ease our reliance on Big Dairy? Cheese is delicious. Even aspiring vegans find cheese hard to quit. But making dairy cheese is not only rough on the planet — the dairy cows’ lives aren’t great either. In this episode, we’re getting the full picture of the impact...

In the midst of the one-year anniversary of LA’s devastating, off-season wildfires, we’re reminded that to live in a time of drastic climate change is to prepare for the improbable. From bigger tornadoes and more severe floods to prolonged droughts and deadly heatwaves, no region is immune to the increasing intensity of natural disasters driven by climate change. The rest of the world is coming fa...

Do you feel like you’re drowning in advertisements, clutter, or debt? A no-buy year could help. In a capitalistic society, we're brainwashed to default to buying our way out of our problems. That's what makes a no-buy challenge so much more than a New Year's resolution or an extreme budget. A no-buy or low-buy challenge not only gives you permission to hop off the buy-buy-buy hamster wheel — it al...

[This episode originally aired April 2,2025] The secondhand clothing market isn't equipped for textile recycling. So when your donated clothes don't sell, where do they end up? With the rise of overconsumption and fast fashion, clothes have piled up in thrift stores, landfills, and incinerators around the world. Countries like Ghana and Chile are dealing with fashion waste from countries like the...

From the halls of government to the depths of the ocean, how deep does the plastic crisis go, and can we recycle our way out of this mess? Plastic has completely permeated our existence, and its effects are far-reaching, from soil to glaciers. Recycling was supposed to take care of this mess — or was it?    In this episode, we’ll figure out how the plastic industry is behind one of the biggest gre...

We see greenwashing everywhere — from product labels to fossil fuel ads. But it goes even deeper than that. Greenwashing gets in the way of climate policy changes too! On this episode of Second Nature, we’re hearing how our community dodges greenwashing, talking through 4 questions to ask yourself to see if a brand is greenwashing, and we’re talking to Dr. Mara Einstein about how greenwashing has...

For the past three seasons of the Second Nature, hundreds of you have shared climate actions you take in our own homes — composting, avoiding overconsumption, eating less meat. These practices give us a strong foundation for what comes next.  ‍ This season, we’re focusing our energy outward and making our efforts bigger by proxy with the help of community. This first episode serves as a mission st...

Season four is coming soon, and this season, we're thinking big. Like the ever-connected mycelium networks beneath the world's greatest forests, we're reaching out to one another and finding ways to sync up with community and make efforts bigger than ourselves.  This season, we're coming together to focus our we're efforts where we have the most collective impact — from boycotting greenwashing to...

We're one week out from a new season of Second Nature! Before our season 4 launch, we wanted to bring it back to one of the community's favorite episodes from last season: Why Don't We Fix Things Anymore? Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence have us in a disposable consumption cycle. But it hasn't always been this way. When and why did we stop thinking things were worth fixing? In this...