What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti

In this episode, Jay talks with an old friend about hope: hope for cleaner and safer water in America. Felicia Marcus is an attorney/consultant who has served in government, the non-profit world, and the private sector. She's been a board member on numerous national and international bodies, including one that oversees Canada-U.S. water issues. She is currently the Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stan...

Dr. Chelsea Rochman, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, says plastic, everyone's favourite cheap and easy resource, comes with a high price. Microscopic pieces of plastic flake off every time we wield a disposable bag, or wash a polyester sweater, or any number of things. They permeate our water, air, soil, bodies, even unborn foetuses. It's a problem that will plague humans for...

This week climatologist Micah Hewer and economist Pat Lloyd-Smith tell Jay about the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of global warming on Canada's outdoor recreation sector. On the bad side of the ledger: shorter downhill skiing and skating seasons and slime-covered lakes in the summer. On the good side: longer, better seasons for outdoor pursuits like hunting, bird watching and cross-country...

Dr. Kelsey Leonard, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo and member of the Shinnecock Nation, discusses how Indigenous views on the personhood of water can save that water. More and more bodies of water around the world are being granted legal personhood status, which gives them the right to be defended from industrial pollution. Dr. Leonard is fighting to make water justice a prio...

This season, host Jay Famiglietti sits down with some of the world's leading experts to once again talk about water and learns why some marginalized communities are denied safe water access, how flooding and droughts may end up forcing billions of climate refugees to flee their homes, which regulations have been gutted and need to be brought back to save us from disaster and more. Join us as we di...

Dr. Peter Gleick, co-founder and president emeritus of the Pacific Institute, believes Joe Biden could be the man to save American water policy, which has been foundering under Donald Trump. In his co-authored policy brief, Water Recommendations to the Next President, Gleick and his colleagues lay out the biggest issues with US water safety and access, and what President Elect Biden needs to do to...

Debra Perrone, Assistant Professor UC Santa Barbara, discusses the dwindling groundwater supply affecting 12 million US wells caused by global warming and over-consumption. The world relies on groundwater, which is getting harder and harder to find.  With groundwater close to the surface vanishing, well-drillers are forced to turn to deep drilling for corporate, agricultural, and domestic water ne...

Abrahm Lustgarten, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated environmental reporter, talks to us about climate migration, one of climate change's biggest looming threats. Rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and ever-increasing natural disasters are forcing people to abandon their homes and their ways of life to seek safer ground. As the planet heats up, the number of climate refugees will just keep swelling,...

Dr. Ingrid Waldron is a sociology professor at Dalhousie University who argues that African Nova Scotian and Indigenous communities are victims of environmental racism, forced to drink tainted water, breathe polluted air and live next to waste dumps. Now these concerns are reaching national and even global audiences thanks to a best-selling book and widely streamed documentary, both titled "There'...

In this episode of "Let's Talk About Water," California is burning. And Oregon. And Washington State. And not only are mega wildfires in the U.S. threatening – and sometimes taking -- lives and property there, they're pumping smoke and fallout high into the atmosphere that has spread to Canada and even entered European air space. Host Jay Famiglietti switches gears this week to talk about the abse...

What is the impact of COVID-19 on our water supply? As we learn on the Season 2 debut of "Let's Talk About Water" scientists' initial fears the virus could be a waterborne as well as  airborne have lessened. But as it has in just about every other aspect of our lives, COVID has affected how we understand and use water. Host Jay Famiglietti speaks to water scientist Markus Brinkmann about the Unive...

Host Jay Famiglietti speaks with globe-trotting water expert Henk Ovink about the Dutch approach to water, particularly in comparison to North America. They explore the difference between how humans react to disaster versus how they react to climate change. Both are fraught with danger. Finally.... cue the theme music from "Cheers." It's the 10th and final episode of Season 1. We bid a fond farewe...

President Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. Aaron Salzberg. One of these 3 people regularly wears a pretty sick ponytail and has sat down to talk water policy with the other 2. That person is our guest this week:  Aaron Salzberg is Director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.  He joins host Jay Famiglietti to chronicle his journey from car mechanic to heav...

A brief trip down memory lane for host Jay Famiglietti on a jaw-dropping moment in 2015 with the CEO of Nestle Waters North America. Then, back into the thick of it with guest Ian James , a reporter with the Arizona Republic newspaper in Phoenix. Jay and Ian dig into James' 6-part investigative series on groundwater depletion in Arizona, called "Arizona's Next Water Crisis,"   and touch on the Tru...

Guest Ian James is  a reporter with the Arizona Republic newspaper in Phoenix. He and host Jay Famiglietti reflect on their roles in the b ig bottled water battle that gripped California in 2015 as Nestle Waters North America refused to stop drawing water from a national forest during a drought. Ian shares a harrowing story about violence against small farmers in Peru who were seeing large farm co...

Big topic: what's the state of drought in California these days? Plus host Jay Famiglietti talks about that one time he almost got fired from NASA, guest Newsha Ajami and Jay ponder what made people start using less water in California.

Recorded at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting in San Francisco. Host Jay Famiglietti sits down with old friend Bridget Scanlon, head of the Sustainable Water Resources Program at the University of Texas in Austin. They discuss big bad Texas storms, why flood waters are not commonly captured to be used in drought times, and how contaminants in water can be all natural.

Part 2 of our interview in Tel Aviv, Israel where host Jay Famiglietti sits down with Gidon Bromberg, co-founder and Israeli Director of EcoPeace Middle East. Gidon talks about his leap from attorney to non-profit founder. Jay and Gidon discuss how the holy site of the Jordan River has been "turned into little more than a sewage canal," and how it can recover.

This episode, host Jay Famiglietti sits down with Gidon Bromberg, co-founder and Israeli Director of EcoPeace Middle East. Gidon comes from the most water-scarce region in the planet, where basic facts and science are so heavily politicized that it's hard to agree on them. He lays out the landscape of this conflict over water between Jordan, Israeli and Palestine people. Gidon explains how people...

Our guests this week haven't always seen eye to eye when looking at a river delta that acts as a breeding ground for massive numbers of wildlife and waterfowl. Gary Carriere lives in a community that relies on the Saskatchewan River Delta for its culture and livelihood. Graham Strickert, Assistant Professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan, studies...

Karen Kidd takes us underwater, metaphorically speaking. She tells us how pharmaceuticals, birth control and mercury affect fish and aquatic life — and how they got there in the first place.

Starting soon, Let's Talk About Water, a podcast from the Global Institute for Water Security and The Walrus Lab.