Curated by Malia Politzer, executive editor for piqd.com, an audio discovery platform that recommends and reviews podcasts and audio episodes about your favorite subjects, every day. To see more podcast recommendations, go to piqd.com.
Between the release of last year’s catastrophic IPCC report and extreme weather changes, including fires in California and hurricanes in other parts of the world, 2018 was a confusing year for climate change news.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely that 2019 will see much improvement: at the beginning of each year, the World Economic Risk forum puts together a list of the top 10 biggest threats in the upcoming year—those likely to have the biggest and most sweeping long-term impacts. For the third year running, environmental concerns tops that list.
Luckily, there are some great podcasts that break down the changes to our environment, what they mean, and what we can do about them. Piqd’s team of climate experts collected six podcasts on climate and the environment to help you better understand—and prepare for—the changes that we are all living through.
View, follow, and listen to the whole collection of shows on RadioPublic, available on iOS and Android.
The Compass: The History of Wastefulness
This three-part series, which was produced by the BBC’s The Compass and debuted in January 2019, looks at the evolution of society’s relationship with trash that has evolved over time. Reporter Alexandra Spring begins by traveling across the Pacific Ocean, to visit the great garbage patch to better understand the scope of the problem. Next, she looks at how historic civilizations dealt with trash, and finally ends on a high note: what we can do to live less wasteful lives. Read the full review.
The Response
This three part series, produced in 2018 by Shareable, explores how communities around the world respond and mobilize in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Check out episode three, which looks at climate inequality—and how undocumented immigrants were affected by the fires that ravaged California in 2018. Read the full review.
The Biggest Story In The World
This 12-episode podcast series follows The Guardian’s transformation into a climate reporting behemoth, drawing on recordings from natural disasters, expert interviews, commentary, and more. The series was driven by former Guardian editor-in-chief Aalan Rusbridger’s desire to tell the true story of how climate change is likely affect us, our children, and the world, before he stepped down. Read the full review.
Drilled
This nine-part podcast series, which debuted last year, tells the fascinating (and, at times, rage-inducing) story about how the oil industry managed to shift the narrative of man-made climate change from an undisputed fact, to a politically charged issue open to debate. Each episode is only about 17 minutes long, presents the damning evidence like a detective unveils how a perpetrator committed a murder, via witnesses, experts, and documentation. Read the full review.
No Place Like Home
This podcast tries to cut to the heart of climate change through personal stories and narrative. While it’s been around for a few years, it’s an excellent go-to for information about how climate change is affecting people, and strategies they are using to cope with our rapidly changing world. The most recent season, which was released last year, looks into the phenomenon of “eco-anxiety”—a fear of climate change, and how it will affect us, frequently suffered by experts on the front lines—and how environmentalists and environmental scientists continue with their jobs despite their fears. Read the full review.
Warm Regards
Now in its fourth year of production, this podcast is an excellent primer on the climate science behind today’s warming climate, and what we can do about it. Host Jacquelyn Gill (a paleoecologist at the University of Maine) and veteran ProPublica journalist Andy Revkin invite a roster of other scientists onto the show to break down the science of climate change into digestible bites. They discuss the social dimensions of the changes we are living through, such as the intersection between environmental narratives and feminism, and considerations of race and class. Read the full review.
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Want to create your own collection of shows that dovetails with your area of interest? Add shows to your Smart Folder on RadioPublic, then inform the Podcast Librarian of your collection: librarian@radiopublic.com.
