How We Survive
by Marketplace
“How We Survive” is an award-winning podcast from Marketplace about the messy business of climate solutions. From the glitz and glam of Miami to the punishing Arizona desert, to a sinking island that our national security depends on, every season, we take listeners on an adventure. We explore the innovative, surprising, and occasionally disturbing ways that people are navigating solutions to a changing climate. Previous seasons explored the underbelly of the lithium extraction economy with Tech expert Molly Wood; investigated the red-hot Miami real estate market that’s increasingly vulnerable to storms and sea level rise with journalist Amy Scott; and examined the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — the U..S military — with Marketplace host and former Navy pilot Kai Ryssdal. In addition to long-form deep dive seasons, “How We Survive” has a spin-off series called “Burning Questions” that empowers listeners with information they can implement in their liv
Episodes
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Almost Midnight, from "The Midnight Rebellion"
From WBUR, here's a new kind of story, one that's all about the big questions and decisions we face. “The Midnight Rebellion” is a pick-your-own-path podcast set 100 years in the future, where the stakes are nothing less than the planet itself. It's fiction rooted in real science, built for the...
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Your geoengineering questions, answered!
This season, we explored large-scale climate interventions that could be our last hope. One intervention in particular, solar geoengineering, made a lot of listeners’ heads spin. (We’re right there with you.) This episode, we answer some of your most pressing questions about solar geoengineering....
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Should we mess with nature?
All season, we’ve been unpacking the controversial ways we’re messing with nature to save the planet. In this episode, we explore the wildest intervention to date: de-extinction. We take a tour of Colossal Labs, the $10 billion Dallas startup betting it can reverse-engineer extinction itself, to...
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A Carbon Burial at Sea
We can't avoid catastrophic warming without also capturing and storing carbon dioxide — both the carbon we've already emitted and the carbon we continue to emit through industries that are tough to decarbonize, like steel, petrochemicals, and cement. Europe is a leader in Carbon Capture and…
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How conspiracy theories impact geoengineering efforts
Across the country, anti-geoengineering bills are being proposed in state legislatures. These bills would ban the intentional release of chemicals into the atmosphere for the purpose of affecting sunlight or weather, and could impact future research into stratospheric aerosol injection — or even...
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Make It Rain
Can a technology used for war help prevent an environmental catastrophe in the making? Cloud seeding is a technique where particles, usually silver iodide, gets dispersed into clouds to help generate more rain or snow and it’s been around for 80 years. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. used cloud...
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Novel Solutions
Talk to enough experts about geoengineering and the conversation eventually turns to termination shock. That’s the idea that if we were to start cooling the planet and then suddenly stop, the resulting “shock” of heat could be catastrophic. It’s also the title of a novel by bestselling sci-fi...
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How to Dim the Sun
Could dimming the sun be the key to cooling things down before the climate crisis worsens? Some scientists say yes, that we can cool the Earth by launching tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. It’s a type of solar geoengineering that was once seen as preposterous, meant to exist only in...
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"How We Survive" returns May 27
The climate crisis is escalating. We have to decarbonize our economy, but we’re moving too slowly. So, what’s the backup plan? This season of “How We Survive” is about engineering nature: large-scale interventions that could be our last hope. We’ll explore technology being developed that could...
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Burning Questions: The EPA repealed the endangerment finding. Who are the economic winners and losers?
Earlier this month the Trump administration revoked the endangerment finding, which gave the federal government a legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The move is already being disputed in court. If the repeal is successful, who are the economic winners and losers? “How We…
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Feeding the Family (bonus episode)
We’re dropping into your feeds today to share this special bonus episode. For many people gathering around the table this holiday season, things feel a little different. Maybe it’s the cost of ingredients that’s on your mind, or cuts to USDA funding that have left your food bank running low. Or...
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Is grass-fed beef more nutritious? How can I waste less food? Is insect protein tasty?
Throughout the season, we asked you all what questions you had about food, solutions and climate change, and you did not disappoint! In this episode, we find answers to your most pressing questions, like whether grass-fed beef is more nutritious than grain-fed, if cell-cultivated meat is…
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The Dry Line
The 100th meridian is the longitudinal boundary separating the humid East and the arid West. Researchers say the dry line is moving east because of climate change, threatening some of our cheapest and most reliable crops, like wheat and corn. In this episode, Amy drives across Kansas to talk to...
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What the World’s Farmers Can Teach Us About Climate Resilience
Climate change is transforming how the world grows and eats. In this episode, host Amy Scott talks with New York Times international climate correspondent Somini Sengupta about what she’s learned from farmers adapting to extreme weather. From drought-resistant crops to regenerative practices,...
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The Land Problem
About a third of the greenhouse gases cooking our planet come from our food. Agriculture and livestock production are incredibly taxing on the planet. To curb the impact, we need to drastically reduce the amount of land we use to make food, while at the same time making more food for a growing...
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The Uncanny Valley of Meat
If you have ever bitten into a plant-based burger and felt dissatisfied, or even grossed out, you’re not alone. In this episode, we explore the uncanny valley of meat and dive deep into what makes meat so … meaty. Plus, “The Splendid Table” host Francis Lam joins Amy Scott for a taste test of...
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Food Tour of the Future
Climate change is changing what we eat. As the planet heats up, foods like salmon, chocolate and coffee might be harder to come by and more expensive to buy. In this episode, the “How We Survive” team goes on a food tour around Northern California to find out how tech entrepreneurs are finding…
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“How We Survive” returns Oct. 15
Imagine a future where chocolate and coffee are rare and expensive; where cheap, nutritional staples, like corn and wheat, are threatened. The climate crisis is a food and agriculture crisis. A third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from what’s on our plate. Cow burps, deforestation, water...
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The climate crisis is an economic crisis (bonus episode)
We’re dropping into your feeds today to share this special bonus episode. It’s a conversation between host Amy Scott, Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal and Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Elizabeth Kolbert. We talk about how the accelerating climate crisis is creating economic disruption. And we...
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"Burning Questions:" A conversation with Bill McKibben about his new book on solar power
A cheap and accessible form of energy lies in a large ball of burning gas 93 million miles up in the sky: the sun. So why haven’t we adopted solar energy more widely? “How We Survive” host Amy Scott recently talked with longtime climate writer and activist Bill McKibben about his upcoming book...
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Burning Questions: Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed. What now for the climate?
Last week’s massive spending and tax bill, named the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” was signed into law by President Trump. It includes major cuts to clean energy incentives, pushed forward by the Biden Administration’s signature climate law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The new law…
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Burning Questions: How do cuts to NOAA impact all of us?
June marks the start of hurricane season but thanks to the climate crisis we’re dealing with extreme weather year-round. Just in the past month, deadly storms have devastated Kentucky and a brutal heat-wave is surging across the country. With the recent cuts to NOAA and the National Weather...
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ESG, Reincarnated
Can we invest our way out of the climate crisis? That’s the question we started this series with, and in this episode, we try to answer that question. Host Amy Scott pops the hood of her own retirement investments to look at how to reduce their carbon impact, and she shows you how you can too. We...
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The Death of ESG
In recent years, ESG investing moved from a mainstream strategy promoted by the biggest asset managers in the world, to a polarizing topic. Financial firms scrubbed the acronym from their websites, dropped out of net-zero initiatives, and stopped advertising their climate efforts. Some have...
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The God Box
To understand the fierce and widespread backlash to environmental, social and governance investing — and more specifically, climate-conscious investing — it helps to first understand its humble origins. Part of that history began about as far from Wall Street as possible, spiritually anyway, with...
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“How We Survive” returns April 9
Can capitalism save us? In 2020, it seemed like the answer was “possibly.” That year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink shook up the investment world in his annual letter to companies, in which he made climate change a major focus. On CNBC he stated, “We believe a portfolio that focuses on sustainability...
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Burning Questions: Is the future insurable?
Since early January, historic wildfires have been burning across Los Angeles. Over two dozen people have died, and more than 10,000 homes have been destroyed. Insured losses may exceed $20 billion. In the months prior to the fires, thousands of Los Angeles homeowners were dropped by insurers.…
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The Banks Growing Money on Trees (bonus episode from “Outside Podcast”)
This week, we’re sharing another podcast we like from our friends at Outside Magazine. A quarter of the money at the world’s largest banks goes directly to funding fossil fuel projects. But what if it didn’t? In this episode of “Outside Podcast,” reporter Cat Jaffee calls customer service at her...
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Burning Questions: What are the climate wins and setbacks from the election?
Last week’s elections delivered climate wins and setbacks. What will a second Donald Trump presidency mean for climate policy going forward? What can President Joe Biden accomplish in the remainder of his term? And how did state climate measures perform? Host Amy Scott talks with Washington Post...
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Burning Questions: What’s driving climate misinformation (and what to do about it)?
In the wake of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, the internet was flooded with conspiracy theories and misinformation, ranging from false claims that the government geo-engineerd the storm on purpose, to false rumors around FEMA blocking aid from people who needed it. In this installment of...
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The Uncertain Future
After spending nearly a year exploring U.S. national security and climate change, some big questions remain: Should the American military be smaller? Is that even possible? And what about the upcoming election; Could it upend the military’s climate focus? In our last episode of the season, host…
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Wargames
Imagine it’s 2044. We’ve failed to control global warming and temperatures have risen 2 degrees Celsius. Northern South America is suffering from extreme heat, mudslides, agricultural collapse and rolling blackouts. Governments are falling apart and 2 million people are on the move. If you were...
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The Disappearing Islands
On Jan. 20, a 20-foot wave crashed into a community center on a U.S. military base in the Marshall Islands. The wave broke down the door, smashed windows and even dragged people under. Waves and storm-driven flooding aren’t uncommon in the Marshall Islands. But this one hit a base that’s vital to...
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Embrace the (Energy) Suck
The Department of Defense is an enormous consumer of energy, using 73 million barrels of fuel annually. An F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet, burns 15 gallons of gas every minute when cruising. And more than a third of the DoD’s emissions come from powering its estimated 750 bases around the world. On…
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The Last Frontier
The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the world, and as it warms, a whole new set of national security issues is emerging. This episode, host Kai Ryssdal traverses the frozen terrain that could be the center stage for global conflict. We hitch a ride with the Coast...
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The Changing Threat
Today, the White House and the Department of Defense recognize climate change as a threat to national security. And the military is on the front lines of having to deal with the fallout. In this episode, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal remembers what it was like serving in the military during the...
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“How We Survive” is back Sept. 11
For “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal, joining the Navy fresh out of college was one of the most consequential times of his life. It was the 1980s; the Cold War and the Soviet “evil empire,” in President Ronald Reagan’s words, was the greatest threat. Fast-forward through 40 years and one career...
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Burning Questions: How to fight off climate dread
To an individual, the climate crisis can feel overwhelming. There’s only so much composting you can do, right? It can be tempting to bury your head in the sand. But what if instead we imagine that we can succeed in fighting climate change? That’s the subject of Ayana Johnson’s new book, “What If…
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Burning Questions: How can I make my home climate friendly?
One important way individuals can make a difference in their carbon emissions is to electrify their home. But that can feel like a daunting change when you’re just getting started. In this episode, Amy talks with Donnel Baird, founder of BlocPower, a start up that’s focused on electrifying homes...
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Burning Questions: How can I eat for the planet (without getting stressed out)?
Do I need to stop eating meat if I care about the planet? Does it really matter where I buy my food? How can I make climate-friendly food choices if I’m short on time? Amy chats with Melissa Nelson, professor of Indigenous sustainability at Arizona State University, about how our day-to-day food...
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Burning Questions: Where Should I Live?
“How We Survive” listener Anna wants to know: “Where should I live? Every now and then I look at maps and try to determine the safest place to live, but I don’t even know where to start when it comes to evaluating climate risks.” In this episode of “Burning Questions,” Amy talks with Marketplace...
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Burning Questions: What’s the deal with 1.5 degrees?
In the past decade, 1.5 has become an important number when talking about the climate crisis. (As in 1½ degrees Celsius, which equates to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.) It’s considered the maximum increase in temperature since preindustrial times that Earth can handle before all sorts of terrible…
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“Burning Questions” is back!
Have you ever wondered where it’s safe to buy (or rent) a home? Maybe you’re looking to make more environmentally friendly choices at the supermarket. Or, you’d like to know how to keep climate despair at bay. We’re here to help! The “Burning Questions” series from “How We Survive” responds to…
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The Worth of Water
The Colorado River, vital to the American West, faces a crisis as demand surpasses its supply due to rising temperatures and unsustainable usage practices. As millions depend on its waters for survival, challenges like rampant growth and water-intensive farming further strain this precious...
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Send us your climate questions!
We are working on another season of our series Burning Questions and we want to hear from you! What are your most pressing climate questions? Are you trying to figure out when to invest in an electric car? Or maybe you want to make climate-friendly changes to your diet? Whatever your question is...
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Introducing: Ripple (bonus episode)
We have a special episode for you today. We’re sharing an episode of the new podcast from APM Studios and Western Sound called “Ripple.” The largest oil spill in American history captivated the public’s attention for the entire summer of 2010. Authorities told a story of a herculean response…
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Is composting really doing anything? (Bonus episode from “The Anti-Dread Climate Podcast”)
Participate in the cycle of life and sequester some carbon while you’re at it — even if you don’t have a city-provided green bin! Caleigh Wells and Candice Dickens-Russell geek out about their own composting methods, and discuss what they’ve learned from an urban farm owner.
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A thanks and a note from Amy
It’s been quite a year! The “How We Survive” team piloted a new series, “Burning Questions,” answering your most pressing climate concerns. We also spent months traveling across the South West, from Arizona and New Mexico to Nevada and California, to report on the West’s water crisis for our…
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Rights of Rivers
The Colorado River has been carved up and relentlessly fought over for decades. But has anyone ever asked what the river wants? Until recently, that answer was ‘no.’ There’s a growing movement, rooted in Indigenous values, to give nature — rivers, fish, crops and trees — the same rights as people...
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Water, water, everywhere
As water supplies in the west dry up, finding solutions is critical. The good news is that water is all around us, if you know where to look and how to treat it. In this episode, we’re going on a road trip to check out the fascinating technology producing water from the sewer, the ocean and even...
About this show
“How We Survive” is an award-winning podcast from Marketplace about the messy business of climate solutions. From the glitz and glam of Miami to the punishing Arizona desert, to a sinking island that our national security depends on, every season, we take listeners on an adventure. We explore the innovative, surprising, and occasionally disturbing ways that people are navigating solutions to a changing climate.
Previous seasons explored the underbelly of the lithium extraction economy with Tech expert Molly Wood; investigated the red-hot Miami real estate market that’s increasingly vulnerable to storms and sea level rise with journalist Amy Scott; and examined the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — the U..S military — with Marketplace host and former Navy pilot Kai Ryssdal.
In addition to long-form deep dive seasons, “How We Survive” has a spin-off series called “Burning Questions” that empowers listeners with information they can implement in their liv
Hosted by
Marketplace