environmentalimpact

You probably know wind energy projects have been around since the 90s, but did you know they now provide 10% of America’s energy, and more than that in other countries? Learn about what’s ahead for wind and what it’ll need to become a real star like coal.

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Forrest Maready is the author of “The Moth in the Iron Lung”, among other books. It tells a very different story of the Polio epidemic than the one you are likely familiar with, a story with radically different implications for health and medicine. Bret talks with Forest about his book and his interpretation of the evidence with an evolutionary bent to the conversation.

Buy the Moth in the Iron Lung: https://a.co/d/dvYehmh
Follow Forest on X: https://x.com/forrestmaready

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Which is the cream of the crop for your health and the planet?

The supermarket shelves are fairly bulging with plant-based options for people who either prefer not to drink cow's milk or can't for health reasons like an allergy. Some have been around for a while - like soy, almond and the current best-seller in the UK, oat - but there are newer additions to consider like hazelnut, hemp and a drink made from dried peas.

Listener Sian wants to know if these milk alternatives are better for her health and the environment than cow's milk. Do they give you the same nutritional benefits? And what's the carbon footprint of each, and how do they compare to the production of cow's milk?

If you’ve seen an ad, trend or wonder product promising to make you happier, healthier or greener and want to know if there’s any evidence behind it, then email us: sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807

Presenter: Greg Foot Producer: Simon Hoban

Following his seminal book Empireland, Times writer Sathnam Sanghera now looks at the legacy of colonialism for the billions of people Britain once ruled over – from houseplants to the state of democracy. He also tells us about the fallout from Empireland, and why the debate around our own history has become so toxic. 

This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: thetimes.co.uk/storiesofourtimes.

Guest: Sathnam Sanghera, Writer, The Times, and author of Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe.

Host: Manveen Rana.

Clips: The British Council, BBC News, TODAY/NBC, Empire/Goalhanger, Parliament Live, Chatham House, Conservatives.

Read more: Sathnam Sanghera: why I’m taking on the racist trolls again

Email us: storiesofourtimes@thetimes.co.uk

Find out more about our bonus series for Times subscribers: 'Inside the newsroom'

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Executives shell out millions of dollars for the privilege of flying private — but that convenience comes at a steep cost to the rest of us. Zachary Crockett prepares for takeoff.

RESOURCES:

• "High Flyers 2023: How Ultra-Rich Private Jet Travel Costs the Rest of Us and Burns Up the Planet," by Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, and Kalena Thomhave (joint report by The Patriotic Millionaires and the Institute for Policy Studies, 2023).
• "French Green MPs Want to Ban Private Jet Flights, to 'Bring the Rich Back Down to Earth,'" by Stéphane Mandard (Le Monde, 2023).
• "Markey, Velázquez Announce Legislation to Make the Rich Pay for the Public Costs of Private Jet Pollution," press release by Senator Edward J. Markey (2023).
• "Private Planes and Luxury Yachts Aren’t Just Toys for the Ultrawealthy. They’re Also Huge Tax Breaks," by Paul Kiel (ProPublica, 2023).
• "A Teenager Tracked Elon Musk’s Jet on Twitter. Then Came the Direct Message," by Neil Vigdor (The New York Times, 2022).
• "This Article is More Than 1 Year Old: A 17-Minute Flight? The Super-Rich Who Have ‘Absolute Disregard for the Planet,’" by Oliver Milman (The Guardian, 2022).
• "Private Jets — the Achilles Heel of EU Air Traffic Security?" by Crina Boros and Juliet Ferguson (EUobserver, 2018).
• "In Defence of the Ever-Unpopular Corporate Aircraft," by Joe Nocera (Financial Post, 2017).

EXTRAS:

• "Freakonomics Radio Takes to the Skies," series by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

SOURCES:

• Chuck Collins, program director on "Inequality and the Common Good" at the Institute for Policy Studies.
• Anthony Tivnan, founder and president of Magellan Jets.

The creation of atomic weaponry changed human civilization forever, but it also left its mark on the Earth itself -- in both obvious and subtle ways. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss some of the ways in which the world would not be the same. (originally published 9/24/2020)

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About 50 years ago, beef cost more than $7 a pound in today’s dollars. Today, despite high inflation, beef is down to about $4.80 a pound, and chicken is just around $1.80 a pound. But those low prices hide the true costs of the meat we consume — costs that the meat and poultry industries have quietly offloaded onto not only the animals we consume but us humans, too.

Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 14.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates as high as 28 percent. It uses half the earth’s habitable land. Factory farms pose huge threats as potential sources of antibiotic resistance and future pandemics. And the current meat production system loads farmers with often insurmountable levels of debt. Our meat may look cheap at the grocery store, but we are all picking up the tab in ways we’re often starkly unaware of.

Leah Garcés is the chief executive and president of Mercy for Animals and the author of “Grilled: Turning Adversaries Into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.” Few animal rights activists have her breadth of experience: For years, she’s been steeped in the experiences of farmers who raise animals, communities that live alongside industrial animal operations and, of course, the farmed animals that live shorter and more miserable lives. So I invited her on the show for a conversation about what meat really costs and how that perspective could help us build a healthier relationship to the animals we eat and the world we inhabit.

We discuss what it’s like to live next to a hog farm, factory farming’s role in growing antibiotic resistance, how the current system of contract farming saddles individual farmers with debt, the lengths the U.S. government — and taxpayers — goes to to subsidize industrial animal farming, the possibility that the next pandemic will emerge from a crowded factory farm, how high costs — like deforestation in the Amazon — are hidden from consumers at the grocery store, the challenge of helping children make sense of routinized cruelty, whether regenerative agriculture can help undo the damage done by industrial animal farming, the historic animal welfare case currently in front of the Supreme Court and more.

Mentioned:

Mercy for Animals

“Sen. Cory Booker has a plan to stop taxpayer bailouts of Big Meat” by Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella

Book Recommendations:

Wastelands by Corban Addison

Meatonomics by David Robinson Simon

Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison

Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero, and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Leah Douglas and Evi Steyer.

The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.

A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.

Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Mining in the Pacific Ocean was meant to benefit poorer countries, but an international agency gave a Canadian company access to seabed sites.
• Miles below the surface, harvesting metallic nodules may threaten animals found nowhere else on the planet.
• Here are some of the seabed authority emails and other documents The Times assembled as it worked on its investigation of seabed mining.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

What is the history of plastic, and what could the future hold?  Why is perfect pitch, not so perfect, and do any animals have it?  And how on Earth did we end up with these meaningless names for generations?

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Catch Sidney Gish on Tour!

We also learn about: what is plastic? plastics are an invasive species, natural plastics, explosions are at the root of a lot of science, guncotton, oops we made it explosive, should have bought those 666 horses, patent drama, ella slumdog millionaires celloid tennis balls, flammable films, pronouncing bakelite, carrier bags vs plastic bags, the great pacific garbage patch, plastic quiz, all plastics made still exist, the future of plastics, testing our perfect pitch, Tom interviews Sidney Gish, being able to tell home depot paint swatches doesn’t make you a master architect, my brain is wet wet mud, the 1 in 10,000 number is bogus, guessing sine waves vs pianos, the Levitan Effect, more people have pitch memory than perfect pitch, perfect pitch in animals, dolphin octave mirroring, mosquitos matching pitch to mate, let’s bone doooooown, playing happy birthday for rats, describing happy birthday like an alien, perfect pitch RAMPANT among birds, birds understand spectal vocoder music, what is a generation? the origins of generation names, Strauss-Howe generational theory, retrofitting a logical system from a random idea, backfilling generations to arthurian times, THEY WERE PLAYWRIGHTS, there should never just be One center for research, a london doctor once said…, generational character archetypes, social theory shouldn’t sound like a D&D campaign, millennial and their avocado toast, why don’t millennials like Blue’s Clues anymore? people have always been complaining about “lewd wicked children”, scientists vs the pew research center.

Sources:

The Science Museum: The Age of Plastic

Essentials of Polymer Science and Engineering

UN: From Birth to Ban: A History of the Plastic Shopping Bag

Nat Geo: Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Ocean Clean Up: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Plastic Bag Statistics

Earth Day: Fact Sheet- Single Use Plastics

Climate Foresight: The Future of Plastics is Uncertain

University of Birmingham: The Fate and Sustainable Future of Plastic

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Carden & Cline's Excellent Review of the Myth's of Perfect Pitch

Marisa Hoeschele's Amazing Review of Animal Pitch Perception

Guessing Sine Waves vs Piano Notes Experiment

Pitch Memory TV Theme Experiment

The Levitin Effect

Mating Mosquitos Hamonize

Singing Happy Birthday to Rats

Songbird Hearing Anatomy

Starling Spectral Shape Experiment

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Pew Research: The Whys and Hows of Generations Research

Millennial Means Nothing

Open Letter to the Pew Research Center on Generation Labels

The Avocado Toast Article

BBC History on Complaining about the Youths

Michael Kosta re-educates the public on how to go to the movies, with tips on phone etiquette, mindfulness of other viewers and more.

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In 1986 Cleveland released more than a million helium balloons at once! It didn’t go at all according to plan!

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r/childfree is one of the fastest growing communities on Reddit and it's for people who do NOT want children. They don't want to be told why they should have them, how much they'll regret it if they don't, and how "selfish" they are for not "contributing to society." This choice is becoming more common, yet it's still questioned ferociously. We hear from some of these people and explore how this Reddit community offers support when friends and family don't.