PODCAST

Earth Wise

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A look at our changing environment.

education natural sciences

All Episodes

2:00

Waste colonialism

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/24

Plastic pollution is a pervasive environmental problem that manifests itself in multiple ways. Very little plastic is recycled; most of it ends up in landfills or is burned, both solutions having serious shortcomings. High-income countries – such as many in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Australia – facing increasingly strict regulations in disposing of […]

2:00

Restored wetlands and climate

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/23

Forests are well-known to be major storehouses of carbon in the environment. Less known but also extremely important are peatlands and wetlands and, like forests, both have suffered declines as a result of human activity. And, like forests, both are seeing efforts at restoration. Restoring peatlands has the drawback that it initially causes a spike […]

2:00

Energy storage in New York isn’t easy

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/19

The state of New York has the ambitious goal of having 70% of its electricity come from renewable sources in 2030 and a 100% zero-emission electric grid by 2040. Meeting these goals is becoming increasingly unlikely as the state faces multiple challenges including local opposition to projects, rising inflation, and the termination of offshore wind […]

2:00

Five-minute car charging

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/17

A long-standing complaint about electric cars is the amount of time it takes to charge their batteries. A decade ago, this was a serious shortcoming. Even at the fastest chargers available at the time, it could take hours to refill the electric fuel tank. Combined with the limited range earlier electric cars had, this made […]

2:00

Melting in Svalbard

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/16

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago north of the mainland. It is known for its glaciers, tundra, and wildlife – especially polar bears, Arctic foxes, and reindeer. It is home to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a place to safeguard critical seeds for the world’s food supply. The location was chosen for its remoteness and perpetual […]

2:00

Help from elephants in cooling buildings

Earth Wise ·

2025/09/15

Elephant ears play a crucial role in keep the giant animals cool. Elephants don’t have significant sweat glands. Instead, they rely on their large ears to regulate body temperature. Their ears make up 20% of their body’s surface area. The ears act like a natural air conditioner, making use of a network of blood vessels […]

2:00

Better blue LEDs

Earth Wise ·

2025/08/27

LEDs have become the standard source of energy-efficient lighting. They make use of semiconductors to turn electricity into light. Depending upon the materials used to make them, LEDs produce different colors. In the early 1990s, the first blue LEDs were discovered, ultimately earning the Nobel Prize in physics, and enabling LEDs to produce white light, […]

2:00

An anti-malaria breakthrough

Earth Wise ·

2025/08/26

The deadliest animal in the world is the mosquito. Mosquitos infected 263 million people with malaria in 2023, leading to 600,000 deaths, 80% of which were children. Malaria is caused by infection from Plasmodium parasites. The parasites are transmitted to humans from the bite of infected female mosquitos. Researchers at the University of California San […]

2:00

A hidden cost of climate change

Earth Wise ·

2025/08/25

Climate change is dramatically impacting food production by altering rainfall patterns, increasing temperatures, and triggering more frequent extreme weather events. These changes make crops more vulnerable to droughts, floods, heatwaves, pests, and diseases, leading to lower yields and greater uncertainty for farmers worldwide. But climate change isn’t just reshaping our planet. It’s also changing what’s […]

2:00

New Orleans is sinking

Earth Wise ·

2025/08/14

As climate change accelerates, rising sea levels are putting coastal communities at greater risk of flooding and storm surge. Driven by melting glaciers and warming oceans, global sea levels are rising at an increasing rate. For low-lying cities like New Orleans, even small increases can have serious consequences. And that risk is compounded by another […]

2:00

Forest-based agroforestry

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/30

Tree plantings have become a go-to climate solution for governments and conservation groups due to the carbon-storing potential of trees. While planting new trees on open farmland would help capture additional carbon, a new study led by scientists from Yale School of the Environment suggests a powerful alternative: forest-based agroforestry. Instead of clearing land for […]

2:00

The world is warming and it’s happening faster

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/29

This summer has already seen unprecedented heat in many places. It started with a record-breaking heat dome in June in the United States. Alaska had its first-ever heat advisory that month. Europe has seen triple-digit temperatures in cities like Paris, Madrid, and Rome and even in places like Austria, Sarjevo, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia. On […]

2:00

AI and greener cement

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/28

Cement pretty much holds the modern world together. The amount of cement required to create our infrastructure is almost incomprehensible. By weight, humanity consumes more cement than food, about 3 pounds per person per day. The cement industry produces around eight percent of global CO2 emissions, which is more than the aviation industry. So, if […]

2:00

Raccoons in Europe

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/25

Tens of thousands of raccoons live in Kassel, a city of 200,000 people in central Germany known for its art scene. Overall, there are an estimated 1.5 million raccoons in Germany. The omnivorous mammals are native to North America, but they were brought to Germany in the 1930s for fur farming. Fur farming ultimately ceased […]

2:00

Deconstructing buildings

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/24

An estimated 30 million tons of wood waste from construction and demolition in the U.S. ends up in landfills each year. A growing number of cities have launched initiatives to reuse the wood instead. It is a strategy to reduce carbon emissions, cut waste, and shift towards a circular economy. For a long time, salvaged […]

2:00

Marine heatwaves are spreading

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/21

Sea surface temperatures broke records in 2024 and a quarter of the world’s oceans are experiencing temperatures that qualify as a marine heatwave. A marine heatwave is a prolonged period during which ocean temperatures are significantly warmer than average for that specific location and time of year. Unusual heatwaves have occurred in all the major […]

2:00

Indoor air and outdoor pollution

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/11

The majority of us spend about 80% of our time indoors. The quality of the air that we breathe depends on the age and type of building we occupy along with any sources of indoor pollution that may exist and, ultimately, the quality of the air outdoors. The HVAC used to heat, ventilate, and cool […]

2:00

New nuclear power for New York

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/09

Nuclear power has been around since the 1950s, but it has fallen out of favor in recent decades, in part due to a couple of traumatic disasters at nuclear power plants. In fact, only two new nuclear power plants have been built in the US in the past 30 years, and they took a very […]

2:00

Can birds outfly climate change?

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/08

As global temperatures continue to rise and ecosystems shift, animals are left with limited options. They must either adjust to the changing conditions in their habitats or relocate to cooler environments. For many species, neither choice is easy – or sometimes even possible. Ecologists had long assumed birds were among the most adaptable species in […]

2:00

More trouble from sea urchins

Earth Wise ·

2025/07/07

Sea Urchins are real troublemakers. On the West Coast, the sea urchin population exploded when the sunflower sea stars that eat them were decimated by a wasting disease. Urchins devour kelp and they ate up 96% of the region’s kelp forests. Kelp forests serve as shelter and food for a vast array of marine life […]

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Earth Wise

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