Episodes

  • Introducing “How We Survive”

    Introducing “How We Survive”
    Sep 21 2021
    The climate crisis is here. The Western U.S. is burning, much of the Northeast is underwater after a hurricane and towns in Europe are swept away by massive floods. Time is slipping away to stop the worst effects of a warming planet, and the world is looking for solutions.

    On “How We Survive,” Molly Wood explores the technology that could provide some of those solutions, the business of acclimatizing to an increasingly inhospitable planet, and the way people have to change if we’re going to make it in an altered world.

    Decarbonization requires a lot of batteries, and many batteries require lithium. The need for lithium is driving a modern gold rush for the metal that could save the world, but relies on an old, dirty technology: mining. This season, we’ll dive deep into the economics, the tech and the human stories behind the rush for “white gold.” And unlike the gold rush of the 1800s, this time, our survival might depend on it.

    It all starts Oct. 6. Listen to the trailer now and be sure to follow the show so you don’t miss an episode.
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    4 mins
  • White Gold

    White Gold
    Oct 6 2021
    To get off fossil fuels, you need a lot of batteries. To get a lot of batteries, you need to mine a lot of lithium. Welcome to Thacker Pass, Nevada, where a proposed lithium mine has sparked protests from farmers, ranchers and the native Paiute–Shoshone tribe. Some tribal members reject the idea that they should sacrifice their ancestral home for the climate fight, while others say that their history is being distorted and co-opted by protestors. And farmers and ranchers in the area who have never had to sacrifice their way of life really don’t want to. We traveled to Thacker Pass to report on a fractured community thrust to the front line of the fight to save us all.
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    36 mins
  • The Necessary Evil

    The Necessary Evil
    Oct 13 2021

    Mining is a complicated business. It’s destructive, it’s dangerous. But in order to get the lithium we need to power the energy transition, mining could be a necessary evil.

    In this episode, we go from protests in South America to a gold mine in Nevada, where we take a ride on what looks like a massive Tonka truck, all in the hopes of finding out if there’s a better way to do things while getting the metal we need to survive.

    After talking to mining experts, environmental justice advocates and a very vocal CEO, we get some answers.
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    33 mins
  • Electrify Everything

    Electrify Everything
    Oct 20 2021
    To survive the climate crisis, we need to electrify everything: our cars, of course, but also our appliances, homes, mass transit, entire neighborhoods and cities. Everything. That’s no small task. So to better understand why electrifying everything matters, and how we’re going to do it, we look at the aftermath of a natural disaster and talk to one man who used batteries to save lives. Then we spend a little time with an entrepreneur whose vision for an electric future includes turning every building into a Tesla (sort of). And we talk to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on how we can seize this moment.
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    29 mins
  • The Resource

    The Resource
    Oct 27 2021
    We’re back on the road this week, to California’s Salton Sea, a salty lake in the desert that was once marketed as “Palm Springs with water.” Today the water is receding and increasingly toxic. The community that once thrived here now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. But there is some hope. There’s a huge amount of lithium all around the Salton Sea in the bubbling hot brine deep underground. Some hopeful modern-day 49ers have big plans to get it out. If they can only succeed, the lithium here could meet 40 percent of the world’s demand.
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    36 mins
  • Gnarly Brine

    Gnarly Brine
    Nov 3 2021

    Our journey through the California desert continues. We visit the quiet front-runner in the race to extract lithium from the superhot, corrosive brine bubbling underground. And we dive into the past to look at an earlier attempt to harvest lithium from the Salton Sea. That project ended in failure, but its patents live on. And those patents could be a roadblock for the companies racing to extract the “white gold” today. With millions of dollars invested and a global supply of lithium waiting below the Salton Sea, there is a lot on the line.
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    33 mins
  • Sci-Fi Intermission

    Sci-Fi Intermission
    Nov 10 2021
    Our favorite place to look for climate solutions: Science fiction. In fact, sci-fi (and its sub-genre, cli-fi) is what got us thinking about adaptation in the first place. Cli-fi can get a little bleak — weather turns deadly; earth becomes uninhabitable; humans flee to space. And while it’s entertaining to imagine the worst-case scenarios, the best of the writing is hopeful. It allows us to dream up solutions that don’t involve billionaires, rockets or climate-changing satellite stations. This week, Molly sits down with climate fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss his most recent book, “The Ministry for the Future,” which almost reads as a blueprint for saving the planet.
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    21 mins
  • The Better Battery

    The Better Battery
    Nov 17 2021
    Imagine a future where all the lithium we need has already been extracted from the ground and is endlessly recycled. Or where the batteries we use to store renewable energy are made from abundantly available materials — like salt. This episode, we visit a lab where a couple of brilliant scientists are trying to build the batteries of the future. And we drop in on a company that’s extending the life cycle of lithium through something called “urban mining.”
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    28 mins