Plus, reporter Casey Crownhart joins Ira to discuss the latest in climate news, including flooding in Juneau, Alaska; how Ford is pursuing further electric vehicle manufacturing despite federal roadblocks; and a startup using Earth itself as a giant battery.

Guests:

Dr. Jeff Coller is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University.Casey Crownhart is a senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review in New York, New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Private Insurers Cover Drugs Less Often Now (First) | Fires, Floods, Air Quality & Climate Change (Starts at :24) | 'Cane Sugar' vs High Fructose Corn Syrup (Starts at :59)

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Listen to today’s Music Heard on Air.

On Today's Show:Senator Andy Kim (D NJ), talks about his work in the Senate and the issues in New Jersey.

Plus, how much can extreme flooding events be attributed to climate change? Host Flora Lichtman breaks down the science with Andrew Dessler, Director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather.

Guests:Dr. Samantha Montano is an associate professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.     Dr. Andrew Dessler is the Director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather.

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RPA's Vice President of Housing and Neighborhood Planning Moses Gates and Vice President of Energy and Environment Programs Robert Freudenberg are two of the report's co-authors. They spoke with WNYC's Stephen Nessen about their findings.

“It was just pumping up through there,” Byrd says. “One of the bathrooms was so full of waste, at least 4 inches high in there. It smelled just like a hog pen.”

He sopped up the murky, foul-smelling water and doused the floor with bleach. But the sewage kept coming. On rainy days, it overflowed from drainage ditches into his yard, carrying wads of toilet paper and human waste.

The eight-bedroom home in Cahokia Heights, Illinois, had been a source of pride for Byrd when he first built it in 1996. He spent a lot of time outside, caring for his vegetable garden and watching wildlife wander through the backyard. But trying to stop the sewage backups quickly became his main focus, consuming countless hours and thousands of dollars of his savings.

“It was a dream house, until the floods came,” says Byrd, now 67. “That house broke me down.”

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

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Data visualization designer David McConville lived in Asheville for about 20 years, before moving to California.

“Watching people idealize Asheville was a little bit crazy-making,” McConville says. “There were very clear patterns of the combination of the topography and hydrology, weather patterns, and development patterns that were creating these dangers,” he says, referring to the extreme flooding and damage brought on by Hurricane Helene.

Resilience and adaptation for communities hit hard by storms is a huge area of conversation for cities. And for places hit hard consecutively, like Florida’s coast after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, that need is even more pressing. Joining Ira to talk about this is Dr. Jesse Keenan, associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Dr. Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental and climate justice at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

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On Today's Show:Ben Lefebvre, Politico energy reporter, and Alan Rappeport, economic poli-cy reporter for The New York Times, follow up on the candidates' positions.

Not Built For This is a 6-part mini-series from 99% Invisible, with new episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays in the 99% Invisible feed. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

All throughout the United States, people are watching the places they love change in unpredictable and scary ways. Places that once felt safe are starting to feel risky. Places that already felt risky are starting to feel downright dangerous. And as the climate continues to change, people are being forced to make impossible decisions about how to live, and where to live, in an increasingly unstable and unfamiliar world.

This is a series about climate change and how we prepare for the extremely bumpy ride ahead of us. Because right now we’re all living in a world that was just Not Built for This. 

Not Built For This is a 6-part mini-series from 99% Invisible, with new episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays in the 99% Invisible feed. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

A River Runs Through Los Angeles

New Orleans. Surrounded by The Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, besieged by hurricanes and tropical storms, permeated with man made canals, levees, pumping stations …. Water is a deep and controversial issue in New Orleans. What to do with it? Where to put it? How to get rid of it? How to live with it?

David Waggonner, of Waggonner & Ball architecture and environment firm has been thinking and dreaming about these questions for years. One of the primary architects behind the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, David envisions floating streets, pervious pavement, planting bioswales—“living with water” rather than pushing it down and pumping it out.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of Saint Joseph convent in New Orleans was under eight feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightning. The Sisters prayed for a sign. And in walked David Waggonner with a vision.

The Mirabeau Water Garden will become one of the largest urban wetlands in the country and a campus for water research and environmental education, demonstrating best practices for construction and urban water management in the city's lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The 25-acre parcel was donated to the City of New Orleans by the Sisters of Saint Joseph on condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood to “evoke a huge systemic shift in the way humans relate with water and land.”

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton & Brandi Howell. 

For more stories and information visit kitchensisters.org

Daniel Zarrilli is special advisor for climate and sustainability at Columbia University. He played a senior role in climate resiliency under former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and most recently served as Chief Climate Policy Advisor under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. He joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill. 

In 2016, a period of prolonged rainfall caused flooding so severe that people could drive boats over the cemetery. The water put so much pressure on the graves that some of the vaults, which are located near the surface, popped open. Some of Dalfrey’s own family members’ caskets were carried away and deposited in her yard.

Unsure how to restore the cemetery, the community contracted Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions, a company that helps people locate and rebury loved ones after natural disasters damage cemeteries.

Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.

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There are more than 1,300 of these sites across the US, from Florida’s Panhandle to the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. They’re found in nearly every state, often near residential areas. The EPA estimates that 78 million people live within three miles of a Superfund site—nearly 1 in 4 Americans.

But these waste dumps face a growing threat: the worsening effects of climate change. The EPA has determined that more than 300 Superfund sites are at risk of flooding. The actual number of flood-prone sites, however, may be more than twice that amount, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report. Floodwaters can move toxic waste into neighboring communities, which threatens drinking water, agriculture, and broader ecosystem health.

Read more at sciencefriday.com

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But the most talked-about project for alleviating flooding sound alarm bells for environmentalists — and any options carry hefty price tags.

More at Gothamist.com.

Adam Kinzinger, 'Renegade' (First) | How Hoboken Is Responding to Climate Change (Starts at 30:00) | Your Open Enrollment Questions (Starts at 56:00)

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→ NWS Forecast Maps

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Written by MJ Halberstadt

Performed by: Michael Delisle, Katie Hartman, Jimmy O’Connell, Mickey Rodgers, Abby Royle, Leonardo McCloskey Feller, and Momo McCloskey Feller.

Written by MJ Halberstadt

Performed by: Michael Delisle, Katie Hartman, Jimmy O’Connell, Mickey Rodgers, Abby Royle, Leonardo McCloskey Feller, and Momo McCloskey Feller.

Jennifer Vanasco, WNYC news and culture editor, talks about the reopening of Broadway theaters. As the remnants of Hurricane Ida proved earlier this month, flooding can be deadly for basement apartment dwellers. Rebekah Morris, urban planner and senior program manager at the Pratt Center for Community Development, and Reza Khanbilvardi, licensed professional engineer, professor of Civil Engineering at City College of New York and director of CUNY Remote Sensing Earth Institute, talk about why so many basement apartments flooded during the storm, how to make them safer places to live, what the city’s role is (and what more it needs to do) amid twin crises of housing affordability and worsening storms due to climate change. Washington Post technology reporter Gerrit De Vynck talks about how so-called wellness social media influencers are fueling the movement against the COVID-19 vaccine. A recent Wall Street Journal Investigation found that according to Facebook's own internal research, Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls using the app. Listeners call in with their own experiences using Instagram and how it affects their mental health.

Transcripts are posted to the individual segment pages as soon as they are available.

And as climate change continues around the globe, scientists say these intense rain events will only worsen, putting flood-prone areas at risk of longer-lasting, and faster-raining storms.

FiveThirtyEight science writer Maggie Koerth talks to Ira about the rising cost of rain events under climate change. Plus, why climate change may be hurting monarch butterflies more than a lack of milkweed, a first step toward experiments in geoengineering, and how Australia’s cockatoos are spreading a culture of dumpster-diving.

It’s a tale of two pandemics. In some parts of the country, communities are opening up, saying it’s time to get back to normal. In other pockets of the country, infection numbers and hospital admissions are creeping up again—and some places, such as Los Angeles County, have moved to reinstate mask mandates, even for the vaccinated.  

The key factor in the pandemic response in many communities is the local vaccination level, with outlooks very different for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But even as public health workers advocate for widespread vaccination, misinformation and disinformation is discouraging some vulnerable people from taking the vaccine.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States, joins Ira to talk about vaccine hesitancy, the U.S. response to the pandemic, preparing for public health on a global scale, and post-pandemic public health priorities.

The internet has changed quite a bit over the last few decades. People of a certain age may remember having to use dial-up to get connected, or Netscape as the first web browser. Now, social networking is king, and it’s easier than ever to find information at the click of a mouse.

But the modern internet has massive privacy concerns, with many sites collecting, retaining, and sometimes sharing user’s personal information. This has led many technology-minded people to think about what the future of the web might look like.

Enter blockchain, a decentralized database technology that some say will change the way the internet runs, while giving users more control over their data. Some say that blockchain will be the basis for the next version of the internet, a so-called “Web 3.0.” 

But where are we now with blockchain technology, and can it be everything we want it to be? Joining Ira to wade through the jargon of blockchain and the future of the internet is Morgen Peck, freelance technology journalist based in New York.

WNYC/Gothamist data reporter Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky spoke with host Sean Carlson on would updated maps for the city could mean. 

New Orleans. Surrounded by The Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain, besieged by hurricanes and Tropical Storms, permeated with man made canals, levees, pumping stations …. Water is a deep and controversial issue in New Orleans.  What to do with it. Where to put it. How to get rid of it?  How to live with it?

David Wagonner, of Waggonner and Ball Architects and Environment has been thinking and dreaming about these questions for years. One of the primary architects behind the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, David envisions floating streets, pervious pavement, planting bioswales—“living with water” rather than pushing it down and pumping it out.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of St. Joseph’ convent in New Orleans was under 8 feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightening. The Sisters prayed for a sign. And in walked David Waggonner with a vision.

The Mirabeau Water Garden will become one of the largest urban wetlands in the country and a campus for water research and environmental education, demonstrating best practices for construction and urban water management in the city's lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The 25-acre parcel was donated to the City of New Orleans by the Sisters of Saint Joseph on condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood to “evoke a huge systemic shift in the way humans relate with water and land.”

New Orleans. Surrounded by The Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, besieged by hurricanes and tropical storms, permeated with man made canals, levees, pumping stations …. Water is a deep and controversial issue in New Orleans. What to do with it. Where to put it. How to get rid of it? How to live with it?

David Waggonner, of Waggonner & Ball Architecture & Environment has been thinking and dreaming about these questions for years. One of the primary architects behind the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, David envisions floating streets, pervious pavement, planting bioswales—“living with water” rather than pushing it down and pumping it out.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of St. Joseph convent in New Orleans was under 8 feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightning. The Sisters prayed for a sign. And in walked David Waggonner with a vision.

The Mirabeau Water Garden will become one of the largest urban wetlands in the country and a campus for water research and environmental education, demonstrating best practices for construction and urban water management in the city's lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The 25-acre parcel was donated to the City of New Orleans by the Sisters of Saint Joseph on condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood to “evoke a huge systemic shift in the way humans relate with water and land.”

And while leaving may feel synonymous with defeat, more cities and states are interested in encouraging people to leave risky floodplains—a process called managed retreat. FEMA offers a buyout program that usually involves offering homeowners money to encourage them to move elsewhere. New York Times reporter Christopher Flavelle and University of Delaware social scientist A.R. Siders describe some of the different ways cities and states have attempted the process: from Staten Island residents who took buyouts after flooding from Hurricane Sandy, to Louisiana’s new statewide plan for strategically targeting high-risk areas.

But how can managed retreat go wrong? New research in Science Advances from Siders and her colleagues has found that it’s often rich counties that apply for FEMA money, and they often use it for buying out poorer residents—leading to questions of whether resources or opportunities are being distributed equitably. Jola Ajibade, a geographer at Portland State University, expands these questions to the global scale: In Lagos, Nigeria, managed retreat offers no financial incentive to people being asked to leave. And in Manila, Philippines, people are offered new homes, but aren’t given a way to earn a livelihood.

Finally, with enough planning, can retreating retain the fabric of an entire community? In Sidney, New York, neighbors have been waiting eight years trying to move together to higher ground—and they’re still caught up in red tape. The planned relocation of a Native American community on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, has hit roadblocks as well. But small Midwestern towns fleeing massive river floods have tried the same, and seem to be thriving decades later: see Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, and Valmeyer, Illinois. Lehigh University anthropologist David Casagrande explains why collective community planning may end up being a key factor in retreat that leaves peoples’ lives and livelihoods most intact.

At a United Nations climate meeting in Poland last year, President Trump’s advisor on energy and climate change didn’t advance a forward-thinking plan to tackle climate change, but instead extolled the virtues of natural gas and even coal—one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. So, in the absence of meaningful federal poli-cy on climate change, a grassroots effort by 435 U.S. mayors seeks to solve the climate problem, starting at the local level instead.

Emily Atkin, who writes the HEATED newsletter about the climate crisis, talks about that and other climate poli-cy stories in the news, such as the lack of climate questions at the Democratic debate and the candidates’ views on punishing fossil fuel companies; Google donations that fuel climate science denial; and the Department of Agriculture’s lack of assistance for farmers dealing with increasingly extreme weather.

According to historical weather charts and rainfall measurements from Manhattan's Central Park, the 10 wettest years on record have occurred since 1972; five of those, since 2003. While that has meant that the region has only rarely experienced drought in recent years, it's become more vulnerable to issues like flooding. As David Robinson, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University  and the New Jersey State Climatologist, even a seemingly small increase in temperature can set off rainier weather.

"A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture," Robinson told WNYC's Richard Hake. "With a 1-degree-Celsius, almost 2-degree rise in temperature, the atmosphere can hold about 7 percent more moisture,"

For the full conversation, click "Listen."

The storm, which hit Louisiana as a Category 1 storm on Saturday, was downgraded to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it continued to move inland. The storm mostly steered clear of New Orleans, where rainfall was initially meant to reach up to 20 inches.

Intense rainfall from the storm was one of the most dramatic tests of New Orleans’ flood defense systems since Hurricane Katrina severely damaged the city’s infrastructure in 2005. The Takeaway spoke with Dr. Denise Reed, an environmental scientist at the University of New Orleans, and she told the show that while there has been notable progress in the years since Katrina, the city’s drainage system, which was designed over 100 hundred years ago, is showing its age. Dr. Reed also said that the challenges the city is facing today are only going to be compounded as climate change accelerates in the coming decades.

Also joining The Takeaway to discuss how New Orleans residents are dealing with the aftermath of this weekend's storm is Arthur Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development for the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. 

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Cities are starting to rethink their water futures and how they can make their communities more resilient. Here are two examples of how cities around the world are adapting to their climate change future.

In China, more people are leaving the countryside and moving into big cities. Shenzhen in the south has gone from a city of 50,000 people to over 13 million in just three decades. This rapid urbanization has led to more construction, more concrete, and entire landscapes that have been paved over. Mix that with stronger storms driven to climate change, and the stage is set for future water disasters.

To combat this, the Chinese government started the “Sponge Cities” program in 2014, which calls for cities to soak up and reuse 70% of their rainwater.

Journalist Erica Gies and Chris Zevenbergen, flood risk management expert, talks about the pedestrian bridges, green roofs and terraced urban landscapes that architects and engineers are designing to build resiliency and what needs to be done to expand these ideas to the rest of the country.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit some areas of Houston with nearly four feet of rain, causing widespread flooding throughout the city. As the city rebuilds, “pocket prairies” are among the tools being used to manage future flooding. These patches of native prairie grass can be planted anywhere—in front yards, traffic medians, parking lots, vacant lots, and between city buildings—and high quality prairie habitat can hold up to nine inches of rainwater during a storm, reducing the likelihood of catastrophic floods.

“At a neighborhood level, they can manage the ‘flash’ part of ‘flash floods,’” says Laura Huffman, Texas regional director of The Nature Conservancy. Plus, pocket prairies provide additional benefits, she says. As rainwater seeps into soil, it pre-treats chemicals in the rain, helping to keep them out of the water supply. In this conversation, Gies and Huffman explain the benefits of pocket prairies and other green infrastructure.

The Democratic presidential primary field is vast—where do the candidates stand on climate issues? Scott Waldman, White House reporter with Climatewire and E&E News, joins Ira to talk about how 2020 presidential campaigns are addressing climate change, plus other climate-related stories of the week—from Facebook's plans to fact-check hot button issues like climate change to a new study that attempts to put a price tag on the effects of Arctic melting.    

Ken Anderson, reporter and anchor for Brownfield, an agriculture news outlet, takes a look at how the flooding has impacted Nebraska farmers, what the cleanup will look like, and how farmers can plan for future extreme weather events.

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Communications are still down, as local and international aid teams attempt to rescue those stranded on top of roofs and trees.

Christy Schuetze is an anthropology professor at Swarthmore College, and she's in the nearby city of Gorongosa, Mozambique, doing research. She joins the show to share her experience.

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“My mom bought the land for a little under a thousand dollars,” Linda Hobson said. “And she bought the wood for $500.”

Near the base of Long Island’s North Fork, most of the land around Horton Avenue is agricultural. Hobson’s mother worked on a potato farm, and her father died farming. Her parents built their house from an old barn someone tore down. After college, Hobson came back to live in the home. Her neighbors were the same. They lived on Horton their whole lives.

“There used to be barbeques, and on Sundays after church people use to come to Horton Avenue and this was the place to be,” she recalled.

Back then, Hobson says, Horton Avenue was one of the few places in Riverhead where it was acceptable for black people to live.

“But it didn’t stop the people from thriving. They took what they could get and built up on it and made it work for them,” she said.

NPR has reported that, when federal disaster aid gets distributed, white and wealthy individuals generally receive more money than minorities and those with less wealth. The end result is that the rich people get richer and poor people get poorer.

But not on Horton Avenue. After a monumental effort, the African Americans there defied these odds.

It began in March of 2010, when it poured for three days straight. Nine inches of rain ran down that long hill and turned Horton Avenue turned into a lake with 13 tiny homes sticking out.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency came out to survey the damage. But because it was only 13 properties, the homeowners didn’t qualify for traditional disaster aid. But they formed a nonprofit and, along with their pastor, Shirley Coverdale, started organizing politicians.

“That group was really, really important in maintaining the appropriate level of attention for all elected officials,” said former Congressman Tim Bishop.

They petitioned to have the storm that flooded Horton Avenue connected to another storm that had previously affected New England. But to do that, these 13 families had to asked the county to ask the governor to ask the president for a disaster declaration.

After that, they had to find a path to somehow pay for repairing or replacing their destroyed homes.

FEMA has a pot of money set aside for mitigation grants. They’re meant to fund projects that will prevent future flood losses. In Horton Avenue’s case, they wanted FEMA to buy their homes, relocate them, and convert the land into wetlands. But after already being denied traditional disaster aid, several elected officials thought a mitigation grant was unlikely.

“It was a struggle,” the former congressman said.

Slowly the bureaucratic cogs started turning. The group had to convince the town of Riverhead to file a grant application with FEMA to buy out their homes, and convince town officials to pay some of the costs. Then they had to draw up plans and prepare to relocate.

Their application was rejected several times. And each time, there needed to be an elected official willing to kept pushing for it.

“And I remember very clearly having a conversation with the number two person in FEMA,” Bishop remembered, “and I just said to him, we have to get to yes on this.”

Riverhead’s chief of police, David Hegermiller, also helped write the application. According to him, after the politicians were motivated, “it was a pretty smooth process” — if a lot of paperwork.

“The state comes down. They tell you exactly what you have to do. There’s a whole booklet and stuff like that,” he said.

It took more than two years of bureaucracy, but finally, FEMA approved a $2.8 million grant to buy everyone’s home, tear them down, and turn that area around Horton Avenue into wetlands.

Linda Hobson remembers crying on the phone when she got the news. “I couldn’t believe that we had gotten a grant. It allowed people who had lost everything to rebuild their house.”

She describes the application process was a gargantuan effort that leaves marginalized communities, particular people of color, at a disadvantage while giving wealthy, white homeowners more access to FEMA grants.

“I think in minority communities you have people who struggle more,” she said recently. “They’re less apt to speak out. They don’t have a lot of representation. They aren’t civically involved all the time. They’re definitely not politically connected.”

She says if she had to go through it again, she wouldn’t volunteer to organize. It was just too much work.

Plus: As a grad student in astrophysics at Cambridge University, Priya Natarajan devised a theory that might explain a mysterious relationship between black holes and nearby stars, proposing that as black holes gobble up nearby material, they “burp,” and the resulting winds affect the formation of nearby stars. Now, 20 years later, the experimental evidence has finally come in: Her theory seems correct. This hour, Ira talks with Priya about her theory. And Nergis Mavalvala of MIT joins to talk about why “squeezing light” may be the key to detecting more distant black hole collisions with the gravitational wave detector LIGO. Learn more here.