Episodios

  • Shon Hiatt: Lithium and the Salton Sea

    Shon Hiatt: Lithium and the Salton Sea
    Jun 17 2025
    Lithium - it's the third element on the periodic table, but most of us don't know too much about it besides that it's in electric car batteries. This week on Sea Change Radio, we welcome University of Southern California Business Professor Shon Hiatt to learn more about the lithium industry - how this mineral is mined, its importance to the energy and transportation sectors, and why lithium’s market price has collapsed over the past few years. We use the enormous lithium deposits in Southern California’s Salton Sea as a jumping off point for a larger conversation about all things lithium, including the environmental impacts of its extraction.
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    29 m
  • Pam Walaski and Crystal Kolden: Dealing With Extreme Temps

    Pam Walaski and Crystal Kolden: Dealing With Extreme Temps
    Jun 10 2025
    As summer season starts to heat up, it’s important to remember that soaring temps endanger the lives of millions. Unfortunately, the federal government is not doing much to help. There are absolutely no federal statutes guaranteeing the rights of workers to legally leave their workplace to prevent heat injury (incidentally, as we discussed in previous episodes of Sea Change Radio, there are no federal laws protecting incarcerated people from extreme temperatures, either). This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with Pam Walaski, the President of the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), about the heat-related health workplace guidelines her organization is trying to introduce into OSHA standards. Then we dig into the Sea Change Radio archives to learn more about wildfire prevention and safety from Crystal Kolden, a professor at UC Merced who’s also a former firefighter.
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    29 m
  • Will Potter: Factory Farming and the Myth of the Little Red Barn

    Will Potter: Factory Farming and the Myth of the Little Red Barn
    Jun 3 2025
    Did you know that this country has a host of so-called “ag-gag” laws in place that criminalize the work of photographers and journalists who expose abuses on factory farms? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with investigative journalist Will Potter whose new book, “Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable,” gives us a dark but thought-provoking view of factory farming. We talk about his research, hear what it reveals about our food system and this country’s veering towards fascism, and look at how American agriculture has changed over the past century.
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    29 m
  • Gustav Peebles: Not Just Banking, Carbon Banking

    Gustav Peebles: Not Just Banking, Carbon Banking
    May 27 2025
    Have you ever thought about how random it seems that gold is worth, well, its weight in gold? This week’s guest on Sea Change Radio, Gustav Peebles, is an anthropologist and monetary policy expert at Stockholm University. He has not only wondered about the way human beings assign value to a particular element on the periodic table, he has pondered what it would look like if we we applied precious valuation to an element that really matters for our own survival, like atmospheric carbon. In his new book, co-written with Benjamin Luzzatto, “The First and Last Bank: Climate Change, Currency, and a New Carbon Commons,” Peebles lays out a novel, scalable way not to just dole out carbon credits, but to actually monetize the conservation of carbon waste. We discuss the fundamentals of a possible carbon banking system, and talk through just how such a concept might roll out.
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    29 m
  • Umair Irfan: It’s Getting Hot In Here

    Umair Irfan: It’s Getting Hot In Here
    May 20 2025
    As the summer sizzle approaches, it's time to talk about the paradox of air conditioning: how keeping ourselves cooler functions to make the planet hotter. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Umair Irfan, a Climate Reporter from Vox.com, to discuss air conditioning and the promise of renewable energy. We look at how some of the planet's hottest cities are trying to survive in the face of consistent, record-breaking high temperatures and talk about how breakthroughs in the battery storage sector provide some hope that the renewable energy market will continue to grow.
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    29 m
  • Muralist/Cartoonist Sirron Norris

    Muralist/Cartoonist Sirron Norris
    May 13 2025
    The list of things for which San Francisco is famous include iconic bridges, world-class Pride celebrations, excellent food, and murals. The streets of San Francisco are a veritable outdoor gallery with classics from Diego Rivera, artistic achievements lining modest alleys like Balmy and Albion, and dozens of works by today's guest on Sea Change Radio. This week we are speaking with San Francisco artist and muralist extraordinaire, Sirron Norris, about his life’s work. We hear about the road he took to become a painter, the greatest challenges a muralist faces, and the delicate balance of creating art that both enhances and is integrated into its surroundings.
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    29 m
  • Talking Truths And Fictions With Steve Almond, Pt. 2

    Talking Truths And Fictions With Steve Almond, Pt. 2
    May 6 2025
    This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with author Steve Almond. In this episode, we delve further into how to navigate the choppy seas in a new age of political uncertainty and social unrest and chat about a couple of areas of pop culture near and dear to Almond, namely - candy and rock music. Then, we hear a bit from our 2012 conversation with Steve Almond where he talks about the right wing’s predilection for magical thinking.
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    29 m
  • Talking Truths And Fictions With Steve Almond, Pt. 1

    Talking Truths And Fictions With Steve Almond, Pt. 1
    Apr 29 2025
    This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part conversation with author Steve Almond - an astute observer of politics, pop culture, and all things American. In this wide-ranging discussion, we talk about Almond’s latest novel which reveals some of the horrors that immigrants to this country face far too often, look at the painful reality of paying taxes in the age of Trumpism and examine the seeds of this present day authoritarianism sown under Ronald Reagan.
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    29 m
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