To be honest, I wasn’t sure about making this podcast (I do not need more projects!), but when I launched this newsletter last year, and mentioned I was considering getting back on the mic 🎙️ y’all said you missed How to Save a Planet and would love a new one. So, here we are, me granting your wishes and getting to have these amazing conversations. And somehow this is episode 6 of season 2. To celebrate 🎉 this totally random milestone:
FOLLOW this podcast wherever you listen — rate it, review it, and shout from the rooftops 🗣️ “WHAT IF WE GET IT RIIIIIIIGHT?!”
Your minutes are precious, so thanks for listening. And if the audience grows, I’ll keep devoting my minutes to bringing you new, irreverent, sweet, goofy, spicy episodes each week. So, spread the word. And speaking of words…
This week’s guest is Sarah Stillman, a Pulitzer and MacArthur genius award-winning journalist. She founded and leads the Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale, and she's been a staff writer at The New Yorker for about a decade. Sarah’s writing typically focuses on our immigration and justice systems, but increasingly (and in some part due to my nudges), she's also writing about climate change.
Sarah's first piece about climate was an essay, “Like the Monarch,” she wrote for my first book, All We Can Save, an anthology I co-edited with the wonderful Dr. Katherine Wilkinson. And, fun fact, Sarah is also a very dear friend. During the pandemic we would have long telephone conversations while we were going on walks in the woods on opposite coasts. We’d talk about work and writing and climate change, and also dating and family and heartache — the whole spectrum of comedy of errors that is life. 🫠
I am so excited to let you in to one of our meandering, deep dive conversations. Welcome to the inner circle, with the one and only Sarah Stillman.
Sarah’s CALLS TO ACTION:
Interview the people you love about what they love about nature that they want to defend.
Find something to investigate. Document the extreme weather events that are happening to you and the causes — and cite that climate attribution science.
Support local and national public media. Visit your local public library.
Mentioned in the episode:
Sarah’s articles:
Sarah’s website
ProPublica’s investigative series on Sacrifice Zones: Mapping Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution
Asylum categories: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, and political opinion
CREDITS
This podcast was made possible in part with the support of Future Being, a grantmaking and special projects studio which supports the healing of our planet and the safeguarding of biological and cultural diversity.
It’s produced and edited by Matthew Nelson/Stramash Media and me, with help from Jenisha Shrestha. And many thanks to our guest Sarah Stillman.
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