Today's episode features two books that reach deep into the animal world. First, E.O. Wilson sits down with Robert Seigel to discuss how the narrative of war is used in his story featuring ants, called Anthill. Then writer Ed Yong talks with Ayesha Roscoe about trying to show the experience of life through a different perspective – animals – in An Immense World.
Record high temperatures have wreaked havoc around the world this week. In Southern England, railway tracks bent from the heat. In China, the roof tiles on a museum melted. In Texas, heat and a dry spell have caused nearly 200 water main breaks over the past month.
And extreme heat puts lives at risk, too. It's more deadly than tornadoes, hurricanes, and all other weather events combined.
Extreme temperatures, and the attendant misery, are connected to global warming, which is driven by human activity and accelerating.
Reporters from around the globe talk about what they're seeing and how governments are responding. NPR's Rebecca Hersher, who reports on climate science and policy from the US, NPR's John Ruwitch in Shanghai and Willem Marx in London.
This episode also features reporting from NPR's Franco Ordoñez.
The war in Ukraine is devastating that nation's rich, natural environment - from chemical leaks poisoning water supplies and warships killing dolphins to explosions disrupting bird migrations. NPR Environmental Correspondent Nate Rott has been reporting from Ukraine. He sits down with Short Wave's Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to talk about how the Russian invasion is harming the environment even beyond Ukraine's borders.
Today's fictional book is set in very non-fictional circumstances. Novelist Ann Leary was trying to learn about her grandmother's history as an orphan and found that she worked at a eugenics asylum in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. This became the basis of her story in the book 'The Foundling' which explores the state of women's rights, the relationship between it and eugenics, and a commentary over the long history of control over women's bodies.
What even is "the economy"? And how do you measure it? Our path out of the economic darkness and into the light has been guided in large part by one single statistic: GDP. This week: the origins, history, and problems with the economic indicator to rule them all. | At this Summer School, phones ARE allowed during class... Check out this week's PM TikTok! | Listen to past seasons of Summer School here.
A Ukrainian man is being forced to choose between the two: a wife and three children who have fled the country and aging parents who are trapped behind enemy lines.
Talking about abortion can be difficult even among adults. So how do you talk to kids about it? We asked listeners to send us their questions — and brought together two experts to answer them.
Reena B. Patel, a parenting expert and licensed educational psychologist in San Diego, California, and Dr. Elise Berlan, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist in Columbus, Ohio, join us to talk about ways to broach the conversation around abortion with kids of all ages.
Host Emily Kwong wants to keep an eye on her carbon footprint. Most of it consists of greenhouse gas emissions from driving her car or buying meat at the grocery store. But it's not so obvious how to measure those emissions, or how factories, cargo ships, or even whole countries measure theirs.
Enter: NPR science reporter Rebecca Hersher. Together, Rebecca and Emily break down how greenhouse gas emissions are tallied ... and why those measurements are so important in figuring out who's responsible for cleaning up.
What should we measure next? Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.
Today's Book of the Day spans across two places: Hawaii and the Korean Peninsula. The story, though, goes beyond the two realities. In Joseph Han's debut novel Nuclear Family, a Korean family goes through hurdles when one of them is haunted by a long lost family member, crosses a dangerous border, and questions the blurred history of their past. Han shares with B.A. Parker how his own background and upbringing helped tell the story of this book.
As the war in Ukraine nears its sixth month, people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv are finding a new normal. Construction crews are cleaning up bombed buildings and people are returning to work.
