Earth Day polling and Artemis moments give climate talk a human frame.
The piece pairs Earth Day polling with Moon Day moments from the Artemis astronauts, and it uses those shifts to push past simple partisan assumptions about climate concern.

Environmental stakes, patiently reported.
Living on Earth treats environmental news as a civic record, not a spectacle. Its interviews move from court rulings, federal programs, and energy policy to whales, forests, border rivers, Caribbean beaches, moon missions, and family land.
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Living on Earth covers the environment as a network of public choices. The show is serious, measured, and interview-driven. It does not treat climate, health, biodiversity, energy, and law as separate beats for long. A story about FEMA resilience grants becomes a question of prevention before storms, floods, and wildfires. A federal ruling on wildfire logging becomes a dispute over forests, soil, water quality, species survival, and the limits of agency shortcuts. A segment on Cancer Alley connects industrial zoning, toxic air, Black residents, and the legacy of plantation land along the Mississippi River. The show also follows the machinery of power closely. Recent episodes examine Endangered Species Act exemptions in the Gulf of Mexico, Vanguard's retreat from climate initiatives, offshore wind policy, EV economics, and climate obligations in Bonaire. The language is plain enough for general listeners, but it respects complexity. Legal standards, capacity factors, federal programs, and scientific concepts are allowed to stay in the room. They are usually attached to a place or a consequence. That keeps the reporting grounded. Living on Earth also leaves space for awe and memory. Artemis II coverage turns spaceflight into a reflection on Earth, solidarity, grief, and curiosity. Segments on ancient DNA, nighttime ecology, Jamaican plants, dreams, and family land broaden the show beyond crisis reporting. The result is not cheerful environmental lifestyle content. It is steadier than that. It asks what evidence supports a claim, what institutions are doing, who carries the burden, and what might still be protected. Listeners come away with context, not just alarm.
Made for: For listeners who want climate and ecology coverage with legal, scientific, and community context. It especially suits people who prefer calm explanation over hot takes.
What sets it apart: The show connects policy and science to concrete places: rivers, forests, islands, borderlands, neighborhoods, beaches, and species under pressure. Its interviews let evidence and lived consequence carry the weight.
As the planet we call home faces a climate emergency, Living on Earth is your go-to source for the latest coverage of climate change, ecology, and human health. Hosted by Steve Curwood and brought to you by PRX.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Living on Earth makes environmental science useful by tracing how evidence, policy, technology, and community experience meet.
Living on Earth connects environmental science to the decisions that move it from research into public life. Steve Curwood, alongside Jenny Doering, Paloma Beltran, and Ainsley O'Neill, leads interview-driven editions that move between climate regulation, energy infrastructure,…
A monarch's tiny tracker meets a fight over EPA rules; your curiosity gets both wings and teeth.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Earth Day polling and Artemis moments give climate talk a human frame.
The piece pairs Earth Day polling with Moon Day moments from the Artemis astronauts, and it uses those shifts to push past simple partisan assumptions about climate concern.
Border barriers, offshore wind, and night poems share one calm public-interest frame.
Living on Earth brings the Rio Grande buoy barriers, offshore wind, and night poems into a single steady hour. The border segment stays close to Charro Days and local concern that the buoy project could further divide the two countries.
A climate case and a plant-dream memoir give the hour its clearest shape.
The hour finds its strongest footing in the way it links a Bonaire climate case with a Jamaican memoir of plants and dreams. The Bonaire material gives sea level rise, rising tropical heat, and the question of government duty real gravity, while the memoir opens the frame to…
A climate-law fight opens onto the research infrastructure behind forecasts, disaster readiness, and monarch tracking.
This episode centers on a legal pivot point in climate policy: the Trump EPA's move to repeal the endangerment finding that underpins federal regulation of carbon pollution and greenhouse gases.
Climate law, cheap clean tech, and a child's pull toward the outdoors.
Living on Earth brings together three strands: the Trump administration's effort to revoke the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding, China's rise as a dominant force in clean-energy technology, and Daisy's quieter bond with the outdoors.
A broad environmental hour links a border barrier, night life, and offshore wind policy.
Living on Earth sets the U.S.-Mexico border's floating barrier plan in the Rio Grande alongside the communities worried about what it would mean.
Earth Day meets faith, public health, and geothermal heat in a steady, practical hour.
Living on Earth centers its Earth Day hour on Antony Smith, a Grammy-nominated Broadway star and Earth Day ambassador, and uses him to link climate action with a spiritual frame.

Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser build single reported stories around one scientific question.

Flora Lichtman interviews scientists, from gut-health researchers to Queen's Brian May.

Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.

Long interviews with neuroscientists and philosophers on consciousness, decision-making, and whether AI is anything like a brain.

Bob McDonald anchors weekly multi-segment interviews on new research, from cricket courtship to moon missions.

APA's Kim Mills interviews psychology researchers on tipping, crying, and extremism.
This episode of Living on Earth examines a federal plan to install over 500 miles of buoy barriers in the Rio Grande, waiving environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act.
This episode discusses environmental policy changes under the Trump administration, including weakening environmental reviews, the return of sea otters to Oregon's coast by Native American tribes, and the climate impact of proposed LNG export terminals.
Living on Earth celebrates Earth Day 2025 with an interview featuring Grammy-nominated Broadway star and Earth Day ambassador Antony Smith, who discusses her journey from climate indifference to activism after learning about pollution's impact on her community.
Earth Day opens the hour with polling that complicates the usual climate map.
Living on Earth opens at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This episode discusses the Trump administration's decision to waive Endangered Species Act protections for the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico, potentially threatening species like the Rice's whale, while also touching on the Artemis II mission for moon colonization.
This episode covers a federal judge ordering FEMA to resume climate resilience grants, explores how CO2 tells the story of Earth's history, and announces a woolly rhino DNA discovery.
This episode discusses Vanguard's retreat from ESG initiatives due to an antitrust lawsuit, alongside broader topics like fossil fuel reliance and EV adoption.
This episode covers a federal court ruling against Forest Service logging policies for wildfire management and NASA's budget challenges for moon missions and science programs.
This episode discusses a lawsuit by descendants of enslaved people in Cancer Alley, Louisiana, alleging racial discrimination in land-use decisions that expose Black communities to toxic industrial pollution.
The episode opens on a climate case from Bonaire.
The Trump EPA's plan to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding is the episode's first big story, and Pat Parenteau says it would remove the foundation for federal greenhouse-gas regulation.
The hour opens with the Trump administration's push to revoke the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding.
This episode explores how cumulative air pollution from industrial facilities disproportionately affects fenceline communities, using a mobile laboratory study in Pennsylvania to challenge traditional single-chemical regulation approaches.
This episode features interviews about a book on the mysterious natural history of eels, climate impacts on fishing, and the historical significance of astronomy in science.