Environmental policy, measured through evidence and consequence.
Resources Radio is a measured interview show from Resources for the Future about environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions. Its best episodes turn technical debates into clear questions about costs, risks, institutions, and consequences.
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Resources Radio is a policy interview show about the environmental decisions that sit behind headlines. It is not built around debate-stage confrontation. Its style is slower, more exacting, and more interested in how a problem is framed before any solution is judged. Recent episodes move through critical minerals, energy innovation, climate finance, energy affordability, federal benefit-cost analysis, African energy access, carbon market cooperation, and tribal history at Fort Berthold. The range is wide, but the through-line is clear. Resources Radio asks how institutions measure value, allocate risk, and justify public choices. A conversation about mineral supply becomes a discussion of national security, decarbonization, domestic manufacturing, and the difficulty of matching one policy tool to several goals. A discussion of energy innovation turns rankings, patents, and research systems into a way to compare the United States, China, Korea, and Japan. The show also has a strong appetite for definitions. Terms such as microprudential supervision, compliance carbon markets, and benefit-cost analysis are treated as ideas that need to be made usable, not simply repeated. That habit gives the show its editorial spine. Guests are often researchers, policy specialists, or people with direct institutional experience, and the hosts usually let them build the argument at length. The result can feel formal, but rarely bloodless. Episodes on energy affordability connect utility data to risks such as pipe freeze and heat stroke. The conversation about Power Africa treats the end of USAID programs as a real-world shock for energy access, not just an administrative change. The Fort Berthold episode widens the show’s policy lens into history, sovereignty, displacement, and the lasting effects of the Garrison Dam. Resources Radio is best for listeners who want to understand where environmental policy gets made: in reports, agencies, research indexes, financial models, negotiations, and communities living with the outcome. It is a show for patient attention. It rewards listeners who care less about instant certainty than about knowing which questions should come first.
Made for: For listeners who follow climate, energy, economics, public policy, or environmental research and want careful context rather than quick takes. It suits people comfortable with technical language when it is clearly explained.
What sets it apart: Resources Radio stands apart by pairing research-level policy detail with calm, accessible interviews. It consistently moves from terminology and data limits to the public stakes of decisions.
Resources Radio is a weekly podcast by Resources for the Future. Each week we talk to leading experts about climate change, electricity, ecosystems, and more, making the latest research accessible to everyone.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Focused interviews make climate and energy policy legible by tracing how research meets government choices and institutional constraints.
Resources Radio turns environmental policy into pointed conversations about how decisions are designed and carried out. Kristen Hayes and Daniel Ramey take turns hosting guest-led interviews, establishing the policy question quickly before pressing on objectives, tradeoffs, and…
A carbon price changes its name; Kristen Hayes follows the politics you might miss.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear look at why critical minerals are hard to secure, and why the answer changes by mineral.
Resources Radio offers a clear-minded look at the politics and mechanics of critical minerals, with Kristen Hayes and Bea Spiller, an RFF fellow and director of RFF's transportation program, framing a new report around the challenge of onshoring the supply chain.
A clean-energy ranking conversation that turns U.S. innovation into a policy question.
Resources Radio turns its hour to the Global Energy Innovation Index, with Daniel Ramey in conversation with David Hart about how countries stack up in generating new knowledge, building ecosystems for market innovation, and backing new energy technologies with public policy.
A measured look at how insurance data and climate shocks enter bank risk models.
Climate risk reaches finance through a plain but consequential channel: the insurance tied to residential and commercial real estate loans. Resources Radio follows Kevin Styro from his Federal Reserve work into RFF's Climate-Related Financial and Macroeconomic Risk Initiative,…
A policy-focused conversation about Power Africa's abrupt end and its impact on energy access in Africa.
Resources Radio frames a conversation with Katie Off of the Energy for Growth Hub about Power Africa and the broader push to reduce energy poverty and expand electricity access across the continent.
COP30's carbon coalition gets a clear, compact reading.
Resources Radio turns a sharp eye to the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets, launched at COP30 in Brazil, and frames the discussion around why it matters for carbon pricing, trade, and economic development.
A measured look at why climate disclosure depends on information companies can reliably measure and control.
Resources Radio looks at the SEC's final rule on climate-risk disclosure for publicly traded companies, with attention to how the rule shifted after the earlier proposal and public feedback.
A clear look at how carbon pricing persists through political rebranding.
Resources Radio treats carbon pricing as a political and rhetorical question as much as a policy one, moving from the federal U.S. retreat to the broader mix of cap-and-trade and carbon tax experiments still in use around the world.
Resources Radio host Kristen Hayes interviews Jim Cox, a securities law professor, about the SEC's final climate disclosure rule released on March 6, 2024.
Host Kristen Hayes interviews Danny Richter, Director of the Pricing Carbon Initiative, about the global state of carbon pricing.
Three experts discuss the top energy and environmental issues of 2025, starting with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its impact on clean energy tax credits.
RFF experts discuss key 2024 energy and environmental policy developments, including FERC Order 1920, and look ahead to 2025.
A rebroadcasted episode where host Daniel Ramey interviews young research analysts and associates at Resources for the Future about their interests in environmental research and their predictions for the organization's future work.
Resources Radio host Kristen Hayes interviews new RFF fellow Jesse Gourevitch about his paper with Stephen Billings, "Distributional Impacts of Updating Flood Risk Information." Gourevitch explains that FEMA's flood maps omit pluvial flooding and create a "false binary" around the 1%-annual-chance special flood hazard area, while remapping since 2000s moved about 1 million properties in and 2.4 million out.
Resources Radio host Kristen Hayes speaks with RFF fellow Bea Spiller about a report on onshoring the critical mineral supply chain, framed by the Trump administration's focus on mineral security.
Resources Radio speaks with David Hart about the Global Energy Innovation Index, which puts the United States 29th of 39 on knowledge and shows Saudi Arabia and the UAE near the top of that category.
["Kevin Styro tells Margaret Walls that climate-related financial risk matters to central banks because it can affect monetary policy, financial stability, and bank supervision.", "He defines microprudential risk with concrete examples like a mortgage in a floodplain and a branch that floods, then contrasts it with macroprudential risk that can hit the whole financial system.", "Styro walks through the Federal Reserve's pilot climate scenario analysis with six large U.S.
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Katie Auth, Deputy Director at the Energy for Growth Hub and former USAID Power Africa official, discusses the consequences of DOGE shutting down USAID and the Power Africa initiative in early 2025.
Resources Radio host Kristen Hayes speaks with MIT professor and RFF board member Catherine Wolfram and RFF fellow Milan Elkerbout about the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets, launched at COP30 in Belem, Brazil in November 2025.
Angela Parker discusses her book on the history of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes and the impact of the Garrison Dam on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Brian Kennedy from Pew Research Center discusses U.S.