What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question. The subjects are Jill Tarter, Director of the SETI Institute, who has been involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence since the 1970s and who was the basis for the Ellie Arroway character in Carl Sagan’s...

"What we eat matters--to us, and to the planet. Cool food is a game-changing new food category and way of thinking that can help fix the climate. This ... book will show you how to make simple choices, starting today--in the supermarket, in your kitchen, and in the world--to reduce your environmental impact. Hundreds of cool foods exist, but until now have gone largely uncelebrated for their climate-positive powers. Some of these foods may already...

Both humans and wildlife depend on water for survival. This episode explores how a misuse of water can lead to unparalleled destruction; however, sharing our water with wildlife does not only benefit the wild, it may also be a crucial step in our own survival. In Africa, big wildlife including elephants only survive because of the wells that humans dig to bring water to the surface in a parched land. And the Samburu who dig the wells need the wildlife-especially...

For thousands of years, the Tigris has acted as a lung exhaling life into Mesopotamia. Its cycles of flooding created seasons of plenty and seasons of scarcity. Water was once everywhere, from the northern mountains to the southern marshlands. But it is now beginning to falter, becoming clogged and erratic, and the changing climate is bringing environmental instability to the countries that rely on it. During the pandemic, in 2020, Leon McCarron travelled...

World renowned scientist, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, tells Sanjayan the oceans are in trouble, that a rise of slime is coming. But Sanjayan goes in search of a very different future. He travels to one of the remotest reefs on earth. The sheer number of sharks in this place doesn't make any sense - the mass of predators is greater than prey. It seems like a paradox. But when you understand it, you see how our oceans can be more productive than we could ever...

"A book that shows us how to work through thorny moral questions by examining their parts in broad daylight, equipping us to not only identify our own positions but to defend them as well. It demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our everyday lives, and offers some clear-eyed tools to those who want to learn how to better fight for justice and liberation for all"-- Is it sexist to say that "men are trash"? Can white people be victims of racism?...

"H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman's experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record. Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means-now-to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the...

A compelling global exploration of nature and survival as seen via a dozen species of trees that represent the challenges facing our planet, and the ways that scientists are working urgently to save our forests and our future. The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history--from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying...

"Tour 6 North American deserts in 24 hours from day break in the Mojave Desert through midnight in the Great Basin while learning about why these deserts are in danger and how to save them"-- "Tour 6 North American deserts in 24 hours from day break in the Mojave Desert through midnight in the Great Basin. This meticulously illustrated picture book takes readers on a cross-continental tour in 24 hours, visiting 6 different deserts at different hours...