Green grass grows everywhere: on baseball fields, in backyards, in front of strip malls. Collectively, we spend billions of dollars every year keeping them fertilized and watered.

But lawns cost more than money in Western states like Utah. Despite a severe drought, residents of Utah’s towns and cities use more water per capita than any other place in the nation, and a majority of that water goes right into lawns. That’s helping fuel an environmental disaster that could wipe out one of America’s largest inland seas.

In this episode, first produced in 2022, we trace the 600-year history of lawns, explore how they became a symbol of power, wealth, and Whiteness in America, and share tips on how to make a yard more environmentally responsible.

Featuring: Malin Curry, Ira Curry, Kelly Kopp, Zach Frankel, Karen Stenehjel

Produced by Nate Hegyi. For a full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.

This summer, more than 100 cruise ships will visit the small city of Portland, Maine, dropping thousands of passengers onto the city’s commercial waterfront for lobster rolls, local souvenirs and a quintessential New England experience.

But as Portland has rapidly become a landmark destination for cruise lines, a group of activists are calling into question the long held narrative that cruise ships provide a dependable economic boom.

Producer Marina Henke spent the months leading up to the 2025 cruise season charting these muddy waters. For small coastal cities like Portland, are cruise ships really the economic generator that the industry claims them to be?

Featuring JoAnn Locktov, Jack Humeniuk, Joe Redman, Jacques de Villier, Zach Rand, Brian Fournier, Kevin Rodriquez, Martha Honey and Dan Kraus.

Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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LINKS

Martha Honey is the co-founder of the Center for Responsible Travel. She’s the editor of the book “Cruise Tourism in the Caribbean: Selling Sunshine” which includes much of her own research on the economics of cruise ships.

You can find Portland Cruise Control on Bluesky or at their website portlandcruisecontrolmaine.org.

In 2019, Colin Woodward published “Pier Pressure”, a three-part series out of The Portland Press Herald documenting the rise of the cruise ship industry across Maine.

Are you a Portland local? You can see a schedule of all cruise ship arrivals at maine.portcall.com

Portland is not the only city to face rapid cruise growth. Check out Cruise Boom, a PBS documentary focused on the cruise industry's footprint in Sitka, Alaska.

Growing up, Kiese Laymon thought of himself as a city kid. But he spent his childhood with a foot in two worlds: his mom’s house in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi and his grandma’s house in a rural country town.

It wasn’t until Kiese left Mississippi that he came to understand that this question of city versus country actually meant a lot more. It carries a lot of baggage: the tensions between north and south, tectonic historical forces, and the contradictions of life in Mississippi.

In this episode, our producer Justine Paradis sits down with writer Kiese Laymon for a conversation on this question of country versus city, what that has to do with the history of Black life in this country, and the story of Kiese’s first children’s picture book, his latest in a lifelong exploration of a complicated love of Mississippi.

Featuring Kiese Laymon.

Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.

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LINKS

Kiese Laymon’s first children’s book, City Summer, Country Summer.

If you’d like to read more by Kiese, we recommend “Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)”, his essay about Outkast, his grandmother, and stank. (Oxford American)

Kiese adapted City Summer, Country Summer from this 2020 prose-poem essay. (New York Times)

One of our listeners is in a pickle. He’s looking to buy an engagement ring but wants to make sure the diamond comes from an ethical and sustainable source. So he sent us an email asking for help.

This is our latest addition of “This, That, or the Other Thing.” It's a series about the choices we make in our lives to try and build a more sustainable world, whether they have any effect, and what we can do instead if they don't.

Today… Host Nate Hegyi looks into the most sustainable ways to source that big, sparkly rock. Should it be a diamond from the ground? A diamond grown in a lab? Or maybe a different gemstone altogether?

Featuring Saleem Ali, Rachelle Bergstein and Anna Provost.

Produced by Nate Hegyi. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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Visit our website to see Justine's sapphire engagement ring.

You can find a copy of Rachelle Bergstein’s book here. She was also featured on this episode about diamonds, from 99% Invisible.

The Kimberley Process helped reduce the number of conflict diamonds in the world – here’s a list of countries that are participants.

Anna Provost features a lot of her really cool Montana-mined sapphires on Instagram.

A recent study in the journal Nature found that mining diamonds produces millions times more greenhouse gas emissions than growing them in a lab.

Alexis Nikole Nelson, better known to her millions of fans as @blackforager, was raised by a mother who is an avid gardener and a father who loves to cook. Foraging allowed Alexis to fuse her love for wild plants and food from a very young age.

But before Alexis became the @blackforager many know today, there was a period in her life where Alexis lost that love and connection to foraging, and where food became very much the enemy.

This episode comes to us from our friends at Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, a podcast about the human drama behind saving animals. From a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones, to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison, show host and wildlife biologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant takes us inside the work of the extraordinary people who are protecting wildlife.

Featuring Alexis Nikole Nelson.

For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.

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LINKS

You can find Alexis Nikole Nelson’s videos on Tik Tok and Instagram.

Also, be sure to check out Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.

Mike Strizki drives the only hydrogen-powered car on the East Coast. That’s because he’s the only person with access to fuel… which he makes, by himself, in his backyard in New Jersey.

And it’s not just his car. Mike’s house, his lawnmower, even his bicycle are all powered by hydrogen. He’s convinced that this element could be the single most important solution to the climate crisis, if only people and governments would just get on board.

But he’s been screaming this from the rooftop of his hydrogen house for two decades. And today, fewer than 0.2% of cars in the US run on hydrogen. What’s it like to be the earliest early adopter of a technology that never catches on? And does Mike still have a chance to be proven right?

Featuring Mike Strizki.

Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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In the race to decarbonize cars, battery electric vehicles have proven more popular than hydrogen. But debate still rages on which is the better zero-emission technology. Some say hydrogen cars cannot catch up to battery-electric vehicles, whereas others claim EVs aren’t the future, hydrogen is.

Mike Strizki and his hydrogen-powered house have been featured on The Wall Street Journal, ABC World News, and a number of New York Times articles including “The Zero-Energy Solution,” and “The Gospel of Hydrogen Power.”

Lead is a study in contradictions. It’s dense enough to stop an X-ray, but soft enough to scratch with your fingernail. It’s heavier than steel and iron, but also more flexible.

And, despite evidence of its toxicity, humans have been using it for all sorts of things for thousands of years.

In this edition of our series “The Element of Surprise,” we hone in on this notorious heavy metal. What chemical properties make lead so harmful? How did something so dangerous become so ubiquitous? And if medical authorities acknowledge no amount of lead exposure is safe – especially for children – why do so many of us have lead in our water and our homes?

Featuring Justin Richardson, Bruce Lanphear, and Chakena Perry.

This episode was produced by Kate Dario. For the full credits and transcript, go to outsideinradio.org.

SUPPORT

To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.

Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

LINKS

Radiolab dedicated an episode to the scientist that was trying to estimate the earth’s age, and unintentionally helped get rid of leaded gasoline in the process. It’s wild and worth a listen.

A comprehensive history of leaded gasoline and an in-depth investigation of how the lead industry lobbied cities to use lead pipes.

Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner have published numerous books covering the American lead industry and lead’s lasting public health impacts.

The EPA has robust resources about how to deal with lead exposure and how to minimize your risk.

In the late 1950s, engineer Herb Ueda Sr. traveled to a remote Arctic military base. His mission? To drill through nearly a mile of ice, and extract the world’s first complete ice core.

To finish the job, he and his team would endure sub-zero weather, toxic chemicals, and life inside a military base… which was slowly being crushed by the glacier from which it was carved.

In this episode (first released in 2023) Daniel Ackerman takes us inside Camp Century, and explains how a foundational moment in climate science was inextricably linked with the United State's military interest in Greenland.

Featuring Curt La Bombard, Julie Brigham-Grette, Herb Ueda Jr., Don Garfield, and Aleqa Hammond.

Produced by Daniel Ackerman. For a full list of credits and transcript, go to outsidinradio.org.