You might associate it with the foil that wraps leftover pizza and the shiny craft beer cans sold in breweries, but aluminum is literally everywhere. Scoop up a handful of soil or gravel anywhere on Earth, and you’ll find atoms of bonded aluminum hidden inside. Over the past 150 years, that abundance has led production of the silvery metal to skyrocket (pun intended) and created an industry responsible for 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But even before it was used in everything from airplanes to deodorant, the trade of aluminum minerals helped color the world, finance the Vatican, and led to the mass collection of human urine.

In this episode, we’re piloting a new segment called “The Element of Surprise.” It’s all about the hidden histories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, isotopes, and molecules. And we’re kicking things off with aluminum.

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LINKS

The World Economic Forum has published a number of studies and articles on the need to decarbonize the aluminum industry and the promising technologies that might help us get there.

A few years ago, Alcoa announced plans to build a new aluminum smelting plant in Maniitsoq, Greenland. PBS’s POV released a documentary about how people there reckoned with the island’s colonial past as the project progressed, stalled, and eventually collapsed.

The National Park Service has a fun little read about the Washington Monument’s aluminum tip.

Sean Adams, at the University of Florida, wrote an excellent recap of the U.S. government’s antitrust case against aluminum giant Alcoa.

Here’s another one from Foreign Policy about how industrial cartels and monopolies helped Hitler gain power.

Check out Charlie Halloran’s “The Alcoa Sessions,” to imagine what kind of music might have been played during Alcoa’s cruise voyages between New Orleans and Jamaica between 1949 and 1959.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported, mixed, and produced by Taylor Quimby

Mixed by Taylor Quimby

Editing by Rebecca Lavoie, with help from Nate Hegyi and Felix Poon

Our staff includes Justine Paradis

Executive producer: Taylor Quimby

Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio

Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Ryan James Carr, and L.M. Styles

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

When officials commissioned a set of updated hazard maps for Juneau, Alaska, they thought the information would help save lives and spur new development. Instead, the new maps drew public outcry from people who woke up to discover their homes were at risk of being wiped out by landslides.

What’s followed has been a multiyear project – not to address the challenges posed by climate-fueled landslides – but to alter, ignore, or otherwise shelve the maps that outline the threat in the first place.

Host Nate Hegyi visits Juneau to see one example of why, across the country, even the most progressive Americans are rejecting tough truths about climate change when it comes knocking at their own back door.

Featuring: Tom Mattice, Christine Woll, Eve Soutiere, and Lloyd Dixon.

SUPPORT

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

Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).

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LINKS

You can check out Juneau’s new hazard maps, along with many of its neighborhood meetings, on their website.

Dive into why the insurance industry stopped providing landslide coverage to Southeast Alaska.

KTOO had a wonderful story on how a 1936 landslide that killed 15 people in Juneau became a faded memory.

Zach Provant, a researcher at the University of Oregon, spent months investigating the rollout of Juneau’s hazard maps.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi

Edited by Taylor Quimby and Katie Colaneri

Editing help from Felix Poon and Justine Paradis

Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer

Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

When it comes to protecting the biodiversity of Planet Earth, there is no greater failure than extinction. Thankfully, only a few dozen species have been officially declared extinct by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the half-century since the passage of the Endangered Species Act.

But, hold on. Aren’t we in the middle of the sixth mass extinction? Shouldn’t the list of extinct species be… way longer? Well, yeah. Maybe.

Producer Taylor Quimby sets out to understand why it’s so difficult to officially declare an animal extinct. Along the way, he compares rare animals to missing socks, finds a way to invoke Lizzo during an investigation of an endangered species of crabgrass, and learns about the disturbing concept of “dark extinctions.”

Editor's Note: This episode was first published in October 2022. Since then, the US Fish and Wildlife Service officially delisted 21 of 23 proposed species due to extinction. The ivory-billed woodpecker was not one of them.

Featuring Sharon Marino, Arne Mooers, Sean O’Brien, Bill Nichols, and Wes Knapp.