Science Friday - A Century Of Science, Book Club: Rising, Charismatic Creature Update. Oct 1, 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Looking Back On A Century of Science In 1921, the discovery of radium was just over 20 years in the past. And the double helix of DNA was still over thirty years in the future. That year, a publication that came to be the magazine Science News started publication, and is still in operation today. Editors Nancy Shute and Elizabeth Quill join Ira to page through the magazine’s archives, with over 80,000 articles covering a century of science—from the possibilities of atomic energy to discussions of black holes, to projections of the rise of the avocado as a popular fruit. There are mysteries—are spiral nebulae other universes? And there are missteps, like the suggestion that the insecticide DDT should be incorporated into wall paint.     When The Water Comes The Science Friday Book Club is kicking off for fall. Producer Christie Taylor joins in a conversation with Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. They talk about the surprisingly fascinating science of coastal wetlands, and their role in protecting communities from sea level rise—plus how communities themselves, from Staten Island to southern Louisiana, are responding to rising seas and flooding. For the full rundown, excerpts, and more, check out our main Book Club page.   Who Will Sweep The Charismatic Creature Carnival? Our Charismatic Creature Carnival is coming to a close. Over the last month, SciFri has celebrated six overlooked or unfairly maligned species that deserve a chance under the spotlight. And now, out of our three semifinalist creature candidates, there can only be one winner. Will it be the colorful, tiny, but mighty mantis shrimp? Or perhaps the adaptable, dramatic opossum? Or will the endangered shoebill stork, with its prehistoric look, come out on top? The choice is up to our listeners: vote here.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, launching the next edition of the SciFri Book Club, with a book about rising seas and communities banding together. But first, what was science like a mere hundred years ago? Let's say 1921. Well, you had the discovery of Radium. It was only 20 years in the past. The double helix of DNA was still 30 years in the future. and in 1921, a publication called Science News began operation. I began reading it religiously decades ago. It's still in operation today, and it's seen a lot of science over that 100 years. Joining me now to talk about a century of covering science

is the editor-in-chief of Science News, Nancy Schutt, and Elizabeth Quill, Enterprise Editor and Archive Wrangler for the magazine. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks, I, Reg. great to be here. Great being here, Ira. Nice to have you both. Natsy, let me begin with you. Give us the origin of the magazine. Where did it come from? That's a great question, Ira. Way back in the early 1900s, newspaper magnet EW scripts, after he made many pots of money in the publishing industry, became friends with a zoologist, Edward Ritter at the University of California.

And these two men realized they shared a deep interest in science's potential for making the world a better place. And they also thought that a healthy democracy dependent on public understanding of science. Scripts actually thought that newspapers were doing a pretty crummy job covering science. They were running a lot of articles about fake cures, dangerous patent medicines, conspiracy theories. So he and Ritter decided that they were going to join forces and launch a series. syndication service that would provide factual evidence-based articles to the nation's newspaper. And that was the precursor of Science News. It started on April 2nd, 1921. So it wasn't like an independent journal that would get mailed to people. It was a service for

newspapers. Right. They actually mailed out articles that newspapers could reprint. And it became really popular. Actually, I looked back and there was one in April 21, which is the founding month. where the Emporia, Kansas Daily Gazette published one of the Wire Service stories about the discovery of the oldest and staleist bread in America, which was actually a 500-year-old archaeological finding in the Quiflowings at Mesa Verde National Park. But they covered a lot of real bigger news as well, including earthquakes in California. And it quickly grew to the point where just members of the public wanted to get it, you know, in the mail.

And so it first expanded into something called Science Newsletter, which was a weekly newsletter, and then became a four-color magazine, which is what we still have today, and that's Science News. And I recall reading about the early days, seeming that the newsletter was very closely tied into the structure of official Washington science, right? Yeah, it's interesting looking back that they were doing things that we wouldn't do today, really. in the early offices were over at the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences. In the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt asked science service, which was our precursor organization, to research the number of women working in science and government, but definitely deeply tied into the Washington, D.C. science community. Now, Beth, I know you've been rambling through the archives of those hundred years,

some 80,000 article, is that correct? That's right. More than 80,000 news reports in our archive. Any general impressions or takeaways from that list? Wow. There's so many gems in that reporting, and you can find anything if you're interested in basic discoveries. That's there. The reporting of insulin as a treatment for diabetes is there, all the way up to cloning of. of Dolly the Sheep, the first to use of the term to our knowledge, the term black holes in print appears in our archive. There is just so much to investigate for people like me who are really interested in the history of science and for anyone who wants to know how currents of the past connect to current events. In celebration of our centennial, we've launched what we're calling

the Century of Science Project. And it looks back at major advancing the sciences across the fields. It builds on those 80,000 news reports. And what's amazing is the articles not only track the greatest discoveries and give context for what scientists thought at the time, but they also show that some of the biggest questions in science are enduring, how our brains work, what's the nature of the cosmos, how did humans evolve? Those stories are there from the beginning, and they still are sparking our curiosity today. I want to play a few excerpts from some of those early articles. Let me begin like with this one from 1921 on the potential of something called atomic energy. Nowadays, everyone knows that the peculiar behavior of radium is due to the fact that its atoms

disintegrate, setting free the large amount of energy which all atoms are supposed to possess inside themselves. The disintegration of radium is not controllable, but goes on at a constant rate which man can neither increase nor retard. Ever since the nature of radioactivity has been understood, it has been a dream of scientists and novelist alike that man would one day learn how to control atomic disintegration, such as that of radium, and how to utilize the vast stores of energy inside of atoms, stores so large that the total energy of the world's coal beds is tiny in comparison. And of course, out of that, we got the atomic bomb, which I'm sure you covered also. That's right. And it's so interesting that, you know, we have the discovery of radioactivity,

but we have to bring ourselves back because at the time, we didn't know about fission. We didn't know about fusion in the sun. And so there's so much context that we have today when we listen to that, that they didn't have then. And it's amazing to see how far we've come. Yeah, because I was reading one of the articles about that, about surprising news about what is powering the sun. We really don't know what it is. They seem to think back in those early days that it was actually the splurricular. of the atom or something, but the term fusion was not even around then.

That's right. And that article you're referring to, you know, it's so interesting to read because I think it also mentions that the sun is perhaps hundreds of billions of years old. And we now know our universe is about 14 billion years old. So it's, again, so many little pieces that over a century add up to create our knowledge and understanding that we have today. And so many times when you go through these articles and you see what was written and the projections, people get projecting into the future so wrong, so many times. Yeah, I mean, I think they do. I think they do. Certainly, you know, there are elements where I think there is an article and I, you know, I don't have the details, but that said we would be flying

around the world in or across the country in two hours, you know, and it's, you read these things that you're like, well, sort of right. We've definitely seen improvements, but we're not. not there yet, and that's not the direction things have gone. I kind of, when I read it, I'm struck by both the power and the limitations of human imagination. You know, in some ways, you're like, wow, if I could really bring myself back, it's amazing that they knew so much and got so much right, but also what was wrong really stands out to you. You know, you speak about what was wrong, and we were just talking about nuclear power. And then again, what you have on the other side is you have a history of cold fusion, where everybody bit into that back in the early

90s. I know we even talked about it on Science Friday. And then it just went, you know, so many predictions for it and then just totally dismantled. And you also have, you also have elements like gravitational waves where there were early searches for gravitational waves and claims of discovery that then proved to be wrong, but the basics of that is right. And we've now detected gravitational waves today with the LIGO and Virgo detectors. So it's really amazing how things sort of come and go and then come back in some ways. Nancy, other publications have long histories too. I'm thinking of Scientific American, popular science, and they each have their own flavor. What flavor would you describe science news

as having? I think our flavor is that, you know, we've always focused on just like straight up, here's the news as we know it. We're obsessed about accuracy. Clearly, our mission from the beginning was to counter misinformation or disinformation about science or just lack of understanding and really say, you know, this is how it works. This is what we know. This is what we don't know. And we're still really doing that today. And I think, you know, as science has grown in extraordinary ways over the past century, you know, it's hard for us regular civilians to keep a grip on this.

And a lot of our readers love the fact that we cover across the fields of science because even if they might be a scientist themselves, it's really hard to keep up. And as someone who was an English major, I particularly love our coverage of physics and astronomy because, who boy, I'm not a physicist, but it's fascinated and I love reading about it and trying to learn about it. And I get to do that every week. It's wonderful. Yeah, me too. It's great. You know, it's almost impossible. I know how many tens of thousands of pages you have. It's almost impossible during our discussion to cover all the things that have happened, all the advances that have happened in the last hundred years, from the invention of the birth control pill to genetic engineering that didn't exist, you know, before the late 60s and the 70s,

and all the things that came out of that, all the general relativity and all the physics that came, the discoveries of different kinds of stars and black holes. It's impossible. Just impossible. But you have it all in one spot that people can look through themselves. Tell us how we can do that. Well, yeah, www.sciensnews.org. That's our site. And from there, you can access our archive, all of those reports. And also our Century of Science page is www.science.org slash century. And that's where over a year and a half, we started this project last. last January, and it will continue through March 22, we'll be highlighting a subfield of science each month and doing original reporting perspectives, as well as highlighting some of the people in science who we're calling them our unsung characters, who were under-recognized

at the time and now, and just didn't, their stories weren't told, and we're hoping to tell them. So we invite everyone and hope you'll check it out. We have to take a break. We'll be back with more conversation with the editor-in-chief of Science News, Nancy Schute, and Elizabeth Quill, Enterprise Editor, and Archive Rangler for the magazine. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're looking back on 100 years of science with the publication Science News. My guest, Sir Nancy Schute, the editor-in-chief, and Elizabeth Quill, Enterprise Editor for the magazine Science News.

Beth, you're not always looking at the super serious. Here's a clip from 1921 about the Great Frontiers in Fruits. The favorite fruit of Americans of the generations to follow us will be the avocado or alligator pear. That this large, meaty tropical fruit will be a common daily food of the future is the opinion of David Fairchild, in charge of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's work of introducing new and useful seeds and plants into this country. A few crackers and an avocado sprinkle with a little salt make a hearty and well-balanced lunch, declares Mr. Fairchild. Although over 1,200 acres of

Avocado trees are now planted in Florida and California, the tropics of the United States, the alligator pear is still a rich man's fruit. Eventually, Mr. Fairchild believes that it will be just as well-known and as popular as oranges and lemons. No mention of guacamole there anywhere. What's so wonderful about that is that is from 1921. So we, the public, were a little slow on getting on the avocado train, but we sure as heck are there now. You certainly are. You know, one thing that surprised me, many historians, and you mentioned this before, we started talking about black holes.

They credit John Wheeler, the famous physicist, with coining the term black holes in 1967. But you have an instance of it in your publication in 1964. Or space may be peppered with black holes. This was suggested at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Cleveland by astronomers and physicists who are experts on what are called degenerate stars. Degenerate stars are not Hollywood types with low morals. They are dying stars or white dwarfs and make up about 10% of all stars in the sky. The faint light they emit comes from the little heat left in their last stages of life.

It is not known how a star quietly declines to become. a white dwarf. You know, that really answers a question that has been plaguing me for decades, because John Wheeler, who is credited with not making up the term black holes in 1967, but saying that he heard it in a question at a conference where someone in the audience asked him about black holes and then he went on to use it. Well, your article explains how that could happen, that you had it in your publication three years before then. Somebody sees it and then asks John Wheeler about it. Yeah, that's right. And our research suggests that Wheeler himself did speak at the symposium from which our report came, but no one there recalls him naming black holes back then.

So we never really got to the bottom of who first said it, but we're very proud that we're able to kind of point to our article to say, here it is, and to uncover this kind of quirky bit of history. Nancy, you have a story about a person who washes dishes and Einstein. Can you tell us, please, that story? Oh, this is one of my favorite gems of the many gems in our archive, where in 1936, in the spring of 36, a dishwasher from a restaurant dishwasher named Rudy Mandel showed up at the science news offices in Washington, D.C., and he, he, he, he, he, he, he, He said he had a theory about how gravity could distort light like a lens. And he very much wanted to talk to Albert Einstein about this.

And the editors listened to Mr. Mandel and they said, okay, here, we're going to buy you a train ticket. Get on the train, go up to Princeton, and talk with Professor Einstein about your theory. And the two men got together. It sounds like they had a lovely conversation. and sometime later, Einstein published a paper outlining what we now call gravitational lensing. And he thanked Mandel in the paper. Do we think that Einstein got the idea for gravitational lensing from a dishwasher? I mean, it was, you know, the concept was out there, but I think that, you know, who knows?

It might have sparked Einstein to do some more thought and work on it. And I love what it tells us about what life was like in the 1930s, that a dishwasher would wander into your office as a journalist and you would say, hey, go talk to Albert Einstein. And Einstein and the dishwasher would talk. Yeah, Einstein would see people. Yeah, and Mandel was an engineer. And he really did the persuading to Einstein to take it seriously, right? I mean, Einstein knew that gravitational lensing was possible, but he didn't think it would be, and others didn't think it would be such an important effect.

But Mandel really said, hey, look closer at it, pay more attention to it. And looking at another very important story, your reporters covered the Scopes trial, right? Absolutely. Beth, do you want to do that one? Nancy probably has even a little bit more of the details than I do, but the famous trial, to determine whether evolution and modern science could be taught in schools, we were very involved in that. We were on the scene and we were supporting scopes. Today, you know, or in recent decades at least,

that kind of involvement would probably be considered over the line for journalists. But at the time, we really saw ourselves as proponents of science and of the public understanding of science. Yeah. It's a great example. Science Service, which was a great example, which was our name then, helped cover the defense cost for John Scopes, the teacher who was on trial. And the editors of Science Service sent telegrams to scientists on behalf of Clarence Darrow,

who was Scopes' defense attorney trying to get scientists to testify. And it is just something no journalists would even think of today. But it is pretty cool that the photographs that our editor took of Clarence Darrow questioning William Jennings Bryant at the trial are in the Smithsonian archives. Yeah, it is unfortunate that one can think of some journalists who might cover it that way today. One of the big examples of a whole society getting something wrong, and we talked about how getting things wrong was part for the course, was DDT. Here's a clip from 1945.

DDT can send malaria mosquitoes, typhus lice, and other disease-carrying insects to join the Dodo and the dinosaur in the limbo of extinct species, thereby ending these particular plagues for all time. One of the most promising carriers for household use of DDT seems to be wall paint. Since flies, mosquitoes, and other domestic pests need only to touch it with their feet in order to pick up enough to kill them, a DDT carrying painted surface turns the whole interior of a room into a big death trap for them. Several well-known commercial firms are already manufacturing DDT.

paints. Boy, did we get that one wrong. I mean, the law of intended consequences, not knowing what they are, really bit us on that one, didn't it, Beth? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I remember when I first uncovered that story in our archive and I was just like, wow, you know, we were often, perhaps you could say, had too much zeal in our coverage of chemistry and of new materials. I mean, even, you know, our coverage of plastics is similar. They have certainly around us everywhere, but have also become global pollutants. And it's interesting the way we covered it

and to see how we might do it differently today and to know in hindsight what we know. There are a lot of stories like that that just stand out. And I think they're an opportunity to kind of have us take a pause and say, what are we missing today? what are we as journalists not critical enough today? And where might our blind spots be? And where might we be overly enthusiastic now? And I think that's an interesting lesson to take from a lot of this coverage and a lot of this history. Nancy, one of the things that both science and science

journalists have been struggling with over the century is being more inclusive to a wider range of science and scientists. How have you grappled with that? When you go back in our archive, it's really instructive to see, you know, how the vast majority of the bylines are from men who were white men. And we have had many brilliant women as reporters and editors at Science News over the decades. But it was really, you know, a man's game for a really long time, as was science. And I think that's changed a lot. Science has changed a lot. Science has changed. journalism is changing, but we still have a long way to go. And we're trying to do a lot with science news and really thinking about, you know, who's doing the science, how do we make sure that everybody's voices are heard, trying to make sure that we're really inclusive in our sourcing.

And also looking at what science can tell us about diversity and race and how science is or isn't doing a good job. on diversity and inclusion. You know, we at Science Friday are celebrating our 30th year this year. And so, you know, I just opened up your magazine to November of 1991. We started on the radio in November. And I looked at the stories that you covered during our first week of the broadcast. And I saw something that we did, a few things that we did, like the discovery of, you had the discovery of the first pluripotent stem cell.

which is huge now, right? Definitely. Definitely. Congratulations on your anniversary as well. That's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. But every issue, you know, every issue you look at, you can find something similar.

You can find something where it's like, wow, that was a moment in time that changed things going forward. And that's what's amazing about this archive. And that's why for our centennial, we want to really invite readers into it. and give them the chance through the Century of Science Project to explore what's there and to find what bit most interests them. And looking back, another thing that struck me is how some of the ideas we take for granted we're still open for debate,

like in this story about spiral nebulae. Spiral nebulae may not be other universes. Distinct changes in the structure and form of the nucleus of the well-known spiral Messier 99 are recorded, by Dr. Lampland at the Lowell Observatory. The nebulae of the so-called spiral family are very numerous throughout the depths of space, but scientists have not yet been able to determine their size,

distance, and composition, or discover what laws govern their motions or how they are related to the stars and planets. Astronomy is always a fascinating thing to look back on because we get new tools. We get new telescopes. We get all kinds of new devices we can look out and see further into space and back in time. It's always changing, right?

That's right. And that's one of my favorite stories, or that class of stories is one of my favorite, because, of course, it was a question at the time of what were those spiral nebulae? And were they other galaxies outside of the Milky Way? Or were they much closer by and part of the Milky Way? And it really speaks to our, I mean, it was just later that decade that Hubble showed that there are distant galaxies outside of our own. And so it's fascinating to kind of see the back and forth of the coverage and to hear what the scientists, what astronomers were thinking. And to put that in context and to really be a witness to the fact that our view of our place in the universe was changing.

I'm I reflato and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. That started a whole discussion, Hubble, and then Fred Hoyle and then George Gamow. They all started discussing the Big Bang, which was another supposedly derogatory term that Fred used to describe how the universe began. And there was a huge debate that still goes on today. Yeah, so often in these stories, it's like you can almost feel the scientists, like they want to solve this question so badly and they don't have the data or the technology or the tools to do it. And one of the thrilling parts about looking back at the century is to see when they get the tool, whether it's the Hubble Space Telescope or whether it's sonar so they can

put, you know, survey the ocean floor and discover plate tectonics, you know, that they couldn't really figure it out until they had the technological. tools to do it. That's right. And think about all the things that have been discovered about the deep ocean floor that way never knew about before a hundred years ago. The vents. Plague tectonics was a big discussion in the early 20s, as you say. How does the earth move? But we then created these deep diving vessels where people could go into them and see things they had never seen before. And I don't think people could have predicted things like that about what you, you know, you would see if you actually had the tools to do it.

Yeah, and I was just blown away by the fact that, you know, plate tectonics was still controversial in the 1960s. Yeah, yeah, they were still talking about that. It took a while for that idea to catch on, didn't it? It's really fascinating. Some of those tools that we're talking about and that Nancy mentioned, you know, weren't just set within one scientific discipline either, but there were certain tools that came around that really transformed multiple fields.

at a time. You know, I'm thinking of something like the electron microscope or you think of radiometric dating that really had implications for biology, for material science, for human history, for understanding of the universe. And it's amazing to see how that one, one technology or one innovation can just open wide the doors of scientific inquiry. You know, we look back over the years and saw how science journalism started out 100 years ago with the scope trial, at least in terms of what you were covering in the range of years, and then has morphed into other science journalism. Can you predict?

Can you make a prediction about the future of science journalism, Nancy? Oh, gosh, that's easy, Ira. Well, you know, journalism. Well, can you make a prediction about where you would like it to go? I would hope that science news is going to be around for another 100 years and that we will continue to do our, you know, deep dives and explanation about how science works and the advances that make it happen and how it affects society and how we understand it. And just as science has been transformed by technology and discoveries in the last 100 years,

so has journalism. We're in a huge era of ferment and destruction. Some of it creative. Some of it not. But I'm confident we're going to have science journalists 100 years from now, and I hope science news journalists will be doing an even better job than we are today. And of course, we have run out of time. I'd like to thank my guest Nancy Schutt, the editor-in-chief,

and Elizabeth Quill, the Enterprise Editor for the Magazine Science News. Happy anniversary to both of you and all the staff there who I've known and enjoyed talking to over the years. Thanks, Ira. Thank you. You're welcome. Also, thanks to SciFri's Aeneiro, Nadja Ortelt, Kyle Viturbo, Sotia Garcia, and Diana Montano for being the voices of those Science News archive clips. Why don't we come back? The SciFri Book Club returns with a call to action for communities

on the front lines of climate change. It's Elizabeth Rush's book Rising. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. It has been quite the summer for extreme weather in the U.S. Another record year for wildfires has meant evacuations and dangerously poor air quality in large swaths of the country. Hundreds of thousands remained sweltering and without power for weeks after Hurricane Ida came in from the Gulf. Flash floods killed dozens in the northeast. Drought threatens the water supply for millions in the West. Our listener Richard in Seattle called into the sci-fi vox pop app and shared this story from where he lives. What's less obvious to the casual observer is that if you stand in Seattle, on a clear day, you could see mountains 360 degrees around you.

Even in the depths of August in previous years, we'd look out and see white on the tops of those mountains. Those glaciers are gone. It's gone. It's scary. So do you feel a little bit anxious like Richard does about the future of the planet? or maybe you want to do something, but you don't know what to do. Our book club may have some inspiration for you. Producer Christy Taylor is here to explain.

Hey, Christy. Hey, there, Ira. All right, so tell us what we are reading and why. Sure thing. Ira, we are reading Rising Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, and it follows Elizabeth all over the country as she visits threatened coastal wetlands and talks to people whose communities are in danger from rising seas and flooding.

People, though, were also doing something about it in communities like Staten Island, Pensacola, the South Bay. It's a really, really gorgeous book, Ira, and it's one that actually made me feel a little bit like there's a way to make things better at the end of the day. Good to hear that it's not a bummer, as they say. It really isn't, though there are times, I have to be frank, when there are some heavy emotions. Rising author Elizabeth Rush joined me for a short chat a couple weeks. weeks ago, and I started by asking her to read an excerpt from the book, one that deals specifically

with the kind of grief and anxiety that a lot of people may be feeling. So this comes about 60 pages into the book, and I think what you need to know is that I've spent the morning in a marsh in coastal Maine, and we're discovering that as the marsh becomes inundated, it's emitting really high levels of methane, which is a gas that warms the planet really quickly. and I'm out in a kayak with a friend. And so that's what you need to know as we jump into this scene. These days, all it takes is a little unusual warmth to make me feel nauseated. I call this new form of climate anxiety and sickness.

Like motion sickness or sea sickness and sickness is its own kind of vertigo, a physical response to living in a world that is moving in unusual ways. towards what I imagine as a kind of event horizon. A burble of bile rises from my stomach and a string of observations I've been hearing in these parts adulterates the joy of our afternoon adventure. Thank you so much for reading that. So I think what you're describing here,

this end sickness, as you call it, it's a very familiar feeling for a lot of people who are already aware of the changes that our planet is undergoing. We announced your book for our fall book club, and several people actually immediately emailed us to say, hey, that's a really heavy topic. That's a lot of grief and a lot of anxiety to process here, isn't there? It's interesting. I feel like that deep immersion into climate awareness is something that more and more and more people are feeling in the present tense.

I think that there's something really important actually in creating a space to share that grief, to talk about how uncomfortable or unsettling this topic is because I think only in making that space do we actually start to arrive at a place of a possibility of moving sort of in that discomfort into or towards climate action. Towards the middle of the book, I start to drop into communities that have been dwelling in that discomfort for a significant period of time. And they've started to recognize that their vulnerability is shared amongst each other and with that shared vulnerability, they're gaining a little bit of a sense of the fact that they can do something with it. Like, what are we going to do now that we know that we're imperiled?

And I think each of those communities comes up with different solutions that are a reflection of, you know, the larger socioeconomic circumstances that they find themselves in, the history of these communities. But part of what I think is really special about rising is that it's not just about dwelling in discomfort and grief. It's also about what people have done once they've spent a lot of time there. So I also think of it as sort of a guidebook to the future that we all increasingly share. You overall, you write a lot about the importance of wetlands and marshes for keeping people safe from rising waters, but you also write about the ways in which sea level rise is endangering the existence of these marshes. Can you talk a little bit more about what's happening in these ecosystems? I will tell you when I started writing this book, as I started to focus on sea level,

level rise, I thought, okay, I'm going to have to spend a lot of time in wetlands. And my immediate response to that was snooze alert. You know, like, I want to be on mountain tops. I don't want to be knee-deep in mucky marshes. But the more I learned about marshes and the more time I spent in them, the more enraptured I became. They are these really dynamic systems. When we're talking about tidal wetlands, we're talking about a whole ecosystem that lives really within a very, very fine balance. Thinking about how dynamic they are that they live in this in this in between space, of course, as sea levels are rising, they're starting to, especially in places where they can't migrate inland because we've built roads or neighborhoods along their uplands edge, they're starting to get

sort of squeezed in place. You've got sea levels rising on one side and an impenetrable bear barrier on the back end. When we don't have human-made infrastructure on the back of these marshlands, we can see with a certain pace of sea level rise, the marshes can keep up. They can migrate, move in and out. It's a beautiful thing to watch, but also as you become more attuned to it, you start to recognize how tremendously vulnerable they are because they really only live in that unique space between land and sea. You save many, many pages for just letting people speak and tell their own stories themselves, which feels really important because so often people who experience disasters get treated like characters in a story that they're not actually writing,

right? It's also simply about the fact that, you know, I've been writing about sea level rise for a decade now. And the thing that's fundamentally transformed me has been sitting in a stranger's living room and listening to their stories of what it's like to make a life on top of vulnerable land and then watch parts of that life get washed away. I still remember to this day being invited to a celebration of life party for this man named Leonard Montalto who died during Hurricane Sandy in Staten Island. I'd been researching and spending time in Oakwood Beach for over a year. and his daughter, Nicole, pulled me into her aunt's guest bedroom and said, you're writing a book,

so I'm going to tell you the story of what happened on the night of Hurricane Sandy, because you will help me memorialize my father. And she spoke for two hours. And for the longest time, I had no idea what to do with that interview. I transcribed the entire thing, and it just sat in a folder on my computer. for years because I felt like there was nothing that I could do that would add anything to that story. Speaking of what happened on Staten Island and Hurricane Sandy, I want to ask you to read one more excerpt from this section about how those communities bounced back or responded to Sandy.

So I think the one thing that I want to say to introduce this short piece is that many, many communities along the edge of Staten Island came together and and started to petition the government to purchase and demolish their storm impacted homes. And they eventually won the right to have those homes purchased and demolished. And they relocated in. And if you look at the story of Staten Island, 80% of islanders stayed on the island. So a lot of their communities remained intact. Here's a short excerpt that sort of reflects on my time in Staten Island.

Here is what I found among the rubble-strewn foundations in the ported-up bungalows, alongside the berm with its insides exposed in the inundated cord grass. It is no surprise that there I found another tremendously vulnerable tidal wetland. But in Oakwood, I began to understand that the vulnerability of these places can and ought to be transformed into a battle cry. Yes, wetlands communities are the canaries in our coastal coal mines, the first to feel the ocean's gathering force. And yet the retreating residents of Oakwood by banding together and demanding aid are also something else. An example for the rest of us to follow. They're less victims than agents, more rhizomes than rambikes. Thank you so much for that. And I just want to make this

metaphor you've used a little bit more clear for our listeners. So we talked about the rampikes, which are trees that have died because they're soaking up salt water. But a rhizome is a strong interconnected thing, and that's the thing you're celebrating here. Absolutely. So rhizomes are these roots that can form new shoots and pop up and create new plants in surprising places. And so when you look at rhizomes,

they're really exciting because it's not just about the individual plant, it's about the community of plants that move up and in as these underground networks reach. up and in. And I definitely saw that happening in the human communities that live in these vulnerable places as well. When I could find groups that banded together and discovered a shared sense of vulnerability and a sense of purpose from that vulnerability, they often were able to advocate for themselves, new futures that would help them maintain important parts of their community identity, will also shedding their high risk exposure to flooding. And I found that actually to

be, dare I say, a source of hope. Well, and we will end on that possibly controversial word. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Christy. Elizabeth Rush, author of the book Rising, Dispatches from the New American Shore. As we've said, this is the official kickoff for our fall book club. Head to our website, Science Friday.com slash book club.

We have excerpts of the book, a newsletter, discussion communities, and much more. And you can attend live Zoom events. We'll have Elizabeth herself back later in the month to answer your questions and talk more about what she saw in coastal communities. Plus, this Tuesday, October 5th, join us on Zoom for a live interview about marsh science. Like you just heard, these are vital and fascinating ecologies, and we're going to put on our virtual waiters and splash on in. All the information you need is at ScienceFriiday.com slash book club. I'm Christy Taylor. Christy Taylor, sci-fi producer and our radio book club captain.

And as you're reading the book, tell us what you're thinking, please, via our sci-fri-voxpop app. We want to hear your questions, your feelings, and anything else that comes up. It's all there on the sci-fri vox pop app wherever you get your apps. I'm I reflato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And now for the last time this fall, it's our charismatic creature carnival. Joining me today, as always, is our charismatic, Creature Correspondent, Kathleen Davis. Hi, Kathleen. Hey, Ira. I'm so sad the carnival is almost over. You know, so am I. But let's review. Last week, we had a showdown between the pigeon and the shoebill stork.

And I hear we have a winner. We sure do. Our listeners voted on which creature they thought was the most charismatic. And one of our feathered friends came out on top. So, Ira, for the last time, this carnival, I would like a drum roll, please. Soaring into our third semi-finalist spot is the one, the only shoebill stork. So now we have all our semifinalists, right? Yes, the shoe-bill stork joins the mantis shrimp and the opossum as carnival matchup winners. And that means one of them will come out on top as our first entry into the charismatic creature Carnival Hall of Fame. But that choice is up to our listeners.

Ooh, and we know our listeners feel strongly about these creatures, don't we? We heard from so many people, listeners of all ages from all over the world, from Douglas, Alaska, to Tokyo, Japan. Our listeners were so passionate about the creatures we talked about, so we've collected the wonderful art and voice messages they've sent in at ScienceFriiday.com slash carnival. But who will be our winner? Will it be the Shoe Bill Stork? Here is what listener Jeff from Bozeman, Montana,

had to say about why he liked the Shoe Bill Stork. Given the fact that dinosaurs are still alive and with us in the form of birds, there is no better example, in my opinion, than the Shoe Bill Stork. It looks exactly like what I imagine a living dinosaur would look. It's kind of terrifying, in my opinion, but really cool. Whoa. First of all, he should have his own radio show, with that voice, but that was a great vote, I think. Yeah. But it could also be the opossum that comes out on top.

Here is a message that we got from Judy from Sag Harbor, New York. I'm voting for the opossum because it's America's only marsupial, number one. I live in Long Island, and opossums eat ticks, so that's very cool. And it's got a face that only a mother could love. So we've got to love them. She makes a good argument, I guess, you know, that's got a face only a mother could love. It sure does. Or will the colorful, tiny but mighty mantis shrimp come out on top? Here is a message we got from Diego from Florida about why he loves the mantis shrimp. I like the mantis shrimp because of all its different colors.

Yeah, I just think it's really good. Well, I'm with you, Diego on that one. They are all great creatures. I really don't know who's going to come out on top. And how do people vote for their favorites of these three? Per usual, the site you're going to go to is ScienceFriday.com slash carnival. Science Friday.com slash carnival.

Voting closes next Wednesday, 10 a.m. Eastern Time. And Kathleen, I hear the winner will be announced at a special event next week. Yes. So, as our listeners may know, on Wednesdays, we hold Science. Friday trivia. It's completely virtual. It is streamed on YouTube so anybody can come. And next Wednesday at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time, we are doing a special charismatic creature trivia night. Oh, so does that mean if you've been listening throughout the carnival? You might have an advantage? I'm not, not saying that. Do I have any use for the mantis shrimp costume I've been painstakingly make for

Halloween? Well, it's funny that you mentioned that. Our trivia event will also be a virtual costume party. No. I will be dressed up. So will our trivia leader, Diana, and we'll want you to send photos of your costumes. So choose your favorite charismatic creature we talked about during the carnival. And I can't wait to see what our creative listeners do. Same here.

Sign up for trivia at ScienceFriiday.com slash trivia. Our carnival winner will be announced next Wednesday, 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time. I want to thank our Carnival Ring Leader, SciFri producer Kathleen Davis. This really was a lot of fun. It was a great contest. Thanks, Ira. I had a blast, and I will see everybody at Trivia next week. And that's about all the time we have for this week.

If you've missed any part of the program or you'd like to hear it again, why not? Subscribe to our podcasts. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.