Terrascope Radio

Here we feature the work of first-year students – these are the final pieces produced over a semester for subject SP.360 – Terrascope Radio.

May 2026 Turning the Table

Posted at 11:35h in Radio by Kristin Baker

Puerto Rico relies on imports for 85% or more of its food, leaving the island insecure and dependent. Here are sound-rich profiles of three remarkable people, none of whom began in agriculture, each using their own unique backgrounds and skills to help make the island’s food supply–and the lives of its people–more secure. Some music from Blue Dot Sessions.

First Aired: May 12, 2026

Transcript

Turning The Table – Terrascope Radio 2026 Program Script

[Suley:] Thank you so much. We are really happy to have you here. And because we can share what we do. And one thing that is very important for us is to share the table and to share the table as slowly as the same way as the food grow. So we can go back to what we are supposed to be, which is being humans, right?

[Penelope:] Suley Cruz is a lot of things– farmer, teacher, and revolutionary. She lives in the mountains just outside of San Juan, the largest city in Puerto Rico. She’s standing now in an open pavilion, surrounded by rows of neatly planted crops. Beyond that is the Caribbean jungle. Suley is serving lunch here at El Josco Bravo. It’s part school and part working farm, so everything they do comes back to food. Because, everywhere in Puerto Rico, food– how it’s grown, where it comes from, and how it gets to people’s plates– is complicated.

Today, you’ll hear about these complexities, and why, to some, Puerto Rico’s food system is deeply flawed. But you’ll also hear 3 stories about people turning the table, and trying to fix it. From people like Suley, who bring change through teaching, to others who disrupt the system, they all bring their expertise to the table. But not only that, their humanity, culture, community, and love of food pushes and motivates them to create a better Puerto Rico.

[Ian:] I am agronomist. I’m. But I, we always say that more important than being agronomists. I am a farmer.

[Penelope:] Alongside Suley, Ian Pagan is one of the coordinators of El Josco Bravo. He’s spent 12 years teaching agroecology– sustainable farming practices that are informed by their knowledge of natural processes.

[Ian:] Harvesting and teaching others to harvest and to cultivate their own food is our best, contribution for Puerto Rico. So it’s that that’s super important for us. Why? Why is our best contribution? Because, we produce very little of the food that we consume. Do you know how much we produce? 15% is the number that everybody says. I think it’s less than 15%. 15% was the number before Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Maria. Destroyed our our our agriculture. So that put us in a very vulnerable situation.

[Penelope:] Puerto Ricans produce less than 15% of the food they consume, and, with the effects of natural disasters, that number is only decreasing. But hurricanes are just one piece of a much larger issue. Another piece? Well, some people say Puerto Ricans just aren’t interested in working on a farm.

[Ian:] What do you hear? Always in Puerto Rico, that we are lazy people, that we don’t want to work under the sun, that we don’t want to get our hands dirty. And that’s what most of our population think of ourself. But what we have experienced, during more than one decades, dedicating to teach others is the opposite.

[Penelope:] For El Josco Bravo, laziness is not what’s preventing people from doing agriculture– it’s stigma.

[Ian:] What happened with the, agricultural labor? It has it has been historically very, stigmatized, for example, most of our ancestors were dedicated to the sugarcane plantations. But it was a very exploitative condition. So most of our ancestor said, you have to study, you have to be a professional and not end up like me in agriculture.

[Penelope:] Ian reverses this stigma through education. Students at El Josco Bravo learn everything about growing food: how to weed, handle a machete, and harvest the crops when it’s time. But although the farm is his classroom, his lessons reach far beyond it. Because developing farming skills isn’t enough to overturn the whole system– it also requires a change in mindset.

[Ian:] Being raised in Puerto Rico, living in Puerto Rico, you always hear about it is part of our colonial, mindset. if you as Puerto Ricans don’t behave well, there will not be food for you. And that’s very powerful.

[Penelope:] Ian and his team did not start out as farmers– they were originally college students.

[Ian:] We were very concerned students about our political situation. About the economic situation? About our environmental situation here in Puerto Rico.

[Penelope:] They lobbied, protested, and pushed for change in the status quo in Puerto Rico. But eventually, they saw opportunity for change in a different way.

[Ian:] So we wanted to put our resources, time, ideas to propose something and to and to build something. Not just always protesting and stepping back. We say that we are building a an army of our agroecological farmers. So right now, 12 years later, there are thousands of people educated like, very highly educated in our ecology because of, as a result of our school, of agroecology, there’s, dozens of new agroecological, projects around the island.

[Penelope:] Ian and his colleagues started as revolutionaries, and that’s not too far from where they ended up. They channeled their love and anger into something that would heal Puerto Rico’s food system from centuries of stigma and exploitation, sharing their knowledge with thousands of people around the island.

[Ian:] In the struggle for a better Puerto Rico, we are proud Puerto Ricans. We have to to establish that we we are proud Puerto Ricans and we think and we know that we, wow. We know that we can do better. And we, nos merecemos mas… we deserve better also. Thank you.

[Jocelyn:] Further south on the island, in a sprawling expanse surrounded by hills, a warm breeze rustles the grass, carrying a dusty, dry aroma through the air. Amidst the avocado trees, another farmer finds herself drawn to the land and the life that comes from it.

[Josefina:] I just want to taste avocado with nothing else. taste? Passion fruit. I mean, everything I plant, I have to love it. Well, I’m glad that I don’t plant things I don’t like. I am Josephina Arce.

[Jocelyn:] And she, along with Betsaida Ortiz, runs a 70-acre farm.

[Josefina:] Well, welcome to Finca Atabey. Atabey is a word in Taino language, which means, Mother Earth.

[Jocelyn:] Her name for her farm, which is in Taino, an indigenous language of Puerto Rico, reflects her connection with the earth, and the passion in her voice overflows as she talks about the food she grows. But surprisingly, she hasn’t been a farmer her whole life.

[Josefina:] I am, ex-professor of chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras.

[Jocelyn:] It wasn’t until after she retired that she decided to take up farming.

[Josefina:] I would no longer wanted to have very controlled experiments. I wanted something real.

[Jocelyn:] She’d rather spend her retirement doing hard labor than resting.

[Josefina:] I think I’m maybe you’re a little crazy because, it’s a lot of work. It’s very difficult, but it gives me a sense of of living. Of earth.

[Jocelyn:] Aside from that, Josefina is passionate about other issues that impact Puerto Rico and the rest of the world.

[Josefina:] I went over here to work on this farm because I was very interested in, food sustainability in Puerto Rico. Maybe not to to provide everything, but at least to have something to eat if something happened for a few months.

[Jocelyn:] She’s also committed to combating climate change. She’s concerned about the overuse of chemicals in agriculture, and in general the impact that large-scale farming has on the environment. Despite not being a professor anymore, she regularly conducts research on her farm to innovate alternative farming techniques.

[Josefina:] Oh, God. I didn’t know exactly what I was hoping for because, doing, research, experimenting in a changing environment is extremely difficult, but I love it.

[Jocelyn:] She loves it. So she’s motivated partly by her understanding of science. She’s motivated by her wholehearted desire to produce Super Tasty Food. She’s also motivated by her love for the people around her. Her infectious joy for nature and the land compels her to share it, and she wants more people to see the world in the beautiful way she does.

[Josefina:] I wrote two books this year, this last year. Education is something that I’ve done all my life, and it’s something that I enjoy so much. People say that I teach even if people don’t want to learn, I don’t care. You’re going to hear me and everything that I have to learn first hand, touching the earth and touching the plants. It’s so beautiful. It really makes me sad that people are not enjoying all the beautiful things that the earth is supposed to give us.

[Jocelyn:] So when Josefina grows food, she grows it the way a scientist does. But she also does it with her full nurturing authentic self. With all the love and care in her heart for the earth, and for her people.

[Christian:] While farmers like Josefina are getting their hands dirty, love for food and the island keeps others moving forward in the heart of Puerto Rico in San Juan.

[Crystal:] I love to cook it. I love to grow it. I love to eat it.

[Christian:] But growing the food is only half the struggle… getting the food to the table is just as important. That’s where Crystal Diaz, cofounder of PRoduce, comes in. PRoduce is an online marketplace where people can easily order local produce. To facilitate this, they operate a distribution center where they package and send out orders. This work all started with a question

[Crystal: 00;02;03;07] And when in in the sense that I love food, at some point you get into the question of why we don’t have really good food and why is this happening, why we import so much.

[Christian:] This questioning of Puerto Rico’s flawed food system caused Crystal Diaz to leave her career of 14 years in marketing and business. She realized that what she really wanted in her career was to add value to her homeland.

[Crystal:] I knew at that point that I wanted to focus my efforts into adding value to my country, to my island, and the part that I love is food.

[Christian:] But then… in 2020…. the world changed

[Christian:] As the coronavirus pandemic locked down the entire world, the imports that Puerto Rico relied on began to slow down.

[Crystal:] when the things get hard because there is a pandemic, everybody is going to protect their people, and what we will have? Whatever happens with the country that is producing that food that decides that it will not ship any more food because they’re gonna protect their people, and then we are right here waiting for the ship. That’s not reliable. It’s a fake reliability.

[Christian:] So her goal was simple: she wanted to be a part of the movement working to make a change, no matter how big or small.

[Christian:] Crystal quickly realized that you can’t just build a new food system on a foundation of broken trust. For years, Puerto Rican farmers had been the one to bear the brunt in the food system:

[Crystal:] In the case of the local farmers, there was a lot of trusting issues because a lot of distributors in the past will tell you, “Yes, yes, yes, grow this. I will buy from you.” And then when the crop was ready, they will tell you, “Ah, no, you didn’t have it when I needed it, so I already bought it from someone else.” So for us, it was very important to, like, we have been committed since day one that we will buy your crop if we said that we were going to do it.

[Christian:] Crystal knew she couldn’t run PRoduce by only buying when it’s convenient… she had to be the one to change these relationships. And so Crystal took the risks, time, and dedication to have meaningful connections with the farmers.

[Crystal:] Somebody has to risk, and we have always expected that the farmers is the one that risk. And the way that we see it is that we’re gonna risk it. The farmer should not risk it. That’s how we began most of our relationships, were losing money just buying whatever you had, just to— for you to start trusting us.

[Christian:] During this time, PRoduce established itself to Puerto Rican consumers as an app that not only brought food to their plates, but also lessons about supporting local food and farmers.

[Crystal:] So that what, like, what do you think moving forward is your vision for education and how it can work with this kind of new system that you’re creating? That’s right. Well, I think education is, one of the primary things that we need to do, especially because we cater products that most people have never seen before or have never and haven’t seen in years. So we need to educate a lot about how to use them, how to cook kids, what to use them. I have been having conversations lately of take whatever recipe you want and just substitute the potato with these, these, these, these or that, or just substitute water and take like general ingredients that you can substitute with local stuff and just, giving the people the hint to use other goods that are not necessarily their potatoes and, things that we don’t grow here.

[Christian:] She shows people that consumers don’t need to rely on imported food to create delicious dishes. Spreading awareness and fostering meaningful connections is what drives Crystal.

[Crystal:] So I think in general, what I like most of what I do is that I get to choose what adds value because I have that freedom, what adds value on what I want to do that adds value to to what I believe that should be happening in Puerto Rico instead of our regular job, where I have to do the same thing every day because I have different projects, I just have things to do all the time. But I get to do what adds value? What adds value to you? For me, it adds value, to make more local product available in the tables of the Puerto Rican families in different ways, in a restaurant, in your home, when you’re cooking, buying from more local farmers so people get more, excited to grow more food.

[Christian:] Crystal’s operation in San Juan is growing day by day. It is expanding from just a distribution center to a storefront and community center, a place where Puerto Ricans can hang out and relax, connect with people, and share their love for local food.

[Liam:] Listening to Ian, Josefina, and Crystal, none of these people started in agriculture, but they recognized a problem and learned how to navigate it from scratch, all while leveraging each of their unique backgrounds and skills to push towards a better future, a better Puerto Rico.

[Liam:] Ian didn’t see what he wanted in his education, so he became a teacher himself to empower his students and community.

[Ian (El Josco Bravo):] We are proposing a new kind of farming that provide us dignity, good quality of life.

[Liam:] Josefina approaches agriculture with her scientist’s background, and she puts her whole heart and soul into her work to share her joy for the earth with as many people as possible.

[Josefina (Finca Atabey):] Well, it’s like it’s like having your child or somebody else’s child. It’s just you feel, empowered. You feel, like you’re doing something for yourself that you know where it comes from.

[Liam:] Crystal found instability in distribution with small farmers left hanging, so she strove to build a system of connection, trust, and loyalty.

[Crystal (Produce):] I love to connect people. I love to create networks of people doing really good things together, and supporting our local farmers and getting consumers amazed because they try something the first time. That’s what moves me.

[Liam:] This isn’t just a story about food or the flawed system governing its production and distribution. This is a story about people from all walks of life disrupting that system. But not only that, it’s a story about people driven by community, care, and cultural pride.

Acknowledgements
[Iman:] This piece was produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2026 Terrascope Radio class.

[Iman:] While gathering sound for this story, we saw this sense of culture and community at Plaza Pública Santiago R. Palmer Square in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Children giggling and running around fountains, old couples dancing hand in hand, and people nodding along to the music that reverberated throughout the square. This is the community, the culture that Ian, Josephina, Crystal, and so many more are committed to. Committed to bettering the future for the people and children dancing along to the music.

[Osade:] Brought to you by Terrascope Radio 2026: Iman Babiker, Stacy Chen, Stephanie Fischer, Liam Gault, James Holmes, Jocelyn Hwang, Osadebamwen John-Nejoh, Christian Le, Anniston Pierce, Wade Rogers, David Sevilla, Penelope Swain, and Jacob Zhao. Terrascope Radio is a class developed by the MIT Terrascope program in collaboration with the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. We would like to thank Terrascope director David McGee and community coordinator Kristin Baker, as well as instructor Ari Epstein and Undergraduate Teaching Fellow Jackson Dryg. We would also like to thank the people and organizations that we spoke to in Puerto Rico. Without these amazing people, this piece would not have been possible. Some music from Blue Dot Sessions. Thank you for listening!

May 2025 A Rock in a Hard Place: The Lithium Conundrum in Nevada

Posted at 11:14h in Presentations, Radio by terrascope

Want cleaner energy? With current technology, we’ll need a lot of lithium, but lithium mining can have harmful consequences.

A radio story about how hard it is to create a radio story about such a difficult topic; a serious tale told with a sense of humor. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

FIRST AIRED: MAY 29, 2025

^{Image Credit: Ari Epstein}

Transcript

1) Intro: [1:08]

[MUSIC: sad intro/background music]

[SFX: door to beanbag room swings open]

Katelyn: Hey, Ramona. I haven’t seen you for a while… wait, it’s 3 am, how long have you been lying in that beanbag?

Ramona: grrrrr

Katelyn: Gosh, you look awful, AND you have your sad music playing? What’s going on?

[FADE MUSIC LOWER]

Ramona: mhrrrr

Katelyn: What’s this all over the walls?

[SFX: peeling sticky note off wall]

Katelyn: sticky notes? What are you doing here?

Ramona: arrrggghhh

[SFX: rolling over in beanbag]

Katelyn: Hey, stop it. You need to get up, move, DO SOMETHING. What’s wrong with you?

Ramona: It’s this class, Katelyn. I should have dropped it when I could.

Katelyn: What class?

Ramona: Terrascope Radio. I think I told you. We‘re trying to tell this story about lithium mining.

Katelyn: Ok, and?

Ramona: My classmates and I have put together like a million versions, with different stories and different people speaking but it’s just not working. Ahhr, let me just play this for you. This was our first script version, Rowan is narrating this one.

[SFX: rolling in beanbag, typing something and pressing “enter”]

[SFX: click sound]

2) Beginning of a documentary about lithium mining in Nevada [2:16]

____________________________________________________________________________

[PLAY: RenoMusicianInterview_YrBLAK_0258.wav]

[FADE TO BED]

Rowan: Nevada is home to many deposits of minerals, including gold, silver, and copper, making it historically a very attractive mining territory. Now, the state is in the grips of the Gray Rush – a massive push for a mineral found in a wide variety of products from batteries to medication. A mineral that is critical to the worldwide transition to cleaner energy…

Lithium.

[FADE IN starting right before “lithium” – SaltyStepsAmbi_YrBLAK_0247.wav]

Rowan: Here, on top of a massive pile of salt and mining byproducts overlooking a flat desert landscape checkered in ponds of blue and green…[cut off here]

____________________________________________________________________________

[SFX: click sound]

Katelyn: Why did you stop it?

Ramona: I can’t listen to this. It’s all too general, like you could have looked that up. There is no story in this piece.

Katelyn: I thought it sounded fine, but sure, I see how this can start to get boring if it went on for much longer. Personally, I don’t really care about this topic, but there’s gotta be a way you could make it into more of an engaging story for people who actually do care. Was there any particular story that stood out to you?

Ramona: Actually, there was. *hehehe* pupfish. Wait, my classmates, Jackson and Victoria, put this one together… here it is!

[SFX: click]

____________________________________________________________________________

3) Pupfish [5:43]

[AMBI: walking, footsteps]

[FADE OUT AMBI]

Victoria: So I’m in Ash Meadows, a wildlife refuge just east of Death Valley, along the border of Nevada and California. I’m here on a group tour with Mason Voehl [veil], executive director of Amargosa Conservancy– an organization dedicated to protecting the natural beauty of Ash Meadows.

[AMBI: wind and grass rustling]

[FADE IN on “winding”, FADE OUT on “trees”]

Victoria: So far I’ve seen winding, prickly stalks of yellow grass, grey leafless ash trees, and a serene turquoise spring. But this next stop, just outside of Ash Meadows, is a little different. In the distance I see a long grey chain-link fence.

[MUSIC: suspenseful]

[OPTION: Service Road 237, Trailhead (link))]

Victoria: As we get closer, I see that it’s topped with rusty barbed wire. A sign warns us that the area behind the fence is under video monitoring. A part of the desert…. Under video surveillance?!

[OPTION: Katelyn saying “whoa”]

Victoria: Mason led us into the viewing area– a dirt path with fenced-in walls and a ceiling. At the end of the path, I looked between the black bars and saw what all the security was for: a deep, narrow cave in the ground

[MUSIC: something more contemplative, but with energy]

[OPTION: Service Road 237 (Thin Fog version), Trailhead (link)]

[OPTION: Unakite, Graniteworks (link)] #more energy, but also denser…

Jackson: Mason explained that this cave, Devils Hole, was no ordinary cave. About fifteen feet down, there’s an oxygen-deficient pool that gets less than six hours of sunlight a day. Most fish wouldn’t be able to survive there, but there’s like this superfish, the Devils Hole pupfish, that can! In fact, it’s their only habitat. And as of spring 2025, there are just a few dozen of these fish left in the wild.

Jackson: In that pool, there’s an algae covered platform that protrudes from the wall. It’s where the pupfish lay their eggs and breed. But as resilient as these pupfish are, that shelf is their key weakness. That shelf is submerged in only two feet of water, and as Mason puts it,

[ACT: 012LAV_dr2, 9:23-9:27

“If the water in the Devils Hole falls below that shelf and that shelf dries out, that’s game over.”

]

Jackson: Not only that, Mason explains, there’s a long history of locals who have wanted these pupfish to die.

[ACT: 012LAV_dr2, 10:20-10:28

“Back in the 1960s, 1970s. Ash Meadows, before it was a wildlife refuge, actually supported a lot of agriculture.”

]

Victoria: Farmers who pumped groundwater out of the well dropped the water level of Devil’s hole to lethal levels. The National Park Service sued the farmers, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. Long story short, the protection of the pupfish won.

Jackson: After that, every time a nearby farmer or rancher sent in an application to use groundwater in the area, the state of Nevada would stringently check how much it would impact the water in the Devil’s Hole.

Victoria: And these limits made the local residents angry…

[ACT: 012_LAVdr2_D

“The town of Amargosa Valley is just west of us. This basically was, in some ways, a death nail on their ability to actually grow as a community. Again, you can’t do anything out here without water.

There was a time where you would drive around Amargosa Valley in this area, and you’d see bumper stickers that said either kill the pupfish or save the pupfish. I mean, it’s that polarizing.”

]

Jackson: Ranchers would come to Devil’s Hole with their guns and shoot into the cave. Over time, security intensified, until it became the intimidating fenced-in area we’re standing in now.

[AMBI: something to bring us back to the setting]

Victoria: But in summer 2023, something strange happened: the local residents and the pupfish found themselves united against a common enemy.

Jackson: The new threat was a mining company. They wanted to explore the area near Ash Meadows, drilling boreholes and looking for lithium, hoping to start a new mine if they struck it rich.

Victoria: This set off alarm bells for Mason and his colleagues at the Amargosa Conservancy. Drilling so close to the Ash Meadows area could definitely harm the Devils Hole pupfish. So Mason started to rally as much support as he could.

Jackson: But he needed the support of the local community – a community that used to hate the pupfish.

[ACT: 000_031203_D

Nye County, which we’re in, is one of the most aggressively libertarian counties in the United States. That is not an exaggeration. Me and my colleagues were called ecoterrorists

We went to the commission, though, and said, Look, local towns are worried about this. We’re worried about it. And Nye County joined us.

]

Jackson: The local residents knew that this mine was threatening their water supply. And because of that, Mason was able to bridge the massive political divide and form an alliance to stop the mine. Together, they sent a letter of opposition to the BLM– that’s the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all mining on federal land. Then they filed a lawsuit. Their case was that the drilling would threaten the extinction of the Devil’s Hole pupfish.

Victoria: [speak quickly] Mason told us it was this frantic time. It was constantly all hands on deck. The deadline was getting close. The drill rigs were already on site, drilling was set to start in 48 hours and everyone was anxious:

[ACT: 000_31203_D

“They were getting set up and we were going: “what do we do”?

]

[BUILD UP music from bed level, then STOP music abruptly after “what do we do?”]

[OPTION – Pewter Lamp, Desjardins (link)]

[PAUSE for :03]

[ACT: 000_031203_D: BLM did the right thing and pulled their permit at like 10 pm on a Wednesday night saying yeah we agree with you, we aren’t permitting the drilling.

But this was sort of like a wake up call for the entire community. We went, how was this even possible, that a project this bad, this close to the refuge, almost happened? And it’s because, again, we never saw this threat coming. We have to protect the groundwater flowing into Ash Meadows otherwise this whole… national wildlife refuge status doesn’t mean anything.

]

Jackson: The groundwater… that both pupfish and people depend on.

____________________________________________________________________________

Transition: [1:01]

[SFX: click]

Katelyn: Okay so, what’s wrong with this one?

Ramona: It’s, I mean it’s a good story, I like listening to it, but it only kind of touches upon the larger problem with this whole situation. Thing is, if Mason and others weren’t keeping tabs on the situation, people might not have found out that they were starting to drill there until it was too late. AND if not for the pupfish, THEY WOULD HAVE HAD NO SAY IN THE MINE BEING THERE.

Katelyn: I think you might be being dramatic.

Ramona: Am I?

Katelyn: What I do agree with you on is that your story needs way more background information. Like, what do you mean when you say communities have no input? I’m no expert, but I would imagine that there are policies in place for that.

Ramona: Well, kind of. I am also not an expert. But, umm, we talked to Kassandra Lisenbee, outreach director at the Great Basin Resource Watch, explained this to us.

Katelyn: The Great Basin Resource Watch?

Ramona: They’re a non-governmental organization from Reno, Nevada. Their goal is basically to protect the natural resources and communities from mining impacts. Ohh, here’s the sound. She explains it WAY better than I could.

[SFX: after “Nevada”, typing/clicking in the background]

____________________________________________________________________________

4) Policy Piece [2:00]

[ACT: Kassandra – Nevada Public Lands2.wav

“Nevada here is 80% public lands. Mining on public lands actually operates under the 1872 federal mining law, so it’s about 153-ish years old at this point, um it was really written to promote westward expansion…Because of that, mining gets a lot of perks. They are considered the highest and best use of public lands and so a lot of regulators and communities feel like they don’t have a right to say no to a lot of mining projects.”

“We have 29 different reservations here in Nevada. A study from Morgan Stanley on the energy transition shows most of the minerals that people will want to pull out to support the energy transition are within 35 miles of Native American reservations. So. Who’s paying the price of these mines?”

]

[SFX: click]

____________________________________________________________________________

Katelyn: It sounds like the mining companies have the better end of the deal. So what? They just get to come in and do whatever they want with the land? Why don’t you make your piece an exposé about that?

Ramona: Hmm, I don’t know. I feel like that’s not particularly fair, or a good story to tell. It’s not like the mining companies are in an easy spot, either.

Ramona: We met this geologist – Randal Burns – he works for Lithium Americas at a planned lithium operation called Thacker Pass. Talking to him, [small pause] it was clear that he cares about mining ethically. You know, there is effort in mining companies to minimize the ways the process affects land and water. Here, take a listen to this story Jordan narrated…

____________________________________________________________________________

5) Mining Perspective [2:20]

[ACT: randal-like-i-said-good-and-bad-mines.wav

“I have seen legacy issues. The previous mine I worked at was actively dealing with legacy issues. Very aware about how bad it could be”

Jordan: Having seen issues with other mines, Randal looked for a company that would CARE about their environmental impacts.

Jordan: One issue mining operations face deals with the leftover materials, called tailings, which are usually wet and get left onsite in dams. If the dams fail, acid from the tailings can seep into the ground and release other, potentially harmful minerals, contaminating the groundwater and soil. Lithium Americas solves this by neutralizing these tailings and making them dry.

[ACT: randal-filter-tailings.mp3

“Later in the process, filter tailings, neutralized it’s like a tile, no risk for dam failure. From an environmental standpoint this is a really good place to be for a mine.”

]

Jordan: Lithium Americas has definitely thought about the damage to land and water. While interviewing Randal out in the mountains near the proposed mine site, he talked about the impacts of Thacker Pass.

[ACT: Randal-everything-has-an-impact.mp3

As far as mine projects go, it’s pretty remote, water table’s not impacted, building here. Not displacing people, many other things, anything you do has an impact: clear cutting ground for corn, housing, for what trade off? Clear cutting ground:it’s for natural resources. If you can’t grow it you have to mine it.

]

____________________________________________________________________________

Transition: [1:09]

Ramona: You see what I’m saying, though. Imagine putting in all this effort to make the mining operation as good as possible, under pressure from the media, hated by some members of the community. [sigh] That can’t be easy.

Katelyn: I see. So what, the mining companies aren’t the bad guys? I guess I just kinda assumed they were the ones causing harm.

Ramona: Well, mining is an invasive process. That’s a fact. But there’s also more to it and you can’t just make a piece about how mining companies are evil.

Katelyn: Hmm okay, makes sense. Oh, oh, oh. I have an idea. What do you think about this for your piece: The inside scoop on what it’s like being in the lithium industry and having people hate you.

Ramona: Actually, that might be interesting. But it also misses the point a little. If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to include the voices of people in the impacted communities, which are a crucial part of the story.

Katelyn: Is that really important to have? Do you need to put those people in your story?

Ramona: That is not up for debate. You should have been there. These lithium mines have a real impact on people’s livelihoods. I mean, these are people’s homes we’re talking about, their communities.

Katelyn: Sorry, I didn’t realize.

Ramona: No, no, I mean, I didn’t realize either until I went to Nevada. Their stories were so compelling, I was in awe just listening to them speak. There’s no way we can leave them out of the piece.

Ramona: I should really play you some of them. My classmates, Suhaila and Elsa tried to put them together, but it felt [pause] it felt like what we produced wasn’t doing them justice.

Ramona: [sharp exhale] Anyways, give it a listen.

____________________________________________________________________________

6) Fermina + Edward + Community Impact [4:02]

Suhaila: So what is the impact of mining? From the speakers we listened to and people we talked to on the streets in Nevada we learned it’s land and it’s water but it’s also a struggle of trust like Edward Bartel, a rancher near Thacker Pass describes:

[ACT: Edward 5.8.wav

“A big part of our ranch is out near the mine site and they’re going to draw down the water table underneath our ranch out there and affect springs and stock watering locations…When they test pumped their production well, after 2.5 days it had already started showing a drawdown on our stock water well There’s a direct connection, not disputable.”

]

[ACT: Edward 5.8.wav (continued)

“Obviously we don’t trust the mines in terms of their promises. If they had someone in there acting in good faith it’s gonna be hard to tell that. And something I would like to see independent monitoring – to have something like the usgs come out so we have some degree of comfort that it’s not just the fox guarding the hen house”

]

Elsa: And it’s a struggle of protecting histories and futures which Fermina Stephens, Director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project which works to protect the human rights and treaty rights of the Western Shoshone people explains:

[ACT: Fermina-laws+bad-guys.wav

One of the things that need to be changed is the law, the policy that actually gives us equal leverage, because right now there’s nothing, absolutely nothing out there, that protects our culture or our spirituality and our culture and our spirituality is one with the environment and biodiversity. Who we are as a people is interlinked with everything that’s being destroyed, and so the laws need to change for the betterment of everybody, because those are the things that are important not just to indigenous peoples but to all peoples because those are our life sources that need to be protected.

]

Elsa: It’s not just outdated laws, this is also what some people believe. 10

[ACT: Fermina-laws+bad-guys.wav:

“When we were talking to the guy with the transition coalition and someone asked him about the destruction to all the indigenous people and their culture. HE was like, “well I’m trying to save the planet for my future generations, so that’s more important than these peoples’ culture” so right there you know, and it’s been said before.

]

5.8 NIMBY:impact_4.wav (All clips below included in this file)

Suhaila: And mining creates a point of divide among communities and families like Kassandra sums up:

[ACT: Kassandra – ½ family.wav

“I’m a pretty normal Nevada girl, half my family works in mining and half my family hates mining”

]

Suhaila: And like Sara in Reno:

Just-dont-talk-about-it.wav “Yeah my dad is in mining while he’s my dad and I love him but I’m really against it chemicals bad

Elsa: And yet, for others, mining is their livelihood.

Miner lives.wav (both acts included in this file)

[ACT: Adam – No school go to mining.wav

“My name is Adam Seary, supervisor for silver peak…worked in mining for 15 years…yeah if you’re not going to school to further your education and higher up roles and you’re single and young, mining is a good start.”

]

[ACT: Tom – Lived in Reno 50 yrs.wav + Tom – Family in Mining.wav

“My name is Tom, I’ve lived in Reno my whole life, 40 years…do you have family members that are miners? Oh yeah numerous, grew up here my whole life, a lot of my friends work for the mines”

]

Suhaila: But one thing people can agree on is:

[ACT: Kassandra – Grow or Mine.wav

“If you can’t grow it, you gotta mine it”

]

____________________________________________________________________________

7) Reflection + Conclusion [3:00]

Katelyn: Wow, okay, that was powerful. You definitely need to include some of those clips in your piece.

Ramona: I know! And interestingly everyone recognizes the seemingly obvious fact that some of the materials we need in today’s age, like lithium, we can only get it through mining. There is really just no other way to get it.

Katelyn: If there’s no other way to get it, do we even need to get it at all? How much do we really need lithium?

Ramona: Huh, you want your phone and laptop to have a battery? Well, you probably want lithium for it. [small pause] I’ll do you one better. Do you want us to transition away from fossil fuels to more renewable energy and electrify transportation? Well, you heard what we might lose in the process.

Katelyn: Ugh this hurts my head. I thought we were solving a problem by moving toward renewable energy, but we are just creating another in its place.

Ramona: I know. I mean, there are some alternatives to lithium batteries being developed, but right now, it seems we need the lithium.

Conclusion

[SFX: dropping headphones on table]

Katelyn:… Wow. So we need lithium to have a future, but the only way to get it is by mining, which hurts the environment and is regulated in Nevada by some outdated, loose law from the 1870s. Yeah, and anyone living near these mines are out of luck unless they happen to have pupfish in their backyard. And I really want to be mad at the miners right now, but it’s also their livelihood. I don’t know who to be mad at! I’m so confused! When did I start caring about lithium mining??

Ramona: Mhm, you see how I feel. Now try to make that mess into a story.

Katelyn: So your piece should be about… the…um… I don’t know.

Both: (Sigh)

Ramona: Wanna join me on the beanbag?

[MUSIC: Vernouillet, The Sweet Hots (link) #more playful, goofy

MUSIC: Convoy Lines (1 min version), Truck Stop (link)] #more groovy

[BED LEVEL]

8) Acknowledgements [1:01]

Elsa: This story was produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2025 Terrascope Radio class. Jackson Dryg, Ramona Poreitere, Katelyn Battacharia, Jordan Prawira, Elsa Deshmukh, Suhaila Cotton, Victoria Pham, and Rowan Wergeland. Terrascope Radio is a class developed by MIT Terrascope, a first year learning community in collaboration with the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. Thank you to Terrascope director David McGee, community coordinators Michelle Contos, and Em Schule, Radio Instructor Ari Epstein, and Undergraduate Teaching Fellow Lien Nguyen.

We would also like to thank the organizations who were gracious enough to educate us about this topic, the Great Basin Resource Watch, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the folks at Lithium Americas Technical Center and Albemarle’s Silver Peak operation.

Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions. Guitar playing by Reno musician Tommy Come Up

9) Extra Scene [0:07]

[FADE OUT music]

[SFX: knock on door]

Lien: Hey, you two good? What’s this all over the walls?

Lien: Guys? GUYS?

May 2024 Isla del Encanto: Stories of Puerto Rican Community and Resilience

Posted at 11:57h in Radio, Terrafrosh2027 by terrascope

Image credit: Sydney Kim

A joyful and thought-provoking collection of stories about the resilience and rich sense of community with which the people of Puerto Rico overcome natural disasters, unreliable electrical power and a difficult political history. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

First Aired: May 13, 2024
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Transcript

[ACT 1]
COMMISSIONER SANTOS: When I got out of my house the first time and we drove a little bit around, it was like a warzone. [Fade in serious music slowly] It was completely devastated. [Bring serious music to audible level]

MAYOR ORTIZ: Literally our town is destroyed. Every single way, the infrastructure, and the houses, the electrical system, the streets…

[TRACK 1]
LIEN: In 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria.
You just heard Lillian Mateo-Santos and Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz. Here are Alma Frontera, Carlos Santiago, and Jesús Hernandez.

[ACT 2]
ALMA: Nothing really compares this… there’s no way for me to really describe how Maria just decimated the island. And when you’re really used to living in, you know the cliche paradise where it is all green, it’s all foresty…

CARLOS: You see all this green? When Hurricane Maria hit, it was… it was sad. It was… there wasn’t a leaf on a tree. You just see the base of the tree.

JESUS: Cellular towers collapsed. No communications. No power systems. No water.

[music fades from sad background and cuts off for higher energy part]

[TRACK 2]
LIEN: Hi! My name is Lien.

HAYLEA: I’m Haylea.

FAITH VICTORIA: I’m Faith Victoria.

CAROLINE: And I’m Caroline.

LIEN: We’re freshman at MIT. During our first semester here, we took a class where we worked on a proposal for improving electrical resilience in Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean.

HAYLEA: And while working on that, we realized just how unstable Puerto Rico’s electrical grid actually is.

LIEN: For 4 months, we spent hourrrss “frantically researching” solar panels,

HAYLEA: Microgrids

FAITH VICTORIA: Nonprofits

CAROLINE: Batteries

LIEN: Climate Patterns

HAYLEA: Geography

FAITH VICTORIA: Federal grants

HAYLEA: pause We REALLY wanted to help.

LIEN: But when our proposal was finished, we didn’t feel that we were done with our research. We thought it was important to see and experience the place we had studied. So, in the spring, we went to Puerto Rico.

[plane sound effects]

[ACT 3]
PILOT: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to San Juan, Puerto Rico! Where the local time is 6:36….

[TRACK 3]
FAITH VICTORIA: After landing, we walked around Old San Juan. Around the city, we heard music from the street performers [fade in street music] and people encouraged us to join them in dancing and singing! [merengue brought up] And as cars passed by, reggaeton blasted from their open windows [reggaeton from car passing by]. There was music everywhere. Standing out on the streets and seeing it all unfold, we knew this place was special, and it was clear that the people loved it too. As we explored, we began asking people how they would describe Puerto Rico– using only three words.

[ACT 4]
VARIOUS PEOPLE: Three words…. That’s actually quite tough, three words. Uh, beautiful? ⋅
Magical, powerful ⋅ Rico ⋅ Puerto Rico mi patria ⋅ Hospitalario ⋅ Community ⋅ Spiritual ⋅ Unity ⋅ Sazón.. sazón is like, flavor ⋅ Mi corazon ⋅ Proud ⋅ Humble ⋅ Que la gente es.. amor ⋅ The first thing that comes to mind is sandungueo. Which really it's one of those African words in our vocabulary.. Sandungueo means to dance. To like, party, so.. Sandungueo.

[bump up music, then fade to transition music]
[transition music]

[TRACK 4]
HAYLEA: The next day, we woke up bright and early to visit the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau or PREB- a government body that enforces energy policy on the island.

[ACT 5]
COMMISSIONER MATEO SANTOS: Good morning everybody, welcome to the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau. My name is Lillian Mateo Santos. I’m one of the 5, uh, commissioners of the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau. I prepared this short powerpoint to walk you through the change in the legal framework and landscape of our energy sector.

[TRACK 5]
HAYLEA: With all the research we’d done, we had a lot of questions for her. But as she was talking about the electrical situation, one thing really stuck out to me.

[ACT 6]
COMMISSIONER MATEO SANTOS: For some of you, it may be unheard of, but there was people in Puerto Rico who didn’t have power for 8 months, but I got power… uh… the week of Thanksgiving, so it was two- two and a half months, approximately. So, for me it was something very traumatic to a certain extent because I have a special needs daughter, and there is a lot of, uh, bed-changing and bathing and all things involved. But I consider me… I consider myself a fortunate person because other people were struggling incredibly after the hurricane.

[TRACK 6]
HAYLEA: And while we still had a lot of questions about the grid, and about the programs PREB had in progress–I kind of just wanted to be like, let’s go back to her life story.

[ACT 7]
COMMISSIONER MATEO SANTOS: For people who lost family members, uh, that changed their lives forever. And it was not a learning experience, it was something real, and that shouldn’t happen again. In my case, it gave me some assurance that you can do things you thought you couldn’t and that there are many things in life that you can live without for some time.

[transition music]

[TRACK 7]
LIEN: After thanking Commissioner Mateo-Santos, we left to visit the Foundation for Puerto Rico, a nonprofit organization. When we entered the building, the staff welcomed us and then led us to a presentation room.

[ACT 8]
ALMA: Hi! Bienvenidos, my name is Alma Frontera and I’m the Vice President of Operations and Programs here at Foundation.

[TRACK 8]
LIEN: Two weeks before Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Hurricane Irma hit the neighboring islands in the Caribbean. So Alma’s story began not with Maria, but with Irma.

[ACT 9]
ALMA: We are very giving people, so we all came together; we emptied our warehouses, and we were sending everything to our neighboring islands, and we were receiving a lot of refugees from our neighboring islands so even just our hotels and rooms were now full.

[TRACK 9]
LIEN: And just as Puerto Ricans were pouring resources into their neighboring islands, Hurricane Maria hit their own island two weeks later. Maria was already a devastating storm, and the lack of supplies made the impact much worse. But the generosity and sense of community that the Puerto Rican people displayed during Irma did not stop after Maria hit them. In fact, during relief efforts, that community resilience grew.

[ACT 10]
ALMA: Um, we would talk to the neighborhoods to understand who’s neighbor with who, and you’ll find you know neighbors saying, the lady that lives across our street, like, she has dementia, she’s locked in there, but there’s an alcoholic person that lives with her so don’t leave the food with him because he’ll sell it just leave the water and then leave the food with the other neighbor who cooks for her.

[TRACK 10]
LIEN: As someone who was never close to my neighbors, it was strange to hear that these people not only knew their neighbors, but knew them so well that they had systems to take care of each other during the hurricane relief efforts. And these sorts of stories were not a one time thing. It is just who they are.

[transition music]

FAITH VICTORIA: And later that night, we heard a similar sentiment from one of the workers at the hotel.

[ACT 11]
MARÍA: Mi nombre es María, trabajo aquí de banquete, vivo en Rio Grande.
RITA: My name is Maria, I work here as a banquet server, I live in Rio Grande.

MARÍA: Regularmente somos muy comunicativos y verdad siempre tratamos de ser cordiales con todo el mundo
RITA: We are usually good at communicating effectively with one another, and we always try to be friendly with everybody around us;

MARÍA: Pero dentro de la comunidad hubo más unión después del evento de Maria
RITA: But after María, there was even more unity within our community.

MARÍA: Y entonces pues en ese momento tu conociste a toda la comunidad
RITA: And so in that moment, you got to know everyone within your community well;

MARÍA: Porque cada uno se necesitaba y cada uno se ayudaba uno al otro.
RITA: Because every one of us needed support from one another, and every one of us provided the help that each of us needed.

[transition music]

[TRACK 11]
FAITH VICTORIA: As an unexpected stop, one of our trip leaders suggested we visit the Boys and Girls Club in Las Margaritas because of a project she had worked on there. On our way there, she stood up on the bus and explained the project’s history.

[ACT 12]
MABEL: Mabel Ramirez… and I am with MIT Lincoln Labs.
MABEL: We are going to get a tour of a solar power system to enable water for the Boys and Girls Club that was actually installed after Hurricane Maria. Several of us from MIT got together to bring technology and the community helped in the installation as well. So it was completely community engagement and all the engineers that came together.
MABEL: The idea was to allow the Boys and Girls Club to serve as a shelter and a community to provide food and water and have the community come there immediately after Maria.

[TRACK 12]
FAITH VICTORIA: Once we arrived, we walked through the building and up to the roof to see the full scope of the project– dozens of thin solar panels. We got to talk to Mabel about the project, how they’d installed everything in only a week; and it was really impressive.

FAITH VICTORIA: On our way back down, we passed classrooms with kids, running around, coloring, playing games. And as we walked around, we began to see exactly what Mabel’s project was helping to support. She had said that this Boys and Girls Club was used as a community center during recovery from Hurricane Maria, but that wasn’t its original purpose.

[ACT 13]
ISSIAR: Pues, mi nombre es Issiar Sore Rodriguez.
ROONEY: My name is Issiar Sore Rodriguez.
ISSIAR: Soy el post-secundario de Boys and Girls Club de Las Margaritas.
ROONEY: I run the post-secondary education of the boys and girls club in Las Margaritas.
ISSIAR: Básicamente el post-secundario trabaja en lo que es el área académica de los estudiantes.
ROONEY: Basically post-secondary is an academic area where we get students to study a professional job.
ISSIAR: Para que se pueden caminar a esa área profesional, que pueden tanto de trabajar y, como, estudiar eso que la apasionan en la vida.
I walk with them to reach this professional stage; where they can not only work, but also study what they are passionate about in life.

[TRACK 13]
FAITH VICTORIA: We learned that many Puerto Ricans are below the poverty line, and this cycle of generational poverty is only exacerbated by educational disruptions. Historically, Puerto Rico has dealt with repeated long-term school closures, and when students are in school, they face disruptions due to electrical outages. The Boys and Girls Club is a safe haven for those students, who often don’t have much support.

[ACT 14]
ISSIAR: A veces la gente dicen que los estudiantes están perdidos, los niños son- están perdidos, que la vida está perdido.
ROONEY: Sometimes people say that the students are a lost cause, that the kids are a lost cause; that their life, it’s a lost cause.
ISSIAR: Pero estos niños me dan vida a mí, me dan vida, y uno se siente en este momento confiado en que hay un futuro por delante, que estos niños van a dejar por Puerto Rico y el mundo, que nos van a dejar de hablar así.
ROONEY: But these kids give life to me. And I feel very confident there’s a future where these kids are going to prove them wrong.

[TRACK 14]
FAITH VICTORIA: Mabel’s project was a response to Hurricane Maria, but now it has taken on an added importance– giving these kids an opportunity to thrive.

[transition music]

[TRACK 15]
CAROLINE: Later in the week, we visited another community organization– a nonprofit called Casa Pueblo, located in the mountain municipality of Adjuntas. We had researched them last semester, and they’d captured our attention because after Hurricane Maria they were the only place for miles that still had power, thanks to their off-grid solar-powered system.

CAROLINE: We heard over and over that no one was prepared for Maria, but Casa Pueblo was. When we arrived there, co-founder Alexis Massol Gonzales began speaking to us. We learned there was something way before Maria that motivated them to become electrically independent.

[ACT 15]
ALEXIS: En 1898, estados unidos invadió Puerto Rico
DANIEL: In 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico
ALEXIS: y se apoderó militar, políticamente, económicamente, hasta el dia de hoy
DANIEL: And they took over this country militarily, politically, economically. This remains true today.

[TRACK 16]
CAROLINE: Alexis explained that, since Puerto Rico is a colonized island, this affects how Puerto Ricans view the world.

[ACT 16]
ALEXIS: “El colonizado, no tiene futuro. El futuro lo decide la metrópolis.
DANIEL: The colonized person, doesn’t have a future; because the future is determined by the colonizers;
ALEXIS: Y el colonizado- tampoco disfruta el pasado; Porque fue borrado.
DANIEL: And the colonized don’t enjoy their past; Because it has been erased.

[TRACK 17]
CAROLINE: But that doesn’t mean they’ve lost hope for their future.

[ACT 17]
ALEXIS: Queremos motivar a la gente
DANIEL: We wanted to motivate the people;
ALEXIS: Porque el colonialismo hace de los puertorriqueños y las puertorriqueñas que seamos pesimistas.
DANIEL: Because colonialism makes Puerto Ricans pessimistic;
ALEXIS: Porque nosotros nos han negado un mejor país.
DANIEL: Because they have denied us a better country;
ALEXIS: Y entonces decidimos que de abajo parriba vamos a ir construyendo un pais alternativo.
DANIEL: So then we decided that, from the bottom to the top, we would build an alternative country.

[TRACK 18]
CAROLINE: And so they did. As its very first project, Casa Pueblo stopped a destructive US mining operation.

LIEN: And then, they turned that area into a protected forest- that they now manage.

HAYLEA: They organized protests in Washington, DC to fight against a project for a natural gas pipeline in Puerto Rico.

FAITH VICTORIA: They run a school where they teach music and art, and engage kids in the natural world through open-air classrooms in the forest they manage.

LIEN: They also plan to power all of Adjuntas, the municipality where they are based, with their independent electrical systems.

[fade in ending music, raise up briefly and then fade under Caroline]

[TRACK 19]
CAROLINE: Growing up as a Jamaican American, I really related to the colonized mindset Alexis described, and hearing his story inspired me. In his words, I heard my family and their hopes for Jamaica’s future mirrored in Casa Pueblo’s mission. And despite Puerto Rico’s complicated history with the US, Alexis portrayed no hatred. Instead he emphasized striving for a future where we can come together as equals and better the world around us. Even more than that, his unwavering love for his people and his island was palpable– and I saw that same love mirrored in so many of the people we met.

CAROLINE: We visited Puerto Rico with the history of Hurricane Maria on our minds– expecting to learn more about the electrical issues Puerto Ricans face. Instead, we met people whose history with disadvantage went far beyond Maria. And we met people who didn’t let any of that dampen their spirit, or their hope.

CAROLINE: Puerto Rican’s stories didn’t start or end with Maria. And while they’ve been told throughout history how their story should go, now they’re writing their own.

[raise ending music to play in the clear for a few seconds, then fade under credits]

[CREDITS]
KAHLEN: This show was produced by the Spring 2024 MIT Terrascope Radio Class: Rita Braun, Haylea Brock, Faith Victoria Ni [knee], Nerissa Wong, Daniel Sanango [san-on-go], Rooney Salas [sal-as], Caroline Brown, Kahlen Wheaton, and Lien [lean] Nyguyen [wing]. The Terrascope Radio Class is a part of MIT Terrascope, a learning community for first-year undergraduate students. The class was developed in collaboration with MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program.
Thank you Terrascope faculty David McGee and community coordinator Michelle Contos and well as radio instructor Ari Epstein [ep – stine] and Undergraduate Teaching Fellow Xiner Luo [low].
Music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Thank you for listening!

[raise ending music to play in the clear, fade off at the end]

Music Credits for PRX:
Sad music-
● Title: Arlan Vale
● Artist: Blue Dot Sessions
● Album: Cauldron
● Year: 2017
● Length: 45 seconds

Transition Music-
● Title: Selftop Speech
● Artist: Blue Dot Sessions
● Album: Thimble Rider
● Year: 2024
● Length: 30 seconds

The Friends We Made Along the Way Music-
● Title: Georgii
● Artist: Blue Dot Sessions
● Album: Fornax
● Year: 2021
● Length: 2:15 minutes

May 2023 YÁ’ÁT’ÉÉH–Everything Here Is Sacred

Posted at 11:10h in Radio, Terrafrosh2026 by terrascope

Image credit: Ari Epstein

An exploration of ways in which seemingly everyday places and activities, such as a cornfield, or the meeting place of two rivers, or the process of planting and tending crops, are imbued with sacredness in Diné (Navajo) tradition. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

First Aired: May 15, 2023
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Transcript

Yá’át’ééh—Everything Here is Sacred

Tony: Yá’át’ééh. Yá’át’ééh. Yá’át’ééh. Yá’át’ééh. Yá’át’ééh. Yá’át’ééh. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here.

Jacqueline Prawira: That was Tony Goldtooth welcoming us in the Navajo language when we joined his family for an outdoor Navajo-style lunch. Why were we joining Tony? We were a group of first-year students from MIT, and we traveled to the Navajo Nation to initially learn about agriculture, but what we learned was so much more than that. We met truly amazing and inspiring Navajo people, or Diné, who showed us that agriculture was much more than just the job. It’s a central tenet of their culture and identity as a people.

One person we met was Brandon Francis, a research technician at New Mexico State University (NMSU). He showed us around the NMSU Agricultural Experiment Station, where we got to see things like gardens of native plants, experimental vineyards, and the equipment he uses to conduct his research.

[music fades in]

At one point, Brandon stopped us to take in the landscape. Looking down the path of tan, soft soil under our feet, an artificial grove of poplar trees–now brown and bare–walled off the landscape to our left, while paler brown but equally bare fields waiting for growing season stretched off to our right. Perfectly framed between the two, seeming to mark the end of our dirt path at the horizon, was the blue-ish silhouette of a far-off monolith named Shiprock. This geologic structure, a remnant of an ancient volcano, is deeply intertwined with the traditional stories of the Diné, and it is considered a sacred place. Obscuring the bottom half of Shiprock’s profile was the chimney of a power plant puffing short-lived white clouds.

[music fades out]

[walking ambi]

Brandon: This is what I call the perfect image of the reservation. You have a coal-fired power plant. The picture of agriculture. Then you have the Shiprock in the background. That’s the, what I like to say is, the res. in a piñon shell. Agriculture, coal-fired power plant, Shiprock, that’s the res. in one picture right there.

[music fades back in]

Jacqueline: Brandon also took us to the confluence of the Animas and San Juan Rivers near Farmington, New Mexico. When we arrived, the winds chilled us to the bone, the spring sunshine in late March not yet warm enough to offer any relief. The San Juan River’s surface was a shimmering reflection of the sky, while the Animas River was a murky brown mirroring the bare overhanging cottonwood branches. When the rivers merged at the confluence, the water of the two rivers would flow in parallel lanes of color, only beginning to mix at their border where the water encountered mini islands of beige sand and rocks.

[music cuts out]

[background wind and birds ambi]

Brandon: This is our temple, you know. We, we view this part – this land, this water – as sacred, you know, providing life…and we pray right here. We pray for things. Because we always believe that water takes our prayers to the big water, down to the Colorado, it goes into the ocean, and eventually comes back to us. So, it carries our prayers for us. So every time we pray, we pray to the water. Not only do we view river as part of our family, but a part of our way of life.

[music fades in over ambi]

When we grow things, and when we grow plants, we view them as our children, as our relatives. When we’re watering them, or when we’re tending to them, we always talk to them and [speaking Navajo (3:31)] “Grow my little one.” You know? And we treat them as family.

Jacqueline: But what if the water is contaminated? We learned about the Gold King Mine Spill that happened in 2015, when a mine in Colorado spilled toxic waste water into the Animas River, where it spread to the confluence, and much of the San Juan River downstream, turning the waters caution tape yellow. Farmers relying on the San Juan River for water were forced to shut down their irrigation lines.

Brandon: So when the Gold King Mine Spill happened and they shut off the water, for a lot of Navajo people, for a lot of Diné people, it was like watching their relatives die out in the fields, and die of thirst, you know. Wither and die.

[music plays through transition]

[music cuts out]

Xiner Luo: After our stroll with Brandon along the river, we headed to the Lane Family Farm, owned by Gloria and Harry Lane. Through the farm, Gloria and Harry aim to teach Diné culture and traditional farming. The farm consists of a one-story house, painted a light tan that almost camouflaged with the surrounding soft khaki-colored soil. The house overlooks the San Juan river and a plot of farmland, which was clear of weeds when we visited, as the family prepared for the upcoming planting season. There, standing next to the field, we met Kevin Belin, Director of the Diné Bizaad (Bih-zahd) Institute at the Navajo Preparatory School, who extended the ideas of sacredness Brandon mentioned earlier.

Kevin: You hear that from native people. Oh, everything is sacred. Look at the ground ground you touch, it’s sacred. That river there, is sacred. Those trees, the birds that feel the sun’s rays, it’s sacred.…it is! It truly, truly, is.

Xiner: For Kevin, one particularly sacred plant is corn.

[music fades in]

Kevin: We were told our bodies are made of corn. When we were created, we were told this is what our bodies were made of. This is how we are going to interact with the world around us. When you’re creating a corn field, you’re creating life. When you plant that seed, sperm, right, egg. When you’re creating that field, you create your home.

[music cuts out]

Xiner: To Brandon and Kevin, agriculture is not just a means to an end, a way to deliver food to the grocery store for the convenience of modern society. Even though there are challenges—waking up before the blazing sun rises and removing weeds in the blistering heat—Practicing agriculture is a fundamental part of who they are as Diné people.

Kevin: For us as Diné people, you have to have a passion for growing corn. You have to have the will. You have to have the motivation to come over here, look at this piece of dirt, and think it’s gonna be productive. You have to have that mindset that this land here, I’m gonna have to work it to ensure we have food.

Jacqueline: And while some of us were listening to Kevin, others were talking with Gabrielle Henderson, also known as Gabby, a New Mexico State University undergraduate student who also volunteers her time at the Lane Family Farm. So why does she put in the time and effort to help with farming?

It all started with Gloria and Harry’s daughter, Nonabah Lane, who unfortunately passed away 6 months prior to the time we met the Lane family. But in her lifetime, Nonanah was an educator and environmental sustainability specialist who also became a role model for Gabby.

[voices talking in background over Gabby’s clips]

Gabby Henderson: So how I personally got into this was through Nonabah. She’s kinda been there for me since childhood, making cookies, and she would, she’s just a really, really outgoing person. She’d travel everywhere, she’d tell me everything about it, and that was when I was a little kid. And then, when I got into high school, I became more mature, I guess. Not really, but a little bit, and I got to know the way of like, kinda like the farm. But then when Nonaban would tell me about these opportunities, and this stuff about the farm, I wouldn’t be intrigued by it. I’d think about it, but then I’d just be like…mmm I don’t have time for it, when really I did. But now, when she passed, it’s this like, it really affected me. I needed to be more involved, and I wanted to do something more with my life, I guess.

Narration: So Gabby got her start in the place where we met her – the Lane family Farm, currently managed by Nonabah’s parents, Gloria and Harry Lane, and her brother Bruce Lane. And, although we never got to meet Nonabah ourselves, she has continued to have an impact on those around her.

Gabby: I was just like, yeah, I can do this for her. And I also noticed that the farm needed help because Gloria is getting old and Harry is getting old, and I was like, I just need to help them so I first started here, and I would just come here for maybe 3 days a week for maybe a couple hours, but then Gloria got me connected with Dr. Lombard from NMSU. He works at the Agriculture Center and I got an internship over there too so I just started there in, I think, December, and I’m learning new stuff.

Narration: And while the Lane farm continues operating, both as a farm and the center of the Navajo Ethno-Agriculture program co-founded by Nonabah, Gabby is slowly but steadily making progress with her own projects in agriculture.

Gabby: I’m learning pruning, and I’m learning seed planting with different, like, experimental seeds, I guess.

[transition music]

[transition music fades out]

Xiner: While Gabby is working on growing food, others are working on how to get the food from the farm to the table.

Danielle Goldtooth: We are very happy that you all came out to visit us, today, here at our new little farm area, where we’re gonna be putting together some, some new and exciting things, hopefully.

Xiner: Danielle Goldtooth and her partner Alan Moore became involved in food sovereignty and traditional Navajo cuisine because of one particular food – hamburgers.

Danielle: He likes telling this story but I’ll tell it this time. We were cruising through Pheonix and we were stopping off at a burger joint to get a hamburger. And it’s a local place, maybe about a year ago or so. And we go in and they’re like, well, we don’t have any beef. And, they’re like, we have supply chain issues. And we’re coming from working as a slaughterwoman and a butcher, so we’re very befuddled. We’re like, we just came out from where these people can’t even sell all of their cows right now. What’s going on here? How am I not having beef 50 miles away from where I’m also processing this? Something here is not right. Why is this not closer to home? Why are we not having beef where we should be having it?

Xiner: But it wasn’t just a supply chain issue, Danielle and Alan also noticed that the farmers in their area were getting older.

[water running in background]

Danielle: A lot of our elderly are still farming but our middle aged people and our younger people are not. And, so, it is our hope by coming back to this space, that we’re able to help revitalize, but also help demonstrate, that the Diné way of life and the way that we have had our communities put together with a basis of agriculture is a way that we can continue to move forward in this newer world, using technologies that are going to be helpful, not just for ourselves, but for the Earth. So that’s kind of our, in essence, our mission. Allen and I have our own food company called DiiINA Food Start to Finish.

Xiner: Their business produces traditional Navajo food starting at their own farm and finishing at the table. They hosted us for lunch near where their farm is located. And we arrived just in time to watch the final preparations for the food.

[cooking ambi under following narration]

Xiner: Racks of mutton hissed and spat on a grill over a fire, outsides charring to form a dark brown-black crust. Bags of vegetables tumbled into woks, sizzling on contact with the hot metal. Ears of corn and foil-wrapped potatoes were buried all around smoldering embers dusted with ashes.

[cooking ambi fades out]

Interestingly, all of this cooking was executed on the ground. Pits had been dug out and structured into a cooking area using stone blocks which pots, pans, and metal grill grates were set over. And as we waited, we learned that these particular stones actually held special value for Danielle and her family.

[background noise of people moving around and wind over Danielle’s clips]

Danielle: What we were doing this week in preparation for you all to be here. The first thing that we actually did was we took down an old little oven, and all of these little rocks that are here, and the big rocks that are here, were actually quarried by our forefathers. This specific one was probably from our great great great great grandfathers’ Hogan, and they hand-quarried these stones themselves. And this used to be a part of a Hogan, a traditional Navajo home, out near the Shiprock rock area. As the years have gone by, we’ve reused these stones over and over for fire pits or for our cooking adobes and such.

Xiner: As the intense winds blew wood smoke and the mouth watering aromas of grilling meat, stir-fried vegetables, and roasted corn towards us, Danielle introduced the menu for the day, consisting of traditional Navajo recipes made using farm fresh ingredients.

Danielle: This is what we would love to offer you. We have a three-sisters soup for our vegetarian folks. We have a, I believe it’s going to be, Anasazi beans with split pea, yellow pea, pinto beans, and a few other beans that you would’ve found in this area that were traditionally brought here by and cultivated by the Anasazi themselves. For those of you who are meat-eats, the other thing that’s special about these ribs is my grandmother went and she picked out Chiiłchin, which is a redberry, sumac.

Xiner: And the food was delicious! Before we left, we asked Danielle about the significance of her work.

Danielle: I imagine that our impact is going to be very small, but that’s okay, as long as we’re doing this for our community and we have our hearts in it, that’s what matters to us.

[transition music]

Jacqueline: It seems that it is not just the surrounding land that is sacred for the Diné people we met; they also place purpose in their actions and how they pursue their goals. So what seems immediately ordinary and everyday, such as farming, could hold deeper and richer meaning.

Reflecting back on the trip, this idea was definitely something that resonated with each of us. We couldn’t help thinking about our own lives: Why do we do the things that we do, and what, if any, is the greater meaning in our everyday actions?

[transition music fades out]

[new transition music]

Jacqueline: This show was produced by the Spring 2023 MIT Terrascope Radio Class: Xiner Luo (low), Jacqueline Prawira (Prah-weir-ah), Nevena Stojkovic (Stoi-co-vich), and Elisa Xia (SHA). The Terrascope Radio Class is a part of MIT Terrascope, a learning community for first-year undergraduate students focused on solving complex environmental problems. The class was developed in collaboration with MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program.

We would like to thank the members of the MIT Terrascope community: director David McGee, community coordinator Michelle Contos, and associate director and lecturer Ari Epstein (Ep-stine (like mine)). Ari Epstein is also our instructor for Terrascope Radio along with the Undergraduate Teaching Fellows, Richard Chen and Athena Wang, who gave much support and feedback throughout the class.

We would also like to thank everyone who made the Terrascope spring break trip possible: Joel Grimm, Libby Hsu (shoe), Ben Tiger, and Vippy Yee as well as the people who talked to us throughout our trip: Steve Semken, Danielle Goldtooth and Alan Moore, Tony and Cora Goldtooth, Lula Sandoval, Brandon Francis and Karyn Denny, Kevin Lombard, Adriano Tsinigine (Sin-i-giny), Gabrielle Henderson, Gloria, Harry, and Bruce Lane, Bree Lameman, Dean Demsey, Cindy Howe, and Darell Jones.

Without these amazing and wonderful people, this program would have truly been impossible.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Thank you for listening!

[new transition music fades out]

May 2022 Things Moving, People Doing

Posted at 10:24h in Radio, Terrafrosh2024 by terrascope

Image credit: Tova Kleiner ’24

Somehow the things we need get from “there” to here, but it’s not just about the things; *people* make the global supply chain work. Here are stories of some of them, from a sea captain whose first working voyage had his knees knocking, to pedal-powered trash haulers, to residents of a tiny city at the nexus of multiple supply routes. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

First Aired: May 9, 2022
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Transcript

[curious music]

Lauren Shrack: Where did your house come from? Unless you live in a tree, it probably didn’t just sprout from the ground. Unless you live in a log cabin in the woods, the materials probably weren’t there to begin with. And unless you live right next to the manufacturer for every single material you need for a house, they probably traveled for a long distance to get to you. So, how did they get there?

Quash Hopkins: “Your entire house that you live in, came on a truck. All the brick, all the block, all the cement, all of the plywood, all the shingles, all the siding, came on the back of a truck.”

[music fades out]

Lauren: That’s Quash Hopkins, a truck driver who operates locally in Massachusetts. And it’s not just your house that comes on a truck.

[quirky music]

Quash: “Everything that we have in society, unless you live close to a processing plant, comes on a truck. I just delivered fish, now I’ve just picked up a load of Starbucks Coffee. Picked up ice cream, pizza rolls, your toothpaste, your toilet paper, your playstation 5’s, your laptops, your favorite sneakers…”

[music fades out]

Lauren: The supply chain is so ingrained in our lives that we barely even think about it. But if you take the time to look a little closer, you realize that there’s a lot more to it than things getting to where they need to be.

[Americana-folk music]

Lauren: Today we’re popping open the hood of the supply chain, and taking a close look at individual stories of people whose lives are affected by it.

[transition music]

Sarah Hernandez: Imagine a big, burly sea captain. You wouldn’t expect him to be scared of anything right? Turns out, even he has experiences that shiver his timbers. So this captain devotes his life to teaching students to be confident, and competent, out at sea, so that they don’t face the same fear. Let’s hear from Malachi Macon.

[transition music fades out]

Malachi Macon: Captain David Mackey, a veteran maritime officer, had a … nerve-wracking first job experience on a ship. I mean, while talking to a conference room full of college students, Captain Mackey said that…well, I think it’s better if he tells the story.

Captain David Mackey: “I was 22, on a thousand foot long natural gas carrier, coming out of school and left out of going through the greek isles over there. I flew over to greece, got on the ship, Captain said ‘ok, fixes every 15 minutes I’ll be in my room if you need me’, and I was like, I looked around and I had a helmsman, who was my Dad’s age, and it was me! Y’know those knees were knocking but I’m like ‘but I gotta do it!’. So, yeah I was pretty scared to put it blunt… But, you learn quickly.”

Malachi: Nowadays, Captain Mackey teaches at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, guiding its cadets into a future career in maritime shipping. Cadets have to go through a lot of training at the Academy before graduation, and part of their training involves a ship simulator. But not like one that’s just on a computer, it’s a full room sized ship simulator.

[low whirring and beeping sounds]

Malachi: You walk in and the walls are all one big screen, showing a digital version of the world, as seen from the bridge of a cargo ship. Under the low red lights, you see a multitude of replicated instruments and panels in front of you. Things like a compass, electronic navigation and depth charts, and so much more. And with a change of a few settings, the virtual ship appears to pitch up and down, as it moves through the waves of the ocean, and you lean with it as if you were there.

[beeping stops]

Captain Mackey: “This’ll be a capstone course, where they can use all their navigation skills. They learn each one of these pieces of equipment independently and now they can put all that together, and we can allow the cadets to make errors…”

Malachi: …that way, cadets can be as prepared as possible for the real world. Now, of course there’ll be some things that they weren’t expecting to happen. For example, in the ship simulator, Captain Mackey explains…

[beeping resumes]

Captain Mackey: “The first time on a thousand foot long ship, to watch the wave hit the bow, and literally be able to watch the wave come under the ship and the ship undulate underneath it. I’m going ‘holy cow! I thought this was made out of metal.’ Well metal bends, right?”

[beeping stops]

Malachi: But, if they ever find themselves in a situation like that, then they’ll know what to do.

Captain Mackey: “So their knees aren’t knockin like mine were, the first time I got up here and the captain went down below and said ‘call me if you need me’. Yeah, ‘I need ya! There’s a ship out there, I need ya!’ No. We’re expected to be able to handle the job.”

Malachi: And as Captain Mackey said back in the conference room, they are certainly able to get the job done.

Captain Mackey: “These guys are workers, these guys are intelligent, they’re educated, they’re trained, but they know how to work. They really know how to go to it.”

[transition music]

Sarah: For our next story, Tova Kleiner will tell you about a group of people who have found a creative way to haul trash. Here’s how they become intimately familiar with the waste they collect, and their neighbors because of it.

[transition music fades out]

Tova Kleiner: Every Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday morning, you might hear the sighing of the garbage trucks inching up and down your street, the beeping as they back up, and the loud rumbling of their engines. But in Northampton, Massachusetts, trash pick up day looks a little different. It looks like a trailer on the back of a bike.

[classical music]

Ruthy Woodring: “You know, I’d describe to people what we were doing and they’d be like ‘noo, you can’t do that, you can’t haul trash on a bike!’. I’m like ‘well, we are!’”

Tova: Ruthy Woodring is one of the co-founders of Pedal People, a bike-powered trash-hauling co-op. We met her and her fellow haulers in a school parking lot, right across from the waste transfer center where haulers drop off their loads. They brought out one of their bikes and trailers to show us, skeptical as we were, that it is indeed possible to move trash by bike.

[bike and trailer sounds, music fades out]

Tova: In Northampton, there are no municipal waste collection services, so pedal people are in high demand.

Ruthy: “We pickup for over a thousand households and businesses, and we’re the biggest local hauler…”

Tova: Unlike other types of hauling, working on a bike allows Pedal People to closely observe all of the stuff they pick up. And there’s nothing more personal than someone’s garbage.

Tova: “Do you like, make perceptions of people based on their trash?”

Ruthy: “Oh yeah. And sometimes it’s really wrong, but sometimes you make perceptions of people not based on their trash, and then you see their trash and you see that things don’t match up that way either, based on professed values. It’s good practice to not be judgemental.”

[lighthearted music]

Tova: Yet, it also offers a strangely touching and humorous way for Ruthy to get to know her neighbors.

Ruthy: “I had a customer that had a baby and they were very excited they had a baby, and I was like ‘ugh, diapers’. And so, every week I’d come to pick up and they had 30 pounds of diapers or something like that, and then I picked up for like two and a half years, and after a couple of years it gradually sort of tapered off and I was like ‘yes! I outlasted that baby!’ – and they had another baby.”

Tova: It’s the personal connections and impacts that motivate Pedal People to keep doing what they do. Sure, it’s better for the environment.

Ruthy: “I really want to walk gently on the Earth.”

Tova: Sure, they can make a few bucks.

Ruthy: “Can we really make a living? A lot of people think that we’re volunteers. We’re like ‘no’. This is hard work, I would not volunteer.”

Tova: And sure, they can pursue their cycling dreams.

Ruthy: “Actually I wanted to be a professional athlete when I was younger. But they say that the average career span of a professional male basketball player is like 6 years. And I’ve been doing Pedal People for 20. So I got my dream!”

[music fades out]

Tova: But what ultimately keeps them pedaling is their commitment to the Northampton community, and their love for what they do.

Ruthy: “We get a lot of support. You know you’ve made it when the little kids are dressing up for halloween like a Pedal Person.”

Tova: Pedal People are the trash-hauling heroes of Northampton, and this is their theme song.

Ruthy, singing: “I saw it sittin’ there on the side of the street. I could tell it must have been there about three weeks. The wind was smelling strong, like something good and gone. But, I knew it wouldn’t be long, ‘cause it was with me. Yeah, me! Singing’ I love hauling trash! Put another bag on my trailer baby! I love hauling trash! Never gonna stop, ‘cause it never ends!”

[applause]

[transition music]

Sarah: Have you ever gone someplace that looks completely ordinary on the outside, but is completely not ordinary on the inside? Deepta Gupta has.

[transition music fades out]

Deepta Gupta: These are the sounds of a wholesale flower market in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on a Tuesday mid-morning. From the outside, it’s your typical tall gray, metal, and concrete warehouse, surrounded by an ordinary looking parking lot. But inside, it’s a different world.

[groovy music]

Deepta: Flowers fill the space, in every color, shape, size and texture you can imagine, their lush scent tickling our noses. The voices of different vendors echo, describing what’s coming in, what’s going out, who’s ordering, and the sounds of frantic phone calls overlap with carts rolling, stems being snipped, and wrapping paper crinkling. Watching the whole warehouse move to take in and send out flowers, we become curious. What turns an ordinary warehouse into a colorful market, bustling with life?

Deepta: We long to understand more about the people who keep it going, so we start talking to them. One person we meet is Paula Parziale, who says she’s the first woman wholesaler in the area, maybe New England. Everyone seems to know who she is, and she’s in high demand. She’s quick on her feet, and it’s like she knows every little detail of the supply chain, to the hour and minute things will get here.

[music fades out]

Paula Parziale: “If things got here on time, that would make all the difference in the world. We always get a big delivery on Saturday morning, it doesn’t even come until sunday sometimes, sometimes Monday now! And half of that would’ve been sold on Saturday and Sunday. Now it shows up Monday and it’s not sold. So it just backs everything up in here, and more to dump and less to sell and missed sales…”

Deepta: But even when there’s delays and issues, Paula knows exactly how to get what, from where, and when.

Paula: “A lot of things are available worldwide different times of the year. So, Peony for instance. Everybody thinks that Peony’s in the spring. But we can get them in the winter now from New Zealand or from Chile…”

Deepta: And she makes sure to do so, for her customers.

Paula: “So if you have a bride or something that has their heart set on something that is not available that time of year, it is available, somewhere. So it’s very confusing for people. They’ll be like ‘Can I get…’ and, yeah you can! It’s crazy but it’s great!”

Deepta: Although Paula might be able to get any flower whenever she needs it, she still takes care with what flower she stocks.

Tova Kleiner: “What’s your favorite flower in here?”

[music fades back in]

Paula: “I couldn’t tell you. The ones that sell! There are flowers that I actually personally do not like, and I will not even bring them here. It’s kinda strange, but it’s personal too. It’s like my house in here everyday all day so I have to like everything.”

[confident music]

Deepta: Next, we talk to John Williams, another flower wholesaler. He’s chopping stems of flowers when we approach, and he seems quite lively. John Williams is someone who thrives in the hustle and bustle of the flower market.

John Williams: “Come on a wednesday morning at five o’clock, and you’ll see this place jumpin’. I wouldn’t even have time to talk to you, believe it or not. We don’t even have time to eat lunch some days. It’s a really intense business, it’s pretty cool, I like it.”

Deepta: For John, when the business is booming, he’s a happy camper.

John: “People being born, people being married, people dying… It’s kind of a crazy business, I love it. Hah, I love it!”

Deepta: John doesn’t just love his job. He takes pride and ownership in what he does.

John: “You tell your friends you work in a flower shop. ‘Oh how’s that little flower shop doing?’ And you say ‘Yeah, come pick some flowers up for your girlfriend.’ They walk in, they’re like ‘Oh My God!’. There you go buddy, that’s my ‘little flower shop’.”

Deepta: We leave the warehouse energized, feeling as if we were let into a secret garden. A vibrant little corner that we hadn’t known existed. So much passes through here. So many flowers touched everyday by the people who work here, and who shared their stories with us.

[transition music]

Sarah: The New England Flower Exchange is just one of the many transportation hubs in Chelsea Mustafa Al-Obaidi tells us about what it’s like for Chelsea residents to have so much stuff, moving through their city.

[transition music fades out]

[brief background conversation]

Mustafa Al-Obaidi: We are in Port Park in Chelsea, and next to us are piles upon piles of salt, destined for roads all across eastern New England.

Karl Allen: “Welcome to Chelsea, it’s a pleasure to have you all here. My name is Karl Allen, I’m a planner with the city of Chelsea. So, Chelsea is the smallest city in Massachusetts. It’s somewhere around 2 square miles. Buy and large, the community views itself as a blue collar, immigrant community.”

[sounds of cars driving by on a road]

Mustafa: Despite being the smallest city in Massachusetts, many of the products that serve the New England area are housed here. From the New England Produce Market that feeds 9 million people every day, to the flower market where trucks come in daily from all over the country. From a substation that transforms electric power for the local area, to tankers that carry petroleum products through Chelsea Creek so often that they have come up with a special name for the tankers.

Karl: “There’s a special class of tanker, called the Chelsea Class. Purpose-built, to fit through this channel.”

Mustafa: We spent an entire day visiting some places that products go through, all within a few minutes drive from one another. But what we didn’t see firsthand, was that within these two square miles, there are 40 to 50,000 residents building their lives. How does all of this affect them?

Mustafa: Karl takes us a few blocks down to Greenroots Chelsea, a local community-based organization dedicated to protecting the local environment and public health. Maria Belen Power, Associative Executive Director of Greenroots, tells us the impact that the emissions from freight traffic has on the residents.

Maria Belen Power: “Then again, no surprise that we have large public health concerns. One of the largest rates of childhood asthma hospitalization, and also concerns around heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and just other respiratory problems.”

Mustafa: John Walkey, Director of Waterfront and Climate Justice Initiatives, tells us how the things other communities get to enjoy are covered in the footprints of transportation in Chelsea.

John Walkey: “We were doing a slide presentation, with some slides that show pictures of nasty industrial stuff in Chelsea Creek, and then pictures of like the Charles River and the Esplinod. And go back and forth and say like ‘Why does one community like Cambridge and the Back Bay get this beautiful recreational asset, and then we get this bull$*@# all up and down the creek?’”

Mustafa: Chelsea has been carrying much of the burdens of the New England area upon its shoulders, at extreme cost to its residents. But GreenRoots’ role is to stand up for its surrounding community, and fight for improvements in Chelsea. The trucks at the produce center were a source of concern for residents.

Karl: “You see these tractor trailers that were pulled up, kind of tight to the loading bays, and they were using that surplus refrigeration and in order to keep them cold, they were running diesel engines 24 hours a day. And so, what the people at Greenroots did is worked with them, got some grants and replaced the diesel engines with electric engines.”

John: “So, getting that pulled offline was like thousands of pounds of pollutants taken out of the air every year.”

Mustafa: But it’s not always the case that Greenroots has resounding victories. For example, Eastern Minerals, the company that distributes salt, was not required to cover its salt piles.

Maria: “We actually fought Eastern Minerals, and lost that battle. There were residents that were complaining about the salt pile not being covered, but Eastern really felt that that was too costly; too expensive for them to cover it up. So, we lost the battle, but there was some small victories, where they are now investing in the community, in a way where they didn’t before. And so, Port Park, the park that you guys were at before, is one of those examples.”

[reflective music]

Mustafa: When they win, it’s hard earned. And when they concede, it’s done strategically. And while there are never perfect solutions, and there’s always more to do, through the work of Karl, Maria, John, and others, Chelsea and its residents have a spot at the bargaining table.

[music fades out]

Lauren: Now that we’ve heard from people from so many sides of the transportation industry, do you still remember Quash Hopkins, the truck driver we met at the very beginning? Hopkins told us all about the goods he moves from place to place. But who is Hopkins, and why does he do what he does?

Quash Hopkins: “I love knowing that the job that I do, it helps other people. I’m bringing essential products to people, I’m bringing people their soap, their food… That makes me feel good. As a Dad also, being a provider is kinda what I do, so it kinda fits within that role that I fill.”

Lauren: Hopkins wishes that more people were aware of just how important truck drivers are to our society, and gave them the respect that they deserve.

Quash: “Just understand that there’s people behind the wheels, and that we do this not only for our own lives, but for yours too. So, if you have a chance, thank a trucker.”

[reflective music]

Lauren: Truck drivers like Hopkins, along with everyone else we met along the way, ensure that virtually everything we have in society, gets to where it needs to be. But, much more than the goods they transport, the people who work in and around transportation live fascinating and complex lives. It’s easy to forget, but behind every product you encounter, there are dozens of stories. The stories of the people who worked to get it there. And at the end of the day, it’s not just about the things moving around, it’s also about the people, every step of the way.

[groovy music]

Gabriel Rodriguez-Castillo: This piece was produced by Terrascope Radio, a class in the MIT Terrascope Program, which is a first year undergraduate learning community, focused on solving complex environmental problems. Terrascope Radio was developed in collaboration with MIT’s program in comparative media studies. We would like to thank everyone involved in this project. Great thank you to:

All of the people we spoke to, for sharing their lives and knowledge with us.

Our instructor Ari Epstein and our undergraduate teaching fellow Katherine LiYue Pan for ongoing support and guidance throughout this class.

Professor David McGee, for directing Terrascope as a whole.

Elise Chambers, Joan ??Silverlict ??-Epstein and Joel Grimm, and Libby Hsu, for their contributions to the terrascope community, and for making our spring break trip possible.

Music from blue dot sessions.

Gabriel: This piece was brought to you by Terrascope Radio 2022: Tova Kleiner,

Tova: “We interviewed a plant. It went well”

Gabriel: Sarah Hernandez,

Sarah: “This is brown basmati rice. Gourmet, and organic.”

Gabriel: Deepta Gupta, and Athena Wang,

Deepta: “You can always find life.”

Athena: “You just have to chew a little bit to find it.”

Gabriel: Lauren Shrack,

Lauren: “I derive deep fulfillment from all forms of destruction.”

Gabriel: Jaden Anderson,

Jaden: “It’s Monday, and there was Tuesday, and like Wednesday too but, [indistinct] really different days.”

Gabriel: Kai Van Brunt,

Kai: “UWU”

Gabriel: Mustafa Al-Obaidi, and Gabriel Rodriguez-Castillo,

Mustafa: “You are the flower of my life.”

Gabriel: “I am the flower of your life? Ooo.”

Gabriel: Eldar Urkumbayev,

Eldar: “But it’s valid.”

Gabriel: Richard Chen,

Richard: “Well let me tell you a story ‘bout a man named Charlie on a tragic, and fateful day…”

Gabriel: Malachi Macon.

Malachi: “It smells like fish over here!”

Gabriel: Thank you for listening.

[music ends]

How to spell this?

Jun 2021 Climate Poetry

Posted at 21:00h in Radio, Terrafrosh2024 by terrascope

Photo credit: Sydney Kim

A collective meditation on climate change and the fear, responsibility, and hope associated with it.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

First Aired: June 16, 2021
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Transcript

Daniela Vallejo: The first time that I ever heard about sustainability as a concept at all was through Bill Nye. 

[Student cover of the “Bill Nye the Science Guy” theme song] 

Daniela: He taught me about global warming and the greenhouse gas effect at the tender age of seven. And at the time, it seemed like we were on track to fix everything. It seemed like “wow, we’re working on this issue, and it’ll totally be fixed by the time I’m an adult.”

[“Bill Nye” fades out] 

Daniela: And here we are. 

[ominous music]
 
Mahaam Desai: Climate change. 

Cher Jiang: Climate change. 

Joy Domingo-Kameenui: Climate change. 

[rainforest animal sounds]

Daniela: I think of the Amazon. 

Cher: Biodiversity. 

Mahaam: I think of butterflies and grass. 

Joy: Climate change. 
 
Mikayla Britsch: An inconvenient truth. Al Gore up on that stage. 

Cher: It’s easy to feel that existential threat when you think about…

[overlapping voices]

Joy: ...biodiversity. 

Cher: ...species going extinct. 

Mahaam: ...climate change. 

[ocean waves crashing]
Daniela: ...the ocean acidifying.
 
Mahaam: ...the fires. 

Daniela: ...the corals bleaching. 

Cher: ...how that affects human health as well. 

Mahaam: ...climate change. 

Daniela: ...the degradation of ecosystems. 

Cher: ...threatening to wipe out entire cities. 

Joy: ...climate change. 

[complete silence]

[ominous music resumes]

Mahaam: I actually think of my house, and I think of a lot of the dry grass, and the fire that burned through my neighborhood. 

[crackling of a blazing fire]

Daniela: I just think of-- I don’t know, the world is so beautiful, and it’s truly tragic to think about all the beauty that will disappear. 

Joy: It’s sad that we don’t have a one way to save it all. 

[ominous music fades out]

Daniela: Whether or not I need to work against climate change...

[optimistic music] 

Daniela: ...isn’t really about how much hope there is left -- it’s more about a feeling of responsibility or duty. 

Cher: We-- we do have this duty to nature. 

Joy: Hope is living, just being optimistic and having faith in... 

Mahaam and Mikayla: ...today 

Daniela and Cher: ...tomorrow 

Mikayla: What else are we supposed to do with our lives? 

Cher and Mahaam: Hope. 

Mikayla: You have to keep fighting. 

Mahaam: For our children, grandchildren, and...

Mahaam and Mikayla: ...generations to come. 

[complete silence] 

Cher: I think there is hope. 

[ocean waves crashing]

Terrascope Radio

May 2026 Turning the Table

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