The Future of Food

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People have been looking for meat-alternatives for decades. Vegetarians avoid animal products for many reasons, from concerns over animal treatment and slaughtering practices to the meat industry’s climate impacts. Methane from cows and other livestock contribute about 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

There have been plant-based alternatives on the market for awhile now, but another method has quietly gained steam over the past decade: meat grown in a lab, using cultured cells. This past June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved two companies—Eat Just and Upside—to grow and sell cultivated chicken products in the U.S. Lab-developed beef will likely be next, while some companies are even working on cultivated pet food meat. (Lab-grown mouse meat kibble, anyone?)

But will growing tissue in a lab actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and … will people even want to eat it? Joining Ira to discuss this beefy topic is Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at the MIT Technology Review, who talks about how this kind of meat is made in a lab, the challenges the industry faces, and what lab-grown beef patty tastes like.

As global temperatures rise, cities are typically hotter than rural areas. Tall buildings trap heat and temperatures don’t drop nearly as low at night.

Out of sight, just below the surface, it’s also getting hotter. Scientists are beginning to document the unexpected consequences of underground climate change.

A new study measuring the phenomenon used sensors to track increasing temperatures underground in Chicago and map how the earth has shifted beneath the city as a result.

Ira talks with the lead researcher of the study, Dr. Alessandro Rotta Loria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, based in Chicago, Illinois.

People who live near freshwater rivers or lakes are likely familiar with Asian Carp. The fish are not native to the U.S., but over the last few decades their populations have exploded in waterways like the Mississippi River Basin and the Illinois River.

Over the last few years, there’s been a major PR campaign to move away from the name Asian Carp, in favor of a new name: “Copi.” The reason is two-fold: First, it joins a general trend of moving species’ names away from nationalistic associations, considering anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other goal is to make the fish sound more delicious—creating a market that would incentivize fishing the Copi, hopefully reducing their populations.

Joining Ira to talk about this is Jim Garvey, director of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Sometimes Jim Kirkland wishes he had been alive 150 years ago.

That’s when the golden age of North American dinosaur discovery began, and early titans of paleontology crisscrossed the Rocky Mountains unearthing dozens of new species that became household names, from the Stegosaurus to the Brontosaurus to the Triceratops.

But a close second to that era is what Kirkland gets to see these days in Utah.

“I am doing that kind of discovery right now,” Kirkland said. “I’m just lucky to be alive.”

Kirkland, Utah’s state paleontologist, uncovered and named the Utahraptor in 1993. The deadly predator became the official state dinosaur in 2018.

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