How to Survive the Future Alex Chambers and Allison Quantz

Alex visits a farm in Southern Indiana – Nightfall Farm – to talk with the farmers Liz and Nate Brownlee about climate change and crawdads. And all the rain.

Katie is a criminology professor and a doula. She’s also the mother of two sons. They’re grown men at this point, but they still do dinner together almost every week – along with her older son’s wife, and her husband. This episode starts with some news from Katie’s daughter-in-law.

Ellen retired from her work as an ecologist decades ago, but she still walks in her favorite state park. One spring day, she takes Alex along trails that keep getting wider to search for disappearing spring ephemerals: among others, guyandotte beauty, great waterleaf, and the puttyroot orchid, which can be hard to find.

When his daughters were teenagers, Chuck and his family lived close to downtown Martinsville. That was also the time - they found out later - that the city’s drinking water was most contaminated with toxic chemicals.Chuck’s dreams are with his grandson now, an early-career jazz musician making a life in a city where things are starting to look up.

When Alex said his neighborhood needed speedbumps to deal with the cops speeding through, poet Ross Gay said, “Build your own. That’s what we did.” Ross is in his nineties now, but he’s as much a part of the neighborhood as ever.