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With Good Reason: Weekly Hour Long Episodes (Series)

Produced by With Good Reason

Most recent piece in this series:

Mapping Climate History (hour/no bb or bed)

From With Good Reason | Part of the With Good Reason: Weekly Hour Long Episodes series | 52:00

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Last year, thick smoke from Canadian wildfires wafted down and blanketed a broad swath of the East Coast - from New York to North Carolina. The wildfire smoke had us East Coasters feeling like the apocalypse had arrived. But fires aren’t always doom and gloom. Stockton Maxwell says they can actually be restorative for forests. And: Coral reefs are one of the most beautiful ecosystems of the natural world. But they’re more than just a feast for the eyes. Pamela Grothe says coral reefs offer a map to the past, helping researchers track climate history over many hundreds of years. 

Later in the show: By now most of us know about the harsh reality of sea-level rise. But you’ve probably never heard of groundwater overuse. Manoochehr Shirzaie says it’s causing US coastal land to sink at an alarming rate - in some places close to 20 inches per year! Plus: The Equity Center at the University of Virginia helps empower communities to tackle climate injustice. Barbara Brown Wilson is a co-founder of the Equity Center. She shares some of her favorite projects across Virginia - from heat islands in Charlottesville to coastal flooding on the Eastern Shore.

Skeptic Check: Pandemic Fear

From Big Picture Science | Part of the Big Picture Science series | 54:00

Contagion aside, coronavirus is a powerful little virus. It has prompted a global experiment in behavior modification: elbow bumps instead of handshakes, hand sanitizer and mask shortages, a gyrating stock market. Pragmatism mixes with fear and panic as we react. Can we identify when we’re acting sensibly in the face of COVID-19, or when fear has hijacked our ability to think rationally and protect ourselves?

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Contagion aside, coronavirus is a powerful little virus.  It has prompted a global experiment in behavior modification: elbow bumps instead of handshakes, hand sanitizer and mask shortages, a gyrating stock market.  

Pragmatism motivates our behavior toward the spread of this virus, but so do fear and panic. In 1918, amplified fear made the Spanish Flu pandemic more deadly. 

Can we identify when we’re acting sensibly in the face of COVID-19, or when fear has hijacked our ability to think rationally and protect ourselves?

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