What happens to your corporeal body, if and when it is buried in the earth? According to Genesis in the Hebrew Torah, we come from dust and to dust we return. The original text, however, uses the word עָפָ֣ר ("apar"), which means “earth.” Most burials in the United States seek to protect the body from returning to the earth through containment, while cremation produces greenhouse gases and leaves behind heavy metals. Are there other ways to go? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, a Seattle-based green funeral home that composts human bodies, turning them into soil that can be spread almost everywhere. We talk about other end-of-life choices, too.

How should we speak with children about climate change? Should young children be taught about climate change, and how? During the Cold War, the existential threat of nuclear holocaust was always present but there was, at least, a chance that the missiles would not be launched. Climate change is also an existential threat but it is already happening. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a thoughtful conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Bagley, managing director of Project Drawdown, who has written and spoken about these questions. She holds joint Ph.D.s in environment & resources and educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she studied how video games can encourage systems thinking about complex environmental topics.

San Benito County is one of the unsung jewels of the Central California Coast. Most people know of San Juan Bautista and the Pinnacles, but there is much, much more. Two mountain ranges, broad valleys, rangelands, farmlands and biodiversity. But the Highway 101 corridor, which runs through a corner of the county, provides access to Silicon Valley and the SF Bay and people are moving south in search of cheaper housing. Malls and sprawls are not far behind. Now, a local movement is seeking to limit development with an initiative to require a public vote if agricultural, rural or range land is rezoned to residential, commercial or industrial use, a strategy already applied in several other California counties. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz to hear from Andy Hsia-Coron of Protect San Benito County, one of the activists behind the initiative, Chris Wilmers of UCSC, who studies cougars and bobcats that want to cross the road, Seth Adams from Save Mount Diablo, a land trust active across the County, and Val Lopez, Chair of the Amah Mutsun, whose ancestral lands cover much of the County.