energy, explained

energy, explained


Latest Episodes

Climate change’s big question: Can we get to zero carbon?
April 12, 2019

Recent reports stress the urgency of reducing carbon emissions to check the worst effects of climate change. At a public event In Pittsburgh, a distinguished panel waded into the possibilites, obstacles and potential solutions.

Black lung disease epidemic: ‘It shouldn’t have happened’
February 11, 2019

NPR reporter Howard Berkes joins StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Reid Frazier to discuss regulatory failures — and the human cost, including to Pennsylvania miners — of a disease that has been described as “suffocating while alive.

What responsible reporting on scientific research looks like
January 11, 2019

How should journalists go about covering research, so that they add to the public discourse rather than inflame it? StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Amy Sisk talks to two reporters who’ve covered studies tied to fracking and health for this episode of the “e...

Author Bethany McLean, ‘Saudi America’ and what you might not know about the fracking industry
December 04, 2018

Bethany McLean, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, peers into the business side of fracking and finds an industry that is moving ‘astonishing’ amounts of money but isn’t as financially strong as it might seem.

Environmental rights in Pa.: New life for a forgotten amendment
October 24, 2018

Pennsylvania was among the first governments in the world to guarantee its citizens the right to a clean environment. In practice, that didn’t mean much — until now. As fracking transformed the state’s rural landscapes,

Maple trees vs. natural gas: How one family lost the farm to a failed pipeline project
October 12, 2018

The Holleran family stood firm against a natural gas pipeline that threatened their dream of a maple syrup farm. They navigated the twisting turns of an inscrutable federal bureaucracy. They stood between the trees and chainsaws.

A very controversial pipeline
September 05, 2018

Pennsylvania’s most polarizing pipeline brings the fracking boom through Philadelphia’s suburbs. The neighbors aren’t happy. We explain.

Introducing “energy, explained”
August 31, 2018

The reporters at StateImpact Pennsylvania, a public media reporting collaboration among WITF, WHYY, WESA and The Allegheny Front, bring you a podcast that goes behind the headlines about how we find and use energy in Pennsylvania.