Poop Train. You may not give a second thought (or backward glance) to what the toilet whisks away after you do your business.
But we got wondering -- where would we wind up if we thought of flushing as the start, and not the end, of a journey? In this short, we head out to trace the trail of sludge...from Manhattan, to wherever poop leads us. This all started back when we were working on our Guts show, and author Frederick Kaufman told us about getting sucked in to the mystery of what happens to poop in New York City.
Robert and producer Pat Walters decided to take Fred's advice and pay a visit to the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant... which turned out to be just the beginning of a surprisingly far-ranging quest. A Hot Topic: Climate Change Coming To Classrooms. Hide captionFor the first time, new nationwide science standards recommend teaching K-12 students about climate change. iStockphoto.com For the first time, new nationwide science standards recommend teaching K-12 students about climate change.
By the time today's K-12 students grow up, the challenges posed by climate change are expected to be severe and sweeping. Now, for the first time, new nationwide science standards due out soon will recommend that U.S. public school students learn about the climatic shift taking place. Mark McCaffrey of the National Center for Science Education says the lessons will fill a big gap. "Only 1 in 5 [students] feel like they've got a good handle on climate change from what they've learned in school," he says, adding that surveys show two-thirds of students say they're not learning much at all about it. We all learn the water cycle. Even when this is taught, McCaffrey says, climate is often sidelined.
Political Pressure Raising Difficult Issues. A Cooler Pacific May Be Behind Recent Pause In Global Warming. Hide captionRock islands dot the ocean in Palau, Micronesia.
The waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean have been relatively cool for the last 15 years. How To Save A Public Library: Make It A Seed Bank : The Salt. Hide captionThe seed library is a partnership between the Basalt Public Library and the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute.
Seed packets encourage gardeners to write their names and take credit for their harvested seeds. Courtesy of Dylan Johns. From Corn Belt To Main Street: The Drought's Far-Reaching Grasp. Hide captionThe sun shines above a farm near White City, Kan., in November.
Orlin Wagner/AP The sun shines above a farm near White City, Kan., in November. The U.S. had its hottest year on record last year. That heat, combined with the relatively dry winter that came before, has brought a historic drought. From forest fires and low crop yields, to infrastructure and recreation, the drought has been costly, with early estimates putting the cost at between $50 billion and $80 billion.
The U.S. How The Smokey Bear Effect Led To Raging Wildfires. First of a five-part series The history of fire in the American Southwest is buried in a catacomb of rooms under the bleachers of the football stadium at the University of Arizona.
Here rules professor Thomas Swetnam, tree ring expert. James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change. 2013: A Tipping Year For Climate Change? Bjarke Ingels: Hedonistic sustainability. In China, New Sustainable Cities Are Rising From Nothing. In 1902, a self-taught urban planner named Ebenezer Howard published his utopian vision for "Garden Cities"--self-contained circular towns radiating from a central city, connected only by train.
Al Gore – Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad on the iTunes App Store. In Kentucky's Coal Country, A Resentment For Obama. Hide captionThe Big Sandy Power Plant, 4 miles north of Louisa, is the biggest industry in Lawrence County.
Local residents blame President Obama's environmental policies for the company's plans to close the plant in 2015. Noah Adams/NPR The Big Sandy Power Plant, 4 miles north of Louisa, is the biggest industry in Lawrence County. Local residents blame President Obama's environmental policies for the company's plans to close the plant in 2015. If the voters in Louisa, Ky., had their wish, Mitt Romney would have taken the oath of office Monday. And now comes word that Louisa is going to lose its biggest industry — a power generating plant that's been burning coal since 1962. Welcome to the Anthropocene.
Allan Savory: How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change. David Haskell Finds Biology Zen in a Patch of Nature. Did You Hear That? I Think It Was The Sound Of A Walrus. Stand aside Beyonce, there's a new sound in town.
More than 9,000 sounds, to be more precise. BBC One - Frozen Planet. Americans Do Not Walk The Walk, And That's A Growing Problem : The Two-Way. Hide captionAmericans walk less than the citizens of any other industrialized nation, says Tom Vanderbilt.
In this file photo from last summer, pedestrians and a cyclist cross the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images "Americans now walk the least of any industrialized nation in the world," says writer Tom Vanderbilt. To find out why that is, Vanderbilt has been exploring how towns are built, how Americans view walking — and what might be done to get them moving around on their own two feet. Morgan Harris - Yosemite HD. Yosemite HD shared Jan 20, 2012 See more fromReddit TV Up Next Poor ball girl asked to catch huge bug at the Australian Open 2012 Share.