ecoRI News reporter Colleen Cronin speaks with the team behind the environmental podcast Possibly to discuss the history of the podcast and Possibly’s latest episode, which explores whether a giant space umbrella could slow global heating.

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This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Colleen Cronin 

Welcome to the Blab Lab, a podcast from the reporters of ecoRI News, where we unpack the critical environmental issues facing southern New England. I’m reporter Colleen Cronin. And today we have two special guests from the podcast Possibly: host and managing producer Megan Hall and senior reporter Will Malloy. Possibly is a podcast co-produced by The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative that dives into really interesting questions about local environmental issues and climate change at-large. Today, we’re going to listen to a really cool Possibly episode about space umbrellas. And then we’ll chat with Will and Megan about what went into making the episode.

Megan Hall 

Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. A while ago, we asked if anyone had big crazy ideas about how to slow down climate change. And a few of you wrote in with the same question, can we send an umbrella into space to block the sun and cool the planet? Is that something we could really do? I’m here with possibly reporters Will Malloy and Iman Khanbhai to find out.

Will Malloy 

Hi Megan!

Iman Khanbhai 

Hi!

Megan Hall 

An umbrella in space? How would that even work?

Will Malloy 

I know the idea sounds almost impossible and even kind of silly. Can you imagine how much fabric that would take?

Iman Khanbhai 

How would you hold it up?

Megan Hall 

Is anyone actually considering putting up a big umbrella?

Will Malloy 

We asked Possibly founder and Brown University’s provost for sustainability, Professor Stephen Porder.

Stephen Porder 

So, an umbrella obviously is not practical.

Iman Khanbhai 

But scientists are talking about something that isn’t too far off…

Will Malloy 

Putting a whole bunch of dust particles very high up in the atmosphere.

Stephen Porder 

It’s like a trillion little, teeny umbrellas. The idea is fly a bunch of airplanes, let out some particles into the very high atmosphere and let those particles reflect a little bit of sunlight.

Iman Khanbhai 

You might hear ideas like this called solar geoengineering. The idea is that we could temporarily turn down the temperature on Earth by blocking some of the sunlight that comes into the atmosphere and warms the planet.

Megan Hall 

How do we even know if something like this would work?

Will Malloy 

Putting a bunch of dust into the atmosphere is basically what happens when a volcano erupts.

Stephen Porder 

Nature has already done the experiment; we know that if you inject a huge amount of particles into the upper atmosphere it will cool the planet.

Will Malloy 

Some scientists think it might be a good short-term way to bring down the temperature while we work on more permanent solutions.

Megan Hall 

That sounds pretty extreme.

Iman Khanbhai 

It is extreme. There’s even an open letter from over 400 scientists from around the world who are opposed to even researching this.

Megan Hall 

Tell me more about that debate?

Will Malloy 

For one, if you start putting particles in the atmosphere, you’d have to constantly refresh the supply. Just like the ash from a volcano erupting doesn’t last forever, the dust particles would only stay in the atmosphere for a short amount of time.

Stephen Porder 

So, you’d have to have this network of planes, putting particles up into the upper atmosphere continuously through good economic times, bad economic times, wars, whatever else.

Megan Hall 

And human beings are not great at being consistent…

Iman Khanbhai 

Right. And stopping would have big consequences, which makes a lot of scientists worried about starting in the first place.

Megan Hall 

What would happen if we did stop?

Will Malloy 

Putting up particles, like putting up an umbrella, would block some of the sun’s rays. But if we keep burning fossil fuels, that’s like continuing to pile up blankets around the Earth, [and] then you pull the umbrella away. And now you have all this blanket on top of you. And you get the full effects of the sun and then this huge blanket and so you go from like cooled down to very rapidly getting very hot.

Iman Khanbhai 

Also, we’re not totally sure who would implement this strategy. A single country? One really motivated billionaire?

Will Malloy 

And it could have effects we can’t even predict, like if we cool the planet too much too quickly, it might impact agriculture or create strange weather conditions.

Megan Hall 

You said “could,” but we know that climate change would definitely impact agriculture and the weather.

Iman Khanbhai 

That’s exactly the core of this debate.

Stephen Porder 

Does this strategy buy us time? Or does it present false hope that we don’t need to transition off of fossil fuels and just continue to cook the planet until we accidentally or on purpose stop putting these particles in the atmosphere and experience this giant whiplash?

Megan Hall 

I would not have guessed that those questions about sending an umbrella into space would have such a serious answer.

Will Malloy 

I’ll admit, I thought this question was a little unbelievable too. But it turns out the idea of blocking out the sun brings up some pretty interesting dilemmas.

Megan Hall 

Well, Will and Iman, thanks for looking into it.

Colleen Cronin 

We have two special guests from the podcast Possibly: host and managing producer Megan Hall and senior reporter Will Malloy. So, before we get into this kind of wild topic of sun umbrellas and solar geoengineering, I was wondering if you guys could just talk about like, what Possibly is and what you guys do for any listeners who are new to your podcast.

Megan Hall 

Sure. I’d love to hear Will define it, just as more of a newcomer to it than I am. I’ve been on the show since it started in 2017. So, it’s evolved over the years, but how would you describe Possibly now?

Will Malloy 

Yeah, I would say Possibly is a show that covers sustainability and environmental topics. The format is answering questions. So, they can be listener questions or questions that we have, usually with an eye toward things that people can do in their day-to-day lives or things that they can effect in some way.

Megan Hall 

Yeah, and I would say our goal is to really avoid seeming preachy. And to avoid making people feel guilty or paralyzed by indecision, because a lot of environmental reporting, or just sort of discussions about the environment, make you feel like this thing will save the planet, that thing will save the planet, everything will save the planet, or everything you’re doing is wrong. Like every choice you make is equally terrible. So, you might as well just like, eat everything off Styrofoam plates, like this really matters. So, we try to say, “OK, this is what matters. This don’t worry about so much.” Like help people kind of prioritize their decisions and just break these giant overwhelming topics down into smaller pieces, so they feel more manageable.

Colleen Cronin 

You guys highlight a lot of innovation and creativity, like this episode talks about, there’s caveats. And so, you know, how do you not sugarcoat? And is that that’s something you guys are thinking about?

Megan Hall 

Definitely. I mean, we always think a piece is more interesting if there’s a twist, if there’s sort of a like, “but,” or like thinking about it a different way. I mean, that’s just better storytelling, like, who wants to listen to four pieces where we’re just like, “Rah, rah, this is right, this is bad! Hey! Yay!” You know? So, I think just from a storytelling perspective, it’s better. And also, it’s just more honest.

Colleen Cronin 

And so, has that sort of always been the way you’ve thought about it? Or how has it evolved?

Megan Hall 

So, if you go way back, our first episodes were a half-hour long. So, they were much more involved. We didn’t have students; I was in the background. And we had a host who was a professional journalist. But what we found was it took us a really long time to produce those because we all had different jobs. And they would air on The Public’s Radio once on a Sunday. And then you know, like, six months later, we’d have another one. So, when I was working on one of those more intense episodes, I remember I was driving to Stephens’ house, and it was the summer, and I had my air conditioning on in my car. And I was wondering how guilty I should feel about that. And Stephen, who studies sustainability science gets those questions all the time. So, I said, “Steven, how guilty should I feel?” And what if we had a series on the radio that was like that, just saying, like, I guess the original premise was like, “How guilty should I feel?” or “What do you think I should do about this?” So that’s where the idea for the current Possibly was born. Let’s do something shorter. Let’s involve students. And let’s make it something that can air every week.

Colleen Cronin 

Something that’s great about Possibly is this sort of model of having students report on things and get real life experience. And, Megan, you were a student at Brown once, what is it like for you working with students now?

Megan Hall 

I really love it. I mean, so, I was the healthcare reporter at The Public’s Radio many years ago. And I left after a while, and one of my ideas was I wanted to get a PhD and become a professor. And that never happened. But in a way, I’ve kind of gotten my wish; I get to do hands-on audio work in the rest of my job. But then I get to have these interactions with students and learn from them. And I teach one class a year, where I kind of create a pipeline for Possibly, so I teach everyone sort of the tools of reporting for Possibly over the course of a semester. So, it’s great. I get to have a job that’s very practical, but also be in academia and try to encourage the next generation of awesome reporters.

Colleen Cronin 

Will, I heard you before we hopped on talk about taking, well actually not taking, TAing an advanced biology class. I wasn’t really much of a student journalist. I was more the journalist part. But what is it like for you?

Will Malloy 

Well, my academic interest is primarily in science communication, especially around environmental science, and ecology, and Possibly fits really well in with my academic interests and my interest outside of the show. I do research on blue crabs. And I’m very invested in local ecology and what’s going on here. And so, I think Possibly, for me, it is like a lab that I’m getting paid for because it’s a chance for me to practice the skills I really want to develop, which are science communication skills. With stakes not so high, new episodes are four minutes long and they air weekly. It’s not like, you know, there’s many reporters, but it does, I think, put on real pressure in a good way of, it’s not just a grade, it’s, “I want to make a good episode because lots of people are going to listen to this. Because it airs during Morning Edition. So, lots of people are just going to listen to it, not on purpose. So, I want to make it good.”

Megan Hall 

And we really love having Will, because he’s not only a great student who understands science and science communication, but he’s a Rhode Islander with a lot of connections. So, it’s easy for Brown students to kind of just stay on College Hill, and maybe just interview experts over Zoom. But Will’s done a really good job of getting out into the field, you know, interviewing professors from other universities in person, getting out on the beach, and sounds of the waves. So, he’s brought a lot to Possibly.

Colleen Cronin 

That’s awesome. In Rhode Island, if you’re a Rhode Islander, it makes life a lot easier.

Megan Hall 

You got to know a guy.

Colleen Cronin 

You got to know a guy.

Will Malloy 

And our show airs other places, too. But I think I always like reporting on local stories. And I think it’s great when we can, again… it’s another way to take like a big issue and make it really personal. You can be talking about really big things, like we had an episode on microplastics that I produced that was about researching microplastics in the Narragansett Bay. So, I think that’s a good example of how we can take a really big issue that people are talking about a very high level and make it very personal and about our home we’re that we share.

Colleen Cronin 

Jumping into the episode that we aired on our show today. Great idea. Wonderful idea. When I heard that you guys are doing this episode, I was so excited to talk about it. This was a listener question, correct?

Megan Hall 

Yes. So, we thought that it would be fun to solicit listener questions about ideas that are so crazy, they might just work, because sometimes people say, “Well, couldn’t you just solve climate change by like, putting a bunch of air conditioners in the ocean?” You know, like that sort of just like, “but what about like, covering all the glaciers with reflective tarps?” You know? And sort that, OK, yeah, why not? Let’s, let’s talk about some of them, and evaluate how realistic they are. So, this is one of those so-crazy-it-just-might-work” questions.

Colleen Cronin 

Were you expecting a real answer out of this one? Because you start with sun umbrellas and you go to solar geoengineering, which sounds real, and obviously is based on listening to that. So, did you expect that and how hard was it to like, go from A to B?

Will Malloy 

Well, part of it is that there are many different people who have their hands on what questions get answered. Sometimes it’s a reporter saying “I want to do this.” Sometimes someone from the producing team is like, “I think we should cover this.” For these there was just like we had a list in our meeting room of crazy ideas. So, I grabbed that one. And I didn’t know anything about it, I thought it was completely going to just be like a “This would never work episode, let us tell you why.” But I ended up talking to Stephen Porter, I interviewed Steven before I did the rest of the research on the episode, which is kind of backwards. Usually, if I’m interviewing someone who’s not affiliated with the show, which is almost always, you know, you try to be a good journalist, you research the topic before you go in kind of knowing what’s going on and expecting certain answers. But with him, it was different because he knows the format of the show so well, he doesn’t need to be coached in terms of…

Megan Hall 

…How to give you a good soundbite.

Will Malloy 

Yeah, he does need to sometimes need to be a little bit coached on how to get good soundbite.

Megan Hall 

We’re working on it. We’re working on it…

Will Malloy 

But he knows what information we’re looking for. And all that I’m listening for is, “Does that sound good for radio?” And so, I’m not listening for as much for information in that interview. And then I did a lot of research afterward. And so that’s how I went from a to b, it was easy. In that case, I didn’t have to do a lot of digging, to figure out that buzzword to look up to figure out the story behind it because I think that can be challenging. Like it’s hard to go from, can we put an umbrella in space to that’s called solar radiation management or solar engineering. But once I knew those terms, it was really easy to do research because there’s lots of papers out there, both academic and otherwise, that covered this topic really in depth.

Colleen Cronin 

Yeah, I’m sure Google Scholar results for solar geoengineering are higher than for sun umbrella, but maybe not. I don’t know personally.

Megan Hall 

That’s the problem with academic writing. We need to be clearer. Say what you mean!

Will Malloy 

And the great part about being a partially Brown-funded show is that we have access to like a million databases, we have JSTOR we have everything so…

Colleen Cronin 

…JSTOR, I miss it.

Will Malloy 

The amount of information we have access to easily academic information is really a privilege.

Megan Hall 

And experts, too. You know that they’re just people nearby that can help us or that Steven is our founder and our sort of ultimate fact-checker.

Colleen Cronin 

I was going to say you guys already kind of answered this question but you know, I think has environmental reporters, science reporters, you’re trying to train translate some really complicated stuff for audiences. And also, like sort of for yourself to understand, although Will you probably have a very strong depth of knowledge of what the stuff actually means.

Will Malloy 

We’re reporting on stuff that has nothing to do with our personal expertise. And so, you have to practice every time.

Colleen Cronin 

But like, you know, I’m usually doing that for print, we got the Blab Lab, but I’m primarily a digital, print reporter. Are there like sort of weird things about audio, either benefits or obstacles in particular, to doing that kind of thing, that type of translation?

Megan Hall 

What would you say? Because I’ve been in audio my whole career. So, have you noticed anything translating to audio?

Will Malloy 

I think the biggest obstacle is that, for the most part, people are listening to your words one time. So, when you write something in print, people can go back and reread a sentence, they can go back and see what you referred to earlier, if you introduce a concept to paragraphs above and then come back to it, you can just say, you know, maybe it’s not the best thing to do, we would say, as we discussed above XYZ. But because audio is such a one directional format, it comes on the radio, you listen, you stop. And as we’ve talked about people, or as Meghan talks about a lot, people are listening to this while they’re doing the dishes. while they’re driving to work, while they’re cleaning their house. So, you get people’s partial attention, and you only get the one listen through. And so, information has to be that much easier to get on the first pass through. And I think more so than in print, you can’t really introduce that many new terms per episode, and then use them consistently, you can really introduce a couple new concepts. Otherwise, you have to be using words the whole time that people can understand the whole time. So, I think the biggest challenge is that is that you have one shot to convey the information for the most part.

Megan Hall 

And you have to be really careful about numbers. You can’t use very many numbers in an episode, like one number in a sentence, one or two. Because those numbers are just too hard to hold in your head. Many episodes I have a line and my line is, “is that a lot?” Because my job is to be the listener surrogate. That’s how we kind of define what I do is the host, like I’m supposed to be the person who’s skeptical, who’s learning this for the first time, who like has a mortgage to pay and other responsibilities. I try to be the stand-in for the listener.

Colleen Cronin 

I’m curious if there’s podcasts or really any media that’s climate-related that you might recommend that you’re reading to our listeners?

Megan Hall 

ecoRI!

Colleen Cronin 

Oh, thank you.

Megan Hall 

Colleen Cronin is a really talented journalist; you should see her APRA requests. They are fire.

Will Malloy 

Taking notes every day on how to get the information.

Megan Hall 

In terms of podcasts, I always say “How to Save a Planet,” which is a Gimlet Production, Alex Blumberg used to work for This American Life, and he started Gimlet, a whole bunch of different podcasts. His “How to Save a Planet” is basically the longer version of what Possibly tries to be. So, they have a great episode called “Recycling, is it BS?” and they really do a good job of getting into like the history of why plastic recycling even started, and also answering sort of basic questions with a sense of humor and conversational style. So, I recommend “How to Save a Planet.”

Will Malloy 

Professor Kate Shapira, who we’ve had on the show before, on our show before, who’s a professor at Brown, I’ve been her student for the past two semesters, literally this month came out with a book about what she’s learned from working in climate anxiety. She runs a climate anxiety booth, like Peanuts style, the doctor is in.

Megan Hall 

Lucy, yeah.

Will Malloy 

You go talk to her about your climate anxieties. And she has recently come up with a book about that. And so, I’ve done some of the exercises from the book with her in various settings. And just learning from her. It’s been very instructive. And so, I’m excited to read that book.

Megan Hall 

I think it’s called “Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Booth.”

Will Malloy 

Yeah.

Megan Hall 

Her sort of perspective is, you need to process your climate anxiety before you can take action. And so even though, you know, I’ve been working on the show forever, there were a lot of things that I hadn’t worked through, especially around, you know, the future that I was leaving my kids and the conversations I was having with my kids about climate change, and how to talk to them about some stuff that’s actually really scary if we don’t get our act together. And that’s pretty scary to think about when you have a 9-year-old and a 7-year-old and easy to feel like you failed them, right? Like I’m leaving this to you. It helped me feel like I could move more toward action and hope and sort of like, concrete ways to do something about climate change, that aren’t even just as specific as buying an electric car. They’re also just about building community because we’re going to have to be resilient and we’re going to have to work together as our world changes.

Colleen Cronin 

I think that I need that book. And I think that all of my colleagues ecoRI desperately need that book. If you’ve ever listened to Frank Carini talk on the show, I’m going to give him that for his birthday.

Megan Hall 

You could do a book club and have Kate on the show!

Colleen Cronin 

Where and when can our listeners listen to Possibly?

Will Malloy 

You can listen to Possibly on Tuesdays on The Public’s Radio; it airs during Morning Edition, or you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple Music, Pocket Casts, wherever else people listen to podcasts,

Megan Hall 

Or askpossibly.org. It features all of our past episodes, there’s a spot where you can submit questions. And if we answer your question on the air, you get a free Possibly T-shirt. Some of them we silkscreened ourselves at AS220.

Colleen Cronin 

Oh, we love that. We love that. Thank you, guys, so much for coming on the show.

Megan Hall 

Thank you for having us.

Will Malloy 

Thank you so much.

Colleen Cronin 

You can hear Possibly every Tuesday on The Public’s Radio and find them online or wherever you get your podcasts. If you haven’t checked them out yet, you should. Thanks to our listeners for following along. We also want to thank Vanessa Carlton for letting us use her song “Willows” for our theme song. We record the Blab Lab at LitArts RI. It’s edited by myself and our publisher Jo Detz, who also mixes the episode. If you have any questions, ideas, or tips for podcast you can email me at [email protected] And until next time, if you want to get more Rhody environmental news you can visit our website: ecori.org.

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