As She Rises

In New Orleans, there is a time before the storm, and a time after. How does one keep up with change in a state losing a football field’s worth of land every hour and a half? On a street where a neighbor’s porch is built 12 feet off the ground? 

Take Action:

• The Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy advances structural shifts toward ecological equity and climate justice in Gulf South communities of color on the frontline of climat...

In the land we know as Alaska, a poet considers a melting landscape also ablaze. What does it mean to live in a “sepia-toned” world, to be forced to distance your ties to your culture, and to truly understand that what happens to the land also happens to the people? “June really isn’t June anymore / is it?” 

In this episode, we visit the land currently known as Alaska. Joan Naviyuk Kane, Iñupiaq poet and scholar, joins us with the t...

“It’s not the same, knowing the theory of climate disaster, and then actually living through it.”

There is a fissure on the island of Puerto Rico-- one widened in the wake of massive storms, earthquakes, COVID, and quickened by the dizzying pace of climate change.

In this episode, bilingual  poet Raquel Salas Rivera finds hope in a poem titled “nota para una amiga que desea suicidarse después del huracán” and tells us about the rippl...

In Northern Minnesota, over eleven hundred glassy lakes create a vast inland sea. The water is so clean that canoers can drink straight from the lakes. What will it take to protect this beautiful and life-giving landscape from human threat?

In this episode, we are transported to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota. Kim Blaeser, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, reads her poem “Eloquence of Earth.” And she speaks abo...

The most visited stretch of beach in Hawai’i should be underwater. Instead, it’s kept afloat by over thirty thousand tons  of sand-- sand that drifts out to sea every 5 to 10 years before it's replaced yet again. Before the Ala Wai canal drained the watershed, Waikiki sustained a native population of over a million, and fed and nurtured its diverse wildlife in a self-sustaining system. Today,  king tides are trying to reclaim Waiki...

This land has always been on fire. But the destructive power of these flames is new. There was a time before, and there is a time ahead, when fire clears the way for new growth in the foothills. “So many particular precious, irreplaceable lives that despite ourselves, we're inhaling.”

In this episode, we visit the land currently known as Northern California. Molly Fisk, inaugural poet laureate of Nevada County, California, recalls t...

In Oklahoma, a fight is playing out that could finally recognize tribal sovereignty, especially over how to manage the environment. This could set a precedent for the rest of the country, and affect our climate. But the powers that be won’t let go easily.

In this episode we visit the plains of eastern Oklahoma. Joy Harjo, the United States poet laureate, reads her poem “Speaking Tree” and shares what happens when we lose touch with ...

“The worst crime I know men have committed is to turn nature into an oppressor.”

In the city, the heat is suffocating: it reverberates off buildings, seeps through the concrete, and bounces off glass back down onto a city of 8.4 million people. New York City is hotter than ever before-- but it’s felt differently from neighborhood to neighborhood. Today, we’re ending our season in the land currently known as New York, where increasin...

Straddling the border between the US and Canada, the Skagit Watershed is a haven for sea creatures. The “Magic Skagit” is in peril: the ways of life it has sustained for the communities along its shores are faltering under years of settler disruption, and upstream, its headwaters originate in a pool of unprotected land threatened by extractive industries. Still, there’s hope in numbers: a cross-border coalition of federal, Tribal, ...

Far out in the waters of the South Pacific are the Samoan Islands. They make up an island paradise, a contested territory, an ecological haven. They might also hold a key in the fight to protect endangered coral reefs.

“steady us mother/ your eye lights the way

your heart moves our blood

your hand steers our boat.”

Welcome to season 2 of As She Rises. In this episode, we visit the islands of Samoa. Poet Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard read...

Nestled in the Northwestern corner of present-day New Mexico is the Greater Chaco Region: home to thousands of Diné and Puebloean families. It's also one of the most intense concentrations of oil wells in the country, designated an “energy sacrifice zone” by the Nixon administration in the 1970s. Now, a group of activists who recognize the land’s inherent importance, and who themselves have built lives on and around it, are changin...

As climate change progresses, more people will be forced from their homes and into exploitative environments. In the United States, this is particularly true of farmworkers.

The climate crisis is, undeniably, a labor issue too.

“like you i woke up in the dark. but i was reaching for animals, trying to beat the heat. like you sunrise usually found me in the middle of doing something. i didn’t call it prayer, but i did believe that if ...

Premiering May 1 wherever you get your podcasts. As She Rises is back for its third season with a new host: Leah Thomas, founder of The Intersectional Environmentalist. This season, As She Rises is traversing the Colorado River Basin downstream, understanding water through a new lens and centering stories of resilience in the face of the drought. 

If you're interested in learning more about the Colorado River Crisis,  check out High...

Lake Powell is long and thin. It snakes through the red-desert, running southwest through Utah, ending at the top of Arizona. From above, it looks like a human artery. From the inside, it's idyllic. The water is crystalline. Every year, millions of people flock to the lake to fish, canoe, and hike. Today, Lake Powell is around a fifth of its original size. Pools that used to be deep enough to dive into have turned into puddles of m...

The Havasupai tribe lives at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, in Supai Village. Just north of the village, a hidden aquifer turns into Havasu Falls, a waterfall that cascades into a pool of blue-green water. This water has sustained the Havasupai people for centuries, nourishing their crops, softening the harsh conditions of the desert, and serving as a place of reverence. But now, the Havasupai tribe’s water source is threatened by...

Black Mesa is a high desert, arid, with few streams or rivers aboveground. Water tends to come from above or below: sometimes, as a gentle rain. Other times, a rushing monsoon. Navajo and Hopi people have called it home for thousands of years. Its water reservoirs— a complex system of underground pools called “aquifers”— sustain people, livestock, and agriculture on the plateau. More recently, that scarce resource fed the needs of ...

In the southern valleys of California, lies a desert oasis known as the Salton Sea. The inland sea is picturesque— from afar. Up close, the beauty begins to fade. The sea is a result of diverting the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley for agriculture, and it’s filled with fertilizer, pesticides, and salt. Decades of drought have caused the sea to evaporate at a rapid pace, exposing the lakebed, unearthing toxins, and endangering...

The Sonoran Desert, situated at the bottom edge of Arizona, stretches out into the haze of a horizon, rippled with heat. It’s fed by thin tributaries of the river and, more often, watered by sparse rains. It’s a place that, in theory, could seem pretty inhospitable. But the Tohono O’odham nation has survived and thrived there, thanks in part to traditional agricultural practices that are more relevant than ever as a drought looms a...