The Reason We’re All Still Here

Fishermen dying mysteriously off the coast of Japan. Entire populations of sea animals disappearing. Despite decades of work by the international community, the high seas remain law enforcement’s biggest blind spot, and the site of environmental crimes whose effects reach around the world. But some people are attempting to stop these crimes: We follow the investigations of two private-citizen sleuths, one using satellites to expose massive but previously untraceable illegal fleets, another using spycraft to infiltrate a criminal network of poachers and smugglers operating on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

This episode features Sara Mitchell, professor of political science at the University of Iowa; as well as Jaeyoon Park of Global Fishing Watch and Andrea Crosta, founder and Executive Director of Earth League International.

An international crisis is a little like a relay race. In 2011, the baton passes into the hands of diplomats like American ambassador Wendy Sherman, who led the P5+1 team negotiating the Iran deal.

The Deal tells the story of the Iran nuclear deal: how it came together, how it fell apart, and what that means for the rest of us. Hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He tweets @armscontrolwonk.

Learn more at IranDealPodcast.com.

The Deal tells the story of the Iran nuclear deal: how it came together, how it fell apart, and what that means for the rest of us. Hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He tweets @armscontrolwonk.

In Season 2 The Deal brings the story of the Iran nuclear deal into the present. Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis examines the options available to Joe Biden by looking at the past. Will we make the same mistakes? Or have we learned our lessons?

You don't have to listen to season one to follow season two, but it helps!

Learn more at IranDealPodcast.com.

With the Iran nuclear deal dead as a doorknob, Jeffrey Lewis set out to make a new podcast, one that tells stories of scientists, journalists and maybe a vigilante or two... private citizens who are working to solve diplomatic problems and prevent the next global catastrophe.

Yes this podcast is about saving the world – one arduous, unlikely, under-funded, seemingly impossible mission at a time. Skinny dipping physicists, activists living on houseboats and, of course, at least one person looking at satellite images in his pajamas..

The Reason We’re All Still Here is a production from Gilded Audio and The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Proliferation is just a fancy word for the spread of nuclear weapons. Nonproliferation is stopping it.

Some questions fall far outside the scope of what governments are designed to answer. How will we explain ourselves to extraterrestrials? What can we say to warn humans 10,000 years in the future about the nuclear waste we’re leaving behind? Assuming we develop the proper technology, would it be beneficial to breed glowing cats?

Two decades after NASA shot a message to aliens into deep space, one of its authors joined an eclectic group of experts and went down a similar rabbit hole regarding nuclear waste. The result was one of the most outlandish, mind-bending, and heartfelt reports ever commissioned by the US government.

This episode features artist Jon Lomberg, former NRDC lawyer Dan Reicher, and futurist Ted Gordon.