Is audio the best way to freak out about the future? Two new podcasts are making a strong case for it. The ongoing Hot and Dry presents New Mexico as a case study for how climate is changing landscapes and resource access and what state and local government can do about it. And over ten episodes, The Big One unpacks the consequences of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that has a predicted 50 percent chance of hitting Southern California in the next 50 years. The two podcasts are menacing on different levels—what’s more terrifying, the slow roll of global warming or the trauma of an earthquake? But both tap into the intimacy and fluid nature of audio to look at the political structures and human actions that are going to impact our physical reality.
“Audio lets us be more casual, which opens up some interesting conversations,” says Cally Carswell, a cohost of Hot and Dry, which is self-published. Last year, Carswell, an environmental writer for High Country News, was…
