Blue Lab is excited to announce the launch of the second seasons of our popular environmental podcast series Carried by Water (helmed by Mario Soriano) and Mining for the Climate (helmed by Jessic Ng and Nate Otjen). Our third original podcast, Archival Ecologies (helmed by Jayme Collins), will drop its second season in winter 2025.
"It's thrilling to see the new seasons of our podcasts start to roll out," said Blue Lab director Allison Carruth, who is professor of American studies and environmental studies at Princeton and the faculty director of the university's Program in Environmental Studies. "These postdoc-led environmental storytelling projects embody the Blue Lab method: we aim to tell hyperlocal, research-driven and aesthetically captivating stories that explore how climate change and other environmental challenges are upending lifeways, transforming relationships to place and, for many, making the future feel increasingly contingent. Across our three podcasts, we've built a loyal listenership of about 7,000 people in just two years—many of whom live in the places where the stories are set. I'm incredibly proud of Mario, Jessica, Nate and Jayme and am grateful for all they've contributed to Blue Lab's community and public impact."
Below you can catch up on what's new in season 2 of Carried by Water and Mining for the Climate and hear from the project leads about why they were compelled to tell these stories.
Project Title Carried by water
Project type Podcast
Project Lead Mario Soriano
Season 2 Production team Farah Arnaout '26, Jayme Collins, Asela Perez-Ortiz + Hannah Riggins '27
Season 2 of Carried by Water brings listeners to communities in New Jersey and Delaware where homeowners and scientists are grappling with the question of relocation in the face of increasing flooding and sea level rise. Through stories of people making real-time decisions about whether the advantages of remaining in place outweigh the risks of repeated disaster, we discover evolving ideas of climate adaptation, home, identity and resilience.
You can find Carried by Water on Blue Lab, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music. and iHeartRadio.
Mario Soriano is the creator of and project lead on the original Blue Lab podcast Carried by Water.
I grew up in a part of the world where floods were just a fact of life that people have learned to live with. You could say that I became a hydrologist because I was fascinated by the idea that there was an actual science to this that would enable one to systematically understand the processes driving such events. The podcast project allowed me to dive into the social and cultural aspects of disasters, centering community voices and lived experiences that have often been drowned out by technocratic discourses.
- Mario Soriano
Carried by water season 2 production stills
Tahmidur Junayed, a researcher at the University of Delaware, describes instruments for monitoring subsurface environmental conditions. This set-up is in a phragmites zone.
Signage for Woodbridge Township Open Space Conservation/ Resiliency Zone. This area was once occupied by homes, which the state acquired through the New Jersey Blue Acres program. The homes were demolished and the land is being kept open for flood mitigation and promoted as a walking trail.
Monique Coleman watched with her family as their house in Woodbridge, New Jersey was demolished as part of the Blue Acres buyout program. The lot, now designated as permanent open space for flood mitigation purposes, has been reclaimed by nature. Photo by Mario Soriano.
Hannah Riggins and Farah Arnaout speak with Andrea Habeck and Amanda Archer at the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve in Tuckerton, New Jersey.
Mario Soriano and Hannah Riggins interview Lisa Auermuller at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station.
Ken Able, retired professor and station director from 1987-2019, believes that retreat from the field station’s unique location would constitute a loss of irreplaceable local insights. Here, he is discussing a photo from his book “Coastal Landscapes: South Jersey from the Air” with Mario Soriano. Photo by Jayme Collins.
Asela Perez-Ortiz interviews Tom Flynn, floodplain administrator for Woodbridge Township.
The Rutgers University Marine Field Station in Tuckerton, New Jersey. With its unique location at the inlet of Great Bay, the station provides a vital base for long-term ecological research. Photo by Mario Soriano.
Jayme Collins lowers a hydrophone to record the underwater soundscape at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station.
Mario Soriano at the Woodbridge River Passage. The passage runs across homes formerly occupying Watson and Crampton avenues that were acquired by the state through Blue Acres.
Project Title Mining for the climate
Project type Podcast
Project Leads Jessica Ng + Nate Otjen
Season 2 Production team Christopher Bao '27 + Jose Santacruz '27
Season 2 of Mining for the Climate brings listeners to the McDermitt Caldera, a desert region that has recently become the epicenter of US lithium mining. Far from being a barren landscape, the caldera is home to many people, along with numerous species of animals and plants. In this season, we talk with local experts who are concerned about impacts from Lithium Nevada’s 6,000-acre Thacker Pass Lithium Mine and several other mining projects that are currently underway. While lithium extraction promises to be a “new frontier” for ranching and mining communities like Orovada that haven’t experienced this activity before, mining in the region is a long and complex issue, one that dates to the founding of Nevada and one that Indigenous communities like the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation have long contended against.
You can find Mining for the Climate on Blue Lab, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio and PlayerFM.
Jessica Ng is a project lead on the original Blue Lab podcast Mining for the Climate.
I’ve been committed to land protection struggles around lithium mining for the past 8 years. In 2021, when I was still a grad student in California, I visited the prayer camp that was protesting the Thacker Pass mine. I was glad to have the chance to sit with the stories of those who have a deep relationship to the McDermitt Caldera and weave them together into this second season of Mining for the Climate.
- Jessica Ng
Nate Otjen is a co-creator of and project lead on the original Blue Lab podcast Mining for the Climate.
I remember taking a red-eye flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Reno, Nevada, with the first Mining for the Climate team. On the flight we decided that we needed two seasons to tell these stories: one about the proposed lithium mine in North Carolina and another about fast-tracked permitting in Nevada. Now that Season 2 has been released, I hope that we did justice to the beautiful McDermitt Caldera and its inhabitants. Like the caldera which stretches out to the horizon, these stories deserve their own space where they can be felt.
- Nate Otjen
Mining for the climate season 2 production stills
View of the McDermitt Caldera from the north end. Sagebrush cover the gentle slopes, and green wetlands accompany the creek that flows from Disaster Peak and the snowy Trout Creek Mountains in the distance. Photo by Jessica Ng.
The team interviews geographer and anthropologist Paul White at the University of Nevada Reno. Photo by Jessica Ng.
Blue Lab undergraduate intern Jose Santacruz '27 monitors audio input during our interview of Daniel Rothberg, an independent journalist based in Reno. Photo by Jessica Ng.
John Hadder, Director of Great Basin Resource Watch, emphasizes a point while Blue Lab undergraduate intern Christopher Bao '27 adjusts audio input. Photo by Nate Otjen.
Susan Frey, media spokesperson for the Thacker Pass Working Group, shows us the location of a new school planned for Orovada, a small agricultural community near the caldera. The current school is located on the main road that mine construction and operation will use. Photo by Jose Santacruz '27.
The team rests in the shade of an aspen grove with Paiute Shoshone community members Council Vice Chair Justina Paradise, Myron Smart and Day Hinkey. Photo by Jose Santacruz '27.
Day and Myron unearth a medicinal root. They emphasized that lithium mining threatens their cultural and spiritual connection to land in the caldera. Photo by Nate Otjen.
Construction of the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in the southern end of the McDermitt Caldera has begun. Photo by Jose Santacruz '27.
Katie Fite, Director of Public Lands at Wildlands Defense, describes the wildlife in the caldera and how ranching, invasive species and fire have already stressed the landscape. Photo by Nate Otjen.
Katie Fite, Director of Public Lands at Wildlands Defense, breaks open a sage grouse dropping. The color indicates that the sage grouse was eating yellow wildflowers, while the moisture indicates that the dropping is fresh. Photo by Christopher Bao '27.
Paiute Shoshone tribal member Gary McKinney displays the first sign he made to support the protection of Peehee Mu’huh, or Thacker Pass, from lithium mining. Photo by Christopher Bao '27.
Project Title Archival ecologies
Project type Podcast
Project Lead Jayme Collins
Season 2 Production team Farah Arnaout '26 + Hannah Riggins '27
Season 2 of Archival Ecologies, which is forthcoming and will drop in winter 2025, will bring listeners to both Colorado and Norway to explore the physical, ecological, cultural and historical dimensions of ice.
You can listen to Archival Ecologies on Blue Lab, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Amazon Music and iHeartRadio.
Jayme Collinis is the creator of and project lead on the original Blue Lab podcast Archival Ecologies.
As a teenager, a fast-moving wildfire swept into my community, burning the homes of hundreds of students in my school. Given only 30 minutes to evacuate, many people lost everything. The following school year was punctuated by all the regular high school things, and also by heart-wrenching conversations with friends who were living with their families in hotel rooms, were grappling with the loss of all of their family photos, were wondering why they packed their nail polish and not the photo albums, were wondering when their homes would be rebuilt, were wondering where they’d live in the meantime. At an early age, these events shaped how I understand environmental disaster: when it hits, it comes for your material culture, and when you rebuild, how you deal with the absence and loss of the material objects that hold your history, as well as the changes in the lived infrastructure of your life, shapes how communities move into a future together, shapes the connections between people attempting to improvise a way to recover, and shapes what recovery means in community contexts. These experiences shape my motivation to tell stories of cultures in flux during climate change through how communities understand and respond to the losses and transformations in cultural material that they witness.
- Jayme Collins
Archival ecologies season 2 production stills
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
Jayme Collins at the USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF).
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
The USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
Foothills above the USGS U.S. National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Denver, CO. Photo by Jayme Collins.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
Jayme Collins at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
Artist Lena von Goedeke holding a glass sculpture of an ice core. Photo by Jayme Collins.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
Photo by Jayme Collins.
