Advertise on podcast: Trace Material

Trace Material explores the intersection of our lives and the lives of the materials that surround us, one material at a time. This year, for Trace Material’s third season, the podcast team at HML is investigating fungi. Does this mysterious kingdom hold the keys to a healthier future? Tune in this summer to find out and subscribe today!

Our story starts at the turn of the twentieth century, when the natural materials everyday objects were made from were becoming scarce. Enter the era of the inventor, it was time to forge new materials and build a new world. 

In post-war America everything that people touched––paint, fabric, dishes, jewelry––could be made of plastic. But how did this first generation living in a plastic world learn to accept it as part of their daily lives?

In the 1970s, workers in PVC factories across the country began getting sick with a rare form of liver cancer.  While the plastics industry claimed they were unaware of what was causing that cancer, internal documents told a different story. Today we’re telling a story about corporate concealment, cancer, and of course, plastic. 

The connections between vinyl chloride and diseases like cancer were first understood inside the factory setting. Workers were quite literally on the frontline. But today we're taking you outside the factory walls and into fenceline communities and suburban homes. For part one of this story, listen to The House of Documents. For more information regarding PVC and vinyl chloride, head to our episode page.

The push to promote disposable plastics created mountains of new waste that will never biodegrade. The burden of that waste has been placed almost entirely on the shoulders of low-income communities of color.  This week, activists share a story of community opposition to the construction of a garbage incinerator in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark during the 1980s, and their ongoing fight for environmental justice.  For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

The nation’s first plastic bag ban in Suffolk County, NY set off panic in the plastics industry. How did industry create the myth of recycling and squash potential bag bans? We speak to Assemblyman Steve Englebright, who sponsored the bag ban in 1988, about the decades long fight to ban plastic bags in Suffolk County and the tactics used by the plastic industry to thwart these bans. Plus, Kara Napolitano from SIMS Municipal Recycling Facility in Brooklyn offers us a new way to think about plastics recycling. For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

More than any other generation, Gen Z’s lives have been marked by climate change and climate anxiety.  In this episode of Trace Material, we speak to young climate activists to understand how they’re imagining a future away from plastics and a materials designer working to make that future a reality. For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

We're looking back at the stories we've told on this season of Trace Material. How did we find ourselves living in the plastics age and where might we go from here?  Be sure to go back and listen to any episodes you may have missed this season! For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Over the course of this season, we’ve told stories of iconic plastic objects like Tupperware and Bakelite and looked at how this material has woven itself into our culture and our bodies. We’ve traced how we found ourselves in the plastics age, but what comes next? To help us envision the future plastics, we invited Pete Myers to speak with us in our first ever live taping of Trace Material. Pete is the founder and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences (which publishes the famous Environmental Health News) and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. Pete has decades of experience in the chemistry of plastics, particularly with a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors––a term he coined in the early 90s and explored in the best selling book he co-authored called “Our Stolen Future." We know the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) and explored the myth of plastics recycling in this season of the podcast. In this episode Pete makes his argument for a new set of R’s: rethink, redesign, reform. Subscribe and listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Have you enjoyed this season? Let us know on Apple Podcasts  Trace Material is a project of Parsons Healthy Materials Lab at The New School. It is hosted and produced by Ava Robinson and Burgess Brown. Our project director is Alison Mears, and our research assistant is Olivia Hamilton. Trace Material was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our theme music is Rainbow Road by Cardioid. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Here's a first listen of Trace Material Season 2: Stories from the Plastics Age, coming your way June 16th! We were curious: what will future societies think of us when they dig up relics of our present day? 

We’re going back in time to before hemp was considered controversial. To explain where we are today and why it’s such a hot button issue, we’re going to trace hemp’s history in the United States by looking back at the early American hemp economy. Who benefited and who suffered?