From "How We Survive": How to Dim the Sun

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 8.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re featuring an episode from the new season of “How We Survive.”

Could dimming the sun be the key to cooling things down before the climate crisis worsens? Some scientists say yes, that we can cool the earth by launching tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. It’s a type of solar geoengineering that was once seen as preposterous, meant to exist only in the pages of a sci-fi novel. But now, it’s a reality.

To find out for ourselves, we travel to Northern California where two entrepreneurs are launching sulfur-filled balloons from the top of stacked shipping containers. Later, we talk with scientists on both sides of this issue to find out if solar geoengineering could help prevent catastrophic tipping points or introduce a whole new slew of cascading consequences.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, it's Kai. We know the climate crisis is escalating. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
0:08.0	Today, we're sharing the first episode of the latest season of our climate solutions podcast, How We Survive.
0:14.4	Amy and the team are exploring large-scale climate interventions, like dimming the sun. Really?
0:21.4	It's actually a fascinating episode, only slightly terrifying.
0:25.8	Enjoy it.
0:27.3	So what are we going to do right now?
0:30.5	We're going to launch some balloons and send them into the stratosphere filled with
0:34.1	sulfur dioxide and hydrogen gas to get it up there.
0:37.9	So in other words, just another Wednesday morning in Northern California.
0:41.4	Exactly.
0:43.8	At an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area,
0:48.3	I'm with Andrew Song and his business partner, Luke Eisman.
0:52.5	We're in an industrial area near a deli and a bunch of warehouses.
0:57.5	A little heads up. This is, we'll have to be careful walking.
1:00.6	It's actually the roof of a container at my friend's warehouse around the corner.
1:04.4	Okay.
1:05.1	Good thing I'm not wearing heels.
1:06.9	Right.
1:08.4	My producer, Haley, and I are about to embark on an assignment that is not, not sketchy.
1:15.1	To launch these special balloons, we first have to climb up some ladders to the top of two shipping containers stacked on top of each other.
1:25.2	Be careful, Haley.
1:28.4	You should be telling me to be careful.
	...

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