This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from IHeart Radio.

My guest today is a journalist and staff writer at the Atlantic, where she covers the weekly

planet newsletter.

Her work has previously appeared in major outlets, such as Newsweek, Quartz, Wired, The New York Times, The Nation, Time

Magazine, and NPR. Zoe Schlanger is also the author of the 2004 book The Light Eaters,

How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence offers a new understanding of life on earth.

In 2017, Schlanger received the National Association of Science Writers' Reporting Award.

She's also been recognized as a finalist for several other major journalism awards.

With a focus on climate change, pollution, and environmental justice in her writing,

I was curious about when Schlanger's environmental awareness and interest began.

I grew up in Connecticut, not very far away from where we are now in Manhattan, and Schlanger's environmental awareness and interest began.

I grew up in Connecticut, not very far away from where we are now in Manhattan, and I grew up with New Yorker parents, so I was coming into the city all the time.

And I think my earliest environmental awareness came from driving in alongside the Hudson River

and learning at some point that the Hudson River was contaminated with PCBs.

GE.

Right, exactly.

And was, you know, declared a superfund site.

And that clicked.

Something in my child brain thought, I can't see that.

That's kind of a secret.

Not many people maybe know it, but maybe everyone

...