The Cruelest Summer

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more frequent, more intense, and longer than any we’ve seen before. We’ve suffered through extreme weather events caused by those heat waves. We’ve seen wildfires that have been made more intense by climate change. We’ve had failures in infrastructure, industry, and the food supply. And of course, these problems are only getting worse. We’re looking at a future where extreme heat is just the new normal.

This week, we bring WIRED senior science writer Matt Simon onto the show to talk about where all the heat is coming from and what it’s doing to the environment. We also talk about how quickly the problem of excessive heat is accelerating, and what—if anything—humans can do to slow it down, or at least lessen the damage it causes.

Show Notes:

Read Matt’s stories about heat waves, the wildfires in Lahaina, Maui, and how the heat is affecting the ocean’s food chains. You can find all of Matt’s WIRED stories in one place. Also, listen to Matt’s appearances on two previous episodes referenced in this week’s talk, when we spoke about microplastics and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Recommendations:

Matt recommends the 24 Hours book series that looks at different ancient societies. Lauren recommends the short film “How to Catch a TikTok Thief” from The New Yorker. Mike recommends Connections, the new daily game from The New York Times.

Matt Simon can be found on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, @mrMattSimon. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:01.0	Mike.
0:02.0	Is it getting hot in here?
0:05.0	Is that a Nelly reference?
0:07.0	Nelly?
0:08.0	Yeah, Nellie.
0:10.0	To quote the great early 2000s, poet Nelly, also known as Cornell, Iroll Haines Jr.,
0:16.0	it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes.
0:19.0	Is that an HR violation? Almost certainly, but I'll let it
0:22.7	slide. I think the problem is that it is perpetually getting hot in here, like on the earth. The
0:28.3	summer right now is the coolest it's probably ever going to be. Oh, no. This is another
0:33.9	doomsday episode, isn't it? Unfortunately, it is. But we're going to at least try to talk about what we can all do about extreme heat.
0:42.3	We have to try.
0:43.6	So let's do it.
0:44.4	Okay.
0:51.7	Hi, everyone.
0:52.6	Welcome to Gadget Lab.
0:53.5	I am Michael Callori. I'm a senior editor at Wired. And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. We are also joined today by Wired Senior Staff writer Matt Simon. Welcome back to the show, Matt. Thanks, as always, for having me. Of course. You work on the science desk here at Wired, where you cover biology and the environment. So whenever you come on the show, it's usually a huge bummer because you tell us about how the planet is dying and you really only ever have bad news for us. Mr. Doomsday, your nickname. Resident Doomsday writer. Unfortunately, we are going to have a little bit more of that today because we've brought you on to talk about extreme heat, but we want to make sure that
1:27.5	we also spread some positivity and talk about like things that we can do as a society and as
1:31.6	individuals to combat this problem of extreme heat.
1:35.3	Plenty of stuff to do, yes.
1:36.6	Great.
	...

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