What happens when a data center moves to town?

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Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lately, tech companies like Meta have been putting hundreds of billions toward building new data centers to power their AI ambitions. Some communities have been pushing back, however, arguing these facilities strain local resources. But demand for data centers isn’t expected to slow down anytime soon. On the show today, Landon Marston, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, explains what data centers actually are, why they require so much energy and water to operate, and how they can affect nearby communities. Plus, how can data centers become more sustainable?

Later, reflections on Medicaid cuts and the power of journaling. And, a listener makes us smarter about “100-year floods.”

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door" from The New York Times
"Coreweave stock pops after company announces $6 billion AI data center in Pennsylvania" from CNBC
"Meta's Zuckerberg pledges hundreds of billions for AI data centers in superintelligence push" from Reuters
"How A.I. Is Changing the Way the World Builds Computers" from The New York Times
"China Is Putting Data Centers in the Ocean to Keep Them Cool" from Scientific American
”The 100-Year Flood” from the U.S. Geological Survey

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, if you're listening to this, I will assume you're at least interested in money,
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0:42.4	Music dot com slash million. Hello, everyone.
0:43.5	I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:44.6	Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:49.0	And I'm Rie Mae Marees.
0:50.1	It is Tuesday, July 22nd.
0:52.8	So lately, we've been seeing more and more tech companies putting billions of dollars towards building new data centers.
0:59.7	Just last week, the cloud computing company, CoreWeave announced a six billion investment in a new data center project in Pennsylvania.
1:07.2	Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg said Mehta will spend hundreds of billions on several massive AI data centers to work on developing what they're calling superintelligence.
1:16.9	It's a lot.
1:18.8	Yeah, but at the same time, some communities where these data centers are being built are raising concerns about the impact it's having on local energy and water resources,
1:28.6	which is a real thing and not people just blowing it out of proportion, but to get the exact details,
1:34.0	we wanted to know more about the data centers and their environmental impact.
1:38.2	So here to make us smart about this is Landon Marston, who is a professor of civil and environmental
	...

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