There's everywhere else in the United States, and then there's Texas.

It's big, it's proud, it's got a lot going on, and it takes a daily news show to keep up with it all.

The Texas Standard tackles politics, business and tech, the arts, and the people and things that make Texas unique.

It's smart, fast-paced, relevant, and sometimes

even a little fun. After all, it's the news from a Texas perspective. Subscribe to the Texas

standard wherever you get your podcasts. More than Tex-Mex, more than guns, more than high school football, if there is one thing

we Texans value, it is summertime shade.

A close parking spot is nice, but one shadowed by a tree feels like a small lottery prize. And as places all over the

planet grow hotter, protection from the sun is not just a matter of comfort but of public health,

a kind of natural resource. So why is shade so hard to come by in places that need it?

From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. My guest, Sam Block,

is an environmental journalist who wanted to understand the uneven access to shade in a warming

world. His investigation took him from the settlement of the fertile crescent to the rise of skyscrapers

and makes the case for the relevance of passive cooling even in our high-tech

modern world. His book is called Shade, the promise of a forgotten natural resource. Sam, welcome to

think. Hey, Chris, thanks for having me. You write that what safe drinking water and clean air were

to the 20th century, shade could be to the climate

changed 21st.

By which you mean, I think, something we consider as a feature of like public infrastructure

and urban planning as opposed to just a nice design choice?

Yeah, that's right.

You know, as you say, cities everywhere all over the planet are getting much hotter.

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