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We’re back for our 50th episode, and we’re coming into the new year with a bang – Elise tells us how the Hindenburg airship explosion, despite some amazing survival stories, might have halted the potential for low-carbon air cargo (and cool blimps).
Then Olivia revisits a phenomenon of early 2021: Ever Given, the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal, and what it says about our supply chain and meme culture.
Other topics include how the fossil fuel industry upholds itself, adding a comma for dramatic effect, and what we’ve been reading.
Story #1: The Hindenburg Explosion (Elise)
Sources:
Discrete Lattice Material Vacuum Airship, NASA
WWI Zeppelins: Not Too Deadly, But Scary as Hell, Wired, October 2014
Zeppelin Hindenburg, transatlantic workhorse, The History Press
Titanic and Hindenburg, Airships.net, April 2016
The Hindenburg, Before and After Disaster, Britannica
The Age of the Airship May Be Dawning Again, Foreign Policy, February 2020
What Really Felled the Hindenburg?, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2017
YC grad Buoyant wants to solve middle-mile delivery with cargo airships, Tech Crunch, August 2021
The new age of the airship: Could blimps be the future of air travel?, Science Focus, June 2021
How airships could return to our crowded skies, BBC, November 2019
Could Airships Rise Again?, IEEE, September 2019
Hindenburg Accident Report: U.S. Commerce Department, Air Commerce Bulletin via Airships.net, August 1937
Hindenburg Disaster, Wikipedia
Story #2: The Ever Given and Getting Stuck in the Suez Canal (Olivia)
Sources:
The Happiest Number I’ve Heard in Ages, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, January 2022
Container Ship Stuck In Suez Canal Gives Way To Massively Funny Tweets, Huffington Post, March 2021
Is a choked up Suez Canal just a taste of the future?, Fortune, commentary by Mike Hoffman, April 2 2021
Study maps correlation between busy shipping lanes and more intense thunderstorms, Splash247 [shipping industry news], September 2017
Lightning enhancement over major oceanic shipping lanes, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 44 Issue 17, Thornton Virts Holzworth & Mitchell, September 2017
36 of the funniest memes about the Ever Given as the ship is freed from the Suez Canal, the Independent’s Indy 100, March 2021
Shipping Pollution, Oceana (undated – might be pre-2010 statistics)
Maritime shipping causes more greenhouse gases than airlines, Yale Climate Connections, August 2021
How to rehabilitate old oil supertankers, BBC, June 2019
It took the Suez Canal crisis to highlight the scale of the polluting shipping sector, Climate Change News, April 2021
Additional letter from a shipping industry executive: Can we be honest about the damage we are all doing?
The Dump
What we’re reading
Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch
Warmth by Daniel Sherrell
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
What we’re watching
Yellowjackets on Showtime
The World Is Burning bookshop is live! Help us come up with book list titles and bulk up our reading list.
Our World is Burning themed playlist is on Spotify.
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Thanks for listening!
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