Ways & Means Podcast Launches New Season with Climate Change Series
The Sanford School’s award-winning documentary podcast, Ways & Means, launched its new season on Wednesday, Feb. 20, with the first episode in a four-part series on the topic of climate change.
In the opening episode “How Parenthood Affects Climate Change Skeptics,” former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis recounts how his thinking on the issue was changed because of his son.
“Yeah, I was completely dismissive of climate change,” he says. “It seemed to me that people like Al Gore wanted to regulate our very breath.”
Megan Mullin, associate professor at the Nicholas School, has found that there is a 40 percentage point gap between Democrats and Republicans in their concern for the environment.
But Sanford PhD candidate Emily Pechar has found that prompting Republican parents to think about their identity as parents shifts their level on concern on climate change.
The latest episode, A Greener Commute: One City’s Story, looks at how a Durham city team, with help from Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, applied behavioral economics to find ways to reduce the number of daily drivers communing to downtown.
“We're trying to reduce the number of people who drive downtown by five percent,” said Durham Mayor Steve Schewel. “If we can do that, we can stop building parking decks, and we really want to stop building parking decks.
Listen to find out why $163 is the magic number.
Other Duke people featured in the series include:
- Assistant Professor Robyn Meeks
- Professor Subhrendu Pattanayak
- Professor Billy Pizer
- Joseph Sherlock, senior behavioral researcher, Center for Advanced Hindsight
Ways & Means is a production of the Sanford School of Public Policy, produced by Carol Jackson, digital strategist, Alison Jones of the Duke Office of News and Communication, and Karen Kemp, Sanford assistant dean for communication. It is hosted by Emily Hanford, senior correspondent for APM Reports, with more than two decades of experience as a reporter, producer, editor and program host.
Ways & Means won the 2018-2019 Award of Excellence in Communication and Marketing from CASE, an international association of educational institutions for a previous miniseries, “New Ideas for Policy in the Developing World.”
Find Ways & Means on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play or at https//waysandmeansshow.org.