November 7, 2025 • 46 mins
What is the Anthropocene, and when might it have started? What is the great acceleration? Can we expect, or engineer, a great deceleration? What can we learn from nuclear history about nuclear futures? Featuring Travis Olds, Assistant Curator of Minerals at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Nicole Heller, Associate Curator of Anthropocene Studies at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Encounter Trinitite glass, mentioned in this episode, in the exhibition The Stories We Keep: Bringing the World to Pittsburgh.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Pisano (00:00):
You're listening to the Anthropocene Archives, a
presentation of We Are Nature.
In this special series ofstories, we're delving deep into
Carnegie Museum of NaturalHistory's 22 million collection
(00:21):
items, raiding cabinets andcases, sifting through objects
and organisms in search ofstories of stewardship,
solutions, and scientificwonder.
On today's episode, grasping anew geological epoch,
researching radioactive rocks,and conquering our fear of
creation.
Grab your Geiger counter andget ready to rock.
(00:45):
Welcome to We Are Nature, ashow about natural histories and
livable futures presented byCarnegie Museum of Natural
History.
I'm your host, natural historyenthusiast and livable futures
envisioner, Michael Pisano, andI'm thrilled to be back at the
museum recording amongst theCarnegie's 22 million collection
(01:07):
items to share exclusivestories from the staff who
steward and study thesetreasures.
Today, I'm joined by two suchtreasure stewards and studiers.
Friends, please introduceyourselves.
Travis Olds (01:17):
Hi, I'm Travis Olds.
I'm Assistant Curator ofMinerals.
I focus on uranium minerals andcrystallography.
Michael Pisano (01:24):
Awesome.
Nicole Heller (01:25):
Hi, my name is Nicole Heller and I am Associate
Curator of AnthropoceneStudies.
So I am a conservationscientist by training and I work
here at the museum doingexhibition and education and
research around this concept ofthe Anthropocene.
Michael Pisano (01:42):
Yes, and you've also taken on the very honorable
role of producer of this seasonof We Are Nature and helped us
kind of frame the big picture,you know, connecting stories
about the museum's collectionsto some ideas about the day and
age we live in.
I wonder if you could kind ofexpand on what we are trying to
do to link this collection ofcollection stories together.
Nicole Heller (02:03):
Yeah, so I mean this, the wonderful thing about
the concept of the Anthropocene,which we will talk more about,
but it's really this metaconcept that's really related to
all the collections here at themuseum.
And so traditionally withnatural history, there was often
a kind of siloing of differentareas where each collection was
sort of its own entity andstudied by itself in many ways,
(02:26):
you know, the bird collection orthe mineral collection, very
taxonomic approach.
But these days in the momentwe're in and really
understanding theinterconnections between human
life and ecologies.
There's an interest inunderstanding our collections,
kind of stories that connect thecollections, right?
(02:47):
Or how we can use thecollections to understand these
phenomena in the world that weface today.
And so almost every object inour collection, of the 22
million objects, I think youcould find a connection in a way
to the Anthropocene or howhumans are affecting the planet.
And so that's really I thinkthe part of the inspiration for
this podcast we've been workingon is finding this kind of
(03:12):
object-based storytelling,right?
Or using the objects as a wayin to these important social,
ecological, geological storiesthat kind of make up nature in
the world today.
Michael Pisano (03:24):
Excellent.
Just to make sure we're all onthe same page.
Can you give us a quickdefinition of the Anthropocene?
Nicole Heller (03:30):
Yes, yes.
So the Anthropocene is aproposed current geological
epoch that we're in right now.
And so what is a geologicalepoch?
You might be thinking, what isthis?
And it really has to do withthe geology time series, which
is kind of a way that scientistskeep track.
It's like a calendar of kind ofthe history of the Earth over
(03:54):
about four billion years and howgeologists sort of look at that
rock record and use that tokind of parse time in a sense
and divide the earth intoperiods of time that are really
major moments in its evolutionand transformation over time.
Often it's much more aboutlooking way back in deep
history.
So this is a little weird to betalking about a geological unit
(04:17):
right in the present time, butkind of the way the story goes
is atmospheric chemist PaulCrutzen was at a meeting with a
bunch of environmentalscientists, and they were
looking at a lot of Earth systemdata, and kind of a moment
where it was like, hey,something's really different.
We're no longer in theHolocene, the former time
(04:39):
period.
We're now in a new period oftime.
And he said, I think we're inthe Anthropocene.
Anthropocene, kind of human newtime, kind of a new time of
humans on Earth, or humans aredriving Earth system processes
at this period of time.
And today we're going to betalking about some of the
markers, literal markers in thesediment that mark this
(05:00):
geological time unit.
Michael Pisano (05:03):
That's perfect.
And you've brought us right tothis object, this collection
item that's linked, like Nicolesaid, to the beginning of the
Anthropocene, the proposedstart.
Mackenzie Kimmel (05:15):
This season of We Are Nature is being recorded
in a room at Carnegie Museum ofNatural History.
The room is dominated by rowafter row after row of black
metal lockers.
Each is marked with a preciselypainted yellow number.
(05:35):
The lockers are labeled withnames like Lamiaceae and
Poaceae.
You will learn more about thelocker's contents in due time.
From time to time, the rows androws of black lockers are
interrupted by a table.
Nicole, Travis, and Michaelstand around one of these
(05:59):
tables, contemplating twoobjects that sit on its yellow
melamine surface.
These are the collection itemsthey intend to discuss.
Every episode, I will describethe items on the table, their
color, their size, theirtexture.
I will be your eyes in theroom.
(06:20):
See if you can guess what eachcollection item is before the
guests reveal its identity,starting now.
Collection item one easily fitsin the palm of your hand.
It feels dense and cool to thetouch.
(06:41):
Smooth, translucent greenpatches are embedded throughout
a gritty, tan substrate.
Each tiny green patch reflectsthe fluorescent lights overhead
in miniature.
This item's collectioninformation tag notes that this
(07:04):
object was created on July 16,1945, in Socorro County, New
Mexico.
Can you identify CollectionItem 1?
Travis Olds (07:37):
The first few milliseconds when the bomb was
at its hottest, and I don't evenknow the temperature, but it
was just sun level, surface sunhot.
Michael Pisano (07:46):
Too hot.
Travis Olds (07:47):
And it just melted everything.
And even the desert glassaround the site where the
fireball reached, it justmelted, I think in some places
down to a few inches, which is alot in sand.
Yeah.
Yeah, so trinitite is the glassy rock formed from
the first...
nuclear test at the Trinitysite in New Mexico.
(08:11):
And a lot of it is just bubblyglass.
It has a different texture insome pieces, depending on how
far away from the bomb it was.
It can have different colors,reds, grays, yellows.
It incorporated parts of thetower that the bomb was on and
pieces of the bomb itself.
Michael Pisano (08:30):
And is this an official mineral?
How should we refer totrinitite when we talk about i
t?
Travis Olds (08:34):
No, it's not an official mineral because it's
man-made.
It's an anthropogenic, you cancall it a mineral, it ends in
"-ite", and you would think it'sa mineral, but no, because it's
man-made, it's not accepted asa mineral.
Michael Pisano (08:48):
Cool.
What does nuclear testing haveto do with the start of the
Anthropocene?
Nicole Heller (08:52):
Yeah, so the Anthropocene is this idea that
when, you know, a new geologicalperiod starts, when human
activity starts to dominate theEarth's system, okay, and humans
have like all creatures alwayshave an effect on their local
environment.
But the real question here isaround impact on the whole
earth.
And that's what's kind of novelhere.
(09:12):
And so when does this start?
When is it that humans havebegun to kind of dominate or are
like the primary drivers of ourEarth system.
And scientists have beendebating this and bringing forth
different kinds of evidence ora hypothesis about when this
really begins.
But from a stratigraphyperspective, the kind of way
that science has done is it'sreally focused on looking for a
(09:35):
signal of when kind of in thesedimentation layers, in those
that will ultimately become rockover time, in those sediment
layers, they're looking for aboundary in the stratigraphy
when there's kind of a preciseboundary and then it's found all
over the globe.
It's sort of not just in onelocal area, but it's uniform
around the globe.
(09:55):
And the best sort of marker ofthat or indicator that's showing
up in sediment is around atomicbomb testing.
So right around, so wementioned 1945 is this first
atomic bomb testing, but ittakes a little while for there
to start to be a lot of fallout.
And by the 1950s, you're reallyseeing radioactive plutonium
(10:19):
isotopes, which are a signatureof these bomb testing, showing
up all over the world and insediment layers.
And that is kind of whatscientists were looking for,
right?
A marker that is precise intime, found around the world,
and it's really where thosehuman activities start to kind
of dominate those sedimentlayers.
Michael Pisano (10:39):
Yes, yes.
The testing and that 50s startdate is also linked with this
idea of a great acceleration.
I wonder if you can expand onthat and also if you have
anything to add from an earthscience perspective or just what
those words mean to you.
Travis Olds (10:52):
Yeah to add on just using nuclear testing as a
signal it's you know man'scontrol of the atom peaked then
yeah that was huge and anddeposition of these layers of
isotopes which have definedhalf-lives you can determine you
know go back in time that's howmany of these geologic epochs
(11:14):
are determined you go back andyou and you date them.
And so I think this is awonderful thing to use as the
start of the Anthropocene.
Michael Pisano (11:24):
Michael and Nicole from the future here.
Pardon the interruption.
We recorded this episode backin fall of 2023.
And between then and now, whenyou're listening to it,
something kind of importanthappened.
Nicole, what happened?
Nicole Heller (11:45):
Well, it turns out that the International
Commission on Stratigraphy, whowas the group deciding whether
or not this proposed geologicalepoch would be accepted as a new
time period that would start in1950, well, turns out they
rejected that proposal.
Michael Pisano (12:05):
What happened?
Why?
Nicole Heller (12:07):
Yeah, I think it's pretty complicated.
And really, it comes down to ahandful of people who made this
decision.
While no one really disputeswhat's happening, right?
No one disputes that the Earthsystem has changed significantly
in response to humaninteractions.
No one really disputes that.
But I think a lot of technicalquestions remain about beginning
(12:30):
a new geological epoch in sucha recent time period, right?
1950.
Michael Pisano (12:35):
That's really not normal.
Nicole Heller (12:37):
That's really not normal.
Michael Pisano (12:38):
How long ago did the Holocene start?
Nicole Heller (12:40):
The Holocene started 11,800 years ago around,
and it's kind of called likenew time.
So in a sense, that was like...
Michael Pisano (12:49):
It's the baby.
That was the baby, right?
That was really, really new tobe even looking back thousands
of years.
Because again, right, this is acalendar that's looking across
over 4 billion years of Earthhistory.
So...
Talking about 75 years is alittle uncomfortable, I think,
for the geological community,and you know, I think there
(13:13):
continued to be debate aboutwhen does this start?
Is it an epoch?
Is it an event?
How should it be marked?
And really, can we understandkind of how sediments that were
laid down only in the lastcouple decades or in our
lifetime, how those would reallyfare and how scientists a
(13:37):
million years from now mightlook back at this period?
And so I think, for those kindof technical reasons that it's
premature to make this decision.
Right.
We have to remember thatgeologists are operating at a
different time scale.
They're taking all the timethey need.
Nicole Heller (13:54):
Yes.
Michael Pisano (13:54):
In the meantime, where does that leave the
Anthropocene?
If it's not an epoch, what isit?
Nicole Heller (13:59):
Yeah, I mean, it is a key word, and it's an
extremely useful word.
And that's kind of the beautyof it.
You know, I myself was prettynervous, right, when I heard
that this, that it wasn't goingto be ratified and officially
become a geological time period.
I thought, oh, no, here I am, acurator of this thing.
Michael Pisano (14:18):
It's in your job title, yeah.
Nicole Heller (14:21):
Right.
But rest assured, or I've beenrelieved that, you know, most
people in environmentalsciences, in humanities, the
arts, kind of across scholarlyand public domains, people are
continuing to use the termAnthropocene.
Our museum is continuing to useit as are others.
And that's because at the endof the day, it's a really useful
(14:43):
term to refer to these bigcomplex changes that are
happening on our planet and thatdefine the present era and
really point to the relationshipof humans collectively with our
planet.
And I think the word serves asthat wake-up call for
(15:05):
recognizing that a lot of thischange is not sustainable and
not safe, and that we need tokind of reverse some of these
trends to have that future, toprotect that future we all want.
Travis, I was curious, if youthink about this plutonium,
right, that's suddenly showingup in the sediment from the
(15:27):
deposition, like, would therehave been anything else sort of
naturally producing plutonium toshow up?
Travis Olds (15:34):
So when the Earth was first formed, yes, there was
enough plutonium agglomeratedthat there was still some left,
and that decayed out within thefirst probably few million
years, so...
initial Earth was veryradioactive.
Nicole Heller (15:50):
Okay.
But then more recently, likethis is novel to suddenly, like
if you were a geologist and youjust stumbled upon this layer of
plutonium, what would youthink?
Travis Olds (16:00):
Yeah, totally.
There's no other way to makeplutonium other than through
bombarding with neutrons, andthat's a man-made process, so...
Michael Pisano (16:08):
Gotcha.
Let's talk about that greatacceleration bit for a second,
and then I want to come back toexactly this point of kind of
human interaction withradioactive materials and maybe
novel things that we startfinding.
But first, what is the greatacceleration?
Nicole Heller (16:22):
Yeah, so the great acceleration is, it's a
term coined by historians, andit's really about kind of
thinking about the last sort of250 or 350 years and how social,
economic, ecologicalindicators, Earth system
indicators and how those havechanged.
And when you look at thesegraphs, whether you're looking
at something like humanpopulation size or GDP or use of
(16:48):
fresh water or number of dams,like these kind of social side
metrics, if we look at how thosechange over time, they're sort
of growing from 1750 steadilyand then they just accelerate
right around 1950 and they allstart accelerating around the
same time.
At the same time, when you lookat Earth's system changes like
carbon dioxide in theatmosphere or methane or how
(17:10):
acidic our oceans are or thewarming of the planet.
They show the same sort ofgradual increases and then this
rapid acceleration right around1950.
So that's why this period iscalled the Great Acceleration.
And it's really when kind ofglobal technological change just
boom, just goes kind of wildalong with human population.
(17:32):
And the Great Acceleration, Ithink, is a part of why
scientists proposed that theAnthropocene starts in 1950
because of this kind ofunderstanding of this sort of
state system change or this sortof just acceleration in all of
these human-driven processes andthat showing up in the sediment
(17:52):
as well as in kind of processesthat we are coming to struggle
with like climate change andthese other...you know,
biodiversity loss.
So there's kind of how allthese things sort of connect
together.
Michael Pisano (18:03):
Exactly.
Thank you.
And I wonder how it's expressedkind of, I know part of your
scholarship is in understandingthe nuclear fuel cycle and in
human interaction withradioactive minerals.
So how is this greatacceleration concept reflected
in the advancement of eithernuclear technology or maybe the
genesis of novel radioactivematerial?
Travis Olds (18:25):
Hey, we owe a lot of advancements to our
understanding of the atom andespecially medical technologies
and understanding of CT scansand PET scans, positron emission
tomography, which is one of thebest ways to be able to find
cancer in someone.
It's really radical science.
You eat a radioactive isotope,it concentrates in the areas
(18:46):
that are growing most, so thecancers, tumors, and then it
decays.
Perfectly 180 emission.
And that's how this positronemission works.
It measures that time betweenthe detections and it can
pinpoint in your body where thetumor cell is.
Michael Pisano (19:02):
And then what about out in the world?
I know that you have been apart of describing many novel
materials that have aradioactive kind of part to
them.
How does that kind of map tothis exponential kind of curve
of progress or the fallout fromthese events?
Travis Olds (19:19):
Yeah, along with that massive influx in progress
came a lot of waste, minetailings, waste to produce the
plutonium that made the bombsand it's scattered throughout
the country and this issomething that to this day
people are having troublecleaning up and part of what I
do when we look for new mineralsis we're using these uranium
(19:41):
mines as an analog tounderground storage or a leaking
tank, what kind of phases mightform underground and we want to
understand the chemistry ofeach of these crystals to help
clean it up.
Michael Pisano (19:54):
I mean, I see you starting to gesture to this
other collection item and itfeels like it's related to what
you're saying.
Mackenzie Kimmel (19:59):
Travis is holding a rectangular beige
device next to collection itemtwo.
The box emits a cascade ofchirps.
Travis Olds (20:18):
So this is a Russian Geiger counter.
Michael Pisano (20:22):
It's such a cool object in itself.
Travis Olds (20:24):
Yeah, I bought that on eBay like 15 years ago.
Inside there's a tube filledwith a gas that detects the
invisible radiation coming offof it.
You can't see it, but it'shappening.
Michael Pisano (20:38):
It really is.
And how much longer will it behappening for?
Can you guess that?
Travis Olds (20:43):
So the half-life is something like 4.5 billion
years, so about the age of theEarth.
So for another...
Many, many billion years itwill be detectable.
Michael Pisano (20:56):
All right.
Mackenzie Kimmel (20:58):
If it weren't for the alpha, beta, and gamma
radiation particles causing thisfrenzy of haunted Game Boy
sound effects, you might betempted to taste the enthralling
crystals that coat the top ofCollection Item 2.
The forbidden candies grow froma dark gray, irregular hunk of
(21:23):
rock.
The rock is small, about threeinches long by one inch wide and
half an inch tall.
The crystals form a minuscule,mossy, glossy carpet, only a
millimeter thick at its tallestpoint.
Looking closely, you discerntwo separate types of crystal.
(21:48):
One is relatively larger, withwhitish tinted tips protruding
from a deep bluish green base,like a miniature ocean wave
frozen in mid-motion.
The second type of crystal ismuch smaller, appearing as
(22:08):
patches of stubble across therock face.
These crystals are brightyellowish green, an acidic,
high-vis stippling on the dullgray stone.
What is Collection Item 2?
Travis Olds (22:36):
Yep, so this is a sample from an abandoned uranium
mine, we go underground withpermission and collect samples
from what was left of the orefrom when they mined out the
ore.
So over time, 30 to 50 or soyears, it gets damp and wet and
things start to oxidize andrust.
And uranium rusts in reallybeautiful colors.
Nicole Heller (23:00):
And did you say this was a novel, like a new
mineral?
Travis Olds (23:03):
Yep.
The green mineral is calledandersonite, which is a calcium
uranyl carbonate.
And then right next to it arethese kind of yellowish crystals
of a brand new phase, a uraniumselenite carbonate.
Underground, it's very humid,it's damp, and this region sees
monsoonal rains, essentially,that just dump water that comes
(23:28):
through in waves.
So a lot of these uraniumminerals, the colorful ones at
least, are water-soluble, or ina little bit of acidic solution,
they'll be soluble, so itdoesn't take much, and rainwater
is enough to get it to startflowing.
And this is what leads to theformation of new things on the
mine wall.
(23:48):
So we use these specimens thatwe collect as analogs to
potential underground storage,deep geologic repository of
nuclear waste or spent fuel.
Michael Pisano (23:58):
What can you learn about them by examining
this analog?
Travis Olds (24:04):
So when things crystallize, they lock in the
conditions of the water that wasacting on it.
So when we know the chemistry,the structure, we can then work
backwards to try to think, oh,how can we prevent this kind of
oxidation from happening anduranium from reaching the
groundwater?
Michael Pisano (24:22):
And my understanding is that this isn't
the only new to science, newlydescribed mineral you've been a
part of finding.
Can you just expand on that andshine on yourself a little bit?
Travis Olds (24:34):
Yeah, well we're part of a team and so when we go
out and collect, you know,sometimes we get really lucky.
And that's really what findinga new mineral species is about.
I'd say it's like 90% luck andthen 10% knowing what you have
and recognizing that you shouldcheck it.
I've been involved in a littleover 30 mineral species and the
(24:56):
bulk of those are uraniumbearing.
So we're learning a lot abouturanium chemistry, especially in
these old uranium mines.
And it has been and continuesto be one of our best bets to
understand a long-term nuclearwaste storage.
Michael Pisano (25:12):
Gotcha.
And maybe it's obvious, butwhat's the problem with that?
Travis Olds (25:17):
Yeah, so really uranium is more of a toxic metal
than it is a concern forradioactivity.
Yes, it's radioactive.
Yes, it's bad if it gets insideof you, but it's a heavy metal.
And so it kind of acts likelead, gives you a toxic reaction
to the metal.
And so this is a really...
awful problem in many parts ofthe Western US.
(25:39):
So Arizona, parts of NewMexico, where it was Native
American land, DOE and whatevernuclear acronym at the time came
in and they took over.
And what was dumped was justdumped right outside the mine.
And usually these canyons haverivers flowing through them.
(26:01):
And so rainwater leaches fromthe tailings, they're filled
with the ore.
and it pollutes the water thatthe Native Americans and their
livestock drink.
And so that just, it's kind ofthis continual ecosystem of
toxicity in parts of Arizona,especially.
Michael Pisano (26:19):
I'm glad that you were specific about the
location and the peoplesaffected, because this brings up
another important aspect of howwe think about the Anthropocene
now, which is through a sociallens.
I wonder if you could speak tokind of what that story inspires
for you and if we can zoom outfrom that into when we think
intersectionally about a problemlike uranium in a waterway.
Nicole Heller (26:40):
In thinking about something like the
Anthropocene, a lot of thescholarship and interest is
really about thinking of it aslike a twin problem of both a
crisis of unsustainability andof kind of rapid change that is
really making us vulnerable.
And I think climate change isthe best example of that.
But also this twin problem ofinequity and the way that some
(27:04):
people are more vulnerable thanothers and are made more
vulnerable and this kind oflegacy of which populations or
communities are seeing our kindof sacrifice zones are allowed
to be places where we put wastethat is dangerous or where
atomic bomb testing maybehappened and those communities
really didn't have a choice inthat matter and are still
(27:26):
struggling with the publichealth impacts of that work.
I mean, my understanding isthat Trinity, that the community
there has been suing about thepublic health impacts that that
atomic bomb testing has had ontheir public health and kind of
keeping people, company,governments accountable has
been, I think is one of thereally hard parts of this as
(27:48):
well.
Travis Olds (27:49):
No, like many of the mines around you know,
Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania,it's some mining company.
They come in, they do theirbusiness and then either they go
bankrupt on purpose orredissolve or, you know, slough
off their responsibility forcleanup.
And that was the legacy fromlate forties to about the early
(28:10):
nineties in a lot of places outWest.
Michael Pisano (28:14):
Sure.
And I think, um, we prettycommonly associate nuclear
materials with disaster, evenatrocity, right?
It goes up to the levels beyondmine drainage to the way that
nuclear power was harnessed inwar.
How does this legacy ofpollution and of really
(28:36):
destructive uses of nuclearpower intersect with the work as
you do it now and possibly eventhinking about, like you were
starting to say, cleanup ormitigation in these systems?
Travis Olds (28:47):
Yeah, so there are techniques in place to do this
and it's done successfully.
Not currently in the US, thereis no federally mandated
disposal site.
There is one, it's called theWaste Isolation Pilot Plant in
New Mexico.
It's a salt, old salt mine.
Basically what they're doing isthey're taking some of the,
it's not waste from a nuclearreactor, it's waste from these
(29:13):
kind of legacy processes.
So they bring it into the mine,and over time this salt just
creeps and it kind of entombsit, and it prevents water from
flowing.
So that's one of the bestplaces to be able to do deep
geological repository storagetype things.
That's one of the best ways todeal with a lot of the legacy
waste, because it's just waste.
Other countries like Francereprocess their waste, so
(29:37):
specifically from nuclearreactors, and because this is a
plutonium proliferation problem,the US doesn't reprocess the
fuel, but fuel from a nuclearreactor is actually spent fuel
or used fuel, it actuallycontains something like 90 plus
percent of the original fissileusable material in it, and you
(30:00):
can reprocess that to get itback.
But the U.S.
doesn't do that because itcreates a plutonium waste stream
and that could potentially bestolen, interdicted, used for a
bomb.
Michael Pisano (30:16):
Bombs, fallout, meltdown, mutually assured
destruction.
These horrors haunt ourpsyches, policies, and cultures
like heavy metals in the watersupply.
I wonder if this trauma is whywe invest so heavily in the
pursuit of security, in doomsdaystockpiles, and destructive
potential.
But does hoarding resources andweapons make us any less
(30:40):
scared?
Does it make us any safer?
It's easy to see what's scaryabout nuclear power.
Who hasn't jolted awake at 3am,paralyzed by the cold, sweaty
certainty of impendingannihilation?
Or perhaps the greater fear isof people who might wield atomic
weapons, the fear of someunshakable inherent human
(31:00):
brutality.
At this point of theAnthropocene, 75 years after
that thin blanket of plutoniumparticles settled into the
Earth's sediments, I'm moreconcerned with the fear of
moving on, the fear of lettinggo, of breaking from tradition,
of making change.
At 3 a.m., my paralysis demonleans down and whispers: Are
(31:23):
Americans afraid of creation?
The uranium on our planet wascreated billions of years ago in
interstellar collisions andsupernovae.
The uranium atoms in ourreactors predate the formation
of the Earth.
You'd be right to cower at thedestructive scale and force of
such cosmic catastrophes.
But also, these are acts ofcreation.
(31:46):
These events are the forgesthat create the elements that
make up our universe, whichitself was created in an even
bigger and less conceivablebang.
Decaying uranium heats theinterior of the planet below
your feet.
This radioactive energy drivesthe plate tectonics and
(32:08):
volcanism that created theconditions for the origin of
life on Earth.
400 million years ago, nuclearfusion in our sun created energy
that was absorbed by planktonon a shallow inland sea.
Countless generations ofplankton grew and died and sank
and were entombed in stone, aseventually the sea itself
(32:29):
perished in a slow-motiontectonic plate collision.
This collision formed theAppalachian Mountains.
Much more recently, humans shota pressurized stream of
chemicals deep underground toretrieve the plankton, which in
the intervening hundreds ofmillions of years had been
transmuted by heat and pressureand time into oil and gas.
(32:50):
When we burn the oil and gas,we release the energy of the sun
gathered by the plankton 400million years ago.
That ancient solar power hasfueled the exponential growth
spurts of the GreatAcceleration.
It's incredible, and perhapsimpossible, or at least
(33:13):
humbling, to imagine thebillions of years over which
these processes unfold.
The aging of stars, theagglomeration of elements into
new planets, the evolution oflife on Earth.
It's incredible to see whathumans have done in the last 75
years.
The elemental, primordialpowers we have learned to wield.
(33:33):
The resulting cascade ofdiscoveries, an accelerating
chain of reactions betweenhumans and planet that have
created new minerals and newelements, unlocked and unleashed
massive amounts of energy.
Over the past 75 years, we havemanifested miracles and
experimented with destructionapproaching cosmic scale.
(34:06):
As we're kind of, you know,moving away from fossil fuels as
we have to, I wonder what youboth think about the role of
nuclear energy and where youwould hope to see it go next.
Travis Olds (34:18):
I'll be frank.
I think nuclear power isprobably the only replacement
for base load power.
So something that can power onyour lights any time of the day.
And that's currently what theyuse natural gas or coal for.
And so replacing that, whichneeds to happen, needs to come
from a combination of either abulk of it nuclear that can
(34:41):
provide a consistent power base,or if batteries and storage of
energy can become more advanced,things like solar, wind can
boost that.
Where does that take you?
Nicole Heller (34:52):
This is a huge issue, right?
I mean, energy is one of thebiggest sources of carbon
dioxide and methane emissions.
So kind of reducing fossil fueluse is essential.
And like Travis says, you know,that's really challenging
because we've depended so muchon the kind of power of fossil
fuels and how sort of they'vebeen relatively cheap and easy.
(35:13):
You can turn your lights on inthe middle of the night and all
these sort of benefits.
And so looking toward a netzero future, right?
How are we going to getourselves off fossil fuels in
the next 25 years, which isreally, that's the commitments
that countries around the worldhave made.
And to get on track to this netzero energy future by 2050 is
(35:35):
essential.
And in those analysis, nuclearis always part of that
portfolio.
But there's a lot of debatearound this, right?
Michael Pisano (35:44):
What are some of the concerns that you hear
about nuclear?
Nicole Heller (35:47):
I mean, the ones that I grew up on, right, are
the safety issues and the wasteissues.
And Fukushima was just a fewyears ago, right?
And we saw the crisis thathappens from one of these
reactors melting down.
But then there's also the wasteissue.
And, you know, I don't fullyunderstand if we're solving that
(36:10):
in a safe way.
Travis Olds (36:11):
No, all of the waste of most nuclear reactors
just sits on site nowadays.
And that's not a solution tothe problem.
We've been relying on very oldnuclear reactors for so long.
And there have been so manyadvances made in this
technology, especially withregards to safety.
Michael Pisano (36:31):
Sure.
What would you say to someonewho's nervous?
What do you wish they wouldknow about nuclear power and
those advancements that youmentioned of how we can do it
more safely?
Travis Olds (36:44):
Yeah, so one of the big improvements are these
things called small modularreactors.
They're about some fraction ofthe size of Fukushima or
Chernobyl.
Very small, can power a wholecity and be done safely.
Michael Pisano (36:58):
Am I hearing, and this is complete kind of
speculation, but advancementshave maybe been difficult to
make in renewables in some casesbecause of, you know, existing
interest in the fossil fuelinfrastructure that we already
have, entrenchment in the statusquo of energy production.
Is that similar, do you think,to the lack of, or one of the
(37:19):
factors in the lack of progress?
It's policy, again.
It's, you know, dependent onour government to actually make
the decisions to do some ofthese things.
And part of it is publicopinion, you know, a lot of
people are afraid and they don'twant this.
I think a lot of people want itdone right, but a lot of people
are still afraid.
(37:52):
Humans are amazing.
Every day, humans work togetherto cure diseases, win lawsuits
against polluters, and solveproblems of sustainable energy.
We've spent 300,000 yearspracticing altruism and
cooperation.
It can be easy to lump allhumanity into some moral
dumpster full of villainy andapathy, to consider our species
(38:16):
as some blight on an innocentplanet.
Our history can sometimes readthat way, but we're all learning
to think critically and thinktwice about who wrote the
official histories.
The same goes for naturalhistory.
Some very popular naturalhistory books interpret the
story of life as driven bycompetition and brutality.
(38:36):
This is not the onlyinterpretation, nor the most
convincing.
Without the microbes in ourguts, without fungi in the soil,
without photosynthesizers andpollinators and innumerable
interspecies interdependencies,life would scarcely stand a
chance.
We need each other.
Homo sapiens is a dominatingforce because of our remarkable
(38:56):
ability to collaborate andcultivate and care.
Dominance so far has not goneparticularly well.
We may have gone a littleoverboard with the coal and the
oil and the uranium, but theseancient substances are not
inherently destructive, andneither are humans.
Fossil fuels are the rawmaterial for countless
(39:18):
life-saving tools.
They cook our food, heat ourhomes, drive our cars, and made
the roads we drive them on.
Meanwhile, their extractiondestroys places, lives, and ways
of life.
They're filling the world withgreenhouse gases and toxic
pollutants that threateneverything on Earth's existence.
The destructive force of fossilfuels has come to outweigh what
(39:42):
it creates, so it's time tochange.
It's time for humans to embraceour creative side and boldly
support new alternatives.
And these alternatives alreadyexist.
Nuclear, solar, and batteriesare improving every day,
illuminating new visions of alivable future.
All three have obstacles toovercome, nothing's perfect, but
(40:05):
we're out of time to spendwringing our hands over old
fears.
The inherited fear ofdestructive potential, or fear
that the apocalypse isunavoidable and perhaps even
deserved because humans havebeen bad.
We deserve firestorms andhurricanes and pandemics as
reprisal.
This is a convenient coverstory for doing nothing to ease
(40:26):
the suffering of fellowEarthlings today and in the
future.
You know what I fear?
A life caught up in the speedof the great acceleration, a
passive ride on a runaway train,accepting helplessness.
A next world is coming whetherwe are active in its creation or
(40:46):
not.
Trying won't be easy, but itwill be worth it.
The sooner we stop extractingand burning fossil fuels, the
more suffering we will prevent,the more lives we will save.
That alone seems a good enoughreason to reinvest oil and gas
subsidies in better, sustainablealternatives.
But also, in solving these hardproblems that aren't going
(41:08):
away, we have an amazingopportunity to pursue health,
community, and happiness.
We won't heal from the traumasof the Anthropocene by scraping
the last fossil fuels out of theEarth, exploiting each other,
or loading a bunker with bulletsand beans.
You don't heal from old woundsby preparing for the prospect of
(41:29):
a next attack.
The antidote to destruction iscreation.
Nicole Heller (41:42):
I would suppose I'm more hopeful for kind of
system level change that willfacilitate this transition so
that when we go to plug in wedon't have to think about it.
What's coming out is clean,right?
Because it's really hard to seethe change happening at the
scale it needs to happen justthrough individual behavior.
(42:04):
At the same time, I aminterested in what I think
you're also pointing to thoughis about like distributed energy
sources and taking advantage ofthe energy that's all around
us.
I mean, I just think about likehow fundamental energy
extraction is to being acreature right it's something
(42:26):
every creature does right?
And it's so, there's so manyways to do it and so it does
seem like it seems like there'sthis great opportunity to just
tap into more varied ways ofmaking energy when you think
about it in a more distributedmanner, more of a kind of
(42:49):
distributed sort of villagescale.
Michael Pisano (42:52):
A little bit of a solar punk future, right?
Everybody's got a solar panelon their backpack and their
hover skateboard is also poweredby that.
I mean, I think we're kind ofgetting in some ways back
towards this idea of the greatacceleration and the kind of
dynamics that define this kindof progress that we have been
making progress.
(43:12):
And in some ways, I think theconversation about sustainable
energy futures often gets hungup on just novel technologies or
on retrofitting or improving.
And that's obviously important.
It's a huge part of phasing outfossil fuels.
But this discourse, I think,can overshadow maybe some of the
(43:32):
cultural perspectival shiftstuff also about reining in that
infinite growth paradigm andjust the idea of maybe using
less energy, designing systemsto use less energy culturally,
finding value in that, perhapsbroadly doing less.
So I guess I wonder what youboth think of ideas of
(43:54):
deceleration or de- growth?
Nicole Heller (43:57):
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a, I mean, it's a good
analogy, right?
This period has been justacceleration, right?
Like so much new technology andso much change and, and like
policies and regulations aren'talways keeping up with the rate
of change and, or they get sortof stuck. Yet we kind of
continue to keep acceleratingand changing.
And I mean, we feel that rightall the time with like every day
(44:19):
you open up the paper, it'slike a new thing.
Okay.
AI is coming on.
Like what does AI andartificial intelligence mean?
How might that transform someof these debates?
How might that contribute tosustainable energy?
And I think deceleration, Imean, it's a great...
a great question.
Often when we say things likethat, people get a little like,
(44:42):
they don't like that.
They say like, I don't wanna goback to eating nuts and
berries, you know?
But like, I think there's a,but at the same time, like we're
all pretty harried, you know,we're frustrated.
I think people are frustratedwith the pace of life.
So maybe there's like, maybeslowing down a little in many,
many ways could really improveour wellbeing.
Michael Pisano (45:16):
400 million or so thanks to Nicole and Travis
for inviting us into theCarnegie's mineralogy collection
and to the many items there- infor lessons in creation,
destruction, and wonder.
We Are Nature is produced byNicole Heller and Sloan MacRae.
It's recorded at CarnegieMuseum of Natural History by
Matt Unger and Garrick Schmidt.
(45:36):
DJ Thermos makes the music.
Mackenzie Kimmel describes thecollection items.
And Garrick Schmidt and MichaelPisano, that's me, edit the
podcast.
Thanks for listening.
You're listening to the Anthropocene Archives, a
presentation of We Are Nature.
In this special series ofstories, we're delving deep into
Carnegie Museum of NaturalHistory's 22 million collection
(00:21):
items, raiding cabinets andcases, sifting through objects
and organisms in search ofstories of stewardship,
solutions, and scientificwonder.
On today's episode, grasping anew geological epoch,
researching radioactive rocks,and conquering our fear of
creation.
Grab your Geiger counter andget ready to rock.
(00:45):
Welcome to We Are Nature, ashow about natural histories and
livable futures presented byCarnegie Museum of Natural
History.
I'm your host, natural historyenthusiast and livable futures
envisioner, Michael Pisano, andI'm thrilled to be back at the
museum recording amongst theCarnegie's 22 million collection
(01:07):
items to share exclusivestories from the staff who
steward and study thesetreasures.
Today, I'm joined by two suchtreasure stewards and studiers.
Friends, please introduceyourselves.
Travis Olds (01:17):
Hi, I'm Travis Olds.
I'm Assistant Curator ofMinerals.
I focus on uranium minerals andcrystallography.
Michael Pisano (01:24):
Awesome.
Nicole Heller (01:25):
Hi, my name is Nicole Heller and I am Associate
Curator of AnthropoceneStudies.
So I am a conservationscientist by training and I work
here at the museum doingexhibition and education and
research around this concept ofthe Anthropocene.
Michael Pisano (01:42):
Yes, and you've also taken on the very honorable
role of producer of this seasonof We Are Nature and helped us
kind of frame the big picture,you know, connecting stories
about the museum's collectionsto some ideas about the day and
age we live in.
I wonder if you could kind ofexpand on what we are trying to
do to link this collection ofcollection stories together.
Nicole Heller (02:03):
Yeah, so I mean this, the wonderful thing about
the concept of the Anthropocene,which we will talk more about,
but it's really this metaconcept that's really related to
all the collections here at themuseum.
And so traditionally withnatural history, there was often
a kind of siloing of differentareas where each collection was
sort of its own entity andstudied by itself in many ways,
(02:26):
you know, the bird collection orthe mineral collection, very
taxonomic approach.
But these days in the momentwe're in and really
understanding theinterconnections between human
life and ecologies.
There's an interest inunderstanding our collections,
kind of stories that connect thecollections, right?
(02:47):
Or how we can use thecollections to understand these
phenomena in the world that weface today.
And so almost every object inour collection, of the 22
million objects, I think youcould find a connection in a way
to the Anthropocene or howhumans are affecting the planet.
And so that's really I thinkthe part of the inspiration for
this podcast we've been workingon is finding this kind of
(03:12):
object-based storytelling,right?
Or using the objects as a wayin to these important social,
ecological, geological storiesthat kind of make up nature in
the world today.
Michael Pisano (03:24):
Excellent.
Just to make sure we're all onthe same page.
Can you give us a quickdefinition of the Anthropocene?
Nicole Heller (03:30):
Yes, yes.
So the Anthropocene is aproposed current geological
epoch that we're in right now.
And so what is a geologicalepoch?
You might be thinking, what isthis?
And it really has to do withthe geology time series, which
is kind of a way that scientistskeep track.
It's like a calendar of kind ofthe history of the Earth over
(03:54):
about four billion years and howgeologists sort of look at that
rock record and use that tokind of parse time in a sense
and divide the earth intoperiods of time that are really
major moments in its evolutionand transformation over time.
Often it's much more aboutlooking way back in deep
history.
So this is a little weird to betalking about a geological unit
(04:17):
right in the present time, butkind of the way the story goes
is atmospheric chemist PaulCrutzen was at a meeting with a
bunch of environmentalscientists, and they were
looking at a lot of Earth systemdata, and kind of a moment
where it was like, hey,something's really different.
We're no longer in theHolocene, the former time
(04:39):
period.
We're now in a new period oftime.
And he said, I think we're inthe Anthropocene.
Anthropocene, kind of human newtime, kind of a new time of
humans on Earth, or humans aredriving Earth system processes
at this period of time.
And today we're going to betalking about some of the
markers, literal markers in thesediment that mark this
(05:00):
geological time unit.
Michael Pisano (05:03):
That's perfect.
And you've brought us right tothis object, this collection
item that's linked, like Nicolesaid, to the beginning of the
Anthropocene, the proposedstart.
Mackenzie Kimmel (05:15):
This season of We Are Nature is being recorded
in a room at Carnegie Museum ofNatural History.
The room is dominated by rowafter row after row of black
metal lockers.
Each is marked with a preciselypainted yellow number.
(05:35):
The lockers are labeled withnames like Lamiaceae and
Poaceae.
You will learn more about thelocker's contents in due time.
From time to time, the rows androws of black lockers are
interrupted by a table.
Nicole, Travis, and Michaelstand around one of these
(05:59):
tables, contemplating twoobjects that sit on its yellow
melamine surface.
These are the collection itemsthey intend to discuss.
Every episode, I will describethe items on the table, their
color, their size, theirtexture.
I will be your eyes in theroom.
(06:20):
See if you can guess what eachcollection item is before the
guests reveal its identity,starting now.
Collection item one easily fitsin the palm of your hand.
It feels dense and cool to thetouch.
(06:41):
Smooth, translucent greenpatches are embedded throughout
a gritty, tan substrate.
Each tiny green patch reflectsthe fluorescent lights overhead
in miniature.
This item's collectioninformation tag notes that this
(07:04):
object was created on July 16,1945, in Socorro County, New
Mexico.
Can you identify CollectionItem 1?
Travis Olds (07:37):
The first few milliseconds when the bomb was
at its hottest, and I don't evenknow the temperature, but it
was just sun level, surface sunhot.
Michael Pisano (07:46):
Too hot.
Travis Olds (07:47):
And it just melted everything.
And even the desert glassaround the site where the
fireball reached, it justmelted, I think in some places
down to a few inches, which is alot in sand.
Yeah.
Yeah, so trinitite is the glassy rock formed from
the first...
nuclear test at the Trinitysite in New Mexico.
(08:11):
And a lot of it is just bubblyglass.
It has a different texture insome pieces, depending on how
far away from the bomb it was.
It can have different colors,reds, grays, yellows.
It incorporated parts of thetower that the bomb was on and
pieces of the bomb itself.
Michael Pisano (08:30):
And is this an official mineral?
How should we refer totrinitite when we talk about i
t?
Travis Olds (08:34):
No, it's not an official mineral because it's
man-made.
It's an anthropogenic, you cancall it a mineral, it ends in
"-ite", and you would think it'sa mineral, but no, because it's
man-made, it's not accepted asa mineral.
Michael Pisano (08:48):
Cool.
What does nuclear testing haveto do with the start of the
Anthropocene?
Nicole Heller (08:52):
Yeah, so the Anthropocene is this idea that
when, you know, a new geologicalperiod starts, when human
activity starts to dominate theEarth's system, okay, and humans
have like all creatures alwayshave an effect on their local
environment.
But the real question here isaround impact on the whole
earth.
And that's what's kind of novelhere.
(09:12):
And so when does this start?
When is it that humans havebegun to kind of dominate or are
like the primary drivers of ourEarth system.
And scientists have beendebating this and bringing forth
different kinds of evidence ora hypothesis about when this
really begins.
But from a stratigraphyperspective, the kind of way
that science has done is it'sreally focused on looking for a
(09:35):
signal of when kind of in thesedimentation layers, in those
that will ultimately become rockover time, in those sediment
layers, they're looking for aboundary in the stratigraphy
when there's kind of a preciseboundary and then it's found all
over the globe.
It's sort of not just in onelocal area, but it's uniform
around the globe.
(09:55):
And the best sort of marker ofthat or indicator that's showing
up in sediment is around atomicbomb testing.
So right around, so wementioned 1945 is this first
atomic bomb testing, but ittakes a little while for there
to start to be a lot of fallout.
And by the 1950s, you're reallyseeing radioactive plutonium
(10:19):
isotopes, which are a signatureof these bomb testing, showing
up all over the world and insediment layers.
And that is kind of whatscientists were looking for,
right?
A marker that is precise intime, found around the world,
and it's really where thosehuman activities start to kind
of dominate those sedimentlayers.
Michael Pisano (10:39):
Yes, yes.
The testing and that 50s startdate is also linked with this
idea of a great acceleration.
I wonder if you can expand onthat and also if you have
anything to add from an earthscience perspective or just what
those words mean to you.
Travis Olds (10:52):
Yeah to add on just using nuclear testing as a
signal it's you know man'scontrol of the atom peaked then
yeah that was huge and anddeposition of these layers of
isotopes which have definedhalf-lives you can determine you
know go back in time that's howmany of these geologic epochs
(11:14):
are determined you go back andyou and you date them.
And so I think this is awonderful thing to use as the
start of the Anthropocene.
Michael Pisano (11:24):
Michael and Nicole from the future here.
Pardon the interruption.
We recorded this episode backin fall of 2023.
And between then and now, whenyou're listening to it,
something kind of importanthappened.
Nicole, what happened?
Nicole Heller (11:45):
Well, it turns out that the International
Commission on Stratigraphy, whowas the group deciding whether
or not this proposed geologicalepoch would be accepted as a new
time period that would start in1950, well, turns out they
rejected that proposal.
Michael Pisano (12:05):
What happened?
Why?
Nicole Heller (12:07):
Yeah, I think it's pretty complicated.
And really, it comes down to ahandful of people who made this
decision.
While no one really disputeswhat's happening, right?
No one disputes that the Earthsystem has changed significantly
in response to humaninteractions.
No one really disputes that.
But I think a lot of technicalquestions remain about beginning
(12:30):
a new geological epoch in sucha recent time period, right?
1950.
Michael Pisano (12:35):
That's really not normal.
Nicole Heller (12:37):
That's really not normal.
Michael Pisano (12:38):
How long ago did the Holocene start?
Nicole Heller (12:40):
The Holocene started 11,800 years ago around,
and it's kind of called likenew time.
So in a sense, that was like...
Michael Pisano (12:49):
It's the baby.
That was the baby, right?
That was really, really new tobe even looking back thousands
of years.
Because again, right, this is acalendar that's looking across
over 4 billion years of Earthhistory.
So...
Talking about 75 years is alittle uncomfortable, I think,
for the geological community,and you know, I think there
(13:13):
continued to be debate aboutwhen does this start?
Is it an epoch?
Is it an event?
How should it be marked?
And really, can we understandkind of how sediments that were
laid down only in the lastcouple decades or in our
lifetime, how those would reallyfare and how scientists a
(13:37):
million years from now mightlook back at this period?
And so I think, for those kindof technical reasons that it's
premature to make this decision.
Right.
We have to remember thatgeologists are operating at a
different time scale.
They're taking all the timethey need.
Nicole Heller (13:54):
Yes.
Michael Pisano (13:54):
In the meantime, where does that leave the
Anthropocene?
If it's not an epoch, what isit?
Nicole Heller (13:59):
Yeah, I mean, it is a key word, and it's an
extremely useful word.
And that's kind of the beautyof it.
You know, I myself was prettynervous, right, when I heard
that this, that it wasn't goingto be ratified and officially
become a geological time period.
I thought, oh, no, here I am, acurator of this thing.
Michael Pisano (14:18):
It's in your job title, yeah.
Nicole Heller (14:21):
Right.
But rest assured, or I've beenrelieved that, you know, most
people in environmentalsciences, in humanities, the
arts, kind of across scholarlyand public domains, people are
continuing to use the termAnthropocene.
Our museum is continuing to useit as are others.
And that's because at the endof the day, it's a really useful
(14:43):
term to refer to these bigcomplex changes that are
happening on our planet and thatdefine the present era and
really point to the relationshipof humans collectively with our
planet.
And I think the word serves asthat wake-up call for
(15:05):
recognizing that a lot of thischange is not sustainable and
not safe, and that we need tokind of reverse some of these
trends to have that future, toprotect that future we all want.
Travis, I was curious, if youthink about this plutonium,
right, that's suddenly showingup in the sediment from the
(15:27):
deposition, like, would therehave been anything else sort of
naturally producing plutonium toshow up?
Travis Olds (15:34):
So when the Earth was first formed, yes, there was
enough plutonium agglomeratedthat there was still some left,
and that decayed out within thefirst probably few million
years, so...
initial Earth was veryradioactive.
Nicole Heller (15:50):
Okay.
But then more recently, likethis is novel to suddenly, like
if you were a geologist and youjust stumbled upon this layer of
plutonium, what would youthink?
Travis Olds (16:00):
Yeah, totally.
There's no other way to makeplutonium other than through
bombarding with neutrons, andthat's a man-made process, so...
Michael Pisano (16:08):
Gotcha.
Let's talk about that greatacceleration bit for a second,
and then I want to come back toexactly this point of kind of
human interaction withradioactive materials and maybe
novel things that we startfinding.
But first, what is the greatacceleration?
Nicole Heller (16:22):
Yeah, so the great acceleration is, it's a
term coined by historians, andit's really about kind of
thinking about the last sort of250 or 350 years and how social,
economic, ecologicalindicators, Earth system
indicators and how those havechanged.
And when you look at thesegraphs, whether you're looking
at something like humanpopulation size or GDP or use of
(16:48):
fresh water or number of dams,like these kind of social side
metrics, if we look at how thosechange over time, they're sort
of growing from 1750 steadilyand then they just accelerate
right around 1950 and they allstart accelerating around the
same time.
At the same time, when you lookat Earth's system changes like
carbon dioxide in theatmosphere or methane or how
(17:10):
acidic our oceans are or thewarming of the planet.
They show the same sort ofgradual increases and then this
rapid acceleration right around1950.
So that's why this period iscalled the Great Acceleration.
And it's really when kind ofglobal technological change just
boom, just goes kind of wildalong with human population.
(17:32):
And the Great Acceleration, Ithink, is a part of why
scientists proposed that theAnthropocene starts in 1950
because of this kind ofunderstanding of this sort of
state system change or this sortof just acceleration in all of
these human-driven processes andthat showing up in the sediment
(17:52):
as well as in kind of processesthat we are coming to struggle
with like climate change andthese other...you know,
biodiversity loss.
So there's kind of how allthese things sort of connect
together.
Michael Pisano (18:03):
Exactly.
Thank you.
And I wonder how it's expressedkind of, I know part of your
scholarship is in understandingthe nuclear fuel cycle and in
human interaction withradioactive minerals.
So how is this greatacceleration concept reflected
in the advancement of eithernuclear technology or maybe the
genesis of novel radioactivematerial?
Travis Olds (18:25):
Hey, we owe a lot of advancements to our
understanding of the atom andespecially medical technologies
and understanding of CT scansand PET scans, positron emission
tomography, which is one of thebest ways to be able to find
cancer in someone.
It's really radical science.
You eat a radioactive isotope,it concentrates in the areas
(18:46):
that are growing most, so thecancers, tumors, and then it
decays.
Perfectly 180 emission.
And that's how this positronemission works.
It measures that time betweenthe detections and it can
pinpoint in your body where thetumor cell is.
Michael Pisano (19:02):
And then what about out in the world?
I know that you have been apart of describing many novel
materials that have aradioactive kind of part to
them.
How does that kind of map tothis exponential kind of curve
of progress or the fallout fromthese events?
Travis Olds (19:19):
Yeah, along with that massive influx in progress
came a lot of waste, minetailings, waste to produce the
plutonium that made the bombsand it's scattered throughout
the country and this issomething that to this day
people are having troublecleaning up and part of what I
do when we look for new mineralsis we're using these uranium
(19:41):
mines as an analog tounderground storage or a leaking
tank, what kind of phases mightform underground and we want to
understand the chemistry ofeach of these crystals to help
clean it up.
Michael Pisano (19:54):
I mean, I see you starting to gesture to this
other collection item and itfeels like it's related to what
you're saying.
Mackenzie Kimmel (19:59):
Travis is holding a rectangular beige
device next to collection itemtwo.
The box emits a cascade ofchirps.
Travis Olds (20:18):
So this is a Russian Geiger counter.
Michael Pisano (20:22):
It's such a cool object in itself.
Travis Olds (20:24):
Yeah, I bought that on eBay like 15 years ago.
Inside there's a tube filledwith a gas that detects the
invisible radiation coming offof it.
You can't see it, but it'shappening.
Michael Pisano (20:38):
It really is.
And how much longer will it behappening for?
Can you guess that?
Travis Olds (20:43):
So the half-life is something like 4.5 billion
years, so about the age of theEarth.
So for another...
Many, many billion years itwill be detectable.
Michael Pisano (20:56):
All right.
Mackenzie Kimmel (20:58):
If it weren't for the alpha, beta, and gamma
radiation particles causing thisfrenzy of haunted Game Boy
sound effects, you might betempted to taste the enthralling
crystals that coat the top ofCollection Item 2.
The forbidden candies grow froma dark gray, irregular hunk of
(21:23):
rock.
The rock is small, about threeinches long by one inch wide and
half an inch tall.
The crystals form a minuscule,mossy, glossy carpet, only a
millimeter thick at its tallestpoint.
Looking closely, you discerntwo separate types of crystal.
(21:48):
One is relatively larger, withwhitish tinted tips protruding
from a deep bluish green base,like a miniature ocean wave
frozen in mid-motion.
The second type of crystal ismuch smaller, appearing as
(22:08):
patches of stubble across therock face.
These crystals are brightyellowish green, an acidic,
high-vis stippling on the dullgray stone.
What is Collection Item 2?
Travis Olds (22:36):
Yep, so this is a sample from an abandoned uranium
mine, we go underground withpermission and collect samples
from what was left of the orefrom when they mined out the
ore.
So over time, 30 to 50 or soyears, it gets damp and wet and
things start to oxidize andrust.
And uranium rusts in reallybeautiful colors.
Nicole Heller (23:00):
And did you say this was a novel, like a new
mineral?
Travis Olds (23:03):
Yep.
The green mineral is calledandersonite, which is a calcium
uranyl carbonate.
And then right next to it arethese kind of yellowish crystals
of a brand new phase, a uraniumselenite carbonate.
Underground, it's very humid,it's damp, and this region sees
monsoonal rains, essentially,that just dump water that comes
(23:28):
through in waves.
So a lot of these uraniumminerals, the colorful ones at
least, are water-soluble, or ina little bit of acidic solution,
they'll be soluble, so itdoesn't take much, and rainwater
is enough to get it to startflowing.
And this is what leads to theformation of new things on the
mine wall.
(23:48):
So we use these specimens thatwe collect as analogs to
potential underground storage,deep geologic repository of
nuclear waste or spent fuel.
Michael Pisano (23:58):
What can you learn about them by examining
this analog?
Travis Olds (24:04):
So when things crystallize, they lock in the
conditions of the water that wasacting on it.
So when we know the chemistry,the structure, we can then work
backwards to try to think, oh,how can we prevent this kind of
oxidation from happening anduranium from reaching the
groundwater?
Michael Pisano (24:22):
And my understanding is that this isn't
the only new to science, newlydescribed mineral you've been a
part of finding.
Can you just expand on that andshine on yourself a little bit?
Travis Olds (24:34):
Yeah, well we're part of a team and so when we go
out and collect, you know,sometimes we get really lucky.
And that's really what findinga new mineral species is about.
I'd say it's like 90% luck andthen 10% knowing what you have
and recognizing that you shouldcheck it.
I've been involved in a littleover 30 mineral species and the
(24:56):
bulk of those are uraniumbearing.
So we're learning a lot abouturanium chemistry, especially in
these old uranium mines.
And it has been and continuesto be one of our best bets to
understand a long-term nuclearwaste storage.
Michael Pisano (25:12):
Gotcha.
And maybe it's obvious, butwhat's the problem with that?
Travis Olds (25:17):
Yeah, so really uranium is more of a toxic metal
than it is a concern forradioactivity.
Yes, it's radioactive.
Yes, it's bad if it gets insideof you, but it's a heavy metal.
And so it kind of acts likelead, gives you a toxic reaction
to the metal.
And so this is a really...
awful problem in many parts ofthe Western US.
(25:39):
So Arizona, parts of NewMexico, where it was Native
American land, DOE and whatevernuclear acronym at the time came
in and they took over.
And what was dumped was justdumped right outside the mine.
And usually these canyons haverivers flowing through them.
(26:01):
And so rainwater leaches fromthe tailings, they're filled
with the ore.
and it pollutes the water thatthe Native Americans and their
livestock drink.
And so that just, it's kind ofthis continual ecosystem of
toxicity in parts of Arizona,especially.
Michael Pisano (26:19):
I'm glad that you were specific about the
location and the peoplesaffected, because this brings up
another important aspect of howwe think about the Anthropocene
now, which is through a sociallens.
I wonder if you could speak tokind of what that story inspires
for you and if we can zoom outfrom that into when we think
intersectionally about a problemlike uranium in a waterway.
Nicole Heller (26:40):
In thinking about something like the
Anthropocene, a lot of thescholarship and interest is
really about thinking of it aslike a twin problem of both a
crisis of unsustainability andof kind of rapid change that is
really making us vulnerable.
And I think climate change isthe best example of that.
But also this twin problem ofinequity and the way that some
(27:04):
people are more vulnerable thanothers and are made more
vulnerable and this kind oflegacy of which populations or
communities are seeing our kindof sacrifice zones are allowed
to be places where we put wastethat is dangerous or where
atomic bomb testing maybehappened and those communities
really didn't have a choice inthat matter and are still
(27:26):
struggling with the publichealth impacts of that work.
I mean, my understanding isthat Trinity, that the community
there has been suing about thepublic health impacts that that
atomic bomb testing has had ontheir public health and kind of
keeping people, company,governments accountable has
been, I think is one of thereally hard parts of this as
(27:48):
well.
Travis Olds (27:49):
No, like many of the mines around you know,
Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania,it's some mining company.
They come in, they do theirbusiness and then either they go
bankrupt on purpose orredissolve or, you know, slough
off their responsibility forcleanup.
And that was the legacy fromlate forties to about the early
(28:10):
nineties in a lot of places outWest.
Michael Pisano (28:14):
Sure.
And I think, um, we prettycommonly associate nuclear
materials with disaster, evenatrocity, right?
It goes up to the levels beyondmine drainage to the way that
nuclear power was harnessed inwar.
How does this legacy ofpollution and of really
(28:36):
destructive uses of nuclearpower intersect with the work as
you do it now and possibly eventhinking about, like you were
starting to say, cleanup ormitigation in these systems?
Travis Olds (28:47):
Yeah, so there are techniques in place to do this
and it's done successfully.
Not currently in the US, thereis no federally mandated
disposal site.
There is one, it's called theWaste Isolation Pilot Plant in
New Mexico.
It's a salt, old salt mine.
Basically what they're doing isthey're taking some of the,
it's not waste from a nuclearreactor, it's waste from these
(29:13):
kind of legacy processes.
So they bring it into the mine,and over time this salt just
creeps and it kind of entombsit, and it prevents water from
flowing.
So that's one of the bestplaces to be able to do deep
geological repository storagetype things.
That's one of the best ways todeal with a lot of the legacy
waste, because it's just waste.
Other countries like Francereprocess their waste, so
(29:37):
specifically from nuclearreactors, and because this is a
plutonium proliferation problem,the US doesn't reprocess the
fuel, but fuel from a nuclearreactor is actually spent fuel
or used fuel, it actuallycontains something like 90 plus
percent of the original fissileusable material in it, and you
(30:00):
can reprocess that to get itback.
But the U.S.
doesn't do that because itcreates a plutonium waste stream
and that could potentially bestolen, interdicted, used for a
bomb.
Michael Pisano (30:16):
Bombs, fallout, meltdown, mutually assured
destruction.
These horrors haunt ourpsyches, policies, and cultures
like heavy metals in the watersupply.
I wonder if this trauma is whywe invest so heavily in the
pursuit of security, in doomsdaystockpiles, and destructive
potential.
But does hoarding resources andweapons make us any less
(30:40):
scared?
Does it make us any safer?
It's easy to see what's scaryabout nuclear power.
Who hasn't jolted awake at 3am,paralyzed by the cold, sweaty
certainty of impendingannihilation?
Or perhaps the greater fear isof people who might wield atomic
weapons, the fear of someunshakable inherent human
(31:00):
brutality.
At this point of theAnthropocene, 75 years after
that thin blanket of plutoniumparticles settled into the
Earth's sediments, I'm moreconcerned with the fear of
moving on, the fear of lettinggo, of breaking from tradition,
of making change.
At 3 a.m., my paralysis demonleans down and whispers: Are
(31:23):
Americans afraid of creation?
The uranium on our planet wascreated billions of years ago in
interstellar collisions andsupernovae.
The uranium atoms in ourreactors predate the formation
of the Earth.
You'd be right to cower at thedestructive scale and force of
such cosmic catastrophes.
But also, these are acts ofcreation.
(31:46):
These events are the forgesthat create the elements that
make up our universe, whichitself was created in an even
bigger and less conceivablebang.
Decaying uranium heats theinterior of the planet below
your feet.
This radioactive energy drivesthe plate tectonics and
(32:08):
volcanism that created theconditions for the origin of
life on Earth.
400 million years ago, nuclearfusion in our sun created energy
that was absorbed by planktonon a shallow inland sea.
Countless generations ofplankton grew and died and sank
and were entombed in stone, aseventually the sea itself
(32:29):
perished in a slow-motiontectonic plate collision.
This collision formed theAppalachian Mountains.
Much more recently, humans shota pressurized stream of
chemicals deep underground toretrieve the plankton, which in
the intervening hundreds ofmillions of years had been
transmuted by heat and pressureand time into oil and gas.
(32:50):
When we burn the oil and gas,we release the energy of the sun
gathered by the plankton 400million years ago.
That ancient solar power hasfueled the exponential growth
spurts of the GreatAcceleration.
It's incredible, and perhapsimpossible, or at least
(33:13):
humbling, to imagine thebillions of years over which
these processes unfold.
The aging of stars, theagglomeration of elements into
new planets, the evolution oflife on Earth.
It's incredible to see whathumans have done in the last 75
years.
The elemental, primordialpowers we have learned to wield.
(33:33):
The resulting cascade ofdiscoveries, an accelerating
chain of reactions betweenhumans and planet that have
created new minerals and newelements, unlocked and unleashed
massive amounts of energy.
Over the past 75 years, we havemanifested miracles and
experimented with destructionapproaching cosmic scale.
(34:06):
As we're kind of, you know,moving away from fossil fuels as
we have to, I wonder what youboth think about the role of
nuclear energy and where youwould hope to see it go next.
Travis Olds (34:18):
I'll be frank.
I think nuclear power isprobably the only replacement
for base load power.
So something that can power onyour lights any time of the day.
And that's currently what theyuse natural gas or coal for.
And so replacing that, whichneeds to happen, needs to come
from a combination of either abulk of it nuclear that can
(34:41):
provide a consistent power base,or if batteries and storage of
energy can become more advanced,things like solar, wind can
boost that.
Where does that take you?
Nicole Heller (34:52):
This is a huge issue, right?
I mean, energy is one of thebiggest sources of carbon
dioxide and methane emissions.
So kind of reducing fossil fueluse is essential.
And like Travis says, you know,that's really challenging
because we've depended so muchon the kind of power of fossil
fuels and how sort of they'vebeen relatively cheap and easy.
(35:13):
You can turn your lights on inthe middle of the night and all
these sort of benefits.
And so looking toward a netzero future, right?
How are we going to getourselves off fossil fuels in
the next 25 years, which isreally, that's the commitments
that countries around the worldhave made.
And to get on track to this netzero energy future by 2050 is
(35:35):
essential.
And in those analysis, nuclearis always part of that
portfolio.
But there's a lot of debatearound this, right?
Michael Pisano (35:44):
What are some of the concerns that you hear
about nuclear?
Nicole Heller (35:47):
I mean, the ones that I grew up on, right, are
the safety issues and the wasteissues.
And Fukushima was just a fewyears ago, right?
And we saw the crisis thathappens from one of these
reactors melting down.
But then there's also the wasteissue.
And, you know, I don't fullyunderstand if we're solving that
(36:10):
in a safe way.
Travis Olds (36:11):
No, all of the waste of most nuclear reactors
just sits on site nowadays.
And that's not a solution tothe problem.
We've been relying on very oldnuclear reactors for so long.
And there have been so manyadvances made in this
technology, especially withregards to safety.
Michael Pisano (36:31):
Sure.
What would you say to someonewho's nervous?
What do you wish they wouldknow about nuclear power and
those advancements that youmentioned of how we can do it
more safely?
Travis Olds (36:44):
Yeah, so one of the big improvements are these
things called small modularreactors.
They're about some fraction ofthe size of Fukushima or
Chernobyl.
Very small, can power a wholecity and be done safely.
Michael Pisano (36:58):
Am I hearing, and this is complete kind of
speculation, but advancementshave maybe been difficult to
make in renewables in some casesbecause of, you know, existing
interest in the fossil fuelinfrastructure that we already
have, entrenchment in the statusquo of energy production.
Is that similar, do you think,to the lack of, or one of the
(37:19):
factors in the lack of progress?
It's policy, again.
It's, you know, dependent onour government to actually make
the decisions to do some ofthese things.
And part of it is publicopinion, you know, a lot of
people are afraid and they don'twant this.
I think a lot of people want itdone right, but a lot of people
are still afraid.
(37:52):
Humans are amazing.
Every day, humans work togetherto cure diseases, win lawsuits
against polluters, and solveproblems of sustainable energy.
We've spent 300,000 yearspracticing altruism and
cooperation.
It can be easy to lump allhumanity into some moral
dumpster full of villainy andapathy, to consider our species
(38:16):
as some blight on an innocentplanet.
Our history can sometimes readthat way, but we're all learning
to think critically and thinktwice about who wrote the
official histories.
The same goes for naturalhistory.
Some very popular naturalhistory books interpret the
story of life as driven bycompetition and brutality.
(38:36):
This is not the onlyinterpretation, nor the most
convincing.
Without the microbes in ourguts, without fungi in the soil,
without photosynthesizers andpollinators and innumerable
interspecies interdependencies,life would scarcely stand a
chance.
We need each other.
Homo sapiens is a dominatingforce because of our remarkable
(38:56):
ability to collaborate andcultivate and care.
Dominance so far has not goneparticularly well.
We may have gone a littleoverboard with the coal and the
oil and the uranium, but theseancient substances are not
inherently destructive, andneither are humans.
Fossil fuels are the rawmaterial for countless
(39:18):
life-saving tools.
They cook our food, heat ourhomes, drive our cars, and made
the roads we drive them on.
Meanwhile, their extractiondestroys places, lives, and ways
of life.
They're filling the world withgreenhouse gases and toxic
pollutants that threateneverything on Earth's existence.
The destructive force of fossilfuels has come to outweigh what
(39:42):
it creates, so it's time tochange.
It's time for humans to embraceour creative side and boldly
support new alternatives.
And these alternatives alreadyexist.
Nuclear, solar, and batteriesare improving every day,
illuminating new visions of alivable future.
All three have obstacles toovercome, nothing's perfect, but
(40:05):
we're out of time to spendwringing our hands over old
fears.
The inherited fear ofdestructive potential, or fear
that the apocalypse isunavoidable and perhaps even
deserved because humans havebeen bad.
We deserve firestorms andhurricanes and pandemics as
reprisal.
This is a convenient coverstory for doing nothing to ease
(40:26):
the suffering of fellowEarthlings today and in the
future.
You know what I fear?
A life caught up in the speedof the great acceleration, a
passive ride on a runaway train,accepting helplessness.
A next world is coming whetherwe are active in its creation or
(40:46):
not.
Trying won't be easy, but itwill be worth it.
The sooner we stop extractingand burning fossil fuels, the
more suffering we will prevent,the more lives we will save.
That alone seems a good enoughreason to reinvest oil and gas
subsidies in better, sustainablealternatives.
But also, in solving these hardproblems that aren't going
(41:08):
away, we have an amazingopportunity to pursue health,
community, and happiness.
We won't heal from the traumasof the Anthropocene by scraping
the last fossil fuels out of theEarth, exploiting each other,
or loading a bunker with bulletsand beans.
You don't heal from old woundsby preparing for the prospect of
(41:29):
a next attack.
The antidote to destruction iscreation.
Nicole Heller (41:42):
I would suppose I'm more hopeful for kind of
system level change that willfacilitate this transition so
that when we go to plug in wedon't have to think about it.
What's coming out is clean,right?
Because it's really hard to seethe change happening at the
scale it needs to happen justthrough individual behavior.
(42:04):
At the same time, I aminterested in what I think
you're also pointing to thoughis about like distributed energy
sources and taking advantage ofthe energy that's all around
us.
I mean, I just think about likehow fundamental energy
extraction is to being acreature right it's something
(42:26):
every creature does right?
And it's so, there's so manyways to do it and so it does
seem like it seems like there'sthis great opportunity to just
tap into more varied ways ofmaking energy when you think
about it in a more distributedmanner, more of a kind of
(42:49):
distributed sort of villagescale.
Michael Pisano (42:52):
A little bit of a solar punk future, right?
Everybody's got a solar panelon their backpack and their
hover skateboard is also poweredby that.
I mean, I think we're kind ofgetting in some ways back
towards this idea of the greatacceleration and the kind of
dynamics that define this kindof progress that we have been
making progress.
(43:12):
And in some ways, I think theconversation about sustainable
energy futures often gets hungup on just novel technologies or
on retrofitting or improving.
And that's obviously important.
It's a huge part of phasing outfossil fuels.
But this discourse, I think,can overshadow maybe some of the
(43:32):
cultural perspectival shiftstuff also about reining in that
infinite growth paradigm andjust the idea of maybe using
less energy, designing systemsto use less energy culturally,
finding value in that, perhapsbroadly doing less.
So I guess I wonder what youboth think of ideas of
(43:54):
deceleration or de- growth?
Nicole Heller (43:57):
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a, I mean, it's a good
analogy, right?
This period has been justacceleration, right?
Like so much new technology andso much change and, and like
policies and regulations aren'talways keeping up with the rate
of change and, or they get sortof stuck. Yet we kind of
continue to keep acceleratingand changing.
And I mean, we feel that rightall the time with like every day
(44:19):
you open up the paper, it'slike a new thing.
Okay.
AI is coming on.
Like what does AI andartificial intelligence mean?
How might that transform someof these debates?
How might that contribute tosustainable energy?
And I think deceleration, Imean, it's a great...
a great question.
Often when we say things likethat, people get a little like,
(44:42):
they don't like that.
They say like, I don't wanna goback to eating nuts and
berries, you know?
But like, I think there's a,but at the same time, like we're
all pretty harried, you know,we're frustrated.
I think people are frustratedwith the pace of life.
So maybe there's like, maybeslowing down a little in many,
many ways could really improveour wellbeing.
Michael Pisano (45:16):
400 million or so thanks to Nicole and Travis
for inviting us into theCarnegie's mineralogy collection
and to the many items there- infor lessons in creation,
destruction, and wonder.
We Are Nature is produced byNicole Heller and Sloan MacRae.
It's recorded at CarnegieMuseum of Natural History by
Matt Unger and Garrick Schmidt.
(45:36):
DJ Thermos makes the music.
Mackenzie Kimmel describes thecollection items.
And Garrick Schmidt and MichaelPisano, that's me, edit the
podcast.
Thanks for listening.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.