Supercharged by a warmer world ,Hurricane Michael ripped through the Florida Panhandle with Category four winds and an 8-12 foot storm surge. Host Steve Curwood and Michael Mann, a climate expert at Penn State University, discuss how unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico fed the hurricane’s rapid intensification and essentially doubled its destructiveness. Climate change is linked to warmer waters as well as worsened storm surge because of rising seas, and Prof. Mann says that the window to reduce climate-changing gas emissions to safer levels is swiftly closing.

Writer Barbara Kingsolver has just released her ninth novel, titled Unsheltered. The novel tells the story of one family’s crisis in modern America, and the tribulations of another family that lived in the same house in South New Jersey more than a century ago. The social and environmental issues presented in Unsheltered include economic crises and the denial of science, and resonate with America’s past and present realities. Barbara Kingsolver joins Host Steve Curwood for a discussion about her latest novel, which was six years in the making.

Peter Dykstra and Host Steve Curwood cover Florida and other states where the environment is front and center in the 2018 midterm elections, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan’s mission to plant 10 billion trees throughout his country. In this week’s look into the history vault, they discuss the Harding Administration scandal in the 1920’s known as “Teapot Dome.”

The trout in Central Pennsylvania’s waterways face pollution from agriculture and development. But as Allegheny Front Reporter Julie Grant explains, this area still has some great fly-fishing, and passionate, local conservationists are working to keep it that way.

In Florida a surge of toxic red and green algae blooms has fueled frustration with Republican Governor Rick Scott. Critics blame “Red Tide Rick,” who is running for a US Senate seat, for not doing enough to control this ecological crisis while he says his opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, is at fault. For a breakdown of how this ecological disaster is shaping Florida’s politics this November election, Host Steve Curwood spoke with Politico Reporter Michael Grunwald.

Traditional family recipes can go back through the generations, and that can present challenges when members of the newest generation go vegan. Ratatouille can be one answer, as writer and UMass Boston student Paloma Beltran tells us.