We’re hard at work on the next season of “How We Survive,” but we’re dropping into your feed today to say thank you. To show our thanks, we’re going to give you a little peek behind the curtain to show you how we make “How We Survive.” We’ll also play a few stories that’ll be new to our podcast audience about the dangers of the climate crisis and the solutions that help people live safely in vulnerable coastal communities — at least for a while longer. It’s listeners like you who keep this podcast going, and this Earth Day, we ask that you consider making a donation in support of Marketplace’s ..read more

You’ve raised your house up on stilts and your town has added higher seawalls and pumping stations, but sea level rise is relentless. Eventually, you may have to consider the ultimate solution: Leaving your home, giving the land back to nature and starting over somewhere else. There’s a jargony sounding name for this solution: Managed Retreat. In our season finale, we head to a small island community off the coast of Louisiana that has lost 98% of its land to rising seas and sinking land. Now residents have to decide if they’re ready to leave the place most have called home their whole lives ..read more

In this episode, we travel back in time to the place South Florida used to be — the Everglades before it was drained, developed and transformed into the megalopolis we know today. We start with a bird’s-eye view of the ecosystem. Then we get down on the ground to look at the consequences of drainage up close. Finally we discuss why a restoration plan passed more than two decades ago is more pressing now than ever before ..read more

We’ve told you the insurance industry in Florida is in crisis. Or as one industry insider put it, it’s holding on by “a piece of chewing gum.” In this episode, we explore possible solutions. We dive into the business of reinsurance, or insurance for insurers (turns out you can insure almost anything, including insurance policies); and we look at another possible solution that was born from the wreckage of Hurricane Andrew 30 years ago: the catastrophe bond, a financial instrument that allows investors to bet against storms and make money on risk. So long as a big storm doesn’t wipe them out co ..read more

You asked, we answered. Listeners wrote in wanting to know: “Who the hell loans these people money for mortgages” in risky coastal areas? Who ultimately owns the risk? Do certain investments, like REITs, drive gentrification (and what the heck is a REIT, anyway)? And finally, we tackle the age-old riddle: to rent or to buy? This episode is devoted to answering listener questions ..read more

The insurance industry quietly rules our lives. It determines where and what we build. It’s also a linchpin of the housing market. Without it, homeowners can’t get mortgages. And without mortgages, most people can’t buy homes, and the whole housing market starts to collapse. In this episode, we dig into Florida’s broken insurance market and what’s at stake if we don’t fix it. And we look back at Hurricane Andrew, the 1992 storm that changed the insurance industry ..read more

What do a burning shed, a beautiful above-ground bunker and an island of misfits all have in common? They are all places we visit on our hunt for solutions. This episode, we find out what it will take to stay in the places we love. We play around at a research lab where scientists are figuring out how to make our homes and buildings more resilient to the elements. Then, we leave the lab to see what it looks like to implement safer building methods and materials in real life; first, at a plastic surgeon’s impressive home — 18 feet above sea level. Then, we head south to explore an island where ..read more

Buckle up, grab a hard hat, a tent (and maybe a snack). It’s going to be a bumpy ride! From camping on top of a glacier, right before billions of tons of ice melt off of it, to dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane that destroys Miami, this episode we’re diving head first into the realclimate predictions — and the imagined ways society will handle them.  We’re unpacking why a glacier halfway around the world is causing sea levels around South Florida to rise faster, and then we’re heading to an imagined world (that doesn’t seem too far from reality) where millions of people in Miami a ..read more

The Little River community in Miami is known for frequent flooding during heavy rains, high tides and storms. And when the neighborhood floods, sewage can spill into the yard; toilets back up. Even though it floods, the housing market here is hot. Long-time residents face displacement. This episode looks at flooding and flipping and how the two are related ..read more

Whether you live on the coast or not, sea-level rise will have profound impacts on all of us. So we packed up our bags and headed to Miami, a city that is considered one of the most vulnerable coastal cities in the world. How Miami responds will serve as a test case for how other places around the country survive the effects of climate change. Experts say seas here could rise by 5 feet or more by 2100, eventually leaving whole parts of the city underwater. So if the city is doomed, why isn’t the housing market acting like it? From multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions to a flood-prone block ..read more