Podcasts are a powerful way to dive deep into environmental issues. They can make complex topics accessible and actionable for listeners everywhere. But, wow, the podcast landscape is cluttered. What to even listen to? Do you want some storytelling blended with analysis and solutions? Do you want to eavesdrop on conversations about climate change and sustainability? Are you someone who just feels better listening to climate solutions?

While there are seemingly zillions of options, we’d be remiss if we didn’t suggest two in particular that are well worth a listen: the Environmental Defense Fund’s Degrees, which dives into climate careers and how to get one, and Moms’ own podcast, A Plastic People, a five-episode series about the ubiquity of plastic and its harmful health impacts.

Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission

Beyond those—and to help you wade through the sea of choices—here are seven must-listen podcasts for anyone passionate about the planet and eager to turn awareness into action:

1. Outrage + Optimism

Hosted by Christina Figueres, a global leader in climate diplomacy and former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Tom Rivett-Carnac, a political strategist and climate advocate, and Paul Dickinson, founder of the Carbon Disclosure Project, Outrage + Optimism is equal parts anger and hope. These three hosts do not shy away from the urgency of the climate crisis, but they also refuse to let it crush their spirits. Recent episodes like “Beyond the Oil Crisis: What’s Actually Blocking the Transition?” and “It’s in Our Blood: Communities vs. Forever Chemicals” fuel action by dissecting the barriers to systemic change and keep listeners engaged by highlighting the resistance to environmental injustice. Each week, they discuss tough topics such as policy battles, corporate accountability, and even the emotional toll of activism. This podcast is proof that outrage can spark change, and optimism keeps the fight alive.

2. The Good Neighbor Podcast

Hosted by Tish Taylor of Concerned Citizens of St. John, a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental justice in Louisiana, The Good Neighbor Podcast is committed to amplifying the voices of advocates. It features real stories of neighbors fighting for clean air, safer communities, and systemic change. New episodes drop every week on YouTube.

3. Future Ecologies

Want a podcast that treats nature like a symphony of sound and story? Future Ecologies is the ticket. Hosted by Adam Huggins, a musician and ecological restoration practitioner, and Mendel Skulski, a mycology enthusiast and former industrial designer, this show is an adventure. It’s part documentary, part sound collage, and always thought provoking. Each episode invites you to see the world differently and embrace the connection between humans and the planet, weaving together interviews with experts and immersive soundscapes. Recent episodes have explored cultural burning practices on Yurok territory and the ecological significance of peatlands near Vancouver. New episodes are released monthly.

4. The Climate Question

This podcast unpacks the big, messy questions everyone is asking: What is climate anxiety, and how can you cope with it? How hot could the planet get? Are there any quick fixes to the climate crisis? Hosted by a team of BBC journalists, each episode focuses on a specific burning question regarding the climate crisis. New episodes of The Climate Question drop weekly.

5. The HEATED Podcast

If climate news feels like a never-ending dumpster fire, The HEATED Podcast is here to light the way. Hosted by journalists Emily Atkin and Tracy Wholf, this show cuts through the noise of the biggest environmental stories of the day. Recent episodes have tackled the push for legal immunity from big oil, exposing how fossil fuel companies are attempting to evade accountability for climate deception, and have explored detoxing from plastic, where hosts discuss the challenges and realities of reducing plastic use. From corporate greenwashing to political scandals, Emily and Tracy break it all down in a way that’s informative, witty, and unapologetically real. New episodes are dropped weekly.

6. Earth Radio

Need a quick roundup of the week’s climate news? Earth Radio delivers it in five punchy minutes every Saturday. Hosted by multimedia journalist Rebecca Hendricks, it’s a digestible source for staying up to date on global environmental policy and the latest developments in adaptation and resilience. Each episode features scientists, activists, and experts leading the charge. It’s the perfect way to stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.

7. Climate Court Voices

What happens when climate meets the law? Climate Court Voices gives you a front-row seat to the legal battles shaping our planet’s future. Hosted by Lucy Maxwell, Co-Director of the Climate Litigation Network, each episode amplifies the voices of climate justice activists and legal experts who are holding governments and corporations accountable. In the most recent episode, “The Accountability Decade: Tracing the Evolution of Climate Litigation,” Lucy explores how a surge in climate lawsuits over the past decade has forced governments to strengthen climate action, influenced public opinion, and reshaped how investors and regulators perceive climate risks. New episodes drop monthly.

Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission

No one wants to breathe dirty car exhaust. But last week, EPA proposed to delay strong car tailpipe pollution protections that were finalized in 2024—safeguards projected to prevent thousands of asthma attacks, save thousands of lives, and avoid billions in U.S. health care costs.

This proposed delay is yet another attack on our children’s health from an EPA that’s content to prioritize industry over their actual mission: protecting human health and the environment. Stand with Moms in calling for Clean Cars safeguards now.

Tell EPA: Families Can’t Afford to Delay Tailpipe Pollution Protections

Children’s bodies are uniquely vulnerable to the health harms of tailpipe pollution. Exposure to car exhaust can damage little lungs, brains, and immune systems at critical stages of development, putting babies and kids at risk for long-term health problems.

As moms, we know far too well what it’s like to have a child with asthma or another respiratory condition that makes exposure to tailpipe pollution especially scary. And in summer months, when climate-fueled heat can make air pollution even worse, the danger feels even greater.

So many of us have experienced watching a child with asthma struggle to breathe. It’s devastating. And in this economy, no family needs extra trips to the doctor, emergency room, or pharmacy because of preventable exposure to filthy tailpipe pollution. Extra health care costs are yet another way our families are paying the price for the Trump-Zeldin EPA’s corrupt Polluters First agenda.

Join Moms in telling EPA: do not delay implementing the Clean Cars protections our families and communities deserve.

Read more about Moms’ work on tailpipe pollution.

Tell EPA: Families Can’t Afford to Delay Tailpipe Pollution Protections

For Rusty Pickens, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and public interest technologist, AI surfaces familiar concerns. “It’s a classic play. We’ve seen this resource extraction and extortion of our people over and over,” he says.

With a land rush for massive data centers underway, Tribal lands are emerging as the next frontier. Activist Krystal Two Bulls, executive director of Honor the Earth, is tracking over 100 proposed data center projects on Tribal and rural lands.

Reactions to this targeted wave of AI-driven development are deeply nuanced as it both attracts opportunity and repeats a painful history of exploitation. While some community members tout economic growth for Native Nations that choose to partner with tech companies, others are fighting to protect their Tribes from environmental impacts like air pollution and water scarcity, weakened sovereignty, broken promises, and data colonialism, the massive systematic extraction of Tribal data.

Tell Congress: Protect Families From Dangerous Data Center Air Pollution

From resource frontier to digital frontier

Native Nations are recognized under U.S. law as sovereign governments with control over their own lands, although that independence has historically been limited by power imbalances and federal oversight. As a result, these areas have long been treated as a frontier for harvesting resources—oil and gas, coal, uranium, and other minerals—with little regard to the people most affected.

Now, as Big Tech scrambles to build mammoth data centers to keep up with consumer demand for AI, this old pattern of plundering appears to be re-emerging. Data centers not only need land but also massive amounts of electricity to operate and water to cool their servers, resulting in significant climate impacts. Because most are powered by fossil fuels, they also increase climate-warming carbon dioxide and air pollutants associated health risks, especially for those living close to the facilities. AI-associated air pollution may cause as many as 1,300 premature deaths by 2030.

Getting a fair share

Now the federal government has begun to actively court Tribes to partner with data center developers. The DOE’s Office of Indian Energy hosted a webinar on the topic in February, and Nations like the Osage in Oklahoma are actively weighing data centers as a path to economic diversification beyond gaming. Supporters eye the data centers as a windfall and a way for Tribes to pay for their own energy infrastructure and boost internet connectivity.

But not everyone is convinced that enough safeguards will be in place. “It’s all moving awfully quickly, and it’s awfully big, and there’s a lot of promises and a lot of hype and a lot of money,” says Rusty, a former technology official in the Obama administration. “I’m just not sure the impact will be positive. I think we should be paying close attention.”

Taking steps to protect their lands

Some Native Nations aren’t waiting to find out—they’re taking action. In Oklahoma, Jordan Harmon and Mackenzie Roberts, two citizens of the Muscogee Nation, held town halls on the risks of a proposed hyperscale data center on their Tribal land. Thanks to their efforts, the proposal was ultimately rejected by the Tribe’s National Council late last year. The news of this rejection rippled far and wide: the duo even landed on the cover of Time, featured in a story on “The People vs. AI” movement.

Other Nations are fast at work implementing data center restrictions and commissioning formal studies. The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and Seminole Nation of Oklahoma instituted moratoriums on data center development on Tribal lands this year. And the Cherokee Nation established a task force to study the environmental and economic impacts of data centers on the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

Digital colonization: The next great threat

In addition to natural resources, Tribal data sovereignty and governance are also at risk, cautions Rusty. He delivered remarks at the United Nations Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) last year to draw attention to AI as “the next great threat to Indigenous rights.”

Rusty and other advocates are urging Tribes to exercise caution when considering partnering with Big Tech. If they decide to form a partnership, it’s crucial to negotiate safeguards that limit the tech company’s ownership or surveillance of Tribal data. For Native Nations, this is as much a cultural issue as an economic one. In addition to sensitive healthcare and banking information, Rusty points to the work Tribes have done to help revitalize and preserve their languages—including developing education apps. Currently, Tribal languages have such a small digital footprint they are not well understood by mainstream AI; if this were to change, it could lead to exploitation and monetization of Indigenous cultural artifacts.

As the AI boom continues, it remains to be seen just how much Big Tech’s land grab will bring about another cycle of Native Nation extraction—this time through data centers and digital colonization instead of drills.

Tell Congress: Protect Families From Dangerous Data Center Air Pollution

“What’s in the Air” is a column by Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force Co-Founder and Director, in which she explores life today through the lens of air quality and public health.

Many things break my heart about what this reckless EPA is doing to our country. The corruption of its mission—to protect human health AND the environment—is unprecedented.

Let’s start with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s admission that the burden of climate and air pollution on people’s health doesn’t even figure into his calculations when he’s rolling back protections. Instead, he’s working with the Trump administration to prop up the heavily subsidized, dirty coal, oil, gas, and petrochemical industries—all already making record profits.

Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!

Fifteen years ago, when I was just getting Moms Clean Air Force off the ground, we took on an EPA that couldn’t get to an agreement to seriously cut the air pollution from coal-fired power plants that was contaminating our lakes and rivers, getting into the food we eat (fish and rice), migrating into pregnant women’s bodies, and damaging the brains of developing babies.

Mercury poisoning. Mercury comes from coal power plants. And scientists are in agreement: no amount is safe for the developing brains of babies and toddlers.

We got together a coalition of concerned people to join the fight—mostly by explaining what a coal plant had to do with pregnancy. I remember being told not to eat fatty fish when I was pregnant (wow! decades ago now!). But no one ever explained how mercury in fish and coal plants were connected. Or that mercury contamination was entirely preventable.

Together, we succeeded in securing health-protecting limits on coal pollution. And over the years, we got those protections strengthened. Remember: NO AMOUNT OF MERCURY IS SAFE.

But Zeldin directed EPA to roll back a version of mercury protections that was recently strengthened for the first time in over a decade, propping up an industry and helping to delay retirement of coal plants that would otherwise have been shuttered.

There is absolutely no reason to get dirty, aging, expensive coal plants running again, raising costs, polluting communities, and driving up serious illness. But that’s what the Trump administration is determined to do. Just yesterday, they issued another emergency order to keep an outdated expensive coal plant running in Michigan.

We have the force of love on our side, love for our children—a sustainable, renewable energy source that will keep us fighting for the healthy air our kids and communities deserve.

Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!

Over the last couple of years, Moms have leaned into video, recognizing it as one of the most powerful storytelling media for inspiring action. We’ve created hundreds of videos for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other socials, spotlighting authentic, heartfelt stories that show why this work matters and who it impacts. Some of us have shown a true affinity for it, but all of us are game to come up with ideas, collaborate on scripts, edit and edit again, and of course, film. Our kids have even gotten involved (watch them here and here and here).

We know these videos matter to you because we see your ample likes, views, encouraging comments, and most importantly, petition signatures. But yesterday, our efforts were showcased on a global stage, when we received two Bronze Telly Awards. We’re thrilled about this.

Watch Moms Clean Air Force Videos

For more than four decades, the Telly Awards have recognized excellence in video. With the rise of digital video, the awards have expanded in the last decades to include social media, documentary, and immersive content across all screens. Moms Clean Air Force’s winning videos, produced by our partners at Communications Shop, were chosen from more than 13,000 entries from six continents and all 50 states.

A Real Nightmare Story: Donald Trump’s EPA won in the General Public Service / Activism category. This animated video, inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales, tells the story of a corrupted EPA under President Trump and Administrator Lee Zeldin. Creepy pollution monsters, a Trump silhouette wearing a crown, and a grim reaper figure in a Make Emissions Grow Again hat punctuate a morality tale: Even though this administration claims to care about our health and safety, its actions are making the air dirtier and the climate more unstable.

The Climate Crisis Has No Borders won in the General Environmental / Climate category. A heartbreaking animated short, this video tells the story of Patricia, a mother forced to move her family from Cameroon to the U.S. to escape climate-driven extreme heat, water scarcity, and persistent disease. “We don’t migrate because we want to. We are forced to do so,” Patricia tells us. Her family is not alone in this plight. More and more people may find themselves in similar situations thanks to global warming—and at a time when the U.S. is more hostile to immigration than it has ever been, under the current administration. That makes this win especially important. (Read Patricia’s full story.)

Thank you, Telly Awards!

Watch Moms Clean Air Force Videos