The Woman Behind the Dating App Match.com
The Story Exchange
The year was 1994. "Friends" had just premiered, Bill Clinton was president, and online dating – if it happened at all – was a sketchy proposition. A startup called Match.com was trying to persuade the romantically inclined that the World Wide Web (as it was then known) was a hot spot to meet potential mates. Fran Maier, who had a background in marketing, joined Match.com to bring a woman's perspective to the burgeoning field. Her first decision? Nix the question about body weight. Listen to our conversation, where she talks about the highs and lows of building Internet companies over the...
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Terrifying Weather Events, Part 2: Enter the Protesters
The Story Exchange
In 2003, a deadly heat wave hit Paris, causing the death of over 15,000 people. It was one of the first weather events where scientists could use data to show climate change was to blame. Since that time, we've seen an increasing number of deadly natural disasters, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Harvey, to the 2018 California wildfires, all irrefutably linked to climate change. In this episode, we talk to the activists who say not enough is being done by politicians and big corporations to slow down the warming. We follow Marlena Fontes of Climate Families NYC to this year's "Summer of...
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Terrifying Weather Events, Part 1: Climate Changes Lives
The Story Exchange
On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast with gusting winds of 175 miles per hour – and a storm surge of 26 feet. Lisa Dyson, who had spent her childhood summers near New Orleans, had just earned her PhD from MIT when the news broke. After witnessing the devastation, she was motivated to dedicate her scientific career to working on solutions to the climate crisis. Dyson is now the founder of Air Protein, a startup (with $100 million in backing) that makes nutrient-dense food in a lab setting. She takes us on a tour of her Oakland, California, facility. We also speak with...
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Our Pig Podcast: Touring Wild Harmony Farm
The Story Exchange
Oink, oink! We head to Wild Harmony, a family-owned farm in Rhode Island that raises livestock -- its signature product is organic pork -- in a regenerative way that's designed to benefit the environment. "Our pig production is really special," says Rachael Slattery, who co-owns the farm with husband Ben Coerper. "They're not stressed, they're not hungry all the time. They're healthier, happier animals." The couple raises their Berkshire pigs from piglets to porkers using rotational grazing and cover cropping. The regenerative farming methods help restore soil health and reduce the...
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How Do We Deal With Bad Air Quality?
The Story Exchange
For this special report, we head to Salt Lake City, Utah -- a nature lover's paradise that periodically has the worst air quality in the world. We talk to expert Kerry Kelly, a University of Utah professor who has been studying the toxic dust that's been lofting off the vanishing Great Salt Lake. The lake is disappearing due to climate change, drought and diversions of water for agricultural use. Kelly has invented air quality sensors and protocols for dealing with poor air quality. She recently received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, which she'll used to help high...
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Meet Mary Claire Haver, a Top Menopause Influencer
The Story Exchange
Menopause is having a moment on social media -- and it's about damn time. We talk to the hugely popular Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified OB-GYN and nutritionist, about the lack of adequate care and attention for older women's health needs. And we ask Haver, founder of the Galveston Diet and ThePauseLife.com, about her surprising rise to TikTok fame.
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A Seaweed Startup in Maine's Chilly Waters
The Story Exchange
We head to Maine to talk with Briana Warner, the founder of Atlantic Sea Farms, now the largest producer of farmed seaweed in the country. She specializes in kelp, a type of nutrient-dense seaweed that's good for the environment, too. "When you're adding it to the water and it's sucking up that carbon from the ocean, and then you pull it out of the ocean, you're actually removing that carbon from the ocean," Warned explains in this podcast. Her company works with nearly 30 partner farmers, most of whom are lobster fishermen, to harvest over over a million pounds of kelp a year. And it's...
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We Talk to Judy Woodruff, Acclaimed Journalist
The Story Exchange
We're all about powerful women, so we bring you our interview with Judy Woodruff, the iconic journalist and the longtime anchor of the famed nightly news show, the PBS NewsHour. We had a long conversation about her decades-long career, plus she tells us about the blatant sexism that women in media used to face, and what she's up to now (spoiler: she's never retiring.) Photo by PBS NewsHour via Flickr.
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Afghan Women: 'We Are Not Fragile'
The Story Exchange
It's been two years since the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan. We talk to women -- some who fled, some who stayed back -- about what life is like now. Many of the women expressed frustration that the media often portrays them as victims when they see themselves as fighters. While the Taliban seeks to erase them from public life, we want to give them a platform to speak their minds. These women want you to know: There is still hope in all the fear, and glimmers of defiance in the midst of brutal oppression. These are stories of Afghan women like you haven't heard before.
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Savoring Indigenous Cuisine
The Story Exchange
The power of ancestral foods is on display at Owamni, winner of the 2022 James Beard Award for best new restaurant in the country. Owners Sean Sherman (a.k.a. "The Sioux Chef") and Dana Thompson have created a "de-colonized" menu that exclusively serves Native foods, from lake fish to rabbit to bison. There's no wheat flour, cane sugar or dairy, as those ingredients were brought here by European settlers. The experience is part of a larger trend called "food sovereignty," or the right of Native Americans to have culturally appropriate food, raised sustainably. We check out the restaurant,...
info_outlineJessica Schreiber is fascinated by trash. And in New York City, where she runs a fashion recycling startup, there is plenty of it. In 2016, Schreiber left the agency to launch Fabscrap, a nonprofit that heads directly to the city’s world-famous fashion industry to pick up and resell textile cast-offs — yards of cotton, strips of wool, pieces of luxurious silk, linen and leather. As commercial waste, the scraps aren’t eligible for the city’s residential recycling programs, and, more often than not, end up in landfills. “That to me was unacceptable,” she said.