Outside/In

Hemp used to be a staple of life in America. King James I demanded that colonists produce it. Hemp rope and fabric were ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The USDA even produced a WWII...

25 Feb 30min

A few weeks ago, Nate gathered a group of storytellers in front of a live audience in Portsmouth, N.H. to celebrate 10 years of Outside/In. From goats to ghosts and ill-fated coloring book pages, this...

18 Feb 54min

Ravens get a bad rap in western culture. They’re an ominous symbol of death, considered “unclean” by the bible, and star in Edgar Allen Poe’s haunting gothic poem, “The Raven.” A group of ravens is ca...

11 Feb 32min

After the Irish fought for and won their independence from the British in 1921, they had a problem. Centuries of exploitation had left the island one of the least forested nations in Europe, with less...

4 Feb 32min

A New Hampshire town finds out its water has been contaminated by a chemical. The most basic question — whether the water is safe to drink — doesn’t have a clear answer. Nobody seems to know much abou...

29 Jan 32min

Last week, we talked about the ethics and regulations around sending private citizens to space, but one thing we didn’t linger on much was the lasting impact of Christa McAuliffe; the teacher slated t...

28 Jan 31min

In 1985, high school teacher Christa McAuliffe was selected to become the first private citizen to travel to space. After the Challenger explosion that killed her and 6 other astronauts, NASA scrapped...

21 Jan 31min

One of the very first books for the general public about climate change was written and published by Bill McKibben in 1989. In The End of Nature, Bill wrote that continuing to burn fossil fuels would ...

14 Jan 30min