We’ve all heard about the terrible Himalayan flash flood that traveled nearly 100 km down the Lende Kholā and Trishuli̇̄ Kholā rivers on the Nepal-Chinese border, devastating towns and villages along the way, killing at least 1,250 people and leaving more than 5,000 missing in the two countries. The causes remain under investigation, but climate change appears to have played a major role in the disaster. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Jonathan Mingle, an independent journalist and author whose reporting and writing is focused on the science and politics of climate change, energy, health, and technology. In 2015, he published Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World, in which he reported about the shrinking glaciers across the Himalayas and California, the role of black carbon in that shrinkage and the impacts on the people and nature who live there. More recently, he published an essay, Mountains are Coming Undone," in The New York Times (August 29, 2026).

For a detailed analysis of the disaster, see: "Rapid warming in the Himalaya exacerbates geohazard cascades beyond adaptation limits," (WWA scientific report No. 92) World Weather Attribution. DOI: 10.25560/136420.

Local food systems are of great importance to the Monterey Bay Region and, indeed, to California, and there is a growing number of small farms across the state supplying these systems. Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Josefina Lara Chavez, Executive Director of RegenerationLA, the Latine Alliance in Agroecology and the Food System, which has just launched Rancho Coyote Viejo in south San Benito County. The Rancho is a 25-acre pilot land access farm for beginning farmers practicing regenerative and organic agriculture, along with a demonstration farm to support RegenerationLA’s educational and technical assistance activities. The farm is an experimental collaboration with Paicines Ranch, south of Hollister, California, which owns the property. Regeneration LA seeks to strengthens networks of Latine farmers, food workers, and agricultural professionals through education and capacity building to create a robust food and farming system.

There are lots of dystopian futures floating around in the air and on the air. Imagining the future is never really about the future; it’s more like commentary about the present. “Conjunctural futures” extrapolate from the present: they are not-so-distant, generational futures that could or might be. What might those conjunctural futures look like? Can we imagine a positive one? And what must we do to get there? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson, author, visionary and “conjunctural futurist,” for a conversation about his work, his philosophy and his speculations on the conjunctural future. Robinson is best known for his 2020 book, The Ministry for the Future. Robinson has written more than 20 books, many of them science fiction and others not. He has received many honors both for his writing and his struggle on behalf of nature. His most recent book is The High Sierra: A Love Story.