Water Talks

Aug 09 2023 29

Water Talks Podcast artwork

Water is fundamental! That’s why, for the first time in 47 years, the UN organized a worldwide conference on water in 2023, hosted by the Netherlands and Tajikistan. Will it help? To find out, Tracy Metz spoke to all sorts of people in New York and the Netherlands - artists, activists, urban designers, students, officials - who all share the same sense of urgency as we are confronted with too much water or too little, too dirty and … too unequal. This… is ‘Water Talks’! This podcast is made possible by the Dutch Ministry of Water and Infrastructure (I&W).

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10 Water Talks - Big Five :Rohit Aggarwala

Aug 09 2023 19 mins

Episode Notes This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. This is a conversation with Rohit Aggarwala, the Chief Climate Officer of New York City and the commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. He trained as a historian and worked a

9 Water Talks - Big Five: Kate Orff

Aug 02 2023 15 mins

Episode Notes This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. This is a conversation with Kate Orff. She has her own studio, Scape, and is a professor at Columbia University in New York. Time Magazine called her one of the 100 most important people of 2023. She coi

8 Water Talks - Big Five: Matthijs Bouw

Jul 26 2023 17 mins

Episode Notes Shownotes: This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. Matthijs Bouw is a Dutch architect and urban designer who has lived in New York now for eight years. With his studio One Architecture he is working on ‘The Big U’, ten miles of infrastruct

7 Water Talks - The Big Five: Russell Shorto

Jul 19 2023 18 mins

Episode Notes This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. This is a conversation with Russell Shorto. He is an American writer and a historian, a former director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam AND the author of ‘The Island at the Center of the World’,

6 Water Talks - The Big Five: Henk Ovink

Jul 12 2023 17 mins

This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. This is a conversation with ‘Mister Water’ himself: Henk Ovink. He was influential in shaping planning and water policy in the Netherlands, but he really made his name as a member of the task force Obama created in re

5 Water Talks: Too Unequal

Jul 05 2023 22 mins

Episode Notes This episode is about the tension between water as a source of profit and water as a basic human right. After all, if clean water has to be profitable, some people, lots of people, are sure to lose out. As the director of UN Habitat, Maimounah Mohd Sharif is dedicated to helping the global south get access to clean water and sanitation. Do we need big business to buil

4 Water Talks: Too Dirty

Jun 28 2023 40 mins

Episode Notes There is less and less potable water on the planet and what we do have is getting dirtier and dirtier. We’ve let ourselves ruin this essential resource in the name of profit, or carelessness. The Netherlands is good at keeping the water out, but Europe puts us at the bottom of its league when it comes to the quality of rivers and lakes. According to the ministry, th

3 Water Talks: Too Little

Jun 21 2023 25 mins

Too little water is a problem that directly affects our survival as a species. That’s why the Dutch artist Rene van Engelenburg built the Water Arch, a carnival ride that shows, in the most fun way possible, just how much water we waste. But too little contact with water, taking it for granted and turning it into a commodity, is how we got into this predicament in the first plac

2 Water Talks: Too Much

Jun 14 2023 22 mins

Episode Notes It was the water that made Manhattan a desirable place already for the Dutch in the 17th century. Writer and historian Russell Shorto brings that story to life during a walk through what was once New Amsterdam. It was that same water that almost drowned the city when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. In a twist of history, Sandy brought the Dutch back. Special envoy for in

1 Water Talks: Too Close for Comfort

Jun 05 2023 26 mins

Episode Notes No, the UN Water Conference and the New York Water Week held in March of 2023 did not provide a silver bullet to solve the world’s water problems: too much, too little, too dirty and too unequal. (Not that anyone really expected that…) But yes, they did raise the world’s awareness of how acute the water emergency is. New York is giving a good example. In 2012 Hu