Trace Material – Details, episodes & analysis

We’ve spent this season tracing how fungi, and especially mycelium, can shake up industries and remediate the harm caused by climate change. We’ve talked about foraging, growing, healing and commercializing mycelium. But there’s one frontier we saved for this episode, the last of this season. It’s one that, here at Healthy Materials Lab, we’re honestly most excited about: affordable housing.

We speak with Chris Maurer and the team at BioHab, who are building housing with mycelium.  This project represents the culmination of our exploration of fungi (and aligns with HML’s big audacious goal of making all affordable housing with healthy materials). BioHab is, all at once, addressing waste issues, food insecurity, carbon sequestration, affordable housing, circularity… all powered by fungi.

Here's a link to the recording of our Trace Material Live event with Chris.

For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Mycelium based materials have a wealth of potential applications. But how does a new material get out of the experimental phase and into mass production? That transition is often where material development can stall.

Luckily, that isn’t happening with mycelium. In this episode, we speak with Gavin McIntyre, who is the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ecovative. Ecovative is a revolutionary company at the forefront of the mycelium industry. He leads us through the journey Ecovative has taken to get mycelium products into homes across the world.

For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

The push to promote disposable plastics created mountains of new waste that will never biodegrade. The burden of that waste has been placed almost entirely on the shoulders of low-income communities of color. 

This week, activists share a story of community opposition to the construction of a garbage incinerator in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark during the 1980s, and their ongoing fight for environmental justice. 

For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast, or give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab and Twitter @parsons_HML. If you've been enjoying this season, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

The connections between vinyl chloride and diseases like cancer were first understood inside the factory setting. Workers were quite literally on the frontline. But today we're taking you outside the factory walls and into fenceline communities and suburban homes.

For part one of this story, listen to The House of Documents.

For more information regarding PVC and vinyl chloride, head to our episode page.

In the 1970s, workers in PVC factories across the country began getting sick with a rare form of liver cancer.  While the plastics industry claimed they were unaware of what was causing that cancer, internal documents told a different story. Today we’re telling a story about corporate concealment, cancer, and of course, plastic. 

In post-war America everything that people touched––paint, fabric, dishes, jewelry––could be made of plastic. But how did this first generation living in a plastic world learn to accept it as part of their daily lives?

Our story starts at the turn of the twentieth century, when the natural materials everyday objects were made from were becoming scarce. Enter the era of the inventor, it was time to forge new materials and build a new world. 

Here's a first listen of Trace Material Season 2: Stories from the Plastics Age, coming your way June 16th! We were curious: what will future societies think of us when they dig up relics of our present day? 

This will be our last episode of Season 1. We’re taking a look back at all we’ve learned over the last 12 episodes. We’ve traced the story of hemp from its colonial roots in America, through the war on drugs, and legalization. The future of the plant is wide open. And we hope as we all build it together, the past can be reckoned with instead of being pushed aside in favor of profit.

In this episode, we’re heading to New Castle to see how the folks at DON are building a hemp industry from the ground up to support their vision of healthy, affordable, accessible housing.