Carlyle Calhoun

Today, we take an immersive journey back to Germany's unique Hallig Islands, where centuries-old traditions and cultures have survived annual flooding through adaptation. But can a culture built around weathering storms adapt fast enough to survive climate change? Coming up, get transported to life on the North Sea from our friends at Living Planet.

We travel to the beautiful Hallig Islands in northern Germany to discover how a cherished way of life continues despite, or maybe because of, its precarious relationship with the sea.

SpaceX wants to build one of the biggest spaceports in the world on the Louisiana coast—a sprawling $100 billion complex near tiny Pecan Island, where marshes, birds, and generations of coastal communities are already living with a rapidly changing landscape.

We love our beaches. We build homes beside them, vacation on them, and spend billions of dollars trying to keep them from disappearing. But beaches are supposed to move—and as sea levels rise, keeping them in place is becoming more expensive, more difficult, and possibly impossible.So what happens when the sand, the money, and the time start running out?

What does it take to bring a seabird back from the brink—and can we keep it there? We travel from a rocky island off Maine to a tiny restored island in coastal Louisiana to learn the astonishing comeback stories of puffins and pelicans. This is a hopeful story about how innovative ideas can save wildlife — and asks whether they're enough in a rapidly changing world.

Throughout Western history of conservation, protecting nature has often meant removing people. It's what happened during the creation of many of America's national parks. But what if protecting nature didn't have to mean displacing the people who call it home? That's the question that brings us to Culatra, a small fishing island off Portugal's southern coast, and one of the country's seven natural wonders.For decades, the Portuguese government saw only one way to save the fragile lagoon surrounding Culatra: kick out the residents. This episode follows one woman's decades-long fight for her island — and the unlikely alliance she built along the way with the very scientists once sent to evict her.

Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him.

In the Netherlands, water has always been both a threat and a triumph. A quarter of the country lies below sea level, and for centuries the Dutch have engineered their way to safety. It’s a place not unlike New Orleans: a delta shaped by risk, resilience, and the belief that with enough ingenuity, water can be controlled. But as sea levels rise, that centuries-old confidence is beginning to crack.

This is part 3 of our three-part series about elements. And today is a biggie: carbon. When we hear about carbon, it's usually about its role in heating up the planet. And while that's an absolutely critical part of the story, the story of this most miraculous of substances is so much larger.

This is part 2 of our 3-part series about elements. Last time we met nitrogen, today, it’s partner in crime and in life – phosphorus.