WSHU’s ‘Higher Ground’ Takes Island-Wide Look At Climate Change; Podcast To Air Second Season

As the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic came to a close — and, with it, the arrival of vaccines and a cautious dose of optimism — the general public began to redirect its attention toward issues that had been sidelined by the virus.

And chief among them was climate change.

At WSHU Public Radio, managing editor J.D. Allen — who is a former Southampton Press and East Hampton Press reporter — localized the global crisis and, together with his team, produced an eight-episode podcast, “Higher Ground,” which visits communities across Long Island that are already coping with rising tides and climate change.

“We started to question, ‘Where are we going to focus this climate coverage and what kind of climate coverage not only do we want to report, but do people need right now?’” he recalled during a recent telephone interview. “The one thing that we knew that we didn’t want to do was to produce a doomsday podcast. We were all shellshocked from the pandemic.”

Instead, the pilot — which aired last September — not only explores how Long Island residents are finding ways to contend with violent storms and rising tides, but also focuses on municipal policy, technology, and community ingenuity through the lens of climate adaptation.

“Our listenership is primarily coastal people. As a Long Islander, I’m a coastal person, and so we are experiencing climate change, even if we don’t call it climate change,” Allen said. “‘Oh, that street always floods.’ Well, why does it always flood?

“It was kind of like questioning these signs of climate change that we were taking for granted, and so we ran with that idea,” he continued, “and that really informed everything that we did in the field.”

In less than nine months, the WSHU team reported and produced the first season, which took them from the Great South Bay to Montauk, where they interviewed key local voices — including Kevin McAllister, the founder and CEO of Defend H2O, and Alison Branco, the acting director of climate adaptation for The Nature Conservancy New York — as well as members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, which has been disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.

“Season one was a totally different reporting experience than anything I had done before because of how intensive it was, how we really wanted to approach climate adaptation and the solutions that communities were considering or acting on to save their homes,” Allen said. “I think that as we look at Long Island as America’s first suburb, what Long Island does with all of its great riches and intense poverty and mansions on the water and homes on stilts, the rest of the country, in some way, shape or form, might follow — especially for communities that live by the coast.

“I felt a certain duty to really explore all the options — and I feel like I helped make my home a better place by doing so.”

Following season one, which was supported by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and the Kavli Foundation, “Higher Ground” released a one-hour national special, hosted by Allen and producer Sabrina Garone, through American Public Radio. It aired across the country, from WAMU in Washington, D.C., and WNYC in New York City to stations in Louisiana, Alabama, Utah, Colorado, California, Washington State, and beyond.

Allen and his team are currently working on season two, he said, a five-episode run that will follow a classroom of eighth grade student scientists in Connecticut and how they identify with the climate crisis — exploring themes like global awareness, citizen science, climate consciousness, environmental justice and design solutions.

With funding from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop, which is best-known for the children’s program “Sesame Street,” the podcast is expected to air in August.

“We’re one of a little over a dozen stations to be included in this round of funding and support from Big Bird and friends to do this reporting,” Allen said, “and we are by far the smallest, by multiples of enormous numbers, in terms of station size.”

Reflecting on “Higher Ground” as a whole, Allen said he hopes communities pay closer attention to their surroundings, including local agriculture and aquaculture that they can support either by volunteering or with donations, and to become more conscious of what comprises their neighborhoods.

“Hopefully it creates conversations or a space for conversations to be had about infrastructure improvements, or energy, or what to do in preparation in case the next disaster strikes, because it’s going to happen,” he said. “So we might as well start talking about it — and start listening to each other.”