The Fire Problem

An education program that considers unresolved symptoms of The Fire Problem.

This special podcast series will examine and explain underlying challenges and vulnerabilities with our climate, environment, politics, and vegetation.

Listen to episodes

Recommended
Episodes

What They're
Saying

“I love history and I think it's important if you're a product person and entrepreneur to understand what came before you, because if you know what came before you, you can understand what's coming next. And many people are trying to build the future and don't know the past. And that gets people into trouble.”

John Mills
The Fire Problem, EP547

"The 20th century just annihilated millennia of tradition and knowledge. And we are finally getting back to a place of understanding more, learning from indigenous people and not trying to compartmentalize indigenous history and practice and knowledge into a Western viewpoint about how fire ecology works."

David Weinstein and Hugh Coxe
The Fire Problem, EP541

"When they start burning structure to structure like that, this is no longer a wildland fire. Once it leaves the wildland area and gets into the homes or the businesses, and now fire is spreading via structure to structure, that's what we call an urban conflagration."

Chief Brian Fennessy
The Fire Problem, EP537

“A single home is only as safe as the homes around it. We need to get entire neighborhoods to embrace this notion of the home ignition zone and get communities to collectively take these actions to make themselves more resilient to wildfire as well. That's tricky to get people to coordinate.”

Nick Mott and Justin Angle
The Fire Problem, EP525

"There's really no time like yesterday to reduce our emissions. That's a tough sell in a world driven by profit that is leveraged against the future, that's borrowing against the future. That's what fossil fuels are. These are ancient energies that we are burning against the future, so the math doesn't work."

John Vaillant
The Fire Problem, EP523

Podcast Series

Season Three

Land and Fire: Our History, Our Responsibility examines how land use, land care, and fire behavior intersect, historically, culturally, scientifically, politically, and practically.

Conversations with indigenous fire practitioners, environmental historians, fire ecologists, and land-trust experts will trace how policy, culture, and science have shaped land management, and what responsible stewardship requires going forward.

Produced with the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and the California Resources Agency with support from Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Coming soon

Season Two

Dedicated to How We Prepare: Before, During, and After a Fire, this series follows what communities can do before a fire, how they survive during one, and how they recover after.

Conversations with survivors, insurance advocates, mutual aid organizers, and home hardening experts will examine Zone Zero and California's approach to preparedness at every stage of a fire.

Produced with the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and the California Resources Agency with support from Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Coming soon

Season One

Diagnosing the Problem: Education and Prevention brings together conservationists, first responders, historians, scientists, technologists, and others to help diagnose our situation and identify opportunities for treatment.

Human influence is at the heart of The Fire Problem and our goal is to learn from past neglect and failure to plan for a future of education and prevention.

Produced with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University with support from the Orange County Community Foundation.

Listen to episodes