Trace Material
Trace Material breaks down the building blocks of our constructed environment, one material at a time. What can plastic tell us about suburbanization? What does redlining have to do with lead paint? And how did a president’s bias shape what our walls are made of?
Podcasting since 2019 • 32 episodes
Trace Material
Latest Episodes
Harvesting Housing
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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20:08
Mycelium for the Masses
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 i...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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23:35
Nature's Detox
Did you know that Mycelial networks can break down dead plant or animal matter and they can connect with the roots of living plants to share nutrients between them? Whether that was news or not, mycelial networks are much more complicated than ...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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21:23
The Citizen Scientist
The power of fungi has been neglected by academic institutions and marginalized in the larger society. By the 1960s the American imagination had linked fungi to magic mushrooms, the counterculture movement, and Nixon’s war on drugs. That linger...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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19:32