GARBAGE with Dr. Robin Nagle
Landfills! Composting! Recycling flimflam! An instantly classic conversation with the incredibly knowledgeable, frank and wonderful Dr. Robin Nagle: a clinical professor, author, TED speaker and former New York City sanitation worker and truly the best person on Earth to trash talk with. We cover our long history of figuring out what do do with our waste, what you can and can’t actually recycle, sticky mustard bottles, incinerators, the journeys our trash takes, why rats love plastic garbage bags, and how and why can thank your local sanitation workers.
Listen via Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Visit Robin Nagle’s website
Follow Robin on Instagram and Bluesky
Read Robin’s book Picking Up, an ethnography of New York City's Department of Sanitation
A donation was made to the Sanitation Foundation
Full-length (*not* G-rated) Discard Anthropology episode + tons of science links
More kid-friendly Smologies episodes!
Transcripts and bleeped episodes
Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month
OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!
Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky
Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok
Sound editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions, Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media, and Jake Chaffee
Made possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Aveline Malek and Erin Talbert
Smologies theme song by Harold Malcolm