Plastics production has doubled in the last two decades, clogging up our oceans and showing up in our organs. The massive growth in plastics production is also increasing CO2 output and driving up fossil fuel demand. Meanwhile, only 8% of plast
Last March, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket into space from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It carried more than 40 payloads on board, including a satellite called MethaneSAT, which was designed to track methane emissions aroun
Dwane Roth is a fourth-generation farmer growing corn, wheat, sorghum, and sunflower in southwestern Kansas. Back in 2016, the state of Kansas launched a three-year pilot designed to test the latest water conservation technologies on three work
In January 2024, winter storm Gerri swept across the Midwest, bringing subzero temperatures with it. In Omaha, Nebraska, just as everyone was turning up the heat, the city’s four thermal power plants went offline. Tim McAreavey is the VP of Cus
According to NASA, nearly two-thirds of all Western wildfires recorded over the past 75 years occurred in just the last two decades. Firefighters and fire researchers are seeing this trend first hand. As wildfires grow more destructive and more
Where the Internet Lives is back for a fourth season. In past episodes, we’ve taken you on tours of data centers, talked to people who run the supercomputers that make up the internet, and showed you a world few people get to see.This season, h
Hanoi Hantrakul is a musician and research scientist who works on audio and artificial intelligence. He is a former AI resident at Google working on creative applications of machine learning for music. His musical nom de plume is "Yaboi Hanoi."
Mikko Green is an operations manager at Google's data center in Hamina, Finland. In 2012, when Mikko applied to work at the facility, he was excited about the prospect of moving back to the country where his mother was born.Over the years, Mikk
Sarah Hess is one of a million union workers in the U.S. construction industry. But she’s a rare woman in the field. About 90% of the construction workforce is male – a number that hasn't changed much over the past three decades.Oregon Tradeswo
The Netherlands has a unique relationship with water. One-third of the country lies below sea level, and almost 20% of the mainland is water – largely due to the 6,000 kilometers of waterways that support industry and recreation.Pumping and div
Ian Yang knew he was gay at an early age. But it wasn’t until arriving at Google that he felt comfortable opening up about his sexuality – eventually lighting a spark that made him a positive force in the political discussion around LGBTQ+ righ
Note: this episode contains references to sexual assault. Please take care while listening.Data centers are the latest in a long list of big projects that Dave Moody has tackled over three decades running a construction company. But as an aspir
A solar-centric world is coming. Solar generates just over 3% of the world's electricity. By the middle of the century, it could make up nearly 40% of global electricity consumption.That growth is made possible by sophisticated manufacturing, m
Lenoir, North Carolina, was once a global furniture manufacturing hub. For Rachel Scercy, the furniture industry was the center of her family life. And then the jobs vanished in the 1990s.Today, communities like Lenoir are often seen as great s
In Tennessee, the digital future is merging with the ecological past. Clarksville, where Google has a data center, is home to a fragile ecosystem that has vanished across America: grasslands. What if we could use large campuses like data center
Where the Internet Lives is back for a third season. Over the last two seasons, we’ve introduced you to the technologies and people that run data centers, unveiling a world few people get to see.This season, host Stephanie Wong explores how dat
Each individual server stacked high inside a data center is powerful in its own right. But without a way of linking them together, they aren't much use to anyone. It takes a vast collection of switches, cables, and software control systems to c
Storing photos, taking video calls, or streaming podcasts creates heat. To keep servers cool, many data centers utilize water running through pipes and along server racks.Teams across Google have been working intensively for more than a decade
Few people are ever allowed on a data center floor. Andreas van der Linden is one of those people. Andreas is a data center technician and the maintenance lead at Google's Eemshaven data center in the Netherlands. Every day, he and his team wea
Building a data center can be as complex as the machines inside. It requires teams of construction experts who are constantly solving football field-sized puzzles – people like Sarah Godbehere. For Sarah, construction is a family affair. Growin
Over the years, Majd Bakar has overseen several critical consumer tech advancements inside Google: Chromecast, GoogleTV, Google Nest Wifi, and the cloud gaming platform Stadia. All of them are directly linked to the growth of data centers.From
Mamoudou “D” Diallo's life path has taken him from being a curious youngster in Guinea-Conakry, to an engineering student in Ukraine, to a technology executive in the financial industry, to his role today as a site lead for Google’s data center
A hyperscale data center can house hundreds of thousands of servers. All that digital infrastructure requires a vast and intricate set of mechanical systems to keep machines running optimally.Juliana Conroy-Hoey is a mechanical engineer for Goo
People and information are two of the most valuable things inside data centers. Libby Davis helps protect both.Libby manages security at Google's data centers in Iowa. She runs a large team that monitors every movement inside the facilities – f
Modern data centers are like small cities filled with warehouse-scale computers, bundles of cables and pipes, and colossal equipment to keep everything running. Kenny “KP” Philpot is an environmental health and safety program manager at Google'