Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode

A bill to ease Californians’ access to balcony solar, also called plug-in PV, just cleared the state Legislature and is now sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk. If he signs the bill, SB 868, California could become the tenth state to legalize this simple technology: a solar panel that plugs straight into a wall outlet and be fixed to a home’s balcony, no permits or rooftop installation required.

In today's episode, Ken sits down with EWG's own Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president for California. She's a longtime clean energy advocate who has spent decades fighting for consumer access to solar, from early rooftop solar policy battles to today's fight for balcony solar.

Their conversation traces how the idea made its way from Germany to Utah and now to California, why the state’s three major investor-owned utilities fought it every step of the way, and why this could be one of the biggest wins yet for everyday consumers in the fight for affordable, distributed clean energy.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

California Assembly utilities committee advances bill cutting red tape for ‘balcony solar’

California Legislature approves bill easing access to clean, affordable ‘balcony solar’

SB-868 Electricity: portable solar generation devices

CalMatters SB 868: Electricity: portable solar generation devices

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

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Tens of thousands of people got sick this summer from a foodborne illness outbreak that was preventable. In today’s episode, Ken speaks with Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, about the cyclospora outbreak sweeping the U.S.

The outbreak is a direct symptom of years of underinvestment and recent cuts to public health infrastructure by the Trump administration. From the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ shrinking FoodNet surveillance program to the thousands of Food and Drug Administration and Health and Human Services staff lost to layoffs and early retirements, Sarah lays out how the systems meant to catch contamination early have been dismantled.

It’s happening under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his unfulfilled Make America Healthy Again promises on food chemicals and a food safety loophole, synthetic dyes and defining "ultra-processed food. And it begs the question: Why are the people who promised to fix the food system are the ones gutting the agencies built to protect it?

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

CSPI's synthetic dyes commitments tracker

The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic memo on the FRESH Act

Politico’s: USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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"Ask where the landfill is, and you'll find where the Black people live." That's what Vernice Miller-Travis' grandmother told her. Vernice Miller-Travis helped write the report that first proved, with data, what Black communities had always known: Hazardous waste sites are not randomly distributed; they're concentrated in communities of color.

She has spent decades building the environmental justice movement, co-founding WE ACT for Environmental Justice, leading environmental justice grantmaking at the Ford Foundation, and founding the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Environmental Justice Initiative.

Miller-Travis, who is Ken’s guest today, now serves as executive vice president for environmental and social justice at Metropolitan Group, working with communities and institutions on the racial and economic conflicts that persist in our environment due to regulatory inaction.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

https://www.metgroup.com/

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

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Dr. Georges Benjamin is the CEO of the American Public Health Association, with 25 years at the helm of one of the most respected public health institutions in the U.S. And he’s Ken’s guest today.

At the beginning of 2025, Benjamin made an appearance on Ken’s livestream during Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's Senate confirmation hearing to be health secretary. At the time, Benjamin warned what could happen with RFK Jr. as the national head of public health.

Fast forward to today, America faces its worst measles outbreak in 35 years, with over 2,300 cases and counting. Taylor Farms, already potentially linked to a deadly E. coli outbreak, is at the center of a massive Cyclospora outbreak tied to contaminated lettuce sickening thousands.

Benjamin unpacks how we got here, what RFK Jr. gets wrong, why Make America Health Again was never going to get the support it needed from Republicans and why gutting public health infrastructure has consequences.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

https://www.apha.org

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Everyday we rely on governmental regulatory systems and animal testing to tell us if the chemicals we’re exposed to will or won’t hurt us. But what if AI could help us get more ethical and more accurate answers and avoid animal testing altogether?

In today’s episode, Ken is joined by Dr. Thomas Hartung, Ph.D, a professor at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose work spans the fields of environmental health, engineering, molecular microbiology, and immunology. Hartung’s team are developing cutting edge tools in the world of toxicology: AI and human stem cell models that help us understand our genetic reactions to chemicals and, ultimately, make our lives safer.

Hartung argues that AI has the power to analyze vast data sets of untested or undertested chemicals, “cocktail” combinations, and even different exposure rates and frequencies. All these variations can give us a much more nuanced understanding of the chemicals that permeate our lives, potentially reshaping how chemicals are assessed and regulated.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/2308/thomas-hartung

https://caat.publichealth.jhu.edu/

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1119989

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Menopause affects every woman who lives to midlife, and yet it is understudied and undertreated – a research gap that many attribute to medical bias.

In today’s episode, Ken is joined by Dr. Lauren Petrick, an environmental health scientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she leads the Petrick Lab. She recently published a study, “Impact of Environmental Exposures on Menopausal Symptoms,” that synthesizes evidence from studies linking everyday chemical exposures – like phthalates, phenols, heavy metals, air pollution, and pesticides – to a wide range of menopausal symptoms. These symptoms range from hot flashes and mood changes to sleep disruption and beyond.

As a midlife woman, Petrick brings a personal lens to her research, which suggests that the phthalates in your plastic containers, the fragrances in your personal care products, and the air quality in your neighborhood may all be connected to the symptoms women experience during perimenopause and menopause.

She argues that perimenopause and menopause are a critical “window of susceptibility” to environmental exposures - much like pregnancy and puberty.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Dr. Petrick’s study: Environmental Exposures on Menopausal Symptoms

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

www.ewg.org

@environmentalworkinggroup

From the day we’re born, our bodies contain a constant mix of chemicals. But our regulatory system only targets these substances one at a time. Current policies don’t adequately account for the health threats of mixtures, when two or more chemicals combine inside us.

In today’s episode, Ken talks about chemical mixtures with Dr. Jabeen Taiba, who recently published a study called, “Exploring the Joint Association Between Agrichemical Mixtures and Pediatric Cancer.”

From the study: “We observed a statistically significant positive association between 32 agrichemicals,” which were all pesticides, “and overall pediatric cancer and subtypes, and the strength of the association was slightly stronger among brain and CNS cancers compared to overall cancer.”

Dr. Taiba is a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska’s Water, Climate, and Health program. She's trained as a multidisciplinary researcher, with a background in epidemiology, and has robust experience in clinical research, public health, and large data sets. She and Ken delve into what happens when chemicals mix and how this impacts our most vulnerable: children.

EWG has been studying mixtures since the early 2000s. But chemical companies only test one chemical at a time in its purest form. With more scientists like Dr. Taiba, we’re hopeful that can change.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

The Halifax Project

Dr. Jabeen Taiba’s study

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

www.ewg.org

@environmentalworkinggroup

Do you ever feel a sense of personal responsibility for plastic pollution? That reaction is no accident - it’s the result of a decades-long public relations strategy designed to shift blame away from the industries driving the problem.In today’s episode Ken talks with award-winning environmental journalist and author Beth Gardiner. Her new book, “Plastic Inc. The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet,” reveals why Big Oil is responsible for the global plastic pollution problem.

Beth traces the full arc of the oil and plastic industry’s political strategy as well as the origins of plastic recycling as a PR opportunity rather than an environmental solution.

Against the backdrop of weakening environmental safeguards and shifting regulatory priorities, the episode asks a pressing question: how do we hold some of the most powerful industries on the planet accountable for a crisis they helped create?

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Buy Beth Gardiner’s book

Beth Gardiner’s website

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

www.ewg.org

@environmentalworkinggroup

There is an ongoing lawsuit between the American Academy of Pediatrics v. Robert F Kennedy Jr., head of HHS. The lead attorney of the lawsuit challenging the HHS vaccine policy changes is Ken’s guest today.

Richard H Hughes VI is a professor at George Washington University Law School as well as a partner at Epstein Becker Green. In addition to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Hughes’ law firm also represents the American College of Physicians and the American Public Health Association.

Richard breaks down the legal framework behind the lawsuit against Kennedy, including the effort to dismantle and remake the ACIP advisory committee, the broader implications for federal vaccine policy, and the growing erosion of public trust in pediatricians, vaccines, and public health institutions.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Find the court docket for the case American Academy of Pediatrics v. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. here

And Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling here that opens with an adaptation of a famous quote from the late astronomer and scientist Carl Sagan: “Science, like law, is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge…nevertheless, science is still the best we have.”

Richard Hughes, Professorial Lecturer in Law

New York Times: Kennedy, in His Own Words: Flu, Diabetes, Autism and More

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Two major battles over pesticide policy are unfolding at the federal level, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The dispute: Can states protect their citizens from pesticide harms beyond what federal law requires, or will that authority be stripped away? These are the urgent questions that a pending Supreme Court case and a fight over the farm bill could play major roles in answering.

The chemical at the center of all of this? Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and the keystone product of the Bayer-Monsanto corporation. Critics of the controversial weedkiller link it to a number of health harms through exposure.

To help unravel the legal docket, Ken is joined by Chuck Benbrook, Ph. D. He has worked on pesticide issues in roles during the Carter administration, for Congress and with the National Academy of Sciences, and has served as an expert witness in many of the cases he and Ken discuss.

Benbrook is urging the Supreme Court to preserve the right of states to hold pesticide companies accountable when federal regulators fall short.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Why HHRA’s Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court in Opposition to Preemption?

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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@environmentalworkinggroup

This Earth Day, we're not celebrating progress; we're sounding the alarm. In today’s episode, Ken sits down with Dr. Phil Landrigan and Dr. Adam Gaffney, co-authors of a landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine that breaks down how the Trump administration’s sweeping environmental rollbacks are threatening the health of every American.

Dr. Landrigan is no stranger to these fights. As a young Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor in the 1970s, his groundbreaking research on lead poisoning in children helped drive lead out of gasoline and paint. This victory reduced childhood lead poisoning by 95% and raised the IQ of an entire generation.

Dr. Gaffney, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Harvard Medical School, has spent his career fighting to protect his patients’ lungs – and now the very protections that keep those lungs healthy are being dismantled one regulation at a time.

Together, the doctors share with Ken all the vital rules that the administration is undoing, who will suffer most, and what it will cost the public in health harms and lives lost – from weakened air quality standards and gutted climate policy, to the quiet destruction of the scientific institutions that keep Americans safe.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

New England Journal of Medicine: The Dismantling of Environmental Protections: A Grave Threat to America’s Health

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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What does it look like to stand on principle when everyone around you is playing it safe? In today’s episode, Ken sits down with Rina Shah, a political commentator, GOP strategist, geopolitical risk advisor and one of the most recognized Republican voices on national television.

As a former senior Capitol Hill advisor and two-time presidential campaign chief spokesperson, Shah spent years appearing on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and nearly every major network covering politics and global affairs. But long before the television appearances and the op-eds, she was the daughter of a Ugandan refugee family that lost everything under the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin. That experience shaped everything about how she sees leadership, power and democracy.

Shah shares her family's remarkable story of survival, why she recognized the echoes of authoritarianism in President Donald Trump long before most were willing to say it out loud, and what it cost her to become the first elected Republican delegate to publicly challenge Trump’s nomination in 2016. A decade later, she's still a Republican, still speaking out, and still refusing to let the party she loves be defined by fear and silence.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Rina Shah’s Instagram

Renew Democracy Initiative

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Long before “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, existed, there was Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine): A self-described hippie, back-to-the-lander, certified organic farmer, and the first woman ever elected to Congress from Maine's first district.

Since taking office in 2009, she has relentlessly fought pesticide preemption, championed SNAP benefits and school nutrition programs, and pioneered legislation on food waste and organic agriculture. She’s been fighting for healthier lives long before MAHA was a movement.

Now MAHA has arrived, promising to achieve in a news cycle what Pingree has spent decades trying to accomplish legislatively. MAHA Action's president recently sent a memo to Republican Party leadership calling the movement “a once in a generation political gift to the GOP" and pledging $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterms.

Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. once a prominent voice against toxic pesticides, now celebrates executive orders by President Dinbaly Trump expanding glyphosate production, even as former pesticide lobbyists take key positions at the Environmental Protection Agency.

MAHA was pitched as a bipartisan effort – but reality tells a different story. In today’s episode, Ken talks with Pingree about the contradictions between what the administration says on MAHA and what it’s actually doing on policy.

And that’s the real divide: between those doing the difficult work of governing and achieving real results, and those packaging that work into snappy branding and social media posts. One is measured in years of policy fights and incremental wins. The other is measured in headlines and clicks. Yet only one of them changes the law to protect the public.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Make America Healthy Again? Let’s see if they’re serious

Chellie Pingree 1st District of Maine

In betrayal of MAHA, House GOP farm bill exposes kids to pesticides

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Make America Healthy Again? Let’s see if they’re serious

Chellie Pingree 1st District of Maine

In betrayal of MAHA, House GOP farm bill exposes kids to pesticides

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

www.ewg.org

@environmentalworkinggroup

Most people heard about Project 2025 during the 2024 presidential campaign. Far fewer understood what it actually was. The Atlantic’s David Graham wrote the definitive book explaining the sweeping conservative policy blueprint.

In today’s episode, David speaks with Ken on how what seemed like a Republican policy wishlist was actually a meticulously engineered, four-part plan for seizing control of the federal government.

They discuss how DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) helped accelerate the wrecking-ball agenda, why the architects of Project 2025 always assumed Congress would capitulate to their plans, and whether the damage being done to American institutions can ever be undone. The conversation helps us understand what the 2028 presidential election could mean for the project’s next chapter.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-a-graham/

https://www.davidagraham.com/work

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-project-how-project-2025-is-reshaping-america-david-a-graham/afe80d453ffedb79?ean=9798217153725&next=t&next=t&affiliate=2186

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Many people find EWG while seeking information about pesticides. In today’s episode Ken is joined by our in-house Senior Toxicologist, Dr. Alexis Temkin whose research establishes safety guidelines to help people (including children) minimize their exposure to toxic crop chemicals. In the second half of today’s episode Ken is joined by renowned pediatrician Dr. Phillip Landrigan whose decades of research and advocacy is integral for understanding the effects of pesticides in children.

We see this episode as Pesticides 101, to help give our audience agency over how they (and their families) are exposed to pesticides. Our government isn’t doing enough to protect us from harmful chemical residues often found in healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. Until that changes, we’re grateful for the work of Dr. Temkin and Dr. Landrigan that has helped people, including parents and caregivers, better understand how they can take steps to reduce their exposure to pesticides while eating plenty of healthy fruits and veggies.

Want a deeper dive on today’s episode? Check out the links below:

EWG’s 2024 Dirty Dozen

EWG’s 2024 Clean 15

EWG’s Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Chemicals: The top 12 to avoid

EWG’s YouTube

Alexis Temkin, Ph.D.

EPA warns farmworkers about risks of Dacthal

60 Minutes (CBS; 2/26/1989)

National Research Council (US) Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children

Food Quality Protection Act Signing

Safe Drinking Water Act Signing

Children and Environmental Toxins: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Project 2025's "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (contributed by NPR)

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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@environmentalworkinggroup

We’ve all seen the headlines about micro and nanoplastics. It’s clear that the public is uneasy with the ubiquity of plastic particles in our food, soil, and water. The plastics and petrochemical industry claims that concerns are overblown. A growing group of scientists and researchers disagrees.

Multiple interdisciplinary studies are beginning to discover the impacts micro and nanoplastics may have on cardiovascular and brain health.

Ken is joined by Matthew Campen, PhD, MSPH, the Director of the New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine at the University of New Mexico, to discuss his findings and to help unravel what the science says.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Matthew J Campen, PhD, MSPH

Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains

‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body

Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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48 million Americans are food insecure, congress just cut $200 billion from SNAP, and the upcoming farm bill could make things even worse. But Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) believes we have an opportunity to fight back.

McGovern joins Ken in today’s episode to break down what's really happening with America's food assistance programs, why new work requirements are kicking struggling families off benefits, and how farm subsidies enrich corporations while small farmers go bankrupt. Whose interests is Congress really serving?

While special interests are already lobbying hard for the next farm bill, McGovern believes people power is more powerful than the people in power.

If we can find billions for bailouts of Argentina and tax cuts for billionaires, but claim we're too broke to feed hungry Americans, we should probably check our math.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database

‘City slicker’ farm payments top $2B – and House GOP bill would make problem worse

The cruelest farm bill ever

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Motherhood was a wake-up call for Hilary Swank, as she learned about the toxic chemicals lurking in everyday products we trust to keep our babies safe.

In today's episode, Ken sits down with the two-time Academy Award-winning actress and film producer to discuss how becoming a mom transformed her understanding of just how toxic our world is for the most vulnerable among us.

Last year, Hillary joined Ken at the California State Capitol to fight for passage of SB 646, a crucial prenatal vitamin safety law. She opens up about the shocking moment she learned that prenatal vitamins aren't required to be tested for heavy metals, her partnership with Healthy Baby (the first EWG VerifiedⓇ diaper), and why she'll show up “time and time again” to protect not just her children, but all children.

From her first-ever lobbying experience to helping pass the groundbreaking SB 646 in just six months, Hilary is on a mission to make the world safer for the next generation.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

EWG Skin Deep - Healthy Baby

Gov. Newsom signs nation’s first law to require tests of prenatal vitamins for heavy metals

EWG Area's of Focus: California

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

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Just one year into the Trump administration, the onslaught of attacks on the environment and public health is staggering. The Environmental Protection Agency is leading the deregulatory charge with policy actions that will lead to more pollution.

To help understand the full scope of the damage, Ken in this episode speaks to environmental law expert Joe Goffman. He served as assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration. Goffman also played a key role in writing the landmark 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that strengthened U.S. air quality law.

With his work on virtually every major air quality law and rule over the past 35 years, Goffman is uniquely qualified to unravel the full extent of damage that the EPA is doing to our air, water, and health.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Joseph Goffman, Executive Director of Harvard Law School's Environmental & Energy Law Program

MAAHA: EWG’s ‘Make America Actually Healthy Again’ agenda for EPA Administrator Zeldin

Trump’s EPA Could Limit Its Own Ability to Use New Science to Strengthen Air Pollution Rules

EPA’s Goffman lashed out at ethics charges

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

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Julia Belluz, co-author of "Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us," joins Ken to dismantle everything you think you know about nutrition, metabolism and weight loss. Julia is an award-winning health journalist, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and former senior health correspondent at Vox. She's a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from MIT and currently lives in Paris, France.

Julia explains why our struggles with food aren't personal failures. They are the predictable result of living in toxic food environments designed to make us overeat. Drawing on decades of nutrition science research conducted with co-author Kevin Hall at the National Institutes of Health, she reveals what people get wrong with food despite thinking they’re doing it right.

Julia compares France's deliberate cultivation of healthy food environments to America's chronic disease crisis. She discusses California's groundbreaking legislation defining ultra-processed foods, the promise and failures of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s "Make America Healthy Again" agenda, and why we need systemic change to how we approach food.

For a deeper dive into today’s discussion:

Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us

EWG's food policy work

California's ultra-processed food law

Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode every other week.

@kencookspodcast

www.ewg.org

@environmentalworkinggroup