Journalist Matt King launches “Talking Trash,” a podcast about hidden systems of waste

Journalist and essayist Matt King (The Atlantic, The New Republic, MIT Technology Review) has launched Talking Trash, an independent interview podcast about industrial waste and pollution. The conversation around waste typically focuses on consumer behavior — what you buy, what you recycle, how guilty you should feel. But household waste accounts for just 3-5% of a country’s total waste. The other 95% comes from industry — factories, mines, farms, and supply chains — and most of it is hidden by design.

Waste-related media has grown roughly tenfold over the past decade, driven by Netflix documentaries, TikTok creators, and zero-waste lifestyle content. Almost all of it targets the consumer. Talking Trash shifts this conversation upstream. Each episode features a conversation with a different author, filmmaker, scientist, or artist exposing the biggest messes industry has left behind — and how people are fighting back.

The first season includes stories from around the world, on topics ranging from the cleanup of America’s largest industrial disaster and forever chemicals with million-year half-lives to the toxic legacy of Caribbean banana farming and poetry forged in a British plastics factory.

“After writing about waste for years, I’ve come to see it as one of the most revealing lenses we have for understanding power and inequality,” said King. ”A lot of the consumer-led narratives we’ve been told about waste were manufactured by the industries creating the problem. But a growing field of journalists, artists, and discard studies scholars are challenging this false consensus — and the people doing that work deserve a bigger audience."

King’s work has been recognized as “Notable” in the Best American Essays and Best American Science & Nature Writing series, and discussed in forums ranging from Hacker News to European policy journals. He developed the show through the Stony Brook University Podcast Incubator. The show’s visual identity was created by art director Frances Miller of Alta Zera Design. Talking Trash is entirely independent, taking no sponsors or industry funding. New episodes air every other week.