For thousands of years, Indigenous communities along the Mississippi River and its tributaries built earthen mounds. Some complex constructions rose 8 stories high. These mounds were built for spiritual and religious reasons and also used as a refuge from floods.

Thousands of miles away, on a string of tiny islands off Germany’s North Sea coast, people still live on raised earthen mounds, watching the sea wash over the land around them as the frequent floodwaters rise. Reporter Tamsin Walker takes us to the Hallig Islands, where flooding is part of the rhythm of life, and where residents are finding ways to adapt as sea levels rise. But as the water climbs, so do the costs of staying.

This episode was produced in collaboration with the DW podcast, Living Planet, an award-winning podcast based in Germany that brings you environmental stories from around the world.

To read more about Indigenous earthen mounds in the Mississippi River Valley, check out this essay by Sea Change friend and contributor, Boyce Upholt.

This episode was hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Reporting by Tamsin Walker, a journalist with the DW podcast, Living Planet. Editing help from Johanna Zorn. Sound design by Laine Kaplan Levinson, and our theme music is by Jon Batiste.

SeaChange is a WWNO and WRKF production. We're a part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. SeaChange is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

SpaceX wants to build one of the biggest spaceports in the world on the Louisiana coast—a sprawling $100 billion complex near tiny Pecan Island, where marshes, birds, and generations of coastal communities are already living with a rapidly changing landscape. Louisiana sees the project as an economic opportunity—and a potential new source of money to help save its disappearing coast. But for people who live there, the arrival of rockets raises a different question: What happens when the future of space collides with a place that is already struggling to survive?

This episode is hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun and Coastal Reporter Michael McEwan. Additional reporting and interview tape from Gulf States Newsroom reporter Drew Hawkins. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and our sound designer is Emily Jankowski.

Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

We love our beaches. We build homes beside them, vacation on them, and spend billions of dollars trying to keep them from disappearing. But beaches are supposed to move—and as sea levels rise, keeping them in place is becoming more expensive, more difficult, and possibly impossible.

So what happens when the sand, the money, and the time start running out? Coastal geologist Rob Young says we’re going to have to make some hard choices about what we protect, what we let go, and who pays for the risk.

For more information, studies, and data about beach nourishment, buyouts, and adaptation at the coast, check out the Program for the Study of the Developed Shoreline's website.

Additional resources:

Rebuild by Design

NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer

The Water Institute's Community Resilience Center

This episode was hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and our sound designer is Emily Jankowski. Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.