Shift Key with Robinson Meyer

Sep 02, 2026 — The United States is staring down a natural gas buildout of gigantic proportions. Amazon wants to build what would be the country’s largest power plant in Texas — and run it entirely on natural gas. Not to be outdone, OpenAI is plotting an even larger...

Aug 27, 2026 — Two years ago, Donald Trump made an outlandish campaign promise: He would cut Americans’ power bills in half. It was a ridiculous, impossible pledge — but even so, the affordability problem didn’t need to get this bad. A new report, out this week from...

Aug 20, 2026 — California now has the most expensive electricity in the continental United States. It also has expensive housing … and an increasingly broken home insurance market. Are the three phenomena linked? They might be. Due to a peculiarity in the state’s...

Aug 12, 2026 — Every few years, the Pacific Ocean’s surface waters become especially warm near the equator, a climatic phenomenon known as El Niño. El Niño is a normal part of the climate system, but even in a normal year, it can trigger extreme weather around the...

No transcript available.

Aug 06, 2026 — At this point, when you hear “venture capitalist,” you probably think of … software. Or artificial intelligence. Or cryptocurrency. The Engine Ventures, which spun out of MIT a few years ago, is different. It tries to fund what it calls “tough tech,” a...