This is

99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Today I'm really excited to bring you the beginning of a new mini-series that we've been working on for the past year. It's called

not built for this and it's about climate change but in a very 99 p i kind of way

it's not really about the science or CO2 projections or electric cars.

This series is about how our world was not designed for the tectonic changes that are coming.

From top to bottom, our society is full of that are coming.

From top to bottom, our society is full of structures and systems that are being stress-tested

by increasingly extreme weather.

The series is going to cover infrastructure and insurance, housing and public health.

Over the course of six episodes, we're going to take you all over the United States to Florida, California, Louisiana, and Arizona. But today we're going to start with a small story

set in an unlikely state. If you had to make a list of the states you thought were

relatively safe from the worst impacts of climate change, Vermont might be close to the top.

The Green Mountain State is relatively cool, there's plenty of water, it's nowhere near the ocean. It also happens to be the state

where Emmett Fitzgerald, the host of our series, grew up. He's from Montpelier, a quaint little

town that's also somehow the capital city.

And it's truly the last place that I ever imagined starting this series.

But then, something happened last year that made everyone in Montpelier understand that they might not be so safe after all.

And so to begin, I want to take you to the little town that I know best in all the world and explain what happened

This is episode one of not built for this, the bottom of the bowl.

Bear Pond Books is a small town institution in Montpelier, Vermont,

and a place where I've spent a lot of time.

...