Americans waste a staggering amount of food. Instead of letting it rot and wreck the environment, some entrepreneurs want to put it to work feeding insects, and see the potential to revolutionize how we feed some of the livestock that provide us our meat.

Phil Taylor's enthusiasm for insects is infectious. The University of Colorado Boulder research ecologist beams as he weaves through a small greenhouse in rural Boulder County, Colorado. A room about the size of a shipping container sits inside.

For years, public health experts have worried that oil and gas development could be making people living near drilling sites sick. As scientists begin to compile more data, health questions have only intensified.

Reid Frazier (@reidfrazier) of Here & Now contributor The Allegheny Front reports that some doctors in Pennsylvania want to put a pause on fracking, and begin a major effort to study its impact on health.

Studies show that youth spend less than ten minutes a day outside in unstructured play.  In an effort to combat this national issue, Great Outdoors Colorado has awarded roughly $13 million in grants to communities across the state, to encourage children to appreciate, enjoy and take care of the great outdoors.

The Inspire Initiative, launched last year with six pilot projects, ties into the state plan of having every resident within a ten-minute walk or bike ride to a park or open space within a generation.

How do farmers know if they’re being efficient with their water? In Georgia, where much of the state is suffering from a drought, that question is more important than ever.

Right now, Florida is suing Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, part of a decades-long water fight between the two states and Alabama, could cap Georgia’s water use in the Flint River basin and hurt the state’s agricultural economy.

Some farmers in southwest Georgia are turning a new tool to use less water: big data.

Updated 5 p.m. ET

The first American to orbit the Earth has died. John Glenn was the last surviving member of the original Mercury astronauts. He would later have a long political career as a U.S. senator, but that didn't stop his pioneering ways.

Glenn made history a second time in 1998, when he flew aboard the shuttle Discovery to become the oldest person to fly in space.

Glenn was 95 when he died; he had been hospitalized in an Ohio State University medical center in Columbus since last week.

This was the year that all discussion of Guy Clark, standard-bearer of narrative-unfurling Texas songwriting, slipped from present tense into past. After his death in May came innumerable published remembrances, a sold-out tribute show at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium featuring the cream of the writerly Americana crop and a meticulously researched biography, Without Getting Killed Or Caught: The Life And Music Of Guy Clark, all of it celebrating the singular sturdiness of his canon.