Rebecca Ahrens
Writer & Editor
Photograph by Rebecca Ahrens

Selected work

Writing

I write about the history of technology and industry and the innovations shaping the future of the industrial economy.

Our Industrial Life
China’s TMSR-LF1 fuses two nuclear breakthroughs in one reactor
In a remote corner of the Gobi Desert, near the city of Wuwei in China’s Gansu Province, a tiny 2 MW experimental nuclear reactor is humming along, quietly changing the course of nuclear power history.
 The history and future of the heat pump
How the humble heat pump made its journey from Victorian thought experiment to a modern-day sustainable heating essential.
Dot dot dash: 35 years that shrunk the world
“The laying of the telegraph cable is regarded, and most justly, as the greatest event in the present century, […] Now the great work is complete, the whole earth will be belted with electric current, palpitating with human thoughts and emotions. It shows that nothing is impossible to man.”
 The quantum leap: Why 2025 became the year everything changed
"Boardrooms are going to start asking about your quantum computing plans in 3, 2, 1."
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Criticism & features
Let It Go
On Nina Weijers' debut novel and the urge to understand the universe.
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2017
 John Giorno, Poet
A feature on the poet and performance artist.
BOMB Magazine, 2017

Podcast

Audio

I started the Our Industrial Life podcast as Radio PI in 2020. It began as a one-woman show, which I wrote, produced, hosted, and edited as a labor of love. Over the years, it grew into a small team. Below are some of my favorite episodes.

Our Industrial Life · Selected Episodes
Dark matter and ghost particles—industrial data helps uncover the secrets of the universe
SNOLAB is the deepest clean lab in the world. It searches for the most elusive building blocks of our universe: neutrinos and dark matter. The Nobel Prize website describes its experiments as like searching for a particular grain of sand in the Sahara—and it relies on industrial data to do it.
 What the energy transition looks like from inside the grid
From 2007 to 2016, Steve Holliday was the CEO of the UK’s National Grid. In that time, the share of electricity generated by renewables in the UK grew from 3% to 16%. Today, that number is close to 40%. Rebecca and Joe talk to Steve about his time leading the National Grid through the beginning of the energy transition. They also get Steve’s perspective on some of the big questions around the future of the grid.
 The future of the power grid: Aging infrastructure
How do you put more power on an already strained and aging power grid? Our guests today say industrial software—and the data analysis it makes possible—is helping the grid increase capacity and accommodate sustainable power sources as we decarbonize.
 AI: A sustainability friend or environmental foe?
AI has been helping industries decarbonize for years by making their equipment more energy efficient and helping power grid operators incorporate more renewable energy sources. But, manufacturing, training and running the computers that power AI also produces a lot of carbon emissions. So, which is it? Is AI increasing or decreasing our industrial carbon footprint?
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Mongolia
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Haiti
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I'm a writer, editor, and audio producer based in Berkeley. I've been covering technology with a focus on its impact on the industrial economy for a decade.

In 2020 I started a podcast called Our Industrial Life, about how data, technology and innovation keep the everyday parts of life running, covering everything from power grids and water systems, to AI, nuclear energy, and particle physics.

In 2024, I was asked to grow Our Industrial Life into a newsroom. We've published 200+ articles since then. Our bi-weekly newsletters reach over 100,000 readers and our recently launched LinkedIn newsletter reaches an additional 70,000.