Episodios

  • Episode 287-When in the Course of Human Events

    Episode 287-When in the Course of Human Events
    Jun 22 2025
    Short and Sweet: A challenge to our government and our politicians--all of them--to do their jobs. In good conscience, I can't NOT post this audio essay.
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    24 m
  • Episode 286-Conversation with Science Writer Amorina Kingdon

    Episode 286-Conversation with Science Writer Amorina Kingdon
    Jun 6 2025
    I read something the other day that had a reference in it to a new book that had just come out. The book’s called, “Sing Like Fish,” and it’s written by author and science writer Amorina Kingdon. Needless to say, I immediately ordered the book, and I have to tell you, I burned through it in three days. The subtitle is, “How Sound Rules Life Underwater,” which you can imagine, as a wildlife sound recordist, really caught my attention. Actually, a few things in the book caught my attention, including this quote: “For all the wonders and worries of this subject, the truth is that noise does not match the deep threat posed to the oceans by climate change. And yet, neither issue is monolithic or exists in a vacuum. Warming or acidifying waters will conduct sound differently: Sound’s effect on ecosystems like reefs or Arctic food webs will ricochet into animals’ responses to climate change. Yet I believe that it is never a waste to examine the world though a new lens, through a new sense.” That’s powerful writing. So, as I tend to do, I went looking for the author, and I found her north of the border in British Columbia. Amorina and I had a nice chat, discovered that we have a lot of common interests, including, of all things, the acoustic work done by Bell Laboratories, and she agreed to be on the program. Our conversation wandered all over the landscape—I recorded more than three hours of tape—but I edited it down to the most important points. Here's Amorina.
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    31 m
  • Episode 285-Conversation with Wildlife Biologist Bethany Ostrom

    Episode 285-Conversation with Wildlife Biologist Bethany Ostrom
    Jun 6 2025
    On a warm fall day in eastern Nebraska, I met up with wildlife biologist Bethany Ostrom of the Crane Trust. As we talked, we took a long walk along the banks of the Platte River, watching as small grasshoppers by the hundreds boiled out from under our feet like popcorn, listening to meadowlarks and bobolinks calling from the scrubby brush along the river. The Crane Trust monitors the health and welfare of North America’s population of both migratory sandhill cranes, which number in the hundreds of thousands, as well as the highly endangered whooping cranes, which number less than a thousand in the entire migratory population. The health of the crane population is a bellwether for other species, and underlines the importance of the work done by Bethany and her colleagues.
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    24 m
  • Episode 284-Magical Yakhchals

    Episode 284-Magical Yakhchals
    May 29 2025
    Imagine a place right here on Earth—not on Mercury or Venus—where it’s not particularly unusual for the summer temperature to soar to 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 degrees C). Now imagine a 20-meter or 60-foot-tall building in that hellish place where ice can be safely stored, completely frozen, for the entire summer. Oh—I should also add that the building has no electricity and is made out of mud, goat hair, ash, and egg whites. These buildings exist, and they’re called Yakhchals. They’re found in the Middle East, mostly in Iran, in places where it gets very cold in the winter, when ice can be made, and very hot in the summer. They’re a type of evaporative cooler—in the dry parts of the American south, a similar technology is called a swamp cooler—and these Yakhchals been in continuous use since at least the fourth-century BCE.
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    6 m
  • Episode 283-Not-So-Famous faces

    Episode 283-Not-So-Famous faces
    May 18 2025
    Every once in a while, an idea hits me that causes one of those stop-the-presses moments, usually caused by some triggering event—in this case, the senseless, ongoing attacks on and defunding of scientific research by a group of decision-makers who aren’t sure if there’s an ‘I’ in the word ‘science.’ They make me think of a line from the movie Armageddon, in which the Air Force general says to Billy Bob Thornton, one of the NASA executives, “You’re asking me to put the future of the planet into the hands of a group of people that I wouldn’t trust with a potato gun.” The world reveres art, especially music and the artists who create it. The same is true of sports figures. Look at the way we hold up rock musicians and professional athletes as if they were celestial deities, sitting beside Zeus and Apollo and the rest of the pantheon. But when’s the last time we saw such reverence for science and the scientists who strive to understand the ways of the universe? In fact, I know you can name musicians and sports figures. But how many scientists can you name, once you get past Einstein, and maybe Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson? It’s time to change that, don’t you think?
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    15 m
  • Episode 282-The Multifaceted World of Rob Dircks

    Episode 282-The Multifaceted World of Rob Dircks
    May 5 2025
    I just got a package in the mail, which contains a signed copy of a brand-new book that just came out from science fiction author Rob Dircks, called “Sunnyside,” along with a cloth patch that I can sew onto a shirt or a baseball cap. The patch says, “HISTORY REPAIR TECHNICIAN: CORRECT THE PAST, PROTECT THE FUTURE.” I won’t give it away, but it’s related to Sunnyside. As you’ve probably already figured out, Rob is my guest my guest in this episode. I’m already halfway through the eBook version of Sunnyside, which came out before the physical book did, but Rob was kind enough to send me a physical copy as well, and that’s what just got here. Man, I love this patch. In this episode, Rob and I are going to talk about writing with a focus on science fiction, but we’re also going to talk about curiosity, creativity, and the challenge of balancing work and the creative pursuits that feed our souls. But there’s more to Rob Dircks that just being a science fiction author and Podcaster. Yes, he’s written a lot of material, and talk about diverse! His books include “You’re Going to Mars!”, a trilogy called “Where the Hell is Tesla,” and “The Wrong Unit.” And those are just his science fiction titles. He’s also the author of “Alphabert: An A-B-C Bedtime Adventure, and “Unleash the Sloth: 75 Ways to Reach Your Maximum Potential by Doing Less” (And I DARE you to hear that title and NOT check it out, along with Rob’s other books).
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    37 m
  • Episode 281-Where Curiosity Leads

    Episode 281-Where Curiosity Leads
    Apr 2 2025
    Curiosity can lead to some weird and wacky places—how about Sopchoppy, Florida, home of the American Worm Gruntin’ Festival? But there’s more to this story than that. Have a listen.
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    8 m
  • Episode 280-Candle in the Darkness

    Episode 280-Candle in the Darkness
    Mar 18 2025
    HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED that every child, by the time they’re 13 or so, should have a good grounding in three specific skills. They should be able to read well; they should have a decent understanding of their individual rights, especially freedom of speech and the sanctity of a free press; and they should understand the scientific method and how it works. Science is real, and it is as accurate as anything can possibly be BECAUSE it is designed to be ferociously self-critical. What if our political system worked the same way? Wow—what an amazing thing THAT would be! Let me say that another way: what if we were to unleash the scientific method on POLITICAL science? What would THAT look like! In this episode, I take a look at that, with the help of none other than Carl Sagan. Have a listen.
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    20 m