Category: Episodes

Wind: It’s Past & Future

Credit: Harper

The Force of Wind (start time: 7:10)  For those living here on Colorado’s Front Range, you’ve likely had close encounters with wind — whether you’ve witnessed in fear branches snapping off trees in a windstorm, or simply looked up to marvel at the UFO-like lenticular cloud formations created by fast westerly winds. Love it or hate it, wind is one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, forces that shape our world. In this week’s show, host Susan Moran, along with cohost Joel Parker, interview Simon Winchester about his just-published, book,   The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind. Mr. Winchester has written many books, including the New York Times best-seller The Professor and the Madman, as well as Knowing What We Know, and The Perfectionists. His new book explores how wind has influenced everything from the outcomes of war battles, to the advancement of renewable electricity, to the disappearance of several inches of precious top soil across the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Joel Parker
Show Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Joel Parker
Contributors: Beth Bennett, Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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World Domination…by Slime Molds?

On today’s show, Beth speaks with award-winning science writer Jennifer Frazer about her upcoming book: The Slime Mold’s Guide to World Domination: A Natural Mystery. The book is a funny natural history of slime molds that’s also a mystery that asks: how can a giant crawling cell possibly be intelligent?” Jennifer has degrees in biology and plant pathology from Cornell University and in science writing from MIT, AND has blogged about the natural history of neglected organisms for nine years for Scientific American. Get ready for an eye-opening visit to the peculiar world of slime molds, not the creepy crawly things you may expect. Also, delightful dialog from the new crop of interning journalists, our Earhtlings!

Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
Show Producer: Beth Bennett and Shelley Schlender
Additional Contributions: Benita Lee and Mac Hebebrand

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:58 — 37.0MB)

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Critical Earth Minerals Hiding in Plain Sight – Elizabeth Holley

Elizabeth Holley cc Colorado School of Mines

Critical Earth Minerals  Hiding in Plain Site – Colorado School of Mines professor Elizabeth Holley shares  how the US could break its dependency on critical earth mineral imports, and lead the world in environmentally safe ways to do it.

Show Producer/Host/Engineer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:58 — 37.1MB)

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Better Steam//CU-Boulder at World Climate Conference

Todd Bandhauer with heat pump – cc CSU

Great Steam . . . from a Heat Pump (starts 1:00)  Time Magazine named CSU Engineer Todd Bandhauer one of 2025’s top climate innovators.   His heat pump makes steam better than fossil fuel steam boilers.  Interview thanks to Rocky Mountain Community Radio and Aspen Public Radio.

Max Boykoff at COP30 cc CU-Boulder

CU-Boulder at COP30 Climate Conference  (Starts 7:05) CU Boulder’s Max Boykoff attended the world climate conference –the first in 30 years without an official US delegation .  He describes China filling the vacuum left by the US , and also oil and gas lobbyists attending “Blue Zone” talks where indigenous groups – who often are suffering the worst effects of climate change, being banned.  For the CU-Boulder report Go here.

Show Producer/Host/Engineer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:46 — 36.8MB)

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Megadroughts Could Cause World Wide Dustbowls — CSU Melinda Smith Explains

Dust Storm in Texas in the 1930s

Dustbowl Days Today (starts 5:00)  Colorado State University grasslands scientist Melinda Smith explains the study she conducted with the grassroots help of nearly 200 scientists around the world. Their research indicates grasslands are vulnerable to Megadroughts, which climate change is making more common.  Just 4 years of drought in a row may trigger Dust Bowls on the scale of the Midwestern dustbowls of the 1930s.  Smith explains why and what can be done to save regions around the world from dustbowls.

Hosts: Abby O’Brien, Lorraine Healy, Mac Hebebrand
Show Producer/Engineer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:55 — 59.3MB)

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Winter is Coming: Why Leaves Fall

The physiology of deciduous trees (start time: 11:09) For many people living in places with four distinct seasons, such as here in Colorado, a favorite pastime at this midpoint in autumn is watching the faded leaves fall from their branches, and listening to the crackling sound while raking up the dried leaves. In this week’s How On Earth show, we explore questions like, Why do the leaves of aspen, ash and other deciduous trees “change” color in the fall?  (Spoiler alert: They actually reveal their true colors.) Why do they shed their leaves every fall? And what happens to the naked trees in the winter? Host Susan Moran interviews Dr. Stephanie Mayer, a senior instructor emerita in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
-Resources for winter watering:
Colorado State University Extension
Denver Botanic Garden
-Resources for citizen science opportunities:
The National Phenology Network

Host/ Show Producer: Susan Moran
Cohost/Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
Headline Contributors: Lorraine Healy, Max Hebebrand, Shelley Schlender

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Peak Performance: Revisiting a Classic

Five years ago, Beth spoke with Dr Marc Bubbs about his best-selling hardcover book, PEAK: THE NEW SCIENCE OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE. Since then, Bubbs has been on the leading edge of new developments in the physiology and psychology of athletic performance. Bubbs helps athletes and other clients in Canada and England cope with metabolic diseases, Bubbs is also the performance nutritionist for the Canadian men’s national basketball team, In addition, he consults with teams in the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. On this week’s show, Beth talks to Marc about his revised edition of the book, just published, and some of the new developments and strategies he describes.
Also on this week’s show, meet our new interns from CU: Owen Latham and Mac Hebrebrand!

Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Show Producers: Beth Bennett and Shelley Schlender
Additional Contributions: Owen Latham and Mac Hebrebrand

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:43 — 38.1MB)

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Into The Unknown (Part 2)

Into The Unknown (starts at 9:05) What do we know about the universe, and how do we know we know it? Conversely, what do we know we don’t know, what don’t we know that we don’t know, and why not?

To help us unravel these age-old philosophical questions in the context of current science, our guest is Dr. Kelsey Johnson, who received her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado.  Dr. Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, and the former president of the American Astronomical Society. She is the founder of the Dark Skies, Bright Kids program, and wrote the children’s book Constellations for Kids. Her most recent book is Into The Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos. In this episode, Dr. Johnson takes us into that unknown, and talks about what we know, what we might know, and what we might never know.

Part 1 of this interview is available here.

We begin this show with some pre-Halloween spooky science news.

Host: Joel Parker
Show Producer/Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Additional contributions:Benita Lee, Jack Armstrong, Shelley Schlender

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:45 — 36.7MB)

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Into The Unknown (Part 1)

Into The Unknown (starts at 7:57) What do we know about the universe, and how do we know we know it? Conversely, what do we know we don’t know, what don’t we know that we don’t know, and why not?

To help us unravel these age-old philosophical questions in the context of current science, our guest is Dr. Kelsey Johnson, who received her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado.  Dr. Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, and the former president of the American Astronomical Society. She is the founder of the Dark Skies, Bright Kids program, and wrote the children’s book Constellations for Kids. Her most recent book is Into The Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos. In this episode, Dr. Johnson takes us into that unknown, and talks about what we know, what we might know, and what we might never know.

Part 2 of this interview is available here.

Host: Joel Parker
Show Producer/Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Additional contributions: Shelley Schlender, Mac Hebebrand, Lorraine Healy

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:53 — 36.9MB)

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Autumn Insects and their Songs

cicada
Credit: Tim McNary

Science & Songs of Katydids, Cicadas, etc. (start time: 3:08)  It’s the time of year to savor listening each night to the pulsating and clicking sounds of katydids, cicadas, crickets and other straight-winged insects, all crying out for a mate. Soon, with the first big frost, the songs, along with the arthropods themselves, will disappear. In this week’s show, a longtime arthropod expert, Tim McNary, talks with host Susan Moran about things like, who are these small yet very vocal insects? What’s their life cycle like? What body parts make those noises? What role do these vocal insects play in the broader ecosystem? McNary is a curator at the Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Previously, he worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the field of grasshopper and locust management.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Joel Parker
Show & Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:52 — 36.9MB)

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