Category: Episodes

Operation Music – Why or Why Not?

 

cc wiki commons – Prerana R Mohanty

A heart attack forced Boulder community leader and journalist Sam Fuqua to need emergency care.  While being wheeled into the operating room, Sam hoped to soothe his anxiety by hearing some favorite music.  His hope had scientific merit.  Studies like this indicate that surgery patients who get to choose what music plays during surgery, require fewer painkillers and have an easier recovery.

Music might seem a simple and easy comfort to offer surgery patients, but when How on Earth’s Mac Hebebrand asked some local surgery centers about their views on music, almost all declined the interviews . . . all, except for Boulder Heart Cardiologist Nelson Trujillo.

Stay tuned to hear Cardiologist Nelson Trujillo‘s discussion about music during surgery, and to find out what happened to Sam.

Host: Mac Hebebrand
Show Producers: Shelley Schlender & Mac Hebebrand
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

 

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Colorado River // Ghostbots

Colorado River cc Luca Galuzzi

Colorado River Water (starts 1:00)   Steep cuts are ahead in the use of Colorado River water by Arizona and California.  But what about Colorado?  For answers, we talk with CU-Boulder’s Doug Kenney, water law expert and  chair of the Colorado River Project.

Jack Manning CU Boulder Information Scientist cc CU-Boulder

Ghostbots (starts )  AI apps offer to help people  “talk” with the dead.  CU Boulder Information Scientists  Jed Brubaker and Jack Manning and Boulder Unitarian Church Community Outreach minister Jeremy Nichol share research and insights about how these apps work and user responses.

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

 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:45 — 34.0MB)

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Just What is Wilderness?

What is a wilderness, really? Here in the US we think of it as undeveloped land, put aside to appreciate its beauty and remoteness. In other lands and cultures, wilderness is a powerful, ancient concept, at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. For thousands of years, people have sought out uncontrolled, unknown, or uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from normal life. More recently these “pristine” places have been seen as the subject of a last effort to repair a planet imperiled by humans. In her new book The Savage Wilderness, award-winning writer Cal Flyn traverses many of these wild lands—the supposedly uninhabited wilds of the world—and finds that such truly untouched lands don’t exist: Nearly every wilderness has been or is actively inhabited by humans. Here are ascetics in search of God in the desert; lonely shepherds tending their sheep under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks. Cal is the current Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University, and has written for publications including The Guardian, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal. She was named a 2022 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, is the winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of the British Academy Book Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. And as will hear, she speaks and writes articulately and passionately about the meaning of wilderness and why we should value it.

Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
Show Producer: Beth Bennett
Engineer: Abby O’Brien

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Eat Your Garden!

Gardens are popping up everywhere, from community plots to elementary school yards to vertical plantings. A unique approach proposed by award winning British landscaper, Harry Holding, is integrating the edible aspect of vegetable gardens with the esthetic side of flower, bush and tree landscapes. Harry is a renowned garden designer known for his award-winning creations at the Royal Horticulture Society Chelsea Flower Shown. In his gorgeous book, Eat Your Garden, he focuses on growing and designing with “edimentals” (plants that are both beautiful and edible).And, he provides a step by step approach for integrating edible gardening into any space. I’ll link to the book web site because the photos are stunning and while you might think this approach requires too much water for the Front Range, there are several edimentalists working in Colorado (Basalt and Glenwood Springs).

And speaking of links, here is the site for Cleanup Day: https://secure.everyaction.com/a8ryaNbYxEeVy63nAWFUzg2?contactdata=ywSl5RmBd9xS2BWXkMaiWOmVajroOxbf4dSMJZxu2pZwJYgi%2fkTwVJksNA4YM6tiLlWkXcAu5jcGzPpQs32OgNc4uxw6hM1dBzFLGC6HngS3UcslUDoN2xK4UhjkpvA8FMs0HG7DARHDpQU2Sis07+gcs8rbK0Ddmj32tiMJ8BHFAGgbqsbN+RySsiZiFUOHjkhx2udpY48pjPARak8SOg%3d%3d&quick=true&emci=77c479c0-557a-f111-b337-000d3a1558ce&emdi=3810aa15-b17b-f111-b337-000d3a1558ce&ceid=5381405

Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
Show Producer: Beth Bennett
Additional Contributions: Susan Moran, Shelley Schlender, Joel Parker
Engineer: Abby O’Donnell

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Plastics: Health Risks & Solutions

Image credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Microplastics: Health Concerns, Solutions (start time: 6:02)  The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a new rule related to monitoring 30 unregulated chemicals in drinking water that could pose human health risks. While the list includes pesticides and so-called “forever” substances, it omits microplastics, as well as pharmaceuticals. That’s despite pressure from Democratic politicians, as well as advocacy groups over the last two years urging the EPA to include microplastics in the new rule due to human health concerns. This apparent about-face by the EPA, as well as the fact that this week is Plastics Pollution Awareness Week in Colorado, prompted us at How On Earth to summon experts to shed some light on what is known about the human health risks of exposure to microplastics, as well as what’s being done here in Colorado and nationwide to reduce plastic production and waste. Host Susan Moran interviews Dr. Trisha Vaidyanathan, science director at Beyond Plastics; Ryan Call, policy analyst at EcoCycle; and Emily Freeman, circular economy policy advisor at the City of Boulder. For info about how to join the Boulder Plastic Count (July 20-26), click here.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Joel Parker
Show Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer & Headline Contributor: Beth Bennett

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Poking the Squid – What We Can Learn from Animal Sex

Poking the Squid –  Good Reads calls author and illustrator Perrin Roosevelt Ireland’s new book a brilliantly funny, beautifully illustrated graphic nonfiction book that shatters our puritanical and binary notions of nature..

Hosts/Producers/Engineers: Shelley Schlender, Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:07 — 37.3MB)

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Childrearing Tips (and Cautionary Tales) From the Animal Kingdom

Parenting Across the Animal Kingdom (start time: 5:02) As humans, we tend to think that we raise our children with more care than any other animal on the planet. After all, human kids depend on their parents on average for much longer than do those of any other species. But are we really so unique in how we care? How do other animals out there care for their young? What are the evolutionary benefits of “it takes a village” childrearing, with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and others playing a big role, as compared to the nuclear family-type model:  mom and dad, or a single mom or dad? And are there evolutionary benefits of  “tough love” and extreme free-range parenting? Science journalist and humorist Elizabeth Preston starting asking such questions after giving birth to her first child nine years ago. She found answers (through scientists and their research, and quirky encounters) in the lives of  beetles, killer whales, Canada jays, elephants, poison frogs, and many more animals. In this week’s show, How On Earth host Susan Moran interviews Preston about her new book, The Creatures’ Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care.

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

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Kyle Datta – Energy Security, War & Renewable Energy

from Kyle Datta’s presentation at the Gold Lab Symposium

Global conflicts are revealing vulnerabilities in the global reliance on imported fossil fuels and centralized power.  Energy Analyst Kyle Datta says energy security needs may speed the adoption of renewables and “as a side effect,” reduce the rise of global warming.

For Datta’s full speech, which he presented with videos at the 2026 Gold Lab Symposium, go here.

Host/Show Producer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Susan Moran

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Hidden Nations of Animals

Complex Animal Networks (start time: 7:17) As humans, we’re all familiar with, as we live in and are members of, nations. But most of us don’t think of non-human species, be they tiny ants or beavers or bears,  in this context. But Ryan Huling does, and he hopes you will, too. In this week’s How On Earth, host Susan Moran interviews Ryan Huling about his just-published debut book, The Hidden Nations of Animals: A Grand Tour of Earth’s Wild Civilizations. The book is part travel and nature writing, part cartography, part  exploration of sophisticated communication and movement patterns among wild animal populations in the far corners of the Earth, and under our feet. Some of the central characters in the book, such as  red-crowned cranes, are thriving in places that are too dangerous for humans to live. Huling is a senior writer at the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Joel Parker
Show Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Headline contributors: Joel Parker, Shelley Schlender, Susan Moran

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Climate Change: Perils and Progress

Tromso, Norway
Photo credit: Tom Yulsman

Climate Change & Action: From the Arctic to Colorado (start time: 2:33) Twenty years ago the Academy-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth was released in theaters nationwide. It sparked millions of people to ask themselves, How can I wake up and do something to help solve, not just contribute to,  the climate crisis?  The film helped form the modern climate movement, following the environmental movement of the 1970s. Two decades later, despite a rise in public awareness of and concern about the impacts of melting sea ice, and intensifying droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, the Trump administration has met the moment by calling global warming a hoax, rolling back environmental regulations, defunding climate science research,  and demanding more oil, gas and coal production.  Meanwhile, many Americans, besieged by soaring costs of gasoline and other commodities, and struggling to pay rent or mortgage, are more immediately concerned  about the economy and other issues than climate change per se. Yet despite shrinking federal support for renewable energy energy, the green electricity revolution is happening in many states and around the world.  In this week’s show, KGNU host Susan Moran interviews Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center; and science journalist Tom Yulsman, who until recently was the director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was also a journalism professor.

Host & Show Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Abby O’Brien
Executive Producer: Susan Moran

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:11 — 36.0MB)

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