OSIRIS-REx (starts at 1:00) I
n today’s first feature, we hear about OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first mission to do a sample return from an asteroid. Our guest is Dr. Vicky Hamilton, a Staff Scientist at the Southwest Reserarch Institute’s Boulder office, and a member of that mission. She talks about the scientific goals of OSIRIS-REx, and how it plans to obtain and return a sample of the asteroid Bennu.
New Horizons (starts at 14:05) 
Our second spacey feature is about a mission that you might describe as exploring “beyond the beyond”. The piano-sized, nuclear-powered New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto over 3 years ago, and now has its sights set on an even more distant target named Ultima Thule. To talk about that, we have another local scientist from Southwest Research Institute, Dr. Cathy Olkin, Institute Scientist and also a New Horizons mission Deputy Project Scientist. We hear about the flyby events that will take place on New Year’s Eve.
Host, Producer, and Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Susan Moran
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Feature: Titan (starts at 8:55) 
Climate Change (starts at 6:30) 
Dogs have an incredible sense of smell – it’s so good, people can train dogs to sniff our everything from illegal drugs and explosives to lost people and even computer “thumbnail” drives, that maybe someone is trying to sneak into a high security building so they can sneak out information. So how about dogs sniffing for something life-saving, such as a dangerous drop in blood sugars for an insulin-injecting diabetic? For a healthy person, the amount of sugar in the entire bloodstream at anytime is roughly 1 teaspoon. One teaspoon of sugar in around 5 liters of blood. That’s it. For most people, the body’s own insulin production keeps blood sugars in a relatively healthy range, with the pancreas adjusting insulin levels in miniscule amounts to keep blood sugars in balance. For a diabetic who injects insulin, the injection itself can end up putting too much or too little insulin into the body, and this is especially dangerous when it forces blood sugar levels to go far lower than they normally would. Modern technology is reducing the risk, somewhat, through continuous blood glucose monitoring devices. But even these have a lag time, and since sometimes a diabetics blood sugar levels can change dramatically in just 30 minutes, there’s still risk. But now, there are new “blood sugar monitors”. They don’t require batteries. They’re very friendly, they have incredible noses, and they even come equipped with wagging tails. In today’s edition of How on Earth, we talk about “Dogs for Diabetics”.
We present another part of our interview with 
We also talk with Boulder Psychiatrist Dr. Will Van Derveer, who leads the 
Here we provide the full interview by How on Earth’s Joel Parker of planetary scientists Dr. Alan Stern (
With graduation season is upon us, today’s edition of How on Earth is the second of a two-part annual “Graduation Special”. Our guests in the studio today are scientists who will receive their Ph.D. in a STEM-related field. They talk about their thesis research, their grad school experiences, and what they have planned next.
HyunJoo Oh – CU Boulder, 
Nathan Parrish – CU Boulder, 
Diana Perry – Stockholm University, 
Oliver Paine
Diba Mani
John Nardini
You may be among many who wistfully harken back to the “golden days” of the past. For some people the past does look rosier, or perhaps the present looks grim, but, according to 