On this week’s show journalist and author Michelle Nijhuis talks with How On Earth host Susan Moran about her recently published book, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. It’s a book of hope, history, and even humor. Special thanks to listeners who donated and received copies of the book. And thanks to WW Norton & Company for offering several copies to KGNU to help with the fund drive.
Show producer: Susan Moran Hosts: Chip Grandits, Susan Moran
How clean is “clean”? How do you get clean, and how important is it…could it actually be advantageous to your skin and general health to not try to get too clean? We talk with medical doctor and author Dr. James Hamblin about his new book “Clean: The New Science Of Skin“.
Hosts: Chip Grandits, Joel Parker Executive Producer: Jill Sjong Show Producer and Engineer: Joel Parker Additional Contributions: Shelley Schlender
Despite all the advances in modern medical science, a diagnosis of Cancer often casts a pallor of hopelessness, for both the patient and the practitioner. For many types the prognosis is often poor; the cure is often worse than the disease; victory is usually called simply remission, temporary, perhaps fleeting. One might think the inability to find a cure indicates bafflement by our scientists and stagnation in our efforts. According to Professor Michael Kinch, there is in fact a frenzy of activity by scientists and doctors. And a recent spate of breakthroughs, developing treatments based on the inherent powers of our immune systems, represent not a refutation of all we have known before, but a continuation of efforts made by medical pioneers stretching back over a century. His latest book is titled The End of The Beginning: Cancer, Immunity and the Future of a Cure. Kinch was a professor at Purdue University, where he researched breast and prostate cancer. He then went on to found an oncology program at the biotechnology company MedImmune. He is now professor and vice-chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis. Here he shares with Chip Grandits stories from the front lines in the battle with cancer, both past and present. He speaks with what can best be described as a disciplined optimism.
Host: Chip Grandits Producer: Chip Grandits Engineer: Chip Grandits Additional Contributions: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Joel Parker
In the first feature (start time 1:00) KGNU’s Maeve Conran speaks with Antonia Malchik, author of A Walking Life. This book explores the relationship between walking and our humanity, how we have lost it through a century of car-centric design, how we can regain it and more. This part of the interview, produced especially for How On Earth, focuses on the science behind what makes us able to walk. For a pedestrian, walking is a simple as putting one foot in front of another, right? Well from a scientific perspective, there’s quite a bit to it.
In the second feature (start time 13:10), Chip Grandits speaks with Dr. Detlev Helmig, Associate Research Professor at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research. He is one of several Boulder area climate scientists preparing for The MOSAIC expedition, the largest ever Central Arctic research expedition. In September 2019 A German research icebreaker the Polarstern will head northeast from Tromsø, Norway where it will spend an entire year caught up in the shifting Arctic ice. Dr. Helmig talks about the need to improve climate models of the poles, what motivates a such complex, expensive and dangerous expedition and what motivates scientists to take a 2 month stint on board the Polarstern trapped in the Arctic ice.
This View of Life (starts 6:56) In this episode of How on Earth, we talk with David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist with a special interest in human biocultural evolution. Dr. Wilson is Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at SUNY Binghamton, and president of the Evolution Institute as well as editor in chief of its online magazine This View of Life. It is not just about biology, these ideas are formed by decades of research and drawing on studies that cover topics from the breeding of hens to the timing of cataract surgeries for infants to the organization of of an automobile plant. Last month he published his latest book, also titled This View of Life to present a comprehensive case for what he calls Completing the Darwinian Revolution.
Hosts: Chip Grandits, Joel Parker Producer and Engineer: Joel Parker Additional Contributions: Shelley Schlender, Susan Moran, Alejandro Soto Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
The Goodness Paradox (Teaser): Today’s spring pledge-drive show features brief clips from a recent interview with Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard University, about his new book, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. Wrangham discusses with How On Earth hosts Susan Moran and Chip Grandits how, and why, homo sapiens evolved to be both peaceful and violent (less reactively aggressive and more proactively aggressive, like our bonobo ancestors), and what it bodes for the future of human civilization. We will air the full interview on the March 19 science show. Thanks to Pantheon Books for offering KGNU several copies of Wrangham’s book. And thank you to listeners who pledged and received a copy of the book, and to those who have helped power this community radio station for years. If there are any copies of The Goodness Paradox remaining next Tuesday you can call in then and become a member for $60 or more. Or go to kgnu.org and pledge, or increase, your support. We couldn’t do it without you!
Hosts: Chip Grandits, Susan Moran, Joel Parker Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Beth Bennett
Spend some time at the intersection of art, engineering and science; we’ll hear about the world premier of HOLOSCENES / Little Boxes February 20, 7:00 PM at Fiske Planetarium in Boulder. Get a glimpse of how cutting edge visual artists team up with world class scientists using the latest technology to complement a rational understanding of climate change with visceral images to inspire empathy with the hope to engender action and change. In this episode hear Chip Grandits speak with Marda Kirn, director of EcoArts Connections, Shilpi Gupta software engineer at CIRESfor NOAA Science On a Sphere and Dr. Elizabeth Wetherhead a climate scientist and expert in climate forecasting and modeling, recently retired from CU Boulder and CIRES and now working at climate forecasting for Jupiter Intelligence.
Microbial communities are all around us: in our homes, gardens, oceans, even deep underground but their roles in the function of the biosphere are poorly understood. Today Beth spoke with Professor Noah Fierer, at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, who uses DNA to identify microbes in communities ranging from insect microbiomes to Antarctic soils. He has discovered lots of previously unknown bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic critters which are everywhere, eat everything, and perform surprising roles in ecosystems ranging from our guts to Antarctic soils. You can see more at the Fierer Lab website. And check out the New Yorker article on shower heads. With this episode we resume our series on Our Microbes, Ourselves.
Hosts: Beth Bennett & Chip Grandits Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Chip Grandits
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Listen to the show:
Why Compost? (start time: 7:01) Many of us may feel a little less guilty letting fruits and vegetables go bad, because we figure that this waste, thanks to curbside compost pickup, will be turned into nutritious food for crops, lawns or grasslands down the road. And landfills will spew less methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. The story of food waste and reuse is a complicated one. Our two guests are working on getting composting right — and ultimately on how to make our food-production and consumption systems more sustainable, starting here on the Front Range. Dan Matsch directs the compost department for Eco-Cycle, the nonprofit recycler that works with cities along the Front Range. He also directs Eco-Cycle’s Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM). Mark Easter is an ecologist at Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. Matsch and Easter discuss with host Susan Moran the journey of a rotten zucchini, how composting is tied to the emerging practice of carbon farming, and how we all do our part.
Calendar advisory: Join KGNU and Eco-Cycle on Thursday, January 31, at the Longmont Museum (6:30 to 8:00 P.M) for a special community conversation on plastic waste–challenges and solutions. The event will include representatives from Eco-Cycle, the Inland Ocean Coalition, and local business and sustainability leaders. For more info, go to this website.
Hosts: Susan Moran, Chip Grandits Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Chip Grandits Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Additional contributions: Beth Bennett
Headlines: Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA. Coffee and Parkinson’s disease. Sending your name and a message to the New Horizons spacecraft. Winds on Mars. Water on Asteroids.
Feature: Titan (starts at 8:55) The solar system has so many different worlds that come in all shapes and sizes and histories, from boiling hot Mercury and Venus to icy Pluto and the Kuiper belt. Such extreme alien worlds are exciting, but perhaps the places that catch our imaginations the most are the ones that are more familar – perhaps with the hope of humans one day visiting there and even living there. So we think of places that have atmospheres and have – or once had – liquid water. But then there are those places that live in what you might call “the uncanny valley” between familiar and alien, and perhaps Saturn’s moon Titan fits into that category, with an atmosphere (but not one that you would want to breathe) and lakes (but not ones you would want to swim in).