KGNU - How On Earth

On today’s show we offer two interview features. Feature #1: Last week the Environmental Protection Agency published a seminal report about nitrogen, which is an enormous environmental and public health problem that some scientists put on par with the carbon imbalance. Nitrogen is essential for all life, including ours, but excess nitrogen in the environment … Continue reading "Nitrogen pollution...

Feature #1: Last month, astronomers working on the Hubble Space Telescope announced the discovery of another, fourth moon around Pluto; this moon is so small that it could fit easily inside Boulder County (a pretty tricky thing to find at a distance of three and a half billion miles). The researchers who found the new … Continue reading "Pluto’s Moons // Wildlife Preservation"

On today’s show we featured an interview with Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who is principal investigator on NASA’s New Horizons mission. He told us about a fourth, tiny moon orbiting Pluto—found last month by his team during observations in support of New Horizons, which will arrive at Pluto in 2015. Here’s an … Continue reading "Extended interview with Alan Stern"

We talk with one of the nation’s leading nutrition scientists  . . . whose opinions about food and health might not be popular with the American Salt Institute . . . OR with the USDA.  Dariush Mozaffarian is with the Harvard School of Public Health, in the department of epidemiology.  Current projects include leadership of … Continue reading "Lean Deli Meat vs A Big Fat Steak . . . and Water in Ou...

This podcast provides extended version of our interview with Janos Perczel about his new Invisibility Cloak. Background: An undergraduate  at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland has overcome a major hurdle in the development of invisibility cloaks by envisioning an optical device that would allow the cloak to hide things against CHANGING backgrounds.  The … Continue reading "Janos Perczel –...

Here’s an extended version of Shelley Schlender’s interview with Dariush Mozaffarian on Salt.  Note that in the interview, Shelley asks Dr. Mozaffarian to comment on some of the assertions made in the popular press, Scientific American story, It’s Time to End the War on Salt.”  The interview mentions a citation in the popular press article … Continue reading "Harvard Epidemiologist Dariush Mozaffa...

In November Boulder will be asking the voters to approve the conversion of the electrical utility from one run by Xcel Energy to one run by the city.  While there are many, many political issues associated with this vote, there are technical ones as well.  We have on our show today Ken Regelson.  Ken is a … Continue reading "Tech aspects of Boulder utility municipalization"

  Grammy Award-winning music producer Tom Wasinger comments on the entries to the How on Earth theme song contest.  Give us comments on your favorite theme song here.  The winner will be announced on August 12, 2011. Co-hosts:  Ted Burnham and Tom McKinnon Engineer: Tom McKinnon Executive Producer: Susan Moran Producer: Tom McKinnon

This week’s How On Earth offers two features: Co-host Susan Moran interviews Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor for The Atlantic magazine and author of the new book, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. Madrigal spins tales of the bicycle boom in the 1800s and how it paved the way for cars, … Continue reading "Green Tech Author // NCAR Climate Scientist"

      Feature #1: Many problems plague the oceans and the fish and other species that inhabit them: overfishing, pollution, and much more. But perhaps the greatest threat to sea life – and possibly to humans – is ocean acidification.  That’s when the chemistry of the ocean changes and causes seawater to become more … Continue reading "Ocean Acidification // Citizen Science"

At its most basic level, science can be considered as non-political or at least politically neutral: science is dedicated to the collection of facts and interpreting them to help us understand the universe and how it works. For that reason, many people – one may even say our culture in general – places a high … Continue reading "Science Education, Evolution & Creationism"

This week on How On Earth co-host Susan Moran interviews Hannah Nordhaus, Boulder-based author of the new book, The Beekeeper’s Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Feed America. Nordhaus describes how one passionate, colorful and quixotic beekeeper named John Miller struggles against all odds to keep beekeeping–and bees–alive at a time … Continue reading "Beekeeping in Troubled Times...

The World Health Organization has officially listed cells phones as a possible carcinogen. One expert who’s not surprised at the designation is University of Colorado, distinguished professor Frank Barnes. For decades, Barnes has cobbled together hard-to-find research dollars to study the biological effects of magnetic fields and radiation, including cell phone radiation. In 2008, he … Continue re...

  Here is the extended version of the interview with CU Electrical Engineering Professor Frank Barnes about cell phone safety.  

We talk with Sandi Copeland, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at CU, about this story: Two million years ago, two-legged apes roamed the African landscape. Many of these ancient hominins,  lived in limestone caves in what is now South Africa. We know this through fossilized skull fragments and teeth from those caves. But fossils only tell … Continue reading "Cavemen Stayed Local while Women Left...

This week co-host Susan Moran speaks with Dr. Doug Kenney, director of the Western Water Policy Program at the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado,  Boulder’s law school. Kenney sheds light on the Colorado River Compact and how population growth, climate change, and water politics, are expected to further threaten our future … Continue reading "Colorado river crisis // “The...

We present the second part of Joel Parker’s interview of Joshua Foer, author of the book “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything” (the full interview can be found here).  To round out the “brain theme” of the show, we also include an excerpt of BBC’s Science in Action where Jon Stuart … Continue reading "Moonwalking with Einstein (Part 2) // Brain Evolution"

We share excerpts from a talk about the Future of Spaceflight, presented at CU-Boulder in April, featuring Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute and Elon Musk of Space X. Producer: Shelley Schlender Co-hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham Engineer: Shelley Schlender Listen to the show:

We learn about new research that indicates that the combination of exercise plus eating high cholesterol foods may help build lean body mass, even in older adults. What’s more, eating high cholesterol foods such as cheese, beef fat and eggs, when combined with exercise, also seems more heart safe than most people think, according to … Continue reading "Gold Lab Symposium & Fat for Stronger Muscles...

On this How On Earth show we explore how climate change is taking a toll on human health, and then how “smart grid” technology can help reduce the carbon footprint of electrical power generation.  Co-host Susan Moran interviews Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School; … Continue reading "Climate-health link//Smart grid"

Tom McKinnon interviews, via phone, Peter Asmus of Pike Research about Virtual Power Plants.  This emerging information technology may help to integrate more renewable power onto the gird.  And even save money for customers who are willing to turn down their energy demand when the grid is stressed. At the recent Conference on World Affairs, … Continue reading "Virtual power plants//Wildfires and c...

We discuss the environmental and human costs of natural gas drilling practices, and then the human toll of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico one year after the disaster. On natural gas drilling practices, Susan Moran interviews Steve Torbit, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Rocky Mountain Center; and Steven … Continue reading "Natural Gas Boom//BP Oil Spill’s...

Here’s a longer version of my interview with Anjali Bhatara, which aired on today’s program. Dr. Bhatara is with the Laboratory of the Psychology of Perception at the University of Paris, where she studies the interactions between music and the brain, the mind and the emotions. She has published several papers on music perception in … Continue reading "Extended interview with Anjali Bhatara"