Episodios

  • Episode 279–Mystery Sounds

    Episode 279–Mystery Sounds
    Mar 14 2025
    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates underwater microphone arrays throughout the world's oceans, going them th ability to listen to goings-on below the surface. Many sounds capture by those hydrophones they recognize--but some, they don't. In this episode I'll share some of these mysterious sounds with you. What do YOU think they are?
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    9 m
  • Episode 278-Intellectual Inoculation

    Episode 278-Intellectual Inoculation
    Mar 14 2025
    To combat disease, we have the opportunity to go to the doctor and get a vaccine, which helps us create antibodies to resist disease. But how do we inoculate ourselves against a very different and insidious attacker--bias and disinformation? I'll tell you.
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    11 m
  • Episode 277-BCBDXing

    Episode 277-BCBDXing
    Mar 9 2025
    Anyone who has listened to more than two episodes of this program knows that I’m about as weird and geeky as they come. I’m a sucker for science and nature, and in spite of the fact that as a kid I would have rather looked for turtles and snakes in the vacant lots around our town than play sports, a fact that led to more than a few schoolyard brawls, my passion and curiosity have never left me—and hopefully, never will. One of the best things I ever built, one of the most magical, was something called a crystal radio. And listen: if you have a young person in your life, pay attention—this is a great project to do together. The very best resource I’ve found online about crystal radios is maintained by Professor David Goldenberg at the University of Utah. You can find his page at https://goldenberg.biology.utah.edu/fun.shtml. This episode's cover image is from my good friend, Kenn Sato.
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    17 m
  • Episode 276-Biodiversity and Sound

    Episode 276-Biodiversity and Sound
    Feb 4 2025
    One of the most effective yet most overlooked and under appreciated techniques for assessing the biodiversity of an environment is sound--the voice of the place. In this episode, I describe why sound is such a powerful and accurate indicator of bioacoustics health.
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    20 m
  • Episode 275-Jared Blake-The Life of a Field Recordist

    Episode 275-Jared Blake-The Life of a Field Recordist
    Jan 7 2025
    Jared Blake is one of the most important human voices in the natural world today. His unceasing commitment to exhort us all to slow down and listen to the voices of the natural world, to work hard to understand what we're being told, is a cause and effort to be celebrated. in this episode, Jared tells us about his months-long recording expedition to the American Southwest, and about the extraordinary, often eerie, voices he heard while in the wild.
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    37 m
  • Episode 274-Who Authors Really Are

    Episode 274-Who Authors Really Are
    Jan 4 2025
    Here’s a childhood question for you. And I should qualify that—for the most part I’m talking to people who were kids during the 60s, and who shared the books they read with their own children. Here’s the question: What do Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, Kenneth Robeson, Laura Lee Hope, and Victor Appleton have in common? Hopefully, you remember some of those names. The answer is that they’re all well-known authors to anyone who read The Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, Doc Savage, the Campfire Girls, The Happy Hollisters, and a few others. The other thing they have in common? None of them exist, and they never did. They’re all pseudonyms. Here's why.
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    8 m
  • Episode 273-The Strange Story of Fordlandia

    Episode 273-The Strange Story of Fordlandia
    Dec 19 2024
    Were you aware that deep in the Amazon Jungle of Brazil there lies an abandoned American town, built in the 1920s by none other than Henry Ford? Check it out.
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    12 m
  • Episode 272-I'm Your Huckleberry

    Episode 272-I'm Your Huckleberry
    Dec 19 2024
    Remember the movie, “Tombstone”? There’s a scene where Val Kilmer, who plays Doc Holliday, confronts the outlaw, Johnny Ringo. Doc says, “I’m your huckleberry,” which causes Johnny Ringo to go pale as a ghost, because he knows that people don’t generally walk away from a gunfight with Doc Holliday. But here’s the thing: that’s not what he said. The other evening, Sabine told me what he actually said, and that got me thinking about words—you know how I am with stuff related to language—and the next thing I knew I had assembled a list of words that I had never heard in my life, but that now I can’t wait to find a reason to use. Here you go.
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    6 m