Nature and the Apocalypse

On the December 2nd show, I discussed several authors' takes on what life would be like for humans and nature after the apocalypse. First we talked about the new film "The Road" based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. In this story, a father and son make a journey through a post-apocalyptic world in which the sun is obscured by ash and plants and most animals have perished. Humans are pushed to their limits and have turned to cannibalism. It is a story of what humans will do to survive, both physically and emotionally.

We also heard some passages from the Kurt Vonnegut book "Galapagos". In this tale, the human population experiences a severe bottleneck event in which only a handful of fertile humans are left to continue the species after a disease renders most humans infertile. This motley crew of humans is shipwrecked on an island in the Galapagos archipelago. The story is told millions of years later from the viewpoint of ghost that inhabited the ship on which they traveled. At this point, humans have evolved to be coastal creatures that use their flippers and teeth to procure food from the ocean. As with most Vonnegut books, readers will laugh at the silliness of the characters, yet be uncomfortable with how much they can identify with their problems. For another laugh, we also heard from the comedian George Carlin who had some strong opinions on human arrogance exhibited when we try to "save the planet".


Finally, we heard an interview from the NY Times with author Alan Weisman who wrote "The World Without Us". In this book, Weisman explores how nature would take back the earth if the human population suddenly disappeared one day.

As for the news...

• Your skin helps you hear!
• Shoot a cyclist, get 4 months in jail. 
• Help pick the world's ugliest bug!

Music for this episode included: DJ Shadow, Doc Watson, Cat Stevens, M. Ward, Radiohead, Grandaddy, Islands, Mirah, and more.

Test Hiatus No More

NYSK has been on hiatus for 3 weeks because I have been taking comprehensive exams for my doctoral program. The written portion is now over and I have just the oral exam left. As you can see by the posts below, I have been playing catch-up today and hopefully will be back regularly, even through the holidays.

Close the loop!

Humans are trashy... it's a natural fact. In the November 4th show, we learned about some human events that should probably have their own landfill! What are humans doing to deal with all the trash we generate? We could just throw it all away, or we could take three easy steps: Recycle, Reduce, Reuse... and close the loop! You can reduce and reuse by making smart decisions when it comes to purchasing. For example, avoid products with excessive packaging (reduce) and use cloth shopping bags (reuse).

Unfortunately for recycling, the success of this effort is partially determined by the facilities and services available to citizens. The city of Fayetteville, AR (home to KXUA) has had great success with its curbside recycling program, and we talked about some of the guidelines for what exactly can be placed in the green bins. The University of Arkansas campus has an active recycling program that is now sometimes extended to cover big events, such as football games (see Recycling with the Razorbacks).

As for the news, we heard about:

• a murderer with an "aggression gene" getting his sentence cut
• 82 healthy sea turtles hatch at SeaWorld in San Diego
• fellatio in fruit bats prolongs copulation time

No sound quiz this week, but we heard from the likes of Modest Mouse, Sonic Youth, The Cramps, G. Love, Grandaddy, The Faint, Bloc Party, Trinity Roots, and more.

In nature, there are scarier things than ghosts!

In the October 28th show, we learned about bark and wood boring insects such as the European Elm Bark Beetle (Scolytus multistriatus), which is nonnative to the United States. This beetle is a vector for Dutch Elm Disease (DED), caused by a fungus which is transported via the water carrying vessels (i.e. xylem) of elm trees. In response, the tree plugs up its own xylem, thus stopping the movement of the fungus, but unfortunately also blocking movement of water and nutrients. An infected tree eventually loses its leaves prematurely and experiences branch dieback. Elms are commonly planted in urban areas because of their beautiful shape, so the effects of DED are quite visible. Treatment only prolongs the life of the tree at best, so research is currently underway to develop DED-resistant elms.

There are many stories of invasive insects in the U.S. that are changing our forests. For more information on such insects, visit the Forest Pests website. One thing you can do to help prevent the spread of damaging insects, particularly those that bore into wood, is to only burn firewood in areas where it originated, i.e. don't move firewood.

We also learned about the history of pumpkin carving and heard about some recent tidbits from nature:

• Naked mole rats beat cancer
• Ten-foot great white shark nearly bitten in half by a twenty-foot great white shark!
• Do men prefer a pretty face or a hot body?

For the sound quiz, we heard from some traditionally scary beasts such as vampire bats, screech owls, ravens, wolves, and mountain lions. Music featured included David Bowie, Aphex Twin, Mogwai, Blur, Starlight Mints, Devendra Banhart, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, and more!

Our pals, the pigments

On the October 21st show, we learned about why leaves change color during the fall in a temperate deciduous forest. Leaves are important sites of photosynthesis during the spring and summer months. The light-absorbing pigment, chlorophyll, gives leaves their green color. Deciduous trees lose their leaves in the winter in part because there is less water available for photosynthesis during the winter because of freezing temperatures. As the leaves senesce, the green pigment cholorphyll is broken down for its nitrogen, thus revealing accessory pigments such as carotenoids (oranges and yellows). Red is also often revealed, although these pigments (i.e. anthocyanins) are thought by some to be produced during the chlorophyll breakdown in order to protect tissues against the harmful rays of the sun - just like sunscreen!  It has also been proposed that red colors may help make plants less susceptible to attack by insects.

As for the news...

• The Ida fossil now thought to be only a distant relative instead of "the link"
• Music benefits exercise
• Vegetarian spider discovered

For the animal sound quiz, we heard from some bird species that spend their winters in the southeast United States, including the Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ruby-crowned Kinglet (pictured right), Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Dark-eyed Junco, and White-throated Sparrow.

Music featured included The Twilight Sad, Azure Ray, Vivaldi, Olivia Tremor Control, Can, Radiohead, Joan Baez, Talking Heads and more.

Whales do the darndest things!

Check out what these Beluga Whales can do!!! Make sure you watch long enough to see the bubble rings. Want to know more about how and why cetaceans blow rings? Read this article from Scientific American!

Animal Bands

On the September 30th show, I featured bands that love the Kingdom Animalia so much that they decided to make animals their namesake. We heard from the likes of Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear, Cat Stevens, Fruit Bats, Cat Power, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Bonobo, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, and The Toadies. Some of you may be thinking... hmmm... I wonder why that list is so disproportionately Class Mammalia! Well, so did I. Perhaps in future shows I will do a catalog search to come up with some bands whose names reflect Class Insecta or Aves... or maybe Subphylum Chelicerata? You can be assured that I will be doing more shows in which I focus on the music because I had a blast playing these tunes. Hope you enjoy them!

As for the news, we learned that:

• Monarch butterflies rely on a chronometer in their antennae for navigation
• Spiritual women have more sex 
• Teenage students work to reduce the effects of tinnitus, a ringing sensation in the ears

It was an unconventional show, but a lot of fun. Check out the animal bands!

UPDATE: The following week, I did another animal bands show because I had so much fun with this one. Click here for the October 7th podcast.

Turn down that racket!

Inspiration for the September 23rd show came from the noise of the motorcycles that roared into Fayetteville for Bikes, Blues, and Barbecue - an annual motorcycle rally in Northwest Arkansas.  I featured stories about noise pollution and its effects on wildlife... particularly that associated with roads.  But it's not just automobile traffic that messes with wildlife... sonar used by seafaring vessels has been shown to wreak havoc on the navigation and health of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales.

Some interesting things were in the news...

• Mystery of horned females solved?
• Genetics linked to early sexual activity in kids
• Rare heart transplant for a man with reversed organs
• Drink now, pay later

Artists featured included: Mariee Sioux, Cake, The Pixies, Sufjan Stevens, Beck, Mylo, Islands, Ted Leo, Brian Eno, Grand National, The Mountain Goats, and America.

Most frequently quoted b.s. animal facts

Truth or fiction? Unfortunately this question does not oft enter the mind of a person when blurting out some of the most frequently quoted bullsh*t animal facts. On the September 9th show, we ran through a list of these erroneous ideas as seen on cracked.com. They included the mass suicide of lemmings, bees that fly in the face of the laws aerodynamics, the old ostrich with its head in the sand bit, and more.


As for the news in nature, we covered:

• US woman falls off a cliff after marriage proposal
• Yawning toons make an ape gape
• Bananas let off blue halos of cell death

No sound quiz this week :( Artists featured included: Rilo Kiley, The Faint, David Bowie, Eddie Vedder, Wire, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ryan Adams, Tripping Daisy, Deerhoof, Blackalicious, Calexico, and Billie Holiday.

F-I-R-E-I-N-C-A-L-I

Blaze like the fires in California. Blaze like a... fire.. fire.. fire. Just like The Cure is sweeping through my brain right now, so the wildfires swept through California at the end of the summer. In the September 2nd show, we talked all about wildfire and its effects on wildlife. The chaparral ecosystem of California is particularly susceptible to out of control fires because of the hot dry conditions of late summer. So often the media focuses on the property damage caused by these wildfires. What about the turtle that cannot outrun it? Or the bird whose nest goes up in flames? Sometimes even larger animals such as deer cannot out run it, as seen in shocking photos from this video. We learned about other critters affected by fire such as salamanders and shrews from a USGS podcast.

As for the news in nature, we heard about:

• the wolf hunt in Idaho
• male chicks being ground up alive in egg hatcheries
• making music for monkey minds

No sound quiz again :( Darn wireless internet at the station is being finicky!

Music featured included: The Cure (of course), The Decemberists, Voice of the Seven Woods, John Fahey, M. Ward, Starlight Mints, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, and Billy Bragg and Wilco.