The American West is undergoing one of the most extreme fire seasons on record. With megafires creating apocalyptic scenes across large swaths of California, Oregon, and Washington, and a pandemic still in full effect, how are residents and firefighters responding? Are wildfires like the ones seen these past few weeks an anomaly? Or is a burning horizon something people out West will have to learn to live with?
Guest: Julie Cart, reports about climate change and environmental issues for CalMatters.
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NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce had to know more when she recently heard this mind-bending fact for the first time: a quarter of all known animal species are beetles.
Turns out — it's not just that beetles are incredibly diverse. It's that they inspire a lot of passionate study within the scientific community. But there's at least one other animal that might give beetles a run for their money.
Smells repel and attract; they bring emotionally charged memories to mind; they guide behavior and thought nonconsciously; they give food much of its taste; and the loss of sense of smell can help diagnose disease. But what features of the world do smells pick out? What is the olfactory code?
In her new book, Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind (Harvard UP, 2020), Ann-Sophie Barwich delves into the mysteries of smell and the difficulties of scientific attempts to explain how it works. The science of smell is still quite young – it was as recently as 1991 that olfactory receptor genes were discovered, earning discoverers Linda Buck and Richard Axel a Nobel Prize in 2004. What smell researchers have found is an enormously complex system of 400 kinds of olfactory receptors responding to 5000 different features of molecules: compare that to our visual system’s 3 color receptors responding to specific wavelengths of light. Barwich, who is assistant professor of cognitive science and history and philosophy of science at Indiana University Bloomington, also interweaves excerpts from interviews with contemporary researchers – including Buck and Axel -- into her discussion, providing an oral history of how smell is being investigated as it is happening now.
Recorded interviews of Donald Trump by Bob Woodward show he understood the threat of coronavirus in February, while he insisted in public it would “disappear” and was no worse than the seasonal flu. Trump addressed these revelations at a press conference yesterday, confirming that he intentionally downplayed the virus because he’s a "cheerleader" for the country.
Wildfires are continuing to burn across the West, leading to mandatory evacuations for tens of thousands of people, and a blanket of smoke covering much of the Bay Area. High temperatures resulting from climate change have set the perfect conditions for this year's unprecedented rapid scale and spread of fires.
And in headlines: the largest refugee camp in Europe was almost totally destroyed, Caster Semenya lost her appeal to compete in the next Olympics, and a whistleblower alleges that DHS downplayed the threat of white supremacy and Russian election interference.
Links:
Christian Cooper's comic book "It's A Bird" rb.gy/bdecsl
Three L.A. comedians are quarantined in a podcast studio during a global pandemic. There is literally nothing to be done EXCEPT make content. These are "The Corona Diaries" and this is Episode 80. Sitting in with us again today is our hilarious next door neighbor, Daniel Magden! Follow him on Twitter @MagdenDaniel and check out his podcast "Reefer Sadness". Music at the end is "Bubbles in My Beer" by Willie Nelson.
A new podcast from The New York Times suggests that “Nice White Parents” are the reason for failures in the education system. The podcast, according to The Heritage Foundation's Mary Clare Amselem, cites “examples of parents getting involved in the day-to-day operation of the school, and paints this involvement as an affront to public schooling," implying parental involvement is somehow detrimental.
Amselem joins the podcast to discuss it.
We also cover these stories:
About 2,000 American troops are coming home from Iraq this month.
Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday during a press conference that a federal program called Operation Legend is cracking down on Chicago’s surging crime, making more than 500 arrests and charging 124 people with federal criminal counts since the beginning of the program.
The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it will represent President Donald Trump in a defamation case filed by E. Jean Carroll, a woman who claims to have been raped by Trump in the 1990s.
With some exceptions, state legislatures moved in the direction of easing criminal penalties in a variety of areas in 2019. Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute details his research.
With some exceptions, state legislatures moved in the direction of easing criminal penalties in a variety of areas in 2019. Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute details his research.
In the interview, Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple is here to talk about her latest film, Desert One. Through new archival footage and the various perspectives of key players, the film reveals the true story behind the secret mission to free hostages captured during the 1979 Iranian revolution. She and Mike discuss how she approaches the stories she tells, the narrative problems she had to solve in this film, and how persistent she had to be to get Jimmy Carter on camera. Desert One is available to stream online and in select theaters.
In the spiel, Trump’s taxpayer-funded legal defense.
