Radio Curious

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Mushrooms-What they are, how to locate them and how to cook them is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious.

Our guest is Chef Chad Hyatt, who after leaving a ten year career as an engineer realized that cooking was this true passion, and became a classically trained chef.  As part of this transformation he focused on mushrooms and sought out new techniques and traditional ethnic recipes from all over the world to apply to mushrooms.

Chad Hyatt, is the author of “The Mushroom Hunter’s Kitchen.” This book provides over 100 easy to follow detailed mushroom recipes, some of which we discuss in this interview.  And for that reason you might want to be prepared to take notes of some of Hyatt’s comments.

The Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club will present a Mushroom Delight Dinner at the Caspar Community Center on Saturday, November 10, 2018.  Chef Chad Hyatt will be in charge.  For further information go to mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org.

When Chef Chad Hyatt and I visited by phone on October 28, 2018, from his home in Santa Clara County, California, we discussed mushrooms, what they are, how to cook them and how to safely forage wild mushrooms.  We began our conversation with a focus on general details of cooking, and started when I asked him to expound on the opening sentence in his book, “Great food is all about the details.”

The book Chad Hyatt recommends is “Homage to Catalonia,” by George Orwell, based on Orwell’s experience in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

This program was recorded on October 28, 2018.

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Guy R. McPherson, Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona, is our guest in this second of a two part series about abrupt climate change. In part one, podcasted at radiocurious.org, we considered the existing circumstances likely to bring about abrupt climate change, in particular, the total melt of the polar ice caps. This would result in the polar sea water absorbing heat from the sun rather than reflecting it, raising ocean temperatures and shutting off our “planetary air-conditioner.”
These consequences could make Mother Earth grossly inhospitable to human habitation potentially shut down our ability to grow grain and other crops we depend on for food. Without food readily available, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.
Here in part two of our conversation with Professor McPherson we further discuss this pending potential catastrophe and how we may each personally be able to relate to it.
Guy McPherson and I visited by phone on August 12, 2018, and began with his comments of what could occur after the global temperatures preclude the ability to grow grains, the other foods upon which we rely and the resulting reduction of industrial activity. Finally in this visit we discuss how, in the wake of grimness, joy may be created, along with other options.
Additional information about abrupt climate change may be found in the following four links
President of Finland talking to Trump; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDSrGfdjdxA,
President of Finland in north Russia https://finlandtoday.fi/president-niinisto-in-north-russia-if-we-lose-the-arctic-we-lose-the-world/,
Human extinction by 2026 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50050.htm
This program was recorded on August 12, 2018.

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Drastic consequences to life as we know it, here on Mother Earth are the topics of this, the first of a two part series on abrupt climate change. Once again we visit with Guy McPherson, a Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona.

McPherson discusses how global warming is affecting climate change. He explains the physics of what will occur when the polar ice cap has melted ending its ability to reflect the heat of the sun. Instead the heat of the sun will be absorbed by the world’s oceans. McPherson predicts that could well occur by 2022 or sooner, causing the temperature of the oceans to increase.  McPherson argues that this temperature will result in the loss of the “planetary air-conditioner” and the loss of habitat for human species.

Professor Guy McPherson and I visited by phone while he was on a speaking tour, on August 12, 2018.  We began our conversation when I asked his to describe the current state of climate change, now in 2018.

Professor Guy McPherson’s website is: https://guymcpherson.com/

Information about abrupt climate change may be found here, as explained by the President of Finland to the President of the United States: https://finlandtoday.fi/president-niinisto-in-north-russia-if-we-lose-the-arctic-we-lose-the-world/
Additional information can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDSrGfdjdxA, and here from the National Academies: https://nas-sites.org/arctic-interactive/images/Arctic_Matters-booklet.pdf

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In 1990 Earth First activists from Mendocino County were on a road trip to rally support for a summer effort to help protect old growth redwoods in northern California. For years prior logging practices took well over 90% of the original redwood growth in the area. Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari, the organizers were in their car in Oakland, California, May 1990 when a bomb exploded underneath the driver’s seat where Judi Bari sat.

She and Darryl Cherney were immediately arrested suspected of bombing themselves. Although charges were never filed against the two, authorities have yet to locate the bombers. Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari sued and won a jury award of four million dollars against the Oakland Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for violating their 1st and 4th amendment rights.

The film, “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” produced by Darryl Cherney, attempts to answer the question posed in the title and examines their struggle with law enforcement in finding the real bomber and chronicles the history of the local environmental movement here, in Northern California.

Christina Aanestad, the Radio Curious assistant producer spoke with Darryl Cherney about the film he produced and his experiences resulting from the bombing. They visited on March 29, 2011, at the studios of KMEC radio, inside the Mendocino Environmental Center, a hub for social and environmental movements, including Earth First! They began when Christina asked Darryl Cherney to describe the attempted assassination against him and Judi Bari.

The website for Darryl Cherney’s film is www.whobombedjudibari.com.

The book he recommends is, “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” by Alan Shlain.

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The California coastal redwood trees are some of the oldest living things in the world. Other than cutting the tree down, the best way to determine their age, or the age of any tree is with an incremental borer. That’s a long narrow tube twisted into the tree from the bark to the pitch at the center of the tree.  A small finger-size “wooden rod” is removed revealing one line which represents one tree ring is then removed and counted.  Each tree ring represents one year of the tree’s life.

Though few old growth redwood forests exist now, some of the remaining redwoods are estimated to be close to 2000 years old.  Although that is easy to say, it is beyond my ken to fathom.
96 year old Jack Scott of Ukiah, California, is our guest on this edition of Radio Curious.  In 1936 before the era of the chain-saw, Scott harvested old growth redwoods beginning at 15 years old.  Part of the harvest process was to push and then pull one end of a two-person hand-saw. When Scott visited the Radio Curious studios on November 12, 2017, we began when I asked him to describe working in the woods at that time.

The books Jack Scott recommends are those written by Louis Lamore.

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Eric Herm is a 4th generation farmer from Ackerly Texas and author of, “Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth: A Path to Agriculture’s Higher Consciousness.” Herm is transitioning his family farm into an organic farm. He recently returned from a march that began in Baltimore, Maryland and ended in front of the White House in Washington D.C. to oppose the use of genetically modified organisms, GMO’s. We spoke with Eric Herm from his farm in Ackerly, Texas on October 24th, 2011 and asked him to describe his experience in Washington D.C.

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To many of us who live in California, oak woodlands may seem rather ordinary. In reality, that is not the case. Oak woodlands are home to more species of plants, fungi, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and mammals than any other terrestrial ecosystem in the California.

In this edition of Radio Curious, we visit with Kate Marianchild, author of Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants & Animals Among California’s Oaks. Her book, now in its 4th printing, was a finalist in the Science, Nature and Environment Section of the Indie Next Generation Book Award.

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands describes many of the flora, fauna and fungi that inhabit the plentiful oak woodlands in California, and explains their intertwined connections and mutual support systems. More details are available on her website, katemarianchild.com.

In this program, Marianchild describes how acorn woodpeckers, manzanita, newts, the western fence lizard, and woodrats, among others, live and survive together in a symbiotic ecosystem.

The book she recommends is The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Baily. This program was recorded on June 5, 2017.

To many of us who live in California, oak woodlands may seem rather ordinary. In reality, that is not the case. Oak woodlands are home to more species of plants, fungi, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and mammals than any other terrestrial ecosystem in the California.

In this edition of Radio Curious, we visit with Kate Marianchild, author of Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants & Animals Among California’s Oaks. Her book, now in its 4th printing, was a finalist in the Science, Nature and Environment Section of the Indie Next Generation Book Award.

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands describes many of the flora, fauna and fungi that inhabit the plentiful oak woodlands in California, and explains their intertwined connections and mutual support systems. More details are available on her website, katemarianchild.com.

In this program, Marianchild describes how acorn woodpeckers, manzanita, newts, the western fence lizard, and woodrats, among others, live and survive together in a symbiotic ecosystem.

The book she recommends is The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Baily. This program was recorded on June 5, 2017.

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To many of us who live along the coast of California, earthquakes are a living legend. Much of that legend is closely associated with the San Andreas Fault, a line that runs roughly 800 miles through California, forming the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American Plates.

As you might expect, this edition of Radio Curious is about earthquakes. Our guest is John Dvorak, Ph.D., a geophysicist and author of Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault. He is currently employed by the United States Geological Survey, working for the Institute for Astronomy in Hilo, Hawaii. He previously taught at the University of Hawaii, UCLA, Washington University in St. Louis, and at the Smithsonian Institute.

Barry visited with Dr. Dvorak on October 31st of 2014, from his office in Hilo, Hawaii. The book John Dvorak recommends is Daughters of Fire, by Tom Peek.

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This is the third conversation in our series on near-term human extinction, which Barry has called the most disturbing group of interviews he’s had in the history of Radio Curious. On today’s program, we’ll consider how we can each personally deal with this impossible problem, and how an understanding of hospice can help guide the way we interact with our communities and our planet.

Our guest is Dr. Carolyn Baker, co-author with Dr. Guy R. McPherson of “Extinction Dialogues: How to Live with Death in Mind.” She’s also the author of “Love in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating the Relationships We Need to Thrive.” As an author and psychotherapist, Dr. Baker discusses the importance of emotional and spiritual preparedness for the cataclysmic changes that abrupt climate change will bring.

As you listen to this interview, consider how you could incorporate Dr. Baker’s advice into your own life, and how the hospice concept–taking time to interact with loved ones, enjoy nature, and be mindful–can give meaning to your time on earth, in the face of human extinction.

“Extinction Dialogs” presents credible scientific evidence that global warming is pushing our planet to a swift apocalyptic end–more rapidly that we comprehend. Dr. Guy McPherson discusses the scientific evidence that suggests a looming extinction of the human species in parts one and two of this series. In the second half of “Extinction Dialogs,” Dr. Baker encourages and recommends a hospice approach, which we present to you as part three in this series.

The book Dr. Baker recommends is “Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, by Stephen Jenkinson.” This interview was recorded on September 20, 2015.

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