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In this, part two of our series on near term human extinction, we continue our conversation with Dr. Guy R. McPherson, Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Dr. McPherson is co-author with Carolyn Baker of Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind. McPherson presents what appears to be overwhelming scientific evidence that our environment is headed for a swift apocalyptic collapse.

This interview was recorded on September 14th, 2015, but has become hauntingly prescient as Dr. McPherson’s warnings and predictions about the devastating effects of climate change come to pass.

As you listen, consider the following: Is what McPherson predicted occurring? Has climate change affected your life? What have you done, or what are doing differently, as a consequence? What are your future plans regarding climate change?

In part one, Dr. Guy McPherson discussed the rise of global temperature by more than 1 degree centigrade, the likelihood of a continued global warming trend in the future and some of its effects on our planet. In this, our second visit with Dr. McPherson, he explains how this small rise in global temperature is leading to a large-scale mass extinction on earth.

The book Dr. Guy McPherson recommends is Ms. Lady Bug and Mr. Honeybee: A Love Story at the End of Time, by Pauline Panagiotou-Schneider and Guy McPherson. He also recommends the books by Edward Abbey.

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In September of 2015, Barry visited with Dr. Guy R. McPherson (http://www.guymcpherson.net/), co-author with Carolyn Baker of “Extinction Dialogs: How to Live With Death in Mind.” McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. This archive program is the first of a series on near-term extinction of the human species.

Dr. McPherson’s words about the possible effects of climate change are hauntingly prescient, heard a year and a half year later.

As you listen, consider the following: Is what McPherson predicted occurring? Has climate change affected your life? What have you done, or what are doing differently, as a consequence? What are your future plans regarding climate change?

The point from which average global temperature rise (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201507) is measured dates back to 1750, the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the time at which the ever increasing use of fossil fuels began. Since 1750, the planet has warmed by more than 1 degree centigrade. McPherson’s book “Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind,” explains how this small global rise in temperature is leading to a large scale mass extinction on the planet.

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Two bold millennial adventurers, born in 1988 and 1989, serendipitously parked their Volkswagon Westfalia Camper Van in a campsite adjacent to the Radio Curious Mobile Studio–also a Westfalia Camper Van–near Lone Pine, California. Lone Pine is at the eastern base Mt. Whitney, about 90 miles west of Death Valley.

Mary Ashley Krogh, who goes by MAK (http://www.makwashere.com/about/), and her husband, Owen Chikazawa (https://www.wewander.tv/about/) have been on the road, “bound for nowhere” (http://www.boundfornowhere.com/), since the end of April, 2016. They’re my guests on this edition of Radio Curious.

MAK and Owen live and work in Stanley. That’s the name for their camper van home, which provides about 18 square feet of living space. MAK and Owen, both graduates of Savannah College of Art & Design support themselves as designers and illustrators. MAK creates apparel graphic art, branding and graphic designs. Owen designs, illustrates and animates broadcast television and startup explanatory videos. As they foment and pursue their wanderlust bound for nowhere, they remotely focus on their clients’ goals and meet their needs.

MAK, Owen, and I visited in their home office, aka Stanley, at Tuttle Creek Campground, just outside Lone Pine, California, on March 17, 2017.

The books that Owen Chikazawa recommends are The Martian by Andy Weir and The 39 Steps by John Buchan. The book that MAK recommends is The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson.

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Death Valley, the hottest place on earth and the driest and lowest place in North America is a spectacularly beautiful 3.4 million acre National Park.  91% of this outdoor “classroom,” has been designated as a Wilderness and protected by Congress.

Our guest in this edition of Radio Curious is Linda Slater, a National Park Ranger for the past 30 years and currently the Chief of Interpretation at Death Valley National Park.

In this wildly beautiful and dangerously hot place is the lowest point in North America– at 282 feet below sea level. Death Valley, replete with rolling sand dunes, deep winding smooth marble canyons, spring-fed oases, and crusted barren salt flats averages 2 inches of rain per year.

We visited with Linda Slater on March 15, 2017, in the Radio Curious mobile studio. While parked next to a rock strewn area, so white that it appeared to be covered in snow, yet the outside temperature was 100 degrees, our conversation began with Linda Slater’s description of that white material.

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Fast food is what many people eat in America, and increasingly in other countries. It is advertised to be fun, tasty, and easily available. Americans spend more money annually on fast food than is spent on higher education.

Eric Schlosser is our guest in this archive edition.  He’s the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser writes that it is not only what is served for human consumption that is the problem, but the art of mass-marketing to children through organized promotions and ads for the products—in school busses, hallways, and even bathroom stalls—has serious side effects on society.

Working conditions for employees at meat-packing plants and the resulting contamination of the product resulted in the July 19th, 2002 recall of 19 million pounds of beef. In addition to the acute health hazards of contamination, a fast food meal often contains more fat in one meal than the average person needs in a day.

I spoke with Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, in mid-summer 2002, we began with his description of the problem of excess fat in fast food.

Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. The book he recommends is “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” by Ted Conover.

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The Wild Muir

One of the greatest early conservationists of America was a Scottish immigrant named John Muir who, as a young boy, went first to Wisconsin and then later, as a young man in the 1860s, moved onward to California. A friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, he successfully sought to preserve the spectacular Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada range; it was joy in his lifetime. Yet the loss of the equally spectacular Hetch Hetch Valley to a dam to provide water for San Francisco was his greatest sorrow. John Muir founded the Sierra Club and is credited with founding the National Park System in the United States.

I visited with John Muir in the person of Lee Stetson in the studios of Radio Curious in October of 1995 and discussed his life and observations.

We begin with his comments on the effect that extinction of so many species during and since his lifetime has had on the Earth’s remaining species.

The book that Lee Stetson recommends is his own, “The Wild Muir,” by Lee Stetson

The book that John Muir recommends is “Sixty Miles From Contentment,” by M.H. Dunlop.

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Who was Charles Darwin and what led him to describe what we now call the theory of evolution? These curious questions are ones that I have been following since I was about ten years old. In 1978 I had the good fortune of visiting the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1831 for month as part of a five-year voyage around the world. There he saw birds and animals that helped him formulate some of his ideas about evolution he published The Origin of the Species,” 22 years later in 1853. Since then the world, science and religion has not been the same.

Now, at a time when concepts of evolution and natural selection are attacked from certain theological and political perspectives, “The Darwin Conspiracy,” a novel has been written by John Darnton, a writer and editor for the New York Times. “The Darwin Conspiracy,” although fiction, is said by John Darnton to be 90% accurate. It covers Darwin’s life and thinking before and after his publication of “The Origin of the Species.”

I spoke with John Darnton from his home in New York City at the end of October 2005. He began by describing who Charles Darwin was, in his time and place.

The book John Darnton recommends is “Snow,” by Orhan Pamuk.

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The lack of pure water was one of the several things that resulted in the development of wine as a source of potable liquid for human intake.  Putting that aspect of human history in a time and place in relation to social and political events, and the tracing of the different varietals of wine is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious.

Our guest is Glenn McGourty, the Winegrowing and Plant Science Advisor at the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (http://cemendocino.ucanr.edu) located in the hills a few miles northeast of Hopland, in rural Mendocino County, California. This locale has been called the university of our back yard by many of us who live nearby.

Glenn McGourty’s specialty is the history of wine and it’s evolution–how so many varietals came to be and were further developed.  When Glenn McGourty visited the Radio Curious studios on October 18, 2016, we began our conversation with his reflections on the history wine making.

The book Glenn McGourty recommends is “Cold Mountain,” by Charles Frazier.

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Whaling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the home of Herman Melville, author of “Moby Dick,” is our topic today.  Our guest is Michael Dyer, the senior historian at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The Whaling Museum reveals the lives of the largest mammals on earth.  The museum’s social history collection shares the monumental stories of those who spent their human lives whaling at sea between the New England coast and half way around the world, as well as their families who yearned for their return.  It explains how the seamen lived at sea, who they were, as well as the captains and owners of the sailing vessels and all those in between. It also explains the economics of the whale oil that lit and lubricated the industrial revolution.

In part one of our series on whaling I met with Mike Dyer at the New Bedford Whaling Museum on September 2, 2016.  To put matters it into perspective, we began with I asked him to describe the Sperm whale.

The book Mike Dyer recommends is Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America, by Charles Melville Scammon.

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