There is no doubt our climate is changing, but how do climatologists know how much it is going to change and what is causing these changes? Tonight’s guest on Inquiry is HEIDI CULLEN, senior research scientist with Climate Central and well known to many from her numerous appearances on the Weather Channel. Her new book, THE WEATHER OF THE FUTURE: HEAT WAVES, EXTREME STORMS AND OTHER SCENES FROM A CLIMATE CHANGED PLANET is a wonderful introduction to the science of climatology that explains clearly how we know what we know about climate change. Tune in and learn about some of the places on earth where climate change is already an issue of paramount importance. These include the San Joaquin Delta in California and New York City New York. If you want to know about the actual science of global climate predictions, TUNE IN!
Do you have trouble admitting you’re wrong but take real pleasure in pointing out the mistakes in others? Well, you are not alone. The experience of being wrong is one of the most despised yet complex and common phenomena in our lives. What finally brings us to the point of being able to admit we have been in error? Can being wrong ever be a positive experience? Tune in tonight when Inquiry talks with writer, journalist, editor and “wrongologist” KATHYRN SCHULZ about her important new book BEING WRONG: ADVENTURES IN THE MARGIN OF ERROR. It’s a book you would probably like to give to someone else in your life, but you should read it too.
Off our Massachusetts coasts dwell one of the great spectacles of the natural world: the great whales. If you have ever been on a whale watch and gotten close to a Humpback, chances are it was an event you will never forget. What do we know about these mammoth marine mammals behavior, and how can we identify them? Tonight on Inquiry, we welcome PETER TRULL , educator, researcher and veteran of more than 1400 whale watching trips while working for the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies! Peter has written a wonderful guide about whale behavior called CLOSER TO THE GREAT WHALES, profusely illustrated with his own photography. Tune in tonight and learn about how whales feed, sleep and breathe.
Today there are hundreds of websites, television shows and vociferous people who will tell you that their idea is correct and that traditional science can be damned. There are people who deny global warming is occurring; that believe in creationism, swear by astrology and think AIDS can be cured with muddy water. Could they be right and science wrong? With so many conflicting opinions and ideas about the world, how can we tell truth from fiction? Tonight on Inquiry, we welcome MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York. He has written a thoughtful book on this problem titled NONSENSE ON STILTS: HOW TO TELL SCIENCE FROM BUNK. Tonight on part 1 of our conversation; Professor Pigliucci talks about what can be harmful about holding beliefs that are nonsense and why scientists should engage in public debates with pseudo scientists.
Hunger is a political condition and contributes to international security issues,
Congressman Jim McGovern told the audience gathered this past March 29 at the
Leicester campus of Becker College for his lecture, “The Global Hunger Crisis:
Roadmap to a Solution,” which was part of the Franklin M. Loew Lecture Series.
A member of the Congressional Hunger Caucus, Congressman McGovern said that,
in his travels to Africa and South America, "no one has ever asked me for an
AK-47, but they have asked me for food."
Joining Congressman McGovern in this interview is Jean McMurray, executive director
of the Worcester County Food Bank.
To learn more about the Worcester County Food Bank, listen to the Business Beat
interview that Steve did with Jean McMurray and that aired past February 28.
In the early years of the 19th Century, a loose association of poets, writers, publishers and radicals created the heart and soul of Britain’s Romantic movement. This circle of acquaintances included Lord Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Mary Shelley but also many people not as well known outside of Britain. These included luminaries like Leigh Hunt, the publisher of The Examiner, a sort of Huffington Post of its day. These artists wandered throughout Britain and Europe and led wild, unpredictable and amorous lives as they wrote. Their history reads like a hallucinatory soap opera. Tonight on Inquiry, we talk with DAISY HAY, who has a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and is the Alistair Horne Fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Her new book, YOUNG ROMANTICS: THE TANGLED LIVES OF ENGLISH POETRY’S GREATEST GENERATION is a mesmerizing and endlessly entertaining history of these unique writers and poets.
It is the most recognizable equation in the world and it explains Albert Einstein’s theory of space and time in an elegant, yet deceptively simple expression. But what is the real meaning of this equation? Tonight on Inquiry we speak with BRIAN COX, Professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester and a well-known radio and television presenter. Professor Cox talks about Einstein’s concept of “spacetime”, how we measure distances in spacetime and what causality and invariance has to do with the speed of light. Which brings us to the famous Twins Paradox, the inspiration for many a science fiction tale an even Twilight Zone episodes. All this, and what the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider will mean for the Standard Model. If you have ever wanted to really understand relativity, be sure to tune in. Cox’s book, c0-authroed with Jeff Forshaw, is titled WHY DOES E=MC2 ? AND WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Don’t touch that dial! Writer and media historian GERALD NACHMAN returns once again to Inquiry, this time to talk about RAISED ON RADIO , a wonderful account of those golden days when the radio was the important media resource in most homes in America and families gathered around radio sets large and small to be thrilled, amused and informed. Tonight we talk about the early comedians of radio, many of whom came directly from vaudeville. People like Jack Benny, Burns and Allen and Red Skelton. Why did some succeed in this new media, while others failed? Tune in tonight for a fond remembrance of radio past.
Only a hundred years ago, the earth’s oceans seem to hold the promise of a limitless abundance of fish and the potential to feed the world. Today, many of the larger food fish are near extinction, even the smaller species at the bottom of the food chain are becoming rare, and more and more people are demanding fish for food. How did we arrive at this sorry state of affairs? Tonight’s guest is PAUL GREENBERG, writer, researcher and passionate fisherman. In his new book FOUR FISH: THE FUTURE OF THE LAST WILD FOOD, Greenberg writes about what has become of the world’s wild stocks of salmon, sea bass, tuna and cod. Overfishing, the damming of migratory rivers and pollution have all taken their toll and the situation seems grim. But does aquaculture hold out a promise to counter the extinction of these familiar food fish? Tune in tonight for a thought provoking discussion on what it will take to keep our favorite fish on the menu.
Pages
Join
Become a WICN Member
Please pledge now and give what you can afford – for the value you find in WICN.
YOU really do make everything you hear possible on this station. Pledge Now!
Call 508-752-0700 right now or contribute online! CLICK HERE to take a look at our thank-you gifts.
Sponsor
Underwriter of the Week
The premier source of news and information in Central Massachusetts.
In print, online, mobile, and video.
support for WICN.org comes from . . .
