Tag Archives: Earth Sciences

How does deep listening to nature promote biodiversity and a deeper relationship with the natural world?

Book Cover of Civil War by Other Means has an red X on the title of the book

We discuss the book THE SOUNDS OF LIFE: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants. [ dur: 34mins. ]

Karen Bakker ( 1971 – 2023 ) was Professor of Geography and Associate at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. She was Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was the author of Smart Earth: A meta-review and implications for environmental governance, The human right to water revisited (in The Right to Water), and THE SOUNDS OF LIFE: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants.
Professor Karen Bakker passed away on August 14, 2023 after a brief illness.

References to clips of nature sound recordings included in the interview with Karen Bakker :

The American Thanksgiving story is one of cooperation and coexistence between white European settlers and the native peoples. But the real story is much darker.
How does this Thanksgiving narrative get the history wrong?

We discuss the history, the memory, and the meaning of Thanksgiving in the contemporary relationship between the United States and Indigenous people. [ dur: 24mins. ]

Robert J. Miller is Professor of Law at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He is Interim Chief Justice at Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals. He is the author of American Indian Sovereignty versus the United States (in Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies) and A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma. You can access the Scholars’ Circle interview on the book A Promise Kept here . He is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe.

This show was recorded November 27, 2022.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Turkey earthquake, disaster relief politics and humanitarian laws – Feb. 19, 2023

February 18, 2023 host

A massive earthquakes has rocked Turkey and Syria and killed thousands of people. The disaster response to this earthquake has faced challenges, including governance of the relief efforts and legal requirements under international law. We explore the relief efforts in light of scholarship on best practices and legal obligations. Who is responsible for security in the disaster zone? How much are local actors prioritized versus those who have come to the region to provide relief? And what happens when the security capacity of the affected state is so devastated by the disaster itself? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Andrea de Guttry is Professor of International Law at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA) in Pisa, Italy. He is the author of Foreign fighters under international law and International Disaster Response Law.
Branda Nowell is Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University. She is the author of Public Management in an Era of the Unprecedented: Dominant Institutional Logics as a Barrier to Organizational Sensemaking and The Structure of Effective Governance of Disaster Response Networks: Insights >From the Field.
Nukhet Sandal is Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at Ohio University. She is the author of Religious populist parties, nationalism, and strategies of competition: the case of the AK Party in Turkey and Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies.

Earthquake Relief Organizations:

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – US Political System and the 2020 Presidential Election -/- Deep Sea Mining and ecological impact – Oct 4th , 2020

October 4, 2020 host

What are the parts of the US political system that will most affect the election outcome? [ dur: 32mins. ]

Tim Fadgan is Politics and Policy Lecturer at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of Do the best interests of the child end at the Nation’s shores: Immigration, state courts, and children in the United States.
Hans Noel is Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University. He is the author of Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America, and a co-author of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform.
Jennifer Frost is an Associate Professor for History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism.

The search for minerals is leading some corporations to begin mining the ocean floor but scientists warn that this could devastate fragile ecosystems that will have repercussions that we still don’t understand. What is going on in the deep sea? What precautions should be taken to prevent devastating fragile ecosystems? [ dur: 26mins. ]

Craig Smith is Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawai’i.
Verena Tunnicliffe is a marine biologist at the University of Victoria in Canada where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research.

They are co-authors of the study Deep Sea Misconceptions Cause Underestimation of Seabed-Mining Impacts.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – President Trump’s Rhetoric Analyzed -/- Rapid Rate of Species Extinction in Progress – November 17 , 2019

November 16, 2019 host

Does Trump use Nazi-Style rhetoric? Our guest says yes. [ dur: 17 mins. ]

David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He is the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, How Biology Shapes Philosophy and Why We Lie: Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Then, what are the causes of the rapid rate of species extinction and what can be done. [ dur: 41 mins. ]

Anthony Barnosky is Executive Director of Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and an Emeritus Professor of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley. He is the author of Dodging Extinction—Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earth and co-author of Tipping Point for Planet Earth—How Close Are We To The Edge (with Elizabeth Hadly).
Stuart Pimm is Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. He is the author of A Scientist Audits the Earth, The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities, and Patterns in Nature: The Analysis of Species Co-Occurences.
David Wilkie is Director of Conservation Measures for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is the author of Hunting for consensus: reconciling bushmeat harvest, conservation, and development policy in West and Central Africa, Valuation of consumption and sale of forest goods from a Central American rain forest, and Impacts of protected areas on local livelihoods in Cambodia.

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Scholars’ Circle – Portrait of Daniel Patrick Moynihan -/- What to do about Climate effects due to rising temps – November 3 , 2019

November 3, 2019 host

First, we speak with Steven Weisman, editor of the book “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary” which weaves compelling read of carefully selected from a 10,000 page collection of Senator Moynahan’s correspondence, housed at the Library of Congress. [ dur: 18 mins. ]

Steven Weisman is a vice president for publications and communications at Peterson Institute for International Economics and formerly served as chief international economics correspondent of the New York Times. He is the editor of the book Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.

As California burns, oceans rise, storms intensify, and Greenland’s glacier’s melts, we explore solutions to the climate change problem with Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson. He is the author of the just released study The health and climate impacts of carbon capture and direct air capture.

Mark Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. He’s also the Co-Founder of The Solutions Project, 100.org, and the 100% Clean, Renewable Energy Movement. He is the author of A path to sustainable energy by 2030 (Scientific American, 2009); 100% clean and renewable wind, water, sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2015; 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 139 countries of the world (Joule, 2017); and 100% clean, and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 53 towns and cities in North America (Sustainable Cities and Society, 2018)

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Evidence of Crop Failure and Bird Colony Collapse -/- Earth’s magnetic field and it’s effect on birds, bees, whales and turtles – September 8 , 2019

September 7, 2019 host

First, Bird Colony collapse and crop failures.

Josh Tewksbury is Research Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Director of the Colorado Global Hub, Future Earth. He is also Executive Editor of Anthropocene magazine. He is the co-author of the studies Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate and De-faunation leads to interaction deficits, not interaction compensation, in an island seed dispersal network.
Curtis Deutsch is Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography in the School of Oceanography at Washington University. He is the co-author of the studies Acceleration of oxygen decline in the tropical Pacific over the past decades by aerosol pollutants, Microbial functional diversity alters the structure and sensitivity of oxygen deficient zones, and Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate.
Steven R. Beissinger is Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the co-author of the studies Mojave Desert Bird Populations Plummet as Region Warms and Dries and The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevation-al ranges.

Then, how do birds, bees, whales and turtles all use the earth’s magnetic field to guide their behavior? [ dur: 15mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ.

Andres Vidal Gadea is Professor of Molecular Neuroethology at Illinois State University. He is the co-author of Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans and Factors that influence magnetic orientation in C. elegans. JCPA.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Genes, Culture and Prospect of humanity -/- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. remembered – January 15, 2017

January 13, 2017 host

Is humanity outgrowing planet? We get insight from Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University, Paul R. Ehrlich.[ dur: 28 mins. ]

Paul R. Ehrlich is president of the Center for Conservation Biology and Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University, author of the Population Bomb, Human Natures: Genes, Culture, and the Human Prospect and A World of Wounds: Ecologists and the Human Dilemma.

While much of the country remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. as primarily a leader of civil rights and desegregation and a great orator, our next guests say he stood for so much more. Many aspects of his life, legacy & philosophy remain either unknown or conveniently forgotten. This interview from January, 2014. [ dur: 30 mins.]

David Garrow is Professor of History and Law at University of Pittsburgh, author of FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr: From “Solo” to Memphis.
Joshua Inwood is Professor of Geography and Africana Studies in Geography Department, University of Tennessee. His publications include, Nonkilling Geography, Searching for the Promised Land: Examining Dr. Martin Luther King’s Concept of the Beloved Community,and Street naming and the politics of belonging: spatial injustices in the toponymic commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.
Thomas Jackson is Professor of History at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He is the author of, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice.

Find books authored by our guest scholars on this Book Shelf .

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Magnetic Field effects on Birds, Bees, Whales and Turtles -/- Natural bonds among animals and humans – October 16, 2016

October 15, 2016 host

First, birds, bees, whales and turtles all use the earth s magnetic field to guide their behavior. [ dur: 14 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Andres Vidal Gadea is Professor of Molecular Neuroethology at Illinois State University. He is the co-author of Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans and Factors that influence magnetic orientation in C. elegans. JCPA.

Human history has been drastically changed by our relationship with animals. So much so that our next guest says it would be a different world if not for our intimate bonds with animals. How have they changed us and the world we live in? Joining us is Professor Brian Fagan. [ dur: 41 mins. ]

Brian Fagan is Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored more than two dozen books, including “The Intimate Bond: How Animals Have Shaped Human History“ and Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization“.

Find books authored by our guest scholars on this Book Shelf .

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Intergenerational economic equality -/- Crop cultivation collapses without bees – October 9, 2016

October 8, 2016 host

First, trend for economic equality in US has been changing with less opportunity for people to transcend inter-generational economic status than they have in other countries, like Norway, Finland, Denmark and Canada. Why the changes? [ dur: 13 mins. ]

Miles Corak is a professor of economics with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottowa. He is the author of, “Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe” and “Income Mobility Across the Generations”

Then, climate change, pesticides and mites are killing off the planet’s bees. What will happen to the planet’s foods? And can the bee colony collapse be stopped? [ dur: 45 mins. ]

Jeremy Kerr is a Professor of Biology at the University of Ottowa, specializing in conservation biology and biodiversity – Macroecology , Conservation research site. His latest publication links the decline of bumble bees to climate change.
Peter Dearden is a Professor of Genetics and a researcher in the laboratory for evolution and development at Otago University where he specializes in evolution, development and epigenetics (link).
Paulo de Souza is a Professor and team leader at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, and the Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health (link). He’s also a collaborating scientist on NASA’s Mars exploration Rover Mission.

Find books authored by our guest scholars on this Book Shelf .

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Humans Disrupting Evolution -/- Ethics in Health Care – August 21, 2016

August 20, 2016 host

First, is humanity the most damaging predator on earth? Our guests say yes, and that its predatory practices may be disrupting evolution.[ dur: 23 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Chris Darimont, is a Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. He has a PhD in Evolution and Ecology from the Biology Department at the University of Victoria.
Dr. Tom Reimchen, is a Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Canada. Please visit the Evolutionary Studies Lab at University of Victoria, Victoria BC, Canada where you will find additional studies on this subject.
Heather Bryan, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Applied Conservation Science lab exploring the physiological mechanisms by which wildlife responds to environmental change at University of Victoria BC, Canada.

Then, on the Scholars’ Circle panel, many observers argue, that the economic forces are corrupting medical care and eroding the trust between patients and their doctors. The problems in health care delivery have wide implications related to how health care should function particularly when there are limited resources. We examine the ethics of medicine and healthcare, and the modern day issues that complicate them. [ dur: 37 mins. ]

Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University and King’s College. His books include World Poverty and Human Rights, Freedom from Poverty: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? and World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms.
Martin Wilkinson is Professor of Political Studies and Deputy Head of Department of Politics & International Relns at the University of Auckland. His books include Freedom, Efficiency and Equality and Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs.
Richard Cookson is a Reader and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. His books include The Humble Economist: Tony Culyer on Health, Health Care and Social Decision Making and Jonathan Bradshaw on Social Policy: Selected Writings 1972-2011.

Find books authored by our guest scholars on this Book Shelf .

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The Scholars' Circle Interviews

Tag Archives: Earth Sciences

Scholars’ Circle – Sounds of nature ; Thanksgiving (history and memory) – November 26, 2023

Scholars’ Circle – Turkey earthquake, disaster relief politics and humanitarian laws – Feb. 19, 2023

Scholars’ Circle – US Political System and the 2020 Presidential Election -/- Deep Sea Mining and ecological impact – Oct 4th , 2020

Scholars’ Circle – Portrait of Daniel Patrick Moynihan -/- What to do about Climate effects due to rising temps – November 3 , 2019

Scholars’ Circle – Evidence of Crop Failure and Bird Colony Collapse -/- Earth’s magnetic field and it’s effect on birds, bees, whales and turtles – September 8 , 2019

Scholars’ Circle – Genes, Culture and Prospect of humanity -/- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. remembered – January 15, 2017

Scholars’ Circle – Magnetic Field effects on Birds, Bees, Whales and Turtles -/- Natural bonds among animals and humans – October 16, 2016

Scholars’ Circle – Intergenerational economic equality -/- Crop cultivation collapses without bees – October 9, 2016

Scholars’ Circle – Humans Disrupting Evolution -/- Ethics in Health Care – August 21, 2016

By Maria Armoudian