Blue Dot

In our ongoing series of looks back at Project Apollo 50 years later, we examine the Apollo 10 mission. Dave talks to two of his childhood heroes -- Lieutenant General Thomas Stafford, the commander of Apollo 10 and last surviving crew member (crewmates Gene Cernan and John Young passed away in 2017 and 2018 respectively) and one of the legendary Apollo Flight Directors: Gerry Griffin. Apollo 10 notably made it to within 47,000 feet of the lunar surface in May of 1969 as the crew tested out all

Dave talks to kindred spirits on this episode of the Dot. First up is fellow broad/podcaster Kara Miller. Her Boston based show Innovation Hub from WGBH looks at the myriad ways in which human beings innovate from technology and art to core concepts of morality and being. Then we introduce the brand new song Just Go Around. It's a collaboration between Poets Laureate of Texas Karla K. Morton and Alan Birkelbach joined by talented veteran songwriter/musician Lisa Carver.

Dave talks to John Bisney and JL Pickering as we ramp up our coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing this summer. Bisney and Pickering have produced a beautiful coffee table type photography book called Picturing Apollo 11. The volume features many never before published photographs that chronicle the historic mission from the training of the astronauts and assembly of the rocket and spacecraft in the mighty Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center to liftoff, the Moon,

On this episode, Dave interviews Hayley Dieckmann, one of the team of veterinarians from the University of California at Davis Emergency Veterinary Response Team that helped treat animals rescued from the catastrophic Camp Fire that virtually destroyed the town of Paradise, California as well as surrounding communities that were severely impacted by the fire. Dieckmann shares her experiences treating large animals like horses and explains how the UC Davis team responds to emergency situations

In this episode, Dave visits with Terri Randall and Avner Tavori, the two filmmakers responsible for the new PBS/NOVA documentary, Saving The Dead Sea. It's one of the saltiest bodies of water on the planet and the lowest elevation on the land surface of the Earth.

Dave is joined by USGS seismologist Ken Hudnut as they interview John Dvorak, author of Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault and The Last Volcano: A Man, a Romance and The Quest to Understand Nature's Most Magnificent Fury. Dave read Earthquake Storms and shared it with his friend Ken, who happened to run into the author last year during the eruptions of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Hudnut told Dvorak about Blue Dot and that led to the

Dave is joined by longtime friend of Blue Dot, TV meteorologist Rob Elvington as they talk to one of the world's leading climate scientists, Michael Mann. Dr. Mann is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State and the author of the paper that included the famous "hockey stick" graph made famous by former Vice President Al Gore in his film, An Inconvenient Truth in 2005.

Dave interviews James Donovan, author of the new book, Shoot for The Moon: The Space Race and The Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11. Donovan tells the story of both the Cold War driven space race and the culminating achievement of the moon landing in July of 1969. Meticulously researched, the book is timed for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing this summer. Donovan shares how he unearthed new and little known details of the mission from his exhaustive research and interviews with veterans

We go under the sea, literally, to investigate the alarming decline of sea star populations of the Pacific Coast of North America from Mexico to Alaska. Sea stars, commonly known as "starfish" are actually echinoderms and a keystone species, meaning they play a pivotal role within their ecosystem.

We pay tribute to the Opportunity Rover mission, which was supposed to last for three months but wound up tooling around Meridiani Planum on Mars for nearly 15 years. A major dust storm finally knocked the plucky Mars Exploration Rover (nicknamed Oppy) out of commission when NASA lost contact with it on June 10, 2018.