The Helium Crisis

Guest: Phil Kornbluth, President of Kornbluth Helium Consulting, LLC

Your contact with helium quite possibly has been limited to birthday balloons, so you may not realize that helium is a rare and valuable element. It's also under increasing pressure for important uses in science and health. Our guest today is a helium broker. We find out what helium is used for, where it comes from, and how it gets distributed.

 

Why You Need Another Language

Guest: Marek Kohn, author, "Four Words for Friend"

English is seen as the world language today, and native English speakers often don't feel motivated to learn or retain a second language. Kohn, who learned Polish from his parents as a child in England but largely lost his ancestral language, argues that fighting to get or retain pieces of a foreign language helps sharpen our thinking and enrich our lives.

 

Fun with Spiders

Guests: Christopher Buddle and Eleanor Spicer Rice, co-authors, "Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Spiders"

Do spiders make your skin crawl? According to the Sioux City Journal 2018 survey of phobias, nearly one third of Americans struggle with arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders. But despite all that we have to fear about spiders—those long legs and staring eyes and how they sneak up on you when you’re on the toilet—spiders really are wonderful little critters.  

 

Finding the Sacred in Everyday Life (Originally aired 4/10/2019)

Guest: Reverend Dr. Andrew Teal, Chaplain and Fellow, Pembroke College, and Lecturer in Theology and Religion within Oxford University

We're used to seeing the Holy Family featured prominently in sacred art. So when Pieter Bruegal the Elder crammed his paintings with ordinary people and took the spotlight off traditional subjects, what was he telling us about the relationship of ordinary people with the divine?