Johnny Appleseed: The Eccentric Man Behind the Great American Legend 

Guest: Howard Means, journalist and author, "Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story"

Johnny Appleseed, born John Chapman, was a pioneer of the American frontier, and an eccentric one at that. He's a larger-than-life figure with a story we've all helped to promote and expand. His history, though, is a bit more complicated than the Disney biopic lets on. 

Walkable City Rules

Guest: Jeff Speck, city planner and author, "Walkable City" and "Walkable City Rules"

Jeff Speck has said, “The car is an optional instrument of freedom rather than a prosthetic device.” He is one of the leading advocates for a revolution in the way we conceive and design our places of habitation and our means of transportation. 

Our Listeners Find Wonder

Guests: Amy Jensen, Norma Roberts, Marie-Laure Oscarson, Marshall Coleman, and Joanna Harmon

Throughout this hour, listeners from around the globe share discoveries of wonder in their neighborhoods.

The Reactivator Suspends Life and Reanimates It

Guest: Shannon Tessier, Instructor, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Scientific Staff, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Boston

When you hear the word "cryogenics," what comes to mind? The strange practice of freezing heads of people when they die in hopes that somehow, someday, medical science will figure out how to unfreeze them and bring them back? Yeah, it’s a thing. Well, it turns out that "cryonics" is the word for the pseudoscience of achieving immortality by freezing bodies. "Cryogenics" simply means the science of working with materials at extremely low temperatures. Now, if you were a frog, you might do both--it turns out that some frogs can be frozen all winter, frozen solid--and then thaw and come back to life in the spring. If we can figure out how this works it may be more than just cool, so to speak. It may have medical implications. Think about preserving organs as they move from donors to transplant recipients.

Highlight: Ancient Sourdough Brought to Life (originally aired September 11, 2019)

Guest: Seamus Blackely, father of the xBox, physicists, master baker

Seamus Blackely, with the help of a Harvard lab, has made sourdough bread from yeast harvested from 4,000-year-old pots.