Outside/In

In the midst of a battle with cancer, Kathy Kral found herself facing another diagnosis: major depression.

So, Kathy signed up for a clinical study to see if psilocybin – the psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms” – could help her confront her fears about cancer and death, as well as her deepest inner demons.

Featuring Kathleen Kral, Manish Agrawal, and Norma Stevens.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. 

Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Can Psychedelic Therapy Offer a Sense of Peace for the Dying?

The Sunstone Psilocybin Playlist patients listen to during their psychedelic trips

Citations

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon
Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Rebecca Lavoie, Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Jeongyoon Han.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer
Special thanks to Evan Craig, Heather Honstein, Kathryn Tucker, and Erinn Baldeshwiler.
Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Pawan Krishna, the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, and Paul De Bra.
Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s time again for our listener mail round-up, and this week, the theme is borders and boundaries. We learn what it means to define the “end of an era,” explore how close is too close to a black hole, and discuss the power of animal urine. Plus, we hear the story about the time the U.S. and Great Britain almost fought a border war… because of a pig. 

Featuring Eric Salovich, Naoufal Souitat, Dagomar Degroot, and Christine Wilkinson.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. 

Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon and Jeongyoon Han. 

Edited by Taylor Quimby

Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a bluebird day, in April of 2019, Snow Ranger Frank Carus set out to investigate a reported avalanche in the backcountry of Mt. Washington. He found a lone skier, buried several feet under the snow. He was severely hypothermic but alive.

Wilderness EMTs can work for decades and never encounter this particular situation. And what happened next was an attempted rescue that people in Northern New England are still learning from. 

What happens when a rescue goes wrong? And how do first responders cope when an opportunity to save someone’s life slips through their fingers?

Editor’s Note: This episode first aired in May of 2022, and was later honored with a National Edward R. Murrow Award for News Documentary. 

Featuring: Denise Butler, Frank Carus, Jeff Fongemie, Nicholas Weinberg

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram and Twitter, or discuss episodes in our private listener group on Facebook. 

Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Learn more about avalanche safety here.

Read the Wilderness Medical Society Journal article about this incident here.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by: Jessica Hunt

Mixer: Taylor Quimby

Editing by Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi, with help and feedback from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Erika Janik, Sam Evans-Brown, Jimmy Gutierrez, and Christina Philips.

Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer

Special Thanks to: Matt Dustin, Ty Gagne, Frank Hubbell, and Andrew Parrella. 

Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.

Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At any given time, millions of lab mice are being used in research facilities nationwide. And yet nearly all of them can be connected back to a single source: The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where the modern lab mouse was invented.

What started as a research project aimed at understanding heredity is now a global business. Research on lab mice has led to more than two dozen Nobel prizes, helped save countless human lives, and has pushed science and medicine to new heights. But behind it all is a cost that’s rarely discussed outside of the ethics boards that determine how lab mice are used.   

In this episode, we hear the story of how a leading eugenicist turned the humble mouse from a household pest into science’s number one guinea pig. Plus, we get a rare peek inside the Jackson Laboratory - where over 10,000 strains of lab mice DNA are kept cryogenically frozen. 

Featuring Bethany Brookshire, Kristin Blanchette, Lon Cardon, Rachael Pelletier, Karen Rader, Nadia Rosenthal and Mark Wanner.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).

Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Karen Rader’s book, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955, is a definitive source on the birth of the lab mouse…

Curious to learn more about pests? Take a look at Bethany Brookshire’s book, Pests: How Humans Create Villains.

This piece from the New Yorker questions the assumptions and ethical choices scientists have made by using lab mice in sterilized lab environments.

In this New York Times essay, Brandon Keim explores how some ethicists want to reduce harm to animals used for research through a new model: repaying them. 

CREDITS

Produced by Jeongyoon Han

Mixed by Taylor Quimby

Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon

Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie

Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Spring Gang, and El Flaco Collective. 

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In case you hadn’t heard, El Niño is back in the news, and this time it’s pushing global temperatures to the 1.5-degree climate threshold, giving us a sneak preview of a world scorched by global warming. But when it comes to El Niño, the first question on people’s minds is usually…wait…what the heck is El Niño again?

Well, today on Outside/In we’ve got answers. Plus, we ask how to tell if extreme weather events are caused by climate change or by El Niño, and consider what this El Niño can tell us about our climate future.

Featuring Kim Cobb, Emily Becker, and Ángel Muñoz.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. 

Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Read Kim Cobb’s 2016 article, A bittersweet victory for an El Niño chaser – Cobb explains how her research on corals gives us a surprisingly accurate history of El Niño events going back as far as 7,000 years ago.

The National Weather Service for the UK has a great video explainer of El Nino, as well as over a hundred other short videos on their YouTube channel explaining various weather and climate phenomena like jet streams, global circulation, and the Coriolis effect.

For more science-talk on El Nino, check out the ENSO Blog, where climate scientist Emily Becker is a lead writer.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported and produced by Felix Poon
Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Justine Paradis and Nate Hegyi.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer
Special thanks to Jeongyoon Han for playing the violin, and Michael Prentky for the timpani recording.
Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Walt Adams, and Brightarm Orchestra.
Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Outside/In, we often talk about the challenge of covering climate in a way that doesn’t leave us feeling hopeless or overwhelmed. For us, that’s often meant staying curious and keeping a sense of humor. 

But a few years ago, investigative journalist Amy Westervelt had another idea. Why not use one of podcasting’s most popular genres—true crime—to tell the story of climate change? 

From greenwashing to climate denialism and corporate propaganda, Drilled makes accountability journalism a thrill to listen to, while consistently being one of the most informative sources for in-depth climate news.

So today, we’re featuring the first episode of their latest three-part series: “Herb.” This is the story of Herb Schmertz, the political strategist-turned-oil-man who popularized corporate personhood, and how it's become one of the biggest problems facing climate action today. 

Featuring Robert Kerr and Robert Bruhl

Read the episode transcript.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).

Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

CREDITS

This episode of Drilled was written and reported by Amy Westervelt. 

It was produced and sound designed by Martin Zaltz Ostwick. 

Sound engineer: Peter Doff 

Additional reporting by Julia Manepela

Fact checking: Wudan Yan

Outside/In is hosted by Nate Hegyi. The team also includes Tayor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jeongyoon Han. 

Outside/In’s executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s our listener mail round up, and this week it’s all about communication in the natural world, like: how do migratory animals teach their young how to migrate and where to go? Do sharks smell underwater? And, are plants talking to each other?

Plus, a mini-story about a lost baby squirrel and a Bluetooth speaker.

Take a listen!

Featuring: Patrik Byholm, Richard Karban, Bethany Brookshire, and Stephen Kajiura.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. 

Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Visit outsideinradio.org for video of a Bluetooth speaker-assisted baby squirrel rescue.

On animal migration:

On plants talking:

On what makes an animal a pest:

On sharks:

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by Felix Poon, Jeongyoon Han, Taylor Quimby, and Jessica Hunt

Edited by Taylor Quimby

Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer

Special thanks to Lani Asuncion and Angus Murphy

Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Outside/In  is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wine is considered to be an expression of a place and climate, a reflection of centuries-old traditions. But these days, a lot of wine is a product of an industrialized agricultural system, and just as processed as the bulk of products in the grocery store. 

Today on Outside/In, we take a look at what really goes into your wine, and at a growing movement exploring just how “natural” wine can be. 

Featuring Julia Furukawa, Helen Johannesen, and Lee Campbell, with appearances by Lucy Leske, Steve Paradis, Jenny Paradis, Elsie Turner Matthews, and Samuel Golding.

SUPPORT

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Subscribe to our (free) newsletter.

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LINKS

Lee Campbell is a partner in a Virginia winery called Common Wealth Crush. 

Helen Johannesen is a partner in Jon & Vinny’s and Helen’s Wines, a wine shop and delivery club in Los Angeles. She’s also the host of Wineface podcast, with episodes covering the basics of natural wine, a deeper dive on the specific grapes (like pinot noir), and an introduction to certain styles, like orange wine. 

Julia Furukawa is the host of All Things Considered at New Hampshire Public Radio. Check out her investigative reporting on a lack of evidence for some claims of Abenaki ancestry in New England. 

5 tips for navigating the world of natural wine

1. As Helen Johannesen likes to say, “wine is for enjoying and wine is for everyone,” but it’s also a luxury. Still, you can get natural  wines for $20 a bottle or less. The hard part is finding them.

2. If you’re trying to figure out whether a wine is natural or not, turn the bottle around and look at the importer on the back. There are certain importers who seek out small producers who are aligned with the natural wine movement. A couple of importers with such a reputation are Zev Rovine and Jenny & Francois.

3. If possible, find a local brick-and-mortar wine shop. They’re more likely to help you find a natural wine. Plus, wine shops often offer free or low-cost tastings, which can help you figure out what you like without spending a ton of money. There are online wine subscription services that have natural wines as well.

4. If you’re just dipping your toe into the natural wine world, start with what you like. If you love Sauvignon Blanc, try a natural bottle of the same variety.

5. Last, have a good time! Don’t get intimidated or think that you have to be completely pure about it. Again, in the end, wine is supposed to be fun.

-Justine P.
 

CREDITS

Outside/In Host: Nate Hegyi

Hosted, reported, written, and produced by Justine Paradis 

Mixed and edited by Taylor Quimby

Our team also includes Felix Poon and Jeongyoon Han. 

Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie

Music by Matt Large and Blue Dot Sessions

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With 'Oppenheimer,' director Christopher Nolan has turned the Manhattan Project into a summer blockbuster. The film is set in Los Alamos, one of the primary places where the first atomic bomb was developed. But fewer people know the history of Carrizozo, a rural farming area downwind of the Trinity test — and a community still dealing with the fallout to this day.

Radioactive fallout from the bomb settled on everything: the soil, gardens, and drinking water. Cow’s milk became radioactive. Later, hundreds of people developed radiogenic cancers. 

The people of Carrizozo were among the first people in the world exposed to a nuclear blast. More than 75 years later, their families are still fighting for medical compensation from the federal government.

Host Nate Hegyi traveled to New Mexico to visit the Trinity Site, and to hear the stories of so-called ‘downwinders.'

Featuring: Paul Pino, Tina Cordova, Ben Ray Lujan

Editor's note: A previous version of this description incorrectly described Los Alamos as the site of the first atomic bomb test. The actual test took place in the White Sands Missle Range.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).

Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

The federal government has produced a few studies on the fallout from Trinity. This one from Los Alamos found that there was still contamination in the area in 1985. 

Another, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, produced one of the most in-depth histories of the fallout from Trinity and the government’s reaction.

The National Cancer Institute found that hundreds of people likely developed cancer because of the fallout. 

The history of Trinity is full of strange little details, like the desert toads that were croaking all night. 

You can find affidavits and first-hand accounts of the fallout from Trinity at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium website. 

This review by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why it’s so hard to determine a definitive death toll for the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII. 

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi

Edited by Taylor Quimby

Editing help from Rebecca Lavoie, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, and Jeongyoon Han

Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer

Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans are noisy. The National Park Service estimates that all of our whirring, grinding, and revving machines are doubling or even tripling global noise pollution every 30 years. 

A lot of that noise is negatively affecting wildlife and human health. Maybe that’s why we’re so consumed with managing our sonic environments, with noise-cancelling headphones and white noise machines — and sometimes, we get into spats with our neighbors, as one of our guests did…

So for this episode, producer Jeongyoon Han takes us on an exploration of three sonic landscapes: noise, silence, and something in between. 

Featuring Rachel Buxton, Jim Connell, Stan Ellis, Mercede Erfanian, Nora Ma, and Rob Steadman.

SUPPORT

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. 

Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!).

Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).

LINKS

Behavioral ecologist Miya Warrington and her colleagues found that Savannah sparrows changed the tune of their love songs as a result of noisy oil fields in Alberta, Canada (The New York Times)

Bats have changed their day-to-day habits because of traffic noise, according to research conducted in the U.K.

Natural sounds are proven to improve health, lower stress, and have positive effects on humans. Rachel Buxton and her colleagues wrote about that in their study from 2021.

Erica Walker’s organization, the Community Noise Lab, monitors noise levels in Boston, Providence, and Jackson, Mississippi. You can read more about her work in this article from Harvard Magazine.

Are you interested in going to a Quiet Parks International-designated quiet park? The organization has a list of spaces across the world that they’ve certified. 

Here’s a radio story from NPR that serves as an homage to John Cage’s 4’33”. 

If you were ever curious about why bird songs are good for you… This article from the Washington Post should be on the top of your reading list!

This New Yorker piece from 2019 outlines how noise pollution might be the next public health crisis. Since that article, there’s been even more research showing that noise can take years off of our lives. 

So, you’ve heard lots of sounds in this episode. But do you want to see what sounds look like? Click here — and this is not clickbait!

Ethan Kross, who is a psychologist and neuroscientist, wrote a whole book about noise — the noise in your head, to be precise. It’s called Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.

Mercede Erfanian’s research into misophonia and soundscapes is fascinating. You can hear her speak on the subject of different kinds of sounds in a show aired from 1A, or watch her presentation on the effects that soundscapes have on humans. 
 

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and produced by Jeongyoon Han

Mixed by Jeongyoon Han and Taylor Quimby

Editing by Taylor Quimby, with help from Nate Hegyi, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon

Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie

Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Edvard Greeg, and Mike Franklyn.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices