Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

When you drop a letter in a mailbox, how exactly does it end up where it’s supposed to go? We’ll find out how the U.S. Postal Service works and why it’s struggling for survival. Nancy A. Pope, curator from the National Postal Museum and organizer of Systems at Work, and Richard John, professor at Columbia University School of Journalism and author of Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse.

Corey S. Powell, Editor at Large of Discover magazine, talks about the biggest stories in science last year—including the new Mars rover; the discovery of the Higgs boson; the Human Microbiome Project; climate change, storms, and melting polar ice; private space flight; self-driving cars; the comeback of measles, mumps, and whooping cough; and more!

Today's Please Explain is all about helium and the helium shortage. We speak with Dr. Martin Stute, a noble gas geochemist at Barnard college and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and with Dr. Joe Peterson a Bureau of Land Management Assistant Field Manager for Helium Resources in the BLM Amarillo, Texas Field Office.

For this week’s Please Explain we're picking up where last week's left off. We'll find out why stress can take a toll on our mental and physical health and find out how to reduce stress in our lives and cope with it better. We're joined again by Dr. Drew Ramsey, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and co-author of The Happiness Diet,  and  Dr. Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Stress Center, and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurobiology and Child Study at Yale University School of Medicine.

This week’s Please Explain is all about stress—and why it can take a toll on our mental and physical health. We're joined by Dr. Drew Ramsey, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, looks at how stress affects our health and ways to cope with stress and anxiety in everyday life. He’s co-author of The Happiness Diet. And Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Stress Center, and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurobiology and Child Study at Yale University School of Medicine.

Please Explain Stress, Part 2.

The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, prompting some to believe the world will end on that date. For this week’s Please Explain, we thought we’d find out about that calendar and the many others used through history by different cultures to account for the days and months that make up the year. Joining us are John Pratt and Ken Seidelmann, Research Professor at the University of Virginia’s Department of Astronomy.

Mold is a common household nuisance—it can appear on shower curtains and in damp basements and on aging foods in the refrigerator, but it’s a major concern in the aftermath of flooding caused by Sandy. Industrial hygienist and environmental health expert Monona Rossol and microbiologist Chin Yang, of Prestige EnviroMicrobiology, explain what mold is, where it comes from, how it grows, what it can do to your home and health, and how to get rid of it.

On this week’s Please Explain we’ll learn about the microbes, bacteria, and fungi in and around our households, hospitals and other buildings. Rob Dunn, biologist in the Department of Biology at North Carolina State University, project director of the Wild Life of Our Homes, and author of The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today, and  Jessica Green, Director of the Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center at the University of Oregon, explain what these microbes are, where they come from, the ways their presence and absence may directly influence our health and well being, and new research into how to the design and operation of buildings to promote both human health and environmental sustainability. 

For Please Explain we’re looking at how experts predict the weather—and storms like Hurricane Sandy—and how improving technology is making the science more precise. Dr. Robert Gall, Development Manager of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Dr. Adam Sobel, Professor in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Kate Ascher, author of The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper, and Carol Willis, founder, director, and curator of the Skyscraper Museum, discuss the history and future of tall buildings—from Chicago’s 17-story Auditorium Building to Dubai’s 160-story Burj Khalifa. They’ll explain how they’re built, how they work, and how they’ve changed cities.