Saint Helena Forum

Should we mine the oceans for essential minerals to power green technology? 

In our second interview of a three-part series is with Dr. Lisa Levin, a distinguished professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a marine ecologist who studies ecosystems in the deep sea and shallow water. We’ll ask her to tell us what current science is revealing on the sea floor in the CCZ, and what damage may result from Deep-Sea mining. 

Should we mine the oceans for essential minerals to power green technology? 

In our first interview of a three-part series, we explore the pro-mining perspective of  deep-sea mining, with our guest, Gerrard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company. He argues that deep-sea mining could provide a cleaner alternative to traditional mining methods and shares some of his preliminary research conclusions on the impact of his company’s mining methods on marine ecosystems and biodiversity.

A conversation about the composition of the universe

with Dr. Jason Rhodes and Dr. Alina Kiessling

Dr. Rhodes graduated from West Valley high school in Des Moines, Iowa, earned a B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA and an M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. After stints as a researcher at NASA’s, Goddard, Spaceflight Center in Maryland and at Caltech in Pasadena, he landed a position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His projects include NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission, and the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time. All of these are designed to study, “Dark Energy”, the hypothesized cause of the Universe’s accelerated expansion.

​

Dr. Kiessling is a Jet Propulsion Laboratory Research Scientist, investigating Dark Matter and Dark Energy through Weak Lensing Analysis of N-body Simulations. She’s a member of Euclid and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Dark Energy Science Collaboration and was a consultant on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Science Definition Reports. Alina earned a B.Sc. in Space Science from La Trobe University in Australia and her Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh, in the UK.

Bearing Witness - The Reckoning Project

Fighting Impunity from War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

A Conversation with War Correspondent and Human Rights Reporter Janine Di Giovanni.

Janine Di Giovanni, is the author of eight books, a war correspondent, and Executive Director of the Reckoning Project. She earned her BA at the University of Maine and her MFA at the University of Iowa. She began her reporting career in 1987, covering the first Palestinian intifada for the London Times. Describing herself as a human rights reporter with a focus on war crimes and crimes against humanity, she has reported on genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria, and was one of the few reporters who witnessed the fall of Grozny in Chechnya. She covered the war in Kosovo with the Kosovo Liberation Army. Reported for The Times and Vanity Fair in Afghanistan and Iraq. After becoming the Middle East editor for Newsweek, Janine began working in Egypt, Kurdistan, Lebanon, North Africa, and South Sudan. In 2022, Janine founded the Reckoning Project, a non-governmental organization that trains conflict journalists and researchers to gather legally admissible testimonies documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Those of you who have followed the Forum know of David Freed's previous discerning interviews, skills he honed as an investigative reporter for The Los Angeles Times. There he served as The Times' lead police reporter, was an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service (the most prestigious award in American journalism) and shared in a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper’s coverage of the 1992 Rodney King riots. 

David has reported from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, and later worked in the intelligence community for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, among other federal agencies. 

David is also a screenwriter and author of the Amazon- and Audible- best-selling, Cordell Logan mystery-thriller novels.

Join us for a conversation between Mrs. Parks companion and friend, H.H. Leonards  and historian - writer Noah Griffin as they explore the legacy of Rosa Parks.

Sixty-eight years ago on December 1, 1955, Mrs.Rosa Parks rejected a bus driver's order to leave a row of four seats in the "colored" section and move to the back of the bus. Her defiance and subsequent arrest sparked a successful boycott of buses in Montgomery a few days later; a pivotal event in the civil rights movement that ultimately led to the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation. Mrs. Parks became an icon of the movement, celebrated for this single courageous act of civil disobedience.
But as H.H.Leonard writes, "There was much more to Mrs. Parks than the seat she refused to reliquish on "that" bus. By profession she was a seamstress. Her stiching was delicate and precise; she made beautiful clothes. But in the bigger picture, she sewed pieces of people's lives together throughout the world and lifted them up with tenacity, hope, and pure love.

How can a single fertilized egg give rise to a complex organism with varied cells?  The answers may be found in epigenetics, the study of how cells control gene activity by reading, but not changing the DNA sequence. 
This episode explores the topic in language the layman can understand with our guest, Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu, a structural biologist working in epigenetics at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A conversation with Colin Woodard, Director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. Author of six books including American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

To watch the video of this episode, go to shforum.com

A breakthrough study sponsored by the NIH revealed there are shared genetic markers that underly substance use disorders. These new findings offer a road to more effective prevention and treatment strategies for multiple substance use disorders.

To watch the video of this episode, go to shforum.com

The Evolution of Laughter. Across many animals, complex social play is well-documented and laughter (scientists use the term play vocalizations), has been reported in sixty-five species. But seriously, why are we all laughing and what is so darn funny?

Recent Milestones, Current Status and Future Prospects for

To watch the video of this episode, go to shforum.com