We always sit at attention when Alexandra Horowitz visits. Wait, that makes us sound like dogs. Which is appropriate, because Alexandra researches dog behavior, and our behavior with dogs. Should we necessarily spay and neuter our dogs? How should we talk to dogs? Is breeding ethical? Our guest tackles those and other surprising questions in her new book, Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond .

The Ashland Culture of Peace Commission might not exist if not for the work of Anwarul K. Chowdhury. And now he's set to amplify the favor. Chowdhury, who worked as a Bangladeshi diplomat and at the United Nations, was intrumental in advancing the concept of a culture of peace. He is the featured speaker and guest at a Global Peace Conference in Ashland on Saturday.

How can something so simple (and delicious) be so confusing? We get into disagreements over whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable (surprise! It's a berry), we get into disagreements over how to pronounce the word... at least we agree on its versatility. From pasta sauce to jam, tomatoes have many uses. We explore those in this month's edition of Savor, our food segment. Food stylist Will Smith returns to share the hosting chores, offering up his recipe for gazpacho (cold tomato soup, yum!

Something like 1.5 million people took part in "climate strike" actions earlier this year, walking out of school and work to demonstrate support for action to curb climate change. Global Climate Strike activities for this Friday, September 20th, are expected to be even bigger. They are timed to coincide with the opening of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on the following Monday. Local student discuss planned actions.

We run a bit of a risk with this month's edition of Underground History. Normally the segment is about archaeology, but this time around we talk to a paleontologist. Which is fine; the work is similar, and in fact, the fields are often confused. Nick Famoso grew up in Grants Pass and is now the chief paleontologist at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Eastern Oregon. Chelsea Rose is back from that part of the state, back at the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology

"I can say what I want, it's a free country." Easy to say, not so easy to justify; no rights are absolute in the United States (or anywhere else). Free speech has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, with conservatives complaining about how their views are handled on college campuses, and liberals complaining about political money identified as speech by federal courts. P.E. Moskowitz takes up many facets of the speech debate in The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment,

Jacksonville was born and grew into the county seat back in the Victorian days. Even now the historic downtown does not look that different from how it looked when "good Queen Vic" was alive. Historic Jacksonville, Inc. spends a few days this month and next recreating those halcyon (and occasionally bizarre) times in town. Events include people wearing Victorian clothing and recreating elaborate Victorian mourning rituals.

The treatment of people crossing the US-Mexican border is always a topic for debate. A former Ashland resident is focused not on crossings, but on people shot on the Mexican side by law enforcement people on our side. Adam Markle takes up the topic in the movie "34 Seconds."

Will you hear music when you die? Forget the after-life implications, that's an Earth-bound question. And the answer is yes, if you want it. Music thanatologists play music by the bedsides of dying people, frequently harp music. Peter Roberts has been doing it for a very long time, and he is the subject of a documentary film, "From Music Into Silence," by filmmaker Farshid Akhlagi. We get a visit from Peter Roberts and hear some of his music.

Air ambulances in California get some public funding to stay in business. And before the legislature closed, it passed a bill to extend that funding. That buys time for the air ambulance services, which point to the evacuation of an entire neonatal unit from Redding during the Carr Fire as proof of their value. The California Association of Air Medical Services pushed for the passage of the funding measure, AB 651. It awaits Governor Gavin Newsom's signature.