These are the days of the year when you're mostly likely to get into your car and speed off to a vacation spot, with the air conditioner keeping you cool on the way. How's your car holding up under the pressure? Anything rattling where it didn't before? Zach Edwards has heard many a telltale rattle in his years repairing cars. Now he heads a team of car-repair technicians at Ashland Automotive . And he joins us once a month for a perusal of car-care issues we call The Squeaky Wheel.

Human decisions ranging from the drinking of gin to the surrender of Scottish sovereignty have hinged on the behavior of a particular animal. No, not humans. Mosquitoes. That is the argument historian and political scientist Timothy Winegard advances in his book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator . The book goes through a surprising list of key historical events and shows how the little bloodsuckers have played major roles in the outcomes.

We're in the home stretch now for the end of the summer, and the arts events are still coming fast and furious. Stages and galleries in many towns will be busy through the month of August. We sync up with the First Friday arts events in several towns by offering our own overview of coming attractions, called First Friday Arts. It's all listener-generated content; we email invitations across the region, and let them call 800-838-3760 to boost their events on Friday morning.

In the west, water is a constant battleground; there's great demand and a lot less supply. Drawing on her childhood grwing up in the arid west, Becca Lawton's essays dive into the the many ways that water--or the lack of it--shape our part of the world. She collects the essays in The Oasis This Time: Living and Dying with Water in the West . The author lives in Summer Lake, Oregon and runs the nonprofit PLAYA . She gives a reading Sunday (August 4th) at the Ashland Public Library.

Maybe you're really careful with the information you put online. You don't share your name with websites, and certainly not your social security number. You're anonymous, right? Maybe not, recent research shows. Scientific American recently published an article about the research; just your gender, birthdate, and zip code can be enough to strip away your anonymity most of the time. Journalist Sophie Bushwick wrote the SA article.

Bumble bees, native to our region, can be a bit hard to find. One species in particular, Franklin's bumble bee, may already be extinct. There's room for non-scientists to get involved in tracking and assisting bumble bees: the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas . Citizen scientists get training before being turned loose to look for bees and record their sightings.

Iliana Regan figured out her love for food early. What to do with it was another issue. She got her first job in a professional kitchen at age 15, worked in other restaurants while she learned cooking, and finally ran her own kitchen. Meanwhile, she had to navigate sexuality and repression, alcoholism and kitchen macho. Regan is now recognized for her innovative work in her own restaurant, and writes about the pathway to it in Burn the Place .

Josh Gross often says of the bands he features, "I love these guys!" And he means it. Josh, a musician/performer/composer himself, is extremely enthusiastic about music in many forms. He shares the the enthusiasm--and the work of five bands--with us in a monthly segment we call Rogue Sounds. This month's featured acts: Toots and the Maytals, Duke Evers, Conducted By Forget Me Not, Flock of Seagulls, and Derek Deon and The Vaughans.

Benares, India (Varanasi, if you prefer) is nearly 7,500 miles from the Rogue Valley. But Deobrat Mishra , musician and teacher, made the long trip to share his music. And it's not the first time; this marks our second visit with the sitar master and teacher, who comes from a long line of musicians and composers.

Have you thought much about what will happen to your body when you die? In this time of increasing interest in green burials, there are alternatives to the standard metal-coffin-in-concrete-vault burial. The owners of Willow-Witt Ranch near Ashland recently sought Jackson County approval to turn part of their ranch into a green burial site, the Forest Natural Burial Ground. A bit more than 18 acres will be set aside for the burying of bodies without chemicals or vaults, and with biodegradable