Science and Technology
Weekend America's Science and Technology Coverage
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Garageland: Hydrogen in the Garage
President Obama and Congress are promising to kick into serious negotiations this week over the proposed $800 billion economic stimulus package. The stimulus might provide $100 billion to alternative energy and energy efficiency. In New Jersey, Mike Strizki is already living the energy-efficient dream. He's turned the garage at his house into a hydrogen and solar power plant.
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Pollution Smells Like Pumpkin Pie
The holidays are over. Maybe you've joined a gym, started a new, healthy diet. It's been a week since you touched that plate of stale holiday cookies. But for the salmon in Puget Sound, the feast is just beginning. And their diet has been getting much worse. From Seattle, Joshua McNichols explains.
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Crazy for Time Capsules
There are thousands of time capsules buried by school children, civic leaders, colleges, and hospitals across the country every year in the United States. It's fueled by that indomitable optimism about the future we humans seem to have. We bury things and think future generations will find them - and care
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Conversations with America: Oliver Sacks
A couple of weeks ago in his weekly radio and YouTube address, President-elect Obama talked about the role science would play in his presidency. Obama said his administration would seek to ensure that facts and evidence reported by scientists are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. That's a stance dear to the heart of author and neurologist Oliver Sacks.
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Your Take on the New American Car
The CEOs of Ford, Chrysler and GM are driving back to Detroit this weekend after asking Congress a second time for billions of dollars to avoid bankruptcy. We still don't know if Congress will say yes. In the meantime, you sent us your best ideas about how to make American cars inspiring and awesome again. Here are some of our favorites.
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The New American Car
Auto industry CEOs and union leaders are back in Detroit empty-handed this weekend. They spent the week on Capitol Hill begging, unsuccessfully, for help to avoid possible bankruptcy and even more layoffs. Congress has refused to bail them out, at least so far. But in the meantime, we thought we'd offer our own bailout. Not in dollars, but in ideas. How should we re-imagine the American car?
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So Long, Phoenix
We let go of a little part of our civilization this week. The Phoenix Mars Lander--the thing that found water on our neighboring red planet-- stopped sending messages back to Earth. In technical terms, it died. Producer Ochen Kaylan had a rough time with Phoenix's death this week, so he decided to write it a letter.
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America's Infrastructure: Jordan Bridge
This weekend, the Jordan Bridge in Chesapeake, Va. will close permanently. It's the oldest drawbridge in Virginia and a shortcut for many residents to and from the shipyards. Many small bridges around the country are closing permanently, giving Americans rough commutes and forcing them to spend more time and money to get to their jobs.
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America's Infrastructure: Delaware Aqueduct
The longest tunnel in the world supplies New York City with drinking water. And it's leaking: Just in the amount of time that this show is on the air, the Delaware Aqueduct will leak at least enough to put a football field under three and a half feet of water. It's just one part of America's infrastructure that's falling apart. Reporter Rick Karr has the story of the catastrophe that's unfolding several hundred feet underground.
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America's Infrastructure: The Alaskan Way Viaduct
In the coming months, we'll be looking at the state of America's infrastructure. Many listeners drew our attention to the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle. The viaduct is a traffic artery a couple of miles long, and its dual levels were built 55 years ago. This weekend, it's closed and under inspection. We check in with the Washington State Department of Transportation.
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The Science of Fall Colors
If you're in a part of the country dominated by coniferous trees, with needles instead of leaves, this time of year is just about getting colder. But if your landscape features deciduous trees, it is technicolor outside. But why do the leaves change color? What's actually happening in that tree? We're gonna get all public radio educational.
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10-4, Good Buddy
On 10-4, we take a look at the all but forgotten home of the phrase "10-4": The CB radio. Before the internet, cell phones, texting and IM, it was a way to chat with strangers and strange truckers, to invent new names, to use coded slang, to do all the things we do on computers today. Weekend America host John Moe remembers the CB boom of the 1970s and wonders why we're so hooked on blathering to strangers.
