Outside/in

For a long time, the elusive night parrot of the Australian outback was believed to be extinct. Then, an experienced birder with a reputation for dubious finds offered up foolproof evidence that the bird is still alive: photographs, feathers, and birdsong that he promises is the real deal. This week on the show, we're featuring our Australian podcast pal Ann Jones, host of ABC's Off-Track, as she heads out into the bush to try and capture sound from a bird few have ever heard.Sign up for our newsletter!Episode photo by Eddie Yip. 

In our 10X10 series, we examine places that might not seem all that interesting... places like your typical frozen pond.  Sure, on the surface it's a wind-swept desert of crunchy snow and frigid temperatures, but drill a few inches down though, and you'll discover a world turned upside-down. In this episode, we give the down low on bizarre properties of water, fish that thrive in a capped-off environment, and long beards of algae clinging to the underside of a secret ecosystem few have ever explored.Sign up for our newsletterFind more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org Episode photo by Michael Carian.

Outdoorsy types are the among the biggest ambassadors of Leave No Trace, a set of principles and best practices for sharing and conserving wilderness areas. But while most people agree on the broad strokes - DON'T SCREW UP NATURE! - sorting out the details can be an emotional and argumentative affair... especially when it comes to rocks.Sign up for our newsletterFind more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org 

The 40-hour workweek is as American as apple pie, and it’s been around almost as long. So, is it finally time to re-think our Monday-through-Friday lifestyle? With modern mechanization and automation, should we all have more leisure time? And what would that mean for the environment? Producer Jimmy Gutierrez looks into the history of work culture, where it’s being challenged, and makes the argument that we ALL should be working less, you know, to save the planet.  Sign up for our newsletterFind more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

Here's a humdinger of a thought experiment: How fast could people go before the combustion engine and other technologies drastically increased the speed of the human race? And how did they pull it off? Skis? Sled-dogs? Catapults? From ancient horseriders and viking ships to primitive luges and "Russian Mountains", the Outside/In team researches all sorts of old-fashioned methods of locomotion and presents biggest the speed trial of the millennium.If you've got your own ideas about how humans hit record speeds during ye good olde days before the automobile, send us an email at outsidein@nhpr.org or call us on the Ask Sam hotline: 1-844-GO-OTTER!Episode photo  by William James, courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.Sign up for our newsletterFind more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

Pirate trails are everywhere: the pioneers of mountain biking built them on private land, public land and everything in between. They were built by riders just looking for a place to take their new bikes, and in the process they simply appropriated land that they wanted for their trails.But what happens when the evolution of a sport threatens the very thing that made it so attractive in the first place? Sign up for our newsletterFind more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

Everyone's heard of Vikings - their daring North Atlantic voyages, their mysterious runes. But there's another ancient culture in Arctic Scandinavia that's much older, and just as fascinating - the Sámi. While the Vikings have been celebrated, Sámi music, language and traditions were forced underground. Why?Check out Threshold at thresholdpodcast.org And find more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

There's only one place in the world that you can find the axolotl—the Mexican salamander—in the wild. This creature is the living embodiment of Xolotl, the Aztec god of heavenly fire, of lightning and the underworld, and the renegade twin brother of Quetzalcoatl. But the wild axolotl’s fate might be bound to the Aztecs by more than myth: its life in 21st century could rely on a landscape both very old and very human.Find more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

Ask Sam: that special time when scientists worldwide cringe as Sam & the team speculate wildly on a diverse range of topics before picking up the phone to call in the real experts.  This time, we've got another hirsute mystery: Are insect and plant hairs also made from the magical (seeming) protein called keratin? Also, do bugs get cancer? And which came first: the chachalaca (not a typo) or the turkey? The Ask Sam Hotline (1-844-GO-OTTER) is always open, so do your best to stump the gang and send us down another figurative rabbit-hole!

Listener feedback is a big part of working in radio and podcasting. We try to look for the lesson in every critical email, phone call, or tweet (even the cranky ones). However, there is one listener who has probably gotten in touch with producers at New Hampshire Public Radio more than any other - a vegan advocate named Laura Slitt. Her approach hasn’t always made it easy to take her seriously.Today, we’ve got a deeply personal story from producer Taylor Quimby, who last year decided to strike up a relationship with Laura, to try and understand where she’s coming from and what made her decide to give up meat and dairy. Heads up: This episode features descriptions of people killing animals to eat them. Find more Outside/In at outsideinradio.org

Today the second in our two-part series on the politics of population. In this episode, we’re digging into the story of how around the turn of the millennium, population got all tangled up in immigration in one vote at the Sierra Club.That ugly fight represents a pivot point for the movement: a transition from the environmental politics of the 70s and 80s to the environmental politics of today.Find more at outsideinradio.org

Today, we’re talking about population. How it went from being on the front pages of our newspapers and all over late night television to being the issue that you’ll only hear from out of the mouth of comic book super-villain Thanos. It's a big story, so we're spending two episodes on it.Also, we promised you a link to David Roberts' Vox piece, so here's that.Find more at outsideinradio.org

Two barrels. Four bodies. And the decades-long mystery that led to a serial killer.A special look at a new podcast from NHPR, Bear Brook: A podcast about a cold case that's changing how murders will be investigated forever.www.bearbrookpodcast.com

Today, we take a step back to imagine a world without a web of GPS satellites telling your smartphone where you are every second of the day. While this might sound scary, come along and maybe you’ll discover you have a secret sixth sense...one that’s been inside you all along, if you just knew how to turn it on.

Today, we’re giving you an inside look at what it takes to make the podcast. A bunch of people make this show, which means that our ideas meetings almost inevitably turn into total chaos when one of us starts shouting our favorite facts about our favorite animals.This time, we gave up. Rather than fight it, we’re leaning in to bring you four stories about animals. Or rather… four cases for animals that are the best… the coolest… the niftiest… however you want to define that. And when it’s all said and done, we’d like you to settle this one for us. www.outsideinradio.org

News flash: men aren't the only people who enjoy the outdoors. No sh*#, right? But the outdoor gear industry has only recently started to realize that there are more people wanting high quality gear than traditionally fit men. Today, we're digging in to the fraught relationship between the gear industry and gender. When do women actually need something different, and when are companies just looking to make more money by selling women a product that is essentially the same thing... but smaller and pink? And what do you do if the available products - pink or not -  don't fit your body at all? 

There are between eight and ten thousand wildfires in the United States each year, but most quietly burn out and we never hear about them. The Pagami Creek Wildfire in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area was supposed to be like that, but things turned out differently. And Greg and Julie Welch were camping right in its path.

Another year… another record-breaking wildfire season. Thanks to climate change the fire season now starts sooner and ends later.  Scientists also say climate change will make lightning more frequent, and winds more powerful… basically the world is a tinderbox.But what if I told you that maybe the problem with all these big, out of control fires was *not enough* fire. 

Bengal cat is an attempt to preserve the image of a leopard in the body of a house cat — using a wild animal’s genes, while leaving out the wild animal personality. But is it possible to isolate the parts of a wild animal that you like, and forgo the parts that you don’t?Can you have your leopard rosette, and your little cat too?

It took 200 years of dealing with with the invasive European green crab before American scientists finally decided to head back to the source. And when they did, they discovered that the invasive scourge of our estuaries is a straight up Italian delicacy.