Category: Ikonokast

Posted on

Episode 32 – Electric Cars are Good

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 32 - Electric Cars are Good
/

Yes, it’s true, and our guests explain why.

Illustration of an electric car and power sources.
EVs and the environment

Phil Adam is an engineer who has quite likely affected your life directly.  If you ever go to buildings — school buildings, government buildings, commercial or industrial buildings — during the summer, and the air conditioner is on, there is a chance Phil designed the AC system for that structure.

Phil works in several areas of environmental and political activism. Phil is one of the key people responsible for assembling the thoughts and wishes of Minnesota Democrats across the state into a coherent platform of issues.  He is also on the board of directors of the DFL (democrats in MN) Environmental Caucus.

Brian Anderson grew up near the banks of the Wisconsin River, in Portage, Wisconsin, and earned a degree in electrical and computer engineering from the highly prestigious UW Madison.  He now lives in Minnesota where he enjoyed a storied career designing technologies used in automobile diagnostic and medical devices.

Both Phil and Brian have chosen to spend a huge amount of their free time spreading the word on electric vehicles.  As engineers, they have an understanding of the technology. Both Brian and Phil have an excellent sense of how to drag important concepts kicking and screaming out of the weedy rabbit holes they inhabit, into the open, to re-explain them and make them accessible to regular people.

For more information on NIO cards, check out this link to their manufacturer.  This is not an endorsement of a particular carmaker, but an example of how engineering continues to evolve to solve some of the perceived problems with commercial acceptance of electric vehicles.

Posted on

Episode 31 – The Range, the North Shore And More

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 31 - The Range, the North Shore And More
/
North Shore of Lake Superior in the winter.
North Shore of Lake Superior in the winter.

This is an overlapping continuation of episode 31, including the part about Silver Bay.  Greg Laden and Mike Haubrich spoke a bit more, about our travels and experiences along the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.  We also talked about the Iron Range in some greater detail, we talked about the gas fires in a flooded Grand Forks in 1997, how Hibbing had to move for the mines in the 1920’s and how even the mountains in Minnesota are almost flat.

This is how our conversations go when we get together.  You should join us sometime.

Moving Hibbing

Flooding in Grand Forks

Soudan Mine Tours

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Amazon purchase benefits Iokonokast)

The Geology of the North Shore

Posted on

Episode 30 – Protecting the Watershed with Megan Bond

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 30 - Protecting the Watershed with Megan Bond
/
Megan Bond Atty
Guest Megan Bond

Megan Bond has a BS in Public Administration with a Minor in Health Care Adminstration, a J.D. and an M.A. in Public Policy and Leadership from the University of St. Thomas. She began working in water conservation as a teenager in Las Vegas and has found her way into the environmental movement wherever she’s lived, and made environmental policy a major focus of her studies at all levels, even earning the Dean’s Award in Environmental Law in law school. She is an attorney and a solo practitioner at Bond Law Office, in International Falls, MN, concentrating in public interest defense work, including defending 37 water protectors protesting the Line 3 project in 2020 and 2021. She lives on the shores of Rainy Lake near Voyageurs National Park, in the heart of the Rainy River Watershed. Outside of her career, she chairs theDFL Environmental Caucus, chairs the Science and Policy Committee for Voyageurs Conservancy, serves on the Board of Directors of her local Food Shelf, and spends as much time camping in the summers and hiking in the autumns as she can.

 

Canoes at Boundary Waters
Canoes at Boundary Waters

In this interview, Megan talks extensively with Greg Laden about the importance of the watershed to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park as well as the Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario;  but more importantly, the watershed flows out from a contintal “trivide” to Hudson’s Bay, The Atlantic Ocean’s East Coast through the St. Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf Of Mexico through the Mississippi River.

A watershed map of North America.  The trivide that Greg and Megan speak of is where the orange, green and purple colors meet.

We do need to have copper for solenoids in windmills, and it’s a nearly perfect conductor for electrical wires for power transmission.  So, we aren’t saying to not mine copper, but the mines being fought over are not necessary in an environmentally sensitive area.

There is  an additional segment with Mike Haubrich talking to Greg about the EPA suit that forced the Reserve Mining Company to stop dumping taconite tailings into Lake Superior.

Some links of interest:

Statement on the availability of copper in the long run.

Zebra Mussel invasive species on Rainy Lake

Canada’s Worst Mining Disaster is Due to a Dam Being Built in the Wrong Place

Toxic Algal Blooms

Enbridge Line 3 is a Big Jerky Project

Mile Post 7 PDF Statement by the Army Corps of Engineers

The United States V Reserve Mining Company, DBPedia

Hard-fought United States vs. Reserve Mining changed environmentalism

Posted on

Episode 29: Agro Ecology and Smart Farmers with Laurent Penet

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 29: Agro Ecology and Smart Farmers with Laurent Penet
/
Laurent Penet, PHD
Our Guest

In this wide-ranging episode, we explored ideas in agriculture on how to make it both more productive and ecologically friendly.  Our guest is Laurent Penet, PhD,  a researcher with the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment.  While we strayed from the initial question, we did cover a lot of ground on maintaining our ability to continue to produce food in the tropics and the temperate zones, how to encourage biodiversity by not killing all the weeds, why we need pollinators, and reiterated that farmers are great resources because they know the land they are working.

AgroEcology, an Overview

Honey Bee Haven in Minnesota

Introduction of Mongooses in the Caribbean for pest control

Ethanol Production in Minnesota

Forever Green Initiative

Laurent had warned us that the frogs may be loud, but they ended up being quiet.  So I made up for it by adding some to the beginning through an audio courtesy of ZapSplat.  “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is extracted for the intro, and the close is “A Song for Peace” by Siddhartha Corsus.  Legal notifications under the Creative Commons License. 

Posted on

Episode 28: Fourteen questions with Ethan Siegel

Ethan in one of his many costumes.
Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 28: Fourteen questions with Ethan Siegel
/
Ethan in one of his many costumes.
Ethan Siegel as an early telescopist.

We started with a list of twenty questions, but that turned out to be bigger than a breadbox (figuratively, meaning we ran out of time.)  And so we have fourteen questions related to phsyics and the universe in general.

Ethan Siegel is a primo science communicator, with a blog at Starts With a Bang, a podcast of his own of the same name, and articles that he has published in a diverse array of magazines.  He’s an enthusiastic interpreter of science, and we assure you there is no math required to listen to this podcast.

Starts With a Bang site and blog.

The Encyclopedia Cosmologica

Ethan’s book Beyond the Galaxy Link from Amazon, purchase supports Ikonokast.

We are using new bumper music. “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is extracted for the intro, and the close is “A Song for Peace” by Siddhartha Corsus.  Legal notifications under the Creative Commons License. 

Posted on

Episode 27 – The Science Says I’m Right and You’re Wrong

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 27 - The Science Says I'm Right and You're Wrong
/

Especially since Covid-19, everyone you argue with either in person or on the internet about masks or vaccines, or climate change, or evolution, or whether the earth is flat or round*, or whatever people fight about, there’s going to be a demand to produce the science to support your argument.  That’s not always as easy as you might think.

In this episode, Mike interviews Greg, to ask about how science works, what peer-review means, whether correlation implies causation and if that means that correlation has no value.  It helps to have a good understanding of what science does, and how it works.  We’re here to help.  For example, are you familiar with “The Scientific Method?”  You likely earned an “A” on your 8th Grade (2nd form) science quiz by reciting this set of steps:

Cooking up a Science Misunderstanding
Just a basic idea of how science works.

There’s much more to science than that.  Science is woven into the culture, and yet many misconceptions remain.  Greg and Mike only covered a quantum mass of misconceptions, but we never fail to inform. There are many resources, and we reference this one during the show:

Understanding Science:  An Overview

and also this one, they are both pubished by the University of California, Berkeley:

Misconceptions of Science

We are using new bumper music. “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is extracted for the intro, and the close is “A Song for Peace” by Siddhartha Corsus.  Legal notifications under the Creative Commons License. 

*The earth is neither flat nor round, is it?  It’s an oblate spheroid, meaning it is ball-shaped with bulges around the belly, or the tropics.  Pizzas are flat and round, the earth is not pizza.

Posted on

Episode 26 – Seven Simple Rules for Saving the Planet

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 26 - Seven Simple Rules for Saving the Planet
/
Yurt
A yurt

One person alone doesn’t make much of a difference, really.  But that’s no reason to throw your hands in the air, say “what does it matter,” and take a hot shower with water heated by a gas-burning tank.  There are simple actions that you can take in your life, that don’t require turning into a scoldy, crunchy, hippie living in a yurt on a commune in Vermont.  (Although there’s nothing wrong with that.)

In this episode, Mike and Greg are each other’s guests, and we go over things you can do both at home and in talking to your local and national government representatives to help restore carbon balance to nature.

Engineers are working the problems, too.

We are using new bumper music, “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith.  Legal notifications under the Creative Commons License. 

 

 

 

Posted on

Episode 25 – Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, Part 2

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 25 - Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, Part 2
/

The wait is over!

Bill Schutt
Bill Schutt, auther of Pump: A Natural History of the Heart

This is the second part of Greg Laden’s interview with Bill Schutt, whose book Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, is available on Amazon in multiple formats. If you haven’t listened to the first part of this interview yet, catch up on that one first.

Don’t forget to listen to our interview with Dr. Schutt on Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History.

Here are the links to the articles in both parts of this interview:

Pump: A Natural History of the Heart

Meteorite Crash-Landed in Canada Woman’s Bed

COVID-19 slows birth rate in U.S., Europe

Bat guts become less healthy through diet of ‘fast food’ from banana plantations

Threatened rattlesnakes’ inbreeding makes species more resistant to bad mutations

Posted on

Episode 24 – Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, Part 1

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 24 - Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, Part 1
/

We are back!

Bill Schutt
Bill Schutt, auther of Pump: A Natural History of the Heart

Join us with part one of an interview with zoologist and author Bill Schutt, as we discuss his latest book, Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, a delightful and informative exploration of the heart, in all its (anatomical) forms.

We have changed our format a little, and hope you enjoy it. Feedback is welcome as long as you are nice about it.

Material discussed in this and the next episode:

Pump: A Natural History of the Heart

Meteorite Crash-Landed in Canada Woman’s Bed

COVID-19 slows birth rate in U.S., Europe

Bat guts become less healthy through diet of ‘fast food’ from banana plantations

Threatened rattlesnakes’ inbreeding makes species more resistant to bad mutations

Posted on

Episode 23 – Language Myths, Mysteries, and Magic

Ikonokast
Ikonokast
Episode 23 - Language Myths, Mysteries, and Magic
/

Dr. Karen Stollznow is a linguist who earned her PhD at the University of New England, in Australia. She hosts the skeptical podcast Monster Talk with Blake Smith (subscribe, you’ll thank us!) She is also a prolific author, having published academic works, non-fiction as well as fiction.

Karen Stollznow
Dr. Karen Stollznow

In this episode, we open with the ways in which we judge and stereotype each other based on the dialect and language that we use and move on to the meanings of words and how the change in time and space. Not only does the cafe lose the accent after a time, but bad words turn good and good words turn bad. It’s hysterical, how that works.

We marked this episode “explicit” because we discuss some of the words that are not used in polite language and how the relative offense of using some words varies based on where the speaker is as well as how the audience may be.

Check out her Amazon Author’s Page Here and also check out Monster Talk.