Diet Disease

Could it be that many of the world’s most dreaded diseases, from Alzheimer’s to cancer and heart disease, can be prevented or even cured by a simple change in diet?  In this interview Dr. Sandra Poling talks about recent research that shows it could:

Diet Disease

(30 minutes)

Are Researchers Finally Closing in on the Cure to Cancer?

Could it be that the prevalent theory of the cause of cancer before the discovery of DNA sidetracked research into chromosome damage for decades was right all along?  

In this edition of KPTZ Compass I talk with biochemist Travis Christofferson, the author of Tripping Over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer, which details the remarkable successes researchers into the 90-year-old metabolic theory have had in recent years, and allow ourselves to hope that the cure may actually finally be right around the corner:

Metabolic Theory of Cancer

(30 minutes)

Fighting the Navy

Over the course of the past couple of years, the U.S. Navy has steadily expanded its operations in the Puget Sound region, from more than doubling the size of the nuclear weapons handling dock at the Bangor Trident submarine base on the Hood Canal, to increasing the number and frequency of training exercises with noisy Growler fighter jets stationed on Whidbey Island, to increasing testing and in-water training using explosives and sonar, to proposing to use Olympic National Forest lands as a training ground for electronic warfare.  Each of these expansions has met with almost universal public opposition, and critics have questioned the legality of the piecemeal environmental review process.  Here are several programs I produced for KPTZ Compass on the Navy's increasing militarization of the Sound, and the public push-back:

Whidbey Growlers
(30 minutes)

Electronic Warfare Non-hearing
(30 minutes)

Trouble with the Navy
(29 minutes)

The Navy's Marine Messes
(30 minutes)

Tarboo Plant-a-Thon

My favorite stories are those of communities joyfully working together for a common cause...and of those sorts of stories, this is my favorite so far: the tenth annual Tarboo Creek Plant-a-Thon, at which some 200 volunteers came together to help restore salmon runs in a troubled watershed.

Tarboo Plant-a-Thon
30 minutes

Electronic Warfare Non-Hearing

Electronic Warfare Non-Hearing

30 minutes

Representatives of the U. S. Navy and U. S. Forest Service faced a very tough crowd at a public meeting held in the Port Angeles City Council Chambers on the evening of Thursday, Nov. 5.   People had come in droves from as far away as Oak Harbor, Port Townsend, and Sequim.  There were rumors that a large contingent from Forks had not shown up only because there were trees down, blocking the highway over by Lake Crescent that stormy night.  It’s probably just as well they couldn’t make it, though, because as it was, every seat in the large hall was filled, people were sitting on the floor and standing wherever they could find room at the back, and the crowd extended out into the foyer all the way to the front doors.  There was no more room.

The subject of the meeting was a Navy application for a Forest Service permit to use remote logging roads for mobile electro-magnetic emitter trucks that Growler  aircraft from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island would seek out in cat-and mouse war games for up to 16 hours a day on as many as 260 days a year.  The nationally-sanctified "Square-inch of Silence" would be violated, as would be the peace and quiet of the Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest.   But the Environmental Assessment gave no consideration to those effects.

The meeting had been requested by Sixth District Congressman Derek Kilmer when citizens contacted him to object to the lack of opportunity for public input after the Forest Service initially quietly rubber-stamped the plan in mid-September.   

The comment period was at first extended to October 31^st and a crowded public hearing was held in Forks, but so many people requested another extension that this meeting had been scheduled, and the comment deadline set back to November 28.  And so it was that there were loud expressions of dismay and even threats to walk out when the announcement was made that the evening's proceedings would not be made part of the public record:

The deadline for commenting on the Electronic Warfare Plan is November 28.  

The full Pacific Northwest EW Range Environmental Assessment is available by searching the web for that title. Comments should be addressed to Greg Wahl, Forest Environmental Coordinator, Olympic National Forest, 1835 Black Lake Blvd SW, Olympia, WA 98512, or can be sent by email gtwahl@fs.fed.us. 

But for the Grace of God

We talk with a local reporter who, but for some fluke of fortune, might easily have met the same grisly fate as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria beheading victim James Foley, in an interview that ties American involvement in the Middle East to global warming…and life in Port Townsend!

But for the Grace of God
29 minutes

Robot Futures

A talk with perhaps the world’s foremost expert on robotics and artificial intelligence about everything from the future of driverless cars to the ethics of the development of autonomous weapons systems.

Robot Futures
30 minutes

Solar Power Trip

A talk with the founder and president of a company that has been key in making Port Townsend the city with the most rooftop solar power plants per capita in Washington State. But are we pushing the limit on new installations?

Solar Power Trip
30 minutes

Climate Refugees

A noted investigative journalist explains why he and his wife have recently moved to Port Townsend as “climate refugees”…and outlines the profile of the coming global calamity climate scientists now almost unanimously agree is probably inevitable.

Climate Refugees
30 minutes

Double M Ranch

What do vintage British automobiles, custom electric guitars, tube amplifiers, a man who as a boy was good at building with blocks, and one of Port Townsend’s most popular restaurants have in common?  The answer lies at the Double M Ranch:

Double M Ranch
30 minutes

Whidbey Growlers

Activists from Whidbey Island talk about what they see as the Navy’s escalating militarization of the Northern Puget Sound and its consequences, with responses from not one, but TWO Navy public affairs officers.

Whidbey Growlers
30 minutes

The U.S. Navy's Marine Messes

Two stories of the U.S. Navy running afoul of the marine environment, and of the effects on marine mammals—and a local shellfish farmer:

U.S. Navy's Marine Messes
30 minutes

Bigfoot and the Sasquatch Genome Project

I talk with a former police detective who not only claims to have seen Bigfoot TWICE, but who also helped supply genetic evidence to prove the existence of the creatures that most believe to be a myth:

Bigfoot and the Sasquatch Genome Project

30 minutes