Each week, UnDisciplined takes a fun, fascinating and accessible dive into the lives of researchers and explorers working across a wide variety of scientific fields.
…
continue reading
The campaign rhetoric, struggles for political power and results of the 2022 election converge in the 68th meeting of the Montana Legislature. Join us Monday mornings for The Session — a breakdown of the latest action we’re watching in the statehouse, produced by Montana Public Radio, Yellowstone Public Radio and Montana Free Press.
…
continue reading
Informed and creative public radio for the New West. Listen for news and views, music discovery, cultural commentary and enlightening conversation.
…
continue reading
In his new book, Combing Through the White House, Theodore Pappas suggests that the hair of American leaders has long conveyed important political and symbolic messages, and has affected the way in which the public perceives them.By Raegan Edelman
…
continue reading
1
The Session Live at Free Press Fest: Looking ahead the 2025 Montana Legislature
17:42
17:42
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
17:42
The 2025 Montana Legislature elected by voters in November will meet in January to consider new laws and develop a two-year state budget. Already, it’s clear what some of the key issues of the session will be — among them housing affordability, tax policy, education funding and the potential renewal of Montana’s expanded Medicaid health coverage pr…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Do women think about climate change differently than men?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
It is sometimes assumed that women, as a group, tend to feel differently about climate and climate change than men. and that’s true — but as it turns out, context matters.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Have greenhouse gas emissions peaked? Does that mean we’re going to be OK?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
It was not so long ago that there seemed to be no end in sight for the continual rise of greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. But now it seems possible, even likely, that we may have reached the point in which the emissions responsible for climate change are actually starting to fall.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Are wildfires increasing under climate change?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
The western United States is getting hotter, windier, and drier. And that means more fire risk. It also means that when a fire does occur, it is likely to be much more dangerous and destructive.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What is the predatory impact of wolves in Yellowstone?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
Wolves were once naturally abundant in Yellowstone national park, but starting in the 1870s they fell prey to humans who hunted them until their numbers were non-existent. And this was all to protect the “big game species,” like bison and elk. But the perceived “threat” that wolves were to these species wasn’t really correct, due to their very phys…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What can we learn from how farmers adjusted to ancient climate cycles?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
One of the things that is often missed when we talk about climate change and agriculture is that climate shifts have always impacted where we can plant and what we can grow. And one of the best ways to really see this is to track how corn production has moved across North America for thousands of years.Andrew Gillreath-Brown’s work was funded by ht…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Where did climate denial come from? (Part 2)
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
For decades the basic principles of climate science were not at all controversial. To understand what changed we have to go back into the past. That’s what David Lipsky does in his latest book, The Parrot and the Igloo. (Part 2 of 2)By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Where did climate denial come from? (Part 1)
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
For decades and decades the basic principles of climate science were not at all controversial. And then, something happened. But to understand why, we have to go back into the past. (Part 1 of 2)By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Did human-caused climate change actually start thousands of years ago?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
Archeological anthropologist Todd Braje points out that humans have been impacting global climates and ecologies for millennia. And he says that if we really want to understand our future, we need to understand that part of our past.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: When climate scientists are under attack, who has their backs?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Since 2011, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund has supported hundreds of researchers who have been attacked, sued, defamed, and threatened — and this year the organization has been busier than ever. The group’s director, Lauren Kurtz, says she’s happy that her organization is being sought out by scientists in need—and really sad that there is a…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Does crop insurance sometimes do more harm than good?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Anne Schechinger, isn’t opposed to federally subsidized insurance, but she believes it’s long past time that we look very hard at places like the Lonestar State and ask whether things need to change.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: We might be able to engineer our way out of global warming. But should we?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
It's possible that a nation suffering from the extreme effects of climate warming might take simple steps that could change the global atmosphere. There’s not much to stop it from happening, so Ben Kravitz says the the world needs to be prepared.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What do wolves tell us about our relationship with nature?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
John Vucitech suggests that it’s not just the science that matters when we’re talking about our longstanding views on wolves–it’s also a matter of compassion, and of understanding.By Matthew LaPlante, Raegan Edelman
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What can we do to save the coral reefs? Here’s one, um, cool solution.
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Coral reefs are some of the oldest, most diverse ecosystems on Earth. But they’re also among the most vulnerable. So, what do we do? Mary Hagedorn has an idea: Let’s collect as many as possible and freeze them.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Should we all trash talk a little bit more?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Rafi Kohan’s latest book tells the story of trash talk, and explains why the practice of leveling vicious insults at our rivals might not be all that bad.By Matthew LaPlante, Raegan Edelman
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How can we find hope in a changing world?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Bill Weir once felt as though he was watching the American story change in staggering ways. But now he wakes up each morning with more wonder than worry.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How can we reconnect with nature?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Brittany Gowan says that no matter where you are, and no matter how far you might feel from the world as it once existed, you can still connect to nature.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How to survive the end of the world
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
If you have a gnawing sense that this is end of the world as we know it, then know this: You’re not alone. And Athena Aktipis has some advice for you.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How is climate warming impacting groundwater storage?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Until recently, there hasn’t been a great way of assessing groundwater storage, or understanding how climate change is impacting it.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Can we predict the next snowpocalypse?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Matthew’s recent paper looks at the potential connections between ocean temperatures and epic winters, like the one we experienced in the Mountain West in 2022-23.By Matthew LaPlante, Raegan Edelman
…
continue reading
For 21 years, the pub event series known as Nerd Nite has cross-crossed the globe, making science accessible and fun.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How do you land on an asteroid?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
In The Asteroid Hunter, Dante Lauretta chronicles the quest to retrieve a sample from Bennu, which is one of the large asteroids that is most likely to collide with the Earth.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Can a personal creed help young people connect in a rapidly changing world?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
The young adults who comprise Generation Z live in a world of far less violent crime relative to the generation before them. So, why are so many of them struggling? Educator John Creger thinks he has part of the answer: They often need help understanding who they are in this world.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Why do people police language?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Anne Curzan might seem like a strange sort of English teacher. The veteran professor doesn’t believe in “right” and wrong” when it comes to grammar. Rather, she wants people to be able to make informed choices about language.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How long can apes remember each other’s faces?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Laura Lewis met a bonobo named Louise as part of a study on the capacity of bonobos to remember the faces of apes they’d spent time with decades earlier. And Louise remembered.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What is it like to leave an evangelical church?
23:00
23:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
23:00
Like many Americans, Sarah McCammon grew up in a deeply evangelical family, where she was plagued by fears and deep questions about her belief system, but scared to leave.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Is there more undiscovered life in the Great Salt Lake?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Until recently, nematodes weren’t known to live in the Great Salt Lake. And, in fact, very little lives there — because the lake’s salinity makes most life untenable. But, as it turns out, these tiny worms were doing just fine.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What’s ‘fair’ when it comes to climate action?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
When humans debate climate policy, the questions asked are often posed in terms of what will work best. Fairness isn’t always, or even often, taken into account. But Stacia Ryder thinks that needs to change.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Are food companies responsible for the epidemic in diabetes, cancer and dementia?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Ultra-processed food and the companies that produce them contribute significantly to the epidemic in diabetes, cancer, dementia, and other chronic disease. Is it time to regulate these products like tobacco? And will it take a class action suit to make that happen? Erik Peper believes so.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Why do humans use the past to inform the future?
25:55
25:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:55
Memory is not a rigid, static picture of what came before. Rather, it’s a nebulous, ever-changing conceptualization of who we were, what we believed, what happened to us, and what was happening around us.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Robots, AI and the future of human connection
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
There is precedent for humans connecting with other living things, like getting attention, love, and companionship from dogs and cats and a few other animals that have been domesticated to provide partnership. Now, there’s a new option for meeting this need — social robots — who may end up being even better at fulfilling the human desire for connec…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Should species be named after horrible people?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
When an Austrian bug collector discovered a new species of beetle in the 1930s, he bestowed upon it the name of a person he greatly admired. He called it Anophthalmus hitleri — and sent Adolf Hitler a note announcing the onomastic tribute. After nearly 90 years, should species still be named after horrible people?…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Can you still travel the roads that Julius Caesar built?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
Long before Julius Caesar became one of the most powerful rulers in the world, he was a relatively unknown curator of the Via Appia, a road stretching from Rome on the Tyrrhenian Coast to the Salento Peninsula on the Adriatic Sea. Our guest John Keahey traversed the Via Appia, and he joins us to talk about it.…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: What have we learned from 50 years of the Endangered Species Act?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
A new book by Lowell Baier is not just a history of The Endangered Species Act, but an explanation of what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong in the implementation of this historic federal statute.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Were Utah’s pioneers slave owners?
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
Slavery in the United States is often thought to be an institution of the American South, but western states played a part as well. In Utah, a law passed in 1852 made slavery and the slave trade legal, and this law was passed under the urging of the first territorial governor, Brigham Young. Historian Paul Reeve joins the program to discuss newly u…
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Navigating the future of the global water crisis
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
Water crises are nothing new. Indeed they’ve influenced the very course of human history again and again but we’ve never had a planet with 10 billion people on it before, and so can we solve the water crisis at a global scale?By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How bugs may help us get to Mars
25:54
25:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:54
If we are going to go to Mars, we’re going to need to bring a lot of things that we need to live that the red planet, so far as we can tell, just doesn’t have... and that includes bugs.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How inclusivity benefits men and women on the autism spectrum
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
Autism Spectrum Disorder exists on a continuum of behaviors, capabilities, and deviations from norms — and for a very long time, that spectrum didn't include much space for girls.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Rethinking sexual harassment prevention in the workplace
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
Almost all large organizations — from government entities to universities to private businesses — engage in sexual harassment prevention training. And yet the problem persists.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: With natural disasters rising in frequency, the US needs to rethink emergency management
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
The recent disaster in Maui was the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, and it has highlighted a gaping hole in the country's disaster response.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Why you should become a 'student of seed'
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
Consider for a moment what our world would look like without seeds.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Carl Nassib came out while playing in the NFL - here's what the media thought about it
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
There are no openly gay players in any of the five major men's sports leagues in the United States. But that's not because there are no gay players in those leagues.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: The surprising side of climate change - why you don't have to fear the future
25:57
25:57
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:57
There's a force that people don't think much about — the existential terror of accepting the truth about global warming. But what if we didn't have to be afraid?By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How the Great Salt Lake is becoming hostile to life
26:41
26:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:41
As the Great Salt Lake has shrunk in recent years, it has become an increasingly hostile place to life of all kinds.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: How to protect yourself and your home from wildfires
26:00
26:00
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
26:00
Under climate warming, the risk of wildfires is increasing. So, we're all going to need to adapt.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: The economic evolution of an icon
25:57
25:57
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:57
The top-grossing movie of 2023 is a movie about a doll that is known for creating toxic expectations about girls' bodies and also paving the way for girls to be anything they want.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: Clenched fists and full beards: two pieces of evidence suggesting humans evolved to fight
25:56
25:56
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:56
Humans have evolved to do lots of things. And one thing scientists are now coming to recognize is that we also evolved to fight — with each other.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: This asteroid is about to pass dangerously close to Earth
20:55
20:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
20:55
The OSIRIS-Rex mission has picked up a piece of the asteroid Bennu projected to pass close to Earth. Precautionary? Maybe. But there's a big enough risk that we're doing something about it.By Matthew LaPlante, Raegan Edelman
…
continue reading
1
UnDisciplined: 'It's one of the most lonely feelings': The realities of mainstream schooling for deaf children
25:58
25:58
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
25:58
85% of deaf children attend mainstream public schools and many deaf advocates will say this is a good thing, but good intentions and good educational practices are two different things.By Matthew LaPlante
…
continue reading