• Don Walsh
Only two men have ever been to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 6.78 miles (10.9 kilometers) below the ocean surface. In 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard descended the depths aboard the United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste. Boyd leaves the studio to talk with Walsh about his record-breaking adventure.
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• Leela Hazzah
How do you live in peace when you have lions as neighbors? It’s an important question. Lions are quickly disappearing in Africa, threatened by retaliatory and traditional spearing by Maasai warriors. Leela Hazzah directs the Lion Guardians, a program that helps herders live alongside lions.
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• McKenzie Funk
As rising temperatures melt the polar ice cap, five countries race to map their claims to a new energy frontier. The stakes are huge. Nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas may lie beneath the seabed of this vast wilderness. Author McKenzie Funk explores the “Arctic Landgrab” in the May issue of National Geographic magazine.
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• James Roberts
A new computer model suggests that over 4 billion years ago, an asteroid the size of Texas struck Mars and shut down its magnetic field. James Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland joins Boyd to talk about his recent study and what this means for our home planet.
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• Gary McKechnie
Gary McKechnie, author of USA 101: A Guide to America’s Iconic Places, Events and Festivals, joins Boyd to suggest summer vacation destinations.
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• Alasdair Harris
Alasdair Harris has made it his goal to improve the marine environment off the coast of Madagascar through ecotourism. To that end he has founded Blue Ventures, a marine conservation organization sustained by visiting tourists who actually partake in scientific research on the local reefs. After talking with Harris about the project, Boyd is ready to drop the radio show and spend six weeks diving and working in Madagascar.
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• Martin McClellan
The steamship SS Tahoe used to ply the waters of Lake Tahoe. But in 1940, the ship was scuttled in 400 feet of water off Glenbrook, Nevada. Sixty-two years later Martin McClellan made a record-setting high-altitude dive into the frigid lake to visit the ship. Boyd talks with McClellan about the expedition and his plans to return to the SS Tahoe this summer.
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• Spencer Wells
How far back can you trace your ancestors? Spencer Wells, director of the National Geographic Genographic Project, joins Boyd in the studio to talk about the project’s latest discovery. It turns out that most people from around the Mediterranean are descended from the Phoenecians, a group of seafarers and traders who founded colonies all over the Mediterranean until they were completely obliterated by the Romans in the second century B.C.
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• Karla Cosgriff
How do you get high school kids to pay attention in class? Maybe it’s a little easier if the lesson includes swimming with sharks or scuba diving on a coral reef! That is the theory behind The Island School, an exciting institution in the Bahamas where students take a hands-on approach to science. Boyd talks about this opportunity with Karla Cosgriff, director of the school’s companion facility, the Cape Eleuthera Institute.
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• Notes
There are plenty of interesting sights to see while driving across the U.S. Boyd shares some of his favorites.