June 29, 1979 - MPR’s Tom Meersman interviews Lee Botts, chairman of the Great Lakes Basin Commission. She discusses the present and future status of the Great Lakes. Topics include phosphorus and algae problems, the definition of “dead lakes,” and pollution.
July 20, 1979 - MPR’s Rich Dietman interviews Dr. Frank Busta, member of the Food Science Department at the University of Minnesota. Busta discusses controversy that has arisen in a related sorbate study and about whose side food scientists are on...consumers or big business?
July 25, 1979 - MPR’s Lee Axdahl provides a report on pollution concerns of PCBs (aka - polychlorinated biphenyls) in the Great Lakes. Axdahl tours the Environmental Protection Agency's research ship Crockett as it traverses Lake Superior. Scientists on the vessel are examining the health of the water.
August 17, 1979 - Professor Robert McKinnell, of the Department of Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Minnesota, talks with MPR’s science reporter Rich Dietman about the controversy and research concerning cloning.
August 24, 1979 - MPR’s Dan Olson and Rich Dietman visit the National Weather Service office. They talk to meteorologist John Graff and others who explain their forecasting equipment, the costs of the operations, trends in weather, and other aspects of their work.
October 4, 1979 - MPR’s Dan Olson interviews experts on what organic farming is and what its value is. The group includes Margery Peterson, principal author of a Minnesota Department of Agriculture publication on organic farming; Marilyn Larson of the Organic Growers and Buyers association; Lester Frohip, an organic farmer from Southwestern Minnesota; and Russell Adams, Jr., a soil biochemist at the University of Minnesota.
November 3, 1979 - Dr. Gerald Webers, a geologist at Macalester College in Saint Paul, talks about his upcoming three-month expedition to Antarctica, studying everything from seal behavior to upper atmospheric radiation. The expedition is being funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and will be based at Camp Macalester in the Ellsworth Mountains. Webers has agreed to send back his observations on tape from time to time so that we can hear firsthand how things are going.
January 4, 1980 - Donald Anderson, director of the Mid-American Solar Energy Complex, speaking at a conference on alternative energy and energy conservation held in Mankato, and sponsored by the Region Nine Development Commission. Donald Anderson is a former professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota and helped develop solar energy products at the Sheldahl Company in Northfield. Mid-American Solar Energy Complex is a 12 state Midwestern group which is working on the technical, financial, and political aspects of solar energy.
January 26, 1980 - Dr. Gerry Webers, a geology professor from Macalester College in Saint Paul, led a scientific expedition of over 150 researchers to the in the Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica. There, using Camp Macalester as a base of operations, the scientists gathered information on the continents weather, magnetic structure and past life. Webers and others believe that Antarctica was once a part of Africa. And, to support their belief, they have found fossils of animals and plants that could only have lived in a climate much warmer than that of the South Pole's. For about the next 18 minutes, we hear a portion of a tape journal that Webers sent back from the Antarctic.
April 26, 1980 - On this Weekend program, MPR’s Rich Dietman interviews Ruth Mattson Taylor about speaking with the dead. Through the help of British clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell, Ms. Taylor says she communicated with her deceased father, A.D. Mattson, who was a Lutheran minister, on numerous occasions during which time he told her some of what it is like "on the other side.” Ms. Taylor recently finished editing a book entitled, "Witness from Beyond."