Thawing Permafrost, Healthy Anger, Understanding Trauma

Permafrost Releasing Greenhouse Gases as it Thaws (0:41) Guest: Jordan Wilkerson, PhD Student in Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard We’ve got a feedback loop going on in the Arctic where, as the atmosphere warms, the permanently frozen ground there is thawing. As it thaws, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (AKA laughing gas) escape into the atmosphere, where they cause further warming, which thaws more permafrost, which releases more greenhouse gas and round and round. Only now are researchers getting a grasp on how fast that cycle is going. An atmospheric chemistry lab at Harvard just published some data showing there’s a lot more nitrous oxide escaping the permafrost than previously thought. Anger Can Actually Be a Good Thing (14:19) Guest: Ryan Martin, Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay We often think of anger as a bad thing – it can make us mean and reckless and lead us to believe that the idiot cutting us off in traffic is a monster. And it’s even worse on the internet. But anger expert Ryan Martin says we’re overlooking the emotion's power for good. Sudden Infant Death Claims the Lives of 3,500 Babies Each Year, But New Research May Be the Answer to Ending It (31:39) Guest: John Kahan, President of the Aaron Matthews SIDS Research Guild at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Chief Data Analytics Officer at Microsoft Thousands of infants in the US every year die suddenly, for no apparent medical reason. There’s no warning. No way to know if an infant is at risk. The rate of these Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths has remained steady since the mid-1990s. Efforts to prevent SIDS by putting babies to sleep on their backs and eliminating smoking in the household have reduced, but not eliminated these deaths. Why, with our advanced medical technology and economic wealth, haven’t we solved SIDS yet? Breathing and Shaking Toward Recovery from Trauma (50:51) Guest: James S. Gordon, MD, professor of psychiatry and family medicine, Georgetown Medical School, author of “The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing after Trauma” Overcoming the effects of a serious trauma might include medication and therapy. If you’re being treated by psychiatrist James Gordon, it will include deep breathing and frenzied full-body shaking. Dr. Gordon’s techniques sound strange, but they’ve worked for teachers and students affected by the Parkland shooting and for people in Puerto Rico, Houston, Haiti and New Orleans devastated by natural disasters. The techniques have also helped Syrian refugees in Jordan, Palestinian children in Gaza and a range of veterans and victims of war suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Jackie Robinson’s Daughter on Her Civil Rights Awakening in 1963 (1:28:29) Guest: Sharon Robinson, Author “Child of the Dream: A Memoir of 1963” 1963 was a pivotal year for the Civil Rights movement in America. The historic March on Washington happened that summer. In the months before that march, the nation watched in horror as TV news cameras showed Alabama police using firehoses and dogs on African American youth marching in what’s known as the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. And in September of 1963, four African American girls were murdered in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. 1963 was also a pivotal year in the life of Sharon Robinson, the middle child and only daughter of baseball legend Jackie Robinson.