Blue Dot, named after Carl Sagan's famous speech about our place in the universe, features interviews with guests from all over the regional, national and worldwide scientific communities. Host Dave Schlom leads discussions about the issues science is helping us address with experts who shed light on climate change, space exploration, astronomy, technology and much more. Dave asks us to remember: from deep space, we all live on a pale, blue dot.
Blue Dot: Whale-SETI: a communications interaction with Twain the Humpback Whale
In this very special episode, Host Dave Schlom visits with three researchers who were part of an incredible series of experimental communications with a humpback whale off the coast of Alaska.
2/2/2024 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Monitoring surface water from space: Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission
Two scientists join host Dave Schlom to discuss the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission which launched in December of 2022.
1/26/2024 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Meteor Showers 101 with Peter Jenniskens
SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens joins host Dave Schlom to take a deep dive into the science of meteors and meteor showers. Dr. Jenniskens is the author of the authoritative Atlas of Earth's Meteor Showers, a comprehensive and professional-level compilation of all we currently know about meteor showers and the comets they originate from.
1/19/2024 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: A Range of Biodiversity: the Klamath Mountains Pt. 2
Host Dave Schlom and Michael examine the incredible forests of the Klamaths with two Cal Poly Humboldt professors who are deeply involved in studying them, Lucy Kerhoulas and Rosemary Sherriff.
1/12/2024 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: A Range of Biodiversity: the Klamath Mountains Pt. 1
In the first of a special two-part series, Host Dave Schlom is joined by Michael Kauffmann, co-editor and publisher of The Klamath Mountains: A Natural History.
1/5/2024 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Reflections on a life of service in the National Parks: a conversation with Jim Richardson
Host Dave Schlom sits down with one of his favorite people, Lassen Volcanic National Park Superintendent Jim Richardson, on the eve of his retirement from the National Park Service.
12/29/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: Icebergs as a resource: how floating mountains of ice can be harvested for freshwater
Blue Dot delves into the world of iceberg science and the latest ideas on using them as sources of freshwater for the future as Host Dave Schlom interviews Ohio State University Professor Matthew Birkhold, author of Chasing Icebergs: How Frozen Freshwater Can Save The Planet.
12/22/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: The story of America's first women astronauts with Loren Grush
Host Dave Schlom is joined by Bloomberg News science reporter Loren Grush to talk about her new book, The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts.
12/15/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: California's complex weather and climate
Host Dave Schlom delves into the topic of California's amazingly diverse climate and weather with the authors of the new book, Fire and Rain: California's Changing Weather and Climate, Stephen LaDochy (Cal State LA) and meteorologist Michael Witiw.
12/8/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Watershed Restoration with CalTrout: a conversation with Curtis Knight
Host Dave Schlom is joined by the Executive Director of California Trout, Curtis Knight, to talk about the conservation organization and its regional restoration projects across the state.
12/1/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Pascal Lee and the Carl Sagan Prize
Host Dave Schlom and Pascal Lee team up once again, this time to discuss Lee winning the Carl Sagan Prize from Wonderfest in the San Francisco Bay Area for his scientific research and gift for science communication.
11/17/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: Salish Sea Wild: a conversation with wildlife vet Joe Gaydos and filmmaker Bob Friel
Host Dave Schlom is joined by the creators of the YouTube channel, Salish Sea Wild.
11/10/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: The Science of Road Ecology
Host Dave Schlom visits with Fraser Shilling, Director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis.
11/3/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Epic mission to an ocean world: Europa Clipper
Host Dave Schlom examines the Europa Clipper mission, set for launch in the fall of 2024, to explore Jupiter's giant icy moon. Europa is an ocean world covered in a sheet of ice.
10/27/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Drs. Hall joins forces to talk about "Science and Nonsense"
CSU Chico Professor of Physics Kendall Hall joins Host Dave Schlom once again as a special co-host as they talk to her father, also a Physics professor, Raymond.
10/20/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: Profile of a mission: Psyche explores its namesake asteroid
Host Dave Schlom profiles the mission with NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers Paige Arthur and Kaelan Oldani, then discusses the scientific investigations with Arizona State University graduate student and Psyche science team member Sam Courville. In the final segment, senior JPL engineer Abi Biswas joins Dave to talk about the cutting-edge Deep Space Optical Communications system that Psyche will be demonstrating to pave the way for high bandwidth communications on future space missions.
10/13/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: California Against the Sea: a conversation with Rosanna Xia
Host Dave Schlom is joined by Rosanna Xia, environmental journalist for the Los Angeles Times to discuss her new book, California Against The Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline.
10/6/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: Hunter Pence's all-star efforts for a better Bay Area: The Healthy Planet Project and San Francisco Baykeeper
Host Dave Schlom visits with two-time World Series champion and four-time MLB All-Star Hunter Pence about the nonprofit organization he and his wife Alexis have founded: Healthy Planet Project.
9/29/2023 • 51 minutes, 34 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: West coast climate now and in the past with Hannah Palmer and Veronica Vriesman
Host Dave Schlom visits with UC Davis climate and environmental scientist Hannah Palmer and colleague Veronica Vriesman, a marine scientist and paleontologist at Oberlin College in Ohio.
9/22/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Preparing for the next Great American Eclipse: a visit with Rick Fienberg
Host Dave Schlom is joined by Sky and Telescope magazine senior contributing editor Rick Fienberg to preview the big celestial event coming up soon, the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
9/15/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Aquaculture 101 with Katie Mackey Harris
Host Dave Schlom is joined by special guest and co-host Katie Mackey Harris for a look at the world of aquaculture in the western United States. Harris is the President and General Manager of Mt. Lassen Trout, a family-owned company and trout farm operation in Northern California.
9/8/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Salish Sea Wild: a conversation with wildlife vet Joe Gaydos and filmmaker Bob Friel
Host Dave Schlom is joined by the creators of the YouTube channel, Salish Sea Wild.
9/1/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: One of our greatest planetary astronomers: Heidi Hammel!
Host Dave Schlom is joined by special co-host Kendall Hall, an assistant physics professor at CSU Chico, for a very special conversation with one of America's greatest planetary scientists, Heidi Hammel. Also joining us is Stefanie Milam, Deputy Project Scientist for Planetary Science for the James Webb Space Telescope.
8/25/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: The heat is on: a conversation with Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First
Host Dave Schlom visits with Rolling Stone contributing editor and author Jeff Goodell about his latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.
8/18/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Brook M. Thompson and Harold Fidler's role in the Manhattan Project
Family plays a pivotal role in this episode with Yurok tribal member and environmental engineer Brook M. Thompson. Brook shares how her strong ties to family and community have shaped her work, bringing traditional indigenous practices to mainstream science. Also, Producer Matt Fidler and his father Rich, talk about Matt's grandfather, Harold Fidler, who was a pivotal part of the US Army's role working with UC Berkeley scientists on the Manhattan Project, the subject of the new Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer.
8/11/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Combining passions: fly fishing and photography with Val Atkinson
Host Dave Schlom sits down for a visit with world-renowned fly fishing and travel photographer Val Atkinson.
8/4/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Hunter Pence's all-star efforts for a better Bay Area: The Healthy Planet Project and San Francisco Baykeeper
Host Dave Schlom visits with two-time World Series champion and four-time MLB All-Star Hunter Pence about the nonprofit organization he and his wife Alexis have founded: Healthy Planet Project.
7/28/2023 • 51 minutes, 34 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: Cosmic mysteries: dark matter and dark energy
Host Dave Schlom investigates two of the components that make up most of the universe -- dark matter and dark energy.
7/21/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Here Begins The Dark Sea: a conversation with author Meredith F. Small on the Fra Mauro map
Host Dave Schlom visits with best-selling author and award-winning anthropologist Meredith F. Small to talk about her new book, Here Begins The Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of The World.
7/14/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: Liftoff! What it takes to launch NASA's Artemis Moon rocket
In this episode, Host Dave Schlom visits with managers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to find out what goes into launching America's Artemis missions to the Moon with the Orion spacecraft perched atop the Space Launch System (SLS).
7/7/2023 • 51 minutes, 51 seconds
Blue Dot: 2023 Space Pioneer Award winner Pascal Lee
Host Dave Schlom has a fascinating conversation with Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist from the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.
6/30/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Remembering America's space station: Skylab @ 50 Pt. 2
Host Dave Schlom concludes our two-part look back at the first and only exclusively American space station, Skylab, which was crewed by three teams of astronauts in 1973.
6/23/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Remembering America's space station: Skylab @50 Pt. 1
Blue Dot host Dave Schlom is joined by space journalist Emily Carney and Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart in part one of our look back at the only all-American space station -- Skylab.
6/16/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Blue Dot: Using our public lands and waters responsibly!
In this episode, Host Dave Schlom tackles a topic much in the news lately, how to safely and ethically use our public lands and waters. Dave visits with National Park Service spokesperson Ana Beatriz Cholo from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in Los Angeles.
6/9/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Mark Catesby in the New World and California's massive snowpack
Host Dave Schlom visits with author Patrick Dean about his new book, Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World. Dean's book reveals that the 18th-century British naturalist, who preceded John James Audubon, recorded his observations in America of the stunning array of flora and fauna he found there.
6/2/2023 • 51 minutes, 37 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: Leonardo da Vinci's gravity experiments: discoveries from Leonardo's notebooks!
Host Dave Schlom revisits with California Institute of Technology Professor of Aeronautics and Medical Engineering Mory Gharib and Chris Roh from Cornell University about their new paper published in the MIT journal Leonardo.
5/26/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: Cosmic mysteries: dark matter and dark energy
Host Dave Schlom investigates two of the components that make up most of the universe -- dark matter and dark energy.
5/19/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Blue Dot: Black holes 101 and the most distant cluster of galaxies yet observed by JWST
Host Dave Schlom sets his sites on some cosmic mysteries -- the physics of black holes and the latest discovery of a cluster of galaxies closer to the birth of the universe than any yet detected.
5/12/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: One of our greatest planetary astronomers: Heidi Hammel!
Host Dave Schlom is joined by special co-host Kendall Hall, an assistant physics professor at CSU Chico, for a very special conversation with one of America's greatest planetary scientists, Heidi Hammel. Also joining us is Stefanie Milam, Deputy Project Scientist for Planetary Science for the James Webb Space Telescope.
5/5/2023 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
Best of Blue Dot: The "Blue Economy" in Fort Bragg, CA
Blue Dot investigates the concept of the Blue Economy, using ocean resources in a more responsible, sustainable way as being practiced in the small coastal town of Fort Bragg, California.
4/28/2023 • 51 minutes, 36 seconds
Blue Dot: NASA Artemis Recovery Program and US Navy Admiral Ron Piret
It's almost an all-Navy show as Host Dave Schlom talks to Liliana Villarreal, Director of the Artemis II landing and recovery Director and US Naval aviator Lt.Thomas Logan about joint efforts between NASA and the Department of Defense to safely recover the four Artemis II astronauts when they return from the first lunar mission in over 50 years.
