4.29.26

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic magazine dated April twenty twenty six,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. Please join me now for the first article

(00:21):
titled How National Park Owers Learned to Love Modernist Architecture
by Catherine O'Shea Evans. Mid century planners in the US
Park Service ditched rustic timbers for clean lines and concrete.
Now their creations have gone from iores to icons. A
tourist in the National Parks in nineteen fifty six might

(00:44):
have had a hard time ignoring that America's crown jewels
were in a pickle. Visitation had more than doubled in
the prosperous decades since the end of World War II,
and the parks were unready for the surge. More than
fifty million people passed through the entrance stations that summer,
many arriving in big cars of postwar make, often pulling
onto roads designed in the era of the modern tea.

(01:08):
Staffing shortages were rampant, and maintenance issues plagued the few
rustic buildings that offered visitors services. So to rescue the
flailing parks, the National Park Service and PS launched a
ten year, billion dollar effort to modernize them. It was
dubbed Mission sixty six, as in revamp the visitor experienced

(01:29):
by nineteen sixty six, the fiftieth anniversary of the Park Service.
The planned championed access and convenience, making it easier for
millions to take in some of the United states most
extraordinary scenery, but it wasn't until decades later that the
purpose build structures at the heart of the scheme became

(01:50):
scenic attractions themselves. The Mission sixty six program saw the
construction of centralized hospitality villages, with the NPS director at
the time called zones of civilization in a wilderness setting.
It introduced the then novel concept of the visitor center,
borrowing ideas from the shopping centers springing up around the

(02:11):
burgeoning suburbs, and it brought mid century modern architecture to
a park system where most buildings fell on a spectrum
between ramshackle hunting cabins and Bavarian chalets. The new buildings
which went up by the hundreds weren't necessarily intended to
be showstoppers. Plenty were bland and functional ranger stations, admin buildings,

(02:33):
or staff housing. Others were architect designed specimens of jetson
esque flare or brutalist gravity, and right from the beginning
and for decades to come, they were debated, derided, and dismissed.
Ugly beyond words to describe, wrote the traditionalist editor of
National Parks Magazine, critiquing one building in an anti modernism

(02:56):
screed from the nineteen fifties. Some regrettable architectural legacies, summed
up a historian in nineteen ninety seven, at a time
when calls to dismantle Mission sixty six buildings were becoming commonplace.
But more recently, defenders of Mission sixty six architecture say
they've seen a shift. What was once viewed as egregiously contemporary,

(03:18):
out of step with a lodge like style known as architecture,
now strikes visitors as nostalgic, says Ethan Carr, a professor
of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and
the author of two thousand and sevens Mission sixty six
Modernism and the National Park dilemma. I don't see Mission

(03:39):
sixty six as being threatened the way it was when
I wrote that book, Carr says. In the years since,
he suggests Americans have stopped associating modernist architecture with the
problems of modernity, like traffic and overcrowding. Nowadays, car says Riley,
the whole American landscape is so devastated that people look
at modernist architecture and it's quaint. It's a sea change

(04:02):
from when architectural historian Christine Madrid French worked for the
Park Service thirty years ago. At what point most of
these buildings built between fifty six and sixty six were
not considered historics as French today, the executive director of
California's Nepa County Landmarks, many were overdue for repairs, and

(04:23):
the way they'd been sighted right alongside natural and historic
resources had come to be viewed as intrusive Mission sixty
six buildings. French says, We're at a critical juncture. Are
they going to survive or not? Some did not. A
spate of demolitions in the two thousands included the Corry

(04:44):
Visitor Center at Utah's Dinosaur National monument, a squat concrete cylinder,
and the Henry M. Jackson Memorial formerly Paradise Visitor Center
at Washington's Mount Rainier National Park, often compared to a
flying saucer. The turning point, French says, came in twenty
thirteen with a leveling of the drum shaped concrete and

(05:06):
glass Cyclorama Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. Designed
by celebrated modernist Richard Neutrough, it was dedicated in nineteen
sixty two atop the site of Pickett's charge. When the
NPS decided visitors would be better served with the hillside
restored to a pastoral state, French led a legal and

(05:27):
public relations effort to save the Cyclorama, ultimately to no avail.
Its loss, however, seemed to kick off a reassessment of
other Mission sixty six structures. The next year, the Neutra
designed Painted Desert Community Complex at Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park,
itself briefly slated to be raised in the nineteen nineties,

(05:50):
was named a National Treasure by the National Trust for
Historic Preservation, a collection of low slung glass and stucco
buildings that became a National Historic Landmark in twenty seventeen
after the Cyclorama, there was a change, French says, people said,
you know what, let's look at these buildings again. The

(06:10):
era's designed prestige has only snowballed since, and these days,
when NPS steems a modernist park building is no longer
meeting visitor needs, the conversation is often about adaptive reuse
rather than demolition. Mid Century modern is the whole motif
at Yellowstones Canyon Lodge, part of the first Mission sixty

(06:31):
six project to break ground back in nineteen fifty six,
adapted beyond recognizability over the years, the lodge has since
been restored to its Eisenhower era glory, down to the
starboat burst chandeliers. Of course, Mission sixty six was never
about esthetics. The goal was a wholesale reimagining of how

(06:52):
America's Park's work in an era of auto tourism. Its
planners and architects were really interested in this very specific
visitor experience, says preservation consultant Beggie Zeller, who whose Columbia
University master's thesis surveyed the state of the era's visitors centers.

(07:16):
The intent has sometimes been modeled by retrofit sellers says,
gift shops and snack bars cluttering the intended flow, which
she praises the elegance of the building's original purpose, guiding
park gowers through an almost choreogragraph routine of parking, welcome
and interpretation, culminating in an appeal to go out and
explore the resource. That final flourish was often a grand

(07:39):
set of windows, framing of park tableau, and invitation to
leave the visitor center behind. Next National Geographic thirty three.
At National Geographic, we are inspired by the idea that
people driven by a shared commitment to make the world
a better place can have an enormous impact, and we've
held that convictions eighteen eighty eight, when our thirty three

(08:02):
founders came together to reimagine how we encounter and understand
our planet. In that spirit, we bring you the National
Geographic thirty three, honoring a group of extraordinary people who
are rising to meet the most critical challenges of our time,
making meaningful progress and incredible breakthroughs. These are bold thinkers
and problem solvers from across the globe who believe that

(08:25):
our world needs imaginative solutions and urgent action, and are
leading the charge for change Harrison Ford, the Hollywood legend,
stumping harder than ever for the environment. It may surprise
you to learn that Harrison Ford has a species of
snake named after him. Taca menoides Harrison forty, a rare

(08:48):
breed of slender snake native to the Andes, just sixteen
inches long, harmless researchers, founded in twenty twenty two sunbathing
in an alpine swamp. There's an aunt named for Ford,
T two Fidole Harrison forty, found primarily in Central America,
and a spider, Caliponia Harrison forty, mostly in California, eats

(09:11):
other spiders. He could have had his name on a
Tanzanian butterfly, but demurred, suggesting scientists Navid instead, after his
daughter Georgia my Macraea Gelinia Georgia. It's hard to come
up with Latin names for all the new species being discovered,
Ford says, half grinning and half grimacing, sitting in his

(09:32):
home office in Los Angeles. I guess they have to
pin it on somebody. Ford is eighty three, and, by
now nearly fifty years since coming to fame playing Hans
Solo in Star Wars, is incapacity to take a compliment
without a gruff wisecrack is the stuff of legend. But
come on, there's no TECHAMNOI Days, Mark Hamilie or Fidole

(09:55):
Carrie Fishery. That's because scientists in the field know that
Ford has spent decades championing biodiversity. For the past thirty
five years he served as the public face of Conservation International,
where he's currently vice chairman and whose mission he describes
as saving life on Earth. Basically, instead of enjoying a

(10:16):
RESTful retirement for it, is working harder than people half
his age. He spent much of last year's shooting the
third season of his Emmy nominated therapist sitcom shrinking. When
he's not acting, he's joining his CI colleagues in board
rooms with high profile leaders such as French President Iman
mac Immanuel Maucron, petitioning for urgent resources to fight wildfires

(10:40):
in Brazil, for commitments to conservation frameworks like the UNS
High Seas Treaty, and more. His superstar clout helps bring
to the table the kind of state level decision makers
necessary to accomplish anything of global consequence and the depth
of his commitment. The knowledge that he's now one off
celebrities spokesperson that he'll be back in a year to

(11:03):
follow up helps hold them to account. Both the Amazon
fires and the High Seas Treaty were at issue last
fall when CI leaders met with Macon and other international
delegations during the Climate Week New York City conference. It
was Ford's first time in high level meetings alongside CI's
interim executive director Daniella Reich, who took the position last

(11:27):
summer and was struck by Ford's knowledge and preparation. He
wants to sit down before each meeting and go through
what our priorities, What is the outcome we want for
this meeting? Reich says. He wants to game out and
even sort of rehearse how that's going to go. Does
that sound an awful lot like running lines with a
guy who played Indiana Jones? Reich laughs, It's not quite that,

(11:49):
but it does feel like his day job is about
being prepared. So that's how he engages with Conservation International
as well. Ford is shrewdly aware of his utility to
an organization like CI. He knows that even heads of
state want to say yes to Hans Solo, but he
also knows his star power ain't enough that it's on

(12:10):
him to do what Han Solo can't to articulate the
urgent stakes of conservation work. People are sick to death
of celebrity, I believe, he says, But they recognize truth
when they see it when they hear it. One truth
he is espousing often lately that it's time for the
older generation of climate and conservation warriors to make way

(12:30):
for a new crop of leaders with new ideas about
advancing the cause. They are more fearless, more connected to
the earth, and more capable of changing power than we
ever were, he told an audience last fall accepting a
legacy award from the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, where
he's also been a board member since twenty ten. We

(12:51):
just need to get out of the way. The curmudgeonly
forward emerges only when pressed to describe why he feels
such passion for conservation, and seemingly loathed to come off
corny or sentimental, he rubs his eyes, pauses, we simply
cannot provide for ourselves the things that nature gives us
for free and that sustain our lives, he says finally.

(13:13):
Then he drives home the point fresh water, clean air
pollinators for our crops, potential new undiscovered medicines and cures
for things that ail us food on our tables, they're
not things that we can provide for ourselves. As for
what's on his docket with Conservation International in the year ahead,
he finds it much easier to reply everything. He says,

(13:36):
everything that needs to be done. This article by Devin Gordon.
Samuel Ramsey adventurer, A globe trotting scientist racing to save
the bees. An entomologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
Samuel Ramsey is on a quest to sequence the genomes
of every species of honeybee, but first he has to

(13:57):
find them. Much of global food production relies on the pollinators,
which are threatened by the spread of deadly parasitic mites.
So Ramsay, a National Geographic Explorer, is plumbing the genetic
underpinnings for resistance that can inform anti mite strategies. Last
year he led bee seeking treks in the Philippines in Thailand.

(14:18):
A trip to Malaysia looms its highest peak, Mount Kinabalu,
posts a bee found nowhere else on Earth. This by
James Ross Gardner. Visionaries Kayong Kim and Nurul Sarifa the
K pop super fans driving climate progress. Fans of Korean

(14:39):
pop music, says Kyeong Kim, never give up until they
see results. That's why she and Naurul Sarifa co founded
the climate justice collective k Pop for Planet, which harnesses
fan fervor to pressure brands into going greener. South Korea's
Houndai Motor Company nixed a deal with a coal powered

(15:00):
supplier after K Pop or Planet launched a relentless social
media petition drive. Since the organization set its sights on
the Korean entertainment industry, the label behind girl group Venom's
black print Black Pink, has committed to carbon neutrality by
twenty forty. Now, k Pop for Planet is petitioning music

(15:23):
festivals to run on renewable energy, part of a current
campaign dubbed, of course, k Pop Carbon Punters Adventure. Kira
Hoffman the forester, Harnessing the healing power of fire. Even
as a child, Kira Hoffman understood that fire wasn't merely
a destructive force. Growing up in Smithers, British Columbia, she

(15:46):
helped her parents burn the family farms hayfields to enrich
the soil then fresh out of high school, she joined
a hell attack crew battling raging blazes in remote areas
with massive water drops and loved the work, but was
disillusioned with the forest services extinguished at all costs approach.
Fire was treated as this very scary thing that needed

(16:09):
to be suppressed right away. She says. It was immediately
clear to me that if we just kept putting out
all these fires like that, later we were going to
have a lot of fires that we couldn't put out.
Today is one of the world's leading fire ecologists and
a national geographic explorer, Hoffman is helping reframe how we
think about fires in nature from damaging to deeply revitalizing.

(16:32):
Three years ago, Canada had its biggest and most destructive
wildfire season in memory, displacing hundreds of thousands of people
as record breaking fires became more frequent and extreme because
of rising global temperatures and increased droughts. Hoffman's research at
the University of British Columbia's Center for Wildlife Coexistence continues

(16:53):
to show that the best path forward is to look
to the past, specifically, a proactive approach called cultural burning,
long employed by indigenous communities who've used it to improve
ecosystem health and steward the land. Not only does this
form of intentional fire setting help renew damaged woodlands, but

(17:14):
it will also reduce the risk impact and rapid spread
of today's megafires. Hoffman believes for thousands of years, Native
Nations in North America periodically lit fires for a myriad
of reasons, including to remove vegetation, stimulate plant growth, cultivate
soil control, pass boost biodiversity, and improve water quality. A

(17:39):
lot of eas ecosystems are fire adapted, Hoffmann explains, their
craving fire. While climate change and more modern suppression tactics
result in fires hot enough to destroy the soil's mere
chorizal layer. Cultural burns can have the opposite effect. When
managed in such a way as to spread more slowly

(18:00):
and at lower temperatures. They ensure that even if wildfires ignite,
those fires tend to be smaller and less likely to
rage out of control. Six years ago, representatives from the
Gitano who Wheeled, a First Nations community in northwestern BC,
reached out to Hoffman for help bringing back cultural burns.

(18:22):
She studied their land to identify potential burn sites, trained
community members eager to participate and met with elders like
Darlene Bay, a long time advocate for bringing fire back
to the Gitano nation, to learn more about the Gitano's
traditional relationship with fire. They burned with seven generations in mind,

(18:44):
than they always talk about fire being a teacher, Hoffman says.
In twenty twenty one, Veck let the first legal fire
in Gitanyo territory in more than a century. Now, cultural
burns there take place twice a year, with dozens of
people par dissipating. While Hoffmann is still analyzing data on
long term benefits, transformations have been immediate and visible. Within

(19:08):
a few months, shoots popped up, turning the forest floor
electric green with growth including staples like rice root and
wild onion. This success has led to Hoffmann partnering with
other indigenous communities, including the Wetsuechen Cheslata, Carrier and Jitsan nations,

(19:28):
which in turn has forced her to reckon with obstacles
beyond the ecological well. Into the twentieth century, tribal members
who set fires were subject to fines and even imprisonment
under Canadian law. Her tailing cultural burns leand dispossession was
further disrupted and intergenerational transmissions of knowledge, all while misguided

(19:51):
policies have made dangerous fires, the kind that leave indigenous
groups among the most vulnerable more likely. First Nations can
communities make up nearly half of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
As a result, Hoffman often finds herself facilitating relationships between
Indigenous Nations and British Columbia. I'm always talking walking a tightrope,

(20:15):
she explains. To be trusted on both sides means you're
probably going to disappoint people on both sides at some point.
Thanks to the work of ecologists like Hoffman, cultural burns
are now more common in Canada as well as the
United States and Australia. Don Hankins, a professor at California
State University, Chico and a Miwok cultural fire practitioner, believes

(20:39):
Hoffman's efforts with multiple First Nations are crucial. In order
to really see the change, you have to get to
a totally different scale. You need to be thinking across boundaries.
Back and Smithers, Hoffman and numbers of the Gitanio Nation
will host a community center art class using materials such
as charcoal and ash harvested from cultural burns. Hoffmann and

(21:03):
the Gitagio also educate school groups at Burnsit's fire has
this way of bringing us together, Hoffmann says, sometimes that's
when it's a disaster, but it can also be a
healthy thing and that brings us together too. This article
by Rachel Monroe. Next Chidou Gouvera visionary The mushroom Farmer

(21:26):
Spawning a nutritional revolution. A fungal evangelist, Chidou Gouvera has
traveled across Southern Africa and beyond demonstrating how to cheaply
and easily grow nutrient rich mushrooms. Over ten thousand households
in her native Zimbabwe now utilize her techniques and in night.
In twenty twenty five, her Future of Hope Foundation expanded

(21:48):
a program that trains young entrepreneurs to produce the spawn
that mushrooms need to thrive. Fungiculture is about more than food,
says the National Geographic Explorer in Zimbabwe. It offers families
an alternative to soil depleting tobacco crops, and Guevera aims
this year to launch building projects with mushroom bricks. Next,

(22:11):
Kai Lenny Adventure, The Big Wave Surfer removing plastic from
our waters, ridding the ocean of its one hundred seventy
one trillion pieces of plastic, Kai Lenny says, can feel
like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while
the faucet is running. It's only natural that the thirty
three year old, the youngest ever Surfer's Hall of Fame inductee,

(22:33):
prefers water metaphors. For years, he's led beech clean ups
in Hawaii, particularly on his home island of Maui. But
that's just the spoon. More recently, he's become an ambassador
for anti plastic Crusaders, a New Earth Project, a coalition
of athletes and packaging industry execs that certifies renewable alternatives

(22:54):
to plastic packaging materials. To figure out how to turn
the tap off, Lenny says. Next, Chiun Wu creator the
illustrator simplifying climate science in her webcomic The Weird and Wild.
Singaporean artist Chiun Wu unpacks dense ideas around climate change

(23:14):
with help from acute and nameless frog like guide in Singapore,
there's a negative impression of what an activist is, says
the twenty nine year old National Geographic Young explorer. I
needed a character that would soften that image. Her viral
cartoons napped the attention of big brands on Instagram, where
At the Weird and Wild has some twenty seven thousand followers,

(23:39):
and she recently partnered with Mercedes Benz on a campaign
to demystify Eve's last year. The Singaporean government came knocking.
Now Wu's explainers are helping promote acutely the country's goal
of net zero emissions by twenty fifty. Next to Goussandra
Ruert visionary to come as to build a plastic free

(24:01):
laboratory to transform microplastics research. The thought came to Cassandra
Roert while she was new on the job as an
analytical chemist studying microplastics in human tissues. Maybe I should
test my own blood. That was six years ago, and
while scientists had known for decades about the tiny plastic
particles polluting the world's soils and wrecking havoc on marine life,

(24:25):
they were only just reckoning with how microplastics might also
be infiltrating our bodies. Roert and her colleagues at the
Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Science qae HS in Brisbane
Australia were looking for answers. When her results suggested she
was chock full of polyethylene. Roert was shocked, but also skeptical.

(24:48):
It doesn't make sense biologically. She reasoned that your blood
would be that percent plastic. Her moment of doubt set
the stage for an innovation that's driving forward how we
grapple with microplastics omnipresence. In the years since, headlines about
the scourge of microplastics have only grown more breathless. We
consume a credit card's weight in plastic every week, but

(25:12):
reliable data are in fact hard to come by. Imagine
streaming a song off your phone's speakers during a rock concert.
You can't distinguish it from what's pumping out of the
pa When testing for plastic, the background noise is the
nine billion tons of the stuff humans have produced since
the nineteen fifties, present in nearly every aspect of our lives.

(25:33):
And if we can't accurately determine how much plastic is
in a filet of fish or a violet blood, how
can we regulate or remediate it. A few months after
Roert did her blood test, her director at QAEHS approached
her a philanthropic organization called the Minderu Foundation, which sponsors
research on microplastics and human health, has agreed to fund

(25:57):
constructions of a laboratory unlike any other, one almost completely
free of plastic and its toxic chemical additives. Could row
Out help design and build it. She assembled a team
that spent the next six months assidiously testing building materials
for their plastic content. The result an air locked, two
hundred fifty square foot facility built almost entirely from stainless

(26:21):
steel and nicknamed the Submarine, though it feels less like
a sub and more like a starship from a galaxy
where plastic never took over modern life. It's officially known
as the Mindero Plastics and Human Health Laboratory, and inside
background levels of plastic are at least one hundred times
lower row It says than in a conventional lab. Researchers

(26:44):
can handle samples without worrying about contamination, meaning Rouert and
her colleagues can finally start determining which testing methods are
prone to false positives and other misidentifications of microplastics and
even smaller nanoplastic in human tissues. Trustworthy testing will help
answer critical questions about where microplastics settle in our bodies.

(27:08):
Some of the first peer reviewed research performed in the
clean room was published last year with Roert as lead author.
It found one very common method of detecting microplastics was
unreliable at distinguishing polyethylene from other chemicals in blood. Roert's
original blood test, in other words, was dubious, and those

(27:30):
intimidating headlines maybe too. That's not to say microplastics don't
pose dangers to humans, a fact Robert knows better than most.
Correlational evidence suggests links to dementia, preterm verse and other issues.
But Roert also knows that scientists can't parse those dangers

(27:51):
with sketchy data. It's why she and her colleagues didn't
just build the clean room. They open sourced its design.
Publishing their process and plan uns for institutions to replicate.
This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for to day.
Your reader has been Marsha. Thank you for listening and
keep on listening. Have a great day.