Alaska Science Pod

Ep. 11: Field Notes: Into the Ghost Forest

At the height of summer in 2021, Ned accompanied University of Alaska Fairbanks ecologist Ben Gaglioti to a ghost forest a glacier had run over in Southeast Alaska. Ned a

Ep. 10: Thirty Years of Permafrost Research with Vladimir Romanovsky, Part 2/2

Permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky, professor emeritus at the Geophysical Institute, reflects on his career and surprising changes to Alaska's permafrost duri

Ep. 9: Thirty Years of Permafrost Research with Vladimir Romanovsky, Part 1/2

Vladimir Romanovsky is retiring after 30 years of studying permafrost at UAF's Geophysical Institute. He enters professor emeritus status while seeing changes in Ala

Ep. 8: From Alaska to New Zealand, the bar-tailed godwit with Dan Ruthrauff

Bird biologist Dan Ruthrauff of the USGS Science Center in Anchorage describes the bar-tailed godwit, a bird that every fall flies from Alaska to New Zealand without stop

Ep. 7: Calls of killer whales with Hannah Myers

Hannah Myers is a graduate student and a killer whale linguist. She has listened to hundreds of underwater recordings from which she can identify distinct families of wha

Ep. 6: Martin Truffer and the surging Malaspina Glacier

Martin Truffer is a glaciologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. He reports that the Malaspina Glacier is more than three thousand feet deep

Ep. 5: Randy Brown and the Bering cisco, a tasty Alaska fish

Randy Brown is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fairbanks. For years, he lived off the land in Alaska on a tributary of the upper Yukon River. In th

Ep. 4: GI's 75th Anniversary with Roger Smith: Past, present and future of the institute

Roger Smith is a space physicist who moved to Alaska from London in the 80s. He became the director of the Geophysical Institute in 2000. Roger describes what the early d

Ep. 3: Sherry Shimpson's "Telling Raven Stories," read by Lee Zirnheld

Sherry Simpson, one of the best descriptive writers in Alaska — and  possibly the world —  died in 2020 of a brain tumor. Science writer Ned Rozell worked with Sherry at

Ep. 2: Seismologist Carl Tape investigates the 1900 earthquake near Kodiak, Alaska

In this episode, seismologist Carl Tape transforms into both historian and detective to investigate the strongest earthquake on the planet in the year 1900, somewhere nea

Ep. 1: Cathy Cahill talks innovation in unmanned aircraft

Cathy Cahill directs the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Her fleet of vehicles encomp