In this episode Dave visits with Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate in Everett, Washington. The company is working on an ambitious plan to make the deep ocean accessible to paying customers as well as scientists starting with a set of expeditions next year to visit the most famous of all shipwrecks -- RMS Titanic.

Rush seems like a character right out of an adventure novel, getting a commercial jet pilot's license at 19 years old and working as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base before turning his attention to engineer submarines and submersibles to explore the biggest volume of our planet -- the sea beneath the waves. 

Significant hurdles remain ahead but officials have made progress this past week on finding some solution for removing hazardous trees on private lots. Money for the first step in building a sewer system on the ridge, preparing planning and environmental documents is being assembled, and after a very long wait, the FEMA group housing site just south of Chico is preparing to open fully.

It’s time once again for our weekly check in with representatives from some of the lead agencies attempting to help Camp Fire survivors get back on their feet. We speak with Mike Peacock from FEMA, Justin Jacobs of CalOES, Casey Hatcher for Butte County and Colette Curtis with the town of Paradise.  

On Cultivating Place this week, we speak with two Landscape Architects who came together to create and offer out to the gardening world beautiful, functional gardens that are inspired, interesting, innovative and accessible to all. 

Meg Herndon and Sandra Nam Cioffi share more about the concept behind their Plant Me a Rainbow, based on this garden life as a crucible in which your own values become clear, these two women created a plan to help more people create richly flowering gardens. 

We head up the road this week in search of natural air conditioning, along the California coast again. The Lost Coast, this time, that unruly stretch between Fort Bragg and Eureka that made even road builders give up—which is why Highway 1 and 101 angle inland in these parts. 

Locals, of course, snort at the very idea that this splendid area was ever lost. It’s always been here, albeit shrouded in fog most of the summer and inundated with rain otherwise. California’s isolated “Lost Coast,” virtually uninhabited and more remote than any other stretch of coastline in the Lower 48, has since been found by folks looking to get away from all those other folks.

Shelli Renée Joye received a degree in Electrical Engineering, then pursued a contemplative practice with a Buddhist meditation master.

She moved to Shingletown from San Francisco to live in a quiet natural setting and write a dissertation.  

Among the seven books that she has published is a new book, Developing Supersensible Perception.   

Financial aid and legislative help are speeding the North State’s recovery from the worst wildfire in modern history, but as the region’s top elected leaders heard at a town hall Monday in Chico, much more is needed.  

Shasta Regional Community Foundation is a nonprofit, public charity serving the people of Shasta and Siskiyou counties. Established in 2000 by a group of dedicated community volunteers, the Community Foundation helps people achieve their charitable goals. In partnership with their generous donors they are building resources that will serve the community now and in the future. Click here for more information.

As daylight waned Saturday, about 100 gathered in front of the Yuba County Courthouse in Marysville. Part multi-cultural religious service, part demonstration, the group urged Yuba County authorities to end a contract allowing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold detainees at the Yuba County Jail.

A few degrees of planetary warming may not sound alarming but it is. A few microseconds of error don't sound like much but they can mean the difference between navigating a spacecraft successfully to Mars, or not.

In this episode Dave talks to Drew Shindell about a web article called "A Degree of Concern: Why Global Temperatures Matter." Written by NASA Media Specialist Alan Buis, Shindell, a Duke University Atmospheric Physicist was the scientific collaborator on the project which explains how just a degree or two of average planetary warming can and most definitely will have dramatic consequences on ecosystems and the human civilization that depends on them.