Blue Dot
Fridays at 10 a.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m.
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.
Latest Episodes
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Host Dave Schlom chats with retired University of Iowa Physicist Donald Gurnett about his amazing career as a pioneer of the field of space plasma physics. Gurnett was only 17 when legendary space scientist James Van Allen took him under his wing at the university and Gurnett never left spending 60 years as a Hawkeye student, teacher, and researcher. -
Host Dave Schlom convenes a panel of experts on something that is the most important topic of the 21st century: climate change.
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Blue Dot visits some scary places and potentially dangerous future events. Dave talks to astrobiologist David Grinspoon about two newly funded NASA robotic missions to Venus.
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Blue Dot revisits with Lee Vining High School junior Ellery McQuilkin and chats about a very real science project that has earned her spots in the California State Science and Engineering Fair as well as the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair as a finalist.
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Blue Dot Host Dave Schlom talks to the three winners, out of 14,000 entrants for the Future Engineers/NASA Artemis Moon Pod Essay Contest.
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Blue Dot delves into some familiar territory, the early space program, but with some fresh takes on the space race with author Jeff Shesol. His new book, Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy and the New Battleground of the Cold War is an amazing journey back to a time when America was decidedly NOT first in space.
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Blue Dot talks to Leslie Roche, the Director of the UC Rangelands program about how scientific principles combined with knowledge gained by California ranchers over decades are being used to combat the complex and seemingly intractable problem.
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Dave talks to wildlife veterinarian Joe Gaydos from the Sea Doc Society (a research center on Orcas Island in the Salish Sea off the Washington Coast) and UC Davis along with NOAA marine wildlife biologist Dawn Noren as they examine the lives and deaths of one of the Earth's apex predators: Killer Whales.
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Host Dave Schlom talks to Russell Shapiro, a geology professor at California State University at Chico. Dr. Shapiro has a fascinating array of interests and adventures from seeking evidence for ancient life on Earth to helping NASA craft science goals searching for evidence of ancient life on Mars.
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Blue Dot travels to the red dot to take the early pulse of the Perseverance Rover mission on Mars. Dave talks to NASA/JPL Surface Operations Manager Jessica Samuels about how the overall mission is going after landing successfully on February 18, 2021.
