Air Date: March 13, 2026

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Fires and Logging Justice


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A decades-old US Forest Service rule that’s been used to supposedly reduce wildfire risk through large-scale logging while bypassing environmental review has been deemed unlawful by a federal court in Oregon. Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and Executive Director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, talks with Host Steve Curwood about why clearcutting can instead increase wildfire risk, and shares his view that USFS needs to rethink its entire approach to managing forests and wildfire risk. (10:12)

PFAS Still at Pittsburgh Airport / Reid Frazier


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Foams containing PFAS or “forever chemicals” are excellent at suppressing fires involving jet fuel and other oil products, but they leave behind a toxic legacy. And they have long been used for firefighting drills, including at a training facility based at Pittsburgh International Airport. Although the facility now uses PFAS-free firefighting foam, the Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier reports that sampling is still showing high levels of PFAS being discharged into nearby streams. (06:44)

How Frogs Can Swim Under Ice


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The recent story from Living on Earth’s Don Lyman about a childhood memory of being amazed to see a bull frog swimming along under the ice in his favorite stream sparked the curiosity of some of our listeners. Host Aynsley O’Neill called Don back up to learn how frogs survive under the ice of a frozen stream or pond -- using tricks like breathing through their skin and even in some cases freezing solid before thawing out in the spring. (04:31)

Back to the Moon!


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The Artemis II mission is getting ready to use the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA to return to the moon for the first time since the original Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. Erik Conway, a historian of science and technology at Purdue University and former NASA historian, tells Host Aynsley O’Neill about how declining public support shut down the Apollo program and why NASA again faces headwinds in maintaining the public’s interest in space exploration. (10:11)

Pioneering Women in Science


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Women have historically been underrepresented in science and engineering, but that didn’t stop Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, and Rachel Carson, and there are many more women in these fields who are not as famous. Artist and author Rachel Ignotofsky joins Host Steve Curwood to share the contributions of some of the remarkable female scientists she profiles in her book, Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World. (15:11)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

260313 Transcript

HOSTS: Steve Curwood

GUESTS: Erik Conway, Rachel Ignotofsky, Timothy Ingalsbee, Don Lyman

REPORTERS: Reid Frazier

[THEME]

CURWOOD: From PRX – this is Living on Earth.

[THEME]

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

A federal court rules against a forest service policy using logging to manage wildfire risk.

INGALSBEE: Our approach of making war on wildfire is really making war on Mother Nature, and in that case, we’re damned if we lose, and we are losing all the time. But we’re also damned if we win, because we will have altered the planet in ways that will drive species extinct.

CURWOOD: Also, wrestling with budget cuts, NASA gears up for a new mission to the moon.

CONWAY: Really, there's two big pots of money in NASA. There's the human spaceflight program, and then there's the science program that's overwhelmingly robotic. And it's the robotic program that the administration was trying to cut.

CURWOOD: But proponents say more money for science is more money for innovation. We’ll have that and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards Of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

Fires and Logging Justice

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

A decades-old US Forest Service rule that’s been used to justify logging to supposedly reduce wildfire risk has been deemed unlawful by a federal court in Oregon. The rule was what’s called a “categorical exclusion” to bypass environmental reviews for projects that should have an “insignificant” impact.

CURWOOD: But the rampant clearcutting the forest service oversaw under one of these categorical exclusions, CE-6, often has devastating impacts on wildlife, soil and water quality, and the brush left behind may even increase fire risk. So, environmental groups including WildEarth Guardians, Oregon Wild, and Green Oregon Alliance sued the Forest Service, and in January of 2026 a district judge ruled in their favor and struck down the policy.

O’NEILL: The way federal agencies handle wildfire risk more broadly is not working, according to Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and Executive Director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. He recalled the moment as a young wildland firefighter when he realized his profession needed a paradigm shift.

INGALSBEE: Well, I was on one of the first 20-person hand crews to go to the Silver Fire, which was part of what we called the Siege of ’87, a string of massive wildfires burning up the Sierras and the Cascades. And we were the last stop here in Oregon. It was 100,000 acres, and they didn't even know what to do with us, so they just took us up to a high point. They told us to watch the fire. So here I am with my crew. I'm holding my shovel, and the entire horizon is one sea of smoke. There's just the very tops of the mountains. So, we're sticking up like islands, and here we are, we're gonna go fight this fire? It was a very humbling experience where we realized we are just human beings facing a force of nature much bigger and wilder than we can impose control. Our approach of making war on wildfire is really making war on Mother Nature. And you know, in that case, we're damned if we lose, and we are losing all the time, but we're also damned if we win, because we will have altered the planet in ways that just will drive species extinct and mess things up. So that was my epiphany of, I think we're on the wrong side of this war, and we need to make peace and learn to coexist and cooperate with this really elemental, foundational force of nature.

CURWOOD: Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. He says federal agencies need to rethink not only how and whether fires are fought, but their entire approach to managing landscapes, including the use of categorical exclusions to bypass environmental reviews. And he is celebrating the court decision aimed at ending these abusive practices.

INGALSBEE: So these categorical exclusions short shrift the normal processes for planning projects on public lands, and what they do is allow the agencies to move forward with these projects with less or very minimal environmental analysis or scientific input, less public involvement, less government transparency or legal accountability. Well, it's been misapplied in terms of rushing through with these logging projects, all under the claim that they will prevent wildfires. It's really a very obsolete, bankrupted ideology that big trees cause big wildfires. Just the opposite. In most cases, naturally fires take out the small trees and leave the big trees. But these categorical exclusions let the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management at the behest of timber companies, just in some cases, clear cut, or what they call thinning, is really kind of high grade logging, taking out these big trees, under the claim that, you know, this is going to help prevent or mitigate wildfires, and it's such an emergency we can't wait. We just got to rush through and get the project done. I mean, no one is disputing that it's a wildfire emergency, but that is more a reason to approach these problems urgently, not attack them blindly. And that's kind of what the agencies are trying to do on behalf of these resource extraction or land development corporations, just rush blindly to get the projects through and ignore the impacts.

CURWOOD: So a few years ago, I think in 2022, there were some conservation nonprofits that sued the US Forest Service over the creation and application of the CE-6 exemption, and as I understand it, a court just ruled into their favor, essentially saying you can't use this excuse anymore. What's the significance of this? What makes it a landmark decision?

INGALSBEE: Well, it's very significant. When you go to court battling over these environmental laws or applications, the deck is really stacked in the favor of government agencies. They have lots of discretion to apply these laws as they seem fit. In order to win a case like this, the abuse has to be so blatant, so extreme, that it really forces judges to rule in the favor of environmentalists. And that was what was going on there, using categorical exclusions for these wholesale, large scale logging projects, which will cause very significant impacts. You just can't claim that there'll be no impacts or minimal impacts. That was the original intent of categorical exclusions. You want to put a new sign in, you're gonna have to dig a post hole. Well, that's a minimal impact. They're using that same logic to apply to massive logging projects, leaving behind lots of stumps and slash. And the way they're doing this kind of fire prevention logging is actually wildfire promotion logging, making these areas more flammable as they you know, what was once tree covered, now becomes covered with shrubs and grasses, invasive weeds. They spread fire very rapidly. And then all the big old trees that mostly would have survived fires, or at least seeded the area after fires, they were long gone. And so the consequences of doing things, instead of making forests more resilient, make them more flammable, will last for generations.

CURWOOD: Tim, wildfire prevention in the U.S. has, well, let's call it a complicated and somewhat misunderstood history. Think of Smokey the Bear, and also the dismissal of Indigenous wildfire stewardship practices. And of course, we have the influence of the logging industry. So where is the United States these days when it comes to wildfire prevention, do you think?

INGALSBEE: Well, first of all, the whole premise that we can prevent all wildfires is kind of a bogus claim. Fire is a natural force that is nature's recycler of all this dead, down, woody debris. It turns it into soil nutrients. It rejuvenates habitats. It maintains a carbon balance. Fire has been on the terrestrial land service for 420 million years, and the legacy of Indigenous people stewarding the land with fire, you know, lasts as long as people have been on this continent. So that is a problem. Wildfire prevention is the wrong approach. What we need to do is wildfire preparation. Prepare for the fires that are part of nature. If we can't prevent them, we should prepare for them.

CURWOOD: So despite this court decision, really a win for conservationists, the federal government does seem to keep wanting to ramp up efforts to have business continue as usual. In Congress right now, there is what's called the Fix Our Forests Act, which is currently awaiting Senate approval. It's similarly aims to combat wildfire threats by reducing environmental hurdles to logging. So Tim, to what extent is this fight far from over, do you think?

INGALSBEE: It's far from over. And in fact, it's a bit confusing now with this categorical exclusions court decision that may preempt the Fix Our Forests Act, because that is the core objective of that bill's proponents is, let's rush forward more logging with less analysis, less transparency or accountability. And now the court is saying this one vehicle, using categorical exclusions, is no longer legal. So I'm not sure what will be the outcome of that bill, but that is one of the reasons it's been stalled in the Senate, is there's some wiser heads saying, maybe that's not the best approach here. But it's also a problem that it seems the Trump administration just wants to rush forward in defiance of laws and regulations and so, you know, depending on the courts to put a brakes on it, but you know, if it wants to rush forward all this massive logging under categorical exclusions and basically daring conservationists to take them to court, the wheels of justice roll very slow. The wheels of machines and industry roll very fast, and so I don't know. It's far from over.

CURWOOD: Timothy Ingalsbee is a senior wildland fire ecologist, and he's co-founder and Executive Director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. Tim, thanks so much for taking the time with us today.

INGALSBEE: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

CURWOOD: Nick Smith, a spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, told our media partner Inside Climate News that they were disappointed with the decision to vacate the Baby Bear, Bear Wallow and South Warner projects in Oregon. Mr. Smith went on to say, “Litigation like this does not make forests or communities safer. What it does is take proven management tools out of the hands of public lands managers who are trying to reduce fuel loads, improve forest resilience and protect nearby communities from devastating fire.”

Related links:
- Inside Climate News | “Decades-Old Rule that Allowed Logging on Vast Swaths of US Land Ruled Unlawful by Oregon Court”
- Learn more about Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology

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[MUSIC: Lowtone Music, “Spring Forest” single, Lowtone Music]

O’NEILL: Coming up, why it’s been more than 50 years since the first and last time America landed a man on the Moon, and why we are finally going back. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the Waverley Street Foundation, working to cultivate a healing planet with community-led programs for better food, healthy farmlands, and smarter building, energy and businesses.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Lowtone Music, “Spring Forest” single, Lowtone Music]

PFAS Still at Pittsburgh Airport

The Allegheny Front covers the environment in Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Sign up for their newsletter here.
--

O’NEILL: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

When it comes to fighting fires, it turns out we’ve made a lot of missteps in recent decades, and one of them is using firefighting foam containing PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” These halogenated compounds can be excellent suppressors of fires involving jet fuel and other oil products, but once the fires are out, they leave behind a long-term toxic legacy.

O’NEILL: The foams containing PFAS were often used for firefighting drills, including at a training facility based at Pittsburgh International Airport. Although the Pittsburgh Airport now uses PFAS-free firefighting foam, the Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier reports that sampling is still showing high levels of PFAS being discharged into nearby streams.

FRAZIER: Hannah Hohman and Koa Reitz stand on an old bridge looking down at the confluence of two streams. Homan glances back and forth between the iced over streams below and the GPS on her phone.

HOHMAN: I think that's unnamed trib. And then that's Montour, and they meet here.

FRAZIER: Hohman and Reitz are with Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a local environmental group. They're overlooking where Montour Run meets one of its unnamed tributaries. Since 2023 the group has been sampling the streams around Pittsburgh International Airport. They're looking for PFAs, a class of fluorinated compounds also known as forever chemicals, but Reitz says they haven't sampled here yet.

REITZ: And this is the tributary that the outfalls that we've seen them self-reporting really high levels of PFAs. This is the tributary that they are discharging into.

FRAZIER: After getting consistently high numbers in these streams, Hohman and Reitz decided to look at new, publicly available data. Since last year, the airport's been sampling its stormwater outfalls for PFAs and reporting it to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The highest levels recorded were nearly 63,000 parts per trillion for one type of PFAs. That's 15,000 times what the EPA considers safe in drinking water. Hohman said she was shocked.

HOHMAN: It was alarming when we did pull that number, because I initially, I think all of us were like, this has to be a mistake. Like ...

REITZ: We thought it was a typo.

HOHMAN: Yeah, we were like, this has to be a typo. This, you know, that's a number that is pretty hard to fathom.

FRAZIER: Reitz dips a clear plastic cup into the stream, then closes a lid on top. The water drips through a filter, which will be tested for a few dozen PFAs chemicals.

REITZ: They are kind of the most common PFAs that we see. There are thousands of them, but we're testing for 55.

FRAZIER: The PFAs numbers submitted by the airport were highest near its firefighting training facility. For decades, these facilities used firefighting foam with high levels of PFAs in them. Kimberly Garrett is an environmental toxicologist at the City University of New York.

GARETT: For a long time, it was mandated that those fluorinated foams be used, not only in emergency response, but also in drills and so really spraying that concentrated PFAs.

FRAZIER: This was done for good reason. PFAs chemicals are really good at dousing oil fires, like those involving jet fuel. But there were two things about these chemicals that would present a problem. First, they last a very long time. That's because they're centered on the uniquely strong chemical bond between carbon and fluorine.

GARETT: They are the strongest, one of the strongest bonds we can observe in chemistry. Carbon and fluorine, they it's really a remarkable bond. And so they can persist for centuries.

FRAZIER: So when PFAs get inside the body, they don't break down and lead to a second big problem. Some pretty serious health effects.

MCDONOUGH: They're associated with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, immunosuppression, several other kinds of effects.

FRAZIER: Carrie McDonough is an associate professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. McDonough says the science around health impacts of PFAs weren't well known until recently.

MCDONOUGH: And, because for a long time, the risks associated with PFAs were not really well understood, these foams were basically treated like soap.

FRAZIER: And because of this, many airports and military bases around the country now have PFAs contaminated soil and water. The EPA has since labeled two of the main PFAs chemicals as likely carcinogens. And in the past decade, states and federal agencies have begun the process of regulating PFAs in the environment. Pennsylvania established its own drinking water standard for two of the chemicals in 2023 and the EPA is on pace to set even tighter standards by 2031. Pittsburgh International Airport, in a statement, said it had stopped using firefighting foam with PFAs, but did not answer questions about what it would do to prevent future releases of the chemicals from its site. But PFAs is still present in nearby streams like Montour Run. After taking a few samples, Hohman is startled by a visitor flying over the stream.

HOHMAN: Oh, heron! Dang it.

FRAZIER: It's a great blue heron, a water bird with an outsized wingspan and recognizable long bill. That brings up another big concern for Reitz. What happens to PFAs once it's in the stream?

REITZ: PFAs is one of those things that bio accumulates majorly, and so that's one of the things we're most concerned about when we see people fishing. And we're, you know, I think pushing for some sort of regulation or fish consumption advisory in this area.

FRAZIER: The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission stocks Montour Run with trout. In an email, a Commission spokesman said the cold water trout don't last long in the warm water stream much past the spring, so PFAs chemicals are unlikely to bio accumulate in the fish. The Commission samples fish tissues periodically in PFAs hot spots to determine how toxic they are. Only one stream in the state, Neshaminy Creek, in eastern Pennsylvania has a "Do Not Eat" advisory because of PFAs. For Hohman, PFAs in Montour Run looks like a long-term problem.

HOHMAN: If it's going into the Ohio River, that's source drinking water for millions of people. If people are recreating in the creek and they're eating fish from that creek, like there's so many points where impacts can be felt by the community and the environment.

FRAZIER: At press time, the Pennsylvania DEP didn't respond to questions about what it would do about PFAs levels around Pittsburgh International. Three Rivers Waterkeeper says it will keep sampling in the streams throughout the spring.

O’NEILL: Reid Frazier reported that story for the Allegheny Front.

Related link:
The Allegheny Front | “‘Alarming’ Levels of PFAS From Pittsburgh Airport Are Being Discharged Into Montour Run Watershed”

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[MUSIC: Andrew Marlin, “Pellinore’s Ride” on Witching Hour, Tanyard Branch Music marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers]

How Frogs Can Swim Under Ice

CURWOOD: Time for another creek now, one from a memory. If you tuned in last week, you may have heard Living on Earth’s Don Lyman share his story about “The Frozen Creek.” Don recalled a boyhood moment of seeing a bull frog swimming along under the ice in his favorite stream near where he grew up in Quantico Marine Base in northern Virginia.

O’NEILL: Since that day when he was just 12, Don’s passion for herpetology has blossomed and he knows a whole lot about amphibians. So, when we heard from some of you about how his story had sparked your curiosity, we knew we had to call him back. Hey, Don, thanks for joining us again!

LYMAN: Thank you, glad to be here.

O'NEILL: So your essay was all about this creek that you would spend time in in your childhood, and specifically about a midwinter walk where you spotted a bullfrog swimming under the ice. What about this moment stood out to you in the first place?

LYMAN: Well, I was just amazed. You know, I was a 12-year-old boy, I had never seen a frog swimming under the ice before, and I was just amazed. I was like, how can this frog even be alive under the ice, much less swimming? But it was one of those very vivid childhood memories that just stays with you for whatever reason. You know, I can still picture it.

O'NEILL: Well, you know, I think a lot of us might be thinking that. You know, frogs are cold blooded. It's freezing cold winter out here.

LYMAN: Right.

O'NEILL: So walk us through how a frog can keep swimming even in a body of water that's become iced over.

LYMAN: So basically, frogs are going to go down to the bottom of a pond or a lake or a stream during the winter, and they're going to kind of hang out, maybe on the surface of the mud or sand, and they might burrow a little ways into it. And the way they survive is through something called cutaneous respiration, which basically means they're breathing through their skin. They're absorbing oxygen through their skin. Frogs and other amphibians, such as some salamander species, have a very thin mucus covered skin with a network of small blood vessels underneath the skin, and those blood vessels can absorb oxygen directly from water or from air. And of course, frogs, when they're not in the water, would breathe through their lungs, but they can't do that when they're, when they're in the water. They can also open their mouths and absorb oxygen through the blood vessels and the linings of their mouths. And they can also sometimes open their cloaca, which is a multipurpose opening for excretion and reproduction. And they can absorb oxygen that way from the water as well, from the network of blood vessels in the cloaca, but mostly through the skin.

O'NEILL: And now we're talking about a bullfrog here, but how common is this in other frogs, toads, amphibians, generally speaking?

LYMAN: I think it's common with a lot of species of aquatic frogs, that spend a lot of time in the water, leopard frogs, green frogs, bull frogs. Some other frogs that only spend part of the time in the water, like wood frogs and gray tree frogs and spring peepers, they can actually go down underneath the leaf litter in the forest, but they can actually freeze solid.

O'NEILL: Wow.

LYMAN: And their heart will stop beating, they'll freeze solid. And their livers produce a large amount of glucose, and the glucose goes into the cells and prevents the cells from freezing. But the fluids between cells and between organs will freeze. You know, for all intents and purposes, it's almost like they're dead, and then in the spring, they'll thaw out and come back to life.

O'NEILL: Well of course, when people hear the term "hibernation," you know, I think a lot of us might think, oh, you know, it's almost like a bear just drops into a coma for the rest of the winter, or something like that. But it's, it seems to be a lot more nuanced than that, and especially with these frogs, as you mentioned.

LYMAN: Right. Their metabolism does decrease quite a bit. It drops to about 25% of normal and it allows them to survive on stored energy and a minimal, you know, amount of oxygen.

O'NEILL: You've made me want to start looking around at all these other bodies of water in my area. Keep an eye out. See if I can spot anything under the surface.

LYMAN: Yeah, yeah, that would be cool.

O'NEILL: Don Lyman is a freelance science journalist who brought us the essay, "The Frozen Creek," as well as an adjunct professor of biology at Merrimack College. Don, thank you for taking the time with us today.

LYMAN: You're quite welcome.

Related links:
- Listen to “The Frozen Creek” by Don Lyman
- Learn more about Don Lyman

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[MUSIC: Still Street Jazz Band, “Joy Spring” single, Still Street Jazz Band]

Back to the Moon!

CURWOOD: The United States’ Artemis Two mission is getting ready to use the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA to return to the moon for the first time since the original Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. That program led to the first human footprints on the moon but before the men of Apollo 11 took those historic steps in July of 1969, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission became the first humans to ever orbit the moon and take that iconic picture of the Earth rising over the lunar surface.

O’NEILL: Like Apollo 8, the Artemis Two mission only plans to orbit the moon in advance of an actual landing planned for 2028. But experiments, measurements, and observations made during its ten days in lunar orbit are expected to yield scientific insights not only about the Moon itself, but also about conditions for future interplanetary voyages.

CURWOOD: The four-person crew features the first woman, African-American and Canadian astronaut planned for a lunar mission, all standing by for a launch now scheduled in April of 2026. But the launch date has already been pushed back more than once because of the technical challenges of this extreme pioneering effort.

O’NEILL: As we wait for the Artemis Two blast off, we thought we would call up Erik Conway, a historian of science and technology at Purdue University. He’s a former historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Erik, welcome to Living on Earth!

CONWAY: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

O'NEILL: Let's start with just the basics. What would you say is the purpose and the goals of the Artemis space program?

CONWAY: So the goals of the Artemis program was to return humans to the moon for the first time since the early 1970s, with a slightly larger crew complement. It dates actually really back to the Obama administration and Congress essentially required the development of the Space Launch System as we know it. And in the Obama administration, the intent was to go to an asteroid. When Donald Trump became president, it got redirected back to a lunar program.

O'NEILL: And now, obviously there's the parallel name between the Artemis mission and the Apollo program. What would you say are some of the key differences, other than just the time period in which they happen?

CONWAY: A big difference is the Artemis program is being pursued under the idea that it will be a more sustainable approach to lunar operations. The orientation is different. For example, the lunar module for Apollo was entirely disposable, which the new landing system is not intended to be.

O'NEILL: Well, our last lunar human space flight mission was Apollo 17 in 1972, I believe. Now, how did the political climate of the time affect the success of that mission, but also lead to a halt in our trips to the moon?

CONWAY: So the political climate in the 1970s was one of really shrinking budgets for NASA. And the competition was costs of other geopolitics. The Vietnam war is still going on then, there's still the ongoing civil rights turmoil in the 70s. The Apollo program wasn't particularly popular with the public. A large fraction, more than 50%, thought we shouldn't be spending money on such things, such luxuries. So faced with expanding budget deficits, costs of wars, and protests and other kinds of demands, the Apollo program got defunded.

O'NEILL: Well, so, Erik, I'm sure you've come across this exact sentiment before, of people saying, "Oh, why are we even spending all this money? Shouldn't we be focusing on the problems we have here at home?" What do you say when somebody says something like that?

CONWAY: So I say two things, really, in response to that. And that is, you know, it's our elected representatives' job to decide what to spend our money on. And if you're concerned that it's being misspent, you should become more politically active, and therefore ensure that more of the money goes to your priorities over somebody else's. And second, NASA doesn't really compete with, for example, social programs. The way Congress actually funds things is there's 13 different subcommittees that fund various stuff, and NASA nowadays is actually in the science and commerce budget. NASA competes with other science agencies, not with, for example, it used to be in the committee that handled veterans' affairs, and so it was competing with veterans for money. And that's been different, gosh, about 20 years now, that it's in the science budgets. And so less money for science is less money for innovation, and that only gradually impoverishes the United States, instead of the opposite.

O'NEILL: Well, I mean, you'll pardon the pun, but it takes an astronomical amount of money to actually launch any sort of space mission, especially going to the moon and, you know, launching humans into space. And in 2025, the Trump administration had threatened to slash NASA's budget by 24% in their budget request for 2026, although in January of 2026 Congress voted to allot NASA its full budget. So what have you seen as the, sort of, results of this back-and-forth regarding the budget? What is most at threat when something hangs in the balance like this?

CONWAY: What the administration had tried to do was to really slash the NASA science budget. Really, there's two big pots of money in NASA. There's the human spaceflight program, and then there's the science program that's overwhelmingly robotic. And it's the robotic program that the administration was trying to cut, right? Congress still supports the human spaceflight program and NASA generally. My concern, though, is that the budget deficits are enormous and growing, and will eventually make it an unsustainable program.

O'NEILL: And now, as I understand it, in January, NASA also announced that it is ending funding to a number of independent advisory groups. So what does that mean? What is the purpose of these advisory groups, and how is this likely to impact research, or missions, or robotics, or any of that?

CONWAY: So the ending of support for the advisory groups was clearly a step towards gaining more internal control over its programs on NASA's part. And to me, it's very short-term thinking, because the reason those groups exist is NASA quickly discovered that Congress wants to hear support from the external scientific community. And those advisory groups ensure that, you know, each of the disciplines in NASA—astronomy, planetary science, and earth science—all go to Congress with a common voice. Without those groups, what I suspect will happen is what was happening back in the 70s, before these groups got really going, individual scientists would go to Capitol Hill and pitch individual programs, and NASA will find itself with less support than it had in the past. So that's the real danger. You lose the community buy-in and the ability to speak clearly to Congress.

O'NEILL: Now we've been talking about the US program to, you know, send people back to the moon. What about other countries, other space programs? Where are they in terms of looking to send their own missions to the moon?

CONWAY: So the only other country that's proposing to send astronauts to the moon is China. And they have been, I want to say, a really formidable presence, relatively recently, but very successfully. And so amongst the folks who really want us to believe that there's a new moon race, they're the ones that are being raced. I'll say outright that I'm not a big fan of that framing. In my opinion, if you really want a sustainable future in space, you need cooperation more than you need competition. Right now, US law doesn't permit that. There was a rider put in a budget, gosh, many years ago, by a representative by the name of Frank Wolf, that bars bilateral cooperation between the US and China basically in anything. You cannot write a paper with a Chinese scholar unless there's at least a third country party to it. So, international, okay. But bilateral, not okay. And I think ultimately that's a mistake. We might very well have some common interests, and maybe we should explore them.

O'NEILL: And to what extent do you feel like there might be any sort of public buy-in or attachment to the space program, knowing that the average American can say, "Well, that comes from my tax dollars?"

CONWAY: Because there's public dollars being used here, the intention, I think, is that the public has some level of ownership. A lot of the public is not that interested, frankly. And so NASA had, past tense, a pretty extensive outreach operation to push the news it wanted out into the public. One of the things this administration did, though, was slash that. Don't know why. If you want more public support for a program, you have to create it. So NASA has been further crippled, I think, in its ability to gain attention for its programs. The fundamental problem I think NASA has at reaching the public these days is the lack of media. The collapse of newspapers also meant the collapse of science reporters. Newspapers used to have whole science sections, and now they just don't. And I don't know the solution. To me, it seems like a real problem for sustaining interest.

O'NEILL: Erik Conway is a historian of science and technology at Purdue University in Indiana. Erik, thank you so much for taking the time with me today.

CONWAY: Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Related links:
- Learn more about the Artemis II space mission here
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration | “Our Artemis Crew”
- U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation | “Science Survives Existential Threat From Trump Budget as Senate Rejects Gutting NASA, NSF, & NIST”
- Science | “NASA Ends Support for Planetary Science Advisory Groups”

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[MUSIC: Gustav Holst, Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan, “The Planets, Op. 32: IV. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jolity, Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin]

CURWOOD: Just ahead, this Women’s History Month, we celebrate some pioneers in science. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the estate of Rosamund Stone Zander - celebrated painter, environmentalist, and author of The Art of Possibility – who inspired others to see the profound interconnectedness of all living things, and to act with courage and creativity on behalf of our planet. Support also comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Andrew Marlin, “Pellinore’s Ride” on Witching Hour, Tanyard Branch Music marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers]

Pioneering Women in Science

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

Women and girls make up half of humanity, yet they have been historically under-represented in many endeavors, including science and technology. But prejudice and the accusation of unladylike behavior didn’t stop the likes of Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earle, Barbara McClintock and many others, both famous and not so famous.

CURWOOD: And Rachel Ignotofsky wrote about some of these trailblazing women in her 2016 book, “Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World”. In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re dipping into the Living on Earth archives to bring you my chat with Rachel to sample some remarkable contributions by women, and what inspired her to write and illustrate this book.

IGNOTOFSKY: Well, for me, I have a lot of friends in education, and we were talking a lot about the gender gap in the STEM fields. Why is math and science still considered such a boys’ game? And I just kept saying over and over again, we maybe only talk about female scientists during women's history month. We're not taught about them in school. We're not taught about them in history class, and the only one that we do talk about is Marie Curie. So, what happens to young girls and boys when, you know, you're not introduced to these strong female role models, who all throughout history have made an immense impact on the sciences? I just kept talking about it and talking about it, and after a while, if you say something enough and you don't do something, you're just a schmuck.

[CURWOOD LAUGHS]

IGNOTOFSKY: So, yeah, I started using my own skill set to try and be a part of the conversation a positive way. So I started making these posters that really celebrated some women in science that I thought were great and really talk about their accomplishments and hopefully get more people interested in talking about them.

CURWOOD: I have to say the illustrations in your book are, well, they're really pretty amazing. I mean, yes, you've written up all these women who did something in science or technology or engineering or mathematics, and you've drawn these exquisite pictures of them with all these images around them.

IGNOTOFSKY: Yeah, well, I really think that illustration is really one of the most powerful tools to get people excited about learning. When something is beautiful, when you take the time to take dense information and make it digestible and fun and whimsical, all of a sudden you get to engage with a whole new audience.

CURWOOD: I have to say your illustrations on all these women include lipstick.

IGNOTOFSKY: [LAUGHS] Well, I wanted to make all of the images really bright and really vibrant, so each page is kind of this monochromatic image. All the women are either bright green or bright purple on this dark charcoal background. It kind of makes them kind of just pop off the page and kind of gives you this sort of excitement and wonder that they're kind of feeling while making their discoveries. The field that they contributed to, whether it's vulcanology or marine biology or chemistry, I put those objects around them, kind of floating around them, and you can kind of just feel this wonderment of discovery and exploration.

CURWOOD: Well, there's some women in your book that we know much about, but we don't know about this part of them. I'm thinking of Hedy Lamarr. I mean, tell us that story.

IGNOTOFSKY: Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914, Vienna, Austria. See, she's really known for being a movie star. She was called the most beautiful woman in the world, but what a lot of people don't know is that, in fact, she had this need to invent. She had a secret laboratory in her room where she would experiment. Actually she was married at one point to an arms dealer, back where she lived in Germany, and she escaped him and came to America. But when she was there she learned a lot about technology and torpedoes, and when she was in America and World War II started, she wanted to do what she could to help. She knew that torpedo signals often got jammed. So, together with the composer George Antheil, she created FHSS technology, which was a frequency that actually would change and switch much like a player piano. That's kind of where they got the idea for it. George Antheil at the time was working a lot with player pianos and they created this technology and it worked really well. Torpedoes wouldn't get jammed, and they patented it, and they presented it to the US government, but they did not take her seriously, and they shelved her idea. And she helped the war movement the way that they would allow her to, which was in a kissing booth raising money for war bonds. Later, much later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, they realized what a wealth of technology this was, and they started applying her patent, which was expired at the time, to missiles. And now we use it in Wi-Fi and our cell phones and Bluetooth every single day. So, it's one of those bittersweet stories where, yes, she got the recognition that she deserved at the end, and, yes, now her technology is readily available and used by everyone. But just think about all that wasted time in between World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis where she could have been developing even more technology and been taken seriously.

CURWOOD: Hedy Lemar, you know she was back in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Talk to me about Mamie Phipps Clark.

IGNOTOFSKY: Mamie Phipps Clark was born in 1917 in Arkansas. She is a social scientist, and she's a psychologist, and she's best known for her participation in the Civil Rights Movement with the color doll test that she developed with her husband Kenneth Clark. That's the test that was used as the basis of the argument to win the court case during Brown versus Board of Education and end segregation.But her work actually started much earlier than that. She always wanted to work with kids, and when she was getting her Master’s she decided to focus on preschoolers. She wanted to know if preschoolers identified with their race. At the time people thought that kids that young didn't understand that they belong to a race, but she proved through a picture test that kids as young as three or four understood that they were white or black, and this was her big “Aha!” moment. She realized that she could do this work in race and objectively prove that segregation was damaging children. So, she wanted to know what happens to a child when they're separated. So, she did the doll test, and, for those of you who don't know, it was a test that was given to kids in segregated and desegregated schools. They had identical looking baby dolls. One was black, one was white, and they would ask questions. "Is this doll pretty? Is this doll good?" And, overwhelmingly, the Black children in segregated schools would only choose the white dolls, and they would say that the Black doll was ugly and bad. In turn, they thought they were ugly and bad because they were separated. I just really wanted to include her in this book to show that science can be used to change society, can be used for social good for the better.

CURWOOD: I have to say when I picked up your book I had never heard of Vera Rubin, and yet she’s instrumental in changing what we understand and know about the universe. Can you tell me her story, please?

IGNOTOFSKY: Yes. Vera Rubin was born in 1928 in Philadelphia, and she grew up in Washington DC. So, Vera Rubin gave us the ultimate proof that dark matter exists in this universe. That's huge. She was kind of looking at the movement of galaxies, and she was thinking that they would move the same way that solar systems did. When you're further away from the gravity point, and in the solar system the gravity point is the sun, you move slower. But, when she was looking at these galaxies, that was not the case. In fact, everything moved at the same speed and what was causing that? It meant that there must be this invisible gravity source that was floating throughout the universe. And this invisible undetectable gravity source was dark matter. And this was affecting the way that the entire universe moved and it also, through her studies, she figured out that it made up most of our universe. And so scientists still don't know what that is, and there is still so much that we still need to learn about dark matter. But, by studying movement, she had the most undeniable proof that this was something that was real, that even though we can't see it, it's impacting our universe.

CURWOOD: Tell me about Jane Cooke Wright.

IGNOTOFSKY: Jane Cooke Wright was born in 1919 and grew up in New York. She was one of the leaders in oncology, and she grew up during a time where most women weren't doctors. There were few African-American doctors as well. So, she started working with her father, and her father was a very famous doctor, already in the field of oncology, and they started working together. And when he died she took over the department, and she became the youngest head of a department in cancer research, and she started looking at cancer in a new way. At the time, people didn't really understand chemotherapy. You would take the chemotherapy and just nuke the whole body, but she thought there could be a different way. Instead, she started testing tumor samples outside the body, creating individual cocktails for patients that they would respond to the best, and she also developed a catheter system. So, instead of having to nuke the whole body she would just go in and treat just the organ that was being affected by the cancer. She went on to be the founder of an oncology foundation, and she saved countless lives doing it.

CURWOOD: But Rachel, what's the story of Sau Lan Wu?

IGNOTOFSKY: Sau Lan Wu was born in the early 1940s. We're not really sure of the date that she was born because it was during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, and her mom was illiterate. But her mom did everything she could to make sure that her and her brother got the best education that they possibly could. And she wasn't going to go to college unless she got a full ride, and the only place that gave it to her was Vassar University. They paid for everything, her food, her clothes, her books, her dorm room. And she came over on a boat with just a little pocket change and some cake. And she had three goals, to make three major discoveries in her life, and she did. She had an interest in particle physics. She wanted to find out what all this stuff in the universe was made out of, and that meant what are the particles an atom is made out of. After discovering the charm quark, she went on to discover gluons, and gluons are kind of the stuff that holds all of the subatomic particles together. After those two discoveries, she made a really big one. She led a research team that discovered the Higgs boson. And bosons kind of give mass to these subatomic particles, and they make the whole thing work. They make everything kind of just stick together and work, and they are the reason that, you know, we're not just falling apart and flying off into a million pieces. So, with the particle accelerator she got to work and she said it was going to be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack the size of a stadium, and, yes, she made her third discovery.

CURWOOD: Now, looking at your book, you report that there's still a 22 percent gender gap among science and engineering grads and a 52 percent gender gap among that whole workforce. Why is that?

IGNOTOFSKY: So, all that data is from the 2013 US Census, and I believe that the gap widens from the women graduating to women with jobs from a lack of opportunity, and I think, again, it's just institutionalized sexism. I think when people close their eyes and think of who a scientist is, they don't see a woman. And I think there's many ways that we need to fight this. I think, one, scholarships. Two, we need to get more women in positions of power in the STEM fields.

CURWOOD: How does the field deal with motherhood because if you're pursuing a doctorate, and you get to be age 26, 27, 28, you're really looking for that really key appointment to move forward and it's the same time in life of course that if women are going to choose to have children they need to get on with it. How sensitive to the realities of a female lifecycle is the STEM field, at this point, do you think?

IGNOTOFSKY: I think it's gotten a lot better than it used to. For Sau Lan Wu, it was a decision for her to not have children so she could continue her work. And I know for a lot of female scientists they make that choice, but there are a lot of female scientists who have kids, and I think it really depends on their place of work. I think we all need to fight for better childcare, for having a time, a leave of absence that's respectable to the women who have just had birth. And also, we just have to ask ourselves, you know, these men who have children, they're fathers. We don't ever ask them, “How come you're not home with the kids? Or how come you're not taking more time off to spend time with them?” I think there's a big double standard there, not only in STEM, but in all fields that we, as a society, have to be conscious of and have to fight.

CURWOOD: Well, how do you think the gender gap has changed over time?

IGNOTOFSKY: I think it's gotten much better. I mean, when you look at what it used to be like in the 70s versus now, we've come a long way but there's still so much work to be done. Women only have 13 percent representation within engineering. That's not good. That's not sustainable. I hope that young girls see this. I want them to be able to see that, no matter what your gender is, you can pursue your passions, that there's no such thing as a girl’s job and a boy’s job. They're just jobs. And if you could do a good piece of work and are given the opportunity to do that work, you're going to succeed and you're going to go far.

CURWOOD: Rachel Ignotofsky's book is called "Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World". It was written by Rachel and illustrated by her as well. Thank you so much, Rachel, for taking the time with us today.

IGNOTOFSKY: Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.

Related links:
- Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World
- Rachel Ignotofsky’s website
- New York Times: “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?”

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[MUSIC: Marco Pereira, “Valsa Negra,” on Valsas Brasileiras, Leandro Braga, GSP Recordings]

O’NEILL: Mark your calendars! Our next Living on Earth Book Club event, cosponsored by our media partner Inside Climate News, is Thursday, March 26th at 5 pm Eastern. Data scientist Hannah Ritchie will join us live on Zoom to discuss her new book, Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change in 50 Questions and Answers. So, rekindle your spark of hope and don’t miss this online event on March 26th at 5 pm EDT. It’s free to tune in but you will need to sign up! And you can do that at loe.org/events. That’s loe.org/events.

[MUSIC: Marco Pereira, “Valsa Negra,” on Valsas Brasileiras, Leandro Braga, GSP Recordings]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Paloma Beltran, Sophie Bokor, Jenni Doering, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti Mclean, Nana Mohammed, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Bella Smith, Julia Vaz, El Wilson, and Hedy Yang.

O’NEILL: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes. And we always welcome your feedback at comments@loe.org. I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

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