Jimmy Chaciga, a PhD research fellow at Makerere University in Uganda, thinks he has what it will take to get Ugandan households to adopt solar-powered cookers. First, cookers need to be simple to operate. They need to be cheap. They need to be able to cook once the sun has gone down.But most of all, they need to be ab... more
When the phone rang 10 years ago while Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser was in a particularly engaging lab meeting, she almost didn't answer it.Good thing she did! It was Göran Hansson, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, with the news: May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, along with their... more
Nobelmen and women, in fancy clothing and pearls – but with dragon wings and tails. A laughing man with a full head of curly hair. Lions biting the ears off a man whose mouth is full of writhing serpents. These may sound like a weird combination of a gothic novel and a nightmare, but they're something completely differ... more
This episode was originally aired on March 16, 2021. Norway doesn't seem like a natural place for the aluminium industry to blossom. But somehow, it did – due in part to the unlikely combination of WWII Germany, a modest English engineer who created a worker’s paradise, an ambitious industrialist prosecuted as a traito... more
This episode originally aired on Feb. 16, 2022.Trondheim, Norway’s first religious and national capital, has a rich history that has been revealed over decades of archaeological excavations. One question archaeologists are working on right now has a lot of relevance in a pandemic: Can insight into the health condition... more
This episode originally aired on January 27, 2021.Krill eyeballs. The werewolf effect. Diel vertical migration. Arctic marine biologists really talk about these things. There’s a reason for that — when it comes to the polar night, when humans see only velvety darkness, krill eyeballs see things a little differently. An... more
It's 1968 and a Soviet sub carrying nuclear warheads has gone missing – lost, with all hands. The Soviets never found it – but the Americans did – in nearly 5000 meters of water.What follows is the strange tale of Project Azorian, an ultra-secret mission by the US Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, that played on na... more
Norway's Mid-Arctic Ocean Ridge is alive with underwater volcanic activity – where big towers called black smokers spew mineral-laden boiling hot water into the ocean. The minerals precipitate out, and have accumulated over millions of years. At the same time, this extreme environment is home to lots of weird creatures... more
Our guest on today's show is Anders Hammer Strømman, one of the lead authors for the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on mitigation of climate change, released in April 2022. He was invited to Dubai to the COP 28 climate talks to talk to the shipping industry about how they can reduce their greenho... more
In their careful records of climate change over the centuries — and millennia — trees offer a kind of crystal ball on the past. But they can also help researchers figure out everything from what happened in Norway during the Black Death to how Nazis hid an enormous battleship from the Allies during WWII to how much it ... more
When Hitler's troops stormed into Norway on April 9, 1940, Germany's goal was to secure the country’s 1200 km long coastline so iron ore from Swedish mines could continue to flow to the northern Norwegian port of Narvik — and eventually to the German war machine. But that wasn't all that Hitler and his followers hoped ... more
Up on the Arctic tundra, a young man in chest waders is wandering around a peat bod, burying tea bags — Lipton tea bags, green tea and rooibos, to be exact. This week, I head to Iskoras mountain, a low peak in far northern Norway, outside of the town of Karasjok to find out what burying tea bags in the tundra — and doi... more
Sierra Leone used to be the most dangerous place in the world to give birth. Without enough doctors to do C-sections, women and babies were dying. But what if you didn't need a doctor?This week, the story of two determined surgeons and a no-so radical idea that is saving lives in Sierra Leone — one emergency operation ... more
Norwegian technology, courtesy of the 19th-century whaler Svend Foyn, played a critical role in establishing the modern era of industrial whaling.By the time the 1960s rolled around, most large whale populations hovered on the brink of extinction. Now, Norwegian researchers are testing new technologies so they can trac... more
In 1998, a young Norwegian exercise physiologist found that a technique he had used to help Olympic athletes could help heart patients too. But his idea made doctors sweat. One famous cardiologist told him that if he used his technique in human heart attack patients, he "would kill them."Today's show looks at what happ... more
Three tons of wax. A 4-story office building made almost entirely of wood. And putting CO2 to work instead of letting it heat up the planet: Scientists and engineers across the globe are harnessing unlikely materials to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Today's show looks at how a zero-emissions office building combines in... more
Earlier this year, tremendous floods in Pakistan forced 600,000 pregnant women to leave their homes for safer ground. It was among the latest in a series of nearly unthinkable happenings caused by climate change."Can you imagine if you are about to give birth to a child, and you have to leave your home and flee? These ... more
We all know that climate change is real and that we have to do something about it. In today's podcast extra episode, we go behind the scenes at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and talk to Anders Hammer Strømman, who was one of the lead authors for their latest report, released in April this year. Anders... more
The secrets behind how Norwegian scientists and engineers harnessed the country’s wild waterfalls by developing super efficient turbines — and how advances in turbine technology being developed now may be the future in a zero-carbon world. They include an engineer who figured out how to take advantage of national fervo... more
Baby grey seals. Polar bears. Zooplankton on painkillers. How do toxic chemicals and substances end up in Arctic animals — and as it happens, native people, too? Our guests on today's show are Bjørn Munro Jenssen, an ecotoxicologist at NTNU, Jon Øyvind Odland, a professor of global health at NTNU and a professor of in... more
How the unlikely combination of WWII Germany, a modest English engineer who created a worker’s paradise, an ambitious industrialist prosecuted as a traitor and a hardworking PhD helped build modern Norway, one aluminium ingot at a time.Today's guests are Hans Otto Frøland, Svein Richard Brandtzæg and Randi Holmestad. F... more
Why does Norway always rank among the top countries on the planet when it comes to gender equality? It didn't happen by accident. Instead, it took powerful medieval noblewomen, 19th century farmers’ wives, an early 20th century activist on a bicycle, and the feminists who emerged from the postwar baby boom. And yes, th... more
Trondheim, Norway’s first religious and national capital, has a rich history that has been revealed over decades of archaeological excavations. One question archaeologists are working on right now has a lot of relevance in during a pandemic: Can insight into the health conditions of the past shed light on pandemics in ... more
The different species of Galapagos finches, with their specially evolved beaks that allow them to eat specific foods, helped Charles Darwin understand that organisms can evolve over time to better survive in their environment. Now, nearly 200 years later and thousands of miles away, biologists are learning some surpris... more
Not enough COVID-19 tests? No problem, we’ll make some! When the coronavirus first transformed from a weird respiratory disease centered in Wuhan, China to a global pandemic, no one was really prepared. Worldwide, no one had enough masks, personal protective gear and definitely — not enough tests. The problem was espec... more