Image adapted from Randy Storey
Listen up, because you never know when a sound will change your life. Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton tells us the story of how he became “The Soundtracker,” an unorthodox career choice that has led him around the planet three times in pursuit of the last pristine soundscapes. Journey along with Hempton from tropical jungles to the frozen North as he records the music from the solar-powered jukebox that is Earth.
As cities continue to grow, scientists are trying to define the “Urban Equation” – a mathematical expression that defines not just a group of buildings, but a complex network of physical and social interactions. Why? Because our cities control previously elusive aspects of human evolution. To understand our cities is to understand us. In this episode, Luis Bettencourt and Tyler Nordgren discuss various elements of the urban equation. We see how complex networks give rise to creativity; how to break an urban metropolis down into a series of mathematical symbols; and how our cities are dramatically affecting a cultural connection reaching back nearly 400 years.
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A tale of two men and geology on the roof of the world
Still from John Noel’s 1924 film “The Epic of Everest” (copyright John Noel) showing the tiny figures of George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine’s team as they prepared for the summit attempt.
Part I – Onto the Mountain
I’m sitting in a warm room wearing flannel pajamas with a hot meal in my belly when the title card on the movie fades and the 90-year-old film begins to flicker. The circular aperture is neatly divided along a diagonal line: the top featureless white, the bottom textured rough and grey – both ghostly. Darker striations run across the grey, further broken by white snow that looks like a child’s finger painting flecked with white and black dots. It’s only after several seconds that I notice that a few flecks of black are moving along the border between the white and grey, moving higher along the diagonal. Another title card appears and informs me that these tiny flecks are men, and the striated and speckled grey is Mount Everest as she appeared in 1924, on the eve of one of the most famous disappearances in mountaineering history. Continue reading
In the second half of his interview with Gen Anthro, Hari Mix talks about his experiences this past spring in the Himalaya and his summit bid for Lhotse without oxygen. He also sheds some light on the costs of mountaineering, respecting weather conditions on the mountain, and what he learned about his own physical ability and about the way rescue decisions are made on mountains. Finally, Hari shares some of his ideas for potential directions he might take his mountaineering in the future. If you missed the first half of Hari’s interview, you can listen to it here.
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