Featured image: A hatching monarch butterfly emerges from its chrysalis, shedding its skin after ten days of transformative hibernation. A short glimpse of action that’s easy to miss… (Photography: SpiritMama)
Today, public librarian Kelsey Ockert and her partner Ryan Ly (PhD Candidate in Neuroscience at Princeton) drop in to our show to share their newfound hobby: raising monarch butterflies! As citizen scientists or aspiring insect lovers, anyone can order milkweed plants with monarch eggs for home delivery. As the eggs hatch and their caterpillars grew, Kelsey and Ryan had to fight to keep enough milkweed in the house to satiate the young insects. Learn more about insect parenting, caterpillar personalities and the great migration (that only 1/4 of monarchs take) to rest in enormous Mexican colonies!
Kelsey connects her insect parenting to one inspirational book: Monarchs and Milkweed, by Anurag Agrawal, is a beautifully detailed scientific dive into the amazing monarch butterfly. Check it out!
In other news:
- Machine learning techniques are a useful shortcut to global climate modeling. If they’re to be believed, though, the Earth will be abnormally hot for the next few years, even for a warming planet.
- Scientists have used radioisotope dating to determine the living conditions of ancient peoples, pinpointing precise periods of drought or strain on the past civilizations of Turkey.
The playlist can be found on WPRB.com or below.
These Vibes Are Too Cosmic 