If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott brings on nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen to update readers on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima meltdowns and what is happening with nuclear power in other parts of the world. As background, listen to earlier conversations with Gundersen (starting with April 1, 2011), which can be found on the Archives page.
Read the August 2012 news articles Study: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Caused Mutant Butterflies and Grassroots Power Pushing Japan Towards Nuclear-Free Future . And visit Fairewinds.org, the website of Gundersen’s organization, for more information.

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Ralph Nader

This week’s guest is author and lawyer Ralph Nader. (Note: this interview was recorded in April 2012.) A pioneer in the field of consumer advocacy, Nader is a a four-time U.S. Presidential candidate. He ran in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket. During a very close election in 2000, he was accused of taking votes away from democrat Al Gore. He ran again in 2004 and 2008 as an independent. Nader has helped pass several bills and written many books on the subject of consumer safety. The conversation covers the need for higher wages (Nader mentions timeforaraise.org), the weaknesses of the Occupy movement, the tenets of Nader’s book Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us and his forthcoming book 17 Solutions (fall 2012), nuclear weapons, the lack of free health care in the (more…)

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Dr. Alan Robock

This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s September 2011 interview with Dr. Alan Robock, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Climatology in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. Dr. Robock has published more than 300 articles on his research in the area of climate change, including more than 170 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of expertise include geoengineering, climatic effects of nuclear war, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, regional atmosphere-hydrology modeling, and soil moisture variations. This week’s conversation looks at the latest models of nuclear winter after a nuclear war (more…)

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Dr. Brian Moench

This week’s guest is Dr. Brian Moench, President and Founder of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Moench is an anesthesiologist at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has taught at both Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Moench has written over 60 op eds published in newspapers throughout the USA and on progressive online news sites such as Common Dreams, and received several local awards for activism in environmental and public health protection.
Dr. Caldicott and Dr. Moench cover such topics as global warming including the devastating fires in the West, as well as radiation exposure from nuclear (more…)

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David Dufty

In this episode, Dr. Caldicott talks to David Dufty, author of How To Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection, published in the U.S. by Holt in 2012. Dufty completed a psychology degree with honors at the University of Newcastle and earned a Ph.D., also in psychology, at the University of Sydney in 2002. He moved to the United States in 2003 where he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee. He now lives in Canberra, where he works for the Australian government. Among other issues, Dr. Caldicott and Dufty discuss reality vs. science-fiction, the disturbing aspects of robots and machines, police states, and artificial intelligence which could used by governments and the military. As background, read the 2012 New York Times article, Talking Head, about How to Build an Android.