The World is a daily production of Public Radio International (PRI) whose simple name perfectly captures what it provides: an ongoing education about this complicated planet. This week, I was surprised (though I should not have been) to hear a reporter sign off from one of my favorite places: the Brazilian island city of Florianópolis. This was a sweeping, national story, however, set mostly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.  Protests in São Paulo, April 2023 Photo: Andre Penner The story is about the annual commemoration of the 1964 coup, in which the Brazilian military rem ..read more

NPR's coverage of the latest effort to reduce student-loan debt got some things right: Congress and the courts are making any such relief difficult and such relief programs benefit the entire economy.  But then the discussion turned toward the "moral hazard" of such programs. Steve Inskeep is a good journalist, so I was surprised to hear him just nodding along with the secretary's nonsense talking points.  Education Secretary Miguel Cardona ]I was not surprised to hear Sec. Cardona blame universities for the student-debt crisis, but I expected Steve Inskeep to point out the ..read more

I remember where I was when I first saw this album. Even the name of the album seemed a bit transgressive to the sheltered kid I was at the time. My father's youngest brother and sister were still teenagers when Elton John released Madman Across the Water. According to my fuzzy memories, my brother and I were in the back yard of our grandparents' home listening to a transistor radio when we learned about the album itself -- I don't remember knowing of any other rock albums before this. So this morning I treated myself to this jazzy rendition that he had played for BBC television a week a ..read more

In January 2024, I was delighted to travel to Cape Verde to co-lead my 15th coffee travel course and my first travel course since I was fortunate enough to take students to Costa Rica in January 2020, just before the world closed. I always use the term "co-lead" even though I have been the academic instructor of record for all of these journeys. On most of my coffee tours, I have relied on the expert guidance of Matagalpa Tours, just as I grateful to run this course with my colleagues at the Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verean Studies. For all of these classes, we have also relied heavi ..read more

  Click to enlarge -- notice the tan hash-marked areas. I follow the Facebook page Geomorphology Rules because it so often features maps like this one -- maps that tell a provocative story. I also follow it because my master's research was in fluvial geomorphology and I enjoy staying in contact (pun intended) with that quirky discipline that lies at the juncture of geography and geology. Plus which, geographer Kathleen Nicoll runs the site with equal measures of wit and wisdom. The first thing I noticed about this map is that it identifies the Grand Canyon as a convenient divid ..read more

While driving home recently, I heard a sliver of delightful, bittersweet radio amidst the sad litany of suffering and violence that has dominated the news of late. I made a point of finding the story online when I got home so that I could share it with my family. I then found a print version because in this case, radio was not quite enough!  It was the story of a Portuguese dog named Bobi -- not a famous dog of a fancy Portuguese breed, but a regular dog living in Portugal. Bobi lived, in fact, more years than any dog has ever been known to have lived -- and lived those years very well. H ..read more

This video addresses a landscaping trend of which I was unaware: the rampant planting of redwoods in places they are not meant to grow.  @redwoodsrising plant the plants that are native to your area. don't plant redwood trees unless you have the area #redwood #gardening #landscaping #learnontiktok #naturevibes ♬ original sound - Redwoods Rising Our hero cultivates redwoods for a living, but he warns against buying them for planting in the wrong places. Those wrong places, he argues, would be any places not highlighted in this map of eastern California and Oregon. D ..read more

I was already teaching environmental geography when I gradually realized the relevance of Big Yellow Taxi to my chosen field. It is a 1970 song by the incomparable Joni Mitchell, a Canadian singer-songwriter-genius who is a contemporary of my father.  I start most of my university courses with music, and lately I have decided that this song is essential for the first day in both my survey course and my course focused on land protection. I have been using two versions: A tribute recording -- part of a much larger event -- in which Joni Mitchell listens as Angelique Kidjo, Cyndi Lauper ..read more

 Here they are Here is the info ..read more

Damage in Lāhainā village Maui. Photo: Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources via Big Island Now  Recovery operations are still underway in Maui as an important debate unfolds. It is unseemly to enjoy a vacation when bodies of victims are still being found, and the care and feeding of tourists diverts resources that may be needed by those in need of aid. Canceling vacations, however, damages the economy and denies income to local workers who need funds now more than ever. For this reason, as reported by NPR this morning, Maui County tells tourists to come back — just ..read more