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UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - June 2019

This week on UnDisciplined, we've gathered two of our favorite fellow science geeks to talk about the headlines that caught our eyes in June — and a few we wish would have gotten more attention. 

We'll talk about how dogs evolved, what cats do when we're not looking, why NASA is going to start selling tickets to space, what cities we should save from climate change, and why it's way past time to say goodbye to all-male science panels. 

Joining us this week, and making her UnDisciplined debut, is Utah Public Radio's Ashley Rohde. She is a PhD. student in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, and a science reporter at UPR. 

Also joining us this week, from Boulder, Colo., is Danielle Lemmon. She's a doctoral candidate studying the diversity of El Niño events who last joined us earlier this month to talk about her research

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling Lifespan with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning Longevity Plan with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, Superlative, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.