Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Biomedical Engineer

Woman with net stands in high elevation grassland with green hills in the background
Joan Meiners
Joining us this week on UnDisciplined is Joan Meiners, whose study of bee biodiversity in California's Pinnacles National Park was published in Plos One earlier this year.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about bee biodiversity, blood platelets, genetic engineering, environmental journalism, the fast-changing world of medicine, and the future of our planet. 

We're joined this week by Tara Deans, who uses molecular biology, genetic engineering, and math modeling to improve therapies and treatments across a wide range of health conditions. She's also the recent recipient of a National Institutes of Health grant that will support her work to develop a method to stop the spread of cancer. 

With us on the line from New Orleans, where she doubles as an ecological researcher and environmental data journalist, is Joan Meiners. She was the lead author on a study of pollinator biodiversity in California's Pinnacles National Park published earlier this year in Plos One

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 occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.