Credits

Producers: Daniel Grossman and John Rudolph
Editors: Loretta Williams and Deborah George
Host: Ira Flatow
Coordinating Producer: Sasha Aslanian
Project Manager: Misha Quill
Assistant Producer: Ellen Guettler
Production Assistants: Samantha Kennedy and Neil Tassoni
Mixing: Craig Thorson and D. B. Cooper

Web Producer: Ochen Kaylan
Web Manager: John Pearson
Web Production Supervisor: Michael Wells

Executive Editor: Stephen Smith
Executive Producer: Bill Buzenberg

Photo on home page and header by John Rudolph

Akkadian music provided by Janet Smith, Bella Roma Music (ASCAP)

Independent Producer Daniel Grossman - Dan has been producing radio stories and writing magazine articles since 1986. Before that he was a student for longer than he cares to recall, eventually earning a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in political science, both from MIT. His reports generally concern science and the environment. During the 1999/2000 academic year he had a journalism fellowship at the University of Colorado in Boulder. There he studied geology and climate science, taking an important step toward his longstanding goal of bringing more attention to the impact of climate change.

He has produced material for radio shows and networks as diverse National Public Radio's Weekend Sunday Edition and Living on Earth (where he once worked), Radio Netherlands, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Germany's Deutsche Welle radio. He writes regularly for Scientific American. Dan's journalism awards include the George Foster Peabody Award and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Pinnacle of Excellence prize (both of which were awarded to a series to which Dan contributed a one-hour documentary). When he's not working Dan is trying to keep his old house from falling down and taking his two children to museums in the Boston area.

Grossman received assistance for his expedition to Greenland from Icelandair, Air Iceland Air Greenland, the 109th Airlift Wing of the National Guard and the North Greenland Ice core Project. During his stay he was hosted by the Sirius Sledge Patrol, Iceland's Institute of Archeology and Zackenberg station.

Independent Producer John Rudolph - For more than a quarter of a century award-winning producer John Rudolph has brought world events and the stories of ordinary people to radio listeners around the nation and the globe. Following the attack on 9/11 John led an effort by WNYC, New York Public Radio to document New Yorkers' efforts to cope with their loss and rebuild their city. The resulting documentary series 6 Months: Rebuilding Our City, Rebuilding Ourselves and a follow-on program Changed New York were acclaimed nationally and internationally. John's tape recorder was rolling in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1992 when Bill Clinton declared himself "the comeback kid." John headed Monitor Radio's team of correspondents at the United Nations' Earth Summit where world leaders signed historic treaties on global warming and sustainable development. In a Brazilian slum neighborhood he listened to poor women desperate for birth control describe how they traded their votes for sterilization operations provided by local officials. With microphone in hand he stood in an Arkansas soy bean field as a young African-American farmer spoke of his love of the land and his determination to triumph over racist practices that threatened to force him out of farming.

An internationally recognized journalist, John has produced reports and programs for many of the world's leading radio networks including National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, BBC World Service, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBS Radio, and others. Some notable programs and series he has produced include: Gene Therapy: Medicine For Your Genes, part of The DNA Files, winner of the DuPont Columbia Award; War in the Balkans: Which Way Out?, winner of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Golden Reel Award and the New York Festivals' Gold Medal for International Radio Programming; Population in Perspective, a series on population issues around the world, winner of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award, and the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women's Political Caucus; Vietnam: The Enduring Legacy, winner of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel Award.

In addition to his work in radio John has written for a number of newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Village Voice.

John lives in Maine with his wife Kathy Gunst and their two daughters.

NPR's Loretta Williams - Currently an editor in NPR's Arts Information Unit, Loretta Williams is part of an eight-person reporter-editor unit that produces stories for Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and NPR's weekend news programs. She tracks, assigns and edits news and feature stories related to art, books and media. She has been an editor with the unit since 1999.

Over her 20 year affiliation with NPR, Williams has worked as a trainer, producer, reporter, and director in NPR News. From 1992-1994, she was a producer-trainer for NPR's National Desk News Training Unit, and taught early career journalists advanced skills in story development, writing, and production. From 1989-1990, Williams produced The Class of 2000: The Prejudice Puzzle, a documentary programming initiative that created 13 stories on children and prejudice. From 1988-1992, Williams worked as a freelance feature reporter in NPR's San Francisco and Los Angeles bureaus, supplementing the bureaus' work with stories including reports on a theater troupe that visits migrant worker camps, transracial adoption in San Francisco, and a Los Angeles photography project

Before working with NPR on the West Coast, Williams was the producer of Weekend Edition Sunday. As such, she was responsible for show flow, production staff supervision, producing a segment of the show each week, and directing the show for broadcast.

Williams first worked for NPR in 1984, as an overnight production assistant, who packaged Morning Edition for air. She wrote billboards, host introductions, and revisions on wire copy. She soon advanced to directing NPR newscasts during Morning Edition, then to directing the daily program and producing host pieces, as Morning Edition associate producer/director.

Before re-joining NPR, Williams worked with SoundVision productions from 1997-1998 as the managing editor for The DNA Files. This series of nine one-hour public radio documentaries on genetics was distributed by NPR in 1998. From 1995-1997, Williams was managing editor at Soundprint Media Center. As such, she solicited, scheduled and edited Soundprint, a weekly half-hour radio documentary series. She first joined Soundprint as a contract reporter/producer.

Throughout her career, Williams has worked as a freelance radio consultant. Her clients include WNYC Radio, with which she was a consulting producer on a new WNYC national program and Colorado Public Radio for which she was a newsroom training consultant and fill-in editor.

Williams work has been part of many award-winning NPR productions. She was part of the team of reporters and hosts who produced the series "The NPR 100," which won the George Foster Peabody Award. She won another Peabody Award for her editing of The DNA Files. Her work has been honored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, the Clairon Awards from Women in Communications, the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television, the American Bar Association, the Cindy Awards from the Society of Visual Communicators, the Unity Award in Media, the National Education Association Award, the New York International Radio Festivals, and the Gabriel Award.

NPR's Ira Flatow - Veteran National Public Radio (NPR) science correspondent and award-winning TV journalist Ira Flatow is the host of Talk of The Nation: Science Friday®. He anchors the show each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide a lively, informative discussion on science, technology, health, space, and the environment. Ira is also founder and president of TalkingScience, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV, and Internet projects that make science "user friendly."

Flatow's interest in things scientific began in boyhood - he almost burned down his mother's bathroom trying to recreate a biology class experiment. "I was the proverbial kid who spent hours in the basement experimenting with electronic gizmos, and then entering them in high school science fairs," Flatow says.

Mixing his passion for science with a tendency toward being "a bit of a ham," Flatow describes his work as the challenge "to make science and technology a topic for discussion around the dinner table."

He has shared that enthusiasm with public radio listeners for more than 35 years. As a reporter and then news director at WBFO-FM/Buffalo, New York, Flatow began reporting at the station while studying for his engineering degree at State University of New York in Buffalo. As NPR's science correspondent from 1971 to 1986, Flatow found himself reporting from the Kennedy Space Center, Three Mile Island, Antarctica, and the South Pole. In one NPR report, Flatow took former All Things Considered host Susan Stamberg into a closet to crunch Wint-O-Green Lifesavers in the dark. Conducting the demonstration on the radio from inside the closet, Flatow proved that the Lifesavers do indeed spark when chewed.

His most recent book is entitled They All Laughed... From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives (HarperCollins, New York). It followed on the heels of Rainbows, Curve Balls and Other Wonders of the Natural World Explained.

On television, Flatow has discussed the latest cutting edge science stories on the new digital Cablevision program Maximum Science. He is also host of the four-part PBS series Big Ideas produced by WNET in New York. His numerous TV credits include six years as host and writer for the Emmy-award-winning Newton's Apple on PBS; science reporter for CBS This Morning, Westinghouse, and cable's CNBC. He wrote, produced, and hosted "Transistorized!" an hour-long documentary about the history of the transistor, which aired on PBS. He has talked science on many TV talk shows including Merv Griffin, Today, Charlie Rose, and Oprah. He is currently exploring new and better ways of bringing science news to radio, TV, and the Internet.

On the Internet, Flatow has hosted numerous science-related Webcasts for Discovery Online and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His Science Friday Kids' Connection Web pages won Home PC Magazine's award for one of the top 500 Web sites in the country.

In print, Ira has authored articles for various magazines ranging from Woman's Day to ESPN Magazine, to American Lawyer. His commentary has appeared in The Los Angeles Times and Current newspapers.

Public speaking and moderating discussions are a regular part of his schedule. He has spoken at Rockefeller University, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Calvin Academy, Cal Tech, MIT, Harvard, University of Wisconsin, OSHU, National Inventor's Hall of Fame, and the Kentucky Author Forum.

His recent honors include: the Elizabeth Wood Writing Award from the American Crystallographic Assoc. (2002), AAAS Journalism award (2000), Brady Washburn Award (2000), the Carl Sagan Award (1999).

Ira is member of the National Association of Science Writers.

His hobbies include gardening (especially orchids), tropical fish, and electronic gadgets. He loves the theater.

A native of New York, Flatow now lives in Connecticut with his wife and their children.

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