Matthew LaPlante
UnDisciplined HostMatthew 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.
He is the author of "Superlative: The Biology of Extremes," the co-author of multiple other books on the intersection of science and society, and has led or contributed to more than 20 studies on climate variability and climate change. He earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Oregon State University, a master's in education from California State University East Bay, and a doctorate in climate science from Utah State University.
-
Emerging research suggests that human attention spans are getting shorter. That’s a problem for people who want to make change in a world in which the issues we’re facing are growing ever more complicated. So now, perhaps more than ever, it’s important to understand the art and science of giving a good speech — and few people in Canada do that better than David Shepherd. But Shepherd says none of this came naturally to him. -
Emerging research suggests that human attention spans are getting shorter. That’s a problem for people who want to make change in a world in which the issues we’re facing are growing ever more complicated. So now, perhaps more than ever, it’s important to understand the art and science of giving a good speech — and few people in Canada do that better than David Shepherd. But Shepherd says none of this came naturally to him.
-
Dan McClellan loves the Bible. He doesn’t always love what it says. But he works hard not to try to mold it into something that he wants it to be — to meet it, he says, on its own terms. -
Just about 60% of Americans say they identify as Christian. And just about 20% of Americans say they have read the entire Bible. -
What is life? However you answer that question, there is a good chance that it’s limited in some way by something that recent research has shown is not actually a limit. What living things can breathe, how they derive energy, how long they can live, and even whether they must die are all being challenged by what we’re learning from microorganisms. In her new book, “Intraterrestrials,” Karen Lloyd tells the story of exploring those limits among the strangest species on our planet. -
What is life? However you answer that question, there is a good chance that it’s limited in some way by something that recent research has shown is not actually a limit. What living things can breathe, how they derive energy, how long they can live, and even whether they must die are all being challenged by what we’re learning from microorganisms. In her new book, “Intraterrestrials,” Karen Lloyd tells the story of exploring those limits among the strangest species on our planet.
-
In his new book, climate analyst Mike Berners-Lee says there's one shift that would go far toward solving every climate bind we’re in: holding corporate and political leaders accountable to truth.
-
For decades, we’ve known that climate cycles like El Niño affect regional crop yields. But even though our food system is increasingly global, we haven’t done a great job of thinking at a planetary scale. -
Rising global temperatures are already impacting human health. One survey suggests that most Americans haven’t yet felt this connection in their own lives or seen it in their own communities. But that might change — and soon.
-
On July 6, 2018, listeners who were tuned into UPR heard UnDisciplined for the first time. Now, nearly seven years later, we’ve shared 300 episodes.
