March 2007 Archives

Veronica Green - Research

What would I do if I came face to face with an ultimate bear? As part of National Geographic's research team I got to view Explorer Ultimate Bear. This program lets you check out some of the worlds largest and also most ferocious predators: the polar bear, the black bear and the brown bear. And you even get to see a man face off with a real bear. Native to North America, these creatures can weigh more than 1,000 pounds and are capable of killing prey with a single swipe of the paw.

I have a new appreciation of bears as strong and stealthy athletes. In fact, the show featured a bear in Montana moving a 700 lb dumpster! It was incredible to see this lumbering animal stand upright and use his front paws to maneuver the giant object as if he were part of a hired moving crew. If a bear smells food it will use its strength to get rid of anything, regardless of the size, to get to its next meal.

Another great segment features a man who works with these giants for a living. A trained animal expert is shown wrestling with an actual grizzly as if he were part of the species himself. He describes how the bear's weight feels like its "crushing" his spine as he struggles on the ground with the beast. Also, the expert wears a camera inside of his helmet to get as close as possible to the action. Every one of the bear's movements and sounds are captured. The key is to remember that in this demonstration the bear is well trained and therefore will not use his force to kill as he wrestles. It made me imagine how deadly a rumble with a grizzly in the wild would be. There would be no way somebody could survive such an encounter! Ultimate Bear gave me a firsthand look at the mechanics behind a bear's strength. In addition, I was able to imagine the amount of damage that this brute force could cause.

Kathryn Wallace - Special Contributor

Before walking into Salinas Valley State Prison, a maximum-security men's prison in California, my only perception of prison came directly from the movies. I envisioned my first day being something like the intake day in the prison classic, Shawshank Redemption, with cruel officers on watch and fearsome inmates hurling insults and trash at the crew and me. Entering the sally port for the first time - the double set of security gates that separate the free world from the world behind bars - I felt a sickening thud in the pit in my stomach when the second set of gates shut behind me, locking me in prison.

The reality, of course, is nothing like the movies. The correctional officers are some of the most decent people I've met, tasked with the impossible: feed, clothe, protect and rehabilitate a volatile population that could be making nice with you one second and swinging a homemade weapon at you the next. And the inmates? Well, it wasn't quite the catcalling festival I'd been warned about. First stop on our tour of the prison was a dorm-like housing unit with 120 inmates. The inmates were on their bunks with eyes glued to a small television set propped up against the wall, and didn't cast so much as a glance our way. The movie? The Longest Yard - the prison football remake with Adam Sandler. It was possibly the most surreal moment of my life.

Michael Cascio SVP, Special Programming

You know exactly where you were on September 11, 2001. It's the most famous date in American history. Yet it still amazes me how much people DON'T know about 9/11 more than five years later, such as:

- How al Qaeda meticulously planned the attack years before it happened.
- What the U.S. knew in advance of 9/11.
- What went on inside the airplanes just before they crashed.
- How an amazing portion was captured on video, audio and still photos.
- Why the survivors of 9/11 are still heroes.

And the story isn't over yet. With war raging in Iraq, and Rudolph Giuliani a serious contender for President on the basis of his handling of 9/11 in New York City, it's clear that 9/11 is defining public life in the U.S. But people are still amazed when we try to answer the question: What really happened that day?

Seth Shostak - Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

Roswell has become America's favorite shorthand for "extraterrestrials." The series of events that transpired there in the summer of 1947 is hands-down the most popular evidence cited by folks who think that Earth is awash with visitors from space. This is despite the fact that proof that anything more than human-made debris slammed into the cattle pastures outside of Roswell is either questionable or - according to many accounts - stacked up and labeled at some secret government installation.

My job is to look for extraterrestrials, not by searching the military compounds at Area 51 or something similar, but rather by using large antennas and telescopes to detect signals beamed our way by very distant beings. Frankly, I don't see any good reason to believe that aliens crash-landed in New Mexico, despite the fact that I gauge it very likely that the galaxy is crawling with life. Reasonable people will disagree with me, but then I would ask them the following: what have we learned from Roswell? Sixty years after this so-called interstellar fender-bender, is there a single bit of new knowledge or technical or social development that this crash has wrought? Sixty years after Columbus discovered the New World, there were colonies up and down the coasts of the Americas, potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco had become staples in Europe, and Native Americans had been toured around the continent. Should we expect less from a visit by beings from the stars? I don't think so. Interstellar travel is difficult, and energetically costly. It is not, however, impossible. But if we truly were being visited, that knowledge would be shared far and wide, and not remain for the best part of a century the exclusive province of some clandestine agency in a single country.

Do you believe that we aren't alone in the universe?
Remember you can watch The Real Roswell on March 21, 2007 at 8pm et/pt

Dr. Mike Heithaus and Dr. Ray Heithaus

We've done a lot of traveling in our decades as biologists, but our trip to the Galapagos was one of the most exhilarating! The oceans teem with life from the curious and acrobatic sea lions to the slow and stately sea turtles, bizarre hammerhead sharks, and countless colorful fish. Imagine snorkeling with a penguin without freezing - you can only do that in the Galapagos! It's also the only place you might run across a lizard - a marine iguana - in your underwater exploration!

The life on land is just as amazing! Nowhere else can you get so close to so many different species - without native predators they are totally unafraid of humans. As you travel among the many islands and diverse habitats - from beautiful rocky landscapes devoid of almost all life to lush forests in the clouds - you see similar kinds of plants and animals, but looking closely you will see most of these kinds are different species from one island to the next. Each island exerts its own pressures on the species found there and through natural selection many species have been born in a geological eyeblink!

The fantastic birds you see flitting around the islands are finches of many kinds. Some have even figured out how to use tools - poking cactus spines into trees to stab tasty meals. The magnificent giant tortoises that you encounter are all adapted to the conditions on their own island! The diversity of the Galapagos has given rise to some of the best examples of speciation ever studied and helped Darwin to develop his ideas about evolution that form the foundations of modern biological thinking! Having the privilege to walk some of the same paths and see the same animals and plants is a treat for anybody - and especially for fellow biologists.

Jonathan Burhop - Producer

Ever think your job is tough? Nobody puts in the hours like you do?
Think again, until you've logged a season with a custom harvest crew you haven't seen tough.

These tight teams of farm equipment operators start in the American Southwest and travel north as the crops ripen; harvesting wheat, corn, and soy. Like a swarm of bees, teams of tractors, semi-trucks, RVs and John Deere STS Combines caravan toward Canada. No weekends, no days off, just harvesting. Every two days they set up camp and before they've got a chance to settle into a rhythm they're off again. It's a brutal way to make a living; just look at the hands of Owner/Operator Kent Wright, a man who's been in the game his entire life. His hands tell the story of someone who's spent more hours outside than in, they're thick and tan like leather and pocked with scars. It ain't fun fixin' machinery in the bitter cold or extreme heat but this is what he does. He's a man of few words but when he does speak I suggest you listen. To me the wisdom of man who dedicates his life to hard honest work is something to be cherished, admired, and lived by.

Kent's father started the business when their family farm in Nebraska was hailed out three seasons in a row. With farm equipment sitting idle loans and debt must have been pounding on the family's front door. The choice boiled down to going bankrupt or putting the equipment to work. Kent's father took his equipment on the road and the rest was history. Today, Wright's Trucking and Harvesting is a finely tuned operation using state of the art equipment, a well-engineered plan, and an army of seasonal workers.

Veronica Green - Research

Can you imagine using infrared technology to uncover the origins of Christianity? As part of National Geographic research, I had the opportunity to view Science of the Bible: Decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls prior to its Sunday March 11th premiere. In this program, you get to watch as world class archaeologists and scholars use modern technology to understand the meaning behind these ancient texts. I believe the story of these scrolls will appeal to anyone who enjoys a mystery, regardless of the role religion plays in their lives. After all, who wouldn't be intrigued by a story with a real life ancient treasure map in it?

I felt immersed in a world Indiana Jones might find himself in, as I took in images of the hidden desert caves in Qumran where the scrolls were discovered. It is hard to fathom the hundreds of centuries that have passed since letters were first printed on these scripts. In my world of emails and text messages, it is easy to forget a time in which words did not instantly appear on a screen. Instead, they had to be written on materials such as papyrus, animal hide and even partially on copper. With a quill pen! After all, these are the oldest known biblical documents.

And that brings another thought to mind: who exactly wrote these mysterious scrolls? It turns out that this question, like many others about the texts, cannot be answered with absolute certainty. Written mainly in Hebrew, the scrolls contain more than 900 manuscripts in total. Imagine the dedication these authors had to have in order to amass such a collection complete with thoughts that shape how we think about religion today. These works are the earliest seeds of the religious beliefs that many have been taught and grown accustomed to. Who were these writers and what were their lives like?

Victoria Kirk - Producer

I always knew that yeast was an important part of beer making, but when Budweiser Brew Master Doug Muhleman took the National Geographic film crew to a steel reinforced door and said "this far and no further", I knew there must be more to these microscopic organisms than I first thought.

Behind the locked door, preserved in liquid nitrogen was the very first strain of yeast used by Aldolphus Bush, the founder of Budweiser, over 120 years ago. Today it's still used to give Budweiser its distinctive taste and of course its beer buzz. "Not only does yeast convert sugar to alcohol," explained Doug "but it also creates a myriad of different flavors during fermentation. Yeast is responsible for a lot of the flavor in beer". Considering the yeast behind the locked door in question, launched the Budweiser Empire, there was no chance we were going to get in. The risk of contamination was too high.

Intrigued, I decided to investigate further. The University of California Davis has one of the largest yeast collections in the world. It seemed like the perfect place to start. Biologist Kyria Boundy Mills, the curator of the collection took us into the main storage area. Here over 7000 different yeast strains and over 450 different spices were stacked in neat rows. "These strains represent over half of the world's known species", she said "we've isolated yeast from insect guts, decaying plant matter, cactus and in every imaginable habit around the world".

Jeff Darnell - Research

The National Geographic Channel has always taken its viewer feedback very seriously. Despite having a small staff, (1 person), that responds to the many emails we get, we try to get back to everyone that contacts us as quickly as possible. We also perform more formal methods of research where we do focus groups, survey opinions through the telephone or online and other avenues to find out what viewers like yourself watch on TV, what you think of our channel, your general media habits and anything else that will help us in producing great programming.

One of the research methods we utilize is called recruit-to-view. This is where we ask viewers to watch all or part of a program as it airs on the network and tell us what they think. Generally, we do this via phone or online and it's a one-to-one communication between the viewer and the channel. However, we'd like to open this up for a little discussion. So, with that in mind, we'd like to reach out to you, the elite readers of the NGC blog to see if you have time to watch and write about a program coming up this weekend. Unfortunately, we don't have any incentives for you, other than our appreciation for your candor.

On Saturday, March 3, 2007, we have encore airings of Hunter and Hunted from 8-11pm Eastern. Hunter and Hunted is a program we've had on the air for awhile now, described by one viewer as 'CSI with Animals'. We are looking at producing more in this series, but would like to hear if there is interest, reactions to the style of production and thoughts on new topics. The first hour is called Shark Invasion at 8pm Eastern, the second hour is on Dolphins Attacks at 9pm Eastern and finally Gator Attack at 10p Eastern. You can visit the video area of the website for more information on these shows; I don't want to set up too many expectations, however. If you have the time to watch part of any of these episodes, I ask that you tell come back to this site and post your thoughts.

If you do watch the programs, please come back and share your general feelings. These questions below are meant to show the type of insight we would like from you, but any comments are greatly appreciated.
- How much did you watch and why did you stop watching?
- Did you learn anything new?
- Did you watch the show in HD or SD and does that matter to you?
- If we hadn't asked you to watch the show, would you have tuned in?
- Does the show fit with your expectation of National Geographic?