63 Degrees North - podcast
Podcast: 63 Degrees North
We bring you surprising stories of science, history and innovation from 63 Degrees North, the home of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and from its campuses in Trondheim, Ålesund and Gjøvik.
Listen as we explore everything from the mysteries of the polar night to the history of Viking raiders, and how eavesdropping on whales can help bring them back from the brink of extinction — and more. Take a journey to Europe's outer edge for fascinating tales and remarkable discoveries. Hosted by Nancy Bazilchuk.
Season One – 2021
Sneak peak – Welcome to 63 Degrees North!
Ever wonder what's happening in some of the more far-flung places on the planet? In 63 Degrees North, we'll bring you stories from Norway every week about surprising science, little-known history, and technology and engineering discoveries that can help change the world.
Episode 1: Shedding light – on the polar night
Krill eyeballs. The werewolf effect. Diel vertical migration. Arctic marine biologists really talk about these things, because in the darkest dark of the polar night, it turns out that fish, birds and tiny marine organisms are far more active than researchers ever imagined. Even the faintest light of the moon has an effect. Aaahoooo! The werewolf effect!
Read more: Episode 1 details | Episode 1 transcript
Episode 2: Viking raiders stole this box – but the real surprise is what they did with it
It’s no bigger than four decks of cards stacked one on top of the other – a tiny box raided from an Irish church. In Ireland, the box held the holy remains of a saint. What a mound of sand, some leftover nails and the box itself tell us about the Viking raiders who stole it – and what they did with it when they brought it back to Norway.
Read more: Episode 2 details | Episode 2 transcript
Episode 3: The Longship that could help save the planet
Everyone knows there’s just too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – and we’re heating up the planet at an unprecedented pace. More than 20 years ago, Norwegians helped pioneer an approach to dealing with CO2 that’s still ongoing today – they captured it and pumped it into a rock formation deep under the sea. Now the Norwegian government is building on those decades of experience with a large-scale carbon capture and storage project called Longship. Will it work? Is it safe? And is it something that other countries can benefit from, too?
Read more: Episode 3 details | Episode 3 transcript
Episode 4: Not enough COVID-19 tests? No problem, we'll make them!
When the coronavirus first transformed from a weird respiratory disease centered in Wuhan,China to a global pandemic, no one was really prepared. Worldwide, no one had enough masks, personal protective gear and definitely – not enough tests. The problem was especially acute in places like Norway, a small country that had to compete on a global market to get anything and everything. What happened when a genetics researcher,some engineers and a couple of PhDs and postdocs put their heads together to design a completely different kind of coronavirus test – and how it changed lives in India, Denmark and Nepal.
Read more: Episode 4 details | Episode 4 transcript
Episode 5: Darwin had Galapagos finches. Norway has… house sparrows?
The different species of Galapagos finches, with their specially evolved beaks that allow them to eat very specific types of food, helped Darwin understand that organisms can evolve over time to better survive in their environment. Nearly 200 years later and thousands of miles away, Norwegian biologists are learning some surprising lessons about evolution from northern Norwegian populations of the humble house sparrow.
Read more: Episode 5 details | Episode 5 transcript
Season Two – 2022
Episode 6: Old Bones and Modern Germs
Season Two premiere
What can medieval skeletons tell us about modern-day pandemics? Trondheim, Norway’s first religious and national capital, has a rich history that has been revealed over decades of archaeological excavations. Rsearchers are using this collection to see if insights into the health conditions of the past can shed light on pandemics in our own time. With the help of old bones, latrine wastes and dental plaque, researchers are learning about how diseases evolved in medieval populations, and what society did to stem them – and how that might help us in the future.
Read more: Episode 6 details | Episode 6 transcript
Episode 7: Pirates, noblewomen and bicycling housewives
Why Norway always ranks among the top countries on the planet when it comes to gender equality.
Read more: Episode 7 details | Episode 7 transcript
Episode 8: Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe and the $6 billion deal
How the unlikely combination of WWII Germany, a modest English engineer who created a worker’s paradise, an ambitious industrialist prosecuted as a traitor and a hardworking PhD helped build modern Norway, one aluminium ingot at a time.
Read more: Episode 8 details | Episode 8 transcript
Episode 9: The Detectives: Hunting toxic chemicals in the Arctic
Baby grey seals. Polar bears. Zooplankton on painkillers. How do toxic chemicals and substances end up in Arctic animals – and as it happens, native people, too?
Read more: Episode 9 details | Episode 9 transcript
Episode 10: The Alchemists: Turning wild water into white coal
The secrets behind how Norwegian scientists and engineers harnessed the country’s wild waterfalls by developing super efficient turbines – and how advances in turbine technology being developed now may be the future in a zero-carbon world. They include an engineer who figured out how to harness national fervour and build the 1900s equivalent of a super computer, a WWII resistance fighter who saw something special in tiny temperature differences, and researchers today, who are finding ways to cut environmental impacts from current hydropower plants and craft the designs we need to confront climate change.
Read more: Episode 10 details| Episode 10 transcript
Episode 11: Getting to Net Zero
We all know that climate change is real and that we have to do something about it. In today's podcast extra episode, we go behind the scenes at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and talk to Anders Hammer Strømman, who was one of the lead authors for their latest report, released in April this year. Anders is a professor at NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme where he has specialized in Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental input-output analysis, which are tools that enable us to understand the real environmental costs of the goods and materials we use in everyday life.
Read more: Episode 11 details| Episode 11 transcript to come
Episode 12: The EU has the strongest climate laws in the world. But it's not enough
Earlier this year, tremendous floods in Pakistan forced 600,000 pregnant women to leave their homes for safer ground. It was among the latest in a series of nearly unthinkable happenings caused by climate change."Can you imagine if you are about to give birth to a child, and you have to leave your home and flee? These are very traumatic experiences that people have now in all continents, and increasing frequency," says NTNU Professor Edgar Hertwich. He says we all know now that climate change is no longer an abstraction — it's here, and humankind has to act.
Read more: Episode 12 details | Episode 12 transcript TK
Episode 13: Wax, wood and CO2. A podcast extra on three wild ways to curb global warming
Three tons of wax. A 4-story office building made almost entirely of wood. And putting CO2 to work instead of letting it heat up the planet: Scientists and engineers across the globe are harnessing unlikely materials to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Today's show looks at how a zero-emissions office building constructed 500 km south of the Arctic Circle combines integrated solar panels, heat pumps and a huge vat of wax to heat and power the structure, with enough left over to sell.
We also talk to a researcher who is building highly efficient heat pumps using CO2 as the stuff inside that makes it work. They're spreading worldwide, and can be found everywhere from inside your Volkswagen ID electric car to the Large Hadron Collider. And also — at a hotel in Hell, Norway, where the owners cut their electricity use by 70 per cent — without making a pact with the devil!
Read more: Episode 13 details | Episode 13 transcript TK
Season Three – 2023
Episode 14: Running rats and healing hearts
Season Three premiere
In 1998, a young Norwegian exercise physiologist found that a technique he had used to help Olympic athletes could help heart patients too. But his idea made doctors sweat. One famous cardiologist told him that if he used his technique in human heart attack patients, he "would kill them."
Today's show looks at what happened when our researcher, Ulrik Wisløff, defied the experts — and built a career learning how high intensity interval training can help everyone from heart patients and ageing Baby Boomers, and possibly even Alzheimer's patients — but not in the way you might think!
Read more: Episode 14 details | Episode 14 transcript
Episode 15: Listening to Leviathans: Sounds from the deep
Coming soon