The style on Family Man reflects the type of music this 32-year-old songwriter was born into.  His mother is country singer Jessi Colter and his father, the late country music legend Waylon Jennings.  Growing up, Shooter joined his parents when they toured around the world.

Photo courtesy of artist

“From the time I was born until the time I started school, I traveled with them,” says Jennings.  “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  Rolling around in a bus, being at concerts, stuff like that.  I’m doing it again now.”Jennings landed a role in the 2005 film Walk The Line where he portrays his father alongside Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash.

He says the opportunity to play his dad was an honor, but performing wasn’t as easy as his co-stars made it look.

“It was just appallingly apparent that I was a terrible actor,” laughs Jennings.

But if acting isn’t his strong-suit, Jennings is proving that country music is.  The single off Family Man is titled “The Deed and the Dollar.”  Jennings says he wrote this for his fiancée, actress Drea de Matteo.

“It’s a straight ahead love song except for the little southern sayings that are added for comedic value,” says Jennings.  “I wouldn’t be where I’m at if it weren’t for her.”

Jennings, now a father of two, says the album is about deep family ties, making this record an especially personal one. It was created

Family Man is the new album by country music outsider Shooter Jennings.

out of all the inspiration he gets from those who are closest to him.“From my extended family to my personal family to my in-laws, to my woman, my children, and the battle of being a good dad and all of that,” he says.

Which also includes the struggles in life as heard in, “Daddy’s Hands,” a tune he wrote late one night in a hotel room after returning from the hospital.  His fiancée’s father had suffered from a stroke and Jennings says having to go through that experience again brought back some difficult memories.

“My dad was in the hospital a lot towards the end of his life and it was something I went through when I was really young,” says

Jennings.  “It caused me to kind of reflect back on what I’d been through and that song is kind of about understanding and delaying death to some degree.”

A life on the road traveling from one show to the next can get lonely and tiresome, and it’s a lifestyle Jennings is all too familiar with.  But it’s clear that the songs off Family Man keep Shooter Jennings close to home.

Listen to the story on wglt.org

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“So important to bring about change in the community, bring about change for other people’s lives,” says Frautschi.  “That’s how I like to use my leadership skills.”

This discussion is part of the Multi-cultural leadership Program, or MCLP, a non-profit organization aimed at developing diverse leaders in the community.  The evening’s audience is made up of the program’s 25 participants, everyone coming from diverse backgrounds.  There are different age groups, occupations and ideologies.  MCLP Executive Director Sonya Mau says this diversity in the class is at the core of the program’s mission.

“This program allows you to understand how to bring out the value in people who are different from you,” says MCLP Executive Director Sonya Mau.

She explains that the diversity in the class is at the core of the program’s mission and the ability to work with those differing perspectives is the key to these participants becoming effective leaders.

“Their value will multiply, and it will spread through the community…whichever communities they belong to in their lifetime,” says Mau.

One person spreading those values of leadership is Michael Donnelly, the School Youth Interventionist for Project Oz at Normal Community West High School.  He works with at-risk teens and prepares students for college.

“You have students that come from different backgrounds, demographic backgrounds and financial backgrounds,” says Donnelly.

He was part of MCLP’s first graduating class back in 2010.  Since then, he’s developed his own leadership program for his students and is this year’s recipient of the MCLP Alumni Award.  He says the program taught him that anyone can be a leader.

“It’s all about action, getting involved, being involved and really understanding the community from a lot of different perspectives,” says Donnelly.

Assistant Principal Carrie Broquard is also from Normal Community West High School.  She’s enrolled in the MCLP this year and back at the panel discussion, Broquard mentions the strong friendships she’s made in the program.

“Lots of different pieces of our community all sitting together, looking through different lenses, looking through different life experiences,” she says.  “We’re all coming to the table with a slightly different slant on things.”

For Broquard, the MCLP has been a source of inspiration.

“You have to figure out a way to impact and serve and give back to the community, so I am immensely grateful that I am here,” she says.

After a rigorous eight months in the Multicultural Leadership Program, these 25 participants will graduate this weekend and will continue their journey to become new leaders in Bloomington-Normal.

Listen to the story on wglt.org

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DANIEL HAJEK: On the boardwalk, a tall man in a white robe on rollerblades plays his electric guitar. He passes near an elderly man dancing to a boom box in front of a tattoo parlor and crowds pass by acrobatic street performers on famed Muscle Beach.

Scott Smith sells jewelry from a card table on the west side of the walk.

SCOTT SMITH: It’s like a circus, basically. Welcome to the circus with no elephants, but there is two-headed turtles right up there, if you want to go see.

HAJEK: The boardwalk is split between two groups. The beach shops along the east side who pay rent and taxes and artists and street vendors on the west side like Smith. They pay nothing to sell their items on blankets or under makeshift tents. For years, it’s been a strained relationship between the two sides.

SMITH: There’s not a big rivalry between those guys and over here, would you say?

HOWARD GIRARDIN: Oh, yeah, there is. Yes.

SMITH: Well, there is, but not that…

GIRARDIN: There is. If you knew how many of these people were actually at the meeting and spoke against us…

HAJEK: That’s Smith’s business partner, Howard Girardin. He’s been homeless for most of his life and working this jewelry stand since he arrived in California.

GIRARDIN: I scraped pennies off the ground to start this business.

HAJEK: These street vendors rely on the first come, first serve policy to grab their small sliver on the boardwalk each morning.

SMITH: We sleep out here at night to make sure we get the spot, so that we can try to make a living.

HAJEK: On the opposite side of the jewelry stand is a sunglasses shop run by Borislav Alexandrov.

BORISLAV ALEXANDROV: There’s been, like, literally fistfights. The vendors are actually kicking out the artists who are supposed to be here in the first place.

HAJEK: He says his side has to compete with the street vendors selling cheaper versions of the same products, but his main frustration is the violence he sees caused by the vendors vying for their space.

BILL ROSENDAHL: It’s competing with people who are legitimate, who pay their taxes, who take care of their employees.

HAJEK: That’s Los Angeles councilman Bill Rosendahl of the 11th District, where the boardwalk is located.

ROSENDAHL: And that kind of competition has created more chaos and then the violence associated with it – it’s just awful.

HAJEK: Working closely with the Venice community and businesses, Rosendahl and his staff drafted Ordinance 4215. It restricts vending by evicting the unregulated merchants selling jewelry, clothing and incense on the west side of the boardwalk.

ROSENDAHL: This ordinance puts some order in place.

VANESSA CHAPMAN: The street vendors are kind of what makes Venice Beach so awesome.

HAJEK: Vanessa Chapman comes down to the boardwalk often. She lives just a block away and says this new ordinance will change the very character of the boardwalk.

CHAPMAN: I think otherwise it would just kind of be a strip mall of tourist souvenir shops.

HAJEK: With the ordinance in effect and the street vendors gone next month, the atmosphere of this place will change dramatically. The question is, will the transformed Venice Beach boardwalk live up to the expectations of its 16 million annual visitors?

For NPR News, I’m Daniel Hajek.

Listen to the story on npr.org

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His dad worked in the oil fields and moved the family around. They went from New Mexico and California to West Texas where  teenage Bingham took on the rodeo circuit.

“It’s a lot like running away and joining the circus,” he says. “Just kind of wandering around like gypsies and piling in the back of a pick-up truck and going out to these rodeos.”

Ryan Bingham performs the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, Calif. on Nov. 19th, 2011.
Photo by: David Bazemore

He kept his guitar in the back seat during those long trips to competitions. Bingham and his rodeo friends would stop in at rundown roadhouses between rodeo towns and play a tune at the bar.

“They were places where people just went to get drunk and fight more than anything,” he says with a laugh.

His roadside performances were a big hit and the songs he played reflected his rough and humble past.

“I was pretty much on my own by the time I was 17 and just kind of bumming around, sleeping in and out of my truck,” he says. “It wasn’t necessarily the easiest time of my life.”

But after forming his band, The Dead Horses, he settled down in Los Angeles and eventually signed to Nashville’s Lost Highway Records. Bingham is a long way from living in his truck and playing dive bars, especially since writing the song “The Weary Kind” featured in the 2009 film Crazy Heart. It earned him an Oscar for Best Original Song at the 2010 Academy Awards.

The song was written around the film’s main character, Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges) who reminded Bingham of an old musician friend named Greg Gorman. They used to play guitar together around a campfire in the rural town of Luckenbach, Texas.

“They called [Gorman] the ghost,” Bingham says. “He would just walk up behind you, or all the sudden he would be sitting next to you and then he would just disappear and you wouldn’t see him for like a month.”

The only way anyone could see him performing was beside a fire and a bottle of whiskey. For Bingham, Gorman was an inspiration.

“He was just one of the most amazing songwriters,” he says.

The last time they saw each other was during a trip to Port Aransis, Texas where they stayed up all night recording songs. The next morning as they left town, Gorman gave Bingham his portable recorder as a parting gift.

“I got home two or three hours later and I get this phone call that Greg was driving to Luckenbach from there and had a heart-attack driving and died,” Bingham says.

So that night, he went out in his backyard, built a fire, took out the recorder Gorman had given him and pressed record. The track would become “The Best of Me,” featured as the last song on his 2007 album, Mescolito.

“I think it was like one in the morning when I recorded that song and there’s that train going through in the background,” he says. “That recorder I got from Greg, I recorded a lot of stuff on that then.”

These days, Bingham is at his home in Los Angeles writing new music for his fourth studio album set to be released next year. He performed his latest song in the studio titled, “The Hole Is Too Deep To Fill.”

Listen to the story on NPR’s Intern Edition

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DANIEL HAJEK: University of Southern California computer scientist Kevin Knight is leafing through a Xeroxed copy of the Copiale Cipher, a 105-page document written entirely in code.

KEVIN KNIGHT: On this page we see a capital N, Z, three, a Greek letter, lambda…

HAJEK: Earlier this year, Knight and two colleagues from the University of Uppsala in Sweden acquired copies of the mysterious cipher. Their first step was to use automatic language translation software to compare the secret text to 80 European languages.

KNIGHT: In this case, it gave a very slight preference for German, which helped us focus.

HAJEK: The preference, because the text was found in Berlin. The computer then matched patterns of symbols to patterns found in the German language.

KNIGHT: Then we just collaborated from there, working with the manuscript, deciphering the manuscript, using different language expertise.

HAJEK: And four months later, they had the entire thing figured out. One of the Swedish researchers, Dr. Beata Megyesi says that by combining simple ideas and modern technology…

DR. BEATA MEGYESI: You can actually succeed to break a code in a very short period of time.

HAJEK: She explains that they had to translate 90 different letters that make up the 75,000 characters in the coded text.

MEGYESI: These are used to encrypt a great majority of the book, and there are 11 logograms.

HAJEK: Logograms are symbols that represent words – symbols like an eye, which signifies their society. Back in Knight’s office, we look at a chart of translations he’s drawn in one of his notebooks.

KNIGHT: Across the top of the page are the German letters, and down the left side of the page are the cipher letters.

HAJEK: For example, vowels with dots above them represent the letter e and the symbol of a cross stands for, S-C-H. Their complete translation of the cipher uncovered the 18th century secret society, which stood for…

DR. CHRISTIANE SCHAEFER: Rather radical political ideas about freedom, equality of human beings and also ideas about the right to kill a tyrant.

HAJEK: That’s Dr. Christiane Schaefer, the third researcher who worked on this project.

SCHAEFER: I had started suspecting that the secret society behind this was the Oculist society dealing with eye medicine.

HAJEK: One of the biggest clues pointing to a group called, the Oculist Society, is this description of an eye procedure, found in the passage about member initiation.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Through Translator) All those present members reach for the candles and place themselves around the candidate and the master of ceremonies. He plucks a hair from the eyebrow with a pair of small tweezers, and concludes herewith the operation.

HAJEK: The details of that operation aren’t in the Copiale Cipher, and no amount of cryptography can uncover the exact proceedings of their mysterious ceremonies. So, the best kept secrets of the Oculist Society may never be known. For NPR News, I’m Daniel Hajek.

Listen to the story at npr.org

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Mona began as a fashion artist, but it wasn’t until she caught sight of a courtroom sketch on television that she sent in her portfolio to local media stations. Shortly after, she was given her first courtroom assignment.

“It was so comfortable,” Edwards said. “It was amazing that I was being paid for something that was just too much fun to do.”

When sketching scenes, she’s always taking into account her specialty: fashion.

“It’s all about the clothes. How clothes look, what kind of shoes, who the designer was, the accessories, and all of that. It’s very important. People care about that.”

Photo courtesy of Mona Shafer Edwards

Edwards’s eye for fashion got her some unexpected attention when she was assigned Lindsay Lohan’s probation hearing in Beverley Hills last September. For some of her hearings, Lohan wore a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, famous for their red soles. When Lohan was arrested after her hearing, Edwardssaw a flash of red from the bottom of her shoes.

“And I thought, there’s my sketch!”

News wires picked up Edwards’s drawing and it went around the world. It was seen in French fashion magazines, British tabloids, even a magazine from the United Arab Emirates. One publication showed Louboutin himself.

Edwards uses alcohol-based markers to sketch out her courtroom scenes on a nine-by-twelve pad of soft, vellum paper. It only takes a few minutes to draw an image, and she does it with precision and objectivity.

She’s depicted some entertaining moments, but says that illustrating courtroom proceedings isn’t always easy.

“I see some really awful things,” she said. “I see autopsy pictures and murder scenes, and whenever there’s a child’s death, it’s really, really upsetting.”

Edwards illustrates moments of drama and justice with a personal touch that a camera could never capture, and her job goes far beyond her illustrations.

“I get to talk to the families. They bring me in on both sides. I sort of become this touchstone sometimes for people.”

Listen to the story on NPR’s Intern Edition

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The supernova will last for more than a decade, but it won’t stay this bright. Within the next week, the light that took 21 million years to reach earth will fade out of view for amateur astronomers.

On a Saturday night in the desert town of Yucca Valley, Calif., two hours east of Los Angeles and far away from the big city lights, the town’s community center parking lot is buzzing. There’s a group of excited backyard astronomers like Carolina Liechtenstein.

“I spend hours every night with my dog and maybe some popcorn and just look at the stars. I haven’t turned on my TV lately,” she says. “I get goose bumps.”

Highly sensitive cameras were set up outside the Yucca Valley Community Center in California to capture images from deep space.
Photo by: Brian Hajek

Liechtenstein’s guides for the Saturday stargazing are two professional astronomers. Paul McCudden and Dean Arvidson set up three highly sensitive cameras that look like giant telescopes. They’re projecting the images onto a large screen.

By day, they teach courses in physics and astronomy at Los Angeles City College. For this crowd, Arvidson and McCudden take to the mic and play tour guides of deep space.

“This is probably a few billion stars right there, and then that one single star can be as bright as a few billion stars,” McCudden says.

This supernova is just above the Big Dipper. It’s a Type 1a, meaning it formed from a thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star.

The star gazers start to get an image of Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, on their screen. Within that galaxy, McCudden points to a faint speck of light — the supernova.

“This is pretty rare. You don’t see supernovas this bright very often,” he says.

Dr. Peter Nugent from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was looking at that same galaxy this past August when he discovered the supernova, just hours after light from the explosion reached earth.

“This is the fifth-brightest supernova in the last 110 years,” he says.

Stargazers in Yucca Valley, Calif. look up at the night sky.
Photo by: Brian Hajek

One like this has never been caught that young. Also, Nugent says, astronomically speaking, it’s really close.”The supernova is only located 21 million light-years away,” he says. “We have had only about a half a dozen Type 1a supernova in the past century that have been as close.”

So it’s a pretty special moment for the people standing in Yucca Valley. For Crescencio Garcenyella from

Landers, Calif., seeing it makes him feel like an explorer himself.

“Like Christopher Columbus,” he says. “Just gaze and wonder how gigantic this universe is, and we’re part of this.”

Listen to the story on npr.org

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“I’m curious about the point of life and how we’re able to change the way people view things.  It’s endlessly interesting to me,” says Heroux.  ”I guess that’s what Hooray for Earth means.”

I talk with Elizabeth about her start in music and the group’s new album, The Other Side of Zero.

As an experienced writer, Ben is able to tell stories through his lyrics and flowing instrumentals.  Each of the six songs on his EP has a unique, melodic and nostalgic sound that is representative of Ben’s take on recording a record: making a fleeting moment permanent during an ever-changing life.

“The things I was influenced by ten years ago, it’s rare that those same things are still driving me today,” says Ben.  ”And I’ll have different interests in another ten years.  Something is going to push me somewhere else.  So recording is a way to document where I’m at right now.”

“I don’t know where I’d be without hip-hop music,” says Zumbi.  ”Sometimes you look around the world and you wonder where you fit in…and I’m lucky I found mine.  This is a part of who I am, and what gives me passion in life.”

The group is set to release their new album, Atomic Clock on November 9th, featuring roots-style beats with a strong reggae influence.  And be sure to check out Zumbi’s latest collaboration titled, The Burnerz, in stores now.

Dr. Kim Pereira is the Director of the Honors Program and Professor of Theatre at Illinois State University.  He is originally from Bombay, India (now known as Mumbai) and traveled to the Middle-East in 1984 to live and work in Bahrain.  By 1985, he arrived in Tallahassee, Florida before finally settling down in Normal, Illinois.  He shares stories from his incredible journey that unexpectedly led him to this small, Midwest town.

Two years ago, Caragh moved from Queensland, Australia to Normal, Illinois.  She left behind the tropical beaches and mountainous scenery for the flatlands of the American Midwest.  She explains some notable differences in lifestyles here in the U.S. and clears up a few misconceptions Americans have towards Australian culture.

Beverley and Naomie both traveled from Paris, France to Normal, Illinois for a semester-long study abroad program at Illinois State University.  Along with Keiko and Tatsuaki, they lived in the I-House of Manchester Hall and were able to take part in living an American lifestyle.

Keiko and Tatsuaki are two friends who lived in Manchester Hall on the campus of Illinois State University this past semester.  Keiko is from Hokkaido and Tatsuaki is from Osaka, Japan.  They both share their impressions of Normal, Illinois and the differences they see in American culture.

Gabriel Gudding outside the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he founded the Marshall County Correctional Facility Writing Program. Photo taken March 2002.

In 1999, Gabriel Gudding, a graduate student from Cornell University, went to jail.  He arrived at Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York with a bag full of notebooks, novels and a lesson plan.  Gabe wasn’t a prisoner.  He was a teacher.

He taught an American Literature class to 30 inmates, all violent felons, sentenced to 25 years to life.

“They were there for murder, armed robbery, rape and other very violent offenses,” says Gabe.  ”You feel this vibration, it’s sort of an emotional atmosphere, walking through a series of clanging, banging doors.  It’s unlike any other experience one has.”

He and the other teachers would break up the classes into small groups and discuss the day’s readings. Classes lasted for three hours with a tea break in the middle.

“They were a very eager group of students.  If I give an assignment, they write down everything.  They’re much more organized than I am.  They’re ready for business.  They have done the assignment, they present the assignment, they don’t wait for me to ask about the assignment.  It’s very different from a normal class,” he laughs.  ”They have many, many questions.  And if I don’t come up to the mark, they tell me.  But it makes sense. They have so much time, but they don’t have time to mess around.  It’s too important to them.  This is their education.”

After spending a year at Auburn and starting a creative writing program at the prison, Gabe moved out of New York and headed south where he taught at the University of Mississippi.

“While there, I was so taken with my experience in prison in Upstate New York, I sought out a prison to teach in and found one in a little town called Holly Springs, Mississippi,” he recalls.  ”I started a creative writing program there that’s still going, actually.  I’m very proud about that.”

After Mississippi, he began his position at Illinois State University in August of 2002 and it wasn’t long before he started a teaching position at Lincoln Correction Facility in Lincoln, Illinois.

“It’s a women’s prison and I’ve always wanted to teach at a women’s prison,” says Gabe.  ”They’re much more guarded in a lot of ways.  Most of the prisoners are mothers.  To be without your son, without your daughter, to be kept from them by the state, a huge powerful apparatus against which you can basically do nothing is deeply sorrowful.  When you walk into a men’s prison, you feel fear.  In the women’s, you feel sorrow.”

Check out Gabe’s blog: http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com

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“When I was just a baby, I only wanted her,” says Jean.  ”She would come and sing me ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ in my room until I went to sleep.  But she would oblige me and go and do that so we were always very, very close.”

A childhood picture of Jean being held by Deb. Growing up, the two sisters were inseparable.
Photo courtesy of Jean Gorski

One summer, Deb had saved Jean’s life.

“We had gone camping as a family, she was twelve, I was four, and we went to the edge of this dock,” recalls Jean. “I remember her warning me to stay away from the slippery wet spots but I completely ignored her.  I crouched down to get a better look at something in the water and the next thing I knew, I was underwater.”

Seconds later, Jean felt herself being pulled out of the water as Deb grabbed her by her shirt collar and dragged her up onto the dock.

“She pulled me so hard and so high, she actually set me on my feet on the dock,” laughs Jean.  ”And so we told that story all the time about how she had been only 12 but had the presence of mind to pull me out.  And she saved my life.”

In March of 1999, Jean and her family received news that Deb had been diagnosed with Leukemia.

“It was less than a month from the day that she was diagnosed until the day she died,” says Jean.

Deb was sent to Rush Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago and Jean drove up to be with her that first weekend.  She remembers sleeping on the hospital room floor right by her sister’s side.

“We tried to pretend it was a sleepover and that kind of thing,” she says.

The following weekend, Deb received a call from her dad saying that Deb was struggling.  At the time, they thought she was having a bad anxiety attack.  Deb had gone through anxiety attacks before, it was something that Jean was familiar with.  She had worked with Deb to overcome past attacks.  On the phone, her dad asked Jean to drive to the hospital to calm her down.  He said she was agitated.

“I remember throwing everything into my car and heading up to Chicago and when I got there, probably within 20 minutes, I knew it wasn’t an anxiety attack,” she says.  ”Something was wrong.”

Jean immediately called for a nurse and after running tests, found that her blood oxygen level was low.  On the way to the Intensive Care Unit, her heart stopped beating.  Doctors acted quickly and were able to revive her.

“We were all just shocked,” says Jean.

Later that afternoon, they had to revive her again after her heart stopped a second time.

“That all happened on a Saturday.  So, Saturday night, I stayed in the hospital and slept in the hospital waiting room,” she says.  ”You sleep terribly in those places.  But in the morning, it was a brand new day, I was thinking, ‘this is going to be alright.’  My family regathered because the doctors wanted to talk to us and they basically told us that it had been a miracle that she had survived the night.”

Doctors explained that Deb had contracted an infection that had caused all of her organs to shut down one by one.  He didn’t know how much longer she had.

“I mean, it was just so terrible to hear that news.  It was just so heartbreaking,” says Jean.  ”Sunday night, my family began drifting back to their hotels but I couldn’t leave.  I just had to stay.”

Jean went into Deb’s room one last time before going to sleep that night around 2:00 am.  She told Deb that if she wanted to continue to fight, Jean would stand by her side for as long as it took.

She walked back into the hospital waiting room, sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs and tried to get some rest.

“I finally fell asleep and I started to dream,” recalls Jean.  ”And in the dream, she and I, my sister and I were together in this absolutely stunning garden.  It was no place I’ve ever seen in my waking life.  It had gorgeous blossoms of many different colors, the brightest yellow and red I’d ever seen.  The greenery was just lush.  It was stunning, just absolutely stunning.”

“I was standing in front of her and she was seated on a bench and I sort of looked around this beautiful landscape and to my right I actually saw this shimmering light.  It sort of mesmerized me.  And as I turned to look at it, my sister sort of followed my gaze and looked at it, too.  And in my dream, I knew that that was where we were going.  I sort of took a step toward it and my sister held back.  She wasn’t sure.”

“I held my hand out to her and sort of nodded toward the light and told her, ‘It’s okay, it’s right here.’  She reached up and took my hand and got to her feet.  And we walked toward that light.  And it was at that exact moment that I woke up because overhead they were paging doctors to her room.  Her heart had stopped again.”

“Chaos erupted and people came running and the doctor came to me and told me they were trying to revive her but he wasn’t sure how successful they would be and did I want to come in.  And I told him, ‘no,’ because I knew she was already gone.”

“She died that moment she walked with me to the light.”

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“It just so happens that I would play the lottery,” says Don.  ”One night back in ’97, I was on my way home and I stopped in at the store and got my groceries in the cart and was waiting in line.  There was quite a line in front of me so I thought, ‘This gives me some time.  I’ll run up there and fill in a card and turn it in.’”

And he filled in his six favorite numbers: 7, 12, 16, 21, 33 and 36.  The following night, Don was sitting in his family room watching the evening news.

“And I’m in my easy-chair, my wife’s upstairs, and I’m kind of falling asleep,” he says.

And in a state of being half-asleep, he vaguely heard the starting of the Illinois Lottery Drawing.

One by one, the announcer started up the machines and released the Mega Million ping-pong balls, which began bouncing about chaotically within the confines of a glass container.  The looks of winning seemed completely impossible.

The first number the machine selected: seven.  The second number: twelve.  The third number: sixteen.  At this point, Don is completely awake in his chair.  The fourth number: twenty-one.  The fifth number: thirty-three.  And the final number: thirty-six.

Don had just hit all six numbers.  The same numbers he had selected as his favorites since the age of twelve and the same numbers he had filled out on the lotto card from the previous night.

“And I looked and I thought, ‘Those are the numbers I choose.’  I was just about ready to pass out,” says Don.

There was a reason for his unusually odd reaction.  He didn’t yell out of excitement or call for his wife upstairs.  He didn’t run around, he didn’t wake the kids, he didn’t even stand up.  He just slowly sat back into his chair, grabbed the remote and turned off the television.  There was a problem.

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Part 2 : Hair plays a major role in society as it can partially represent a person’s character, group affiliations, and ethnicity.  But there is a genetic condition in humans that involves the growth of hair all over the body including the face.  This rare genetic condition, known as hypertrichosis has produced myth, curiosity, and misunderstanding.

The krill may not be fully aware of it yet, but their predators have taken notice.

Only a few miles away, an incredibly massive creature glides through the ocean towards the krill.  It weighs in at some 200-tons, which is equivalent to the weight of 100 small cars and is the length of three school busses put together.  It is the largest creature to ever live on Planet Earth.  It is the blue whale.

This painting by Richard Ellis depicting a blue whale is found on the wall of the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Photo courtesy of Richard Ellis.

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”Among all the whales, the most interesting and mysterious are the blue whales.  They’re by far the largest animals that have ever lived.  They’re even larger than the biggest dinosaurs by a significant amount.  Their tongues are so large, it weighs as much as an elephant.  Their tail is the width of a small aircraft.  Their heart is the size of a minivan and their blood vessels are wide enough for a person to swim through.”

Surprisingly, the largest creature on Earth feeds on the krill, one of the smallest creatures in the ocean.  So to get their fill, the blue whales will eat a lot.

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”Each day, a blue whale can consume up to four tons of krill.  That’s about 40 million krill.  We as humans, most of us consume about 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day.  A single blue whale will consume 1,500,000 calories each day.”

This is binge eating to the extreme.  These blue whales are equipped with a special feature which allows for mass consumption.  They have evolved a special jaw to feed on the krill.  They lack teeth but they have a set of plates that work as a filter called a baleen.  So when the whales come to a huge group of krill, they simply open up their mouths, take in up to 100 tons of water…

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”And then they will strain out the water and basically filter it.  They retain the krill and then they’ll swallow it.”

You would think that after a day of consuming four tons of these small crustaceans, the whale would be full or become tired of the taste of krill.  But this isn’t the case.  In fact, the blue whales will continue to indulge themselves with these shrimp-like marine invertebrates until the summer feeding period is over.

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”During the summer season over a period of about a two months, the blue whales feed nonstop, day and night.”

They dive down hundreds of feet during the day to eat and surface feed at night.  And during this time all the excess calories are converted into blubber stored beneath their skin.  By the time their feeding period is over, the blue whales can have a body fat percentage of over 50%.

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”The whale, you can say, they are obese by the time they are done with their summer feeding.”

It all has to do with their lifestyle.  They’ll need the blubber as winter approaches and draws these whales out of the frigid Arctic waters.  So with their stomachs fed and massive bodies packed with an ample supply of blubber, they’re ready for the great migration.  And moving at a comfortable pace of 12 miles-per-hour, these huge creatures begin their 10,000 mile journey southward to warmer waters.

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Dr. Tak Cheung: “Oxygen is essential for life to survive.  The reason that we need oxygen to survive is because oxygen facilitates the possibility of extracting energy from organic molecules.”

Every time you breathe in, air rushes into your lungs and oxygen molecules are absorbed by the mucus membrane of your lungs and then transferred into your blood and circulated around your body.  So take one oxygen molecule.  It’s been circulating around…

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”It enters into your cells, combines with hydrogen which comes from carbohydrates to form water.”

So water is the byproduct of combining hydrogen and oxygen.  The point of combining these two molecules is simple.  When oxygen and hydrogen are combined, it creates energy.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”This event can be demonstrated in a physical way.  If you take hydrogen and oxygen, put it together and provide an electrical shock, you will get a massive explosion.”

This famous 1937 photograph by Gus Pasquerella captures the Hindenburg disaster.

And this is exactly what happened in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.  The German-made LZ129 Hindenburg, a rigid led airship resembling a blimp, came in for its landing after a North American transatlantic journey.  The ship was filled with hydrogen gas giving it lift.  When a sudden accident caused a spark and tear, the concentrated hydrogen was released and met with oxygen in the outside air.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”The end result was a massive explosion and the entire airship was consumed in less than a minute.  This is to tell you how powerful it is. And in fact we humans extract energy from glucose which carries the hydrogen in exactly the same way.”

This same process is going on in your body right now.  Of course, on a much smaller scale.  The oxygen you’re breathing in is sent to a cell where it combines with hydrogen causing a little burst of energy which is stored and used by the cells in our body.  So that’s why we inhale.  Of course, this process also produces molecules and compounds we don’t really need, so as we exhale, we’re getting rid of those byproducts, which when combined with hydrogen and oxygen is carbon dioxide and water.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”And the water is then secreted into the environment…”

…Along with the carbon dioxide we breathe out.  So take a plant.  It relies on moisture and carbon dioxide to function, which just so happens to be what we give off.  It’s leaves are green from chlorophyl, and the chlorophyl is used to capture energy from the sun.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”Use the energy from the sun and split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.”

The plant must produce carbohydrates.  In order to do this, hydrogen is carried by carbon dioxide which then leaves oxygen.  And oxygen is the byproduct, released back into the environment.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”The reason why we have oxygen in the air is simply due to the fact that living organisms using photosyntheseis create organic molecules.  This molecule of oxygen will then be breathed in by you.  You breathe in this molecule of oxygen and you go through the process over and over again.”

So this is the cycle: We release carbon dioxide and water.  Plants need carbon dioxide and water.  We need oxygen and plants release oxygen.  It’s the perfect relationship.

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Dr. Tak Cheung: “Many people think that the hump of the camel is used to store water.  But it’s not.”

Instead of being stored only in the hump, the camel stores water in its body tissue allowing it to store a larger amount of water.  This means that camels can go without drinking water for days.  But if a camel does come across water…

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”It can drink up to 40 gallons of water in one sitting.”

So what’s inside the hump?  Mainly fat.  Important for two reasons:

Dr. Tak Cheung: “It serves as a source of energy.  Another reason is that it provides insulation.  It keeps the camel cool.

“To prevent them from overheating, camels have a special type of hair which provides them with extraordinary insulation.  This allows them to be out in the sun all the time.  When camels sweat, the fluid that interweaves into the hair evaporates very slowly.  It will gradually cool the camel rather than just runoff like when humans sweat.  And the camel’s nostrils are designed in such a way that they can seal off their nose between their breathing.”

Sealing off the nostrils actually prevents water loss, since respiration releases water vapor.  Even the hairs within their nostrils are specially equipped.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”Camels actually cool down and condense the water inside their nostrils.  They then return the water back into their bodies.  When camels urinate, their urine is like little crystals.  It is so concentrated, they will extract almost the entirety of the water out of that.  And when they defecate, their dung is almost completely dry and people can use it to build a fire.”

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Dr. Tak Cheung: “Ants are in fact the most abundant animal on this planet.  If you take all the terrestrial animals and weigh them, about 1/4 of the weight would go to the ants.  Right now, there are over 12,000 species of ants and there are ants everywhere except Antarctica.”

And of these 12,000 species, it’s estimated that the entire ant population is 10,000,000,000,000,000 (10,000 trillion).  Ants outnumber humans one-million-to-one.

Dr. Tak Cheung: “No other animal on Earth is more dominant than the ants.”

And their dominance is due to a number of factors.  First, ants have been around for a long time.  As humans, we’ve been here for 200,000 years.  But ants have been around for almost 110 million years, since the time of the dinosaurs.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”And they have not changed that much.  Which means that they have well-adapted into the biological niche that they occupy.  And the niche that they occupy, they dominate.”

A queen leafcutter ant surrounded by her workers.
Photo courtesy of Alex Wild

Another factor of their dominance has to do with their behavior.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”Ants are able to cooperate and the reason for their cooperation is that they create a social structure.  Now, the society of ants, we call them a true social society, meaning every individual component of the society works together seamlessly.”

Cooperation is the golden rule in every ant colony.  And through their genetics, ants are determined to remain cooperative and social.  This complex system is based around ants having specific jobs to keep the colony running.Dr. Tak Cheung: ”During their larval development, the ant caretakers, the ants that specialize in taking care of the young, they feed the larvae with a special type of food.  And it depends on the type of food that they receive, obviously they contain chemicals that will trigger the ants to develop differently.  Some will be triggered to become workers, some will be triggered to be soldiers and only a few will become queen.  And amazingly, all of this is controlled by a chemical environment in the colony that determines what they need.  If they need all workers, more of the larvae will be fed with a certain type of food and they will become workers.”

Most of these ants are sisters.  Only the female ants do the actual work.  The small number of male ants that do inhabit the colony have it easy.  Their only purpose:

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”Is to fertilize the queen.  That’s their only job.  Once they’re done, they’re gone.  Now, it turns out that ants are very happy creatures.  They don’t have to think about moving ahead.  Once they find themselves caste into that particular lot of life, they are willing to do everything for the better good of the colony.”

Their jobs are highly specified.  Soldiers remain soldiers and workers remain workers.  Whatever position they’re in, they stay there.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”The workers do not reproduce, the soldiers do not reproduce.  Only the queen will reproduce.  She’s like the central reproductive organ in your body.  Ant colonies are like super organisms.”

The leafcutter ants, found in Central America, have huge colonies with numbers in the millions.  Their expertise is using their jaws to cut out pieces of leaves from particular plants.  Groups of these ants happily scurry along in orderly lines and move together, carrying big pieces of leaves they’ve cut.  Some ants are carrying up to ten times their own body weight.  They move together across logs, over rocks, along trails that they’ve created and into one of the many entrances into their underground colony.

Some of these leaves contain poisons and most are indigestible.  So for the ants, this isn’t a direct source of food.

Dr. Tak Cheung: ”They take those leaves, they bring it back to the colony, and they chew up those leaves into a mulch and use it to grow fungus.  They cultivate that fungus in an underground chamber and the fungus will grow fruiting bodies.  The ants then eat those fruiting bodies.”

Leafcutter ants are nature’s farmers.

Dr. Tak Cheung:  ”And they’ve been doing it for over 40 million years.”

The above image courtesy of Alex Wild.

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