In a trip beyond the headlines today, Peter Dykstra of Dailyclimate.org and Environmental Health News, ehn.org, and host Steve Curwood discuss Citizen Science with road-kill and the anniversary of the dramatic Santa Barbara oil spill that helped spur environmental consciousness in the United States.

Above the sun-baked beaches of the Hawaiian islands, glistening white Tropicbirds float, with their long tail feathers streaming out behind them, as Mary McCann reports in today's BirdNote?.

In the past year a number of explosive oil train derailments, including the deadly accident in Lac-Megantic in Quebec that killed 47 people, have raised important questions about how we transport oil in North America. Canadian journalist Jacquie McNish has written extensively about oil trains, and tells host Steve Curwood how we got here.

On the Pacific island of Palau, the modern world rubs shoulders with the traditional, and as the inhabitants eat a more Western diet, they often develop diabetes. But a traditional tree that grows there, known as the mother of medicine tree, promises a treatment, as Ari Daniel reports.

5 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf when BP's Macondo well exploded in 2010, and some remained suspended in the water. New research in Hamburg Germany is examining why the oil behaved like this, as David Levin reports.

Renewable energy technologies like wind and solar are on the rise around the world, but they depend on a group of metals called rare earths, that are in short supply. Science writer Nicola Jones talks with host Steve Curwood about the scarcity of rare earths and how it could inhibit green energy expansion.

There are not enough pipelines to carry all the oil being produced in North Dakota to refineries. Much of the oil now travels by train, but carriers aren't required to warn communities that oil trains are traveling through. As Ashley Ahearn reports, recent accidents have lawmakers in the northwest planning to introduce regulations.