In this week’s trip beyond the headlines, Peter Dykstra tells host Steve Curwood three stories that sound like April Fool's jokes, but are 100% true.

Out in the garden, the cardinal is loudly telling the world who owns this territory. But another distinctive songster is also singing fit to beat the band and as Michael Stein reports in today's Birdnote®, the mockingbird can sound just like the cardinal.

New Orleans Times Picayune writer Jennifer Larino talks with host Steve Curwood about the recent EPA decision to allow BP to bid for federal contracts and expand drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is meeting in Japan to release its latest report, on the impact of climate change on society and the planet. Penn State professor Michael Mann and host Steve Curwood discuss how the report anticipates that increased conflict and declining supplies of food and water lie ahead.

Activist investors in major fossil fuel companies have been filing shareholder resolutions that ask the corporations to disclose their plans to address global warming, and the potential carbon regulation that could be coming. Danielle Fugere, President of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, tells host Steve Curwood that Exxon Mobil has agreed.

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, scientists are still studying the effect of dispersants on bacteria that help eat up hydrocarbons. David Levin reports.

The 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill was marked by a tanker spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an oil pipeline rupture in an Ohio nature reserve and a BP refinery leaking oil into Lake Michigan. Lorne Stockman of Oil Change International tells host Steve Curwood that with the oil production boom in North America has come with an increase in spills.

The ocean is a noisy place and human activity is making it worse. Jennifer Jerrett reports that biologists studying the role sound plays in the sea are making surprising discoveries among some squishy marine life forms.