Sixty feet beneath the water off the Gulf coast of Alabama lies a forest of cypress stumps more than 50,000 years old. Ben Raines tells host Steve Curwood what it’s like to scuba dive among the remains of ancient trees.

In this week’s trip beyond the headlines Peter Dykstra tells host Steve Curwood learn about tourism in Chernobyl and commemorates the publication of a famous Newsweek article on global cooling that has inspired climate change deniers for decades.

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster still washes up on beaches after storms, but BP recently announced that their active cleanup phase has come to an end. But Audubon bird specialist Melanie Driscoll tells host Steve Curwood that oil keeps coming ashore and we’re only beginning to understand the impact of the spill on the gulf ecosystem.

President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren joins host Steve Curwood to discuss the National Climate Assessment draft report and what to expect from the United States at the international climate talks in Paris next year.

Western climbers rely on local Sherpa mountaineering experts to summit Mount Everest, but a recent deadly avalanche swept away 16 of them and the accident threatens the lucrative climbing season. Grayson Schaffer, senior editor at Outside Magazine, tells host Steve Curwood that many are questioning the ethics of subjecting Sherpas to such peril simply for the thrill of reaching the top of the world’s highest mountain.

We hear from a few of our listener poets in response to a shout out for environmental haiku in honor of earth day.

The EPA has banned certain flea and tick collars for cats and dogs because young children touching their pets can get exposures to unhealthful amounts of pesticides. The move came in response to lawsuits filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC Senior Scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman tells host Steve Curwood there are safer alternatives.

To commemorate ten years since the Chernobyl nuclear plant core reactor meltdown and radiation release in the Ukraine, Living on Earth sent producer Bruce Gellerman to the site of the world's most serious nuclear plant disaster. Narrator Gellerman describes the terrain and the fears he enounters as he visits the entombed sarcophagus of the reactor, as well as with school children, hospitals, people who've returned to live out their days in their highly radioactive homes, with alternative energy advocates, and with a Chernobyl disaster museum curator — whose displays of remembering are rarely visited these days.

Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan were the sites of the world's two worst nuclear disasters. Years later some residents choose to stay in the affected communities instead of moving. Michael Forster Rothbart tells host Steve Curwood about his new photo documentary showing the lives of ordinary citizens that remained behind.

The reports of the UN's Panel on Climate Change are critically important but notoriously dense. IPCC scientist Gregory Johnson tells host Steve Curwood about his personal project to write haiku poems to make the reports more understandable.

Ten years ago, Hurricane Ivan uncovered an ancient Cypress forest on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Ben Raines of the Weeks Bay Foundation in Alabama tells host Steve Curwood that scientists and conservationists are studying the forest to learn about sea level rise and fighting to protect the wood from salvage companies.