Feel the wind, see the stars on this week’s Cowboy Tracks

Thu, 10/12/2023 - 8:59am | kdrtradio

The autumn sky, with its earlier sunsets and stars made visible by the clear fall winds, feels like a good background for this week’s Cowboy Tracks.

Host Nancy Flagg starts with the title track from Throw a Saddle on a Star, the latest and 42nd album from Riders in the Sky (they have some NorCal shows in November, by the way — the closest to Davis is in Grass Valley Nov. 9). She follows with Barbara Nelson’s version of “They Call the Wind Mariah” from her 2023 release, Pick of the Litter.

“Listen for the flutes,” Nancy says, “making wind kinds of sound during the song.”

And then head deeper onto the trail for songs including the Timberline Cowboys’ “Where the Wildflowers Bloom,” “Annie Oakley” by the Biscuit Burners, and “Goodnight to the Trail” by Eli Barsi. The territory is wonderful, and Nancy will have you back home when the hour is up.

David Byrne's music shapes this week’s Sometimes Folk

Wed, 10/11/2023 - 12:55pm | kdrtradio

The latest Sometimes Folk “is informed by David Byrne’s music,” says program host Bill Wagman on today’s show. “The other night I went to see the Talking Heads’ concert movie Stop Making Sense,” he says, “and while I was watching I was thinking of David Byrne’s album Rei Momo, in which he investigates a lot of Latin music.” (The photo, from David Byrne’s website, was taken during his 1989 tour for the album.)

So Bill starts today's show with "Independence Day," a song from Rei Momo featuring Kirsty MacColl, then follows with her song “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis” and the Tom Tom Club’s version of “Under the Boardwalk.”

“I think that’s my favorite version of ‘Under the Boardwalk,’ he adds.

Grace Garden is a great Davis story

Fri, 10/06/2023 - 10:36am | kdrtradio

Grace Garden (pictured), created by neighbors to help neighbors, is a formerly weedy plot at the back of the Davis United Methodist Church at 1620 Anderson Road that has blossomed over the years into a prodigious produce patch. It has yielded thousands of pounds of vegetables and fruit, all grown by volunteers and given away. 

Program host Lois Richter tells this great Davis story on her latest That's Life.

Latest Timeout Radio takes us to Unitrans, and then to India

Thu, 10/05/2023 - 1:48pm | kdrtradio

The Unitrans vintage red London double-decker bus is a familiar sight in Davis. Riding on the top deck as a little kid was a big thrill! On the latest Timeout Radio with Rohan Baxi, learn how public transit started in 1826 as an omnibus that shuttled people to a public bath. Also on today's show, Unitrans General Manager Jeff Flynn tells us that the student-run service logs over 1 million miles a year and carries over 22,000 passengers each day.

Then travel to India — home to 92,000 animal species, the wettest inhabited place on Earth, a Guinness world record-holding bus fleet, a 42,000-mile rail network, and cricket matches that draw 100 million viewers each.

Davisville, Oct. 2, 2023: Meat is changing, and UC Davis is helping it to happen

Mon, 10/02/2023 - 5:30pm | Bill Buchanan

At a very simple level, we’re talking today about hamburgers, although the subject goes much deeper than that. Today’s show concerns food, taste, the environment, commerce, questions of how to feed the world — and it’s directly a Davis story, because the University of California at Davis is a national leader in this area of research, and their work is attracting food tech startups to the region. The subject is cultivated meat, or meat substitutes that barely exist beyond the lab for now, but should come eventually to a store or menu near you.

Our guests today are Denneal Jamison-McClung and Kara E. Leong. Kara is the executive director of the UC Davis Cultivated Meat Consortium; Denneal is the director of the UC Davis Biotechnology Program, and co-founded the consortium. They can help us understand what’s happening and why it matters.

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