I Have My Say on the BBC

This past Wednesday, one of the other scientists here at Palmer, Kristen Gorman, received an email request to participate in the BBC’s World Have Your Say. However, because she was already scheduled to participate as an Antarctic expert on NPR’s News Blog The Two Way (similar to this) she passed on my contact info to the producers. The producers contacted me a couple of hours later and within the hour, I was on the radio telling the host and a worldwide audience about the changes we have seen here at Palmer Station as a result of the warming climate.

We’ve had the glacier adjacent to our buildings recede over the past twenty years by about five hundred feet or so…

I have never talked on the radio before, let alone from the Antarctic to a studio in London. The weirdest thing about the call was the horrible echo in the phone. It is because of the echo that I sound so drunk during the the brief Q&A with the host. I also expected the host to interrupt me and ask some sort of follow up questions. But, she apparently wanted to me to have my say and allowed me to ramble – which is why I periodically pause to see if she has anything to say in response to my blabbering. Take a listen (I am introduced at about 19:00 in the broadcast I chopped out the rest of the podcast, it should only be my segement… thanks to Susan for finding the broken link) – just remember it’s my first time and I have a long ways to go before I feel comfortable on the radio.