You know the story of Icarus – the unfortunate fellow who flew too close to the Sun on wings made of wax? Well NASA is planning to send a much more robust probe into the very atmosphere of the Sun. How do you protect a  spacecraft from such an extreme environment? And what do we hope to learn about our star? Find out on this episode when we are joined by Dr. Nicky Fox from The Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. She is the Project Scientist for The Parker Solar Probe, scheduled for launch in 2018.

In our last Cultivating Place "Dispatches from the Home Garden," we heard from a young gardener experiencing her first garden dislocation/relocation in Sacramento, California. This week – in many ways in honor of Father’s Day — we hear from another home gardener, this time in New Jersey and this time on the same land her grandparents cultivated and which she and her husband, with the steady help and mentorship of her father, became the fourth generation of her family to steward this land after her uncle died and the property went on the market. 

Today we head up the road to the North Coast college town of Arcata and its annual celebration of both Kumamoto and Pacific oysters, mainstays of Humboldt Bay’s immensely successful aquaculture industry. It’s good to talk up top-notch local products. And it’s great to be able to boast about local water quality, which growing robust oysters implies. Oysters thrive—and can safely be farmed for human consumption—only in clean, healthy, protected waters. In California that means the northern reaches of Humboldt Bay, also known as Arcata Bay. Much of the south bay is unavailable for aquaculture, protected as the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Preserve, home to hundreds of local and migrant bird species and other wildlife—a destination also well worth your time.

Where in the North State can you see a Grammy Award-winning musician perform to a room of just 40 people? Cottonwood, California, apparently. Last week, NSPR sent Nolan Ford to learn about this small concert venue and its dedicated music community.

Today’s guests traveled all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee to perform their indie/roots-rock sound for fans in the North State. Led by the songwriting of Cruz Contreras, The Black Lillies initially formed in 2009. What started as a group of friends getting together on weeknights, drinking whiskey and comparing songs, has grown into an acclaimed Americana act with two Independent Music Awards and more appearances at the Grand Ole Opry than any other independent band.