Wgtd's The Morning Show With Greg Berg

Kailyn Palormares is naturalist and education manager for Hawthorn Hollow. With her is a colleague of hers, Emily Leonard, who is the resident ecologist there. We explore together the important topics of invasive species and habitat restoration.

Sarah Ashworth, director of Wisconsin Public Radio, talks about the changes in WPR's operation that were announced yesterday - and the impact of those changes on the listeners of WGTD. WPR's two networks are being renamed and realigned. WGTD will become part of WPR News. The changes go into effect on May 20th. (More information about the changes is available at wpr.org/new.)

Award-winning artist and illustrator Ed Steckley talks about his wide-ranging career, which has includes work for Mad Magazine and Saturday Night Live. He recently won a Reuben Award for Best in Book Illustration. We also talk about some of the ways in which the industry has dramatically changed in recent years thank to new technologies.

From 2017 - Nancy Davies, a woman active in community theater in Southeastern Wisconsin, talks about her lifelong love of the circus and the experience of working with Ringling Brothers. The interview was recorded shortly after Ringling Bros. announced the shuttering of its "Greatest Show on Earth." (It remained dormant until last year when it was revived in a different format that does not utilize live animals.)

From 2010- Steven Solomon, author of "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization." In his fascinating book, Solomon charts how the need to secure plentiful fresh water has helped shape the history of human civilization.

Best-selling author Keith O'Brien talks about his new book "Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose and the Last Glory Days of Baseball." The book chronicles Pete's blue collar roots, his improbable rise to greatness as one of baseball's greatest hitters, and the disastrous disintegration of his career due to his gambling addiction. (Pete Rose was banished from major league baseball for the rest of his life.) In part two, we go into the archives for a 2010 interview with Tim Wendel, author of "High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of all time."

We learn all about the non-profit group Adventures in Lifelong Learning (A.L.L.) from president Shelly Underhill, past-president Karen Kempinen, and day trips co-chair Carole Kotese.

Just in time for the total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8th - we hear from David Baron, author of "American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World." The book focuses on the 1878 total solar eclipse that was visible in much of the United States. A trio of brilliant Americans (including a young Thomas Alva Edison and an extraordinary young astronomer named Maria Mitchell) raced to the Rocky Mountains to view the eclipse, gather information, and help elevate America's status in the eyes of the world's scientific community. Baron is himself an 'umbraphile,' which means he is an eclipse chaser; he traveled around the world to observe multiple total solar eclipses. The book was initially released in 2017; it has been re-released with a new afterword.

From the archives: Marta McDowell, author of "Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places that Inspired the Iconic Poet." [Today's Morning Show broadcast was with gardening expert Nina Koziol. That interview was shared in the podcast back on March 28th.]

From 2018 - Richard Ratay, author of "Don't make me pull over: an informal history of the family road trip."

25 years ago this year, Bert and John Jacobs ... two college-age brothers .... designed and sold their first t-shirts. They eventually founded the company Life is Good. In honor of that anniversary, here is an interview where they talk about the Life is Good book that they co-wrote.

From 2005- Stanley Newman's Opus 100 Crosswords.

From 2020- Matt Richtel, author of "An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System- A Tale in Four Lives."

Sneak Preview: One of the most prominent gardening experts/writers/teachers in the Chicago-area, Nina Koziol, is coming to Kenosha on Thursday evening, April 4th- in a program sponsored by the Four Seasons Garden Club. The interview is being broadcast on April 2nd, but we're sharing the interview today in podcast format since the event is coming up so soon.

Dr. Art Cyr

This is a newly-recorded interview with Debbie Irving, looking back over the last ten years since the publication of her memoir "Waking Up White: and finding myself in the Story of Race."

From 2014 - Debbie Irving, author of "Waking up White: and finding myself in the Story of Race." The book is a remarkably honest memoir about Irving's realization (in adulthood) that she had harbored all kinds of racist attitudes that she never realized were there. The book also explores the reality of systemic racism. (Tomorrow, we'll have a newly-recorded interview with Irving in which she looks back over the past ten years.)

We preview the next American Experience documentary film - "The Cancer Detectives" - with co-directors/co-producers Amanda Pollak and Gene Tempest. The film talks about the most important breakthrough in early cancer detection among woman: the pap smear, named for Dr. George Papanicolaou. The film charts the circuitous route by which this became a well-established practice- and the various barriers and attitudes that had to be surmounted. The film also tells about the enormously important contributions made to the cause by Dr. Papanicolaou's wife Andromachi and others.

From 2017 - S.C. Gwynne, author of "The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Revinvention of Football." The book is primarily the story of two football geniuses, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, who helped revolutionize the game of football with a radical approach to the passing game that had never been seen before.

From 2020- Tom Clavin discusses his book "Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter."