Trending Topics
Mushroom Madness 
Fungi can cure or kill, nourish life, and also decompose it back into soil. Fossil evidence for fungi is limited, but the ability to analyze molecular data has led to revelations about the evolution of this extraordinary family of...
Fool’s Gold: The Myth of Tiburcio Vasquez 
“And still of a winter’s night, they say,  when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon  tossed upon cloudy seas,    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight  over the purple moor,    A...
Billions in Flight: Migratory Birds 
Autumn doesn’t officially begin until the equinox on September 22, but all across North America birds are already on the wing—billions of them. Migration times and destinations vary based on the species and variables like weather and food sources—some...
One-Room Schoolhouse 
Back to school. A hundred years ago in Topanga, it would have been on foot—and often barefoot—to the little, red, one-room schoolhouse by the creek in the bend of the dirt road.  Public education in California was still relatively...
Books & Such

The Morgan 

Among his many endeavors, financier John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) populated his private library in New York—now the Morgan Library and Museum —with some of the earliest books crafted by the moveable type printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in...
Books & Such

A Podcast Primer 

Liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow has stepped back from her long-running eponymous primetime show (TRMS), but just inked a $30 million per year contract with NBCUniversal, MSNBC’s parent company. While citing a number of health problems related to potential...
Books & Such

Bobby 

There is a great deal of chatter out there about our divided dysfunctional political system which now includes a growing incidence of references to impending civil war. While the folks who study these things see it as unlikely that...
Books & Such

School Books 

During 2022, Florida Governor Ron Desantis has signed into law measures to evaluate which books should and should not be available within individual public school classrooms and libraries. Some of the books facing a great deal of scrutiny clearly...