On a wintry evening in 1917, university professor Earle Terry listened with guests as the popular music of the day filtered from a physics laboratory in Science Hall into a receiving set in his living room. Little did they know that one hundred years of public service broadcasting had just begun. Terry’s radio experiment blossomed into a pioneering endeavor to carry out the "Wisconsin Idea," a promise to make the university’s knowledge accessible to all Wisconsinites, in their homes, statewide, a Progressive-era principle that still guides public broadcasting in Wisconsin and throughout the nation. In 1947, television was added to this public service model with Channel 21 in Madison, produced, like radio, from the University of Wisconsin campus. By 1967, when the Public Broadcasting Act created the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), the Wisconsin stations had been broadcasting for fifty years. A history one hundred years in the making, Wisconsin on the Air introduces readers to the personalities and philosophies, the funding challenges and legislation, the original Wisconsin programming and pioneering technology that gave us public radio and television. Author Jack Mitchell, who developed All Things Considered for NPR before becoming the head of Wisconsin Public Radio, deftly maps public broadcasting’s hundred-year journey by charting Wisconsin’s transition from the early days of radio and television to educational broadcasting to the news, information, and music of Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television.

The land that is now called Wisconsin has a place in weather history. Its climate has ranged from tropical to polar over hundreds of millions of years--and even today, that's the seeming difference between July and January here. And Wisconsinites have played key roles in advancing the science of meterology and climatology: Increase Lapham helped found the National Weather Service in the nineteenth century; Eric Miller was the first to broadcast regular weather reports on the radio in the 1920s; Verner Suomi pioneered tracking weather by satellite; and Reid Bryson has been a leader in studying global climate change. Wisconsin's Weather and Climate is written for weather buffs, teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and those working in fields, lakes, and forests for whom the weather is a daily force to be reckoned with. It examines the physical features of Wisconsin that shape the state's climate--topography, mid-latitude location, and proximity to Lakes Superior and Michigan--and meteorological phenomena that affect climate, such as atmospheric circulation and air mass frequency. Authors Joseph M. Moran and Edward J. Hopkins trace the evolution of methods of weather observation and forecasting that are so important for agriculture and Great Lakes commerce, and they explain how Wisconsin scientists use weather balloons, radar, and satellites to improve forecasting and track climate changes. They take readers through the seasonal changes in weather in Wisconsin and give an overview of what past climate changes might tell us about the future. Appendices provide climatic data for Wisconsin, including extremes of temperature, snowfall, and precipitation at selected stations in the state. The authors also list sources for further information. Vignettes throughout the book provide fascinating weather lore: o Why there are cacti in Wisconsin o The famous Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys "Ice Bowl" game of 1967 o The Army Signal Corps' ban on the word tornado o Advances in snow-making technology o The decline of the Great Lakes ice industry

An extraordinary, strange, and startlingly beautiful exploration of smell, the least understood of our five senses The nose on your face is the Buckingham Palace Guard of your body, the maitre d' of all taste, as well as the seducer of your imagination, and memory—and Jude Stewart has charmed them all into a wicked, poetic and illuminating tour of their mysterious domains. —Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs Overlapping with taste yet larger in scope, smell is the sense that comes closest to pure perception. Smell can collapse space and time, unlocking memories and transporting us to worlds both new and familiar. Yet as clearly as each of us can recognize different smells--the bright tang of citrus, freshly sharpened pencils, parched earth after rain--few of us understand how and why we smell. In Revelations in Air, Jude Stewart takes us on a fascinating journey into the weird and wonderful world of smell. Beginning with lessons on the incredible biology and history of how our noses work, Stewart teaches us how to use our noses like experts. Once we're properly equipped and ready to sniff, Stewart explores a range of smells—from lavender, cut grass and hot chocolate to cannabis and old books—using smell as a lens into art, history, science, and more. With an engaging colorful design and exercises for readers to refine their own skills, Revelations in Air goes beyond science or history or chemistry--it's a doorway into the surprising, pleasurable, and unfamiliar landscape of smell.

Consists chiefly of excerpts from the Badger State banner, Black River Falls, Wis., for the years 1885-1900 and of photos. taken by Charles Van Schaick from 1890 to 1910.

National bestseller "Masterful." —Jane Mayer, best-selling author of Dark Money The Fall of Wisconsin is a deeply reported, searing account of how the state’s progressive tradition was undone and Wisconsin itself turned into a laboratory for national conservatives bent on remaking the country. Neither sentimental nor despairing, the book tells the story of the systematic dismantling of laws protecting the environment, labor unions, voting rights, and public education through the remarkable battles of ordinary citizens fighting to reclaim Wisconsin’s progressive legacy.