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Hi, everyone. It's Doug Fabrizio. And as you probably know by now, KUER has been doing a mini fun drive here at the end of the year. So today in Radio West, we're going to carve out a little time to make our case.

And as for the show itself, we're going to play parts of two of our favorite shows this year.

The first was a conversation with the husband and wife research team Kelly and Zach Wienersmith

about what it would really be like to live on Mars.

Here's a spoiler. It will suck.

An average temperature of minus 76 degrees, planet-wide toxic dust storms.

The weiner-smiths say the technology looks solid.

It's the squishy details of human existence that don't really pencil out yet.

And then some of our conversation with the writer Catherine Rundle

about her really graceful collection of essays on endangered animals.

So stay with us.

We'll be back after this. There's a compelling argument for trying to settle space, that it could be a refuge if climate change cripples the earth, that it could end scarcity and unify us, make us wise.

But in their new book, the husband and wife research team, Kelly and Zach Wiener-Smith,

say we haven't really worked through the details that we're still in that fantasy myth phase

of all of this.

Like, we don't know for sure if people could make babies in space.

And even if they did, we don't know if they could develop properly in a high radiation,

high carbon dioxide atmosphere without Earth normal gravity.

But set aside the biology questions for a second.

The Wienersmiths say we haven't even worked out the economics or the sociology or the legal

part of space settlement. They say the legal structures that govern space haven't been updated

...