Your weekly Regional Science Update.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, incumbent candidate for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District (right), shakes hands with challenger Dwayne Romero after their debate at a Club 20 at the Asteria Theater in Grand Junction. Sept. 19, 2026.

Colorado GOP gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx used footage of a Yazidi teenager who survived captivity and trafficking by ISIS militants without permission from PBS NewsHour, who produced the interview.

Zinnia Bender of Paonia recorded her first podcast on her phone, in a closet at home, and NPR gave it an honorable mention in its Student Podcast Challenge. Listen to Hope and Resistance here, and hear the North Fork High School sophomore read one of her short stories.

Artists, farmers, shop owners and other North Fork Valley entrepreneurs can join a new six-month program from the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition. The Business Growth Collective pairs monthly workshops with a local mentor and weekly co-working time, starting Oct. 20.

“The problem with heroes, of course, is that no one is perfect, says Heather Hansman, author of Fierce Country. “Mine aren’t. They bumbled and lied and burned bridges and screwed up. They were often egotistical and angry, driven by an obsessive kind of love.” In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with Heather about how her new book explores new kinds of heroes–specifically women in the outdoors–and why these voices have not been heard much in the past and why it’s important that we do hear about more women. In addition we talk about how hard it is to be honest about our heroes–to present them with all their flaws and struggles as well as their triumphs. We talk about researching real people after they’ve died, the importance of walking away from a project, and obsession.Heather Hansman is an award-winning freelance writer and the celebrated author of Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America’s Love for the Wild, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow and Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Outside, among others. She lives in Durango, Colorado, right by the river.

Picture a clear stream where spawning salmon undulate over clean gravels, pressing upstream through waters the iconic fish once vanished from entirely. That’s Lookingglass Creek, in the Umatilla National Forest.In the Wallowa National Forest, Huckleberry Mountain sustains rare species like the Wallowa rosy finch, and on the Malheur National Forest, there’s an Alaska yellow cedar forest hundreds of miles inland from its core range.These three national forests in eastern Oregon share something in common: They are intact roadless forests now on the verge of losing the protections that have kept them free from industrial logging and new roads. These lands are also common ground shared by Tribal members, hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers and anyone who values a quiet trail into the backcountry.

Festival Director Lillia McClure discusses how the celebration became a Paonia tradition.

Last week, we began answering the question that I often get when teaching Mindfulness which is "Does this get easier?" We started by examining how it can make life easier, and said "Yes, it absolutely does". And today we're going to talk about how the practice of Mindfulness itself, gets easier.