KVNF's Music Team puts together a biweekly list of music we keep coming back to. This is music we can't get enough of right now.

Conservation biologist Pepper Trail recounts a question he was asked recently: "What keeps you going?" His answer? Wildflowers.He’s politically active, he says, because as a scientist, he’s appalled at this administration's defunding and mismanagement of our nation’s scientific enterprise, from the National Science Foundation to the Centers for Disease Control. But along with resistance, Trail writes, there must be recharge—a hike, a walk, or just sitting in the backyard. And noticing wildflowers.

Grand Canyon educator Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff is irritated by social media influencers who assure anyone reading that an arduous hike is no big deal—anyone can do it.“One of the 'in' hikes these days is the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim” she writes. “This involves hiking 21 to 24 miles with almost 10,000 feet of elevation change. This feat requires serious levels of fitness and preparation. Yet on social media, posters encourage complete strangers to go for it, even daring people to try it twice.”The result of this bragging? Alarming rescue statistics.

“The book is about the opposite of the eureka moment,” says science writer Roberta Kwok about her new book, LOST IN CURIOSITY: Field Notes From Scientists’ Adventures into the Unknown. Join us in a conversation about the difficulties and gifts of showing up day after day. We talk about patience, wrestling with process, and the long slow path to epiphany–in science and in creative endeavors. We talk, too, about how to choose the right people to interview for a book based on research, how the body may or may not be a part of creative process, the possibility that walking is not the most important tool in a writer’s toolbox, and the thrill of collaboration.Roberta Kwok is a science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NewYorker.com, Nature, New Scientist, Audubon, and otherpublications. She has received a fellowship from the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union. Before becoming a journalist, Kwok worked in a genetics lab at Stanford University. She lives in the Seattle area and is originally from Canada.

KVNF's newest additions to the music library updated July 20, 2026

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KVNF’s Top Spin is a spotlight on the most-played album in the past 6 weeks by our DJs.

Your weekly regional science update.