PODCAST · science
Deep Convection
by Deep Convection
A Podcast About Climate, Science, and Life. https://deep-convection.org/
Episodes
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The Sumner Files, Episode Eleven: Milton Resnick, Part 1
This episode was not recorded by Adam. It was recorded by Sumner, on February 20, 1980, when he, along with Rudolph Grey and Duncan Lindsay, sat down for a conversation with abstract expressionist painter Milton Resnick. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Resnick taught at the New York Studio...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Ten: Weasel Walter
In this episode, Adam talks to musician, archivist, and historian Weasel Walter. As a musician, Weasel’s work spans (quoting from his web page) “extreme rock forms and free jazz”. He was a key figure in what has been called the second no wave movement, in Chicago in the 1990s. His bands and...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Nine: Arto Lindsay, Again
In this episode, Adam talks to Arto Lindsay for a second time. The first time (The Sumner Files, Episode Five) was remote, when Arto was in Brazil and Adam in NYC. This time, a few months later, Arto was in NYC and came by to look at Sumner’s archive and talk about it. Arto himself appears in the...
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The Trump-Induced Crisis in U.S. Science
Adam talks about the crisis in U.S. science and higher education that is unfolding now, due to the multi-pronged assault on both by the second Trump administration. This episode was recorded on June 19, 2025. It’s a special one-off episode of Deep Convection, not part of The Sumner Files. Media...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Eight: Connie Burg
Photo by Alon Koppel. Connie Burg, aka China Burg, Don Burg, and Lucy Hamilton, had never played the guitar before she joined Mars. But that didn’t stop her from developing a uniquely original style that became a defining feature of Mars’ sound, and that in turn influenced all the No Wave music...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Seven: Susan Lehman
In Adam’s memory, Sumner’s life is divided into the pre-Sue and Sue eras, with Sue being Susan Lehman, aka Sue Crane, aka Aunt Sue to Adam and his sister. Sue came originally from California, moved around in her youth, wound up in New York by the mid-1980s, and met Sumner sometime around 1990,...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Six: Cynthia Sobel
Cynthia Sobel, born Cynthia Schoenwetter, is Adam’s mother, and Sumner’s sister. So she knew Sumner from the very beginning of his life to the end, and there’s no one else alive who remembers the things about him that she does. She talks at length about their parents, Charles and Sylvia...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Five: Arto Lindsay
As the front man in DNA, Arto Lindsay was one of the core No Wave figures from the start, and he and Sumner were good friends from the mid-1970s, when Arto arrived in NYC (along with Mark Cunningham and Connie Burg, from Eckerd College in Florida), into the 1980s and beyond. Arto played on…
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The Sumner Files, Episode Four: David Reed
In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with painter David Reed. David’s paintings have been shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe from the 1970s to the present, in venues including the Guggenheim, Gagosian New York and Basel, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Häusler Contemporary,...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Three: Lydia Lunch
In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with Lydia Lunch! Lydia is a singer, poet, writer, actress, and self-empowerment speaker. She got her start as the leader, singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, one of the four bands to appear on the compilation No New York, and moved...
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The Sumner Files, Episode Two: Julia Gorton
In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with photographer and graphic designer Julia Gorton about her experiences in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s, and they share memories of Sumner. With Rick Brown, Julia produced the fanzine Beat It in the late 1970s, and that got her into shows free…
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The Sumner Files, Episode One: Mark Cunningham
In this first proper episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with Mark Cunningham, the bass player in Mars and one of two surviving members of the band. Mark also played brass instruments on John Gavanti, and that record was released on Mark’s own label, Hyrax. Mark has had a long career since...
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The Sumner Files: Episode Zero
This episode launches a new series about the artist and musician Sumner Crane (1946-2003). Scientist Adam Sobel — Sumner’s nephew, and the host of this series as well as the podcast Deep Convection, out of which it grows — introduces the whole thing, explaining who Sumner was, why he (Adam) is...
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Episode 10: Frank Marks
Shortly after Hurricane Otis hit Mexico in late October 2023 after a very rapid (and poorly forecast) intensification, Adam sat down with Frank Marks from NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (HRD) for the last episode of this season. Frank is one of the central figures in the world of hurricane...
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Episode 9: Bjorn Stevens
Bjorn Stevens’ main scientific interest is in the role of clouds in the climate system. He established himself early in his career as a leader in the study of marine stratus-topped boundary layers. That eventually led him to a broader climate research agenda. And since about 2008, Bjorn heads one...
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Ask Adam Anything
Adam answers listener questions!
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About Deep Convection
In this episode we take a break from guest interviews. Instead, Adam explains in detail how the podcast got started, how and why we do it, and who is involved. Just like when you go to any web site or anything and there’s an “About” link, this is that, except via 40 minutes of talking.
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Episode 8: Arlene Fiore
Arlene Fiore got interested in air pollution first as a kid in the Boston suburbs, partly because she suffered from bad asthma, and that taught her that the air can be harmful. Even though her interest in the Earth’s atmosphere was there from an early age on, the path that led her to her current...
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Episode 7: Aglaé Jézéquel
Aglaé Jézéquel’s journey began surrounded by books, in a home where knowledge was cherished. Aglaé shared her parents’ passion from an early age on, but while her family was more into literature, she fell in love with science. Her academic path has led her to her current position as a scientist…
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Episode 6: Sarah Kapnick
Sarah Kapnick’s journey in the climate world has not been a conventional one. Starting as a “math nerd in the Midwest”, her path meandered through investment banking, back to academia for a PhD., and now to one of the most influential positions in US climate science and policy – Chief Scientist…
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Episode 5: Tapio Schneider
Growing up outside Braunschweig, just on the west side of the border with East Germany during the Cold War, Tapio Schneider spent a lot of his teenage years doing sports, and skiing (often just meters away from the East German border patrol) became a large part of his life. He also had a keen...
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Episode 4: Abhisheik Dhawan
In keeping with this season’s excursions away from Deep Convection’s traditional focus on climate science, this episode features Abhisheik Dhawan. While he’s not a climate scientist, his innovative ideas intersect with climate change, development, and finance in a unique way. He is currently a...
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Episode 3: Bob Kopp
Bob Kopp’s academic roots lie in the realms of paleoclimate, paleobiology, and ecology. But, inspired by a legacy of public service passed down from his parents, he soon gravitated towards areas where science meets actionable change. Over the course of his career, he has learned to master the…
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Episode 2: Hannah Reyes Morales
In the second episode of this season, we’re branching out from the traditional, science-centered sphere of Deep Convection and into a world captured through the lens of Manila-born photojournalist, Hannah Reyes Morales. Hannah and Adam crossed paths a dinner at the Columbia Institute for Ideas…
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Episode 1: Rebecca Morss
Rebecca Morss’ scientific credentials are impeccable – a PhD in atmospheric science from MIT, more than 20 years of experience at the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and currently the Senior Scientist and Deputy…
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Welcome to the beginning: Season 4 of Deep Convection is launching soon!
It’s been almost a year since our last episode, and we’re thrilled to announce the arrival of Season 4! In our season opener, Adam and Melanie reconvene, checking in on each other’s lives and exploring some detours—much like in previous seasons, this is the warm-up for 10 more episodes of Deep...
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Episode 10: Gabe Vecchi
Gabe Vecchi’s research spans a remarkably wide range of topics: he started as an oceanographer, and studied intraseasonal variability in the Pacific, before moving to the Indian Ocean, and then, when he moved to Princeton in the 2000s, to a range of atmospheric problems, including a critically...
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Episode 9: In-Sik Kang
In-Sik Kang’s career in climate science started about half a century ago, and it has been remarkable in many ways—scientifically, but also in that In-Sik has spent most of his life in a country that started from very little, in climate science and every other way, having been devastated by war...
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Episode 8: Andy Dessler
Born to a space physicist father, Andy Dessler was steeped in science and academia from birth. Unlike other children of successful academics, he never perceived his father’s profession and the implicit expectations put on him as a burden, but soon decided that science was what he wanted to do as...
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Episode 7: Sandra Yuter
Growing up on Long Island, Sandra Yuter loved to go on field trips—she learned about how glaciers had shaped the environment around her and was fascinated by how the resulting landscape still told the history of its geological past. The combination of scientific exploration and imagination that...
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Episode 6: Chris Bretherton
Chris Bretherton gravitated towards math and science as soon as he could read, which was at the tender age of three. His interest was probably the result of both genetics and family upbringing: Chris’ father is Francis Bretherton, a brilliant scientist who made important theoretical advances in...
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Episode 5: Jane Baldwin
Jane Baldwin has just completed her first year as an Assistant Professor at the University of California Irvine. Her combination of interests is non-traditional, at least for someone coming up through the places and programs that she has. For one thing, Jane does straight up climate dynamics. One...
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Episode 4: Kate Marvel
On her website, Kate Marvel describes her research like this: “I study climate forcings (things that affect the planet’s energy balance) and feedbacks (processes that speed up or slow down warming). Our work here has shown that observational estimates of the Earth’s sensitivity to greenhouse…
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Episode 3: Kelly Hereid
Kelly Hereid had never heard of reinsurance companies when she got recruited by one while attending a scientific conference. A quick Google search brought some clarification, and in the years since, Kelly has become an expert in the field of catastrophe modeling. This type of modeling was…
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Episode 2: Ousmane Ndiaye
Ousmane Ndiaye’s path to becoming the director of Senegal’s national meteorological service was an unlikely one: Born in Senegal as the youngest of 10 children, he lost his parents at a young age and was raised mostly by one of his sisters. That sister was deeply committed to her little brother’s...
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Episode 1: Isaac Held
To climate scientists, Isaac Held probably needs no introduction. He is one of the deepest and clearest thinkers in the field, and his insightful research on the dynamics of the Earth’s climate has earned him immense amounts of respect and appreciation. Isaac spent most of his long and...
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Deep Convection Is Back With Season 3!
It’s been a while since we released the last episode of Deep Convection, but Season 3 is finally here! We are starting the season with a “prologue episode” featuring Adam and Melanie. Adam asks Melanie how her life has changed since their Deep Convection conversation that was recorded 2.5 years…
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Episode 10: Shang-Ping Xie
When Shang-Ping Xie entered middle school in his home town about 300 miles southwest of Shanghai, China had just come out of the Cultural Revolution, the tumultuous political movement launched by Mao Zedong that had dominated Chinese life for a decade in the 1960s and 70s. That was lucky timing…
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Episode 9: George Philander
Growing up in South Africa under apartheid, George Philander had to follow a lot of laws that didn’t make sense to him, e.g., that he was not allowed to stand in the line for white people at the post office. When he discovered mathematics and science, he was happy to have found a world that was...
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Episode 8: Suzana Camargo
Suzana Camargo is one of the world’s leading experts on tropical cyclones — a type of storm that includes hurricanes — and their relationship to the climate. When she first started to do research on hurricanes, she thought it was only going to be a one-year project. But life is unpredictable, and...
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Episode 7: Nadir Jeevanjee
Nadir Jeevanjee is one of those rare people who have both depth and breadth in their skills. He is probably the only person who ever wrote a textbook about tensors and group theory while taking a few years off from grad school to tour with a rock band, and that fact alone should make you want to...
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Episode 6: Fran Moore
Fran Moore, an assistant professor in Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, works at the intersection of environmental economics and climate science. She studies the impacts of climate change from an economic and societal perspective — how to quantify these impacts, and also how people…
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Episode 5: Marshall Shepherd
Before Marshall Shepherd was bitten by the weather bug, he wanted to be an entomologist. But as luck would have it (at least for the fields of weather and climate science), Marshall changed his sixth-grade science project from honey bees to weather prediction after he had found out that he was...
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Episode 4: Deanna Hence
On August 29, 2005, Deanna Hence was aboard a research airplane flying through Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane heading for New Orleans. Thinking back to that day, Deanna remembers feeling both elated and deeply worried at the same time — the scientist in her was excited about the...
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Episode 3: Brian Mapes
Brian Mapes fell in love with cumulus clouds when he was looking out an airplane window during his first flight, on the way to Iowa to toil in the fields with his uncle. He was struck by their beauty, but also wanted to understand them scientifically. In particular, Brian got interested in how...
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Episode 2: Vishal Vasan
Vishal Vasan, an applied mathematician at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore, India, thinks of himself as a “mathematical salesman”, who uses his mathematical tools and expertise to help potential collaborators in other fields. Vishal’s particular interest are problems...
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Episode 1: Sulochana Gadgil
Sulochana Gadgil has had a life-long fascination with the Asian monsoon, the seasonally shifting wind pattern driving the rain storms which are the lifeblood of India’s agricultural economy. Born in Pune, she studied mathematics in India and the USA – at Harvard and MIT – before returning to…
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Season 2 – Ready to Launch!
Deep Convection is back with a new season! Starting next Tuesday, February 2nd, we will release a new episode every other week. In this prologue to Season 2, which was recorded two weeks ago, Melanie asks Adam about his experience making Deep Convection; they look back at the past season and…
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Episode 10: Melanie Bieli
Melanie Bieli is a special guest in more than one way. She’s the first junior scientist to appear on Deep Convection, having just finished her Ph.D. a year ago; but more importantly, she’s the co-creator and creative director of the podcast. So she has been part of all the previous episodes,...
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Episode 9: Ed Sarachik
For Ed Sarachik, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, science and art have always been complementary but equally important ingredients to an intellectually fulfilling life. When he was a physics major at Queens College in New York City, his art teacher gave him an assignment that...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Deep Convection have?
Deep Convection currently has 60 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Deep Convection about?
A Podcast About Climate, Science, and Life. https://deep-convection.org/
How often does Deep Convection release new episodes?
Deep Convection has 60 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Deep Convection?
You can listen to Deep Convection on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Deep Convection?
Deep Convection is created and hosted by Deep Convection.
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