“We get to read the whole book. Normally, you go out for a couple of months. It's like you have a complicated mystery and you get two chapters and you're supposed to figure out what's going on. But here, we've already started. We’re there in the fall, when the ice begins to freeze, we'll watch it evolve through the whole winter and see what happens when summer comes.” – Don Perovich

This week on Living Lab Radio:

• Volcanologist Jess Pheonix explains why predicting volcanic eruptions isn’t currently possible, and even forecasting them is difficult. The deadly Whakaari eruption is just the latest example.
• Don Perovich of Dartmouth College compares studying Arctic sea ice a few months a year to trying to understand a mystery novel by reading two chapters. That’s why a new expedition that involves a ship (deliberately) stuck in the ice for a whole year is such a boon.
  

Donald Nitchie reads his poem, "Nomans Community News."

WCAI News Director Steve Junker hosts a roundup of some of the week's top local and regional news, including: town administrators are scratching their heads over revenues from the new short-term rental taxes; vape shops reopen – but without the flavored vapes; the Mashpee Rotary may be getting a makeover; and young deer are found on Martha's Vineyard with mysterious paralysis.

The family of a man convicted in 2005 of murdering his friend wants a new trial. New witnesses have since come forward, and an Innocence Project is looking into the case. The Mashpee Enterprise did an in-depth story on the case, and WCAI's Kathryn Eident talked with  Enterprise reporter Jessica Hill about what she learned.

140 years ago Henrik Isben’s play A Doll’s House was first staged. It’s become one of the most produced works worldwide, but not without controversy: the play ends with the female protagonist leaving her husband and young children. Author Wendy Swallow wanted to explore what Nora Helmer does next as a divorced and ostracized woman in the late 19th and early 20th Century. On The Point, we talk with Swallow about her novel Searching for Nora, After the Doll’s House. 

Holiday music is in the air, with plenty of opportunities to catch live performances.  Here's your Weekend Outlook.

A few years ago, a Philadelphia arborist named Max Paschall read an article about a man named John Hershey. Hershey ran a tree nursery and experimental farm in Pennsylvania in the 1930s. The article mentioned a food forest Hershey had planted, groves of carefully selected trees that were apparently still standing in a suburb of Philadelphia called Downingtown.

Research shows that most faith communities continue to be segregated along racial and ethnic lines. With a roundtable of religious leaders, we discuss why segregation persists, and what is lost when we’re not exposed to a diversity in our congregations. We also talk about steps we can take to make congregations more welcoming to diversity. 

If you’re into bird-related citizen science, then this is your month. From the Cape Cod Waterfowl Census, to the Christmas Bird Counts, to Project FeederWatch, December offers several ways to contribute to long-term studies of bird populations on Cape Cod and beyond. You just need some binoculars and, depending on the project, some basic bird knowledge.

Mark Faherty, Science Coordinator at Wellfeet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, and host Mindy Todd sit down in The Point studio to talk birds. Mark fills us in on the annual Waterfowl Census, and the Christmas Bird Counts are coming up. We have reports of painted buntings in our region! We hear questions and comments from our listeners.