Steve Heimel, APRN Contributor

Join hosts Steve Heimel and Wesley Early for this annual two-hour tradition of season's greetings statewide.

Talk of Alaska’s “Holiday Greetings from Across the State” returns again to connect Alaskans from Utqiagvik to Juneau, hear festive greetings, well wishes, and sentiments from those who call Alaska home.. Join host Steve Heimel for this annual two-hour tradition of season's greetings statewide.

Talk of Alaska’s “Holiday Greetings from Across the State” returns once again to connect Alaskans statewide as they share winter well wishes.

The holiday season is a time to remember friends and relatives in other places, and you’ll hear plenty of that on the next Talk of Alaska. It’s an annual tradition to devote one special two-hour show a year to nothing but good wishes sent out statewide.

Alaska is a big state, but people are very connected here. If you want to find out how connected Alaskans are, just listen to the radio for a while on Tuesday morning.

It's all about connections - two hours of them. The holiday season is a time to remember friends and relatives in other places, and you'll hear plenty of that... on the next Talk of Alaska. It's an annual Tradition to devote one special two-hour show a year to nothing but good wishes sent out state-wide.  It's a rewarding experience to share  all that holiday cheer, whether you call yourself, or simply listen in.  People are already making their lists. That's the special two-hour Holiday Edition of Talk of Alaska Tuesday morning from 10 to noon.

Wilderness, pasture, human habitat, wildlife habitat -- what if we combined all those functions?  What if we called "invasive" species "successful" species instead? Scary? You bet! But doesn't climate warming and over-population already have us scared? On the next Talk of Alaska, we'll continue hearing controversial arguments for re-aligning how we think about the human-altered environment. LISTEN HERE

Most people agree that we need to aim for more resilient infrastructure and communities to effectively respond to climate change.  But what are the first steps toward getting there?  Your chance to talk it over with two expert panelists is coming up on the next "Talk of Alaska:"  an ecologist who has documented what is actually happening with endangered species, and an experimenter who locked himself in a closed environment for two years. LISTEN HERE

It's an untold story almost 250 years old - what really happened during Captain Cook's contacts with indigenous people during his explorations in Alaska and the rest of the Pacific.  Two unpublished journals by Cook crew members have been found in an Australian store-room.  We'll learn more of the untold story of Captain Cook, and what happened after he died. LISTEN HERE

Alaskans are connected in so many different ways, and nothing shows that better than the special two-hour Holiday Greetings Edition of "Talk of Alaska," from the member stations of APRN.  Good wishes, greetings and holiday cheer fly back and forth from one end of the state to the other as people call in. You won't want to miss it. Listen Here

"Alaska's flag, may it mean to you," goes the Alaska Flag Song. Well, that raises a question. Beyond the blue and the gold, just what does it mean to you to be an Alaskan? That's the subject on the next state-wide radio call-in show Talk of Alaska. On a day celebrating independence, we'll be looking at the what it might mean if the state of Alaska was independent - a nation of its own. How would we define ourselves? Listen Here

Alaskans love a challenge, and our educational system has plenty of them - with shrinking budgets, serious workforce deficits, and poor retention rates for teachers and students. Listen Now

In late January, scientists gather at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage to share the latest information on such things as seabird die-offs, the monitoring system for ocean acidification, the spread of pathogens in a warming climate, and shrinking sea ice. All of this is changing fast, and we'll have a preview of this year's Alaska Marine Science Symposium on science on the next Talk of Alaska.

It's that time of year again - the days will soon be getting longer, holiday celebrations to bring in another year are beginning, and on Tuesday a great big radio greeting card goes out across the entire vast expanse of Alaska. It's the annual two-hour holiday greetings edition of Talk of Alaska. Listen Now

Former Bethel Police Officer Andrew Reid has been sentenced by a Bethel judge to the maximum penalty allowed for the two crimes he pled guilty to: one count of first degree assault, and one count of fourth degree official misconduct. Reid will spend a maximum of 120 days in detention. Reid's sentence would have carried a maximum of 180 days in detention, but was reduced under the recently passed Senate Bill 91. Listen now

Engineers 97th Regiment assigned to build the Alaska section of the Alcan Highway were composed of African American soldiers. Talk of Alaska has gone into Alaska's hidden military history a number of times, discussing the secret fire balloons launched by Japan, for instance, and the Aleutian battlefield debris, Cold War spying, and other things. Both of our panelists have researched these issues and written on them

The world's bear researchers meet every 18 months. Past meetings have been in Greece, the Georgian Republic, etc. This one's in Alaska, starting June 12. This is a big deal. Among other events, there are evening lectures open to the public, one by mauling survivor Dan Bigley, the guy who had the top of his face removed by a bear in Alaska, another by well-known public broadcaster Richard Nelson. But our guests will be biologists. Our panel will delve into the science of a subject that is always of acute interest to Alaskans, from Polar Bear tundra to Brown Bear stream to Black Bear rainforest. Bear biology, status and bear/human behavior will be on the agenda. Download Audio

2:45 p.m. The afternoon has been full of presentations about fish, seabirds and marine mammals of the Chukchi Sea. For the most part researchers only have one year's worth of data, so it's hard yet for them to see how things are changing. But clearly they are improving their equipment.

3:00 p.m. -- Investigators from a number of fields compared notes on the recent unexplained mortalities of seabirds and fin whales this morning. They arrived at no conclusion. It's still a mystery. But they do want to know more about "The Blob," the persistent area of warm sea surface temperature in the Gulf of Alaska that may finally be dissipating.