Thursday, 4 November, 2021
Cow fart deal to save the planet; India’s Diwali festival kicks off; the Aussies growing veggies on the moon; and the bear with a taste for KFC.
LINKS
Diwali in pictures: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/pictures-diwali-celebration
Bear scoffs down KFC in man’s home https://abc7.com/wild-bear-intruder-home/11186659/
Squiz Kids Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/squizkids/?hl=en
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
THE LOWDOWN
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First it was the world’s forests, today it’s the farting cows as world leaders meeting at the climate change summit in Glasgow yesterday announced a global effort to reduce the amount of methane gas going into the atmosphere.
What’s methane? It’s a gas that’s produced naturally – by, say, organic matter rotting, or via the burps and farts of living things, including cows and sheep and, yes, humans – but also in industrial processes like the production of oil and gas. It’s also a greenhouse gas. Which means it causes the global warming that 25,000 people are meeting in Glasgow hoping to stop.
More than 100 countries have signed an agreement to cut back on the methane they send into the atmosphere. Australia was not one of those countries.
Farting cows are one source of methane. As are your dad and the boys in your classroom .. albeit a less significant one. Methane is also produced naturally by wetlands, and unnaturally by human activity including the process to produce gas, the production of rice – and rotting garbage in what is now called landfill .. and used to be called a garbage dump. Recycling and composting are two things all of us can do to reduce the amount of methane we’re responsible for. Stopping farting is not really an option: it’s a perfectly normal bodily function that everyone does. Yes, even your grandma.
Teachers: if you’ve a signed-up to be a Squiz Kids for Schools member, you’ll get access to an excellent Shortcut on climate change from tomorrow afternoon. If you haven’t yet signed up for the free trial of our membership offering – including a daily set of differentiated classroom activities tied to the podcast – then head on over to squizkids.com.au and join the party …
SPIN THE GLOBE
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Each day we give the world globe a spin and find a news story from wherever it stops, and today we’ve landed in India, where lights, candles, firecrackers and fireworks are going off all over the country to mark the biggest day of Diwali. (pron: Di-VAH-li)
What’s Diwali, you ask? It’s India’s most important festival—a celebration of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance. It lasts for five-days, during the darkest nights of the Hindu calendar, and is observed by more than a BILLION people around the world. Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest religions, and 95% of all Hindus live in India… although people from other religions also celebrate Diwali.
Today is the third day of this festival of lights, when people launch floating lamps onto rivers, set off fireworks and firecrackers all night, and create amazing displays of light outside their homes using clay lamps. Check it out in your episode notes, and a happy Diwali to the one million people in Australia who were either born in India, or have Indian ancestry. I’m guessing some of you will be celebrating!
SPACED OUT
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So you know how there’s a big effort underway at the moment to put humans permanently on the Moon? Which is to say, lots of countries are working together to work out a way to build a permanent human settlement on the Moon – including buildings for them to live and work in? Well, they also have to work out how to feed the humans we put up there – ‘cause we all gotta eat – and as there’s currently no pizza delivery company that goes as far as the Moon (at least not yet) – work has begun on how we can grow vegetables on the surface of the Moon so the people who live there have food at their fingertips. And a bunch of scientists from an Queensland university were yesterday revealed as the team who are helping to do just that… grow veggies on the Moon. They’ve developed some really clever artificial intelligence technology which monitors how a plant is growing and helps to make changes to the way it’s watered and fed – which will help astronauts grow plants on places like the Moon and even Mars. Gosh some people are just so clever.
ANIMAL KINGDOM
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Oh we all love a bit of fast food every now and then … and it seems that even bears can’t help themselves when they get a whiff of KFC.
TV stations in America were yesterday reporting that a man in California came home to find a bear on his kitchen counter, its snout buried deep inside a bucket of KFC fried chicken.
The man said he was used to seeing bears in his backyard – as he lives near a forest – but he’d never had one come inside his home, make itself comfortable on his kitchen bench and help itself to his dinner.
He eventually managed to chase the bear out of his house – but not before it had made an unholy mess of the place.
I’ve stuck a link in today’s episode notes to video of the bear having a fried chicken chow down.
THE S’QUIZ
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This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you’ve been listening …
- What is the name of the festival Hindus all over the world celebrate today?
- What’s the name of the gas that’s produced when cows fart?
- Where are Aussie scientists going to help astronauts grow veggies?
SHOUT OUTS
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It’s November 4 … Today is Tonga’s National Day – happy Tongan day to all of our Squiz Kids with Tongan heritage …
It’s also a special day for these Squiz Kids celebrating a birthday today…
Dakota from Inverell, Arin from Parramatta, Grace from Appin, Elizabeth and Lillian from Mackay, Antonio from Five Dock, Neo from Fitzroy North, Josie Lee from Green Valley, Audrey from Rozelle, Liesl from Epping, Wiley from Maroubra, Cooper from Perth and Tory from Munno Para.
Classroom shout outs today go to…Class 3/4J and Miss Conner at Lane Cove West Public School, class 5/6M and Mrs McFarlean at Mount Riverview Public School, Year 5 at St Francis Xavier Primary in Lurnea, Miss McVeety’s Year 6 class and Miss Felice’s Year 4 class at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Primary School, in Kensington, Mr Earnshaw and Year 5/6 Bradman from Appin Public School and lastly to Grade 6 and Mrs Rush from Lakes Grammar School in Warnervale.
The S’Quiz Answers:
- Diwali
- Methane
- The moon