After starting adulthood as a computer programmer, Bruce Comstock was swept into a life of adventure in the air, first as a pilot of hot air balloons (he won the world championship), and later, at the age of 58, as a paraglider pilot, flying in the U.S. and also abroad. Along the way, he set various records, co-founded a balloon manufacturing company near Ann Arbor, and helped others do such feats as flying around the planet. Here, he talks about the lure of the air, and we see photos of his exploits. He lives now in Ashland and is about to fly balloons again, this time in sight of Mount Shasta.

Women are expected to have children, but many suffer miscarriage, have an abortion, can't get pregnant, wait to adopt, or choose not to have children. Whether or not a woman eventually has children, all these are occasions of missed motherhood. Together, they affect a majority of women, yet our society has no adequate rituals to honor missed motherhood. Women are expected just to "put it behind" them and "get on with life." In her new book, Honoring Missed Motherhood, Kani Comstock tells her own story and the stories of a dozen other women who have experienced missed motherhood and then, with her sister, she creates rituals that can be done by individuals, circles, and community meetings.

Concerned way back in the early 1980s about the Cold War arms race between the two super-powers, Tennison, then a nurse, flew to Moscow to meet "the enemy." With friends, she talked with ordinary people in parks, in the metro, and on the street, and began an adventure that has lasted three decades, with programs for supporting large scale exchanges, for creating a sober society, for training entrepreneurs, to give only three examples. In her new book, The Power of Impossible Ideas, the author tells about repeatedly asking not "is it possible?" but rather "is it necessary?" Whatever their reasons, citizen diplomacy gave the Soviets something to move into. Tennison tells how it developed.

Some people retire and play golf. Alan Journet retired, moved to the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon, and with friends initiated a climate-change action group. After a career as a professor in a biology and environmental science department, Journet is able to read the technical papers with discernment, and as a citizen he has chosen to take on the task of helping to educate the rest of us and exploring what we can do.

Author of lyrics for "A New Wrinkle," a musical review that she conceived, Gaea Yudron teaches workshops and gives talks on healthy aging. In addition to being a long-time Buddhist in a Tibetan tradition, she writes not only lyrics, but also poems and lectures. In this episode, she sings "Baba Yaga's Raga," playing a character who is a crone, and reads a poem of hers antiphonally with host Craig Comstock. Yudron showed up for the interview with a button reading "Bold," and as her own activities suggest, does not recommend going gentle into that good night.