This week on The Speakeasy, Damon drinks some 50 year old cognac and eats oysters with Dana Hale of Island Creek Oyster Farm. Tune in to learn more about the popular and sensual raw seafood that has New York City buzzing. Find out how oyster mating affects taste and how farming is one of the most safe and sustainable ways of raising shellfish and seafood. This episode was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

This week on Burning Down the House, Curtis B. Wayne is joined by registered architect and landscape architect, Susannah Drake of dlandstudio. Curtis and Susannah are discussing eco-friendly urban landscaping, and what landscape architecture can mean for New York City's protection from future storms like Hurricane Sandy. Hear about sanitation issues that come with storm surges, and how innovations like sponge parks can deal with rising tides and currents. Where and how are architects building to compensate for the increasing number of tropical storms in the New York metro area? Later, Curtis and Susannah talk about the intersection of landscape design and architecture, and where one ends and the next begins. This episode has been brought to you by Hearst Ranch.

"I think that a lot of our cities were set up on waterways to facilitate exchange. Going back to (dlandstudio's) MoMA project, we analyzed the coastline and the ways it has expanded to facilitate exchange... Now we don't have the same systems of exchange where we're translating goods at the water's edge- in part due to containerized shipping." [17:55]

-- Susannah Drake on Burning Down the House

This week on The Naturalist Bernie spoke to Mike Hamburg, docent at the Natural History Museum and Bernie's resident astronomy expert, about some popular misconceptions people hold about the Earth and the universe.