Panama! 3

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We’re going to hear a little music from Panama for today’s Global Hit. Specifically music recorded between 1960 to 1975. It’s from a CD is called Panama 3. It’s part a three CD collection of historic music from Panama released by Sound Way records. We hear from music critic Tom Schnabel.

Geo Quiz answer

For today’s Geo Quiz, we asked what direction you’re travelling in if you’re crossing the Panama by train from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The answer is northwest. Reporter Murray Carpenter recently took the train ride and sent us an audio postcard.
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Clearing a Path for the Jaguar

National parks around the world provide important refuge for people and wildlife. They’re places where humans can reconnect with the natural world and where animals are protected from human encroachment. But parks rarely provide enough habitat to ensure the survival of an entire species. This is especially true of large predators like jaguars. Jaguars are the biggest cats in the all of the Americas. And in Central America, scientists are trying to protect Jaguars by finding and protecting the corridors that the cats use as they roam from park to park. Julia Kumari Drapkin reports from Panama.

Old Forests vs. New: Do Critters Care?

Correspondent Julia Kumari Drapkin reports from Panama on the debate over the conservation importance of tropical forest that are growing back after being cut. View the audio slideshow

Panama: A historical perspective

Flash forward to today: When the Panamanian government announced last fall that it would spend $5.25 billion to widen and overhaul the Panama Canal, the world’s press barely mentioned it. I suppose few feats of engineering seem that remarkable or extraordinary with our 21st century technology. An indoor ski resort? No problem. A 150-story building? Yawn. But widening the Panama Canal will be no easy feat.

Despite our 21st century know-how, the technology that’s needed today is pretty much the same as it was a century years ago: we need big machines that can dig a lot of dirt, and explosives that can blow rocks to bits. This seems like a relatively easy thing to accomplish. But Panama is not such an

Part III: Panama fossils

Panama wants to make its famous canal bigger and better. The government is enlarging the waterway to allow more and larger ships to pass through it. 7,000 people will work on widening the canal. Some are doing a different kind of digging. Paleontologists are already following along the excavation. They’re searching for fossils. And they’re finding them. The fossils contain information about the region’s past – and hints about its future. The World’s Jason Margolis has the final story of our series on the Panama Canal.
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Margolis: Looking for fossils is a bit like going on an Easter egg hunt.

Jaramillo: “So what a typical paleontologist does is just look around and try to find any evidence of fossils laying around. Sometimes you see the tip of the bone and then the whole animal is underneath.”

Margolis: Carlos Alberto Jaramillo leads a group of paleontologists and geologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City. Today, Jaramillo is working in a large field of dirt alongside the canal. Massive container ships quietly chug through the waterway nearby. Large excavators have stripped away layers of dirt here, exposing fossils from different eras.

Jaramillo: “So

Part II: Developing Panama City

Today we continue our series exploring the expansion of the Panama Canal. Panamanians recently voted in favor of a $5 billion project to upgrade the century-old waterway. A wider passageway will be able to accommodate larger ships… and bring in more money. Panama has run the canal since 1999, when the American government handed over control. Virtually overnight, Panama was flush with a lot of extra cash: About $500 million in profit annually. That’s a lot of money for a country of three million people. Today, you can see that money at work in the rapid development of the country’s largest city, Panama City. Jason Margolis tells us about the urban planning and environmental challenges the city now faces.
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Margolis: Panama City is an elongated city, stretched thin, hugging the Pacific coastline. This coastal design works great for a smaller town: everybody gets to be near the beach. But when a city grows to 1.5 million people, problems arise. Transportation for one.

Former U.S. school buses cruise down the city’s few major arteries. The buses are no longer just yellow, they’re colorfully painted and decorated by private owners. It’s a chaotic system with buses racing in front of one and other to steal potential passengers. Young

Part I: The Big Canal

A century ago, American engineers embarked on what was then the greatest building project in history. It took 10 years and 75,000 men to construct. Three presidents oversaw its completion. Teddy Roosevelt called it, “the giant engineering feat of the ages.” We’re talking about the Panama Canal. Now a hundred years later, Panama is in charge of the canal. The central American country is now embarking on another major engineering project. Today, we begin a three part series looking at the effort to expand the Panama Canal. The World’s Jason Margolis has the story.

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Margolis: You might not realize it, but the reason you’re able to get fresh foods and new products on your shelves so quickly is in large part due to the Panama Canal. Fruits and grains, petroleum and coal, electronics and cars – hundreds of millions of tons of products pass through the canal every year. The Panama Canal is a critical link for world commerce. And it’s central to Panama’s identity. Stanley Heckadon is a professor at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, and the resident historian on all things about the canal.

Heckadon: “It is very difficult to explain perhaps to someone who is not from the isthmus what does the

Panama series

The century-old Panama Canal has become too small for today’s massive ships. So the country decided to widen the canal. The World’s Jason Margolis went to Panama to report on the excavation project, to examine the engineering, and Panama City’s current explosive growth.