Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is alive: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don’t just live on the earth– we are the Earth. We’re an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. In this episode, Ferris (a contributor to the New York Times and a bestselling author) explains how we and our environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates climate–and how the Earth isn’t merely a stage where life plays out, but is an actual swirling, bubbling body that’s alive in its own right. There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of “aliveness” in science. But in his new book, Becoming Earth, Ferris argues that this planet meets the mark. He points to the self-regulating chemistry of the atmosphere, to the vast networks of microscopic plankton that alter global climate, and to something as ordinary (and astonishing) as soil, which can turn dead matter into living things.
We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave?
“Life is a planetary phenomenon. It’s not that Earth had life evolve on it, but rather that Earth came to life itself. It is a garden that made itself. It sewed itself. It nurtured itself. It waters itself. And we are all part of that large, living architecture.”
– Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth and contributing writer for the New York Times
Learn More About Ferris’s Work
Ferris’s debut book, Becoming Earth (Penguin Random House, 2025), was a New York Times bestseller and has been selected as a “Best Book of the Year” choice by seven major sellers. You can ask your local independent bookstores to order it for you, take it out of the library, or purchase it here or anywhere linked on this page.
Ferris is a contributing writer to over a dozen major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. You can find links to his articles on his website here. For more of his writing about ideas from this episode, we recommend reading his piece “The Earth is Just As Alive As You Are” for The New York Times.
Ferris mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis, the name given to the idea that life on Earth not only emerged but also actively shaped and sustained its environment to support life itself. The theory originated in the 1960s, when James Lovelock, a British atmospheric chemist and inventor, first proposed the concept. At the time, Lovelock was consulting with NASA on a project to detect signs of life on Mars, which required identifying chemical signatures that might indicate a living planet, such as atmospheric composition. He observed that Earth’s atmosphere was far from chemical equilibrium (e.g., with gases like oxygen and methane coexisting), which led him to propose that life plays an active role in regulating planetary conditions. Evolutionary theorist and microbiologist Lynn Margulis later collaborated with Lovelock, helping to develop and support the Gaia Hypothesis with evidence from microbial evolution and Earth’s early biosphere. Watch this video of her presenting it to NASA.
At first, many scientists initially rejected or even ridiculed the Gaia Hypothesis; it was viewed by as seeming too anthropomorphic, or unscientific, or simply too mystical-sounding. But as Ferris notes in this episode, today scientists widely acknowledge that life and environment have coevolved, and that feedback loops do exist between biological and geophysical systems. The underlying idea has become much more mainstream.
The new scientific field that emerged from this work, and which Ferris mentioned in the episode, is called zoogeochemistry. Here is one article that further describes that field.
It’s also worth noting that well before modern Western science began to evolve, worldviews of indigenous people in various parts of the world expressed some similar concepts of the earth as being alive through myths, rituals, and stories.
Ferris mentioned one of his favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, who sometimes wrote quite directly about the connectivity of life. Here’s one passage from The Waves (1931), in which one of the central characters, Bernard, speaks to that idea:
“Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.”s
Zoned Out: Race, Property, and Ownership in America
Jul 31, 2025
Dr. Adrienne Brown reads cities the way professors read novels: carefully, and with lots of attention to what’s written between the lines. Adrienne teaches in the departments of English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, and she draws on buildings and literature to trace the ways in which space is racialized—both geographically, in where people live, and conceptually, in how we define complex concepts like vacancy, ownership, and home.
In this episode, Adrienne walks us through the ideas in her book, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership. It uses textual archives to examine the long-entwined relationships between race and mass homeownership. In it, Adrienne highlights how Black women’s experiences reveal a fuller picture of what property ownership looked like in the United States over the past century. She points to the work of artists and architects who challenge our understanding of space and the built environment, and she poses questions about how America might imagine more just ways of living in urban environments.
“The stories of mid-20th-century authors were very much about a new silence around race, even as race continued to shape everyone’s lives in those emerging urban and suburban spaces.”
– Dr. Adrienne Brown, Associate Professor in English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago
Learn More About Adrienne’s Work
Adrienne’s most recent book, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership (Stanford University Press, 2024), uses textual archives to examine the tightly-woven relationships between race and mass homeownership. You can purchase the book here.
She also wrote The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), which won the Modernist Studies Association’s 2018 First Book Prize. It explores how artists and residents viewed the intersection of architecture and race in modernist, urban environments. You can purchase that wonderful book here.
Adrienne is the co-editor of Race and Real Estate (Oxford University Press, 2015), an interdisciplinary examination of race, property, and citizenship.
At the University of Chicago, she is the Faculty Director of Arts + Public Life, a University initiative that uses education, community engagement, and artistic expression to foster community in the South Side of Chicago.
Sources of Inspiration Mentioned in the Episode
Adrienne described how mid-twentieth-century writers sometimes took “these odd detours to write pieces that are just about their neighborhood.” The main plot of the story might have been mostly about something else–but there were moments when they attempted to capture place: what suburbs were like, what race was like; what it was like to have a lot of resources or not to. Here are people she specifically mentioned:
Ralph Ellison (1913–1994), a writer and scholar best known for The Invisible Man. He also wrote a series of essays about Harlem – here is one he published in Harper’s Magazine about how Harlem was full of energy and creativity, but how it also felt weirdly cut off from the rest of the country by its poverty and by American racism.
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000), a poet and teacher who powerfully captured Black experience, has a lot of things named after her in Chicago–schools, parks, buildings, monuments. She’s arguably the city’s most beloved literary figure. At the end of this episode of the podcast, Adrienne quotes from Brooks’s poem, “Beverly Hills, Chicago.”
Thomas Pynchon (born in 1937), a novelist who—although not a California native—wrote extensively about Los Angeles and the surrounding area. Adrienne referenced his piece “A Journey Into The Mind of Watts,” published in the New York Times, which was an exploration of the Watts neighborhood after the 1965 riots.
John Cheever (1912–1982), novelist and short story writer who depicted life in American suburbs just as the suburbs were starting to boom. Here at The Shape of the World, The Swimmer is one of our favorites of his short stories. In it, an affluent man in Westchester County decides to make his way home from a party by swimming the entire way, which in suburbia means he hops from one private backyard swimming pool to the next. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for him.)
Lorraine Hansberry (1930 – 1964). Adrienne talked about Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” which tells the story of a Black family in Chicago grappling with whether they should purchase a home in a white neighborhood. It’s one of the most well-known and familiar plays in the United States, and continues to be frequently staged; but if you haven’t seen the play, you probably know the movie with Sidney Poitier Ruby Dee, and Louis Gossett, Jr.
Adrienne referenced Marshall Brown, a current American architect who first made Adrienne question her use of the word “vacancy.” He is a professor in architecture at Princeton University, where he also directs the Princeton Urban Imagination Center. See more of his work here.
Adrienne mentioned Amanda Williams, a recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Awards.” Williams is an architect-turned-artist whose work examines the relationship between race and space. Some of her work specifically comments upon Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago is located. Williams’s best-known project, called Color(ed) Theory, drew attention to the discrepancy of investment in Black Chicago neighborhoods versus other neighborhoods in white areas. Williams repainted eight vacant houses in the palette of colors she’d observed in commercial products marketed toward Black consumers: one house got painted the color of dark purple of a Crown Royal whiskey bag; another was the bright reddish-orange color of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Learn more about Amanda Williams’s work here.
Existential Risk: A User’s Guide
Jul 10, 2025
Daniel Holz studies black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology, all while also running the Existential Risk Laboratory at the University of Chicago. In this episode, Daniel helps us shed light on some of the biggest threats facing humanity—the kind that could really do us all in. On Daniel’s list: a flat-out nuclear war erupts, climate change worsens, biological warfare and bioterrorism, the possibility that the chaos of misinformation could make good governance impossible, and that artificial intelligence might decide we humans are too irrational and inefficient to keep around. (Along with some other cheery topics.)
Daniel also is part of the group that set the hands of the Doomsday Clock, which signifies how close (or how far away) we are from the end of life as we know it. (He chairs the group, officially called the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.) Right now, the clock reads 89 seconds to midnight. That’s the closest we’ve ever been to a global catastrophe.
“When it’s all out in the open, you see that doom is not inevitable. There really are things that can be done, and there is a path forward. There’s definitely risk. Things are not guaranteed. But there is a path away from doom. I just hope we take it.”
– Daniel Holz, professor in Physics, Astronomy, and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics; Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; and founding director of UChicago’s Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab).
Learn More About Daniel’s Work
In Daniel’s life as an astrophysicist, he’s one of the collaborators in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which works on the cutting edge of gravitational wave physics. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, triggered by cataclysmic cosmic events like the collision of black holes or neutron stars. LIGO uses incredibly sensitive laser interferometers—tools that measure tiny changes in light—to detect gravitational waves. It’s a big leap beyond what traditional telescopes can do, opening up to us lowly humans an entirely new way to observe the universe. You can read more about LIGO’s impact here.
UChicago’s Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab) is a lab that uses risk analysis and research to study some of the world’s most significant threats. The idea for the lab came from a class Daniel co-taught with James Evans, a computational scientist and sociologist, called “Are We Doomed”? The class caught the attention of Rivka Galchen, a staff writer for The New Yorker. Subsequently, her article in the magazine caught Jill’s attention. Jill’s been interested in the topic since reading Tony Ord’s book The Precipice.
The XLab’s purpose is to study existential threats so that people can be made more aware of them, and hopefully, so we humans can figure out how to prevent them from occurring. The XLab provides a venue for UChicago students to build expertise in the focus areas of concern.
The Doomsday Clock
When recording the episode, Jill asked Daniel to describe what it was like to be in the committee meetings when its members decide what position the hands of The Doomsday Clock should be set at. Daniel’s response and their conversation about it didn’t make it into the final cut of the episode, but you can listen to that outtake here.
The Doomsday Clock is a device that alerts the public to how near we humans truly are to destroying the world with technologies of our own making. The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils of existential catastrophe. If the hands were ever to reach the position of “midnight,” that would mean the end of civilization.
Created in 1947, the symbolic clock was started by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Many founding members of the Bulletin were scientists from the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. (The same university where Daniel now teaches.) The scientists who helped to split the atom understood full well that the presence of atomic weapons threatened life on Earth like nothing else that had ever existed before.
Since 2008, the Science and Security Board, which Daniel chairs, is part of the Bulletin, and this is the group of scientists and other experts who determine the setting of the hands. Twice a year, they meet. As of this writing, the clock hands are set at 89 seconds before midnight. This is the closest to midnight that they’ve ever been at any point in history.
The Secret Lives of Fireflies
Jun 19, 2025
Biologist Sara Lewis doesn’t just study fireflies—for her, fireflies are a living reminder that the world is pure magic. In this episode, the author of Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies unpacks the science of fireflies. These members of the beetle family are one of only a handful of terrestrial creatures capable of generating light. How fireflies glow, why they glow, and how their living conditions and populations are changing—Sara explains all of this and describes the relationship between us and them. Sara uses fireflies to make a case for wonder, which she says is something we can and should practice every day.
“For me, paying attention to the natural world feeds my sense of wonder, and I actually think that’s one of the most important senses that we have–and that it may be underused.”
– Dr. Sara Lewis, Professor Emerita in Biology at Tufts University; Chair of the Firefly Specialist Group in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Learn More About Sara’s Work
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. The Firefly Specialist Group that Dr. Sara Lewis leads is dedicated to protecting firefly species whose populations are threatened. Its members engage in research, advocacy, and public outreach (like the establishment of an official “World Firefly Day”). To learn more about the work they do, visit IUCN’s firefly webpage. You can also read their most recent report here, which includes detailed information on how specific species of fireflies are doing.
Sara is the co-founder of Fireflyers International Network, a group of firefly researchers and enthusiasts. This is the group that first coined the word “Fireflyer” to mean a “firefly chaser. A person who thinks about lightning bugs.” Learn more about their work here.
How Do Fireflies Make Light?
In this episode, host Jill Riddell confessed how difficult it was for her to fully comprehend how fireflies are able to light up. She promised listeners that we would include something on this webpage that would hopefully make firefly’s most glorious accomplishment more understandable — for her and for others. So… here goes.
Think of a firefly as having a tiny lantern embedded inside its body — and that lantern takes up about 10 percent of the firefly’s overall size. Even more amazing: the lantern has an on-and-off switch. But that “switch” is not mechanical or electrical — it’s entirely chemical.
You know those glow sticks at parties and concerts? Well, the firefly’s lantern works on the same basic principle: chemistry. There’s no fire involved. The light a glow stick or a firefly makes is cold — it doesn’t give off heat like a candle or a lightbulb.
Both glow sticks and fireflies produce what’s called “chemiluminescence” — that’s a light that gets created as the result of a chemical reaction.
Inside the firefly’s lantern, there’s an enzyme scientists call “luciferase.” This enzyme is a kind of protein shaped like a baseball glove. It holds a smaller molecule called “luciferin,’ which fits right into that glove. Then, using oxygen (and a few helper molecules), luciferase sets off a chemical reaction. As luciferin gets excited and then returns to a calm state, it gives off a tiny flash of light. Cool, right?
Image by Scholastic, Science World
Image by New Zealand Geographic
Relevant Readings
Order Sara’s book, Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies from your local bookstore, online here from the book’s publisher (Princeton University Press), or from Amazon. Also, check out the website for the book, which has additional writings and resources, and the beautiful trailer.
As Sara mentions in the episode, fireflies hold a special place in Japan. During Japan’s period of rapid industrialization, the number of fireflies was radically reduced. Communities began organizing local clean-up efforts and “firefly festivals” (hotaru matsuri), and slowly, populations recovered.
Historically, in Japan, poets used fireflies to symbolize summer and its ephemeral beauty. One of the famous writers of haiku, Kobayashi Issa, utilized them extensively. Here’s an example of one that speaks to the tensions between nature and cities:
Cities and Wildlife: Frenemies or Friends?
May 29, 2025
Biologist Dr. Seth Magle wants to rethink what a city is – and who it’s for. As part of an alliance with 50 cities around the globe, Seth and other wildlife researchers have discovered an overlooked truth: that our large cities teem with interesting native wildlife. Foxes, birds, coyotes, and turtles live successfully within many cities’ borders: they share our sidewalks, our lawns, and, sometimes, even our grocery stores. Have we humans learned to live in communion with wild things? And are we beginning to see cities not solely as culpritsof climate change and perpetrators of a biodiversity crisis but also as sources of potential resolution?
“If we want to connect people to nature, most people live in cities. To me, it makes the most sense to start where people are. We can’t just keep writing off the city as a loss.”
– Dr. Seth Magle, Director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo and Executive Director of the Urban Wildlife Information Network.
Learn More About Seth’s Work
The Urban Wildlife Institute (UWI) that Seth directs is housed at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. It’s an initiative that studies both the zoo’s own property and many other nature areas within Chicago. A lot of UWI’s work is collecting data and developing scientific standards that help minimize conflict between the needs of animals and the needs of humans in Chicago. For more about UWI, visit this page. Plus, here’s some press on UWI: “People Can Learn to Coexist With Urban Wildlife,”“Give Animals a Seat At the Table,” and “How Cities Can Help Solve the Biodiversity Crisis.” You can also learn more about UWI from Jill’s earlier interview with Seth in season one of our podcast: “We All Live in Nature.”
The new program Seth and Jill discussed in this episode was the Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN). Its purpose is to find ways to make cities better places to live for both humans and nature. Seth helped establish this international alliance. A big part of what Seth and UWIN are trying to achieve is for all of the cities involved to use similar standards for what kinds of data they collect so comparisons and contrasts can be made among them. Ultimately, this coordination will create a greater pool of collective knowledge and can lead to quicker solutions in each city for improving wildlife habitat and minimizing conflicts. Each member of UWIN collects its own data independently and retains the right to use it however they see fit, but this additional alliance offers the opportunity for researchers in one city to work with other partners to ask and answer questions at much larger scales—from regionally to globally.
To learn more about Seth’s camera trapping in Chicago and to see a map of the sites, visit this page.
To see some of the Chicago urban wildlife lore that Seth mentioned in the episode, see Chunkasaurus and the Chicago Rat Hole.
How to Get Involved
If you want to help create more wildlife-inclusive habitats in your own neighborhood, check out the Urban Wildlife Project, developed in partnership with the University of Wisconsin. This website has information on everything from yard management and gardening to native flora recommendations – all of which help make life easier for fauna.
To help Seth and his team identify animals that get photographed on camera traps, go to the website Chicago Wildlife Watch. For more information on how to join the Urban Wildlife Institute’s community science programs, visit this page.
A camera is set up by Seth Magle and his associates on a tree.
Close-up shot of a camera placed by Seth Magle and his team in order to find animals in locations.
Cameras are set up by Seth Magle and his associates to capture what animals are found in which locations. This is a key tool for the team.
Can a Tiny Organism Transform Human Relations?
May 09, 2025
Artist Laurie Palmer believes they can. In her book, The Lichen Museum, Laurie explores what we can gain from learning to see life the way a lichen does. Laurie explains how our understanding of the world is filtered constantly through our own physical selves – we have a certain height and breadth; we can see for long distances; we are transient and ephemeral beings; and our brains tend to break reality into neat, distinct pieces and then give those things names. But what if we were more like a long-lived lichen?
Laurie is fascinated by lichens, these small and mostly overlooked organisms. Individuals of some species can stay alive for literally thousands of years. Laurie discovers that lichens have a lot to teach her (and the rest of us) about resiliency, adaptability, diversity, and perhaps most importantly, about how connected we are with other beings.
“Opening up relations with other beings that are seen as dirt or detritus is a way to diminish some of our own hubris.”
– A. Laurie Palmer, American artist, writer, and activist, and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz
HOW TO BUY & READ LAURIE’S BOOK, “THE LICHEN MUSEUM”
Easy enough to acquire: order it from your local bookstore! You can also purchase it directly from the publisher, the University of Minnesota Press.
Laurie Palmer’s earlier book was In the Aura of a Hole: Exploring Sites of Material Extraction (2015), which studies humans’ effects on nature through her decade-long exploration of mineral extraction sites in the U.S. You can read her interview with Art21 Magazine about that.
HOW TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT LAURIE’S WORK
Best place is Laurie’s own website at alauriepalmer.org. But there are also some other gems out there, like articles either written by Laurie or articles written about her. Here’s a lovely piece Laurie wrote for Orion Magazine. The article contains five tips on how to live like a lichen.
MORE DETAIL ON VARIOUS THINGS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE
Taking a Lichen Walk
1. Purchase and use a 10-power magnifying hand lens, like this one for only $13.75 from ASC Scientific. A “10-power lens” or as Laurie referred to it during the interview, a “10x lens” means that the lens will make an object appear ten times its actual size.
2. Keep your eyes peeled and expect to encounter lichens in unexpected places – sidewalk cracks, electrical utility boxes, car doors. And of course, don’t neglect more typical spots like on the bark of trees, the surfaces of damp stones, and the walls of neglected wooden sheds.
3. Get close to the ground. As Laurie explains, “To look at lichens, you have to bend down and kneel, and get inside their world in a way that reduces your stature and vertical human body, which is in control of the world through long distance vision. You become myopic, and they become really huge, and you enter into their tiny world, and so there’s a loss of your own sovereignty, just in the act of looking.”
ADVICE ON BINOCULARS
Another scientific tool that’s useful to have for observing nature are binoculars. In the course of the interview, Laurie asks for advice on which ones to buy. Jill suggested that for a pair that is adequate and costs less than a hundred dollars, try these fun colorful ones made by Nocs Provisions.
“BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER”
Written by Herman Melville and published in the 1850s, the short story titled “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is about a worker who, whenever his boss asks him to do something, consistently answers, “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby’s quiet refusal becomes a powerful act of passive resistance. The story is rather an odd one with elements of absurd, dark humor and ultimately, a descent into nihilism. But it’s at its best and most memorable when it’s challenging the modern world’s assumptions about obedience, productivity, and purpose.
Bartleby came up in this “Shape” interview when Laurie described lichens’ resistance to cultivation. While lichens produce unique chemical compounds that could potentially be useful and economically profitable to humans, lichens grow too slowly for those products ever to be scaled up. Laurie portrays this “failure” as successful resistance on the part of the lichen. They cannot be used or commodified.
Season Six Coming Soon
May 05, 2025
Season Six will launch this Friday, May 9th
New episodes, new guests, and new insights about nature and our built environments coming soon with season 6 of Shape of the World. And more on how we can live together–with nature, with cities, and with one another. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite platform.
Episode 33: Can Listening Be a Political and Moral Act?
Dec 22, 2022
The world is full of sound. Yet we happen to be a species who, at the moment, is directing most of our attention to our own voices and not so much to the voices of other living things. Biologist David George Haskell says this collective inattention is a huge loss for each of us. It’s like leaving money on the table because paying attention to the living world is a source of beauty, joy and renewal—one we can access at anytime from anywhere.
Plus, when we—the most powerful species on the planet—stop listening, the relationship between humans and nature doesn’t exactly go terrifically well. David says, “If I’m not listening to the voices of my kin, the birds and the trees and the living rivers and the whales and neighbors, how can I expect to be a good relative to them? If I’m not listening, how can I expect to be a good member of the living earth community?”
“In my work as a teacher and as a citizen and a writer, I try to be on the side of beauty and connection and less on the side of disconnection and brokenness.”
– David Haskell is a writer, biologist, and professor at the University of the South in Suwanee, Tennessee.
The link will direct you to Amazon, but we’d be remiss not to mention that it’s more fun and aesthetically pleasing for you to buy it at your local bookstore or to ask them to order a copy for you. Or if you don’t have a bookstore near you, try Jill’s favorite shop, the Seminary Coop Books/57th Street Books. You can order from the Coop’s website—and if you live in Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood (or somewhere reasonably close by) a nice human being from the store will deliver whatever you order right to your doorstep. The book will arrive without that overeager, heavy-duty packaging that Amazon burdens you with.
Seminary Coop home deliveries have only a wee, barely-measurable environmental footprint, so check it out.
David’s other books are—all of which are excellent—are:
Insider bonus tip: if you purchase that last one as an audiobook, it’s accompanied by original violin compositions.
If you’re not really a book person but would like enjoy exploring other small hits of David’s way of thinking and being in other ways, check out what David has composed or collaborated on in other mediums:
In the episode, sounds of the European blackbird singing in a courtyard: Mizu LOEB, XC548553. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/548553.
In the episode, we mentioned the organization Noise Free America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to, in their words, “making quiet happen”.
Episode 32: What Should We Fix First?
Nov 18, 2022
Many of us are anxious about everything related to nature and climate—and also worried about a slew of other social and political challenges. But what should we fix first? Author and New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl gives us her answers.
Margaret Renkl’s new book “Graceland at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” is a graceful mix of observations about nature and practical solutions.
“We have a lot of different sources of anxiety right now, but what it all really comes down to is, is climate change and the loss of biodiversity,” says Margaret Renkl. “If we could fix those two things, we could go back to worrying about smaller things. But if we can’t get those things sorted out, the other things we worry about will be made so much worse in the world that’s coming: the income disparity, the racism, the misogyny, the ugly things that happen when people are under duress.”
“If every single person with a little bit of lawn begins to plant native plants, ones that feed native wildlife, collectively we will have the equivalent of the biggest national park in the country.”
– Margaret Renkl, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (Milkweed Editions, 2021)
How to Find Out More
You can absorb more of Margaret’s observations on a regular basis. She has a column in The New York Times that appears each Monday.
Buy and read both of Margaret’s books: Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (Milkweed Editions, 2019) and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (Milkweed Editions, 2021). Ask for your local bookstore to order them for you, or try Jill’s favorite, Seminary Coop Books/57th Street Books. You can order from their website—and if you live in Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago (or somewhere reasonably close) they’ll deliver you order right to your doorstep—without the heavy duty packaging of Amazon and with only a wee, barely measurable environmental footprint.
In the episode, Margaret mentions the Xerces Society, an organization that asks people to take the Pledge for Protection of Pollinators. The Xerces Society’s Bring Back the Pollinators campaign is based on four simple principles: Grow pollinator-friendly flowers, provide nest sites, avoid pesticides, and spread the word.
Episode 31: Who Trashed My River?
Oct 12, 2022
Humans started trashing rivers 7,000 years. Since then, century after century, the water quality of many rivers deteriorated. At first, changes occurred slowly. But by the time the Industrial Revolution rolled around, humans’ harsh treatment of rivers and its nasty impacts picked up momentum and it scaled up from a few random rivers to most of Earth’s rivers being affected by pollution.
But recently, some urban rivers are undergoing transformations. Waterways that once were essentially sewers are becoming sanctuaries for wildlife and places people can access. The organization Nick Wesley co-founded, Urban Rivers, is creating The Wild Mile, the first-ever floating eco-park of its scale in the world. It’s a mile-long floating park located on the North Branch Canal of the Chicago River, a manmade channel along the east side of Goose Island between Chicago Avenue and North Avenue.
“There’s a million different potential outcomes for things. Being open to the many various outcomes that can happen helps people make better plans.”
– Nick Wesley Co-Founder of Urban Rivers
How You Can Help Nick Build The Wild Mile
When completed, the Wild Mile will have floating gardens, forests, public walkways and kayak docks. The Wild Mile will function as a public park, open-air museum, botanical garden, a recreation destination, a classroom for the community, and it will provide habitat for native wildlife.
The organization Nick co-founded, Urban Rivers has a robust and active volunteer program where you can do hands-on work. (In the interview for this episode, Nick said they have about 200 volunteers.) You can also donate money—which is an awesome act to perform to support ideas you love.
Sources for the Facts & Stories in this Episode
For information on the history and origin of the group, “Friends of Trashed Rivers, here’s an article Jill Riddell wrote for the Chicago Reader. It has some lively quotes from Laurene Von Klan, an activist mentioned in the episode.
For history on rivers: Watch Wendover Productions‘ wonderful video on “Why Cities Are Where They Are.” The source for the part of this episode about how long humans have been polluting rivers was archaeologist Russell Adams at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Adams and his colleagues studied a riverbed in the Wadi Faynan region of southern Jordan. Adams was researching this area for more than 30 years to understand the rise of metallurgy. Seven thousand years ago is around the time when we humans started to move away from making crude tools out of stones to making more specialized and precise tools out of metal. (For more on Adams’s discoveries—including the pollution of the river—read this article.)
For information on the river in Berlin: Nick mentioned Flussbad. The Flussbad (“river pool”) is a project that is cleaning up a polluted canal along the River Spree. Located in a highly visible and much-visited part of the city, the plan will add new wetlands and provide spots where people can literally dive into the river. You can learn more about how to visit it here and read more about the concept in Archinet and the New York Times.
For information on the Shedd Aquarium’s program: Nick praised the Shedd Aquarium for its energetic efforts to conserve the Chicago River, and specifically he called out the Kayaks for Conservation program, where anyone who’s interested can go out in a kayak and learn more about the river and help clean it up.
Though only partly constructed, the Wild Mile already has active programming and many ways for people to get involved.
The Wild Mile is located in an area of Chicago that formerly was (and is still partially) industrial. It’s in the middle of a massive real estate development called Lincoln Yards. In this photo, what appears to be an ordinary walkway in a natural area is actually a boardwalk that’s floating on the water surrounded by native plants growing on rafts which also are afloat.
Episode 30: Privilege & Inequality in Animals
Aug 02, 2022
Guest Jenn Smith says that human concepts of intergenerational wealth and inequality occur also in the behaviors of animals. Privilege itself isn’t new–but it’s novel and shocking to learn that humans aren’t the only species who pass along tangible assets to certain individuals in subsequent generations and consciously exclude others. Applying the term “privilege” to the animal kingdom shines a new light on animal culture–and our own.
“We see privilege popping up across the tree of life, not just in humans. When there are these legacies of exclusion within human societies, there needs to be some structural change to be able to address these issues.”
– Dr. Jennifer Smith is a behavioral ecologist and an assistant professor of biology at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
For a bigger perspective on similarities in humans and other non-human animals, read the book, “Wildhood: The Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals.” It was written by one of Jenn’s co-authors, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, and by Kathryn Bowers. You can buy it from an independent bookstore near you or order it from The Shape of the World’s favorite one in Chicago, 57th Street Books.
In addition to privilege, Jenn studies differences in cooperation between males and females in mammals and studies leadership in social mammals. To learn more about Jenn’s full body of professional work and interests, visit her lab’s website. (If you poke around there and look at the team page, you’ll find more cool photos.) Jenn’s scientific publications can all be found on Google Scholar.
Additional Note: The Shape of the World’s interview with Jenn Smith was conducted in spring of 2022. Although Jenn was a biology professor at Mills College in Oakland at the time of that interview, from now on, if you want to take classes with Jenn or have her be an advisor for your PhD, you’ll find her in a new position in the biology department at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. (We just wanted to make that clear in case you get incredibly inspired by what you hear in the episode.)
A California ground squirrel mother and her young offspring greet each other in a friendly exchange at Jenn Smith’s long-term behavioral ecology field project Briones Regional Park in the San Francisco Bay Area. . [Photo by Jenn Smith]
Spotted hyenas forming a coalition at the Maasai Mara Reserve in Kenya, East Africa. Individual hyenas inherit their social rank from their mother. The young pups learn where they are in the pecking order through associative learning (also called classical conditioning.) The young don’t innately know whether they’re supposed to eat first or last; they have to be taught. The social rank of each individual influences their destiny, privileging some over others. [Photo by Kate Yoshida]
Episode 29: Disruption & Resilience
Jul 25, 2022
When Jane Watson encountered a ruined meadow of seagrass in the ocean, instead of getting furious, she grew curious. As a marine biologist, Jane knew that hidden in the story of decimated seagrass, there had to be something in the relationship between it and its destroyer—sea otters—that wasn’t immediately obvious. Something layered and complex. In this episode, we explore how sometimes disruption can be valuable not just for the one doing the disrupting but for the organism being disrupted.
“Some of the best science that’s done today comes through natural history. It comes through people having their eyes open and being wide open to new ideas.”
– Dr. Jane Watson is a professor emeritus of biology at Vancouver Island Institute in British Columbia. Her research focuses on marine ecology and marine mammal biology.
How to Find Out More About Jane Watson’s Projects
Watch this video from the Hakai Institute. A) because it’s beautiful and you’ll feel uplifted by seeing it, and B) because in it, Jane Watson explains the relationship of sea otters and kelp. It helps fill out some details missing from the episode, gives a bigger picture of the relationship of marine plants with sea otters.
Read this article, which includes a photograph of Jane and Dr. Erin Foster, the lead author of the study. (Erin is mentioned in the episode.) Erin is a research associate at the Hakai Institute, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to coastal studies and conservation, and Erin gets mentioned in this episode. (To hear Erin tell her version of events, listen here.)
Read this article in National Geographic about Jane’s and Erin’s work, and this one, from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. The latter has gorgeous photos of otters, including one of an otter “raft,” a phenomenon that Jane describes in the episode.
Jane is an emeritus professor at Vancouver Island Institute, and you can find more about her full body of professional work here.
For sea otters, the family unit consists solely of a single mother and a single pup. [Photo by Michael L. Baird]
Eelgrass and other seagrasses are imperiled worldwide. They’re important as a food source for sea turtles; they filter harmful pollution and bacteria from the water; and the habitat they create serves as a nursery for many fish and crustaceans. [Photo by Evie Fachon]
Note: Shape of the World’s interview with Jane Watson was conducted November, 2021.
Season Five Coming Soon
Jun 23, 2022
Season Five Will Launch July 2022
New episodes, new guests, new insights about nature and our built environments are coming soon. And more on how we can live together–with nature, with cities and with one another. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app or check back here.
Episode 28: The Wild Card
Jun 16, 2021
Sarah Cowles encourages radically rethinking the synthetic landscapes found in cities. When welcoming nature to our human cities, do we aim for an artificial remaking of what once was there? Or do we go with the plants that long to grow there now, the ones that are perfectly suited to take on land that was once paved?
Sarah named her landscape architectural studio “Ruderal,” a biological term applied to plant species willing to grow in wastelands. Several years ago, Sarah established Ruderal after leaving the United States and going to live and work in the nation of Georgia. In episode 28, she talks about how the Soviet Union was dedicated to sustaining “big health landscapes,” large outdoor spaces intended to heal and renew—and what that legacy now looks like up close and in person in Georgia.
“We so finely tune infrastructures to the nth degree but what if we put a little bit extra in there as a kind of wild card? I wish more people could see the potential of setting aside a little bit of surplus.”
–Sarah Cowles, Director of Ruderal, a landscape architecture studio in Tbilisi, Georgia
How to Find Out More About Sarah Cowles’ work
Ecologists use the term ruderal, from the Latin rudus (rubble), to describe disturbance-adapted species,” writes Sarah Cowles. “Ruderal species embody the unruly, tenacious, and opportunistic qualities of vegetation. They are metaphorically paradoxical: indexing catastrophe and abandonment, yet conversely representing resilience and renewal.” [Paper presented to and published by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, available here.]
This is the website for Ruderal; you can sign up for newsletters there. On Ruderal’s Instagram, you can see photos of Arsenal Oasis, the project Sarah describes in the episode. @_ruderal_ Facebook @ruderaltbilisi Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company/ruderal
What Didn’t Make It Into the Episode But Is Important To Know About Georgia
This didn’t quite make our final cut, but it’s important not to ignore the fact that within Georgia, more than a quarter-million people have been displaced from their homes and their land during several conflicts that have flared up in the nation’s relatively brief post-Soviet history. Here’s one seven-minute audio piece on the subject that gives a taste of what’s been going on.
In the unedited interview conducted for this show, in the context of our discussion of the resorts, Sarah said, “After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the resorts fell into disrepair. And then others were repurposed by displaced persons from the different conflicts in the nineties and the early two thousands. So some of the ethnic Georgians who had to leave Abkhazia and South Ossetia moved into those resort buildings and hotels. And since then, some have been upgraded and their conditions have slightly improved, but displacement is an ongoing crisis.”
Sarah Cowles at the Sycamore Pool of the Arsenal Oasis. The project, designed and built by Ruderal for the 2020 Tbilisi Architecture Biennial and discussed extensively in this episode, was recently shortlisted for the LILA International Public Landscapes Award.
Giorgi Nishnianidze, Giorgi Vardiashvili and Elia Katamadze of Ruderal stand near the rainbow Sarah describes in the episode. It’s formed by the spray from a broken water main that provided the genesis for Ruderal’s project at Arsenal Oasis in Tbilisi, Georgia.
The Salt Mountain Disturbance: Brine Dam” Xerox transfer and colored pencil on paper. on Arches paper. 22 in x 30. 2008. Drawing depicting brine flow impoundment and salt stockpile on the former railyard and ruderal forest in Columbus Ohio. Artwork by Sarah Cowles.
Episode 27: The World Is Not Static
Jun 03, 2021
Dr. Caitlin Rankin’s research shows that a long-held theory about why an ancient civilization passed out of existence was wrong. Cahokia Mounds in southwestern Illinois was the site of the largest city in North America and at the pinnacle of its population in 1150, was larger than London or Paris. But over two centuries, its population waned.
Until Caitlin’s research findings found otherwise, a prevailing theory had been that residents of Cahokia caused the problem themselves; they caused the location to become uninhabitable because of poor environmental practices. But Caitlin’s examination of sediments on the site found evidence this wasn’t the case. “The people who lived in North America before the Europeans—they didn’t graze animals, and they didn’t intensively plow. We look at their agricultural system with this Western lens, when we need to consider Indigenous views and practices,” Rankin said in National Geographic magazine. (Article by Glenn Hodges, April 12, 2021).
“Sometimes you need to be careful to ask the right question because you already have assumptions built in to the questions you’re considering.”
– Caitlin Rankin, PhD, RPA Research Geoarchaeologist Illinois State Archaeological Survey
How to Find Out More About Caitlin’s work
Read her academic publication in the journal Geoarcheology. For a less-technical piece, read the article in the New York Times or this one from Washington University in St. Louis (the institution where Caitlin began this line of research when she was a graduate student.
How to Find Out More About Cahokia Mounds
Why not visit and see the site for yourself? Fly into St. Louis, which is only a half-hour from the historic site. Here’s some information. You could combine it with a longer trip to visit other ancient historic sites (including other mounds) in the Midwest; or make it part of a longer trip exploring the Mississippi River. In Illinois, Route 96 hugs the shores of this vast river valley for many miles. Hill prairies thrive on the bluffs.. (Late April and early May are a good time to visit to see spring ephemeral wildflowers, and any day in October is a good time for fall foliage.) 96 is one section of the Great River Road that stretches from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
Additional Information
Note from Jill: “During the interview, when I asked Dr. Rankin about other cities and comparisons of their sizes simultaneous to the period of thriving for Cahokia, she and I spoke about London and Paris. (Two examples of cities that existed concurrently and that were much smaller than Cahokia.) What she and I didn’t cover (because I didn’t get around to asking!) was that during that same period, there were cities on Earth that surpassed Cahokia in size. These included (but weren’t limited to) Constantinople, Baghdad, and Kaifeng.”
Samples of sediments from Cahokia Mounds await analysis in Dr. Caitlin Rankin’s laboratory.
A study site at Cahokia Mounds. Here you can see a hint of the different layers of sediments as Caitlin described it in the podcast.
Soil is brought to the surface for close examination.
The research work site at Cahokia Mounds.
Episode 26: Bees Understand the Concept of Zero
May 20, 2021
Dr. Scarlett Howard’s research on cognition of honeybees got a lot of media attention when in 2018, she published a paper that showed bees can understand the concept of zero. How Scarlett came to prove this is one of the things we discuss in this episode. The importance of zero is a topic we cover in this same episode with help from Faruck Khan, a mathematician who teaches at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.
Scarlett is currently working on understanding the effect of urbanization on native and introduced bee species in Australia. Is the presence of people possibly beneficial to some bees? Detrimental? No one yet knows. Her research explores conceptual learning, neurobiology, and visual perception in honeybees as well as insect diversity, pollinator preferences, and plant-pollinator interactions.
“There are really interesting comparisons we can make between humans and bees, especially considering that we’re separated by over 600 million years of evolution from them. And yet we’re able to do similar things, sometimes in similar ways.”
– Scarlett Howard, PhD, Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia
How to Find Out More About Bees & Zero
“It’s been said that the development of an understanding of zero by society initiated a major intellectual advance in humans, and we have been thought to be unique in this understanding. Although recent research has shown that some other vertebrates understand the concept of the ‘empty set,’ Dr. Howard’s work shows that an understanding of this concept is present in honey bees. This finding suggests that such an understanding evolved independently in distantly related species that deal with complexity in their environments, and that it may be more widespread than previously appreciated.” So says a 2018 article in Science Magazine that put Scarlett and her work on the map. It’s one of the better places to glean details about the experiments and results. For a less technical rendition, see the article from the New York Times or this one from Quanta Magazine.
In the full interview, Scarlett emphasized that she isn’t working in isolation. Other scientists are working on bee cognition; Dr. Adrian G. Dyer is one of several close collaborators, and the team also includes behavioral researchers, statisticians, color and vision scientists, photographers and theoretical physicists.
How to Find Out More About Scarlett Howard’s Work
To keep up with new information coming out of Scarlett and her colleagues’ work, follow her on Twitter. @TheBeesearcher.
How to Help Scarlett Howard in A Community Science Project
If you live in Australia, check out Bees At Home, a citizen science effort where you upload photos of bees you see out in the wild or in your backyard to Flickr using the hashtag #beesathome. In Australia there over 2,000 species of native bee species yet relatively little is known about them. Each bee photo is a data point that helps Scarlett and her colleagues uncover more information about native bee behavior and distribution. You can follow Bees at Home on Twitter @BeesAtHomeAus, and Facebook.
Here we see a female bee confronting the Existential Void of Nothingness. Or perhaps in this photograph, she’s actually being caught right in the midst of figuring out Scarlett’s math problem. The bee might be thinking, “Is something with no spots upon it at all representing a number that’s smaller than a card that has spots? Or is this something else entirely? Can ‘nothing’ be considered ‘less than,’ or is this a blank slate utterly without meaning?”
This is what the math experiments look like. Bees see cards with different amounts of spots on them and are rewarded with sugar water for choosing the correct answer. Here, they’re learning to discriminate between lower and higher quantities.
Lasioglossum lanarium, a species of bee native to Australia. Scarlett Howard works with honeybees for the math experiments, but is interested in learning more about Australia’s native bees as well. Honeybees aren’t native—in fact, they’re a domesticated species.
Bees At Home is a community science competition to map native bees across Australia. People send in photos and win prizes.
Episode 25: Think Beyond the Possible
May 13, 2021
Tony Hiss’s new book, “Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth,” lays out both the urgency for and possibility of protecting 50 percent of the Earth’s land by 2050. This will save millions of species and slow climate change. Tony Hiss discusses what this might look like if it were to happen and he also reflects on his own interesting life and travels.
For thirty years, Tony was a staff writer at The New Yorker. In 1999, Tony wrote a memoir that reflected on what it was like to grow up as the son of Alger Hiss, a government lawyer in the State Department accused of espionage. “He actually went to jail for four years or so,” Tony says of his father. “And he would write me as a way of staying in touch. He’d say, ‘I’m not going to be able to get to Central Park this year, I wish you would go up there and be my eyes and ears.’ That tuned my senses. Writing him letters was probably the reason I became a reporter.”
“Protecting biodiversity is a scramble, still a daunting task, but it looks like something that’s within our reach. I find that extraordinarily hopeful and encouraging.”
– Tony Hiss, Author
How to Find Out More About the “Half Earth” Proposal
The wonderful writer and scientist E.O. Wilson is someone who really embodies what Tony Hiss talks about in the show: a “planetary feeling.” He’s behind the Half-Earth Project, an organization promoting this concept.
How to Find Out More About Tony Hiss
Read his books! Tony has written fifteen of them and they’re all in print from major presses and easy to find.
Also you might be interested in reading this review of Tony’s book in the Wall Street Journal.
How You Can Help Save Half the Earth
Here are five things you can do that will matter. Think about accomplishing two. One is to contribute to the organization that’s working hard on making this concept a reality, and the other is to do something directly. You know yourself, and you’ll know which of these you’re best suited for:
Contribute $ to the Half-Earth Project. Do it here.
Seek out a local effort in your community that is physically restoring a natural area. In Chicago, here’s one and here’s another one. Find a group or agency that is cutting brush or pulling weeds or planting seeds or monitoring a population of an endangered species and go out and volunteer your assistance.
Promote educational initiatives that connect students and adults with the natural world and that encourage them to take a tiny step toward becoming a conservation steward.
Advocate for conservation action and collaboration within your community—we here at The Shape of the World can’t know what that looks like for you precisely, but often it’s attending meetings related to city planning and zoning decisions and starting to understand how decisions get made. Over time, you can work your way into participating in committees and commissions that make decisions. Or if that’s not your thing, then you can be a thoughtful advocate who speaks up at meetings. You might be surprised by how easy this is—usually because only a handful of people ever take the time to do any type of citizen involvement at the municipal or county level. And that’s where the rubber really hits the road on this enterprise of protecting biodiversity. People who live near natural areas (or open spaces that potentially could become restored and protected natural areas) have to be paying attention.
Expand the Half-Earth movement culture by sharing your commitment with friends and family and encouraging them to join you in signing the Half-Earth Pledge.
Tony Hiss’s most recent book is available now, published by Penguin Random House.
Mark Anderson and Tony Hiss at Sanderson Brook Falls in 2018
This is a photo Tony took of the trees he describes in the podcast episode, the ones blooming behind his Greenwich Village apartment. ”The top half of this view is all sky — a great, arching, almost Western-sized sky,” he wrote in the book, The View from Alger’s Window. “Below the sky and neighboring rooftops, there’s a forest-canopy view of a miniature orchard of ten ornamental Japanese crab apple trees.”
Episode 24: Humans Need Nature
Aug 14, 2020
Architect Jeanne Gang has an explicit intention to make the human built environment as kind as possible for birds, nature, wildlife and the Earth’s atmosphere. Jeanne’s breakthrough moment was the design of Aqua, a residential tower in Chicago. Opened in 2009, Aqua was the tallest building ever designed anywhere in the world by a female architect. Jeanne conducted personal research and analysis to invent design features that would make Aqua less likely to be a building where birds strike the glass and perish.
International design awards and prestigious commissions piled up for Studio Gang after Aqua. In June of 2020, Phaidon press issued a new monograph on Studio Gang. The high profile Gilder Center, a new wing on the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is currently under construction. This fall, the first residents of Vista Tower—a new hotel and condominium building taller even than Aqua—will move into new homes in the bird-friendly building.
“I’ve always thought about not only humans but also the other living things around us as part of our realm, one that we can work with and relate to… Many animals live in social societies, and I believe that we are driven by social relationships. We are animals, and we need to better understand our co-inhabitants on the planet.”
– Jeanne Gang is an architect and the founder of Studio Gang, an architectural design firm located in Chicago, Paris, San Francisco and New York.
What Jeanne Has to Say About How Her Practice Works
“I’m an architect, but the way that I see our practice working is similar to and parallel to the way an ecologist would work. We’re studying the relationships between living things and between us and our habitat, our planet, our cities. It’s about studying relationships and not the individual elements themselves… what we try to do is to design so that we facilitate better relationships, improve our relationships, between each other and the environment.” (Excerpt from podcast)
How to Find Out More About Jeanne’s Work
Visit her buildings, either virtually or in person. For more on the principles and insights that inspire her, watch these extraordinary short videos: Toward Terrestrial, Rhythm, and Flow. And check out the work of the French philosopher Jeanne mentions in the podcast, Bruno Latour.
You can also buy and read the Phaidon book on Studio Gang’s work from Seminary Coop Books (or your own local bookstore) and watch this video about it. Or watch her Ted Talk, “Buildings That Blend Nature and City”. Jeanne and Studio Gang have authored two books you can order from your local book store: Reveal (2011) and Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago’s Waterways (2011), the latter of which explored the possible reversal of the flow of the Chicago River, returning it to its original path.
And if, sadly, you live oceans away from any city where Jeanne has buildings, book a ticket to fly through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago five years from now. The design team led by Studio Gang was selected to design the airport’s new international terminal.
How Can I Help Make the Built Environment Better for Nature, Too?
If you live in Chicago, ask your alderman and the Mayor to support the Chicago Bird Friendly Design Ordinance. Chicago is a major fly-through-and-rest-awhile zone for migrating birds in both spring and fall. For thousands of years, birds have taken this same journey—but now big tall buildings sticking up in the sky cause the birds to sometimes smack into them. In the past, this was no one’s fault exactly—no one intended to put something up that killed birds. As Jeanne Gang has proven, if architects avail themselves of the knowledge that is out there on why birds collide with buildings, steps can be taken in the design stage that will prevent it from happening.
This type of thing may sound small but it’s not. In the podcast, Jeanne Gang talks about why having citywide regulation is so important. Find out what’s going on in your own city—and if the answer is nothing, think about how to start something up.
EPISODE 23: Cutting Through the Noise On Climate: How to Do Something That Matters, Do It Consistently, and Then Move On with Your Life
Jul 24, 2020
Climate change is scary. The magnitude of the problem makes it hard for people to commit to direct action to solve it, hoping instead (reasonably but perhaps impractically) that government will do the work. The actions we as individuals do manage are spurred by sporadic panic: when there’s a catastrophic storm or forest fire, one jumps into doing this and that to reduce emissions. But after the adrenaline subsides, our attention is then caught by some other crisis and we neglect climate change.
This is entirely understandable and normal. But how do we counteract it? Just because something is a natural tendency doesn’t mean we should give into it. How can one replace inertia with calm, consistent, unstoppable action? This episode has a concise solution that includes the carbon offset credit, a tool that our guest, Gabe Plotkin, helps us come to grips with.
“It’s impossible for everybody to have an off-the-grid, zero emission existence. We are all going to go about our lives and create emissions. What we say at Tradewater, what we encourage people to do is reduce what you can—by driving less, taking the train when you can, taking a train instead of flying—reduce where you can, and offset the rest.”
– Gabe Plotkin is the Chief Operating Officer of Tradewater, a company that improves the environment and creates economic opportunity through the collection, control, and destruction of potent, high impact greenhouse gases.
How to Find Out More About Tradewater & Carbon Offset Credits
More about carbon offset credits and why destroying the gases in refrigerants is critical to reaching drawdown—the time when the carbon load in the atmosphere levels off and begins to decline—can be found here.
To offset your household’s or your business’s greenhouse gas emissions, go here, to the Tradewatwer website. It takes only a few minutes. If you know yourself well and are pretty experienced in knowing that you get annoyed by too many options, don’t bother with the carbon calculator on the right hand side of the screen. Instead, use the left-hand side of the screen where you enter a straightforward dollar amount. The average household in America emits 20 tons of carbon a year, just go with that and pay $300. If you want to do more and can afford to offset both your home and someone else’s, enter $600. If you live in a small apartment in a large city, don’t own a car, and suspect you emit only half the greenhouse gases of the average household, enter $150. Or if you want to cover only one ton of emissions or maybe want to give that as a gift to someone, one ton is $15.
There are many websites from other reputable businesses like Tradewater that offer carbon offsets. But the point of this episode of our podcast was to reduce the volume of choices a person faces. Having an excessive number of options stands in the way of making a decisive, ethical action to make the world a better place. That’s why we recommend one specific website rather than saying something more general, like “shop around.”
HOW TO MAKE BIG CHANGES
Underneath the “reduce your emissions” mandate lie a series of essential soft skills. Without having the underlying abilities to make a significant change in behavior, someone typically starts off with enthusiasm and then trails off over time. It leaves a good-intentioned person feeling that they failed to follow through on something they genuinely care about.
The sources we recommend here help not just with reducing greenhouse gas emissions but with making any type of behavioral change. They explain why doing something small and repeating the action consistently is the most assured path to keeping the promises we make to ourselves. These books break down the science of how to adopt a new good habit or drop a poor one: “The Slight Edge” by Jeffrey Olsen; “Atomic Habits” by James Clear; and “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. Being able to follow through on something isn’t a personality trait; it’s a skill that can be taught, practiced and learned.
Episode 22: The Grace of Going Unseen
May 27, 2020
Akiko Busch is well-known for her writing on design and culture. Her essays continue to touch on those subjects although increasingly, it incorporates—or directly addresses—the natural world. Her books include The Incidental Steward, where she tries out and writes about various citizen science opportunities: pulling invasive weeds, helping gather data for research, and conducting ecological monitoring; and Nine Ways to Cross a River, where she attempted to swim across (and observe and meditate upon) nine wild American rivers.
For twenty years, Akiko was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine where she wrote about furniture, houses, and home design. “For me, writing about design was always about writing about a sense of fit,” she says. “How a spoon fits the hand. How a human body fits a chair. Or how a house fits a landscape, and how human beings can find a sense of fit with the natural world.”
“We live in a time and culture that value display and are largely indifferent to the virtues of passing unnoticed. It is time for all of us to reconsider the beauty, elegance and imagination that can come with being unseen.”
– Akiko Busch, author of several essay collections, is on the faculty of the MA Design Research program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is a visiting faculty member at Bennington College.
How to Find Out More About Akiko’s Work
The best way to learn more about Akiko is to buy and read her wonderful books. The one that inspired this episode of The Shape of the World was How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. Get her books from your local bookseller or you can purchase them online from The Shape of the World’s favorite bookstore.
You can find Akiko’s work in many other places, too. Read her New York Times essay on invisibility and her New York Times essay on the joys and lessons of swimming in wild rivers. (“Just Beneath The Surface”) In addition to invisibility, we spoke about water during the interview and in the future, will incorporate some of that content into another episode. So look for that!
Something Cool from Akiko’s Book
In How to Disappear, Akiko discusses Invisible Mending, a short film made by the South African artist, William Kentridge. You can watch it here in its two-minute entirety—go ahead and click the link, it’s worth it. Akiko’s book is full of gems: artists to look at, authors to read, and other bits of culture to explore, pursue and marvel over.
Correction
In this episode, Jill mentions that certain types of baby birds disguise their scent when predators are nearby. What she was thinking about was something she learned from David Sibley’s book, What It’s Like to Be a Bird. But she misspoke; it’s the adult birds, not the babies. During his interview with The Shape of the World in April, 2020, David Sibley said, “I was stunned to learn that ground-nesting birds become odorless when sitting on their nest. The chemical composition of the oil that they use to preen their feathers changes. It becomes a compound that is odorless. So while the adult bird is sitting on the ground incubating eggs, the nest is camouflaged by an absence of odor.”
A Note On How This Podcast was Recorded
While recording this interview, both Jill and Akiko were sheltering in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it’s not uncommon for podcasts and radio programs to have speakers in two different locations, the current situation is different. Instead of being in separate studios with good equipment, both host and guest record in their homes on laptop computers. Ralph Loza, the show’s audio producer, listens on Skype and helps troubleshoot problems.
You may have noticed on shows besides ours—including even huge commercial talk shows on television—that the sound quality is iffy these days. We just wanted to let you know why and how we’re adapting. We sacrifice perfect sound quality to preserve the health of the host, the guest, and everyone we might come in contact with if we were to record in a studio. Some episodes this season (the ones that sound better!) were recorded before sheltering started.
Photos from Iceland, which the 10th chapter of Akiko’s book on invisibility discusses. “The Icelandic people live with an invisible population called the Huldufolk, remnants of Celtic mythology perhaps, but still very much present in the country’s cultural imagination. So the little cabin in the crease of the hills is where a Huldufolk family was said to live. The little girl in the adjacent farmhouse played with them…. And the rocky outcropping is called Alphaborg, believed by many to be the home of Borghildur, a queen of the hidden people,” she wrote, describing these photos. “There is something about the idea of the natural landscape being home to a hidden population, along with all the other things we cannot see, that speaks to me.” Photo by Akiko Busch
Each summer for the past eighteen years, Akiko has organized a group swim across the one-mile wide Hudson River. “This river picture is not a dramatic one, but rather one of quiet access to the river, its waterweeds, a place that speaks to how the Hudson can indeed be a place to swim,” she writes. Photo by Akiko Busch
Episode 21: The Coat & the Goat
May 13, 2020
Andrew Robichaud explores the peculiar coexistence of people and farm animals in America’s cities. In the 1800s, it wasn’t unusual for men wearing top hats and formal attire to stride down tony Manhattan avenues right next to goats and cows. After the Civil War, treatment of domesticated animals and our cultural view of what animals might be thinking and feeling changed dramatically. “During that period, reformers were looking to rebuild a certain set of social relationships by improving how people related to animals and therefore how they’d relate to one another,” Robichaud says.
With intervention, animals’ lives improved. Fewer animals lived in cities. Most were better suited to farm life.
But an unintended byproduct was that direct contact between humans and animals became more infrequent. Today, it’s so rare for most urban dwellers to see a cow or a pony that they’re kept in zoos next to lemurs and penguins.
“American cities in the 19th century were ecologically diverse places, invariably made up of a multitude of domesticated, semidomesticated, and undomesticated species.”
– Andrew Robichaud is Assistant Professor of History at Boston University, where he teaches courses in American history.
How to Find Out More About Andrew’s Work
The best way is to buy his wonderful book, Animal City: The Domestication of America at your local bookseller, or you can purchase it online from The Shape of the World’s favorite bookstore, in Hyde Park in Chicago. It’s also available from the publisher, Harvard Press.
Other ways to learn more: if you’re a student at Boston University, you can take one of Andrew’s classes. (Lucky you!) If you’re just a regular non-student type person, follow Andrew on twitter at @aarobichaud and visit his website. If he is giving a lecture or making some other sort of public appearance, he’ll post it there.
Andrew’s next book project is tentatively titled On Ice: Transformations in American Life, and is a history of America’s economic and cultural “ice age” in the nineteenth century.
Episode 20: The Weirdest Way
May 06, 2020
Dr. Katy Greenwald has a longstanding interest in puzzling out the success and persistence of North America’s “gene thieves,” the unisexual (all female) Ambystoma salamanders. These salamanders have what is without a doubt the world’s weirdest known form of reproduction. Opportunistic unisexual female salamanders swipe the sperm of males from other species, resulting in offspring with many different genome combinations. Something thought to be well-understood—sexual reproduction—turns out to be much wilder than we knew.
“Sexual reproduction is sort of an evolutionary mystery”
– Dr. Katy Greenwald is Associate Professor of Biology at Eastern Michigan University and studies conservation genetics of reptiles and amphibians.
How to Find Out More About Katy’s Work
Watch “The Unisexuals: A Story of Salamanders and Sex”. This video was made by Science Friday, a show on National Public Radio. A short piece on Science Friday about Katy’s work spurred us to contact Katy for an interview where we could find out more. Katy does a great job describing the clever ways of the unisexual mole salamander on The Shape of the World, but we totally love this video for helping fill in the visual detail.
Visit Katy on Twitter, @amphibs.
Visit the website for Katy’s lab. The unisexual salamanders are almost a side project. The majority of the work done by Katy and her students is around using DNA analysis to assess how animals persist in areas dominated by human land use. They use molecular tools to answer ecological or conservation-related questions.
The original discovery of unisexual mole salamanders was described in 1992 by Jim Bogart, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario.
Episode 19: Different Kinds of Aliveness
Apr 29, 2020
David Sibley started drawing birds at age five and never stopped. Having an ornithologist father and being around his father’s friends, all of whom were also interested in birds, made birdwatching seem an ordinary thing all grown men did. “Roger Tory Peterson, the father of the modern field guide, lived about twenty miles away from us and I met him a few times when I was a kid,” David says. “He made a living writing field guides—it seemed to me it was just something people do. A normal career path I could choose.”
David went on to do exactly that. His books on how to identify birds and trees have sold over a million and a half copies because they’re so darned good. What makes them great is the detail of the illustrations and the voice that comes through in both text and pictures; you have the sense that the author isn’t trying to show off knowledge but really is trying to help you. Like a good teacher who demonstrates a few different ways to approach a math problem, Sibley field guides provide different views and numerous clues about what a bird might be. David understands that out in the field you won’t always see all of a bird at any one time—life is imperfect—and that’s okay.
“Drawing is a great way to focus, to really force you to look closely at something. For me, drawing was a way of studying birds, a method. The art and the science are inextricably linked.”
– David Allen Sibley is the author and illustrator of a series of books about birds, birding, and tree identification.
How to find out more
David Sibley’s new book, “What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing–What Birds Are Doing, and Why” is an attempt to enter the mind, body and emotions of birds while they’re engaged in the various acts of being alive. It is full of facts on how different species of birds perceive the world, tell time, rest, eat and make decisions. This is the “it” book of 2020 for anyone interested in the many different ways there are to live.
EPISODE 18: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Change the World
Apr 22, 2020
Structural geologist Marcia Bjornerud was raised by free-thinking parents who instilled in her a love of books and nature. She’s published many professional papers (read mainly by experts in the field) and two popular books that, in the opinion of this podcast, ought to be read by every inhabitant of our planet: “Reading the Rocks” (2005) and “Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Change the World.” (2018). The first is an awe-inspiring, sometimes amusing and always relatable way of understanding the Earth itself. The second shows us a way to live on the Earth that respects how remarkable this planet is. Acquiring a better grasp of our planet’s long history is what Marcia describes as “timefulness.” The concept of timefulness pushes back against the narrow perspectives and super-short time frames in which our modern societies generally operate. We each tend to think of our everyday life as singular, without precedent. Yet our lives are built upon a long history of processes set in motion billions of years ago. If we can exercise some self-control, life on Earth can roll comfortably on for another billion.
“Thinking like a geologist is about expanding our time frame, not seeing ourselves as the center of the cosmos, learning patience, understanding what lasts and what doesn’t.”
– Dr. Marcia Bjornerud is Professor of Geosciences and Environmental Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She conducts structural geology field research in Norway, New Zealand, arctic Canada, Italy and the Lake Superior region.
How to Find Out More
Read Marcia’s books. Order them from your favorite local bookstore, or from ours. The 57 th Street Bookstore and the Seminary Co-Op shops in Chicago are independent booksellers that serve readers locally and worldwide. You can find the two of them together online here.
In the podcast, Marcia talks about the Surtsey volcano. This could be the exact same film Marcia describes having seen in grammar school.
Marcia Bjornerud in front of what she calls her dream house in the Italian Apennines, not far from the famed Carrara Marble quarries. In fall of 2016, she taught a semester-long field course in the Marche region and returned to the United States around the time of the 2016 Presidential election. That election and its outcome was a major catalyst for her to write the book “Timefulness.”
EPISODE 17: How To Stay Safe From Coronavirus In The Outdoors
Apr 07, 2020
Even though the coronavirus pandemic is keeping 226 million Americans and one third of the world sheltering in place, stepping out for fresh air is still allowed. But what’s safe? How far apart do we need to be when we’re outside? Can the virus survive in wind, rain and sun? The news media is packed with info on how to stay safe inside—but with the help of Dr. Doriane Miller, we present the latest findings on how best to behave outdoors in the midst of a pandemic.
Yes, you can go outside.
During the pandemic, the answer is an emphatic “no” to most questions of “can I do this?” But not for going outside to enjoy the trees, the sky, the flowers. Doctors on the preventative side of the coronavirus pandemic are encouraging patients to access the outdoors for exercise and for nature’s proven ability to diminish stress.
“Public health officials are promoting going outdoors in terms of helping people to stay healthy not just from a physical health aspect but from a mental health aspect as well,” says Dr. Doriane Miller, the physician at the University of Chicago Medical Center featured in this episode. “As long as they’re keeping what’s considered safe distancing.”
An internist at the at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Dr. Miller explains how the coronavirus protection rules we’re learning for how to behave indoors pertain to activities undertaken out of doors. Like many other physicians, in addition to her ordinary patient group, she’s helping serve those who may have COVID-19. “The University of Chicago hospital is a Level 1 Trauma Center on the south side of Chicago. And so if you get into a bad automobile accident if you’re someone subject to interpersonal violence and have been injured as a result of that, this is where you’d come,” she says. “We’re still taking those cases as well. Now, with CVID-19 layered onto that, the hospital continues to be a pretty busy place.”
When asked how those of us who aren’t the least bit medical can help the frontline care providers during the pandemic, Dr. Miller is very clear. It wasn’t “make us masks” or “come to the hospital and volunteer.” It was: “Take care of yourselves and your family with good hand-washing and social distancing. Do your best not to increase the load of sick patients.”
For a complete lowdown on how to be safe outside (and why these rules are effective) download this PDF compiled by The Shape of the World staff based on the interview with Dr. Miller.
The Shape of the World is partnering with our friends at Openlands to put this information in the hands of as many people as possible. Please share it with your friends. Your safety is critically important. And so is that of the people you love.
Episode 16: It’s Not All Going the Wrong Way
Jun 22, 2019
In Openlands, Jerry Adelmann joined an organization whose interests aligned perfectly with his own: nature, culture, historic preservation, social equity. Since then, Jerry has been a ninja nature practitioner who’s created art exhibitions about nature in Chicago, initiated and helped create national parks in America, and collaborated on cultural and natural protection plans in Asia. Those are just a few examples of the depth and breadth of Jerry’s and the organization’s influence. Openlands also plays an important role in the shaping of policy related to nature and planning.
“Everything we do we do in partnership,” says Jerry. “I’ve been so fortunate, so blessed, to work with amazing people.”
Jerry comes from a tradition of service and deep roots in the community. He’s part of a family that has lived in Lockport, a town slightly south and west of the city, for six generations.
“The formula for a great city is a combination of people and place. Great spaces, great architecture, great institutions are important, but the unique character of a community is also critical: Are the values inclusive? Do people feel welcome? Do they feel part of a bigger whole?”
– Gerald W. Adelmann is executive director of Openlands, a 56-year-old regional land conservation organization working in northeastern Illinois and parts of neighboring states. He is chairman of the Center for Humans and Nature and also chairs the City of Chicago Mayor’s Nature and Wildlife Committee. He has been an advisor in conservation and historic preservation projects in China since the early 1990s and, since 2008, in Myanmar.
How to Find Out More
“People have always been central to the mission of Openlands. It’s very much focused on social justice, social equity as much as it is as the quality of natural systems,” says Jerry. Here’s a video about the organization, one that gives a general overview.
The Land Trust Alliance recently interviewed Jerry, and here’s that link from Saving Land Magazine.
How You Can Help
Give a magnificent donation to Openlands (or if you must, a sweet and modest-sized offering) by clicking here.
If you are interested in trees—and who isn’t?—you can volunteer to become a TreeKeeper. The TreeKeepers learn how to help keep the urban forest growing strong. TreeKeepers learn a lot about the physiology of trees and what they need to survive, and then, in return for the training, they agree to spread the word. They become knowledgable ambassadors who teach their neighbors about trees. There are a number of TreeKeeper events each year, from small pruning workshops to large planting events.
Begun in 1991, the TreeKeepers program has trained more than 2,000 Chicago residents in how to care for trees and protect the urban forest.
Openlands has helped protect more than 55,000 acres of land in the Chicago metropolitan region, including the Lakeshore Preserve in Highland Park (shown here) as well as pubic parks, forest preserves, wildlife refuges, greenway corridors, urban farms and community gardens. It’s also a central part of the cultural life of the city, with projects that have included major art exhibitions at the Art Institute and in Millennium Park.
Episode 15: Promiscuity & Polka Dots
Jun 15, 2019
Janet Voight grew up in Iowa, far from the ocean. Yet as a young adult, she found her way to the study of marine organisms, especially the cephalopods: that strange and wonderful system that includes snails, clams, squids, nautilus, and octopuses. In this episode, we discuss the incredible intelligence and fascinating lives of octopus.
Janet conducts her research not just in a lab, but one–mile deep in the ocean. Sixteen times she’s journeyed down in a strange, deep-ocean vehicle that holds only three people and looks as if it would be at home in outer space. On the East Pacific Rise, she examines the creatures that live around the hypothermal vents at the bottom of the sea.
“I’ve always been fascinated by animals. That’s part of who I am. I was meant to be a zoologist.”
– Dr. Janet Voight is Associate Curator of zoology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and is a specialist in cephalopod mollusks, especially octopuses.
How to Find Out More
Octopus are only of the organisms Janet Voight is fascinated by. “I’ve named 20 species of wood-boring clams,” she writes in her Field Museum blog. “You wouldn’t think there’s 20 species of wood-boring clams in the world. Trees fall in the forest and some of them wash out to sea. The wood that sinks to the bottom of the ocean is colonized by clams that bore into it. They just spend their lives scraping away at wood that sunk to the bottom of the ocean. And this group of species can only survive on the sunken wood.”
Janet appears in a terrific video about the sequencing of the octopus genome, a team she was part of. Here’s another article about this breakthrough.
The video and Janet’s colleague Cliff Ragsdale’s alien metaphor was the source for that portion of the narrative in this podcast episode. The episode was also informed by this article in Scientific American by Peter Godfrey-Smith; you may also want to check out
, “Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness.”
Episode 14: Booms & Busts – Natural Cycles That Run the World
Jun 08, 2019
Dr. Jalene LaMontagne
When Dr. Jalene LaMontagne was growing up, her family moved every three to five years. “I was a military brat,” she says. For a while they lived in Cold Lake, Alberta, a very remote area in northern Canada. “Basically there was our house and community, and a park across the street and then we were surrounded by spruce forest.” Jalene and a group of friends played in a particular cluster of white spruce trees whose trunks grew close enough together that their branches provided protection from rain. That space turned into a fort, a clubhouse, and a place to reenact scenes from Star Wars. The species of white spruce seems to have followed Jalene around—or perhaps, inadvertently, she followed it. “When I was doing my PhD research, it was the only species in the whole valley. I was in the Yukon, in northern Canada and literally, it was the only conifer species in the entire area.” Today, Jalene alternates between her work on white spruce in remote, northern regions and urban work in the city of Chicago, where she researches how the availability of nesting sites and food influences wildlife species found in the city.
“As a population ecologist, I’m interested in a lot of different things and it’s all about the questions.”
– Dr. Jalene LaMontagne is Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at DePaul University, and is an Adjunct Scientist with the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Her research is concentrated on how patterns in plant and animal populations change across landscapes and how they’re impacted by their environments.
How to Find Out More
Working with graduate students and other collaborators, Jalene and her team tackle a variety of interesting questions at the LaMontagne Lab at DePaul University. If you would like to support the ongoing research in Jalene’s lab, you can make a contribution to the work that she and her students do. Go to this page to give online; and under “Other Funds” write in that you’d like to direct your gift to “Biological Sciences Department – LaMontagne Lab Research.”
Here’s the pine marten Jalene talks about in this episode. It was spotted in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, at one of the white spruce study sites.
The summer field crew in the Huron Mountains in the Upper Peninsula: Jalene and students from DePaul University. Graduate student Evan Cowles; Jalene LaMontagne, graduate student Abby Leeper; undergraduate student Hanna Kemp.
Episode 13: It’s Not Over Until the Tiny Fish Thinks
Jun 01, 2019
Most scientists study animals while they’re stationary. It’s a lot easier that way. But Melina Hale studies fish in motion. She wants to find out what’s happening inside their brains—and what signals are traveling through their system from brain to fin and fin to brain—that allow movement to occur. You wouldn’t necessarily think it, but the brain of a fish and the brain of a person have a lot in common. What the fish contemplates may be different from what we think about, but how we conduct the process of thinking is similar. So when Melina figured out how the startle reflex works in fish and which neurons control it, that also explained how humans startle. “These little three-millimeter fish provide a window into the brain that we couldn’t get at in any other way,” says Melina. When Melina’s sons were little, she would make guesses about what was happening inside their brains. “It was fascinating to watch the changes and how they were able to move,” Melina says. “From crawling to walking, I was associating it with what was happening in their spinal cords or neural circuitry.”
“We’ve had to be able to startle—to escape from stimuli—through the whole history of evolutionary time. It’s a really interesting question to figure out how we do that.”
– Dr. Melina Hale is the William Rainey Harper Professor in Organismal Biology and Anatomy and the College at The University of Chicago. Melina studies how animals move and how those movements are controlled by the brain. Melina is also a Vice Provost at the university and lives in Hyde Park with her husband, three kids and their dog.
How to Find Out More
A lot of other projects are underway at Melina’s lab at the University of Chicago, and you can learn about those here. She also is a research fellow at the university’s Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts—which is a cool place to know about in and of itself.
This article explains more about the breakthrough realization that the fins of fish have sensors that are sending signals to the brain and not just vice versa—something Melina talks about in the episode.
This video from the National Science Foundation provides a nice overview of Melina’s work, and how, as the Foundation puts it, “one tiny fish can teach us big ideas about how the brain’s circuitry works.”
Aquariums stacked up in Melina Hale’s laboratory. They’re filled not only with larval zebra fish; graduate students study biomechanics of various fish species.
Laboratories are more than just centrifuges, test tubes and ah-ha moments. Here’s one of the workspaces in Melina’s lab.
Melina and her team of grad students studied how the African Lungfish walks on its hind limbs. This species is likely related to the very first fish-like creatures that crawled out of the water and started to live on land. (Our ancestor!) This article in Scientific American explains more about that research.
Episode 12: “The Green Mentor”
May 18, 2019
Sylvie Anglin’s epiphany of how nature can integrate into both the curriculum and character of a classroom occurred the year she co-taught with Carol Brindley, a veteran teacher of first and second graders. Each student was given a flower bulb to plant in a pot indoors. “Every couple of days, the children would measure the growth, but they would also draw, they would look really, really closely at what was happening,” says Sylvie. “Ms. Brindley would push the children to draw exactly what was there, to take time to look carefully. It was a repeated connection in a relationship with nature—it wasn’t just a one-time thing. At the end, you could line up the drawings in a sequential order and watch how the bulb grew into a beautiful flower.” Sylvie’s interest turned to action. Each year in various classrooms, she incorporated repeated trips to one particular natural area, and assigned students the task of making field guides of plants and animals observed. Sylvie found ways to integrate those lessons into other aspects of that grade’s curriculum—and vice versa. “When I think about what schools should be and how we inspire kids, it’s not having a whole bunch of subjects that are separate from each other. It’s looking for how things connect.”
“The natural world provides children with unending questions.”
– Sylvie Anglin is Principal of the Lower School at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Prior to that, she was a classroom teacher at the school for thirteen years.
How to Find Out More
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools has additional images and information about outdoor education and sustainability here. There’s a nice video of storytelling by the firepit.
If you’re interested in the program Sylvie mentioned where she borrowed specimens from a museum and brought them into her classroom, that’s the Harris Learning Collection at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Educators can check out taxidermied birds andmammals and other items, like from a library. Teachers use the loaned items at school for short periods of time, and then return them to the museum.
Outdoor classroom at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Science teachers thought up the idea for having the outdoor classroom, but it’s used for all academic subjects. It’s also a place for convening older children at the school with young ones from nursery school through the school’s “buddy program.”
Use of the outdoor classroom continues in winter. Lab School’s founder, John Dewey, was a philosopher, and psychologist with progressive ideas about education. Dewey influenced social reform in the late 1800s and early 1900s. From its earliest days, Lab School had children moving fluidly between indoors and out. In 1938, Dewey wrote, “Today’s child is in danger of losing contact with primitive realities – with the world, with the space about us, with fields, with rivers, with the problems of getting shelter and of obtaining food that have always conditioned life and that still do.”
Episode 11: The Warm Glow of Helping
May 11, 2019
As a child, Peggy Mason was a biology prodigy. By the age of nine she was assisting the zoologist Dr. Charles Handley in teaching taxidermy at the Smithsonian. Today, as a neurobiologist, Peggy is still working with mammals but now she’s studying whether they experience empathy and act to help one another. Peggy was studying the subject of pain modulation until a post-doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, asked if she’d be interested in expanding her work to collaborate on a project about empathy. “I went over to see her that same day,” says Peggy, and the upshot was the discovery that like humans, rats have an aversion to witnessing the distress of others and a strong motivation to help someone else who’s suffering.
“It’s our biological mammalian inheritance to help. It’s not helping that’s the weird thing.”
– Dr. Peggy Mason is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. After twenty-five years studying the cellular mechanisms of pain modulation, Peggy expanded her lab’s work to focus primarily on the biological basis of empathy and helping. In addition to leading the research laboratory, Peggy is a committed teacher of neurobiology, teaching both formally (at the University) and informally, through her blog and a popular free, online course.
Want to Learn More, See More, Know More?
You’ll love this video from Nova that shows one rat deliberately setting free another rat that’s trapped. Later, the rat is confronted with the question of which to do first: save some rat it had never even met before, or wolf down the chocolate Peggy offered? Also, here’s the article in Science magazine.
How can I take a class with Peggy?
On Coursera, take “Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Every Day Life,” a free course taught by Peggy. Also you can gain more insights from Peggy by subscribing to her blog, which is fascinating and far-reaching in its subject matter.
Episode 10: When The Girl Frog Sings
May 04, 2019
When Johana Goyes Vallejos travelled to Borneo , she discovered that instead of boy frogs making all the noise—which is how things typically go in frog world—it was female voices piercing the night air. Loud and proud, female guardian frogs searched for and pursued males instead of the other way around. Johana also discovered that after the females laid eggs, their male mates stuck around and watched to make sure the eggs were safe. Then, once the tadpoles hatched, the dads did something extraordinarily sweet. The tiny tadpoles climbed onto their backs, and with offspring hanging on piggyback, the dads would take off. They hopped around the general vicinity until they located water bodies where the tadpoles could grow, and then they deposited the tadpoles in the water. Biologists call this sex role reversal, and while it’s not common, sex role reversal is fascinating. Studying its occurrences adds to a more complete picture of sex roles in animals.
“Nowadays, finding more and more examples of this big spectrum of behaviors should be a way to have an open mind about the diversity we can find. Not only among different systems or different species, but within species. Within our own species.”
– Dr. Lorem Ipsum, Morbi interdum mollis sapien. Sed ac risus. Phasellus lacinia, magna a ullamcorper laoreet lectus arcu pulvinar risus.
How to Find Out More About Johana’s Work
Johana is a postdoctoral research associate at the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas and here is her website. The New York Times wrote an article about Johana’s discovery, and here’s a video where Johana speaks about this part of her research. National Geographic has an article in Spanish about the findings.
Watch this video to the end—it’s worth it! You’ll see the male guardian frog watching eggs, and later the tadpoles climb aboard for their ride.
This male smooth guardian frog, Limnonectes palavanensis, is carrying tadpoles on his back. The males are the ones who provide parental care in this particular species. Johana discovered this at a biological field station in Brunei, a small country on the island of Borneo in the South Pacific.
Episode 9: A Deep Study of Quiet Land
Apr 27, 2019
Like most Chicagoans, Jin enjoyed Lake Michigan in a general way for many years. But because the lake is consistently present—a backdrop to the spectacle of the city—it’s possible for residents to forget the lake is even there. “At some point, I realized I wanted to get to know the lake better, and in order to do that, I needed to photograph it over a long period of time,” Jin says. For some artists, a summer might have sufficed. But part of Jin’s method is to make deep commitments to certain subjects. So, once a week for the next five years, she traveled to a single location on Lake Michigan so she could take photographs. “Part of what interests me is starting to pay attention to a certain thing and then therefore start to see it. Some of it has to do with curiosity, some with chance encounter,” Jin says. And sometimes the need to study something for a long time “has to do with the sheer complexity of the subject matter.”
“I am interested in beauty, and I find the landscape beautiful. But I want to make a landscape that’s more layered and complex. For me, that means having multiple kinds of emotions in the landscape, like the simultaneous presence of beauty and melancholy.“
– Jin Lee is a Chicago-based photographer whose project centers on forming a deeper relationship to places through close examination of their landscapes and built environments. A Professor of Art at Illinois State University, Jin has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Illinois Arts Council grant, and has had solo shows of her work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago Cultural Center, and Sioux City Art Center.
How To Find More Of & Know More About Jin Lee’s Work
Jill Riddell wrote an essay for a catalogue for Jin’s show, Wind & Prairie, that you can read here.
Jin is represented by Devening Projects in Chicago, and you can see photographs on her website. Also, she has a compelling Instagram, so check out @jinlee2019.
Great Water #23 – Photograph by Jin Lee
Weed #3 – Photograph by Jin Lee
Small Mountain #3 – Photograph by Jin Lee
Train View (Odell, IL) – Photograph by Jin Lee
Episode 8: First We Dream
Apr 20, 2019
The father of Philip Enquist was a rebel who didn’t appreciate shortly-cropped mowed lawns, and he allowed the grass in the front yard of their Southern California home to grow long. The neighbors didn’t share his aesthetic, and occasionally one or another of them couldn’t resist the temptation to show up and boldly mow the Enquist lawn. Eventually, Philip’s father moved the whole family away from suburbia out into the Mojave desert where there were no lawns. “Just native chaparral and native groundcovers,” Philip recalls. “That’s really where I was exposed to the beauty of natural landscapes: roadrunners, quail, and it was wonderful.”
“You might think when you first arrive in a city that there’s no nature. But it’s here, and it’s very interesting. It’s just fragmented. This century is the century to put things back together.”
– Philip Enquist is a consulting partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill where he led the urban designpractice for 20 years. He is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He currently serves as a Governor’s Chair for Energy and Urbanism at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Philip Enquist’s View Of The World
Philip studied architecture at the University of Southern California and went to work for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), first in California and later in Chicago. His architectural practice reflects an understanding that nature is the foundation for all society, all culture, and all economies. As the head of SOM’s Urban Design & Planning group, Philip had that in mind as he planned the infrastructure of cities: small plans, large plans, all over the world. “The challenge of reurbanization now is to continue to make cities more accessible and more affordable. How to make them more just and more equal so that we don’t ignore poor neighborhoods that really need support and investment,” Philip says.
Learn More About Seth’s Work
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Watercolor of Lake Michigan. A recent project led by Philip was a 100-year plan for the economic and environmental renewal of the Great Lakes region. Painting by Philip Enquist
The Mojave desert, where Philip grew up. Photo by Philip Enquist
Watercolor of a Tennessee landscape. Painting by Philip Enquist
Season Two Trailer
Apr 15, 2019
Host Jill Riddell explains the what, why and when of Season Two.
Episode 7: The Value of Audacious Thinking
Jun 02, 2018
Zero.When Mary Hennen was growing up, that was the total number of peregrine falcons living anywhere near her home in Chicago. Even in the wilder areas Mary would visit in summer, in Vilas County in northern Wisconsin, no peregrine falcons could be seen anywhere. In fact, in the nineteen sixties, these impressive birds had gone missing from the entire eastern half of the United States. But Mary recalls finding other connections to nature, and those helped lay a path that eventually led her to run the program that successfully brought populations of peregrine falcons back to life. “Some of my earliest memories of being four or five, I’d be in Vilas County walking the little boat road with my grandmother, looking under the tree to see if the little fawn was sleeping there,” Mary said. That time spent outdoors led Mary to get a degree in wildlife from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. In the nineteen eighties, she returned to Chicago and wound up becoming a key player in an audacious effort to bring peregrine falcons back from the brink of extinction.
“When you can spark an interest in a kid and get a kid thinking about the environment and things beyond, I find that thrilling.”
– Mary Hennen directs the Chicago Peregrine Program and is Assistant Collections Manager at the Field Museum of Natural History.
What Happened Next? Did Mary & The Others Succeed?
The conservation specialists on peregrine falcons had what sounded like a truly insane idea: reintroduce the birds not to wilderness areas but to large cities. In nature, when left to their own devices, peregrine falcons nest in canyon environments and for food, they eat other birds. The thinking was that in a city, tall skyscrapers could mimic canyon walls where the birds could nest, and a plentiful supply of pigeons could become the peregrines’ buffet.
This unpromising sounding plan totally worked. Not just slightly, but astonishingly well. Adults were fine with using ledges on buildings as places to nest, and they had no trouble finding one another, courting and mating. Their little fluffy chicks hatched out and fledged, no problem.
This year marked the 30th anniversary from when Mary spotted her first peregrine. “In 1988, I went to see that first peregrine nest site, the first one in the state of Illinois since 1951. The female was flying around the Sears Tower, going after a yellow-bellied sapsucker. My first sight of a peregrine was her in this phenomenal dive after another bird. It was just astounding.”
Today Illinois has around thirty known nesting territories for the falcons, with about twenty in or near Chicago. (Numbers and locations change slightly from year to year.) The program has been so successful that peregrine falcons have been officially removed from Illinois’ list of endangered species.
What If You Love Fast, Handsome Birds And Want To Help?
Mary’s ability to track how nesting sites are doing and where new nest spring up is dependent on the information she receives from people who live or work near peregrine nest sites or who happen by chance to see one when they’re out somewhere. Wildlife photographers have played a particularly key role in pointing Mary toward peregrines that nest in natural cliffs distant from Chicago.The most important thing you can do to assist the Chicago Peregrine Program is when you spot a falcon, be prepared to take down and report some information. Report the sighting to Mary, and if you can manage to take a photo that shows the band on the bird’s leg, that’s even better. Email the information to Mary at mhennen@fieldmuseum.org with a subject line of “Citizen peregrine report.”
Of course, stupendously large donations are an effective way to help as well. So feel free to go that direction. Send big bucks to the Field Museum of Natural History and tell them you want the money to go to the Chicago Peregrine Program. Or call the development office at the museum at (312) 665-7777.
Peyton does a dramatic flyby. This male peregrine and his mate hatched two chicks this year on the thirty-seventh story ledge of a building in downtown Chicago. Photo by Jill Riddell.
Each peregrine chick is given a band by Mary’s team. The metal bands are carefully sized to fit, they have no sharp edges, and they don’t affect anything about the bird’s ability to function. The practice of banding is centuries old and is essential to bird conservation. It helps us understand birds’ movements and habits. Photo by Stephanie Ware.
The vision of a peregrine falcon is fantastically good. They can see one mile and can track three moving objects at one time. If you’re in the vicinity of one calmly perched, the bird appears to make direct eye contact with you. Photo by Stephanie Ware
Episode 6: Women in the Garden
May 26, 2018
The person responsible for Kay Havens’ early interest in interest in science was female: her mother. Together, they collected, studied, and identified shells when Kay was young. But when it came time for Kay to choose a field of study in college, she first chose engineering. “That didn’t work,” she said, but soon after she developed a fascination with plants. Kay went on to a career in biology, and at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Kay runs a program that recruits young students to begin working in science from an early age, and that supports those students into early adulthood. “Botany has always been a field where women feel welcomed,” says Kay. “But it’s only a beginning because we really need to welcome other folks who’ve been underrepresented in the sciences as well. We’re trying to build a pathway for people.”
“I’m in awe of plants and their interconnections with the rest of the organisms they live with. They can’t speak for themselves so someone has to speak for them.“
– Kayri Havens is Director of plant science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she is also a senior scientist. She holds faculty appointments at Northwestern, Loyola, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
What To Do If You Want To Help Kay—and The World—know More About Plants & How They’re Faring
One great way is to participate in Budburst, a national citizen-science campaign where you agree to pay attention and record your observations each year about when plants begin to flower and produce new growth in the spring, and when they change color in the fall. Called “phenology,” these types of observation have been collected for centuries for various reasons. Farmers used the data to improve timing for planting; foragers found it helped them better estimate when desirable plants might be in the proper stage of growth for collection. Today, phenology is critical to help track the effects of global weirding (AKA climate change.)
To become part of a national network of plant conservationists and to lend your voice and support for good policies, join the Plant Conservation Alliance. You can join for free and be as involved as you want to be. On a philosophical note, about that world “involved:” it doesn’t mean you have to become the organization’s president or take on the planning of an annual conference; sometimes joining an organization like this one serves as a way to stay an informed, concerned and thoughtful citizen. (That’s not a small thing.)
What Else Is Out There On A Bigger Scale?
The Chicago Botanic Garden is an active player in Botanic Gardens Conservation International, a network of botanic gardens dedicated to saving threatened plants. This group is committed to helping the rest of us fully grasp that the continued existence of plants is intrinsically linked to global issues like poverty, hunger and human well-being.
This pretty flower is the Pitcher’s thistle, a plant researched by Kay Havens. The Pitcher’s thistle spends most of its life as a few leaves hugging the ground and then, after four or five years, it comes into bloom. The Pitcher’s thistle lives in the sandy dunes of Door County, Wisconsin.
Episode 5: One Strange Mountain
May 19, 2018
What would you do if you were required to catch something—an animal—that you knew nothing about. In the entire world, there was literally no one you could ask for help, not one person who knew any more than you did. All that was known for certain was that the animal was real, that it existed. You didn’t know what it ate. You didn’t know if there were a lot or a few. You didn’t know if it lived on the ground, under the ground, or up in trees. The first time biologist Larry Heaney went to the Philippines, this was the situation. Larry was hoping to locate a species of mammal that the world knew about from only one, lonely museum specimen. “It was initially really, really hard to figure out how to trap them,” Larry says. “There are skill sets involved in research that you never hear about.” Over the following decades, Larry would master those skills—and many more, resulting in the rediscovery of that mystery animal and the discovery of forty totally new species of mammals never before named or described. Most were found on Luzon, the most populated island in the Philippines. “Any biologist would be stunned to see the habitat. It’s so wonderful.”
“Hands-on experience is the way to learn. It really is.”
– Lawrence Heaney is the Negaunee Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and is on the faculty of the University of Chicago.
Curious To Hear An Unusual Origin Story?
Most of us stumble along a bit in figuring out what to do with our lives, but a lucky few really do seem chosen for a specific profession. Larry Heaney, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History was impossibly young, only fourteen, when he started working as a volunteer in the mammal division of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
During that time, the war in Vietnam was underway and the U.S. Navy had dispatched a team of scientists to study that country’s mammals. The biologists’ assignment was to study disease transmission, but while they were there, they discovered more than just pathogens. Under the tutelage of one of the Smithsonian scientists at the Smithsonian, Larry ended up spending his high school years unpacking animal specimens flown in from Vietnam. These included flying squirrels the size of cats, enormous tree squirrels, and tiny deer the size of miniature poodles. Larry was hooked. As an adult, Larry’s work has been a continuation of that early experience. His research today continues to focus on studying mammals from the island nation of the Philippines—an oceanic archipelago that counts Vietnam as one of its nearest mainland neighbors.
Want To Know More About Larry’s Work & How You Might Help?
Visit Larry’s page on the Field Museum website. Visit the Field Museum in person and walk through the Restoring Earth exhibit in the Abbott Hall of Conservation, a portion of which is about the museum’s work in the Philippines. Watch this video from that exhibit—it features Larry’s close collaborator and co-author Danny Balete.
To volunteer at the Field Museum, go to the website. To make a gigantic financial contribution—or, okay, if you insist, a reasonable-sized one—to Larry’s research in the Philippines, do it through the museum website or call (312) 665-7777.
Mt. Amuyao in the Cordillera Mountains of northern Luzon was one of the field sites for Larry Heaney and Danny Balete’s research.
This book is the first to be published on the diverse and splendid mammal populations of Luzon. Co-authored by Larry, Danny, and Eric Rickart and available through Amazon (and other places like the Field Museum’s gift shop, or through special order at your local bookstore..)
Episode 4: Secret in the Scented Night
May 12, 2018
Each weekend when biologist Krissa Skogen was a kid, she went with her family to a lake in western Minnesota. The six of them camped in tents on a small property where there was no cabin, no running water, and not even an outhouse—just a small shed for storing fishing rods. There, Krissa developed an early taste for nature and for something even more important: freedom. For entertainment, her family would go to nature centers where Krissa gravitated toward the plant identification books. “I’d try to figure out what was what based on the drawings. It’s hilarious to think about now, because it was so hard.” The books, she said, offered only vague, general categorizations that made it impossible to actually identify the species. “But there’s no question that’s why I do what I do today,” says Krissa. “It was spending so much time outside and having the opportunity of hours on end to figure something out.” Today, Krissa researches nocturnal pollination and what makes the scent of a flower at night so marvelously alluring—to insects, animals, and to us.
“The cool thing that connects the scientific community is we’re all working in our own little ways to advance knowledge and our understanding of the world.”
– Krissa Skogen, conservation scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden and adjunct professor in the program in Plant Biology and Conservation at Northwestern University.
The fragrant and fabulous evening primrose, one of Krissa’s study subjects shown here blooming in the nighttime air of the arid West. Photo: Skogen Lab
The hawkmoth is one of the pollinators that visit the evening primrose in the evening, after the sun goes down. Photo: Skogen Lab
Episode 3: The Forest of Surprise
May 05, 2018
After first considering life as a musician, Greg Mueller’s professional aspirations took a surprising turn when a college class introduced him to mushrooms in the forests of southern Illinois. He switched his interests from composers to decomposers, from Mozart to mushrooms. Thereafter, he became a biologist who specializes in fungi. . “A hundred thousand species of fungi are named and well-described,” Greg says. “But estimates are that there are a million to one point five million fungi species. Which means we know only five to ten percent of what’s out there.” Today, Greg is a practitioner of both mycology and management. He continues his scientific research while also leading the department of science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
“One of the fun things about science is you never get all the answers. Each experiment gives you a new set of questions.”
– Greg Mueller is the Negaunee Foundation Vice President of Science at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is on the faculty of the biology department at Northwestern University, and is a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History.
What to Do If You Love Mushrooms and Want To Know More
If you aren’t interested in eating mushrooms, just looking at them, you’ll be fine with buying a mushroom field guide and heading out into the woods on your own. But if you’re planning on eating mushrooms, find your local mushroom club and start going to meetings. You’ll learn best by consulting knowledgable people—and as an added bonus, the gatherings are a lot of fun.
To aid your efforts, you might want to acquire a copy of Greg Mueller’s book, Edible Wild Mushrooms either at the Chicago Botanic Garden’s gift shop, the local book store of your choice, or on Amazon. You can learn more about Greg’s work on his website and can contribute to the Chicago Botanic Garden’s scientific and conservation work by calling up the development office at (847) 835-6838.
How to Learn More About the Chicago Chanterelle
Together with Patrick Leacock from the Field Museum of Natural History, Greg recently discovered a new species of mushroom living in the third largest city in America. Along with Shape of the World host Jill Riddell, who volunteered for the project, they published the findings in 2016. This website on the Chicago chanterelle tells the full story.
The discovery of this new species of mushroom demonstrates the potential of cities for protecting biodiversity. Wild things live around us and among us.
Seth Magle is a biologist and the director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo. After finishing a dissertation on urban prairie dogs, Seth Magle started looking around at the astonishing number of species of wild animals that choose—for whatever crazy reason—to live right next to us in America’s biggest cities. Why would animals desert the forest and prairie to come live in our concrete jungles? As head of the Urban Wildlife Institute of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, on an every day basis Seth lives a life where he gets to research the reasons why coyotes, raccoons, rare native bees, squirrels—and yes, even prairie dogs—live in urban environments. What do they do in town once they’ve arrived? What do they eat? How do they interact with people? Should we make our buildings and real estate developments friendlier to nature and wildlife? Should we coax wild animals back into their own natural habitats? “There are countless questions left in front of us,” Seth says. “We’re all trying to get back to nature but we all live in nature.”
“Ecological theater is happening all around us.”
– Peggy Macnamara, professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago & artist in residence at the Field Museum of Natural History.
What to Do If You Like Peggy’s Artwork and Want to See More
Visit Peggy’s show at the Field Museum: Peregrine Returns. It’s up until June 30, 2018. Buy her books, either at the Field Museum bookshop, the local book store of your choice, or on Amazon. You can also inquire about purchasing original artwork through her website.
What to Do If You Want to Learn to Draw and Paint Like Peggy
Take Peggy’s one-week class at Ox-Bow, an artist’s residency affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While spending a week in July in Saugatuck, Michigan, you can take “Nature Illustration in Watercolor” with Peggy. If you’re a degree student at the School of the Art Institute, you can take other classes from her at the School’s downtown Chicago campus.
Or if you’re nowhere near Michigan, do what Peggy did and teach yourself by observing finely made things and drawing them. Try learning from a book Peggy co-authored, Painting Wildlife in Watercolor. You might also want to work your way through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Or sign up for a class at your local community art center. If you’re in Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center offers terrific classes.
What to Do If You Want to Learn to Draw and Paint Like Peggy
A collecting vial, one of the parting gifts Peggy gave to her students.
A painting Peggy made of caddisfly nests. A type of insect, caddisflies create silken cases decorated with bits of shell and stone.
Episode 1: We All Live In Nature
Apr 21, 2018
Seth Magle is a biologist and the director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo. After finishing a dissertation on urban prairie dogs, Seth Magle started looking around at the astonishing number of species of wild animals that choose—for whatever crazy reason—to live right next to us in America’s biggest cities. Why would animals desert the forest and prairie to come live in our concrete jungles? As head of the Urban Wildlife Institute of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, on an every day basis Seth lives a life where he gets to research the reasons why coyotes, raccoons, rare native bees, squirrels—and yes, even prairie dogs—live in urban environments. What do they do in town once they’ve arrived? What do they eat? How do they interact with people? Should we make our buildings and real estate developments friendlier to nature and wildlife? Should we coax wild animals back into their own natural habitats? “There are countless questions left in front of us,” Seth says. “We’re all trying to get back to nature but we all live in nature.”
“Ecological theater is happening all around us.”
– Peggy Macnamara, professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago & artist in residence at the Field Museum of Natural History.
After finishing a dissertation on urban prairie dogs, Seth Magle started looking around at the astonishing number of species of wild animals that choose—for whatever crazy reason—to live right next to us in America’s biggest cities. Why would animals desert the forest and prairie to come live in our concrete jungles? As head of the Urban Wildlife Institute of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, on an every day basis Seth lives a life where he gets to research the reasons why coyotes, raccoons, rare native bees, squirrels—and yes, even prairie dogs—live in urban environments. What do they do in town once they’ve arrived? What do they eat? How do they interact with people? Should we make our buildings and real estate developments friendlier to nature and wildlife? Should we coax wild animals back into their own natural habitats? “There are countless questions left in front of us,” Seth says. “We’re all trying to get back to nature but we all live in nature.”
What to do if you like wildlife
Love what Seth is doing and want to help him? The motion-triggered cameras Seth’s team installed throughout the Chicago region have snapped over a millions animal photos. They are looking for volunteers to help identify what’s in them. I’ve done this volunteer job myself—and have to admit, the activity is pretty mesmerizing. Once I started, it was hard to stop. I kept wanting to see which animal turned up next.
Sometimes you run across something especially compelling in a photo. (When you do, there’s a special “WOW” button to press, so scientists reviewing results will be alerted you found something noteworthy.) I also appreciated this particular volunteer activity because you don’t have to formally register and give up a lot of personal information to be part of it—you can just start identifying wildlife right away. Called Chicago Wildlife Watch, it’s an extremely satisfying way to do a bit of citizen science.
Also, if doing is not your thing but giving is, feel free to make an extremely large donation at any time to the Urban Wildlife Institute. Like now, for instance. Contact the Lincoln Park Zoo for that.
What to do if you see a wild animal
Enjoy it! Let the animal go its own way. Learn the extraordinary power and deep layers of freedom to be found in the word “coexistence.”
Where to watch something beautiful & inspiring about coyotes
The film CHICAGOLAND was created by Manual Cinema and written and directed by Ben Kauffman. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen. This one is about a coyote making its way through the big city.
One Minute Introduction to “The Shape of the World
Apr 17, 2018
Host Jill Riddell explains the what, why and when of Season One.
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