The Shape of the World

Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don't just live...

Dr. Adrienne Brown reads cities the way professors read novels: carefully, and with lots of attention to what's written between the lines.

Daniel Holz studies black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology, all while also running the Existential Risk Laboratory at the University of Chicago.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Margaret Renkl's new book "Graceland at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South is mix of graceful observations and practical solutions.

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.

Guest Jenn Smith says that human concepts of intergenerational wealth and inequality occur also in the behaviors of animals.

When Jane Watson encountered a ruined meadow of seagrass in the ocean, instead of getting furious, she grew curious.

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.

Sarah Cowles encourages radically rethinking the synthetic landscapes found in cities. When welcoming nature to our human cities, do we aim for an...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Akiko Busch is well-known for her writing on design, culture and the natural world. Her essays continue to touch on those subjects although increasingly, it incorporates—or directly addresses—the natural world...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Even though the coronavirus pandemic is keeping 226 million Americans sheltering in place, stepping out for fresh air is still allowed. But what's safe?

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…

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...

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…

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...

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...

As a child, Peggy Mason was a biology prodigy. Today, as a neurobiologist, Peggy is still working with mammals, but instead of preserving their skins, she's studying whether they experience empathy and act to help one another...

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 dark night air...

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...

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...

Host Jill Riddell explains the what, why and when of Season Two.

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...

The person responsible for Kay Havens' early interest in interest in science was female: her mother. Together, they collected, studied, and identified...

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...

Each weekend when 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...

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...

When Peggy Macnamara was a young mother of five children, she didn't relinquish her art practice. Each morning she left her house and drove straight to the nearest natural history museum...

“Ecological theater is happening all around 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.” 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.

Host Jill Riddell explains the what, why and when of Season One.