Ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan has been called the “father of the local food movement.” Many of his insights come from the farming practices of Indigenous people living near the U.S.-Mexico border, who’ve grown food in arid habitats for centuries.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Science and Technology
Locking eyes with another creature in the wild can be a profound experience. For physicist and writer Alan Lightman, half a second of eye contact with a pair of ospreys felt like an epiphany.More
In Chicago, writer Gavin Van Horn and environmental artist Jenny Kendler visit her new art installation, which confronts viewers with the gaze of 100 giant bird eyes. It's meant to provoke curiosity, wonder, and awareness of how many non-human eyes are always watching us.More
There are two famous moments that helped shape environmental politics. Gavin Van Horn, of the Center for Humans and Nature, tells us what happened when Aldo Leopold met the eyes of a dying timber wolf and when Paul Watson looked into the eye of a dying sperm whale.More
In 1960, a young primatologist stared deeply into the eyes of a wild chimpanzee. She was Jane Goodall. He was David Greybeard. Their mutual gaze changed animal science forever.More
A psychedelic research center in Wisconsin is gearing up to manufacture enough medical-grade psilocybin to supply the world. Steve Paulson went to Usona Insitute to see where the magic's made, and got a peek inside the lab of chemist Alex Sherwood.More
Mushrooms and other fungi are mind-bending. A fungal network can spread for miles, but genetically, it’s a single organism. As biologist Merlin Sheldrake says, “they are everywhere at once and nowhere in particular.”More
Thousands of sandhill cranes gather each fall on the banks of the Wisconsin River before they head south for the winter. Anne and Steve visited the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin to witness this migration firsthand, along with their guide: wildlife ecologist Stan Temple.More
David Barrie is fascinated by how animals find their way. How do they travel thousands of miles across oceans or continents, to a place they've never been, without any other creature to show them the way?More
Imagine driving over a hill and seeing hundreds of zebras or a thousand wildebeest. Anne and Steve were lucky enough to witness this spectacle in the Serengeti. Their expert guide, Moses Augustino Kumburu, describes the Great Migration.More
The fact that so many animals migrate — sometimes thousands of miles — has puzzled people over the ages. Why do they take such risky journeys? Conservation biologist David Wilcove studies migration, and he says the scale of migration is staggering.More
Anthropologist Enrique Salmon formulated the concept of “kincentricity,” a worldview that sees everything around us — plants, animals, rocks, wind — as our direct relative. As Salmon says, “the rain is us, and we are the rain.”More
Science journalist Sonia Shah, herself the child of Indian immigrants, has long been fascinated with the way animals, people and even microbes move. She says migration is both a crisis and an opportunity.More
When we talk about bees, usually we mean honeybees. Or bumblebees. But that’s just two out of 20,000 different species of bees. Thor Hanson tells Anne about how different species of bees and humanity have developed dependence on one another.More
Magician Nate Staniforth has a dangerous idea for you. Tonight, after dark, go outside and look up to the sky.More
How do you know what’s real? Start with your senses — if you can see, touch, hear or taste something, it’s real — right? Not necessarily, according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan.More
Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard talks about her pioneering research into “forest intelligence,” She also reflects on her childhood growing up in Canadian forests, how the timber industry can become sustainable, and why she talks to trees.More
Once you acknowledge that plants are intelligent and sentient beings, moral questions quickly follow. Should they have rights? How can we think of plants as "persons"? Plant scientist Matt Hall sorts out these ideas with Steve.More