Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

Sign up for ⁠⁠Nature's newsletter⁠⁠: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Marine ecologist Alannah Vellacott grew up in a Bahamian subsistence fishing community, where wrestling sharks before sunrise was part of daily life. Now she's dedicated to conserving these majestic creatures and uncovering artifacts from slave-trade shipwrecks. In this episode, Alannah shares her journey to becoming...

Sign up for ⁠Nature's newsletter⁠: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Carolina Landa's story begins in the orchards of Quincy, Washington and takes a transformative turn within the walls of an Oregon prison. Raised in a Mexican-American immigrant family, Carolina's curiosity and passion for science led her to champion sustainability initiatives behind bars. In this episode, she discusses...

Sign up for Nature's newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ As a science journalist, Ed Yong spends a lot of time writing about nature without actually being immersed in it. After three years of covering the COVID pandemic, Ed found himself anxious, depressed, and in need of a change - despite winning the Pulitzer Prize. He took a step back from pandemic reporting to write a book...

Sign up for Nature's newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Ella Al-Shamahi grew up a creationist, but her perspective shifted when she studied evolution at university. Today, she’s a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in unstable territories to uncover the overlooked stories of human evolution. Ella is a fierce advocate for conducting research in places where people don’t usua...

Sign up for NATURE's Newsletter here: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Growing up in her Lubicon Cree community in northern Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo witnessed the destruction of her once-pristine boreal forests for oil. A massive oil spill in Melina’s community became the catalyst to launch an initiative that would bring not only clean energy jobs to her community, but a vision...

For more NATURE, sign up for our newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Alexis Nikole Nelson, better known to her millions of fans as @blackforager, was raised by a mother who is an avid gardener and a father who loves to cook. Foraging allowed Alexis to fuse her love for wild plants and food from a very young age. But before Alexis became the @blackforager we all know today, ther...

Welcome back to Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn Grant, a different kind of nature show about the human drama of saving animals. This season, we're talking to all sorts of nature advocates. From a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison. We will hear from real-life heroes with widely different expertise and life experienc...

Sign up for Nature's newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Growing up, Kiese Laymon thought of himself as a city kid. But he spent his childhood with a foot in two worlds: his mom’s house in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi and his grandma’s house in a rural country town. It wasn’t until Kiese left Mississippi that he came to understand that this question of city vs. coun...

Sign up for Nature's Newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ This is a special episode from Sea Change, the nature podcast from WWNO and WRKF. Sea Change brings you stories that illuminate, inspire – and sometimes enrage – as they dive deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond.  In this specific episode, they take you on a journey to...

Sign up for Nature's Newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ Kris Tompkins has spent a lifetime fighting tooth and nail to protect wild lands. In 1993, she stepped down as CEO of outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, and moved to the edge of a windswept road-less fjord in the northern end of Patagonian Chile with her late husband Doug Tompkins (the founder of North Face). There, they be...

Sign up for Nature's Newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/newsletter/ This week, we're featuring an episode of Women Who Travel with Tracee Ellis Ross: Tracee Ellis Ross’ earliest memories involved traveling the world with her mother, Diana Ross, but it was at the age of 22 that she discovered what solo travel could give her. This episode, Lale sits down with Tracee to discuss how solo trav...

As a climate solutions advocate, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is often asked “What are some small things people can do to reduce climate change that don’t require sacrifices?” But the truth is electric cars and solar panels won’t be enough. Climate success will require us to change our relationship with the natural world. We must not view nature as resources to manage, but as kin.  In this final ep...

In a city that loves celebrities, one mountain lion became the mascot for conservation efforts that eventually led to the creation of California’s first wildlife corridor. But one wildlife corridor, even if it’s the largest in the world, isn’t enough. Some populations of mountain lions in Southern California are struggling to survive — threatened by habitat loss caused by urban developments, lack...

In 2016, Hurricane Earl devastated Belize, causing over $100 million worth of damage and displacing thousands of Belizeans across the country. But humans were not the only victims of the storm. Deep in the mangroves, an infant manatee was separated from her mother and washed onto the mainland. She was so tiny when Jamal Galves found her, with her umbilical cord still attached. He named her Hope. A...

Long before the infamous Central Park incident went viral (where a white woman called the cops on him during a birdwatching outing), Christian Cooper had been obsessed with birds. It was a love nurtured through his involvement in The Audubon Society, an environmental organization dedicated to bird conservation.  But recently, Christian’s dedication to and love for this organization has been put to...

When Samuel Ramsey was a child, he was afraid of bugs. But a trip to the library with his mother changed everything and led him to become a bee entomologist. He grew up gay in a non-affirming religious community, he was the only Black entomologist in his Doctoral program, and today he’s both a Christian AND a scientist in a world that often asks him to choose between his faith and his practice. Bu...

In a remote part of the Amazon rainforest in Peru, there’s a river with water so hot, it actually boils. In fact, it's so extreme and so remote that for a long time people thought the river was a myth. Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza risked life and limb journeying to this boiling river, called Shanay-Timpishka or La Bomba, to explore some of the smallest microorganisms on Earth. Why?? Because the untap...

Welcome back to Going Wild, a podcast about the human drama behind saving animals. This season, on top of stories about animals, we’re going to take a journey through the entire ecological web — from the tiniest of life forms to apex predators. We’ll be guided by one central question: How can we, humans, look at our relationship to nature differently? Rae will speak to scientists, activists, and a...

Hi everyone! We’re still a little ways away from the next season of Going Wild, but today we're sharing an episode of a great new podcast called The Class of 1989. In this episode, Len and Vincent talk about the representation of Black women in the films of 1989 — and how Black women directors would help transform the film world throughout the 1990s and into the present. 

It's been a challenging couple of years during the pandemic but we are starting to travel again. Host Lale Arikoglu determines that she needs to challenge herself and goes hiking in Chilean Patagonia in a misty, rainy, and isolated landscape. Closer to home she’s trying to stay upright on a surfboard at New York’s Rockaway beach even though she’s skittish in waves and talks to author Dorthe Nors a...

This week we're sharing a riveting episode from NHPR's show, Outside/In. Take a listen and let us know what you think! A debate about evolutionary “success.” Who should wear the crown of GSOAT (greatest species of all time), and are humans even in the running? Humans have had an impressive run thus far; we’ve explored most of the planet (the parts that aren’t underwater anyway), landed on the moon...

This week, we're sharing an episode from our friends at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Take a listen and let us know what you think! Their second season launches in conversation with Mariana Varese, the Peru-based director of WCS’s Amazon Landscapes Program. Mariana describes a new initiative, “Together for Conservation,” that seeks to conserve biodiversity while preventing environmental crime...

*Content warning: this episode briefly mentions the topic of suicide.* From the kitchen floor to the remote jungles of the Congo, Rae grapples with divorce and single-motherhood on an international trip to study lowland gorillas. For the last episode of season 2, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant talks about a career-changing opportunity to track down one of the most elusive creatures in Central Africa — lowland...

Ornithologist (bird scientist), poet, and author Drew Lanham was recently awarded the Macarthur Genius Grant—$800,000 with no strings attached. But despite his deep love for birds he almost never studied the creatures at all. As a young man, he won a full-ride scholarship to any school he wanted, only this award did have strings attached. Drew would have to give up his dreams of ecology and instea...

*Content warning: this episode contains descriptions of violence that might be disturbing to some listeners.* Herpetologists do a lot of unique things while studying lizards—cut their toes, pump their stomachs, and capture them by lassoing their necks. That one small word, “lasso,'' wasn't always the word used in the discipline. Herpetologist Earyn McGee, one of the few Black, female scientists in...