The Shape of the World

Over the past 30 years, the quality of water in rivers has improved tremendously in many major cities across Western Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada. So much so that what once seemed impossible has now become reality: people really are swimming in the Thames in London, the Seine in Paris, the Rhine in Basel, the Yarra in Melbourne, the Charles in Boston—and in many other places wh...

We often notice more of the visual world than we do the auditory world, yet many of our experiences are defined by sound. The memory of a significant summer evening may suddenly be brought back by our hearing the call of a nighthawk, the swoosh of car tires rippling through a puddle, or the tinkle of  piano keys coming from an open window. Even if at the time of the event you didn’t bring a sound...

Non-human primate societies originally were described by male scientists largely as dramas of alpha males: battles, heroics, and constant dominance over females. Those mid-20th-century men’s findings were riddled with reports and analyses of male aggression and hierarchy. But in the late 20th-century, during the global rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a new cohort of female primatologists...

Humans are incredibly intelligent creatures, and we have been smart enough to rely on the power of rivers for as long as we’ve been alive on this planet. Over a quarter of people dependent on them, yet in most cities, people may not even see the many miles of river that actively flow beneath their sidewalks. For a hundred fifty years, we’ve been burying streams and rivers under concrete in most Am...

Sophie Lucido Johnson, cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of Kin: The Future of Family. Jill Riddell speaks with her colleague, Sophie Lucido Johson, about comedy, community, and the social science of friendship. In her new book, Kin: The Future of Family, Sophie encourages us to reenvision “family” as a much larger network — not just genetic relatives but also neighbors and friends. We...

On the occasions when we humans go out of our way to help another person who is in distress, we are acting out our biological inheritance. And if we don’t help someone in trouble, that’s because we’ve had to actually actively suppress what is natural for us to do. That was the finding of the neurologist Peggy Mason. whom we interviewed in Shape of the World’s second season. We’ve re-released that...

In 2020, we sat down with structural geologist Marcia Bjornerud on the Shape of the World for a conversation that reshaped how we think about time. We decided to revisit and re-release that episode. Marcia has continued to research and to write, and she has a new book out that we love; it’s called Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks .  Marcia Bjornerud has published many profe...

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 hav...

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...

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, th...

Biologist Sara Lewis doesn’t just study fireflies—for her, fireflies are a living reminder that the world is pure magic. In this episode...

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...

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.

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...

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.

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 recent...

“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.   Guest Jenn Smith says that human concepts of intergenerat...

“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. When Jane Watson encountered a ruined meadow of seagrass in the ocean, inst...

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.