Wild World with Scott Solomon

Wild World S2E13 - Watching Whales in Southeast Alaska with Heidi Pearson Alaska is a place of superlatives. It’s by far the largest state in the US. It’s home to the highest mountain in North America, and more than 27,000 glaciers. In the winter, it gets dark and cold– the record low was -80 degrees Fahrenheit.  But because Alaska is so big, there’s a big difference between regions. While th...

Watching Birds in New Zealand with Brent Stephenson  New Zealand is famous for its epic landscapes. It’s become a favorite place for filmmakers who want dramatic scenery. But New Zealand is also known for having unique and unusual wildlife, particularly its birds . There are more than 370 species of birds that can be found in New Zealand, about a quarter of which are found nowhere else on Ear...

There are more than 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth. But rather than being spread evenly across the planet, they tend to be clustered in particular locations. A cluster of active volcanoes occurs in east Africa, in what’s known as the Great Rift Valley , which runs through the continent of Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Mozambique in the south.  Like other places where volcanoes are clu...

The Andes are the longest mountain chain in the world and the second highest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas. There are over a hundred peaks in the Andes with summits that exceed 6,000 meters (19,685 feet)-- and many of the mountains are covered in glaciers. Glaciers cover 10% of the land area on Earth. They store about ⅔ of the world’s fresh water– an incredibly important and valu...

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. In fact, chimps are more closely related to you and I than they are to other apes, like gorillas. That means we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying chimpanzees. But to really learn the secrets of these amazing animals, you can’t just watch them in a zoo. You have to venture out to where they live. Jane Goodall’s work with wild chimpanzees in Ta...

The Himalayas are the highest mountains in the world. They span some 1,500 miles through the heart of Asia, from Afghanistan to China. Having such enormous mountains makes much of the Himalayan region hard for people to access. But that doesn’t mean that nothing lives there. The Himalayas are home to some incredible types of wildlife that have adapted to the thin air, steep slopes, and very cold t...

The emergence of life on land was one of the most important moments in the grand saga of life’s evolutionary history. Many of the characteristics of our bodies– like our arms, legs, hips, hands, fingers, and necks– can be traced back to adaptations that occurred during the transition from fish to amphibians. But how do we know that? What evidence exists from this time that can help us piece togeth...

The 3-masted topsail schooner Oosterschelde is on a two-year journey around the world, following the route taken by Charles Darwin aboard the HMS Beagle nearly 200 years earlier. The voyage is known as the Darwin200 expedition. It’s the brainchild of Stewart McPherson , a British naturalist and science communicator. McPherson and his colleagues organized conservation projects and educational outre...

Madagascar is home to some incredible wildlife. Many of the animals in Madagascar occur nowhere else on Earth. Among them are lemurs– a group of primates that resemble monkeys but are in fact their own distinct group. But, unfortunately, these remarkable animals are facing enormous challenges.  Dr. Jonah Ratsimbazafyis a primatologist who is from Madagascar and is considered one of the world’...

Australia is famous for its strange creatures. And rightfully so. They’ve got kangaroos, koalas, echidnas, and of course one of the wackiest animals anywhere– the platypus! But it’s also home to equally weird and wonderful creatures of a different sort. They just tend to be a little smaller. Ecologist storyteller  Mark Moffett  specializes in finding these small wonders– and sharing thei...

Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo is a Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Rice . His research focus is paleoanthropology and the archaeology of human origins, with methodological expertise in zooarchaeology, vertebrate taphonomy, and the application of artificial intelligence tools to paleoanthropology. He co-directs the Institute of Evolution in Africa (IDEA, Madrid, Spain) and is Professor of Prehisto...

 At more than 42 million acres, the Pantanal is the world's largest tropical wetland. It spans parts of three countries, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. If you visit the Pantanal, depending on the time of year, you may find open plains dotted with small green patches of forest, with water found mostly in the rivers that wind their way through the area. But when the rains come, those rivers spill ou...

Wild World live broadcast from Antarctica! Saturday, December 14 at 1 pm ET Scott will be traveling with the Rice University Traveling Owls aboard the National Geographic Explorer . They will be somewhere along the Danco Coast of the West Antarctic Peninsula. The broadcast will be live streamed from our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@wildworldpodcast). Link to live event: https://www.yo...

Before signing off on our first season, we wanted to share a little more of the conversation Scott had with nature and wildlife photographer Tui De Roy. Tui has lived in the Galapagos Islands since her family moved there in 1955 when she was just 2 years old. Her unique perspective as a local and as a photographer has given her both a keen eye for detail and the opportunity to observe how the isla...

We’re stepping away from our regular podcast this week to bring you an episode from our friends at WCS Wild Audio—a podcast of the Wildlife Conservation Society . WCS Wild Audio brings you the latest news and newsmakers from WCS’s global field sites and its five wildlife parks in New York City, including the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium. In today’s episode, Wild Audio’s Hannah Kaplan talks...

Antarctica is famous for gigantic ice sheets and charismatic animals, but Antarctica is also one of the best places to search for meteorites– rocks that have traveled through space and survived passing through Earth’s atmosphere.  Mini Wadhwa is a planetary scientist who studies meteorites to learn about the formation of our universe and what conditions are like in other parts of our solar sy...

We can learn a lot by exploring the edges of the biosphere, where conditions can just barely support even the most hardy organisms. And by venturing beyond the biosphere– by leaving Earth and traveling into space– we can really test the limits of what our bodies are capable of.  Scott Parazynski is a former NASA astronaut who has flown on five missions to space and completed seven spacewalks....

Around the world, wildlife is in decline. We know that animals play important roles in their environments, but it’s often difficult to know how exactly the natural world would change if any particular type of wildlife no longer existed.  In this episode, Scott speaks with Dr. Haldre Rogers, an ecologist working on the island of Guam, where invasive snakes have eliminated nearly all of the isl...

Brazil is one of the most biologically diverse nations on Earth. In the center of Brazil, between the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Coast Rainforest is an ecosystem found nowhere else on Earth– a savanna known as the Cerrado. The Brazilian Cerrado is home to more than 11,000 species of plants, 800 species of birds, and 200 species of mammals, and an unknown number of insects. Yet, much of the...

Corals– tiny animals that form structures so large they can be seen from space– provide food and habitat for a quarter of all marine life. Half a billion people worldwide depend on coral reef ecosystems for their food and livelihood. Yet, corals worldwide are facing unprecedented threats. Marine ecologist Dr. Adrienne Correa is studying corals in the waters around the South Pacific island of Moore...

The Galapagos Islands are one of the few places where visitors can get a glimpse of what the world was like before humans existed. The unique wildlife, active volcanoes, and rich undersea world has made them a haven for ecotourism. In this episode, we get two very different perspectives on what it’s like to experience the Galapagos Islands. First, Scott speaks with nature photographer Tui De Roy,...

Madagascar is home to species found nowhere else on Earth, yet the island was once home to an even richer array of species that mysteriously disappeared thousands of years ago. To find out what caused the extinction of these magnificent species like giant lemurs, archeologist and artist Dr. Fabio Amador joined a daring SCUBA diving expedition into a network of flooded caves. Dr. Amador's use of so...

Scarlet macaws are icons of the tropical rainforests of Central and South America. But in the Central American country of Belize, scarlet macaws are disappearing as poachers steal their chicks for the international pet trade. Scott Solomon speaks with Dr. Boris Arevalo, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, who is working to protect these spectacular birds by any means possible, incl...

Wild World with Scott Solomon ’ is a new podcast that explores the natural wonders of our planet through the voices of the people who explore, study, and protect them. Each episode features a new location, from the forests of Madagascar to the underwater world beneath the Galapagos Islands and the icy shores of Antarctica. Hosted by a renowned field biologist and science communicator, you’ll hear...