The Shape of the World

What if your upstairs neighbor, your cousin, or the bartender down the street were chosen by lottery to represent you in government? Author and political philosopher Alex Guerrero believes this radical idea, known as lottocracy, is a better alternative than voting.

The idea is that instead of an individual announcing they want to be a leader and then launching a campaign to become one, our representatives in government would be chosen by random selection. To some degree, the concept is already utilized; the United States uses random selection to assemble its juries for legal trials, and in Europe and Canada, groups known as “citizens’ assemblies” are assembled by random selection to discuss and make recommendations on a particular issue.

In this episode, Alex examines the benefits and drawbacks of lottery-based democracy. But in general, he is a huge proponent of the concept, and he and others are working hard to make it a reality. He is convinced it will reduce the influence of money in politics and reduce corruption. It could ease gridlock and produce fairer and sounder policies. And it could make more inclusive political systems. But what would this process actually look like? And could it make the shape of the world as we know it even better?
"Democracy in America and elsewhere is not a disaster, but we need to make some changes. Instead of getting more depressed and anxious and isolated, we should start coming together to try out different things." – Alex Guerrero, Author and Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Learn More About Alex and His Work

Alex has created a free, online, open-to-all course on Coursera, called “Revolutionary Ideas: An Introduction to Legal and Political Philosophy.” Over 30,000 people have enrolled in this course, and you can, too.

If you want to read more of his work specifically on the idea of lottocracy, we recommend his book on the subject, Lottocracy: Democracy without Elections (Oxford University Press, 2024), as well as “The Lottocracy” (AEON Magazine, 2014) and “Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative,” (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2014). Alex has over 40 publications on philosophy and applied ethics, all of which you can find here.

Alex believes underrepresented philosophies in the U.S. deserve more of a voice in higher education and that more courses should include them. He wrote about his own experiences teaching African, Latin American, Native American and Indigenous philosophies in Philosophers’ Magazine, which you can read here). He co-organized a summer institute called “NEWLAMP,” which trains college-level philosophy teachers on how they might incorporate these philosophies in their courses.

In addition to his work at Rutgers University, Alex is the Associate Editor for Ethics, a peer-reviewed international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy published by the University of Chicago Press. This academic year, he is serving as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton University.

How to Jump Into the Lottocracy Movement

Various organizations around the world are working to advance the implementation of lottocracies at city levels, state levels, and federal levels—with varying degrees of success. In some places, they have become normalized, while in others the concept still feels strange and unfamiliar. You can learn more about online communities, think tanks, and member-led organizations working on this here.

One such organization is Sorition USA, which Alex serves on the board of. It helps organize and connect individuals and various groups that are promoting and implementing sortition and random selection. They have local chapters, each taking up different issues. If you’re interested in getting involved near you, visit their website. (“Sortition" is the more formal and familiar term for what Alex is calling “lottocracy.")

More on Details Mentioned in the Episode

Alex mentioned another recent book on the subject called Politics Without Politicians, written by Yale political theorist Hélène Landemore (Penguin Random House, 2026). In this book, Landemore makes a case for citizen-run politics and discusses her experience organizing the climate citizens’ assembly in France. You can purchase a copy of that book by ordering it from your local bookstore or order it from the publisher.

At the end of the episode, Alex said that listeneres can email him with any questions, which you can do here: aag198@philosophy.rutgers.edu.

This episode was originally published in 2021, but we're bringing it back because the questions landscape architect Sarah Cowles asks—about which kinds of nature get space in our cities—feel particularly urgent right now. As debates over land, development, climate resilience, and public space continue, Sarah offers a radically different way of thinking about urban ecology, landscape architecture, and about what nature in a city can actually look like. When welcoming nature to our human cities, do we aim for an artificial remaking of what once was there? Or do we go with the plants that long to grow there now, the ones that are perfectly suited to take on land that was once paved?

Sarah Cowles named her landscape architectural studio in Tbsili, Georgia “Ruderal,” which is a biological term that refers to plants adapted to disturbed environments—species that can thrive in the difficult conditions of cities. Several years ago, Sarah established Ruderal after leaving the United States and going to live and work in the nation of Georgia. In this episode, she talks about how the Soviet Union was dedicated to sustaining “Big Health Landscapes,” large outdoor spaces intended to heal and renew—and what that legacy now looks like up close and in person in Georgia. "We so finely tune infrastructures to the nth degree but what if we put a little bit extra in there as a kind of wild card? I wish more people could see the potential of setting aside a little bit of surplus." – Sarah Cowles, Director of Ruderal, a landscape architecture studio in Tbilisi, Georgia How to Find Out More About Sarah Cowles’ work

At the time of this episode’s original publication back in 2021, Sarah Cowles’ work on Arsenal Oasis had been shortlisted for LILA (the Landezine International Landscape Award). Soon after the release of that episode, the project won the 2021 LILA Special Jury Award. Pearly Jacobs, the audio producer who recorded Sarah’s end of the podcast interview over in Georgia made this cool video about Arsenal Oasis; it really brings it to life.

Sarah Cowles has published various pieces about ruderals in Landscape Architecture Magazine, including After Extraordinary Conditions and Crisis Actors (2020), and Tooling Up (2018). She has also writen extensively about urban design, landscape architecture, and Ruderal's work on her Substack, Sarah at Ruderal.

“Ecologists use the term ruderal, from the Latin rudus (rubble), to describe disturbance-adapted species,” writes Sarah Cowles. “Ruderal species embody the unruly, tenacious, and opportunistic qualities of vegetation. They are metaphorically paradoxical: indexing catastrophe and abandonment, yet conversely representing resilience and renewal.” [Paper presented to and published by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, available here.]

On Ruderal‘s website, you can sign up for their newsletter. You can see more photos of Arsenal Oasis and their other projects on Ruderal’s Instagram, their Facebook, their Linkedin.

What Didn’t Make It Into the Episode but Is Important to Know About Georgia

This didn’t quite make our final cut, but it’s important not to ignore the fact that within Georgia, more than a quarter-million people have been displaced from their homes and their land during several conflicts that have flared up in the nation’s relatively brief post-Soviet history. Here’s one seven-minute audio piece on the subject that gives a taste of what’s been going on.

In the unedited interview conducted for this show, in the context of our discussion of the resorts, Sarah said, “After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the resorts fell into disrepair. And then others were repurposed by displaced persons from the different conflicts in the nineties and the early two thousands. So some of the ethnic Georgians who had to leave Abkhazia and South Ossetia moved into those resort buildings and hotels. And since then, some have been upgraded and their conditions have slightly improved, but displacement is an ongoing crisis.”

As the founder and principal at site design group ltd., a Chicago-based urban design and landscape architecture firm, Ernest (“Ernie”) Wong has spent over three decades transforming overlooked spaces into places where people can gather, play, rest, wander, and connect. He designed Palmisano Park in 2009, and recently worked on the beautiful landscape and gardens surrounding the new Obama Presidential Center.

In this episode, Ernie explains how growing up as an Asian-American in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood influenced the way he sees cities, class, conflicts, communities, and his own career. He tells us about life-changing summers he spent in the wilderness as a teenager and why, for him, landscape architecture is more about sociology than it is about botany.

"The work that we do as landscape architects is primarily invisible. But when we can help a community realize its own identity and engage with each other—that's huge.” – Ernie Wong, Co-Founder and Principal of site design group, ltd. Learn More About Ernie and site design group, ltd.

Ernie helped found the Chicago-based urban design and landscape architecture firm, site design group, ltd. in 1990. Site design group is known for its innovative and imaginative approach to community building; they consult and connect architects, companies, engineers, and institutions all across the United States and beyond to make spaces that bring people together.

Since its inception, site design group has received nearly 200 awards for their work in landscape architecture and design, including recognition from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), AIA, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Urban Land Institute.

In 2021, the firm’s work on the 75th Street Boardwalk in Chicago (which Ernie discusses in this episode, and which you can see in the images below) earned the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Honor Award in Urban Design. That same year, Ernie earned the ASLA’s Community Service award.

About the Obama Presidential Center

There are sixteen presidential libraries spread across the United States, the newest of which is the Obama Presidential Center, which opened in June of 2026. While other presidential libraries are predominantly used as museums and research institutions—places where documents from the president’s administration are housed—the Obama Center functions as both a library and a community center. The star of the center is the many acres of public, outdoor space, fit with picnic areas and grills, tree-lined paths, a sledding hill, native wetlands, playgrounds, vegetable gardens, and more.

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. (MVVA) was the principal landscape architecture firm behind the project. Site design group ltd. and Living Habitats (a Chicago-based landscape architecture firm run by Heidi Natura) were the local implementers of the vision. Tickets are needed to enter the structure on the Obama Center campus, but all of the grounds are free and open to the public.

More Details on Things Mentioned in the Episode:

The Student Conservation Association is the organization that Ernie attended as a teenager. It was founded in the 1950s and was modelled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government program in the 1930s.

Ernie also mentioned a survey that the LEGO Group conducted where children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. This survey was commissioned in 2019 through The Harris Poll; they asked 3,000 kids (ages 8 to 12) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China to choose from five professions: astronaut, musician, professional athlete, teacher, or vlogger/YouTuber. The top choice in the US and UK was vlogger/YouTuber, though respondents from China said they wanted to be astronauts. A similar 2019 poll by Morning Consult (a company that creates online survey research technology) surveyed 2,200 Americans ages 13–38 and found that 54% said that, if given the opportunity, they’d like to be an influencer on social media.

Ornithologist Doug Stotz is a key player in the Field Museum of Natural History’s strenuous effort to safeguard threatened landscapes, galvanize community stewards, and advance action-oriented science research. Doug’s long tenure at the museum is on the verge of changing, so we at the Shape of the World wanted to be sure that before Doug formally retires, we managed to capture his stories and insights.

Over his lifetime, Doug has seen (so far) roughly 3,750 different bird species. That’s over one third of all bird species known and named. Doug is in at least the top 1% of birders worldwide, and perhaps more like the top 0.1%. In the 1970s when Doug got started, bird watching was still an unusual hobby, unlike today. (Currently, in the United States, 96 million people characterize themselves as birders or as someone who’s interested in birds.)

For decades, Doug has worked at the Field Museum’s Keller Science Action Center. Keller uses museum science and the museum’s collections and data to support conservation efforts mainly in two places: the tropical forests of the Andes-Amazon region, with its famous diversity of species and cultures, and in and around the museum’s homebase of Chicago. Altogether, the Keller Science Action Center has protected over 29 million acres of natural habitat.

As is common at natural history museums, Doug’s retirement marks a change in formal employment at the Keller Science Action Center, but the event does not put an end to Doug's scientific contributions. Like many other esteemed specialists who’ve carried out their life’s work within a museum, Doug now has a less formal but still ongoing relationship with the museum—one that encourages him to continue to study birds and collaborate with museum colleagues.

Doug is one of the authors of Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation (University of Chicago Press, 1996), which today stands as a landmark reference on the ecology, distribution, and conservation of bird species from Mexico to South America. He serves on the Mayor’s Nature and Wildlife Committee, and he is a member of the Field Museum’s monarch team, an ad hoc group that ensures healthy habitats for pollinators in Chicago.
"Almost everything is about birds, and almost every bird has something of value to teach us.” – Douglas Stotz, Ornithologist and Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Field Museum of
Natural History Learn More About Urban Bird Collisions

Chicago sits along a flyway that transports 40% of North America’s migratory birds from south to north in the spring and back again in the fall. But the city’s tall glass buildings and light pollution pose a major threat to the safety of birds in transit. Due both to Doug’s efforts and those of other researchers at the Field Museum, and because of Doug's role in the Mayor’s Nature and Wildlife Committee, Chicago became the first city in the United States to implement a policy that encouraged tall buildings to turn off their lights during migration seasons. That program, called Lights Out Chicago, started in 1999. The Chicago Bird Alliance and other environmental players also played strong roles in getting this major achievement initiated and over the finish line—it was a successful team effort.

Lights Out Chicago reduced the problem, but it’s still far from being entirely solved. For better or for worse, the city has become a national leader in studying and tackling the problem of urban bird collisions—mainly because there are still many, many collisions occurring.

If you wish to delve into this more, you can visit a great exhibit on display in downtown Chicago, Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing Ecosystem. The exhibit was designed and co-curated by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang (she was a previous guest on this podcast), along with Openlands (an environmental conservation organization) and the Chicago Architecture Center.

Other bird-related programs happening in Chicago

Events: The Urban Birding Festival (happening September 18th–20th in Chicago, hosted by the Chicago Bird Alliance).

Artist Interventions: Watch this really cool YouTube video about artist Holly Greenberg’s project to create a fabric artwork that’s kind of this big ‘carpet’ of birds. It will eventually be a travelling art piece that specifically exists to raise awareness about the toll building collisions are taking on bird populations. You can actually help her work on it.

Another Chicago artist, Alice Hargrave, has a project, Last Calls / Pink Noise, that transforms recordings made of bird calls into visual representations. She, too, is is highly concerned about bird collisions with buildings and wishes to call attention more generally to the plight of birds. Watch this video to learn more.

Note on “Rapid Inventories”:

In the episode, Doug mentions the Field Museum’s “rapid inventories,” and neither Jill nor Doug explained much about those, so here goes! Originally called “Rapid Biological Inventories,” these surveys initially focused on plants and animals only, but soon expanded to include social elements. As a first step, researchers engage in conversations with local communities and solicit both their involvement in decision-making and in the communication of findings. The nomenclature now is either “Rapid Biological and Social Inventories,” or, as Doug called them, simply “Rapid Inventories.”

The Field Museum launched its conservation-oriented Rapid Inventory program in South America in 2000. It’s an approach that uses inventories as the beginning of conservation efforts rather than the end of research, and the concept and technique have been replicated by others. Since 2000, the Field Museum has conducted more than 30 inventories, primarily in South America but also China and elsewhere. These helped catalyze the protection of millions of acres of habitat.

Each of the largest cities on Earth plays host to hundreds of thousands of dogs. Many megalopolises contain millions of dogs within their municipal borders. Whether those dogs are privately owned (and perhaps pampered in chic apartments), community-owned, free-roaming, or stray, it’s a fact of nature that canines make up a substantial part of the urban biota in places like New York City, Sydney, Tokyo, Mexico City, São Paulo, Delhi, Mumbai, and Istanbul.

Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, founder of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and the author of the bestselling book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Small, and Know, discusses how dogs managed to become such ubiquitous residents of cities, and how we human city dwellers can improve living conditions for the dogs living in our midst. In this episode, she encourages us to challenge the assumptions we make about dogs' thoughts, emotions, and motivations.

"I want people to re-imagine everything we know about dogs—all the things that seem so straightforward and so obvious." – Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, cognitive scientist, author, and founder of the Barnard Dog Cognition Lab in New York City. Learn More About Alexandra Horowitz

At Barnard College in New York City, Alexandra works as a professor in the departments of English and Psychology, teaching classes on dog cognition and storytelling. There, she also founded and heads the Dog Cognition Lab.

Alexandra has published many academic papers and has written seven popular books. She is a cross-over artist who works in the discipline of science, but who also excels in merging that with narrative non-fiction. In 2009, the book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know was number one on The New York Times bestseller list. Simon & Schuster has published a new edition of this book, which incorporates updates on research and new ideas. Ask your local bookseller to procure you a copy if they aren’t already carrying it, or purchase it here.

Also, check out her Ted Talk, “Why All Dogs Are Good Dogs,” which explains how dog “misbehaviors” are well-justified efforts to communicate with us.

THE BARNARD DOG COGNITION LAB

Alexandra’s lab at Barnard College, founded in 2008, investigates the behavior and minds of dogs through scientific experiments that involve dogs and their owners. Using puzzles, scent-based tasks, objects, and games, the lab researches everything from olfactory perception, memory, and navigation to communication, play, welfare, and the social relationships dogs have with humans and other dogs. For example, their most recent article (published in the 22nd issue of Animals), found that the “shaking” dog phenomenon, which is typically perceived as a sign of stress, may actually indicate a transition between activities. To see the full list of scholarly publications from the Dog Cognition Lab, visit this webpage.

In the lab, researchers draw from various fields and methods, such as comparative cognition (comparing how species think, learn, and solve problems), ethology (observing species under “natural” conditions), and behavioral biology (examining why animals behave the way they do). Their research aims to understand dogs from a dog perspective, rather than a human one, which means that experiments are designed around dog’s abilities and agencies. They mostly work with New York City dogs, many of whom can be seen in this assemblage of Polaroids that hangs on the lab’s wall.

STORIES AND PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

When Alexandra and Jill discussed the practice of close-looking, Alexandra mentioned the writer Annie Dillard. Alexandra didn’t mention the title of book she was referring to, but it had to have been Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In it, the author visits a particular stretch of a creek in Virginia for one year, using daily walks as occasions to observe mostly the natural world but also the human.

Alexandra mentioned Sidney Horenstein as an individual who taught her the art of looking (while Alexandra was writing On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes). He once referred to New York as “one of the great geologic meccas in the world.”

Jill described a passage in a book written by Jesse Ball — the title for that is Silence Once Begun (Penguin Random House, 2014).

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 where, before, the idea would have been shocking and untenable. That’s because the composition of those waterways has changed drastically, thanks to the relentless advocacy of environmental groups whose efforts led to much stronger regulation, the improvement of wastewater treatment, and the relocation of industries that had long dominated riverfronts. If you are tired of gloomy environmental news, urban swimming might be a positive place to look!

Chris Romer-Lee is a visonary behind what is called the “Swimmable Cities” movement. He is a swim consultant, author, and co-founder, and though he is trained as a conventional architect, Chris now directs his efforts toward building healthier, more resilient communities—ones in which people have easy access to healthy waters and places to swim.

In 2015, his proposal for a Thames-fed swimming spot in the heart of London went viral. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it caused a huge sensation—the way it spread locally and globally bolstered what at that point was a nascent movement of people asking: “Why can’t we swim in our river?” The proposed Thames Baths Project showed images of people floating in lovely clean water beneath London’s iconic bridges, with swimmers looking up from the water toward famous landmarks. It showed lush plantings integrated with the surrounding architecture, places where wildlife might be invited to share the same spaces as the swimmers.

It all seemed like a distant dream. But exactly one decade later, when hundreds of people came together in Rotterdam, the Netherlands to share similar ideas, ambitions, and dreams that were already becoming reality, Chris’s ideas were no longer considered fanciful. That was the inaugural summit of the worldwide Swimmable Cities initiative. Today, over 120 cities and 250 organizations have joined the alliance and pledged to make their homes swimmable.
“The world moves at one hell of a pace. Swimming and moving slowly seem to be really important at the moment.” – Chris Romer-Lee, swim consultant, author, architect, and co-founder of "Swimmable Cities" and "Future Lidos." Learn More About Chris Romer-Lee

Chris is the author of the multi-award winning best seller, Sea Pools: 66 Saltwater Sanctuaries from Around the World, which was published in 2023 by Batsford Books. His forthcoming book, Diving Boards (Batsford Books, 2027), covers the history, legacy, and story behind these poolside stages.

Beyond Swimmable Cities, Chris has founded various other successful initiates. Studio Octopi is a London-based architecture practice that works across the commercial, public, and private sectors. Chris was one of the co-founders of the practice, and he now consults them on swimming-related projects. Chris is also one of the founders of Future Lidos, a peer network across the UK and Ireland that focuses on bringing the joy of outdoor swimming to more people in more communities. Part of this project involves the free-to-access Lido toolkit, which promotes a greater understanding of the value of outdoor swim sites.

Also check out Chris’s website, which won Best Visual Design at the Archiboo Awards in 2025.

What is "Swimmable Cities"?

Swimmable Cities is an alliance of over 250 diverse organizations across 121 cities and towns in 38 countries. It aims to make bodies of water in cities more swimmable, build stronger communities, and improve resilience against climate change. The Shape of the World was one of the early signatories of the Swimmable Cities charter, which outlines the initiative’s goals and mission. The inaugural Swimmable Cities Summit was hosted last year in Rotterdam, and the next one will be hosted by the City of Ottawa, Canada in August of 2027.

Whether you’re part of an organization, municipality, or are just an individual who cares about urban communities, water, and access to nature, then you should join the alliance. A previous guest of this podcast, Nick Wesley, is also part of this alliance through his organization, Urban Rivers, which focuses on restoring life to the Chicago River.

How Can I Swim Outside in My City?

In the episode, Chris mentioned that the Lords and Commons Cup—an iconic swim race that goes from Hammersmith to Putney in West London—might be returning for the first time in nearly a century. The race went on for decades but came to an end in the late 1940s after WWII, because the war ruptured many of the city’s sewage systems, creating poor water conditions. This year, the organization is set on bringing back the event (and for the first time ever, making it public). If you live in London, keep an eye out for this event in September.

Organized swims are becoming increasingly popular in other cities, too. Here is a list of some coming up this year:

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Annual Boston City Splash, July 18th, 2026 (not an official race, but one of the few times each year that you’re allowed to jump in the Charles)

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Brooklyn Bridge Swim, July 26th, 2026 in NYC (organized by Urban Swim)

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Basel Rhine Swim, August 11th, 2026

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Amsterdam City Swim, September 6th, 2026

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Chicago River Swim, September 20th, 2026

If you don’t live in one of these cities, investigate whether local swimming clubs or organizations in your city are hosting any public swims.

The above images are excerpts from Chris’s award-winning book, Sea Pools: 66 Saltwater Sanctuaries from Around the World (Batsford Books, 2023). Keep an eye out next year for his forthcoming book about diving boards.

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 fully to your conscious mind.... even if you failed to ponder its source…. still, hearing it at a later date, out of the blue, will jog recollection of a particular place or person, or perhaps a certain time period in your life. We know that music is very powerful that way. But sounds from nature possess the same ability.

And for those of you who grew up in North America, there’s one strong sound from nature that evokes city life in summer: the call of the Common Nighthawk.

"I cannot change what is happening across a continent-wide population. But I can change it here." – Edward Warden, President of the Chicago Ornithological Society and Community Stewardship Program Manager at The Nature Conservancy's Illinois field office. Learn More About Edward

By day, Edward works at The Nature Conservancy. But by night, Edward is President of the Chicago Ornithological Society (COS), which sponsors the Chicago Nighthawk Project. COS has numerous ongoing initiatives, including urban restoration projects, community science programs, advocacy work, and field trips. They make it incredibly easy for Chicago residents to get involved with all-things-bird. Beyond their community science programs, they host Chicago bird photo contests and are one of the principal organizers of the Chicago Urban Birding Festival, which is happening this year from September 18-20. You can learn more about COS and their programs here.

How Do I See a Nighthawk?

Go outside in the evening from late May through early July. Because cities give them open airspace, warm rooftops, and good acoustics, the sounds of their characteristic “peeent” sound (as imitated by Edward and Jill on the podcast) really carries.

Starting in June and continuing into July, nighthawks nest. But unlike most other birds, they don’t go around picking up dry grass stalks and composing them into a soft little cup for their babies. Nighthawks lay their eggs directly onto flat gravel rooftops. The incubation period is quite short, lasting only about 18-20 days. Once they’re out, the chicks grow fast. By mid to late July, many of the young have fledged and are flying around finding their own dinner.

From August to September, courtship is over, the laying of the eggs is done, and the kids have grown strong. That’s when they head out, head south to Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay. During the winter, they don’t have to worry about finding gravelly plains so they are less city-centric. If you're in South America, look for them there in open habitats like savannas, grasslands and agricultural areas.

How Can I Spot One?

Nighthawk flight patterns resemble those of bats and chimney swifts (their flight pattern looks rather jerky), because they’re all swerving around to catch bugs. But nighthawks have a bigger wing span than bats or chimney swifts do. This makes them look slightly more floaty than those other nocturnal insect eaters.

The most distinctive feature (which you may or not be able to spot depending on the quality of light) is the white spot on the underside of each of their wings.

Can I Help in Some Way to Determine How Nighthawks are Faring? Is there a Monitoring Program?

If you live in Chicago, Illinois: you can help monitor nighthawks this summer. No prior experience with data collection or biology knowledge is needed. In 2025, volunteers monitored 197 different sites across Chicago metropolitan area and made a total of 526 site visits, which was nearly twice as many as the year before. The COS reported that, “nighthawks were seen at 68 of the locations, up from 49 in 2024. All told, the volunteers saw 188 nighthawks, an increase of 54% from the 122 seen in 2024.”

If you’re interested in volunteering (it’s a nice way to go on an evening stroll around your neighborhood), you can send an email to nighthawk@chicagobirder.org.

If you don’t live in Chicago, Illinois: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is always engaged in community science. If you download their app, “EBird,” you can report nighthawks (and others birds) at any time, without any necessary gear, organizers, or fees. Your sightings will help build a better understanding of nighthawks and their patterns.

Chicago has an exceptionally robust and consistent nighthawk monitering program, but various other programs and watch nights will pop up around the rest of the United States and beyond. Search to see if there is one in your city, or email your state’s chapter of The Nature Conservancy to inquire about any opportunities.

Other Great Nighthawk Resources:

You can see a fantastic display of their boom and peent calls on this video. (Also, read the comments on this; quite amusing.) Nighthawks also take magnificent dives, which come with their own unique vocalizations. Here’s a video that illustrates that.

Edward wrote a wonderful essay on nighthawks in Humans & Nature Press, and you can read it here.

In the episode, Edward mentioned Gretchen Newberry’s book, The Nighthawk’s Evening: Notes of a Field Biologist. Gretchen did her PhD thesis on Nighthawks, and she left her office job to study them full time. You can purchase the book here, or order it through your local bookstore.

Above photo credits left to right: Marion Miller, Matt Zuro, Carlos Manuel.

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 were allowed to enter the academic discipline. A few key women primatologists examined female roles within the troops, as well as the roles occupied by other less-dominant male individuals whom earlier scientists had dismissed as peripheral.

By asking new questions and challenging those early, widely-accepted theories, the women constructed an understanding of primate societies that was more finessed, accurate and complete. They were so successful in this endeavor and their work was so convincing, that male predecessors in the field of primatology readily agreed their own conclusions had been mistaken. They recognized that their narrow focus on the actions of what they labelled “alpha males” had been misplaced.

Samara Greenwood is PhD candidate in the academic field called the “History of Philosophy of Science,” and in her dissertation, she examines why those first scholarly articles on the culture within primate societies were so widely read and accepted. She also has examined how those journal articles managed to influence the culture of the general public. Even today, outside of science and inside the general culture of the United States and Australia, the true picture verified by primatologists hasn’t yet overthrown the erroneous beliefs about the roles of alpha males.

In the episode, Samara describes ways that the newer story could potentially take hold–and encourages us to join in and make it happen. “Whether it’s right or wrong,” she says, “there’s a strong connection about how we imagine nature and how we imagine ourselves.”
"The stories we tell about nature become the stories we tell about ourselves." – Samara Greenwood, PhD Candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Learn More About Samara

Samara is an academic researcher, public humanities broadcaster, and postgraduate scholar in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at the University of Melbourne. Her work focuses on how the women’s liberation movement of the late twentieth century impacted the theories and practices of primatology in the United States. She is also interested in how interactions between innovative craftspeople, practical mathematicians, and natural philosophers contributed to the emergence of “Galilean science” in early modern Italy.

Samara is the founding producer of The HPS Podcast, which features conversations from History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science. You can listen to that podcast here. Her work was also recently featured quite beautifully in an interview on “The Philosopher’s Zone” podcast, which you can listen to here.

Seminal Books, People, and Theories on the Topic

According to Samara, three women who revolutionized the field of primatology in the late 20th–century were:

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Sally Slocum, one of the key feminist scholars who challenged the “Man the Hunter” theory. The “very famous and influential paper” Samara mentioned she published is called “Women the Gatherer: male bias in anthropology,” and you can read it here.

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Jane Lancaster, Sally’s associate and another feminist primatologist who rethought the military model. Her famous article was called “In Praise of the Female Monkey,” published in 1973 in Psychology Today. Jane teaches today at the University of New Mexico in the Anthropology Department as a Distinguished Professor. She is also an editor of Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective.

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Donna Jeanne Haraway, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Her book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science examined how human cultural perspectives—particularly those regarding race, gender, and class—shaped scientific narratives and methodologies within primatology

Samara also mentioned the book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, which was written by Frans De Waal, a Dutch scientist who challenged a number of assumptions about non-human primates. You can read it here. The article that Jill read an excerpt from was called “The Camps Promising To Turn You And Your Son Into An Alpha Male,” by Charles Bethea. It was published in a March issue of The New Yorker magazine.

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 American cities–and most of the ones in Western Europe as well. The Executive Director of Seven Canyons Trust, Ronnie Pessetto, is attempting to peel back the layers of concrete that cover many of the creeks in Salt Lake City, Utah. The process is known as “daylighting rivers.” And because Ronnie’s projects are happening right inside a city with a million people, it means the work is as much about civic healing as it is ecological restoration.

In this episode, Ronnie Pessetto explains why so many rivers got buried in the first place; how to dig them out of their vaults; and how insanely different the water management policies in the West are from those in the Eastern half of the United States. We also get into climate change (like we do almost always, it seems) and how it might reduce the amount of water in Utah, a state that’s already naturally very dry. Daylighting is one optimistic step that can create greater enthusiasm about urban rivers, and ultimately lead to healthier cities.
"When you uncover rivers, you're not only uncovering water—you're uncovering the stories and the lives and the people that have loved and touched the river." – Ronnie Pessetto, Executive Director of Seven Canyons Trust
Above: Illustration by Olivia Cohen Learn More About Ronnie

Ronnie Pessetto is the Executive Director of Seven Canyons Trust, an organization whose goal is to uncover and restore buried or impaired creeks in Salt Lake Valley. Before working at Seven Canyons Trust, Ronnie was a Public Lands Planner for Salt Lake City, where she helped manage various urban parks and trails.

Seven Canyons Trust has several daylighting projects in different stages, which you can read about here. With joy and care, the work of the organization also includes advocacy, education, and community engagement. This year, the Trust celebrates its 10th birthday.

The Backstory of the Three Creeks Confluence

Seven Canyons Trust began in a University of Utah class back in 2014, when a small group of students in an Urban Ecology course developed a 100-year plan for daylighting 21 miles of buried creeks in Salt Lake City. One of the centerpieces of that model was the Three Creeks Confluence, an area just Southwest of downtown Salt Lake City where the “three creeks” (Red Butte, Emigration, and Parsleys) meet the Jordan River. (Confluence is the term for where two or more rivers meet). Within just a few years, the students had had turned the project into a formal nonprofit, secured $3 million in funding, and launched a major daylighting effort. You can read the full original plan (the one they turned in to Professor Stephen Goldsmith) here.

The Three Creeks Confluence quickly became a national model, earning numerous esteemed planning and landscaping awards, and inspiring daylighting projects around the world. It’s also the perfect example of what Ronnie calls “cultural daylighting” in the episode. Water restoration, she says, goes hand in hand with creating accessible and robust community spaces. The Three Creeks Confluence isn’t just a success story in ecological restoration; it’s a public art site, a music venue, and a thriving community gathering space.

If you find yourself in Salt Lake City, you can visit the Three Creeks Confluence at 1300 South and 900 West. See this webpage.

Above, you can see two maps of Salt Lake City. The first shows the Seven Major Creeks of the Salt Lake City Valley. The second highlights where these creeks overlap with recreation in the city – they run through a total of 29 parks! While some sections are still buried, you can see how much of the creeks now flow above ground.

The Spiral Jetty

If you visit Salt Lake City, in addition to looking at daylit rivers, be sure to make the 90-minute drive out to see Robert Smithson’s famous Spiral Jetty. It’s a large-scale earthwork that extends out into the Great Salt Lake, and it’s a truly incredible piece of art. It was built in the 1970s, but not too long after it was completed, the lake’s water levels rose. For 30 years, Spiral Jetty was underwater and unviewable. Then, in the early 2000s, there were times when the water got shallower, and you could partially see Spiral Jetty again — and other times when you couldn’t. Making a pilgrimage was always a gamble! It’s really only been the past decade that it’s been reliably visible. It now sits fully exposed in a lake bed of salt-encrusted sand.

On the drive out there, keep your eyes peeled for long-billed curlews and long-eared jackrabbits hanging out in the grasslands.

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 are living in an era that has the highest reported levels of loneliness, yet many forces encourage us to occupy more and more physical space and to spread out far apart from one another. In this episode, Sophie describes how taking up less physical space can be a radical act of restitution and care — both for ourselves and for the planet. "Humor feels really good, and I think it's important for people to do things that feel really good. Otherwise, you mess everything up for everybody else." – Sophie Lucido Johnson, cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of Kin: The Future of Family Learn More About Sophie

Buy and read Sophie’s books. The one most discussed in this Shape episode was Sophie’s most recent one, Kin: The Future of Family. That link will direct you to Amazon, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how much more fun and aesthetically pleasing it will be for you to buy Kin at your local bookstore, or to ask them kindly to order a copy for you. (And if you do the latter—you get to have a social interaction! Bonus!)

Although those of us who make the Shape podcast all love Kin very much, Sophie’s new book didn’t showcase her funny cartoons and wonderful drawings quite as much as her other two previous books did. So here you go—links to those two:

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Dear Sophie, Love Sophie: A Graphic Memoir

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Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s)

And one more! Audible commissioned Sophie to write an Audible Original, an audiobook called Love Without Sex—that one is available only on their platform and is well worth it.

Sophie has an outstanding Instagram and a superb, thoughtful (and yes, funny!) Substack called “You’re Doing a Good Enough Job.” You can also see more of her work on her website.

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 episode because that particular finding of Peggy’s and the others she spoke about remain incredibly relevant and still come across as a bit shocking.

As a child, Peggy Mason was a biology prodigy. By the age of nine, she was assisting the zoologist Dr. Charles Handley in teaching taxidermy at the Smithsonian. Today, as a neurobiologist, Peggy still works with mammals, but now she’s studying whether they experience empathy and act to help one another.

Peggy was studying the subject of pain modulation until a post-doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, asked if she’d be interested in expanding her work to collaborate on a project about empathy. “I went over to see her that same day,” says Peggy, and the upshot was the discovery that, like humans, rats have an aversion to witnessing the distress of others and a strong motivation to help someone else who’s suffering.

In addition to leading the research laboratory at the University of Chicago, Peggy is a committed teacher of neurobiology, teaching both formally (at the University) and informally, through her blog and a popular free, online course.
“It’s our biological mammalian inheritance to help. It’s not helping that’s the weird thing.” – Dr. Peggy Mason is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. Want to Learn More, See More, Know More?

You’ll love this video from Nova that shows one rat deliberately setting free another rat that’s trapped. Later, the rat is confronted with the question of which to do first: save some rat it had never even met before, or wolf down the chocolate Peggy offered? Also, here’s the article in Science magazine.

How can I take a class with Peggy?

On Coursera, take “Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Every Day Life,” a free course taught by Peggy. You can also gain more insights from Peggy by subscribing to her blog, which is fascinating and far-reaching in its subject matter. Her most recent post has the full script of her “Aims of Education” address, a prestigious speech given to incoming students.

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 professional papers (read mainly by expert academics in her field) and wrote two popular books that, in the opinion of this podcast, ought to be read by every inhabitant of our planet: Reading the Rocks (2005) and Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Change the World (2018). The first was an awe-inspiring, sometimes amusing and always relatable way of understanding the Earth itself. The second showed us a way to live on the Earth that respects how remarkable this planet is.

Acquiring a better grasp of our planet’s long history is what Marcia describes as “timefulness.” The concept of timefulness pushes back against the narrow perspectives and super-short time frames in which our modern societies generally operate. We each tend to think of our everyday life as singular, without precedent. Yet our lives are built upon a series of processes set in motion billions of years ago–and it’s entirely possible that life on Earth may roll comfortably on for another billion.

"Thinking like a geologist is about expanding our time frame, not seeing ourselves as the center of the cosmos, learning patience, understanding what lasts and what doesn’t." – Dr. Marcia Bjornerud is Professor of Geosciences and Environmental Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She conducts structural geology field research in Norway, New Zealand, arctic Canada, Italy and the Lake Superior region. How to Find Out More

Read Marcia’s books. Order them from your favorite local bookstore. Her first two books, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World (2018) and Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities (2022) were published through Princeton University Press and can be found here. Her most recent book, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, was published by Flatiron Books in 2024 and can be found here.

You can also find some of Marcia’s talks on YouTube.

In the podcast, Marcia talks about the Surtsey volcano. This could be the exact same film Marcia describes having seen in grammar school.

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 have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates climate–and how the Earth isn’t merely a stage where life plays out, but is an actual swirling, bubbling body that’s alive in its own right. There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of “aliveness” in science. But in his new book, Becoming Earth, Ferris argues that this planet meets the mark. He points to the self-regulating chemistry of the atmosphere, to the vast networks of microscopic plankton that alter global climate, and to something as ordinary (and astonishing) as soil, which can turn dead matter into living things.

We’ll dig into the ancient myths, the modern science, and the stories that shape the question of Earth’s aliveness. What happens when we stop thinking of the Earth as a rock with stuff growing on it, and start seeing it as a living system — a responsive, complex whole with its own kind of agency? And if the planet really is alive (or at least behaves in a way that’s uncanny to our living peers), how might that change the way we think about it and how we behave? “Life is a planetary phenomenon. It’s not that Earth had life evolve on it, but rather that Earth came to life itself. It is a garden that made itself. It sewed itself. It nurtured itself. It waters itself. And we are all part of that large, living architecture.” – Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth and contributing writer for the New York Times Learn More About Ferris's Work

Ferris’s debut book, Becoming Earth (Penguin Random House, 2025), was a New York Times bestseller and has been selected as a “Best Book of the Year” choice by seven major sellers. You can ask your local independent bookstores to order it for you, take it out of the library, or purchase it here or anywhere linked on this page.

Ferris is a contributing writer to over a dozen major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. You can find links to his articles on his website here. For more of his writing about ideas from this episode, we recommend reading his piece “The Earth is Just As Alive As You Are” for The New York Times.

Other articles by Ferris that particularly piqued our interest include “The Story of Storytelling” and “The Social Life of Forest”

Sources of Inspiration Mentioned in the Episode

Ferris mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis, the name given to the idea that life on Earth not only emerged but also actively shaped and sustained its environment to support life itself. The theory originated in the 1960s, when James Lovelock, a British atmospheric chemist and inventor, first proposed the concept. At the time, Lovelock was consulting with NASA on a project to detect signs of life on Mars, which required identifying chemical signatures that might indicate a living planet, such as atmospheric composition. He observed that Earth’s atmosphere was far from chemical equilibrium (e.g., with gases like oxygen and methane coexisting), which led him to propose that life plays an active role in regulating planetary conditions. Evolutionary theorist and microbiologist Lynn Margulis later collaborated with Lovelock, helping to develop and support the Gaia Hypothesis with evidence from microbial evolution and Earth’s early biosphere. Watch this video of her presenting it to NASA.

At first, many scientists initially rejected or even ridiculed the Gaia Hypothesis; it was viewed by as seeming too anthropomorphic, or unscientific, or simply too mystical-sounding. But as Ferris notes in this episode, today scientists widely acknowledge that life and environment have coevolved, and that feedback loops do exist between biological and geophysical systems. The underlying idea has become much more mainstream.

The new scientific field that emerged from this work, and which Ferris mentioned in the episode, is called zoogeochemistry. Here is one article that further describes that field.

It’s also worth noting that well before modern Western science began to evolve, worldviews of indigenous people in various parts of the world expressed some similar concepts of the earth as being alive through myths, rituals, and stories.

Ferris mentioned one of his favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, who sometimes wrote quite directly about the connectivity of life. Here’s one passage from The Waves (1931), in which one of the central characters, Bernard, speaks to that idea:

“Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.”s

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, in how we define complex concepts like vacancy, ownership, and home.

In this episode, Adrienne walks us through the ideas in her book, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership. It uses textual archives to examine the long-entwined relationships between race and mass homeownership. In it, Adrienne highlights how Black women’s experiences reveal a fuller picture of what property ownership looked like in the United States over the past century. She points to the work of artists and architects who challenge our understanding of space and the built environment, and she poses questions about how America might imagine more just ways of living in urban environments. “The stories of mid-20th-century authors were very much about a new silence around race, even as race continued to shape everyone’s lives in those emerging urban and suburban spaces.” – Dr. Adrienne Brown, Associate Professor in English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago Learn More About Adrienne's Work

Adrienne’s most recent book, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership (Stanford University Press, 2024), uses textual archives to examine the tightly-woven relationships between race and mass homeownership. You can purchase the book here.

She also wrote The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), which won the Modernist Studies Association’s 2018 First Book Prize. It explores how artists and residents viewed the intersection of architecture and race in modernist, urban environments. You can purchase that wonderful book here.

Adrienne is the co-editor of Race and Real Estate (Oxford University Press, 2015), an interdisciplinary examination of race, property, and citizenship.

At the University of Chicago, she is the Faculty Director of Arts + Public Life, a University initiative that uses education, community engagement, and artistic expression to foster community in the South Side of Chicago.

Sources of Inspiration Mentioned in the Episode

Adrienne described how mid-twentieth-century writers sometimes took “these odd detours to write pieces that are just about their neighborhood.” The main plot of the story might have been mostly about something else–but there were moments when they attempted to capture place: what suburbs were like, what race was like; what it was like to have a lot of resources or not to. Here are people she specifically mentioned:

Ralph Ellison (1913–1994), a writer and scholar best known for The Invisible Man. He also wrote a series of essays about Harlem – here is one he published in Harper’s Magazine about how Harlem was full of energy and creativity, but how it also felt weirdly cut off from the rest of the country by its poverty and by American racism.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000), a poet and teacher who powerfully captured Black experience, has a lot of things named after her in Chicago–schools, parks, buildings, monuments. She’s arguably the city’s most beloved literary figure. At the end of this episode of the podcast, Adrienne quotes from Brooks’s poem, “Beverly Hills, Chicago.”

Thomas Pynchon (born in 1937), a novelist who—although not a California native—wrote extensively about Los Angeles and the surrounding area. Adrienne referenced his piece “A Journey Into The Mind of Watts,” published in the New York Times, which was an exploration of the Watts neighborhood after the 1965 riots.

John Cheever (1912–1982), novelist and short story writer who depicted life in American suburbs just as the suburbs were starting to boom. Here at The Shape of the World, The Swimmer is one of our favorites of his short stories. In it, an affluent man in Westchester County decides to make his way home from a party by swimming the entire way, which in suburbia means he hops from one private backyard swimming pool to the next. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for him.)

Lorraine Hansberry (1930 – 1964). Adrienne talked about Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” which tells the story of a Black family in Chicago grappling with whether they should purchase a home in a white neighborhood. It’s one of the most well-known and familiar plays in the United States, and continues to be frequently staged; but if you haven’t seen the play, you probably know the movie with Sidney Poitier Ruby Dee, and Louis Gossett, Jr.

Adrienne referenced Marshall Brown, a current American architect who first made Adrienne question her use of the word “vacancy.” He is a professor in architecture at Princeton University, where he also directs the Princeton Urban Imagination Center. See more of his work here.

Adrienne mentioned Amanda Williams, a recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Awards.” Williams is an architect-turned-artist whose work examines the relationship between race and space. Some of her work specifically comments upon Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago is located. Williams’s best-known project, called Color(ed) Theory, drew attention to the discrepancy of investment in Black Chicago neighborhoods versus other neighborhoods in white areas. Williams repainted eight vacant houses in the palette of colors she’d observed in commercial products marketed toward Black consumers: one house got painted the color of dark purple of a Crown Royal whiskey bag; another was the bright reddish-orange color of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Learn more about Amanda Williams’s work here.

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, the possibility that the chaos of misinformation could make good governance impossible, and that artificial intelligence might decide we humans are too irrational and inefficient to keep around. (Along with some other cheery topics.)

Daniel also is part of the group that set the hands of the Doomsday Clock, which signifies how close (or how far away) we are from the end of life as we know it. (He chairs the group, officially called the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.) Right now, the clock reads 89 seconds to midnight. That’s the closest we’ve ever been to a global catastrophe. “When it’s all out in the open, you see that doom is not inevitable. There really are things that can be done, and there is a path forward. There’s definitely risk. Things are not guaranteed. But there is a path away from doom. I just hope we take it.” – Daniel Holz, professor in Physics, Astronomy, and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics; Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; and founding director of UChicago’s Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab). Learn More About Daniel's Work

In Daniel’s life as an astrophysicist, he’s one of the collaborators in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which works on the cutting edge of gravitational wave physics. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, triggered by cataclysmic cosmic events like the collision of black holes or neutron stars. LIGO uses incredibly sensitive laser interferometers—tools that measure tiny changes in light—to detect gravitational waves. It’s a big leap beyond what traditional telescopes can do, opening up to us lowly humans an entirely new way to observe the universe. You can read more about LIGO’s impact here.

UChicago’s Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab) is a lab that uses risk analysis and research to study some of the world’s most significant threats. The idea for the lab came from a class Daniel co-taught with James Evans, a computational scientist and sociologist, called “Are We Doomed”? The class caught the attention of Rivka Galchen, a staff writer for The New Yorker. Subsequently, her article in the magazine caught Jill’s attention. Jill’s been interested in the topic since reading Tony Ord’s book The Precipice.

The XLab’s purpose is to study existential threats so that people can be made more aware of them, and hopefully, so we humans can figure out how to prevent them from occurring. The XLab provides a venue for UChicago students to build expertise in the focus areas of concern.

The Doomsday Clock

When recording the episode, Jill asked Daniel to describe what it was like to be in the committee meetings when its members decide what position the hands of The Doomsday Clock should be set at. Daniel’s response and their conversation about it didn’t make it into the final cut of the episode, but you can listen to that outtake here.

The Doomsday Clock is a device that alerts the public to how near we humans truly are to destroying the world with technologies of our own making. The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils of existential catastrophe. If the hands were ever to reach the position of “midnight,” that would mean the end of civilization.

Created in 1947, the symbolic clock was started by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Many founding members of the Bulletin were scientists from the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. (The same university where Daniel now teaches.) The scientists who helped to split the atom understood full well that the presence of atomic weapons threatened life on Earth like nothing else that had ever existed before.

Since 2008, the Science and Security Board, which Daniel chairs, is part of the Bulletin, and this is the group of scientists and other experts who determine the setting of the hands. Twice a year, they meet. As of this writing, the clock hands are set at 89 seconds before midnight. This is the closest to midnight that they’ve ever been at any point in history.

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. These members of the beetle family are one of only a handful of terrestrial creatures capable of generating light. How fireflies glow, why they glow, and how their living conditions and populations are changing—Sara explains all of this and describes the relationship between us and them. Sara uses fireflies to make a case for wonder, which she says is something we can and should practice every day. “For me, paying attention to the natural world feeds my sense of wonder, and I actually think that’s one of the most important senses that we have–and that it may be underused.” – Dr. Sara Lewis, Professor Emerita in Biology at Tufts University; Chair of the Firefly Specialist Group in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Learn More About Sara’s Work

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. The Firefly Specialist Group that Dr. Sara Lewis leads is dedicated to protecting firefly species whose populations are threatened. Its members engage in research, advocacy, and public outreach (like the establishment of an official “World Firefly Day”). To learn more about the work they do, visit IUCN’s firefly webpage. You can also read their most recent report here, which includes detailed information on how specific species of fireflies are doing.

Sara is the co-founder of Fireflyers International Network, a group of firefly researchers and enthusiasts. This is the group that first coined the word “Fireflyer” to mean a “firefly chaser. A person who thinks about lightning bugs.” Learn more about their work here.

How Do Fireflies Make Light?

Relevant Readings

Order Sara’s book, Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies from your local bookstore, online here from the book’s publisher (Princeton University Press), or from Amazon. Also, check out the website for the book, which has additional writings and resources, and the beautiful trailer.

To learn more about the firefly habitat restoration efforts in Taipei, read Sara’s blog post on the initiative.

As Sara mentions in the episode, fireflies hold a special place in Japan. During Japan’s period of rapid industrialization, the number of fireflies was radically reduced. Communities began organizing local clean-up efforts and “firefly festivals” (hotaru matsuri), and slowly, populations recovered.

Historically, in Japan, poets used fireflies to symbolize summer and its ephemeral beauty. One of the famous writers of haiku, Kobayashi Issa, utilized them extensively. Here’s an example of one that speaks to the tensions between nature and cities:

Don’t go firefly!

Even at night Kyoto

is noisy.

Read more about fireflies in haiku in this article.

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, even our grocery stores. Have we humans learned to live in communion with wild things? And are we beginning to see cities not solely as culprits of climate change and perpetrators of a biodiversity crisis but also as sources of potential resolution? “If we want to connect people to nature, most people live in cities. To me, it makes the most sense to start where people are. We can’t just keep writing off the city as a loss.” – Dr. Seth Magle, Director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo and Executive Director of the Urban Wildlife Information Network.

The Urban Wildlife Institute (UWI) that Seth directs is housed at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. It’s an initiative that studies both the zoo’s own property and many other nature areas within Chicago. A lot of UWI’s work is collecting data and developing scientific standards that help minimize conflict between the needs of animals and the needs of humans in Chicago. For more about UWI, visit this page. Plus, here’s some press on UWI: “People Can Learn to Coexist With Urban Wildlife,” “Give Animals a Seat At the Table,” and “How Cities Can Help Solve the Biodiversity Crisis.” You can also learn more about UWI from Jill’s earlier interview with Seth in season one of our podcast: “We All Live in Nature.”

The new program Seth and Jill discussed in this episode was the Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN). Its purpose is to find ways to make cities better places to live for both humans and nature. Seth helped establish this international alliance. A big part of what Seth and UWIN are trying to achieve is for all of the cities involved to use similar standards for what kinds of data they collect so comparisons and contrasts can be made among them. Ultimately, this coordination will create a greater pool of collective knowledge and can lead to quicker solutions in each city for improving wildlife habitat and minimizing conflicts. Each member of UWIN collects its own data independently and retains the right to use it however they see fit, but this additional alliance offers the opportunity for researchers in one city to work with other partners to ask and answer questions at much larger scales—from regionally to globally.

To learn more about Seth’s camera trapping in Chicago and to see a map of the sites, visit this page.

To see some of the Chicago urban wildlife lore that Seth mentioned in the episode, see Chunkasaurus and the Chicago Rat Hole.

How to Get Involved

If you want to help create more wildlife-inclusive habitats in your own neighborhood, check out the Urban Wildlife Project, developed in partnership with the University of Wisconsin. This website has information on everything from yard management and gardening to native flora recommendations – all of which help make life easier for fauna.

To help Seth and his team identify animals that get photographed on camera traps, go to the website Chicago Wildlife Watch. For more information on how to join the Urban Wildlife Institute’s community science programs, visit this page.

Relevant Readings

“Why Study Urban Nature?” an essay by Seth in The Center for Humans and Nature Press.

“Wealth and urbanization shape medium and large terrestrial mammal communities,” written by Seth Magle and Mason Fidino, et al. and published in Global Change Biology.

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. Laurie explains how our understanding of the world is filtered constantly through our own physical selves – we have a certain height and breadth; we can see for long distances; we are transient and ephemeral beings; and our brains tend to break reality into neat, distinct pieces and then give those things names. But what if we were more like a long-lived lichen?

Laurie is fascinated by lichens, these small and mostly overlooked organisms. Individuals of some species can stay alive for literally thousands of years. Laurie discovers that lichens have a lot to teach her (and the rest of us) about resiliency, adaptability, diversity, and perhaps most importantly, about how connected we are with other beings. "Opening up relations with other beings that are seen as dirt or detritus is a way to diminish some of our own hubris." – A. Laurie Palmer, American artist, writer, and activist, and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz HOW TO BUY & READ LAURIE’S BOOK, “THE LICHEN MUSEUM”

Easy enough to acquire: order it from your local bookstore! You can also purchase it directly from the publisher, the University of Minnesota Press.

Laurie Palmer’s earlier book was In the Aura of a Hole: Exploring Sites of Material Extraction (2015), which studies humans’ effects on nature through her decade-long exploration of mineral extraction sites in the U.S. You can read her interview with Art21 Magazine about that.

HOW TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT LAURIE’S WORK

Best place is Laurie’s own website at https://alauriepalmer.org/. But there are also some other gems out there, like articles either written by Laurie or articles written about her. Here’s a lovely piece Laurie wrote for Orion Magazine. The article contains five tips on how to live like a lichen.

And here’s an article that provides insights into her art practice, published in SFMOMA’s Open Space series.

MORE DETAIL ON VARIOUS THINGS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE

Taking a Lichen Walk

1. Purchase and use a 10-power magnifying hand lens, like this one for only $13.75 from ASC Scientific. A “10-power lens” or as Laurie referred to it during the interview, a “10x lens” means that the lens will make an object appear ten times its actual size.

2. Keep your eyes peeled and expect to encounter lichens in unexpected places – sidewalk cracks, electrical utility boxes, car doors. And of course, don’t neglect more typical spots like on the bark of trees, the surfaces of damp stones, and the walls of neglected wooden sheds.

3. Get close to the ground. As Laurie explains, “To look at lichens, you have to bend down and kneel, and get inside their world in a way that reduces your stature and vertical human body, which is in control of the world through long distance vision. You become myopic, and they become really huge, and you enter into their tiny world, and so there’s a loss of your own sovereignty, just in the act of looking.”

ADVICE ON BINOCULARS

Another scientific tool that’s useful to have for observing nature are binoculars. In the course of the interview, Laurie asks for advice on which ones to buy. Jill suggested that for a pair that is adequate and costs less than a hundred dollars, try these fun colorful ones made by Nocs Provisions.

“BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER”

Written by Herman Melville and published in the 1850s, the short story titled “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is about a worker who, whenever his boss asks him to do something, consistently answers, “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby’s quiet refusal becomes a powerful act of passive resistance. The story is rather an odd one with elements of absurd, dark humor and ultimately, a descent into nihilism. But it’s at its best and most memorable when it’s challenging the modern world’s assumptions about obedience, productivity, and purpose.

Bartleby came up in this “Shape” interview when Laurie described lichens’ resistance to cultivation. While lichens produce unique chemical compounds that could potentially be useful and economically profitable to humans, lichens grow too slowly for those products ever to be scaled up. Laurie portrays this “failure” as successful resistance on the part of the lichen. They cannot be used or commodified.

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—one we can access at anytime from anywhere.

Plus, when we—the most powerful species on the planet—stop listening, the relationship between humans and nature doesn’t exactly go terrifically well. David says, “If I’m not listening to the voices of my kin, the birds and the trees and the living rivers and the whales and neighbors, how can I expect to be a good relative to them? If I’m not listening, how can I expect to be a good member of the living earth community?” "In my work as a teacher and as a citizen and a writer, I try to be on the side of beauty and connection and less on the side of disconnection and brokenness." – David Haskell is a writer, biologist, and professor at the University of the South in Suwanee, Tennessee. How to Find Out More

Buy and read David’s books. The one we discuss the most in this episode is his most recent one, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and The Crisis Of Sensory Extinction.

The link will direct you to Amazon, but we’d be remiss not to mention that it’s more fun and aesthetically pleasing for you to buy it at your local bookstore or to ask them to order a copy for you. Or if you don’t have a bookstore near you, try Jill’s favorite shop, the Seminary Coop Books/57th Street Books. You can order from the Coop’s website—and if you live in Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood (or somewhere reasonably close by) a nice human being from the store will deliver whatever you order right to your doorstep. The book will arrive without that overeager, heavy-duty packaging that Amazon burdens you with.

Seminary Coop home deliveries have only a wee, barely-measurable environmental footprint, so check it out.

David’s other books are—all of which are excellent—are:

• The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors

• The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature

• Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree: Getting to Know Trees Through the Language of Scent

Insider bonus tip: if you purchase that last one as an audiobook, it’s accompanied by original violin compositions.

If you’re not really a book person but would like enjoy exploring other small hits of David’s way of thinking and being in other ways, check out what David has composed or collaborated on in other mediums:

The voices of birds and the language of belonging. Emergence Magazine. An article, yes, which means reading—but it also includes an audio essay with bird song.

The Atomic Tree. VR experience based on the last chapter of The Songs of Trees.

Concurrent-Dyscurrent. CD/digital tracks of 4-minute field recording compositions (also on all streaming services).

Eastern Forest Playing Cards, with artist Ellen Litwiller, from The Art of Play.

Credits

In the episode, sounds of the European blackbird singing in a courtyard: Mizu LOEB, XC548553. Accessible at http://www.xeno-canto.org/548553.

In the episode, we mentioned the organization Noise Free America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to, in their words, “making quiet happen”.