Harry Hmura —musician-composer whose album “I Am, I Am” integrates original songs and instrumental pieces with the vocalizations of great apes—discusses his formative years as a musician, including a pivotal backstage meeting with B. B. King as a 15-year-old and...
Andrea Turkalo, of the Wildlife Conservation Society—and considered the world’s leading expert on forest elephants, having studied them for more than two decades in the Central African Republic (CAR)—recounts what initially drew her to the CAR nearly 30 years ago,...
Alex Blount, PETA Tour Administrator—in this case, the tour in question is PETA’s “I, Orca” empathy project, which involves using Google virtual reality goggles to immerse participants in a world where they can swim freely in the ocean with their orca...
While away on a family vacation, I presented an encore broadcast of my interview with Helen Macdonald, the author of "H is for Hawk," which received rapturous acclaim and major literary prizes. It's probably my favorite book of the last year or so, and I was...
Dan Piraro—who, for 30 years, has drawn the highly-acclaimed, widely-syndicated comic “Bizarro”—discusses his recently announced plans, over the next two to three years, for retiring “Bizarro,” and how that announcement was initially misunderstood by some, and...
Gail Clifton—who has worn multiple hats at the Sarasota Manatee Association for Riding Therapy (SMART), including 11 years as its volunteer Executive Director—discusses SMART’s history and mission. She also tells stories about the organization’s early triumphs,...
John Hargrove —author of “Beneath The Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld And The Truth Beyond Blackfish”—discusses his childhood love for SeaWorld and its orcas, which began with his first visit to the Florida park in 1980 at age six, and subsequently involved...
Chris Gug—an innovative and heralded underwater photographer—recalls growing up “landlocked” in Connecticut, enchanted by the sea and dreaming of becoming an underwater photographer, but meanwhile shooting all sorts of pictures locally, until, at 15, having...
Helen Macdonald—author of “H is for Hawk,” a wildly-acclaimed, multifaceted memoir that recounts Macdonald’s struggle with the debilitating grief spawned by her father’s sudden death, and her singular solution to that struggle: training a goshawk, a large and...
Cat Warren—author of “What The Dog Knows: Scent, Science, And The Amazing Ways Dog Perceive The World”—discusses how she approached writing the book, which, it’s observed in the interview, is so skillfully sprawling, it constitutes multiple books, and probably a...
