The Shape of the World

By Shape of the World StudiosScience Social Sciences Natural Sciences Nature

The Shape of the World episodes

October 01 The Wild Card (UPDATE)
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.”
40 min
September 10 On Landscape, Identity, and Belonging (Ep. 47)
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.
35 min
August 20 One Man, 3,750 Birds (Ep. 46)
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.
45 min
July 30 Canines in the City (Ep. 45)
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).
44 min
July 09Back in the Swim of Things (Ep. 44)
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:
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)
Brooklyn Bridge Swim, July 26th, 2026 in NYC (organized by Urban Swim)
Basel Rhine Swim, August 11th, 2026
Amsterdam City Swim, September 6th, 2026
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.
36 min
June 18 Nighthawk: The Voice of Twilight (Ep. 43)
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 [email protected].
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.
40 min
May 28How to Make a Myth, and Then Debunk It (Ep. 42)
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:
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.
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.
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.
45 min
May 07 Where Did All the Rivers Go? (Ep. 41)
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.
31 min
April 22Friendship, Bushtits, and the Vastness of Everything (Ep. 40)
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:
Dear Sophie, Love Sophie: A Graphic Memoir
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.
38 min
December 18, 2025 The Warm Glow of Helping (Update)
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.
31 min