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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.  

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.  

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.

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.

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. 

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.