The Natural Curiosity Project

It was an assignment to photograph the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Bay Bridge from atop one of the towers. Who knew they didn't have an elevator?

Ever wonder why they call the company Starbucks?

Poet, fishing boat captain, publisher--what a great conversation!

In this small book that celebrates the second line in the American Declaration of Independence--the line that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." we discover the brilliance of the nation's founders.

Russ Willis is equal parts academic, ordained minister, technologist, poet, and strategist. In this episode, we sit down to chat about his new book, "AI and the Crisis of Control."

Interesting facts about the deep ocean.

At various times in the past, I’ve talked about the partnership between the NCP and the Silverback Digest, an online journal published by my friend and fellow Vermonter Stephen Morris. Stephen, or Step as his friends call him, defines eclectic: gardener, traveler, writer, musician, editor, publisher—a man of many talents, vocations and avocations. Eclectic also defines the Silverback Digest. It reflects his broad spectrum of curiosity—which is probably what brought us together in the first place. Anyway, Stephen recently published a piece called “Clixed-up Michés,” a play on words of “Mixed-up Cliches.” He wrote it a few years ago. It made me laugh out-loud, so I thought I’d share it with you—the audio version.

Mexico is rich with mysterious tradition, a culture where magic and mysticism are as present as Catholicism and the lingering Aztec voices that are woven into the wind. But nowhere is it as evident as it is in Xochimilco, especially at La Isla de las Muñecas—the Island of the Dolls.

Kyle Steele Interviews Steve Shepard about His New Book, “The Sound of Life.”

Do the actions of a single individual matter? If you subscribe to the fundamental tenets of negativism, pessimism, resignation, and snark, the answer to that question is decidedly ‘no.’ But let’s reconsider that.

One of the themes in my new novel, “The Sound of Life,” is interspecies communication—not in a Doctor Doolittle kind of way—that’s silly—but in a more fundamental way, using protocols that involve far more listening on our part than speaking. The ability to communicate with other species has long been a dream among scientists, although as I observed in an earlier Podcast episode, we might not be pleased with what other species have to say to us. But that aside, I find it pretty exciting that we’re on the bleeding edge of being able to engage in a form of two-way communication with other species. So, in this episode, I want to tell you a bit about where we are, and why 2026 is widely believed to be the year we make contact.

Lately, we’ve had more displays of the Aurora than usual up here in northern Vermont. I wondered why, and ended up going down one of my occasional rabbit holes in search of the reason. Along the way, I discovered something very interesting. Let me introduce you to the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle—and why you might want to familiarize yourself with it.

Thank you for a great year! I this final episode of 2025, I review some of the highlights of past episodes. Thank you for joining me!

Episode 308-Book Magic by Dr. Steven Shepard

Join me on a tour of the Essex Junction Water Treatment Facility. It's a lot more interesting than you might think!

The ocean has always been a center-point in my life, a place where I feel the most comfortable. I began SCUBA-diving professionally in 1977, and soon became a dedicated underwater photographer. But it wasn't long before I began to pay more attention to the sounds of the underwater world than I did the sights, and the result was life-changing. Please enjoy.

This is an audio essay, presented in three parts, about the need to balance the forces of industry and the forces of conservation. We need both, so what I'm about to say, I think, is important. Let me begin by telling you what this audio essay is not about. It is not another tiresome, ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling’ story of environmental doom. It is not another finger wagging, how-dare-we-mistreat-the-planet-this-way paean of conservation woe. It is not yet another in a long line of left-wing assaults on the energy sector, nor is it an attack on the right-wing players who want to drill, baby, drill. We are living in a time when society seems to believe that our future MUST be binary. “We can reduce our dependency on oil, or we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change. In fact, “we can reduce our dependency on oil, and we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change.” Here’s how.

This is an audio essay, presented in three parts, about the need to balance the forces of industry and the forces of conservation. We need both, so what I'm about to say, I think, is important. Let me begin by telling you what this audio essay is not about. It is not another tiresome, ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling’ story of environmental doom. It is not another finger wagging, how-dare-we-mistreat-the-planet-this-way paean of conservation woe. It is not yet another in a long line of left-wing assaults on the energy sector, nor is it an attack on the right-wing players who want to drill, baby, drill. We are living in a time when society seems to believe that our future MUST be binary. “We can reduce our dependency on oil, or we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change. In fact, “we can reduce our dependency on oil, and we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change.” Here’s how.

This is an audio essay, presented in three parts, about the need to balance the forces of industry and the forces of conservation. We need both, so what I'm about to say, I think, is important. Let me begin by telling you what this audio essay is not about. It is not another tiresome, ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling’ story of environmental doom. It is not another finger wagging, how-dare-we-mistreat-the-planet-this-way paean of conservation woe. It is not yet another in a long line of left-wing assaults on the energy sector, nor is it an attack on the right-wing players who want to drill, baby, drill. We are living in a time when society seems to believe that our future MUST be binary. “We can reduce our dependency on oil, or we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change. In fact, “we can reduce our dependency on oil, and we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change.” Here’s how.

Older media just never seem to go away...as you're about to find out.

Like every part of our planetary geography, oceans have identifiable regions. Beginning at the beach and gradually dropping to about 650 feet is the continental shelf. This shallow region of the ocean is called the sunlit or Epiplagic zone. From sunlight we move into the beginnings of oceanic darkness: we leave the continental shelf and step onto the much steeper continental slope where we enter the twilight or Mesopelagic zone, which descends to about 4,000 feet—the better part of a mile. Here, light from the surface disappears. We continue in darkness down the continental slope into the midnight or Bathypelagic zone, all the way to 13,000 feet—a crushing depth of nearly two miles. But we’re nowhere near the bottom yet. At 13,000 feet, the slope begins to level as it becomes the continental rise on its way to the sea floor, at about 20,000 feet. This is the Abyss, or the Abyssopelagic zone, the dwelling place of creatures that are the stuff of nightmares. Even their names conjure darkness: gulper eels. Angler fish. Vampire squid. Coffinfish. But this is still not the deepest part of the ocean. That honor goes to the Hadal zone, named after Hades, the underworld. These are the ocean’s deep trenches, and they descend to unimaginable depths of nearly 37,000 feet. Mount Everest could be dropped into these canyons and its peak would lie under deep water. In this program, we look at these deep regions, at the organisms that lives there, and at the sounds of the deep.

Because I do so much work in the world of sound, I’m always looking for resources that will inspire and challenge me. One of them is earth.fm, an online resource for people who appreciate the sounds of the natural world. Sound recordists from all over the world—and I mean ALL over the world—contribute tracks to earth.fm to be shared with anyone who wants to listen. They have a great Web site, which is just earth-dot-fm, and a terrific app, available in your favorite app store. In the process of getting to know them I got to know Melissa Pons, their primary content curator. Melissa is enormously talented: beyond earth.fm, her award-winning work as a sound designer and content creator has been featured on the BBC and NPR, among others. But as I got to know Melissa’s work, I began to think of her as much more than a skilled recordist: I also saw her as a thoughtful and deliberate listener. Her field recording albums cover the acoustic waterfront, and her contributions to earth.fm are as varied as they are beautiful. So, I asked Melissa, who is based in Portugal, to join me for a conversation about field recording, sound design, and the importance of going outside, being quiet, and listening to the voice of the natural world. In the program, you get to meet Melissa Pons.

Weird, isn't it, that wind is completely silent--silent, that is, until it hits something. Then, it bursts out in myriad voices.

In this episode we travel from central Turkey, the region known as Anatolia, to northern Norway, on the island of Svalbard, to visit two extraordinary subterranean places.

IT's hard to believe that I have created 300 episodes of the Natural Curiosity Project. Thank you so much--SO much--for staying with me on the adventure. In this episode, Pete Mulvihill recalls some of his favorite episodes--and asks me for mine. The episodes mentioned in the program are 84 (Bud and the tumbleweeds); 77 (How to Read Movie Credits with Bob Verlaque); 181 (Rob Prince and Dark Winter Nights); 206 (Dewitt Jones); 15 (How Trees Work); 16 (Forest Bathing); and 97, 99 and 109 (Letter-writing). Enjoy!

Acronyms are "words" that are abbreviations. But they differ from abbreviations because they can be pronounced like a word. Many of these acronyms, like the 'ZIP' in 'Zip Code,' aren't even known as acronyms anymore. In this episode, my friend Pete Mulvihill helps me decode some of the most common acronyms in modern lexicon.

Author John Stilgoe exhorts us to go outside, take a walk or a bike ride, and tune in to the world before us that we miss when we whiz by in a car. I implore you to do the same thing--but instead of paying attention to what you see, pay attention to what you hear.

I was listening to music the other day while driving to and from the dump, and one of my favorites came on: Mr. Bojangles, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Like most of the songs that rise to the top of my favorites list, Mr. Bojangles has the best qualities of storytelling. But as I listened, I started thinking, something that always gets me in trouble. And, it did. I wanted to know: Who was Mr. Bojangles? Was he real? Well, it turns out that yeah, he was, but there’s a lot more to the story than a single person.

Some additional thoughts on the craft of writing.

Episode 295-The Most Complicated Machine Ever Built by Dr. Steven Shepard

I spent a great deal of my life in Monterey, California, most of it under the water while teaching SCUBA diving. I recently discovered a Monterey story that held me spellbound. It begins like this: A marine biologist, a mythologist, and a novelist walk into a bar...

An homage to Jane Goodall and others like her. This is a repost from 2021.

This essay contains an important story for the ages. Given current events, and the absolute truth that history does repeat, the lesson is plain, and chilling. 1492 and the years leading up to it in Medieval Spain, were times that should not be repeated. And yet…

Sometimes, curiosity, awe and wonder are the only tools we have. But when it comes to the majesty and magnitude of the night sky, of all the things about it we can’t possibly comprehend, they’re actually the best tools we can have. In this episode we talk about the magic and wonder that happens late at night, when it’d just you, the sky, and pure awe.

I recently had a conversation about technology’s impact on research today. It’s an argument I could make myself—that technology has resulted in access to more data and information. For example, before the invention of moveable type and the printing press, the only books that were available were chained to reading tables in Europe’s great cathedrals—they were that rare and that valuable. BUT: Does technology give me access to BETTER data and information? I believe the answer to that is no, for a very specific reason: It leaves out the all-important human element in the knowledge molecule, the element that makes sense of the data and then converts it to information. Have a listen.

It’s human nature for each generation to criticize the generation that preceded it, often using them as a convenient scapegoat for all that’s wrong in the world. The current large target is my own generation, the Baby Boomers. I recently overheard a group of young people—mid-20s—complaining at length about their belief that the Boomers constitute a waste of flesh who never contributed much to society. Respectfully, I beg to differ; this is my response, along with a plea to ALL generations to think twice about that conclusion.

Musings on science, philosophy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Short and Sweet: A challenge to our government and our politicians--all of them--to do their jobs. In good conscience, I can't NOT post this audio essay.

I read something the other day that had a reference in it to a new book that had just come out. The book’s called, “Sing Like Fish,” and it’s written by author and science writer Amorina Kingdon. Needless to say, I immediately ordered the book, and I have to tell you, I burned through it in three days. The subtitle is, “How Sound Rules Life Underwater,” which you can imagine, as a wildlife sound recordist, really caught my attention. Actually, a few things in the book caught my attention, including this quote: “For all the wonders and worries of this subject, the truth is that noise does not match the deep threat posed to the oceans by climate change. And yet, neither issue is monolithic or exists in a vacuum. Warming or acidifying waters will conduct sound differently: Sound’s effect on ecosystems like reefs or Arctic food webs will ricochet into animals’ responses to climate change. Yet I believe that it is never a waste to examine the world though a new lens, through a new sense.” That’s powerful writing. So, as I tend to do, I went looking for the author, and I found her north of the border in British Columbia. Amorina and I had a nice chat, discovered that we have a lot of common interests, including, of all things, the acoustic work done by Bell Laboratories, and she agreed to be on the program. Our conversation wandered all over the landscape—I recorded more than three hours of tape—but I edited it down to the most important points. Here's Amorina.

On a warm fall day in eastern Nebraska, I met up with wildlife biologist Bethany Ostrom of the Crane Trust. As we talked, we took a long walk along the banks of the Platte River, watching as small grasshoppers by the hundreds boiled out from under our feet like popcorn, listening to meadowlarks and bobolinks calling from the scrubby brush along the river. The Crane Trust monitors the health and welfare of North America’s population of both migratory sandhill cranes, which number in the hundreds of thousands, as well as the highly endangered whooping cranes, which number less than a thousand in the entire migratory population. The health of the crane population is a bellwether for other species, and underlines the importance of the work done by Bethany and her colleagues.

Imagine a place right here on Earth—not on Mercury or Venus—where it’s not particularly unusual for the summer temperature to soar to 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 degrees C). Now imagine a 20-meter or 60-foot-tall building in that hellish place where ice can be safely stored, completely frozen, for the entire summer. Oh—I should also add that the building has no electricity and is made out of mud, goat hair, ash, and egg whites. These buildings exist, and they’re called Yakhchals. They’re found in the Middle East, mostly in Iran, in places where it gets very cold in the winter, when ice can be made, and very hot in the summer. They’re a type of evaporative cooler—in the dry parts of the American south, a similar technology is called a swamp cooler—and these Yakhchals been in continuous use since at least the fourth-century BCE.

Every once in a while, an idea hits me that causes one of those stop-the-presses moments, usually caused by some triggering event—in this case, the senseless, ongoing attacks on and defunding of scientific research by a group of decision-makers who aren’t sure if there’s an ‘I’ in the word ‘science.’ They make me think of a line from the movie Armageddon, in which the Air Force general says to Billy Bob Thornton, one of the NASA executives, “You’re asking me to put the future of the planet into the hands of a group of people that I wouldn’t trust with a potato gun.” The world reveres art, especially music and the artists who create it. The same is true of sports figures. Look at the way we hold up rock musicians and professional athletes as if they were celestial deities, sitting beside Zeus and Apollo and the rest of the pantheon. But when’s the last time we saw such reverence for science and the scientists who strive to understand the ways of the universe? In fact, I know you can name musicians and sports figures. But how many scientists can you name, once you get past Einstein, and maybe Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson? It’s time to change that, don’t you think?

I just got a package in the mail, which contains a signed copy of a brand-new book that just came out from science fiction author Rob Dircks, called “Sunnyside,” along with a cloth patch that I can sew onto a shirt or a baseball cap. The patch says, “HISTORY REPAIR TECHNICIAN: CORRECT THE PAST, PROTECT THE FUTURE.” I won’t give it away, but it’s related to Sunnyside. As you’ve probably already figured out, Rob is my guest my guest in this episode. I’m already halfway through the eBook version of Sunnyside, which came out before the physical book did, but Rob was kind enough to send me a physical copy as well, and that’s what just got here. Man, I love this patch. In this episode, Rob and I are going to talk about writing with a focus on science fiction, but we’re also going to talk about curiosity, creativity, and the challenge of balancing work and the creative pursuits that feed our souls. But there’s more to Rob Dircks that just being a science fiction author and Podcaster. Yes, he’s written a lot of material, and talk about diverse! His books include “You’re Going to Mars!”, a trilogy called “Where the Hell is Tesla,” and “The Wrong Unit.” And those are just his science fiction titles. He’s also the author of “Alphabert: An A-B-C Bedtime Adventure, and “Unleash the Sloth: 75 Ways to Reach Your Maximum Potential by Doing Less” (And I DARE you to hear that title and NOT check it out, along with Rob’s other books).

Curiosity can lead to some weird and wacky places—how about Sopchoppy, Florida, home of the American Worm Gruntin’ Festival? But there’s more to this story than that. Have a listen.

HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED that every child, by the time they’re 13 or so, should have a good grounding in three specific skills. They should be able to read well; they should have a decent understanding of their individual rights, especially freedom of speech and the sanctity of a free press; and they should understand the scientific method and how it works. Science is real, and it is as accurate as anything can possibly be BECAUSE it is designed to be ferociously self-critical. What if our political system worked the same way? Wow—what an amazing thing THAT would be! Let me say that another way: what if we were to unleash the scientific method on POLITICAL science? What would THAT look like! In this episode, I take a look at that, with the help of none other than Carl Sagan. Have a listen.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates underwater microphone arrays throughout the world's oceans, going them th ability to listen to goings-on below the surface. Many sounds capture by those hydrophones they recognize--but some, they don't. In this episode I'll share some of these mysterious sounds with you. What do YOU think they are?

To combat disease, we have the opportunity to go to the doctor and get a vaccine, which helps us create antibodies to resist disease. But how do we inoculate ourselves against a very different and insidious attacker--bias and disinformation? I'll tell you.

Anyone who has listened to more than two episodes of this program knows that I’m about as weird and geeky as they come. I’m a sucker for science and nature, and in spite of the fact that as a kid I would have rather looked for turtles and snakes in the vacant lots around our town than play sports, a fact that led to more than a few schoolyard brawls, my passion and curiosity have never left me—and hopefully, never will. One of the best things I ever built, one of the most magical, was something called a crystal radio. And listen: if you have a young person in your life, pay attention—this is a great project to do together. The very best resource I’ve found online about crystal radios is maintained by Professor David Goldenberg at the University of Utah. You can find his page at https://goldenberg.biology.utah.edu/fun.shtml. This episode's cover image is from my good friend, Kenn Sato.

One of the most effective yet most overlooked and under appreciated techniques for assessing the biodiversity of an environment is sound--the voice of the place. In this episode, I describe why sound is such a powerful and accurate indicator of bioacoustics health.

Jared Blake is one of the most important human voices in the natural world today. His unceasing commitment to exhort us all to slow down and listen to the voices of the natural world, to work hard to understand what we're being told, is a cause and effort to be celebrated. in this episode, Jared tells us about his months-long recording expedition to the American Southwest, and about the extraordinary, often eerie, voices he heard while in the wild.