In the 1970s, scientists proposed what has become known as the Gaia Hypothesis: the idea that earth is best understood not as a passive substrate or background to life but as a life form in its own right. Our guest, journalist Ferris Jabr, believes the time has come to revive that idea. To understand how sentient creatures have evolved on this planet, he suggests, is not only to grasp that animals—human and otherwise—are offshoots of an evolutionary tree; it’s to see the tree itself as one element of a dynamic, interrelated organism. We speak with Jabr about the art of science reporting, the limits of life, and what the white cliffs of Dover are made of.
7. Raised By Animals: Dr. Jennifer Verdolin outlines the interconnectedness of the human ecosystem and the animal kingdom
JENNIFER L. VERDOLIN is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona and an expert in animal behavior. The author of two books, including Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships and Raised by Animals: The Surprising New Science of Animal Family Dynamics, she draws on animal behavior to reveal how much we can learn from other species to improve our relationships, families, and lives. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, NPR, Slate, The Washington Post, and National Geographic. Jennifer was a featured guest on the D.L. Hughley Show from 2014-2018 and is a frequent media guest on other radio and podcast shows. She enjoys engaging the public and speaks at places like the 92nd St Y and universities around the country. She also consults for television production companies in the US and abroad.
6. You Actually Work Together?: Hosts of the “Political Climate” Podcast on what it’s like to spend every day working across the aisle
Political Climate is a bipartisan podcast on energy and environmental politics in America, presented by the USC Schwarzenegger Institute and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Political Climate goes beyond the echo chambers to bring you civil conversations, fierce debates and insider perspectives, with hosts and guests from across the political spectrum. Join Democrat and Republican energy experts Brandon Hurlbut and Shane Skelton, along with Greentech Media’s Julia Pyper, as we explore how energy and environment policies get made.
5. When Jay-Z Meets Green Trees: Heartwood Producer Chris Perkins talks about the role of music in defining an environmental ethic
Chris Perkins is a joint-degree M.E.M. and M.B.A. candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale School of Management from Seattle, WA. His professional interests include standards for stewardship of natural resources, supply chain management, green finance, public-private community conservation partnerships, and next-generation environmental leadership. Most recently, he lived in Jackson, WY, where he worked at the Center for Jackson Hole, the nonprofit responsible for the SHIFT Festival, an exploration of outdoor recreation, conservation, and public health. At FES, he is the founder of Outdoor Rec Industry Student Interest Group, and produces the Heartwood Podcast alongside Assistant Dean of Diversity and Inclusion Thomas Easley. He also provides logistical support to the Outdoor CEO Diversity Pledge.
It’s about more than just business. Ninth Square Market Too Caribbean Style and Rhythm Brewing Co. are two of many black-owned businesses in New Haven drawing from history and family traditions to provide delicious food and drink for local communities. Ninth-Square owner Elisha Hazel and Rhythm Brewing Co. founder Alisa Mercado share about overcoming challenges in the industry, the nuances of sustainability, and their efforts to bring people together––around the table and the pint.
Chewing the Fat is a podcast from the Yale Sustainable Food Program. We cover people making change in the complex world of food and agriculture. We’re home to brilliant minds: activists, academics, chefs, entrepreneurs, farmers, journalists, policymakers, and scientists (to name a few!). Taken together, their work represents a reimagining of mainstream food movements, challenging myths and tropes as well as inspiring new ways of collaborating.
The podcast is an aural accompaniment to our on-campus Chewing the Fat speaker series, aiming to broaden our content beyond New Haven. Episodes are released every two weeks, featuring interviews, storytelling and more.
On the farm, in the classroom, and around the world, the Yale Sustainable Food Program (YSFP) grows food-literate leaders. We create opportunities for students to experience food, agriculture, and sustainability as integral parts of their education and everyday lives. For more information, please visit sustainablefood.yale.edu.
4. Young, Black, and Sustainable: Jarami Bond tells us why carpet is a hidden secret of environmental solutions
Featured as a 2017 GreenBiz 30 Under 30 emerging leader in sustainable business, Jarami Bond develops strategy, crafts communications, and leverages the power of storytelling to help mission-driven brands unlock business growth opportunities, build brand awareness, cultivate healthy company culture, and maximize positive impact. In his free time, he uses his voice, keyboard, and cameras to tell meaningful stories and better the lives of others.
Currently, Jarami serves as A&D Market Manager at Teknion.
From 2015-2019, Jarami served as the Sustainability Strategy Manager at Interface Americas, a globally-recognized sustainability leader and the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial carpet tile.
Jarami supported the advancement of Interface’s mission through strategic customer engagement and business development. He spoke at customer-facing events and conferences, sharing Interface’s sustainability story to differentiate and inspire. Jarami also worked
with Marketing and Global Communications to develop sales tools and facilitate technical trainings that equipped account executives to leverage Interface’s sustainability progress to stimulate marketplace advantage.
Jarami also created pathways for employees to connect deeply to company vision and values and make positive impacts by curating internal communications, developing employee engagement programs, and supporting diversity and inclusion strategy.
Jarami is a graduate of North Carolina State University with a B.S. in Environmental Science with a focus on Sustainable Materials and Technology. While at NC State, he scored three engineering internships with the NC Department of Transportation and a sustainability
internship with the City of Raleigh Office of Sustainability.
In the second episode for YJBM’s Clocks and Cycles Issue, Huaqi and Wei interview Xiaoyong Yang, an expert on the interactions between the circadian clock and metabolism. For more information about YJBM or to read the Clocks and Cycles issue, visit medicine.yale.edu/yjbm
3. A Leader of Forestry: Sam Cook talks about his non-traditional path to success in forestry
Sam Cook is the Executive Director of Forest Asset for the NC State College of Natural Resources and VP for the Natural Resources Foundation Board. He is the former Director of Forestry for the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation in the Lowcountry (Charleston) of South Carolina and has maintained a Consulting Forestry business since 2007 in North and South Carolina. Prior to this work, Sam served in several managerial positions for International Paper Company’s Forest Resources Division for over 15 years. He has worked for Duke Energy in Durham, NC for nine years and started his forestry career with the USDA Forest Service Intermountain Forest and Range Experimental Station in Boise, ID. Sam completed an A.S. in Forestry from Tuskegee University in 1981 and a B.S. in Forest Management from NC State University in 1984.
2. The Challenges of Leadership: Dean Indy Burke connects her story to the challenges of leading one of the best environmental schools in the country
Ingrid C. “Indy” Burke is the Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She is an ecosystem ecologist whose work has focused on carbon and nitrogen cycling in semi-arid rangeland ecosystems and the effects of land management and climate variability on these systems. A respected educator and intellectual leader in the U.S. and internationally, she is particularly interested in fostering interdisciplinary scholarship.
Ep. 21 – David Barrie on the wonders of animal navigation
Author and sailor David Barrie voyaged around the globe and through scientific literature to learn about the awe-inducing and still mysterious navigational powers of animals. Barrie writes of mysteries such as how birds employ “map and compass” type navigation, how Box jellyfish use some of their twenty-four eyes to keep track of trees and other above-water landmarks, how sweat bees can detect and find their ways home using single photons of light, and how Sahara desert ants measure their turns and count their steps in a process humans call “dead reckoning” — in addition to relying on visual landmarks, patterns of light invisible to the human eye, wind micro-vibrations, scent, optic flow, and the earth’s magnetic field. Animals’ navigational feats reveal an extraordinary awareness of the environment around them — a form of perception that is often far different from our own. In his new book, Supernavigators, Barrie describes the navigational intelligences of other species, which often exceed our wildest imaginations, and issues a call for humans, too often “blinded by vision,” to better respect and celebrate these animals’ abilities in an era when human behavior is increasingly impeding them.
