Advertise on podcast: The Shape of the World

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....

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....

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...

Each of the largest cities on earth plays host to hundreds of thousands of dogs. Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, founder of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and the author of the bestselling book, Inside of a Dog, discusses how dogs managed....

Over the past 30 years, the quality of water in rivers has improved tremendously in many major cities around the world. So much so that what once seemed impossible has now become reality: people really are swimming in the Thames in London. Chris Rommer-Lee is one of the visionaries behind what is called the “Swimmable Cities” movement....

We often notice more of the visual world than we do the auditory world, yet many of our experiences are defined by sound. Edward Warden, the president of the Chicago Ornithological Society....

Samara Greenwood, a PhD candidate in the field of History and Philosophy of Science, explores the women who revolutioned the field of primatology and...

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....

Jill Riddell speaks with her colleague, the cartoonist and author Sophie Lucido Johnson, about comedy, community, and the social science of friendship. In her new book...

As a child, Peggy Mason was a biology prodigy. Today, as a neurobiologist, Peggy is still working with mammals, but instead of preserving their skins, she’s studying whether they experience empathy and act to help one another...

Structural geologist Marcia Bjornerud was raised by free-thinking parents who instilled in her a love of books and nature. She’s published many professional papers (read mainly by experts in the field) and two popular books that, in the opinion of this podcast, ought to be read by every inhabitant of our planet...

Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth, claims that it is: that Earth is a vast interconnected living system and we humans (and all other living things) don’t just live...

Dr. Adrienne Brown reads cities the way professors read novels: carefully, and with lots of attention to what’s written between the lines...

Daniel Holz studies black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology, all while also running the Existential Risk Laboratory...

Biologist Sara Lewis doesn’t just study fireflies—for her, fireflies are a living reminder that the world is pure magic. In this episode...