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S2E3: Animal Culture with Carl Safina

Claudia talks to well-known author Carl Safina about ‘animal culture’ and how culture is a crucial part of how some animals come to understand and experience the world. They chat about the incredible ways culture manifests in animals’ experiences and touch on what a serious consideration of animal culture could mean for conservation efforts

S5E1 - Steve Photo.jpg

Recorded: 25 August 2020

Carl Safina grew up raising pigeons, training hawks and owls, and spending as many days and nights in the woods and on the water as he could. He is known for hislyrical non-fiction writing which fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action noting how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. Safina is the author of ten books including his classic Song for the Blue Ocean, the New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel and his most recent title, Becoming Wild; How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, and the National Geographic, amongst others. He has won numerous literary prizes including the MacArthur “genius” prize and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. In addition to his writing Safina was the host of the PBS series Saving the Ocean, he is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, and he is the founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. Connect with Carl Safina on his website (www.carlsafina.org), through his non-for-profit (www.safinacenter.org) or on Twitter (@Carl Safina).

"We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth" (Henry Beston,
The Outermost House).

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast, Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, and Jeremy John for the logo.

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