For today’s episode, I am thrilled to share an interview with Colorado-based author Ben Goldfarb.

Ben has written for pretty much every publication you can think of, including the Atlantic, Science, the New York Times, National Geographic, and Outside, to name a few.

Today’s conversation focuses on Ben’s book Eager:The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, which received the PEN/E.O. Wilson award in 2019. If you aren’t familiar with Ben’s writing, I recommend picking up Eager for your next read as a great introduction to his work. For anyone living in North America, it will completely change how you think about the history of our continent and what it looked like 300 years ago.

We also talk about Ben’s new book, Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. In addition to being named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times; it also won the Sierra Club’s Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental Writing. Crossings, like Eager, paints a historical narrative of the ecology of our continent by focusing its lens on one particular topic: roads and their environmental impact. Road ecology is a term that most people probably aren’t familiar with, but once you dive in, it will likely ride shotgun on your morning commute.

A few topics that we address in this conversation include:

The Impacts of Beavers on River Ecosystems
Grassroots Solutions to Environmental Challenges
Wolves in Yellowstone
The History of the Term “Road Ecology”
The Importance of Culverts
Fish Migrations
And Much More

Ben is a great speaker, with an incredible vocabulary, who distills complex science into compelling narratives. He also connects the dots between the history of our relationship with the environment and environmental movements taking place at various scales around the globe. One thing that I appreciate about Ben is that he does not sugarcoat these issues, but he also is a pragmatic optimist, always tuning into scalable, community-based solutions to tackle these environmental challenges.

Whether or not you are familiar with Ben’s work, I think you will enjoy this conversation.

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If you enjoyed today’s episode, the best thing you can do is like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, recommending it to a friend goes a long way.

You can purchase Eager and Crossings from a locally-owned bookstore near you.

The music for this podcast is Siesta by Ikson, part of the “Tell Your Story” project—a library of free music for content creators. Visit ikson.com to explore the full catalog.