Podcast
99% Invisible
Host Roman Mars initially read Wild Ones for pleasure but was so compelled by its subject that he featured it across multiple episodes. He highlighted that the book is not about nature, but rather an examination of how humans fit wildlife into modern life, focusing on the "designed experience" of conservation, eco-tours, and stuffed animals. The book was praised for its sometimes dismaying, yet ultimately reassuring, look at the transition of human-animal interaction.
Episode: Mooallempalooza
It was described as a sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about how humans interact with and perceive animals in America, focusing on how this interaction has become a designed experience.
I didn't think I'd ever do an episode of 99% Invisible about it. I just read it for fun.
What you need to know about Wild Ones is that it isn't a book about nature. It's a book about how we fit nature into our modern lives.
Wild Ones is about the cutesy stuffed animals, the eco tours, and the Byzantine methods of conservation that evolve when our experience with wildlife goes from something natural to something designed.
Human-animal interaction has become a designed experience and the story of that transition, as the title of the book suggests, is sometimes dismaying and also weirdly reassuring.
Episode: Wild Ones Live
It explored the relationship between humans and wildlife in America, specifically how human interactions with wildlife evolved from natural to designed experiences, often with unexpected and amusing consequences.
I just read it for fun.
What you need to know about Wild Ones is that it isn't a book about nature. It's a book about how we fit nature into our modern lives.
Wild Ones is about the cutesy stuffed animals, the eco tours and the Byzantine methods of conservation that evolve when our experience with wildlife goes from something natural to something designed.
Human-animal interaction has become a designed experience, and the story of that transition, as the title of the book suggests, is sometimes dismaying and also weirdly reassuring.
So I wrote this book about people and wild animals in America, and it only really started because I wanted to show my daughter endangered species in the wild before they disappeared.
