Sonia Shah: Stewardship, Flux, and Migration

A Wild and Beautiful World

“I do think it's very important to be connected to your place, even if those places change, you have to be a student of that place. So this is what we've tried to teach our kids, is that wherever you end up, that you become a steward of that place, you become a student of that place, and you look after that place because you are part of it. When you go into that new place, you are now part of it. The animals are going to know you, they’re going to be affected by what you do, the water is going to be affected by what you do, the air is going to be affected by what you do, so you need to understand your role in that ecological fabric and be a good citizen in that ecosystem. And that just goes for wherever you end up.”

Sonia Shah is an investigative journalist and the author of critically acclaimed and prize-winning books on science, human-animal relations, and international politics. Her 2020 book, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, was selected as a best nonfiction book of 2020 by Publishers Weekly, and a best science and technology book by Library Journal. She also wrote Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, and the prize-winning 2006 drug industry exposé, The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients. Her work has been called “bracingly intelligent”, a “tour-de-force”, “brilliant”, “important”, and “powerful”.

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Many thanks to Hank Lentfer for the use of his gorgeous nature sounds!