The multi award-winning podcast HumaNature comes straight out of the University of Wyoming’s Knight Hall in the Wyoming Public Radio department to tell real stories about when humans and the natural world converge.
As the world becomes less wild, people have lost their connection to nature, these podcasters believe, which has negative consequences for human health, the environment and the outlook for other species. HumaNature reflects on the relationship humans have with the natural world through intimate first-person narratives that allow listeners to reflect on their own connection with nature.
“When we hear these stories about other people’s experiences, we get to experience the world for 15 to 20 minutes through someone else’s experience,” executive producer Micah Schweizer said, “and that builds empathy and helps us get a glimpse of the world that we personally will not experience.”
HumaNature’s host, Caroline Ballard, plays a big part in the production but tries to avoid overshadowing the guests. She helps fill in gaps and give flow to the podcast, but the guest is front and center and the audience gets to hear the short, vivid stories in the storyteller’s own voice.
The cover art on HumaNature’s website by visual artist Meg Thompson sums up the podcast’s overarching themes. It first features a banner showing a human hunting a bison, which symbolizes human versus nature. The second section displays the bison chasing after the hunter, symbolizing nature versus human, and the third shows the hunter and bison listening to the podcast together, representing harmony between humans and nature.
Now in its fourth year, the podcast has seen great success and growth since its inception. It won the Public Radio News Director Incorporated (PRNDI) best podcast awards in 2016 and 2018 and has aired on more than 100 public radio stations, including BC Radio-Canada, KQED San Francisco and SiriusXM in 2017 to 2018.
The podcast has been featured on WHYY’s The Pulse, WAMC’s 51% and on the podcasts Outside/In, She Explores and HowSound. The show also played at the 2018 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, accompanied an exhibition at Denmark’s ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuesium and was profiled on Poynter.org.
HumaNature started off with only airing 10 episodes a year and having to come up with ideas by going out and listening to stories or finding pitches and seeking those people out. The podcast is now up to a new episode almost every two weeks and submission based.
“When you increase production, it gives your audience a reason to stick around,” Schweizer said.
The creators of HumaNature wanted to broadcast the Wyoming lifestyle to a bigger audience than FM Wyoming public radio can reach. They wanted to build an audience outside of Wyoming and tell stories of all over, so they made a podcast. HumaNature has narrated stories from Alaska to Australia and places in between.
The show’s guest speakers, Schweizer said, are “not all necessarily from Wyoming, but they’re all from Wyoming in a certain way because they reflect this experience that we have living here, which is living closer to the natural world than a lot of people do elsewhere in the world.”
For more information about HumaNature visit HumaNaturePodcast.org. The podcast is available at their website or on Apple Podcasts. HumaNature is also now available on Spotify.
