S5 · E13
Wednesday · 7 min
RN
Random Nature
Christy Hyman, PhD
I'm Christy Hyman and I am a geographer who loves birds and the outdoors. I talk to thinkers & educators about how they view nature and how much or how little they embrace it into their lives. I also reflect on how nature and conservation has positively impacted my life as a grieving parent. Views are my own and not reflective of my university/scholarly affiliations.
- 31 episodes
- Avg 12 min
- English
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
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S5 · E12Sunday · 4 minCelebrate Native American Heritage Month
I reflect on the importance of Native American Heritage Month and Indigenous people of the world. https://haskell.edu/ https://indigenousjournalists.org/team/# https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/91316-10-essential-works-in-american-indian-history.html https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814258729.html
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October 25 · 3 minIn Memoriam- My Dear Friend and Supporter Eric "Mubita" Sheppard
No words. We were like brothers. Truly. We would be on the phone for hours plotting, planning, and strategizing. My Brother, My Friend, We will not forget you. https://www.wilderness.org/voices-east#eric Homegoing details: https://www.whitingsfuneralhome.com/obituary/Eric-Sheppard https://www.marchltcrandallstown.com/obituaries/eric-sheppard/events
- RNS5 · E10October 24 · 5 min
Night of the Capercaillie, Arrival to the Forestry Conference
Welcome back to Random Nature. This week's episode continues " The Night of the Capercaillie," but first—as promised— I'm sharing another bird I miss: the Verdin. A quick note: I attempted Scottish accents this episode but quickly realized my limitations. Between my overbite affecting trills and needing authentic auditory references rather than textual approximations, I've decided to leave Scottish accents to the Scottish. Now, let's return to Kirk and Pete as they settle into their lodging and whatever adventures await them at this forestry conference. Learn more about the Verdin: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Verdin/overview
- RNS5 · E9October 17 · 12 min
Night of the Capercaillie, Yet AGAIN
There is an ornithological gaffe in this installment :)
- RNS5 · E8October 10 · 5 min
Night of the Capercaillie, AGAIN
What happens when two graduate students on a simple drive through the glen for a forest ecology conference in Scotland, UK turns into a primal standoff? Also Harris Sparrows (Birds I miss) Learn more: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Harriss_Sparrow/id
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S5 · E7October 4 · 6 minBonus: Night of the Capercaillie! (Spooky Season Special)
Just in time for spooky season, a special bonus episode inspired by true events. When two American graduate students take a wrong turn on a remote Scottish forest road, they encounter something ancient and territorial in the fading light. This is a story about what happens when human carelessness meets wild instinct, set against the backdrop of endangered species and vanishing habitats. It is a tale of ecological horror that asks: who truly owns the forest? Contains themes of conservation, consequences, and one very angry bird. Oh I also introduce the next guest. Listen to the end for a bonus vocalization of the Capercaillie! https://ebird.org/species/wescap1?continue
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S5 · E6September 30 · 29 minTHE WATERFALL HUNTER
I sit down with the one and only Waterfall Hunter. He tells me about alligators that watch his cousins play basketball on the court. I hear all about his hometown of Cross, South Carolina. Fair warning — I giggle through most of this one, because the stories he brings back from his memory are like nothing you’ve ever heard. This conversation goes way off script, so settle in and enjoy. Link to Waterfall Hunter's photos: https://www.instagram.com/waterfall.hunter/?hl=en
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S5 · E5September 29 · 10 minMisdirected fury at the Lab of Ornithology: Cornell's Reckoning
A fraternity on campus was involved in a major gender-based violence incident. The university administration? Total radio silence. Then, instead of going after the president’s office or student conduct—you know, the people who actually have power—online outrage got aimed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Yeah, the bird lab. In the woods. Which has nothing to do with Greek life. The Lab of O’s funding—which comes from memberships and grants—is under threat, as misguided persons online telling people to delete the Merlin app damages research pathways and community trust, putting grad student funding and vital research in real danger. Learn more: https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/10/guest-room
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S5 · E4September 15 · 7 minCelebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
Step into the treetops and discover the extraordinary life of Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874–1927), the brilliant American ornithologist and illustrator who revolutionized wildlife art and some amazing birders of Latinx heritage continuing in that important work! Urban Bird Project: https://urbanbirdproject.org/ Latino Outdoors: https://www.instagram.com/latinooutdoors/?hl=en Cornell Lab of O's Celebrate Urban Birds: https://celebrateurbanbirds.org/ Galeria EVA: https://www.instagram.com/galeriaeva/
- RNAugust 31 · 4 min
Miracles never cease in the garden!
In this episode, we hear how a litter box lid, some leftover charcoal, and a total refusal to do any research somehow produced a thriving romano bean plant from seeds obtained for free at a America250 thing in Brooktondale, NY. The host is just as surprised as you are.
- RNS5 · E2August 11 · 10 min
Tech Needs Limits: The Great Dismal Swamp Needs You!
Bonus episode that discusses a massive, power hungry data center that will destroy critical wildlife habitat and public health combined in the Great Dismal Swamp. Please note my cat is loud toward the end, sorry. He hates data centers too. link:https://www.facebook.com/jeff.staples.33/posts/so-there-will-be-data-centers-in-chesapeake-the-ft-williams-farm-was-sold-in-its/10245555699053073/ Article on the health and environmental risks of data centers: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2026.1648912/full Nature Conservancy Resilient Land Mapping Tool https://www.maps.tnc.org/resilientland/ Social Vulnerability Index https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/place-health/php/svi/index.html
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S5 · E1August 1 · 8 minThe New Year- August 2026- Season 5
In this Bonus Episode Christy shares about yet another New Year that begins Season 5 on the podcast. She discusses the part August plays in her grief journey as well as her time in fellowship and community with the Great Dismal Swamp Enslaved Ancestors Ceremony where she provided remarks in Williamsburg, VA. Christy announces the latest recipient of her son's memorial arts scholarship as well. Lastly she mentions the next invited guest scheduled to appear. Great Dismal Swamp Enslaved Ancestors Ceremony https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enslaved-ancestors-remembrance-program-tickets-1991307857406 https://mubita.net/ Bray School Lab https://www.wm.edu/sites/brayschool/ Tim Lorelli Youth Music Camp https://www.instagram.com/timlorelli/?hl=en
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S4 · E14July 20 · 37 minKathryn Benjamin Golden, Phd on The Great Dismal Swamp
On this episode of Random Nature, Dr. Kathryn Benjamin Golden talks to us about growing up in the Bay Area of California, her new book, This Insurgent Ground: Black Women, Marronage, and Rebellion in the Great Dismal Swamp. She also shares a random nature moment that involves MEGAFAUNA! BY THE WAY-- In the middle there is a brief moment of quiet due to a tech hiccup but we pick right back up. Get Kathryn's book here: https://uncpress.org/9781469697970/this-insurgent-ground/
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S4 · E13July 17 · 11 minBONUS: Next guest plus Canada Wildfires!
Discusses: Air quality advisories in western New York and the Finger Lakes. Wildfire smoke originating in Canada. The particular risks for children, older adults, and people with asthma. The idea that environmental events in one region can affect people far away Links Dr. Golden: https://spatialhumanorg.wpcomstaging.com/2026/07/09/kathryn-benjamin-golden-phd-next-guest-on-random-nature-podcast/ Great Dismal Swamp PBS Featuring Eric Sheppard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-J5QNauVIc My trade book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/cultural-heritage-resilience-of-the-great-dismal-swamp-9780761892021/
- RNS4 · E12July 1 · 8 min
Sunflower Showdown: HOA vs. Hummingbirds
Today’s bonus episode dives into a surprising HOA vs. sunflowers showdown. We hear how one homeowner’s pollinator‐friendly blooms were slashed by the HOA president—despite no laws banning them— and how kids’ bikes in driveways even earned a stern warning. From hummingbirds drawn to those very sunflowers to the broader fight for pollinator gardens amid climate change, we unpack why neighborhood rules can so easily stifle nature (and family fun). Then, we contrast that with a community where every resident gets a raised bed to grow veggies or wildflowers at will. Tune in to rethink control, gardens, and the small ways we all can help wildlife. Links: https://spatialhumanorg.wpcomstaging.com/2026/06/26/hoas-are-killing-birds-calltoaction/ https://boicevillecottages.com/ https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/08/31/when-an-hoa-takes-regulation-way-too-far/75001170007/
- RNS4 · E11June 26 · 49 min
Maia Butler, PhD
In this episode of Random Nature, host Christy Hyman welcomes writer and scholar Maia Butler to trace the landscapes that shaped her life and her work. Maia opens by locating her roots on Coast Salish land in Olympia, Washington, before moving through her childhood in south- central Alaska on Denaʼina Athabascan lands. She describes early memories of Homer on the Aleutian Chain; making mud pies, digging and cooking clams on the beach, and falling asleep under the midnight sun. As Maia grew, so did her “landscape literacy”: learning subsistence fishing and hunting, foraging for medicinal plants with her mother as her first teacher, and braving long winters of snow and ice. She vividly recalls volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and avalanches—moments when Alaska’s raw power humbled her family and forged in her a lifelong sense that “worlds are ending and new ones are beginning” at every turn. Later, Maia moved south for graduate school, planting new roots in coastal North Carolina on Lumbee, Coharie, Waccamaw Siouan, and Eastern Band Cherokee lands and before that, in Louisiana’s bayous and wetlands. There, the rhythms of hurricanes and floods echoed Alaska’s natural drama, teaching her once again to respect forces beyond human control. Christy shares her own Alaskan stories from Nome—bathtub races at dawn, ten-year-olds driving trucks, and weeks under endless daylight and finding in Maia’s memories a shared awe for remote places where nature is always in charge. Tune in to hear how these experiences inform Maia’s writing, her sense of localness, and her belief that every storm, eruption, or blackout is both an ending and a beginning. Links to Dr. Maia Butler’s projects: https://maialbutler.substack.com/p/the-novels-of-toni-morrison-resources-73a/comments https://centerforfiction.org/group-workshop/a-year-of-toni-morrison-volume-ii-with-maia-butler-additional-session https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bell-hookss-radical-pedagogy-9781350441590 https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/N/Narrating-History-Home-and-Dyaspora Also look for the forthcoming collection Black Women’s Gardens as Art and Practice (Harvard 2027) Topics/People/Events Covered: Wilmington Race Massacre of 1898: In November 1898, white supremacist militias in Wilmington, North Carolina staged a violent overthrow of the city's legitimately elected government—one of the few successful coups in U.S. history. The mob burned down the offices of a Black-owned newspaper, killed an unknown number of Black residents, and expelled Black and white Republican leaders from the city. The event effectively ended Reconstruction-era Black political power in North Carolina and has been largely omitted from mainstream historical memory. Alexander Manly: Black(very, very lightskinned could actually have passed for white) journalist and publisher of the Wilmington Daily Record, the only Black daily newspaper in the country at the time. His 1898 editorial challenging the racist myth of the Black male predator was used as a pretext for the massacre. Manly's voice and its violent silencing represent the stakes of Black intellectual life in the post-Reconstruction South. https://goinnorth.org/exhibits/show/milo-manly/manly-family Camille Dungy:Poet, essayist, and editor whose work reclaims the natural world as a site of Black experience and expression. Her edited volume Black Nature recovered a tradition of African American nature poetry that mainstream literary culture had long ignored. Maia mentions Dungy’s work Soil in the podcast. Jesmyn Ward: Mississippi-born novelist and two-time National Book Award winner. Her fiction renders Black Southern communities with unflinching intimacy, returning repeatedly to water—flood, gulf, storm surge—as both literal threat and spiritual presence. bell hooks: Prolific Black feminist thinker whose scholarship and cultural criticism examined the intersections of race, gender, and class while insisting on love as a radical political practice. Critical Fabulation: A term coined by scholar Saidiya Hartman describing the practice of filling archival silences through rigorous, imaginative speculation giving narrative form to lives that history has rendered nameless or voiceless, while remaining transparent about the act of doing so.
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S4 · E10June 8 · 11 minA Pedestrian Birder's Close Call- THE CAR TOOK FLIGHT
In this bonus episode, Christy is on her usual 45-minute walk to her favorite village coffee house when a car goes airborne right in front of her and disappears into a ravine— the motorist, his dog and all. She reflects on the cascade of fears that hit her in those few seconds, the divine and ancestral protection she feels carried her through, and what the whole terrifying experience revealed about the very real safety gaps facing birders and pedestrians on roads like Valley Road. Plus: shout-outs to the Joe Farm down in Alabama, Ithaca's planned greenway, and a handful of Finger Lakes birding spots worth knowing. Stay birdy, everyone. Links https://southhillrecway.wordpress.com/ https://www.connectingwithbirdsandnaturetours.com/ https://www.fortbaptistfarm.com/
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S4 · E9May 21 · 39 minGenX, Church, and Academia (and two pollinators) with Professor Ed J. Blum
What does it mean to grow up saved—and then spend your career studying how race, religion, and power have always been tangled together in the west? Christy sits down with Ed J. Blum, historian of Ideas, to find out. From his evangelical upbringing in suburban New Jersey to his landmark scholarship on W.E.B. Du Bois, Ed traces the through-line between personal faith and intellectual obsession. He and Christy swap stories of religious intensity— her family's fervor (at least on Easter), his Mission work, and the complicated questions both raised about belonging and poverty. Ed also pulls back the curtain on his forthcoming book, which uncovers surprising data about racial categorization in Revolutionary-era America. And somehow, it all ends with a pollinator.
- RNS4 · E8May 7 · 12 min
Gardening in the Fingerlakes Region
In this episode, Christy checks in with a spring update from the Finger Lakes region of New York, where she'll be based full-time after permanently wrapping up a professional affiliation in North Carolina. She covers the famously unforgiving Tompkins County frost calendar—last freeze as late as May 30—and what that means for her raised garden bed at the Cottages, where she's planning a split experiment: half given over to creeping Charlie, half to two varieties of sunflower. She also introduces her two cats, Gimley and Silhouette. The episode closes on the sounds of the Finger Lakes in spring—bullfrogs, owls, birdsong—and a nudge to anyone considering a move to the area.