The Heartbeat of the Wild: David Quammen's conservationist manifesto from landscapes of wonder, peril and hope

EPISODE 1516: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the author of THE HEARTBEAT OF THE WILD, David Quammen, about how to write with both appropriate spiritual reverence and scientific accuracy about the wilderness

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose eighteen books include Breathless (2022), The Tangled Tree (2018), Spillover (2012), The Song of the Dodo (1996) and, most recently, The Heartbeat of the Wild (2023). Though he began his career as a novelist (To Walk the Line, 1970, and three other works of fiction), in recent decades he has written only nonfiction, focused mainly on science, history of science, and the relationships of humans to landscape and biological diversity. In the past forty years Quammen has also published a few hundred pieces of short nonfiction—feature articles, essays, columns—in magazines such as The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper’s, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone.  He writes occasional Op Eds for The New York Times and other newspapers, and book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books.  Quammen has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award. His books have received various awards, and Breathless in 2022 was a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen (also an author: American Zion and the forthcoming True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America) and their family of three dogs, a cat, and a python.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.