Keen On

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 wildernessDavid 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,