Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders
From the curious minds of Atlas Obscura, authors of #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, comes an unputdownable celebration of the world's living wonders. Join editor Cara Giaimo and Marissa Ortega-Welch, environmental journalist and podcaster of How Wild, as we learn how dung beetles navigate by the stars and trees communicate through their roots. Pay your respects to a 44,000 year old shrub. Hear stories of the wild world’s human protectors: a honey hunter and his avian partners, a scientist working to find the world's only ocean-dwelling insects, and an offshore radio DJ who is at the heart of the local fishing community. Teeming with detail and wildly entertaining, Wild Life reinvigorates our sense of wonder about the incredible creatures with whom we share our plane. Moderated by Oakland Zoo's Amy Gotliffe.
Doors at 6:30PM. $17 adv (book bundle avail.) / $20 door
“It makes me want to run upstairs, pack a bag, and bolt away to some far-flung corner of this astounding planet.” —Mary Roach, bestselling author of Stiff and Packing for Mars
Co-presented with Litquake Festival 2024 and the Jewish Community Center San Francisco.
Book sales for this event coordinated by Bookshop West Portal.
Cara Giaimo lives in Somerville, MA, with her wife, Lilia, two cats, many plants, and uncountable neighborhood rats. A former staff writer at Atlas Obscura, Cara now covers our fellow species for the New York Times, Fabrikzeitung, Bloomberg Businessweek, and elsewhere. Her first book, Detector Dogs (with Christina Couch), was published by MIT Kids Press in 2022. She plays guitar in Sidebody.
Marissa Ortega-Welch is an environmental journalist and the creator and executive producer of How Wild, a podcast about wilderness, how it's changing, and what that says about us as humans. It's produced in partnership with KALW Public Media and distributed by NPR. Her freelance work has been featured by many outlets including High Country News, NPR, Latino USA, Reveal, The California Report Magazine, and Bay Nature. Prior to journalism, she spent a decade working in the environmental education and science fields.
Amy Gotliffe has a mission to connect human beings to nature, envisioning a planet where all species live in peaceful co-existence, which makes her position as Vice President of Conservation at Oakland Zoo a perfect fit. With an incredible team, Amy drives massive and enthusiastic, inter-departmental efforts to conserve biodiversity around the globe.
With a focus on creating community-led alliances, nature-based leadership, conservation psychology, human-wildlife conflict resolution, and influencing conservation behavior change, Amy aims to reconnect people to the natural world through understanding, belonging, empowerment and awe. From leading expeditions around the world, to finding wonder in our own backyards, Amy leads with hope for a wilder, thriving world.
