Stay in tune with our phenomenal world. Join us for explorations of science, art, history, and more. We’re on a quest to find awe and wonder in all nature—human or wild, vast or small. Encounters that move us beyond words. Hosted by Marcus Smith, Constant Wonder is a production of BYUradio.
Daniel Curry had had recurring dreams about wolves, long before he chose to devote his career to helping them. After working with captive wolves for several years, he became a "range rider," a human intermediary between predators and the cattle they might want to eat. In this episode of Constant Wonder, we'll discover Curry's extraordinary empathy for both domestic and wild creatures, and we'll hear how he works to keep them all safe.
In this episode, meet Dr. Jim O'Connell, a tireless physician who has spent nearly four decades caring for the unhoused population of Boston. We'll also learn about some of his enterprising and generous patients, who've formed a community that watches out for one another on the streets. Finding redemption and hope amid tragedy, on Constant Wonder.
As a young White girl in Ohio, Rachel Jamison had imagined what life was like for her pioneer ancestors, and she peppered her grandparents with questions about her past. Decades later, she and her family discovered a connection to a prominent early American Black intellectual and met their living Black relatives. The full story of her past had been hiding in plain sight.
Prem Jauhar was a world-class agricultural scientist—an inspiration to his son Sandeep, our guest, who became a cardiologist. When the elderly father Prem started behaving oddly, Sandeep and his two siblings grew frustrated and confused. It’s a classic family story of grown children struggling together to help a parent beset with Alzheimer’s. A beautiful father-son bond, established early on when young Sandeep would help Prem tend his beloved garden, manifests itself at the end of Prem’s life in tender exchanges between a now childlike father and a grieving son. Everyone will have something profound to gain from this episode of Constant Wonder.
Get to know BBC personality and naturalist Mike Dilger, from his passion for birds and wildlife, to his adventures in the cloud forests of Ecuador. In this podcast episode, we explore Mike's early experiences with birdwatching, his quest to find 1,000 different plant species in a single year, and his heartwarming proposal story, involving a ladder, a ring, and some chickens. Mike Dilger celebrates the natural world with contagious enthusiasm.
Join host Marcus Smith for conversations that invite you to discover, explore, and engage with the wonders of the world around you. New episodes available Wednesdays, starting April 19, 2023, on your favorite podcast platforms and the BYUradio app.
As a young woman from the East Coast, Sasha Reed had never been camping before when she was introduced to the Arizona desert by her future husband. She fell in love with both, and crouching on the dry ground she noticed and became obsessed with fragile communities of organisms known as "biocrust." This led her into a scientific field, biogeochemistry, that would shape her professional life. With infectious enthusiasm, she's become an evangelist for biocrust communities, finding joy and amusement in their spunky methods of not only surviving, but thriving.
In 1863 on the South Dakota frontier, a Lakota Indian elder and a US army colonel had a tense and deadly encounter. They could not have known that their children would marry each other, and thus create a welded and complex legacy that generations of their descendants would work to reconcile.
Dying patients often profess to see deceased loved ones around them in the days and weeks before they pass. So often that hospice care doctor Chris Kerr decided to make a scientific study of the phenomenon. He found that while the medical community typically views death as defeat, there is actually a great deal of spiritual growth right there at the end of life. This podcast episode invites you to reconsider these unique dreams before dying.
The apex of marine archaeologist Mensun Bound's stellar career happened a year ago this week, when the expedition he spearheaded found Ernest Shackleton's "Endurance" at the bottom of an Antarctic sea. This was just the latest find in a career marked by big discoveries, including a 2,500-year-old Etruscan ship and a Roman wreck weighed down by massive stone columns looted from Athens.