I'll never forget this one time.

I was basically in the middle of my PhD,

and I had this great opportunity to attend one of the top conferences

for people like me who study bears and manage bears.

It was full of learning and networking and all kinds of stuff. I mean,

everything bear biology. And at the same time, I was pretty uncomfortable almost every second of

the experience.

Folks weren't coming up to me to ask me what project I'm working on or what species of bear I studied or what I was learning or congratulate me on a great presentation or

anything like that. Folks kept coming up to me and saying, oh my gosh, it's so great to see you here.

Wow, we're so glad you're here. What's your name? So where are you from? And then when I would say,

well, I drove here from Nevada, I would get, well, but where are you really from?

I even had a person acknowledged that although Africa had no bears on the entire continent,

it was really amazing that I had come.

I was the only black person, let alone black woman, to attend this conference, maybe ever.

And I stood out like a sore thumb.

This extra piece, this identity piece, this specific type of strength that me and people like me have to bring every day. It's hard, for sure. I'm Dr. Raywin Grant, and this is a different kind of nature show,

a podcast all about the human drama of saving animals.

I want to tell you my story and what it's actually like to track bears and the

sierras, chase lemurs and Madagascar, live with lions in Tanzania,

and do all of that as a black female scientist.

This is going wild.

One of the things that we're doing so well in this podcast and conveying is, you know,

...