Hi, wild listeners. I just wanted to hop on and say thank you to those of you who've been given us great feedback about our new behind-the-scenes content over on Patreon.

I've recorded some fun, relaxed chats with my buddy Ken about what it's like to make the wild. We're calling it the wild side.

If you want to check it out, you can find the link to our Patreon in the show notes of this episode.

Okay, enjoy the show.

I don't know about you, but I'm always pondering the big picture of things, the planet and life,

what it's all about, where it all began. And a few months ago, I came across a man obsessed with

equally big thoughts.

To think that there is this pulsing, breathing system out there in the void,

you know, in this big cosmos of mostly emptiness, nothingness, extremely harsh conditions.

Most planets are not alive. They never come to life.

This pulsing, breathing system in the void, this system that we all call Earth, really is alive

in ways that are hard for us to imagine. Here we have this incredible miracle of a planet that not

only came to life, but has remained alive,

you know, has kept itself alive for more than four billion years, and we get to be a part of that.

When I encountered this big thinker, author and science writer Ferris Jaber on the web,

he was talking about how Earth gave birth to life, but also how life and the organisms on Earth then began to shape the planet physically,

down to the rocks and the weather and the oceans. Take the Amazon rainforest, for example. Ferris had an experience that really shaped

his understanding of our living earth in the rainforest of Brazil. Half the rain that falls in the

Amazon each year is created by the forest itself, an act of self-regulation, just like a living organism. To see this

process in action, Ferris decided to climb up a ladder, a really long ladder to the top of a

thousand-foot research tower. The tallest structure in South America. It's very intimidating

when you're on the ground looking up. You know, it's this South America. It's very intimidating when you're on the ground looking up.

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