This week comedian Shane Mauss takes a field trip to the Fort Worth Zoo to talk to Senior Curator of Ectotherms Diane Barber and Reproductive Biologist Allison Julien all about toads, explosive reproduction, biodiversity, and why amphibians are the canary in the coalmine for the freshwater that humans and so much of earth’s life depend on.

We’ll have two more Ft Worth Zoo episodes coming zoon. We’re gonna learn a lot about training and providing medical care for elephants.

In the meantime you can find other zoo episodes by listening back to the https://www.herewearepodcast.com/

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Diane Barber, senior curator of ectotherms at the Fort Worth Zoo, has 40 years of zoological experience (23 at the Fort Worth Zoo), with a primary focus on amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates, and aquatic species.

In addition to overseeing the ectotherms collection at the Fort Worth Zoo, Barber manages all aspects of conservation programming (e.g., population management, development, implementation of recovery goals, in situ and ex situ research, reintroduction, monitoring programs, assisted reproductive technologies for amphibians, biobanking, captive propagation and husbandry, genetic management, disease surveillance, radio telemetry, harmonic radar, audio loggers, trap cameras, tagging/marking, design of husbandry facilities, etc.) with native Texas species and in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands. Primary conservation programs include the Puerto Rican crested toad, Puerto Rican harlequin butterfly, Virgin Islands boa, Chiricahua leopard frog, Houston toad, Texas horned lizard, Texas kangaroo rat, Pecos pupfish, Texas freshwater mussels and Louisiana pine snake.

Barber is also involved in the following conservation organizations:

Puerto Rican Crested Toad Conservancy, Founder/President

Texas Horned Lizard Conservation Coalition Co-founder/Co-coordinator

Join comedian Shane Mauss as he talks with his friend Chris Wink about the early days of founding The Blue Man Group, getting inspired by vaudeville, and how his latest project Wink World combines art, science, philosophy, and play.

Checkout Wink World in Vegas and Minneapolis https://winkworld.com/

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Valentine's Day is also International Bonobo Day! Bonobos have become known as the amorous, peace loving, hippies of the primate order. Has the story been a little overly simplified?

This week, comedian Shane Mauss apes around with the hilarious and wonderful Rachna Reddy. Rachna is an anthropologist and primatologist at the University of Utah whose fieldwork in Uganda studying chimps and bonobos can give us insights into our own social lives and lifespan development with a particular interest in those formative teen years.

https://explorers.nationalgeographic.org/directory/rachna-b-reddy

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Nobel Prize biologist François Jacob about night science, "Day science employs reasoning that meshes like gears, where each step follows from the previous one. It is effective. It advances. But it proceeds only because night science exists. It is in the dark of night that science comes closest to its goals. It is there that it reveals itself, probing, groping, resting on intuition, on flashes of insight, on leaps into the unknown."

This week comedian Shane Mauss travels to NYU Medical School to catch up with his friend Atia Yania as they have a laugh-filled conversation about creativity and fun being an essential part of insights even when trying to study something as serious and deadly as cancer.

Itai Yanai is a biomedical scientist and Founding Director of the Institute for Computational Medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU.

Learn more about Itai here https://med.nyu.edu/faculty/itai-yanai

And here is his Night Science site https://www.night-science.org/

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For thousands of years donkeys were an integral part of human life. Modern life has taken most of the burden off burros backs but what does the future hold for our equine companions?

Shane takes a deep dive into ungulate evolution and contemplates how hooves ambled their way along various branches on the tree of life to figure out how donkeys even came to exist in the first place.

This week’s guest is Colorado State University, Dr. Sarah King joins the show. In collaboration with USGS, Dr. King leads research on the behavior, ecology, and demography of feral horses and burros in the American west. Through her position as co-chair of the IUCN/SSC Equid Specialist Group, Dr. King works with researchers to conserve endangered equids around the world. Additionally Dr. King is a professional animal trainer, offering training and behavior support for dogs and horses.

If you are in need of dog, horse, or donkey training, check out Sarah’s Brenin Behavior https://breninbehavior.com/ for a free zoom consultation and if you happen to be in Colorado, there are in person opportunities.

InShane Deal of the week: The clothes in this episode were by Threyda . Save 10% (and support this show) with offer code ‘InShane’.

In his latest book, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, British paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and wry wordsmith Henry Gee examines humanity’s precarious journey on the tree of life.

For millions of years, small groups of scrappy, upright apes have lived “one meal away from starvation and two meals away from extinction.” Yet, against all odds, humans went from extras in the drama of life to a lead role in Earth’s history.

Join comedian Shane Mauss and scientist Henry Gee as they share laughs, insights, and philosophies about humanity's past, present, and future. Take a break from the day-to-day grind to explore the unfathomably vast scale of time we miraculously find ourselves existing within.

If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Shane and Henry’s two previous conversations on Shane’s long-running science podcast, Here We Are.

If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Shane and Henry’s two previous conversations on Shane’s long-running science podcast, https://www.herewearepodcast.com/

Want to get Henry Gee's books while supporting local bookstores and this show INSTEAD of corporate monopolies? https://bookshop.org/lists/guest-books-inshanely-curious

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Randal Roberts is the InShanely talented painter creating the evolving show art https://www.allofthisisforyou.com/

Special thanks to audio guru Logan Keith for editing and co-producing this series https://loganraykeith.com/

Shane Mauss shares the origin story of his interest in life’s origin story.

A hobby of watching nature documentaries turned into a full-blown science obsession that sent Shane’s comedy career careening off the traditional stand-up path and onto a unique journey of getting to use humor to explore the hidden underpinnings seeding the tree of life.

Happy Feast of The Ass!