Can curiosity save the wild?
Episode of TED Radio Hour · October 30, 2026 · 50 min
Manoush Zomorodi talks with conservationist Maya Higa about livestreamed wildlife sanctuaries and computational linguist Jeffrey Reed about using AI to study Yellowstone wolf howls.
Summary
This TED Radio Hour episode, hosted by Manoush Zomorodi, explored ways of understanding and protecting wild animals without disrupting them. The first guest, conservationist and content creator Maya Higa, described rehabilitating Bean, an injured red-tailed hawk, in her college backyard while livestreaming on Twitch. The audience's investment in Bean's recovery led her to conclude that conservation education could be done virtually, reaching thousands instead of small classroom groups.
Higa recounted writing a business plan on stream and raising $573,000 in a 2021 livestream to found Alveus Sanctuary, a 40-acre facility in Austin, Texas, that is closed to the public but streams its rescued, non-releasable animals 24 hours a day. She discussed the exotic pet trade, the sanctuary's plans to join the SAFE breeding program for Mexican wolves, her view that there is room for both accredited zoos and her model, and her role as a 'bridge' between online audiences and nature.
The second guest, Jeffrey T. Reed, who grew up near Yellowstone and returned after a career in Silicon Valley, described building rugged acoustic recorders that captured over 200,000 hours of audio in Yellowstone National Park. He explained how spectrograms and AI models help locate and classify howls, research into who initiates chorus howls, work with Google DeepMind on counting wolves by sound, and his speculation that bark-howls might represent combinatorial meaning. He profiled the long-lived wolf 907, discussed anti-poaching uses of the devices and the idea of a 'digital wild,' and argued AI will not produce a translator for wolf language. The episode ended with Reed and Zomorodi howling together in imitation of 907.
Chapters
- 0:25
Introduction
Zomorodi introduces the theme of understanding wild animals without getting in their way.
- 1:19
Rehabilitating Bean the hawk
Maya Higa describes nursing an injured red-tailed hawk back to health in her college backyard.
- 3:48
Bean goes viral on Twitch
Higa explains how livestreaming Bean's recovery drew a global audience and reshaped her idea of outreach education.
- 9:45
Founding a sanctuary nobody visits
Higa recounts crowdsourcing a business plan and raising over $570,000 on stream to found Alveus Sanctuary.
- 14:50
Touring Alveus Sanctuary
Higa describes the sanctuary's animals, enclosures, staff, and 24/7 live cameras, including a rescued serval from the pet trade.
- 20:08
Conservation, audiences and zoos
Higa connects the animals to conservation messages, the Mexican wolf program, her young online audience, and her views on zoos.
- 25:07
Wolves and Yellowstone
Jeffrey Reed discusses the human history of howling and the return of wolves to Yellowstone.
- 28:11
Building acoustic recorders
Reed explains deploying rugged recorders across Yellowstone and finding chorus howls in spectrograms.
- 34:58
AI and chorus howls
Reed describes AI tools to detect howls, research on who starts chorus howls, counting wolves, and bark-howls as possible combinatorial meaning.
- 42:23
The queen of Slough Creek, wolf 907
Reed profiles the long-lived wolf 907 and analyzes a recording of her howl and her pack's response.
- 47:34
AI's limits, poaching and the digital wild
Reed argues AI won't yield a wolf translator but that recorders can fight poaching and bring nature to people.
- 50:52
Howling together
Reed and Zomorodi imitate 907's howl together to close the episode.
Key points
What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.
- Maya Higa
Higa says livestreaming Bean's rehab showed her that conservation outreach could be done virtually, reaching more people without transporting animals.
“I can do this conservation outreach education work virtually without having to bring the animals anywhere and they can reach way more people”
- Maya Higa
Higa recounts raising over half a million dollars in a single livestream in February 2021 to found her sanctuary.
“And we raised over $500,000 on a live stream to found the organization”
- Maya Higa
Higa argues servals are unsuitable pets because they behave nothing like domestic cats and can be dangerous.
“They don't act like domestic cats. They don't want to live inside. They can be very dangerous”
- Maya Higa
Higa says Mexican wolves are critically endangered with about 300 left in the wild, and Alveus is joining a breeding program for them.
“There's only about 300 of them left in the wild right now. So they're critically endangered”
- Maya Higa
Higa says the sanctuary's strength is reaching young, online people who are not otherwise interested in nature.
“I think what Alvarez is really good at is reaching people that otherwise aren't necessarily interested in nature and the planet”
- Maya Higa
Higa says running the sanctuary changed her earlier belief that in-person contact with animals was essential.
“before I founded Alveas, I would have thought that in-person connection was really important too. And what Alveas has taught me is that's so clearly not the case”
- Maya Higa
Higa says she does not advocate boycotting zoos, noting many accredited zoos do important work while others do poorly, and that both models have a place.
“I'm definitely not saying that we should boycott zoos. There are also zoos that are doing a really terrible job, right?”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says the Yellowstone recorders captured over 200,000 hours of audio, far more than a person could listen to.
“we've recorded over 200,000 hours, which would take me roughly 50 years to listen to”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says decoding wolf vocalizations will take so long that he expects to die before younger biologists fully do it.
“I'll be dead by the time the younger biologists really start decoding all of this information”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says his team is working with Google DeepMind to estimate pack size from chorus-howl recordings alone.
“we're working with Google DeepMind to see if we can count wolves just from their chorus howl”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed cites researcher Kira Cassidy's finding that wolves estimate rival pack size from howls and decide whether to retreat or approach.
“wolves can count or estimate the number of wolves howling in a rival pack. And they make a decision”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed speculates that wolves' bark-howl, combining an alarm with a location call, may be a basic form of combinatorial meaning or recursion.
“Is this a basic form of recursion or combinatorial meaning? And recursion is what most linguists would say today is what's unique about human languages”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says wolf 907 lived to 11, far beyond the Yellowstone average, and holds the park record for most litters.
“She lived 11 years, and the average age of a wolf in Yellowstone National Park is about three and a half years”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says wolves in Yellowstone die mostly at the hands of other wolves, whereas outside protected areas humans are the main cause of death.
“The number one cause of a death in Yellowstone is another wolf. Outside of Yellowstone, in non-protected areas, it's humans”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed argues AI is a useful tool for studying animal behavior but will not produce a translator for wolf language.
“I don't foresee a Google Translate for wolfish, right? Because what you're really trying to do is get in the mind of a wolf”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed illustrates how little wild mammal biomass remains compared with humans and livestock, arguing the real challenge is preserving wildness itself.
“If your body represented the total weight of all the world's land mammals today, your right forearm would be what's left of the wild ones”
- Jeffrey T. Reed
Reed says the recording devices are being built partly to locate gunshots and help law enforcement combat poaching in national parks.
“one of the reasons we're building these devices is to locate gunshots on the landscape and help law enforcement protect these resources for the public”
Linked moment · 49:25Skip to 49:25 using a listen link in the info box.
Jeffrey T. ReedReed argues that urbanization is eroding human vocabulary for nature, and a 'digital wild' of recordings can reconnect people to it.
“Human language across the globe is losing its words and grammar for nature”
People
In the conversation
- Manoush ZomorodiHost of NPR's TED Radio Hour
- Maya HigaConservationist, content creator and founder of Alveus Sanctuary in Austin, Texas
- Jeffrey T. ReedComputational linguist, founder of Grizzly Systems and the Cry Wolf Project
Discussed
- Kira CassidyYellowstone wolf researcher who found wolves can estimate the size of rival packs from their howls
Topics
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From the publisher
How do we inspire people to care about wild animals without disrupting their lives? This hour, two surprising approaches to getting to know wildlife — and rethinking what it means to protect it. Guests include conservationist Maya Higa and computational linguist Jeffery Reed. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org . See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 1, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.