When Birding Was Cutthroat

Scientific discovery is often a collaborative experience. But for a group of men in the early 1800s studying birds of North America, it was a messy and chaotic effort to identify and write about many different species as possible, all while trying to outdo each other. Naturalist Kenn Kaufman writes about what John James Audubon and his peers discovered (and what they missed) and how it impacts our understanding of the world today. His book is called, The Birds That Audubon Missed , and Kaufman joins us to discuss. This episode is guest-hosted by Kousha Navidar