Former NPR journalist, award-winning author to give Earth Day presentation

 The presentation will be hosted on Zoom video conferencing and will take place Thursday, April 22 at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Registration is required to attend and is available at https://bit.ly/3e5cxOUBaron will discuss his book, “The Beast in the Garden,” an acclaimed 2003 nonfiction work published by W.W. Norton & Company. Winner of the Colorado Book Award and a Denver-Boulder best-seller, it was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and captured national media interest. Noted by reviewers as a cliff-hanger, page-turning environmental book that reads like a thriller, the true story, set in Boulder, Colo., addresses the traumatic conflict and violence that can result when wilderness and human development attempt to live in the same spaces.

Baron also aims to engage participants in a discussion of the broader issues surrounding Earth Day, an initiative begun in 1970 and that is celebrated on April 22 each year toward empowering and educating individuals and organizations in the movement that aims to protect Earth’s environment and its people. The first Earth Day is credited with influencing the formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, Earthday.org is engaged in more than 190 countries toward building awareness, educating populations and encouraging action on topics ranging from climate change to conservation and the pollution caused by plastics.

“Earth Day offers an opportunity to explore some big questions about the environment. For instance, in a world so dominated by humankind, is anything truly ‘natural’ anymore?,” Baron said. “When we say we want to protect the ‘environment,’ what exactly does that mean? My goal as a writer—and a speaker—is to take complex ideas and to turn them into compelling, understandable stories. I aim to do that in my presentation—to tell a story.”

Baron plans to supplement his presentation with video and slides and engage with the audience in asking and answering questions.

He majored in physics and geology in college and worked 30 years as a reporter and/or editor for public radio. Baron's journalistic positions included serving as an environment correspondent for NPR, a science reporter for Boston’s WBUR, and health and science editor for PRI’s The World. During his tenure as a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado he explored such issues as the increasing struggles between humans and wildlife when they attempt coexistence. This led to the writing of “The Beast in the Garden.”

Baron's work as a science journalist has garnered many preeminent awards including the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, Columbia University's Alfred I. duPont Award, the National Academies Communications Award, and the annual journalism prize three times from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“My entire journalism career has been focused on science—ranging from computer technology to medicine to the environment,” he said. “Many journalists like to write about politics, but not me. As I see it, science is what drives our civilization forward, and that’s where the really important stories are. I’ve always loved science—and I enjoy learning about it and communicating what I learn. I also love the outdoors and seeing the world. Journalism has taken me across the globe—from India to Africa, Iceland to Antarctica.” 

In 2017 Baron authored "American Eclipse: A nation's epic race to catch the shadow of the moon and win the glory of the world."  He currently serves as Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation.

Baron is now working on another book that delves into science history and the fascination that developed with the planet Mars at the turn of the century. “It’s a true story of Mars and Martians,” he said. “A small band of influential astronomers convinced themselves and a good portion of the public that Mars was inhabited by an advanced civilization. The result was a Mars craze on Earth, when people became obsessed with Martians. It was that era that inspired so much science fiction (for instance, H. G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds”), and it helped to launch the space age by inspiring the children who would grow to become rocket scientists.”

Baron connected with La Sierra University through Sari Fordham, associate English professor who read “The Beast in the Garden” and contacted him. “The book is just so fascinating and I knew I wanted to bring David to campus,” Fordham said. A first on-campus event with Baron was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then reconfigured for a virtual presentation, she said.

For further information about the Earth Day presentation hosted by La Sierra University, email english@lasierra.edu or call 951-785-2241. Information about “The Beast in the Garden” is available here: https://www.beastinthegarden.com/author/