What’s new with Encounters?

The new CD gift box set, Encounters: Radio Experiences in the North, is available now!

This six CD set includes 12 of the most popular Encounters episodes from the first four seasons. To purchase a copy online, go to cdbaby.com. The CD gift set is also available at these Alaska book stores: In Anchorage, REI (1200 Northern Lights Blvd.) and Title Wave Books (1360 Northern Lights Blvd) and in Sitka, Old Harbor Books (201 Lincoln Street).

Encounters is PODCASTING. To SUBSCRIBE click here on Encounters to receive our weekly podcast today! If you missed the show on your local public radio station, just want to hear it again or live in a community where the radio station doesn't yet carry Encounters, subscribe today and get new episodes delivered to your computer each week. It's free.

Canadians are now enjoying Encounters on CBC North Radio, Yellowknife, Northern Territories. And Encounters will soon be airing on WIBS—a national college radio network.

Upcoming Programs: Travel with Elizabeth Arnold aboard the Coast Guard ice breaker, Healy, where more than 30 scientists are studying all aspects of the Bering Sea — some of the most productive waters in the world. Elizabeth follows scientists gathering information on walruses, spectacled eiders, ice algae…everything in the water column and on the ocean floor. The goal of the massive research program is to understand this nutrient rich ecosystem and how it will be altered as the climate changes.

In the Canadian subarctic, Jeb Sharp tags along with harp seal research scientist Mike Hammill of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Travel with Jeb to the pack ice in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, where scientists are monitoring the health of the seal herd. You’ll hear the sounds of female harp seals and their white-coated pups during the March pupping season. To listen to the program Click here.

Richard Nelson is just back from several months in Australia. While in the sultry tropics of the Northern Territory, he recorded a program on the cane toad—an invasive, oversized and extremely venomous toad which is endangering many of the unique animals in far northern Australia. In Tasmania, a rare encounter with the highly endangered Tasmanian devil provided the opportunity for a new radio program on this fascinating marsupial. Richard also recorded a program titled, “Searching for a Ghost”, about the Tasmanian marsupial wolf. And along the coast of Victoria, Richard recorded a program that explores and celebrates the marvels of wild Australia, enriched with some of the most beautiful and lavish sounds of early morning.

Richard Nelson has teamed up with four-time Emmy award winning cinematographer Daniel Zatz to produce short films based on Encounters. Click here to view the segments about brown bears in Katmai National Park, shorebirds on the Copper River Delta, and wood frogs in the Brooks Range.

What's this about?

Where else on public radio programming can you hear polar bears growl, peregrine falcons cry and killer whales splash? In an ever increasingly urban world, Encounters: Experiences in the North brings the sounds of the northern wild to the radio for a rare, entertaining and informative weekly program. Now in its fourth season, Encounters is heard throughout Alaska and around the nation. Alaska’s acclaimed cultural anthropologist and award winning nature writer, Richard Nelson is the host of Encounters. Each 29- minute segment contains a tight weave of scientific and indigenous perspectives as Nelson bubbles over with boundless enthusiasm for all things wild. Because it is recorded live to tape, Encounters has a refreshing immediacy that makes for exciting and entertaining listening.

The carefully researched material draws information from the best scientific investigations, from discussions with scientists about their work, from accurate interpretation of conclusions in a wide range of studies, and from direct experience in the field. The programs are recorded live in the field during close contact with the subject. Whether high atop a 65 foot tree to record a program on wind, kayaking along side a pod of sea lions or getting curiously close to a grizzly bear, Nelson engages the listener in feeling the place as well as the subject.

Recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s International Polar Year program, Encounters aims to demonstrate the rewards of experiencing, studying, interpreting and living in the polar world to listeners all over the country. Our program reminds listeners about why the International Polar Year comes at a critical time in this all too globally warm earth we live upon.

Dr. Nelson has spent forty years in the north living with indigenous people and writing extensively about human relationships to the natural world. He began Encounters as a volunteer for KCAW-FM, the voice and heartbeat of Sitka, a small island town on Alaska's north Pacific coast. Encouraged by its popularity among Sitkans, Nelson began to work with KCAW program director Ken Fate who edited the program and found distribution statewide. Today the show is still distributed by KCAW, Raven Radio.