Voice of the Wild Podcast

Yes! We have a special set of shortened episodes (they feature only the call, species name, and family name) that are meant to help students study for quizzes after they’ve listened to the full episodes as part of a teacher's lesson plan. If you’re an Illinois teacher and want access to these, or have any special request that would help you teach your students about wildlife, email Brodie.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, YouTube, Castro, Goodpods, and Castbox. We also have an RSS feed and a regular browser page.

Voice of the Wild is a free educational service and the best way to support us is to share it with your friends and family! If you’re feeling particularly generous, subscribe to our newsletter; while we mostly use it to send out episode alerts, we occasionally send out listener surveys that help us refine the show.

We owe many thanks to Dr. Rob Kanter, who granted us permission to use some of his outstanding photography for Voice of the Wild episodes. If Rob doesn’t have a photo that will work with our thumbnail templates we try to find an image on a stock photo site that was taken in Illinois or a nearby state.

We choose focal wildlife based on three factors:

1. Can the species be heard in Illinois by an everyday person? All species featured on Voice of the Wild must be “hearable” in Illinois at one time or another during a typical year. We prioritize species that are sufficiently common/vocal that most people could find one calling somewhere in their county if they wanted to hear it in-person.
2. Do we have a suitable recording? We have access to a few different sound libraries, but our options are nonetheless incomplete. This sometimes limits which wildlife we can feature.
3. Will the species make for an interesting episode? All of Illinois’ wildlife are wonderful, but some species serve the podcast better than others. We prioritize species we think have a story to tell and a good voice to tell it with, or are at least persistent and reclusive enough that the episode might solve some mysteries. For example, some of the insects we’ve covered have had very modest songs (Check out the Greater Anglewing and Dog-Day Cicada) but nonetheless made for popular episodes because they put a name to a long-unknown sound in many people’s lives. 

To ensure the wildlife facts he's learned through personal and professional experience are supported by current literature, Brodie does a brief literature review for each episode and cites any resources he uses in the episode's description. Most episodes lean heavily on field guides and other physical books in Brodie's library, but he also checks Audubon and Cornell's online bird guides, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and previous Extension materials. When necessary he consults with other experts at Extension or reaches out to researchers at the University of Illinois, typically from the Illinois Natural History Survey or the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. For bird-focused episodes, Brodie uses the International Ornithologist Union's pronunciation guide for help with Latin Family, Genus, and Species names and eBird's barchart function for migratory arrival and departure dates (these are set to central Illinois, since we have listeners across the state). 

The following are the podcast's most cited resources:

• https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/
• https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/
• http://songsofinsects.com
• https://bugguide.net
• Dobson, Colin et al. Field Guide to Hotspots and Birds in Illinois. Champaign-Urbana: Scissortail LLC, 2023. Print.
• Dunne P, Sibley D, Sutton C. 2012. Hawks in flight : the flight identification of North American raptors. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Godfrey, Michael A, John Farrand, and Roger Tory Peterson. Videoguide to the Birds of North America. New York, N.Y: MasterVision, 1985. Film.
• Peterson, Roger Tory, and Virginia Marie Peterson. A Field Guide to the Birds: A Completely New Guide to All the Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Fourth edition, completely revised and enlarged. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980. Print.
• Sibley, David. Sibley Birds East: Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. Second edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. Print.
• Stokes DW, Stokes LQ. 2004. Stokes Field Guide to Warblers. 2nd ed. New York: Little, Brown (Stokes field guides).