drstevenshepard

ABOUT You can always bore yourself silly reading my bio, but here are a few highlights. I spent my early childhood in the American southwest, but when I was 13, my parents got transferred to Madrid, Spain, where we lived under Generalísimo Francisco Franco’s regime. Hmmm… from west Texas to a dictatorship—not much culture shock there. Anyway, as a result of that incredible experience, I fell in love with languages, and culture, and travel, so when I graduated high school I went to the University of California at Berkeley, where I majored in Romance Languages with a specialization in Spanish and minored in Marine Biology. When I graduated, fully armed to teach fish how to speak Spanish, I became a commercial diver and did that for five years before taking the obvious next step, which was working for Pacific Telephone as a network analyst in the San Francisco Bay Area. I did that for 11 years, and somewhere along the way I earned my master’s in international business from St. Mary’s College. Not long after, I accepted a position with a telecom consultancy in Vermont, which is identical to California, but different. So, my wife Sabine and I moved our two kids across the country to join the new firm, Hill Associates, where I worked as an educator and writer for ten years, traveling constantly. After ten years with Hill, I left to start my own company. I wanted to do more writing because I had published my first telecom book a few years earlier, and it had become a legitimate bestseller; and I wanted to do more international work. So, in 2000, I started the Shepard Communications Group, and from 2000 until 2020, when the zombie apocalypse struck, I pretty much lived on airplanes, racking up more than three million airline miles and working in more than 100 countries. Somewhere along the way, I earned my PhD from a university in South Africa where I was teaching and consulting on a regular basis. A few years ago, clients began asking me if I could create audio programs to help them tell their stories. They knew that I’d written more than 40 industry films, so I began to do audio work, which turned into voice-overs and Podcasts (see The Natural Curiosity Project, below), and which, in combination with my biology background and my ferocious love of the natural world, got me interested in recording the sounds of our non-human neighbors, the world they inhabit, and things I could do to help protect it and raise awareness of our impact on it. Hence, www.CritterChorus.com. Sabine and I married in 1981, a few weeks before I started at the phone company in California. As I write this, it’s early 2023, meaning that she has put up with me for more than 41 years, which doesn’t include the five years that we dated. With the pandemic mostly behind us, I’ve decided that it’s time to make a professional pivot once again. I’m largely (not completely, but mostly) leaving my technology career behind to focus on five things: producing The Natural Curiosity Project; writing, with a strong focus on conservation and the role that technology can play to help protect the natural world; recording the sounds of nature; being a grandfather to our five little grandkids; and trying not to get in Sabine’s way so that she’ll keep me around a while longer. BIO Click Here to download a full bio (excellent if you have a sleeping disorder). THE NATURAL CURIOSITY PROJECT I started the Natural Curiosity Project Podcast for one reason: to drive curiosity. I believe that curiosity is our sixth sense, and I also believe that we don’t use it anywhere near often enough. There are countless stories out there that need to be told, so I decided to tell them. Sometimes I do audio essays about a topic that I think my listeners will find interesting, but more often, I interview people who have a great story to tell. Want some examples? Sure. In one episode, I interviewed my best friend from high school, who is now a well-known actor. He explained how to read movie credits. What’s a best boy? Is there a worst boy? Is a gaffer’s job to jab actors with a long, pointed hook? I interviewed Dewitt Jones, a renowned former National Geographic photographer, who now travels the world with his extraordinary message to celebrate what’s right with the world, rather than wallow in what’s wrong with it. What great advice THAT is. I interviewed an elderly man I met in west Texas, Bud, whose hobby is tying messages to tumbleweeds, messages that ask whoever finds the note to send him an email telling him where it was found so that he can track how far it traveled (more than 40 miles in some cases). I’ve interviewed filmmakers, audio engineers, pilots, hikers on the Appalachian Trail, artists, scientists, and more than a few wildlife sound recordists. The only thing that ties the episodes together? The only common theme? This is something you should be curious about, so pay attention! The Natural Curiosity Project is available wherever you get your Podcasts—have a listen. Thanks! SOUND In addition to producing The Natural Curiosity Project, I also record the sounds of the natural world. There are three types of sound on this planet: biophony, which includes all the sounds made by the non-human residents of our planet; geophony, which includes the sounds made by wind, rain, water running in a stream, thunder, earthquakes, the crackling of the aurora borealis, and countless other sources; and anthropophony, the sound—noise? —made by humans, which includes airplanes, cars, chain saws, and so on. There’s way, way too much of that last one. I believe that the critters that we share this planet with have something important to say, and it’s high time we paid attention, because our very existence is taking away their voices. Their voices are every bit as important as ours, and when theirs fall silent, ours will soon follow. BOOKS Writing is not something I do; writing is something I am. As I told a friend not too long ago, in terrible English, I can’t not write. Wow—a double negative. I write every day, not because I have to, but because I want to. I’ve been writing since I was ten years old, when I completed my first book, a magnificent 23-page homage to my hero at the time, pulp fiction star Doc Savage. Silly? Absolutely. But it’s where I started, and today I have 99 books on the market with three bestsellers so far, and hopefully more to come. In terms of subject matter, they cover the waterfront: technology, leadership, storytelling, photography, writing, wildlife sound recording, three novels, children’s books, biography…like I said, it’s the craft, not the subject matter. I just love to write. I’ve also written magazine and journal articles, screenplays, technical documentation (zzzzzzzz…), and audio and video scripts.