The EWN Podcast just surpassed a major milestone – 50,000 downloads!! Launched in August 2020 to mark the 10th anniversary of Engineering With Nature (EWN), listeners around the world have tuned in to over 80 episodes, special releases, and announcements. In the Season 7 Trailer, Jeff King, National Lead of the EWN Program, commented: “One of the biggest highlights has certainly been the number of listeners that are coming to our space. We really appreciate the interest and the support from around the world. Everywhere I go—meetings, conferences, workshops—people are listening to our podcast, and they are truly engaged. They love what we’re doing. It’s incredibly exciting to get that kind of feedback.”
As Sarah Thorne, Host and Coproducer of the EWN Podcast, noted that the podcast “started as a little science experiment in 2020” with Jeff King, Todd Bridges (former Lead of the EWN Program), and Dave Trafford (Coproducer of the EWN Podcast). In Season 1 there were about 2700 downloads. The number of listeners and cumulative downloads has continued to climb, with over 10,000 downloads during both Seasons 5 and 6, including many downloads of episodes from previous seasons, helping the EWN Podcast reach the milestone announced today.
Amanda Tritinger, Deputy Lead of the EWN Program and frequent podcast cohost said, “Congratulations on this fantastic milestone! We’ve talked about engineering with empathy on previous podcast episodes, and I think the key to empathy is listening and hearing diverse points of view. The EWN Podcast gives our guests a platform to share their perspectives. The podcast is an important component of the EWN Program.”
A fundamental goal of the EWN Program is getting the word out. In our most recent episode Season 7, Episode 5, Burton Suedel, Research Biologist with the USACE’s Engineer Research and Development Center and a frequent podcast cohost, noted that through the Atlas series and the EWN Podcast, “We’re striving to do is to share best practices worldwide, inspire actions in others, foster the confidence in our collective vision, and encourage others to incorporate nature-based solutions into their infrastructure projects.” Jeff is committed to delivering on this goal: “We want to continue this journey—keep sharing more of the wonderful topics that come our way and the interesting people we are blessed to get to know on this journey.”
The 50,000 milestone is significant, as Jeff notes: “We’ve done tremendous work creating this podcast and sharing information on many different themes. With the number of downloads, the amount of interest and enthusiasm in this space, the diversity of individuals and guests that we’ve had—it is a big accomplishment.” Sarah adds: “It’s been an amazing journey! We promise we’ll keep interesting episodes coming! We’ve got great topics and guests lined up for the remainder of Season 7 and the kickoff of Season 8.”
