Tag Archives: Graceland

Mongabay exclusive: Iconic musician Paul Simon announces tour supporting biodiversity (story and podcast)

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Early last month, Erik Hoffner, a special editor with Mongabay, got in touch to tell me about the site’s coup of an interview with Dr. E.O. Wilson, one of the world’s leading conservationists. The story and Q&A was exceptionally well done. Erik then let me know that the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation based at Duke University would be hosting a two-day conference, and the legendary singer-song writer Paul Simon would be involved. He wondered if I would be interested in trying to get an interview with Simon and writing a story for Mongabay.

Not a tough question to answerPaul Simon and me. With the help of Paula Erhlich, the CEO of Wilson’s foundation, Simon agreed to meet with me for an exclusive interview on March 3 on the Duke campus during the conference. Simon’s music has been a seminal part of my life, and the life of my family, for decades. Meeting him was a special thrill of a fortunate journalist working for a great news organization. We spoke easily and intently for an hour, a little about music, but mostly about Wilson’s Half-Earth Project and its goal to stave off species extinctions around the world.

We also got to break the news of Simon’s 17-city U.S. concert tour in June 2017 with all profits going to Wilson’s foundation and the Half-Earth cause. The full story is here.

On March 21, 2017, the Mongabay podcast, produced by Mike Gaworecki, posted. The link to my conversation with Mike about the Paul Simon interview, with long outtakes from the interview, is here.