More About Nature Narratives
The show description is Nature Narratives is a science podcast for kids ages 8 to 14. Each episode describes one awe inspiring natural phenomenon as a dramatic adventure story and features custom music score through. The length of each episode is about five minutes and it is completely kid-ear friendly.
The series is ongoing with new episodes available when Jonathan puts together a new episode, so you can follow the show and when a new episode comes out, you can be pleasantly surprised before we learn more about the vibe of the show.
Introduction to Jonathan Byram
My name is Jonathan Byram and I make the Nature Narratives podcast. I’m in Los Angeles. I live here with my wife and my one and a half year old. My wife has helped me a lot with the podcast, but anyway, professionally, I’m a composer and a singer and born and raised here in LA and that’s me.
How Nature Narratives Got Started
About five years ago, I was living in Chicago and I moved there to pursue a girl who I’m now married to while I was living there. I had a view out of my window of the building’s roof next to me and on a snowy day, or it had snowed the day before and I saw the snow melting and then it became a damp roof and then the damp roof started evaporating. The water started evaporating off of the damp roof and it was this amazing image of swirling mist. And it was whipping in the, in the Chicago wind and, and I, and it was, and I imagined it going all the way up into the atmosphere.
And I thought that is such a cool wild adventure to be snow, like, you know, four hours ago. And then to be water and then vapor and then the cycle starts over again. I was like transported back to elementary school science, but like with the awe and wonder of, of, of, of my adult self appreciating it. And so I just like started writing the story out of this adventure of a water molecule. And that’s how I started Nature Narratives.
I like the I’m just like blown away by how amazing nature and the world is. And I get I’m like revisiting all these like basic lessons. That I probably didn’t really care about that much when I was a kid, but I’m doing it now through this podcast.
What to Expect from Nature Narratives
I want them to enjoy it. I want them to be, I want, I want it to be very clear and easy to understand so that you actually learn something. And I also want it to be, my tagline is always be amazed because every episode comes out of something that I’ve noticed or come across or that someone suggested that I just find amazing. And the more I research it, the more amazed I am.
So I hope that people get jazzed about lightning and the grand canyon and the water cycle through it.
The Music in the Podcast
I compose music for a living and I’m working on a film score right now. So. Yeah. I guess I had an ulterior motive for doing this podcast. I, it was so fun to score these little short stories, any way I wanted. Without a director telling me what their vision is without, you know, writing a song for somebody in, with somebody else in mind or, or and, and just like, yeah, it was just so fun to just kind of have free reign and and I would do them very, very quickly and just kind of intuitively and spontaneously and yeah, the scoring, the music was a really, really fun part of this project.
Research Behind the Podcast
My wife is a certified professional teacher. When she was in Chicago doing public school there, and then when we moved here to LA, she got certified in Montessori. So she’s just an uber qualified teacher anyway. So, I would run all these scripts by her and like she would help me shape them in a way that was classroom relevant and useful, or to homeschoolers. Yeah, so she really helped reign things in. She was like, my editor and was really helpful.
The Vibe of Nature Narratives
The vibe is It’s kind of, yeah, I hope it’s cinematic and then mysterious for me comes to mind too. I mean, I was discovering new things while I was making it and wonder is another word I would use.
Jonathan’s Favorite Episode
I prepared for this one because you sent me that question ahead of time and it’s definitely the solar flares episodes. Oh, because it’s not just the solar flare. It’s the Aurora. So it’s, it’s a two parter. It first talks about the solar flare. And then the second part is the, you know, charged ions flying through space and then colliding with Earth’s magnetic field and that results in the Aurora Borealis or the Southern one and, and the, the Northern Southern lights. So yeah, it’s just, it’s just mind blowing. And that was just a really fun episode. Oh. And musically in the first part I got to do one of those, you know, like every time there’s an explosion in space and a movie it’s always like, like a silence and then a huge boom.
Nature Narratives & Little Ears
Yes, definitely.
Where to Find Jonathan & Nature Narratives
You can go to my website to check out all kinds of stuff that I do. And that’s probably the easiest way to get a full picture of the podcast, unless you just wanna go follow it, you know, on the podcast platform. You can go to my website, Jonathanbyram.com and there’s a tab for Nature Narratives on there.
