Rapid City's Emily Graslie Co-Hosts New PBS Nature Series

On Thursday, July 8, Rapid City native Emily Graslie announced she is back online and onscreen as a co-host of a new special limited series "In Our Nature", as part of the PBS It's Okay to be Smart franchise.

The digital short-form documentary series explores how seemingly distant ecosystems, even half a world apart, are connected in surprising ways. Emily joins Trace Dominguez and It's Okay to be Smart host Dr. Joe Hanson looking at the universal rules of life that tie together Earth's living ecosystem.

Episode one takes Emily back home to South Dakota as she travels to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to learn how the bison is being restored to the native prairie ecosystem and its people.  She and co-hosts examine how large mammals like the bison in North America and the wildebeest in Africa are cornerstones to their respective grassland environments.

Watch Episode One here:

About Emily Graslie:

Emily Graslie is a science communicator, video host, and educational media producer.

From 2013 - 2020 she worked as the first-ever Chief Curiosity Correspondent for the Field Museum in Chicago, creating more than 200 episodes for The Brain Scoop, a natural history-themed YouTube channel whose videos have been viewed tens of millions of times. Her media productions and storytelling adventures have taken her and her viewers through both space and time, from deep into the bat caves of Kenya, to the remote Peruvian Amazon jungle — and from the Cambrian through the Cretaceous by means of geologic and fossil formations across the United States.

 In 2020 she made her broadcast television debut on PBS in Prehistoric Road Trip, an original three-part series exploring the paleontology and natural history of the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming. SDPB will be re-airing Prehistoric Road Trip in August. It airs Thursdays, 8/5, 8/12 and 8/19 at 8pm CT, 7 MT on SDPB2-World.