Ari and Chris are back together and excited to be joined by Joey Golden, Curator of Animal Behavior Programs at Maryland Zoo! Chris and Joey both attended the recent ABMA and ISZAW conferences, and we wanted to bring him on to chat about the great presentations he gave about his zoo's progress towards "24/7 welfare" for all their animals. We chat about the importance of leaning on innovators, how Hal Markowitz has influenced his thinking about the importance of automation in modern animal care, the new role of Microsoft's PowerBI in collecting and interpreting pretty much every kind of data in a zoo you can think of, and why all of us should be focused on observation, interpretation, and improvement. Such a cool discussion!

If you have a shout-out you’d like us to share, a question or a topic you’d like us to discuss, or a suggestion for a guest we should have on the show, let us know at podcast@naturalencounters.com!