The beauty of darkness, the costs of light pollution, and what we can do to protect the night.

A starry night is one of nature's most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, most of us no longer experience true darkness. In this talk based on his critically acclaimed book The End of Night, Paul Bogard seeks to restore our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art. Using a blend of personal narrative, natural history, science, and astronomy, Bogard shares the importance of darkness—what we've lost, what we still have, and what we might regain—and the simple ways we can reduce the brightness of our nights tonight.

This program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Click here to watch online.

A special thanks to Boise State University for bringing Paul to Idaho as part of their Sawtooth Writing Retreat Sept. 14-17 at the Central Idaho 4-H Camp. Learn more about the retreat here.

Paul Bogard is author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, which was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. He is also the author of The Ground Beneath Us: From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are, the children's book What If Night?, and the coffee table book To Know a Starry Night. He is also the editor of Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World, and of the anthology Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, Los Angeles Times, Outside, Audubon, Conservation, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere.

A native Minnesotan, Paul grew up exploring the forest and watching the stars near a lake in the northern part of the state. He has lived and taught in New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Virginia, and is now associate professor of English and Environmental Studies at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.