Unique presentations, both funny and insightful, exploring natural history, including the natural history of human behavior.

Highlights

Richard Conniff offers completely original presentations—explorations of human behavior that alternate between the hilarious and the insightful. As a science writer, he’s a master of the research, and as a speaker he has a fabulous eye for observation and a gift for conveying his observations with stories and his insights with wit.

His presentations are entertaining and informative, even provocative, full of moments of recognition—that’s why my boss acts that way! or, ohmygod, I do that.

Richard has spent his career going back and forth between two worlds, chronicling the animal world for National Geographic or Smithsonian one month and analyzing the life-styles of the rich for Architectural Digest the next. His work routinely takes him to the extremes of the earth: from an audience with the late Prince Rainier at the Grimaldi Palace in Monaco to a casual swim with piranhas in the upper Amazon.

In his most recent book, Richard takes us with him as he gets close-up and personal with some of the strangest—and often most dangerous animals—animals in the world. Like his other books, Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals shows us life through the lens of a bona-fide naturalist, with stories full of wit and insight.

Richard Conniff has written several other books on natural history and on the behavior of the human animal as seen through the eyes of a naturalist. The latter include The Natural History of the Rich—A Field Guide and The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Office Beast in All of Us.

He has published in Smithsonian, Time, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Worth, Architectural Digest, National Geographic and other publications in the United States and abroad.

Richard won the 1997 National Magazine Award for his writing in Smithsonian and the 2009 Gerald Loeb Award for online business journalism. His television work has been nominated for an Emmy for distinguished achievement in writing.

Richard is relaxed, fun and funny on the platform, and his material is revealing, intriguing and potentially valuable to a wide range of audiences.

The Natural History of Human Behavior

"I was visiting Monaco on an unlikely assignment for National Geographic, and it felt like I had entered another universe. ‘National Geographic?’ a British stockbroker asked me one morning. ‘Why aren’t you in the mountains of Papua New Guinea?’ I suggested that every nation has its own anthropology, and that the native customs of Monaco were at least as exotic as those of any other hill tribe."

Just a taste of award-winning writer Richard Conniff, whose unique perspective on human behavior has beguiled audiences and won him critical acclaim since writing his first book of modern-culture anthropology, The Natural History of the Rich—A Field Guide.

Richard has moved waist-deep into a crocodile-infested river along with a troop of baboons after 90 minutes of fear-soaked debate in the trees, wondering, along with the apes, if this is when he dies. He sees the same fear, noise and courage at work in the board room when companies make dangerous and uncertain strategic decisions. He’s also moved three martinis deep into a cocktail party with the fabulously wealthy and noticed that they air kiss just like gorillas do to indicate that they accept you into their troop. We are just not that far from our primate origins and the imperatives and solutions of natural selection.

The Ape in the Corner Office

Animal clichés have always been big in the business world and the truth behind the clichés is that the lives of animals and the lives of working people have a lot in common, and not just in the obvious ways. The workplace has supplanted the tribe, the community, and even the family as the focus of our lives, and it has become the modern arena for all the behaviors that originally evolved in those ancient contexts.

Thus, understanding the nature and origin of human behavior—the office beast in all of us—improves business performance. It can help us manage conflict, build useful alliances, and understand the emotions and behaviors of those around us. And this is not just useful stuff—it’s also a lot of fun.

With his most recent book, The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Office Beast In All of Us, Richard sheds this kind of evolutionary light on how to survive—and thrive—in the boardroom and the workplace. In person, he has a wonderful gift for making this revealing material both you-are-there enthralling and also comically entertaining for his audiences.

Credentials

• 2009 Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism
• 1997 National Magazine Award for his writing in Smithsonian
• Emmy nomination for distinguished achievement in writing
• Published in Time, Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Worth, Architectural Digest, National Geographic

Books

The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Office Beast in All of Us

The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide

Rats!: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife

Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World

Ireland Stone Walls and Fabled Land