Tom Hugh-Jones is the producer of the David Attenborough-narrated Planet Earth BBC series and has spent twenty-two years producing natural history and science documentaries for broadcasters such as BBC, National Geographic, and Discovery. When he was just four years old, Tom’s anthropologist parents took him to live with a tribal community in the Colombian Amazon, sowing the seeds of his passion for adventure in the wild. Since then, Hugh-Jones has worked on many prolific titles such as Planet Earth, Human Planet, and Life Story, taking audiences around the world into the beating heart of breath-taking moments, close encounters, spectacular failures, and places no human should ever go.

Hugh-Jones will also bring special guests from Blue Planet Production to discuss the teamwork and process of making Planet Earth and its companion BBC show, Blue Planet. Guests include producer/director Rachael Butler and Pam and Tim Fogg of Rope Access Specialists, a team of experts in rope-access rigging and safety when shooting in difficult-to-reach locales such as caves, volcanoes, and cliffs.

Co-Presented by U-M Museum of Natural History’s William R. Farrand Memorial Lecture with support from U-M Institute for the Humanities.