The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its list of 2017 fellows—24 people from all walks of life who will receive $625,000 “genius” grants, as they’re often called. CityLab is running a series of short conversations with several of the winners. This interview was originally published in Spanish on our sister site, CityLab Latino.

Every year since 2009, Jason De León, an anthropologist and professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has traveled to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. The…