WEBVTT - From the Vault: Lone Wolf, with Adam Weymouth 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.640 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:12.080 name is Robert Lamb. We were off for the Juneteenth holiday, 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:15.280 so we are just a tiny bit behind in our schedule, 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:18.319 so we are going to run a vault episode for 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:21.240 you here. This is an interview episode I did last 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:26.360 year with author Adam Weymouth talking about his book Lone Wolf, 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.520 Walking the Line between Civilization and Wildness. It's all about 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.840 the European Wolf, it's recent comeback and the similarities between 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.199 the human and the lupine world This one originally published 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:41.559 six twelve, twenty twenty five. Let's jump right in. 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:52.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:57.440 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:57.520 --> 0:00:59.920 name is Robert Lamb, and on today's episode, I'm going 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.400 to be chatting with Adam Weyman, author of Lone Wolf 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.160 Walking the Line between Civilization and Wildness. It's all about 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.319 the European Wolf, it's recent comeback, in the similarities between 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:14.360 the human and lupine worlds. Without further ado, let's jump 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:19.360 right in. Thank you, Hi Adam, Welcome to the show. 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:21.280 Hi Rap, thanks for having me on. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:24.920 The new book is Lone Wolf Walking the Line between 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:28.640 Civilization and Wilderness released as of June third and all 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.959 major formats. As you describe in the book, Your Journey 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.120 began in covering the possible reintroduction of wolves into Scotland. 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:39.840 You'd written about this prior, so I thought you might 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.480 walk us through this first. What happened to the wolves 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.319 of the British Isles and where do things stand now 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.040 with their potential reintroduction? 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:49.880 And what happened to the wolves of the British Isles 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.080 is pretty much the same that happened to the wolf 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.560 across its entire range. The wolf used to be once 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.200 upon a time the most widespread terrestrial land mammal on 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:03.080 the planet, all across the Northern Hemisphere, from the tundra 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.880 right down to the tropics and pretty much everywhere, including 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.160 in the British Isles. They were pushed almost to extinction, 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:13.160 or in the British Iles, completely eradicated. So there's a 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.239 bunch of last wolf stories. It seems that they hung 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.519 on in Scotland later than anywhere else. The last definitive 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:24.800 account for wolf in Scotland is sixteen twenty one, and 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.200 that's a note for a bounty that was paid on 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:29.800 a wolf. But it was an exception, you high su 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.799 which suggests by them that demand was already kind of 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:37.040 outstripping supply. And then it kind of verges into myth. 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:38.840 There's a lot of people that would like to claim 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.239 they killed the last wolf, whereas actually, of course the 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.720 last wolf probably lived out it's days, far from any one, 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:46.760 profoundly isolated and alone. 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.880 Now you actually looked for the alleged remains of the 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:52.480 last wolf in Scotland, right. 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.000 Yeah, that's right. So it's like I said, it's very 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:57.600 hard to come by. There's one story that I followed. 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.560 So I began my journey in Scotland at in a 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.480 state up near in Verness where this gentleman called Paul 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.440 Lister has been talking about trying to reintroduce now wolves 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.359 now for about twenty years or so. And I walked 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:12.120 across Scotland and finished it in the south of the 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.600 Kangom Mountain range. And that's one of the places where 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.320 the last Wolf is meant to have been killed. And then, 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.600 as you say later, I said out trying to find 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:23.520 it because it is then meant to have been stuffed, 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:28.240 and had various journey through different collections and museums, but 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:32.000 the actual providence of it is now pretty hard to locate, 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:33.840 and really, through the course of the research it made 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:35.680 me realize that this probably wasn't the last wolf at all. 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.040 This wolf that was being taken around these museums in 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:40.480 Scotland was being labeled as the last wolf in order 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.120 to sell tickets, but really it was probably nothing of 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:43.480 the sort. 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.720 And what about the reintroduction of the wolf into Scotland 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.720 or various other areas where the wolf is no longer present. 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.440 Where do we currently stand with that in terms of 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.520 public sentiment and even governmental opinion. 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:01.680 Well, one of the reasons that the wolf is so 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.000 good to write about is because people are incredibly passionate 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:07.240 about it from both sides. People love wolves or they 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.360 hate wolves, and you find very little in between. And 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:14.160 that's essentially where we are. It's been noted in the 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.919 British Isles as the most popular animal for reintroduction. But 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:18.880 then you go and speak to people that would be 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.960 actually living alongside it. Once again, we have sheep farmers 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:27.600 in Scotland, hunters, gameskeepers, people like this, even people that 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:30.960 live in villages in the countryside, and there's this reputation 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.360 that the wolf has for better or worse, and there 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.880 are people that are very passionately against it as well. 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:39.880 It's interesting because in some ways it's quite an arbitrary 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.800 decision here wolves as we're going to talk about wolves 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.040 are making this remarkable come back in Europe, and if 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.680 Britain was still connected by a land bridge to the 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.919 continent as it used to be a couple of hundred 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.160 thousand years ago, then there would be back. There would 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:55.600 be wolves back on the British Isles now, and we 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:57.520 wouldn't be having a debate about whether or not to 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.920 introduce them. We'd just be talking about how we deal 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.480 with them. But because we're an island, we get to 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:06.120 make these particular decisions about about what we let in, 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:09.680 and realistically it's not going to happen here for a 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:14.040 long time. It's taken about fifteen years of great debate 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.800 to allow the beaver to come back, and that's that's 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.040 broadly accepted now. But there's a lot of other species 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.719 we'd see back before. Wolf is really really the pinnacle 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.240 of Once wolves are back, you know, we're not really 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.040 talking about the worlding anymore. It's kind of. 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:33.719 Happened now now moving to Condon or Europe. Here the 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:40.080 book is primarily concerned with a particular wolf, Schloats. Can 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.800 you tell us about Schloats and why his particular story 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.000 captured you so and serves as the is the driving 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:49.040 force of your narrative? 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:52.640 He sure, Schloutz, it is actually one of the interesting thing. 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:54.560 I mean, it's a particular Slovenian word. And even in 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.000 the other countries that Schlous ended up in, no one 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:01.520 can really say his name. Probably, But I first read 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:03.640 a little piece about Schlutz when I was doing my 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:08.760 research on wolves in Scotland, and it was this very 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.360 small article about this wolf that had been born in 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:15.039 the south of Slovenia in twenty ten and had a 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.440 GPS track and collar put on him by a biologist 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:20.240 who was researching into wolf behavior. But of course that 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.080 biologist could have no idea what this animal was going 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:24.800 to go on to do. He was really just interested 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.160 in the sort of dynamics of the how a wolf 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.760 maintained the territory of the pack. But the following year, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:35.360 at the end of twenty eleven, when Schlutz is about 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.680 eighteen months old, he left his pack behind and set 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.279 off on this epic one thousand mile journey through the Apps, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.920 he crossed Slovenia, he crossed the whole of Austria, and 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.480 four months later in the spring, came into Italy and 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:51.320 it was there that he bumped into a female wolf 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:52.960 who was on a walk about of her own. So 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.279 somehow in there wasn't another wolf for thousands of square miles. 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.120 Somehow these two wolves managed to find each other, and 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.760 when they bred, they became the first wolf pack back 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.560 in the Italian Apps for more than a century. So 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:08.080 in one way, it was this remarkable love story that 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.559 I was drawn to. The female wolf ended up getting 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.960 called Juliet because they were very close to Verona, and 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.360 Romeo and julieta still Verona's most famous couple. So I 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.360 was really drawn to this incredible meeting in this love 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.560 story between these two animals. But of course not everyone 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:26.840 is quite so quite so in love with the idea 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:28.400 of having wolves back in the mountains. 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:31.640 Now, as you definitely discussed in the book, when we 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.640 talk about wolves, there's often a lot of separating the 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:40.160 biological reality of wolves from human mythmaking about wolves and misconceptions. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.560 Coming back to the title of the book, Lone Wolf, 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.920 can you remind us just what a lone wolf actually is, 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.120 and in comparison to maybe some of the ideas that 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:51.440 we have about lone wolves. 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.000 Yeah, so I really wanted to call it lone wolf, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.040 and we had a bit of pushback sort of an 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:58.960 editorial meetings and stuff. But to me, it was really 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.200 important to call it loanew because I wanted to challenge 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:03.920 this idea of what a lone wolf is. We think 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.480 of a lone wolf as this kind of eastward archetype, 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.160 you know, this hero riding off into the sunset who 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:14.160 doesn't need anyone or anything, Whereas what I realized from 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.679 following Schlaus is that actually a lone wolf is simply 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.800 something that hasn't found what it's looking for yet. And 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:21.760 a lone wolf is looking for the same three things 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.160 that we all are. It's looking for enough land to 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.000 live on, it's looking for enough food to eat, and 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.160 it's looking for a mate. So and it's an incredibly 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.679 vulnerable time for a wolf. There is no more vulnerable time. 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:34.679 Wolves don't hunt well alone. They like to be part 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.040 of packs, they like to have a fixed territory. They 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:41.280 are actually an incredibly conservative species, very shy, very hard 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:45.120 to see. So to set off on these journeys, as 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.559 a particular kind of subset of wolves are hardwired to do. 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:53.360 To disperse like this is an incredibly dangerous, perilous time 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.680 for them, and not a not a proud, self sufficient 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:58.640 state that they want to end up in. 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.640 Now. In chronicling this journey, you sometimes rte from the 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.800 point of view of Slouts himself in the book, and 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.040 I thought this was a lovely choice. It makes for 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.480 some very poetic passages. Can you describe your process for 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.720 imagining the mindset of the wolf and how this factored 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:15.360 into your approach. 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:15.800 Yeah. 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.400 Thanks. I toyed with it for a while, and in 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.320 the end it felt important. I didn't want to say that, 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:23.560 you know, I was seeing the world as a wolf was, 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.359 but I wanted in some way to sort of, however clumsily, 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:29.720 kind of get inside Slouse's mind in a way. And 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.760 there was something about following his journey. So the track 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.040 and collar that you had to put on him, it 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.960 gave one waypoint every one hundred and ninety minutes for 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.800 the entire four months of his walk, And before I 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:45.080 set off, I transferred each of those waypoints onto this 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.440 big stack of maps that I carried in my rucksack, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:50.480 and as I walked, As I followed this path, you 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:54.240 started to get some sort of sense of how this 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.360 wolf was seeing the world's you know, on the map. 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.360 It might have not seemed to make sense why he'd 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.720 suddenly changed compass point and set off on a different bearing, 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:04.600 But then when I got to this point, I realized 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:08.280 that I could hear the airport, or hear a highway, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.920 or I could you know, see a town for the 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:12.960 first time as we come over a hill, or the 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.040 other places where he turned round because it was a 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:19.439 mountain pass and the winter that he traveled, it's incredibly snowy, 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:21.960 and a lot of these places are just inaccessible, so 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.000 in some way that you couldn't get from just looking 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:25.880 at the data on the page. By doing this walk, 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.920 I started to sense some sort of way that the 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.160 wolf was moving through a landscape in a way, and 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:34.560 often looking for the easiest route as well, often following 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.520 the river or the bike path down a valley rather 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:42.080 than going over a mountain range. And yeah, I felt 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.120 by the end of this walk, after following in his 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.080 footsteps for a few months, that I'd kind of earned 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.320 the right to at least try and write a little 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:49.800 bit from his from his perspective. 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:52.960 Yeah, humans have of course long considered the wholf. We've 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:57.000 long seen shades of them and us, and shades of 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:01.360 us and them. So yeah, this is this is I guess, 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:06.400 a long standing area of analysis and consideration, right, like, 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.920 how are wolves like us? And how are we like 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:10.400 the wolf? 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.600 Yeah, we obviously go way back. The wolf is the 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.280 first animal we domesticated, it's the first animal we lived alongside. 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:22.040 And there are these really interesting similarities between the two 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.960 of us. We're two of the very few species on 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.599 the planet that hunt prey that are larger than ourselves. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:30.600 That's unusual in the animal world. And in order to 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:32.560 do that, that means that you need to work together 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.559 as a pack. And then when you start working together 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.600 as a pack, that requires division of labor, and it 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.640 requires hierarchy, and it requires some sort of quite complex 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.400 social organization. And so in some ways there's this real 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.520 affinity between how humans work together and how wolves work together. 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:52.920 And I think that probably is the reason that we 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.560 found each other in kind of hunting gather at times 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.360 and decided to work together, essentially because we had this 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.520 sort of underst and we both like to run after 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:03.240 pray and tire them out, and that is the way 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:05.080 that that is the way that they hunt, as opposed 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.600 to a big cat or something like that. And I 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.280 think it's almost that closeness. There was a wolf behavioral 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.160 scientist that I met in Austria and he said to me, 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:15.960 either you love your brother or you hate your brother. 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:18.280 There's nothing in between. And I think it's almost that 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.000 closeness that we feel to wolves. And obviously we see 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:22.840 that in our relationship to dogs as well, which are 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:26.079 essentially the same animal. That we've had this incredible bond 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.480 with them, but that's very easily quickly flipped into a 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.120 hatred that I don't think we have for any other 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:34.040 animal either. 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:36.160 And that speaking of that hatred and sort of like 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.120 the dark side of that bond. You write a bit 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:42.800 in the book about Europe's three centuries of werewolf trials 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.319 and the werewolf panic. Can you tell us a bit 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.000 about this period of time and how it matches up 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:50.960 with the timeline of the Eurasian wolf's decline. 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.959 Sure, so, yeah, to kind of to break that down 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:57.480 a bit, maybe I can say a bit first just 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.680 about the kind of the extermination of the wolf in 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:05.040 generole because we began at that point, as I was saying, 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.440 with that sort of hunter, gather a relationship to the wolf. 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.040 I think it's two hunters almost respecting each other. But 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.360 as soon as we became herders, as soon as we 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.640 put up fences and started to keep livestock, the wolf 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:19.240 became this animal that was on the other side of 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.480 the fence. Suddenly we had something that the wolf wanted, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.000 and very quickly it flipped into the wolf being the 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:30.720 thief the vagabonds, and from a Christian lens, if Jesus 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:32.880 is the lamb, then then the wolf is the devil. 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:38.640 And the persecution that they've faced over millennia, really ever 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:41.040 since there's been money to pay them, there have been 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.160 bounties out on wolves heads, kind of back to sixth 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.959 century BC and Athens there were bounties out on wolves. 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.520 Charlemagne from about eighteen from about eight hundreds sorry in 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.040 France started trying to eradicate the wolf, but it took 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.440 almost a thousand years. It wasn't until nineteen twenty seven 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.360 that wolves were finally gone from France, And in some 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:01.319 ways it was in the United States where that kind 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:05.400 of hatred of the wolf really reached another reached a pinnacle. 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:08.440 Basically that the ways that wolves were killed, they were 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.760 set on fire, they were pulled apart by horses, they 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.199 were beaten to death, and then paraded through town on 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.160 the back of horses. The estimates of up to two 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:19.960 million wolves were killed in the latter half of the 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.400 nineteenth century in the United States, and then and then 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.920 and the Native Americans saw it as as a manifestation 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:28.680 of insanity. It was said, it was seen as a 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:33.000 manifestation of insanity amongst the amongst the white settlers that 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:38.400 were that were killing these animals, and the yeah, and 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:41.720 there's something you're doing this research. It really seemed to 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.240 border on a hatred to wipe out that many animals, 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.560 right down to the very last animal. It feels like 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.720 it requires a stronger motivation than just a desire to 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.200 protect one sheep. It and and the werewolf Charles that 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.120 you mentioned at the beginning of that question seemed to 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.800 be one of those particular manifestations of that sort of 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.920 paranoia and hate. I'm some of your listeners will be 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.960 familiar with the witch trials, like the Salem witch trials, 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.720 and we had them a lot in Europe. As well. 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.520 Thousands of women were killed over over several centuries, but 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.040 I wasn't aware that people were actually put to death 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.640 for being accused of being were wolves as well. And 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.000 one of the u there were two towns actually in 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:25.080 Austria that Schloutz's route passed through were places whereas late 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.800 as the early eighteenth century, people were being put on 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:32.160 trial and hung for being were wolves, and quite often 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.680 the accused seemed to be travelers, wanderers, beggars, people that 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.520 might turn up in town. Maybe two sheep were killed 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.120 that night, and the local people decided to put two 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:49.400 and two together and and persecute the outsider for bringing 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.000 this ill upon the town. 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:58.720 I'm glad you mentioned the agricultural aspect of hatred of 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.400 the wolf. Had recently read a couple of different books 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.640 looking at and were wolf myths and legends and talking 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.680 about how in some cases you see people trying to 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.920 to date the idea of were wolve's back to our 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.440 prehistoric ancestors in this time when we lived closer to 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.440 the wolf, and certainly when we domesticated the wolf. But 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.360 then I think the more convincing stories that I've read 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.160 have made the argument that it is. These are ultimately 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:30.280 agricultural era tales. These are tales of fear of the 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.760 wolf and analysis of the wolf in a time when 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.720 we are worried about our sheep and our herds and 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:40.960 our dominion over nature. 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:42.840 I don't think that's to say that it's a kind 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.920 of obviously it's a misguided assumption. But obviously, you know, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.760 to these people, it's not like now when you can 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.280 get compensation from the state for a wolf kill on 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:57.280 the sheep. Wolves don't kill a huge amount of livestock, 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:04.240 but they can target certain farms and certain herds, and 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.240 so someone might lose twenty of their thirty sheep, and 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.160 that would have been an absolutely existential crisis a few hundred 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.359 years ago. That was your way of getting through the winter, 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:14.679 that was your way of feeding your very large family. 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:19.200 It would have felt horrifying to be targeted in that way. 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.400 And I can see the trials against the were wolves 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.120 and also the kind of ambulets and charms and things 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.119 that people tried to as some way of trying to 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.760 have dominion over nature when nature felt really outside of 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:33.480 one's control. 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.120 Now and my recent reading about some of these werewolf 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:38.680 that's one of the books that I was looking at 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.040 was a twenty twenty one book by Daniel Ogden called 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.119 The Werewolf in the Ancient World, And there's one quote 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:46.840 in that that I keep coming back to, where he 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.520 says the quote wolves are in and of themselves were 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.200 wolves already in so far that is, as they combine 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.240 the qualities of the wildest and most lawless of animals 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.600 with those of civilization and humanity. And I kept coming 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.760 back in that, not to just harp like negative connotations 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.560 of the wolf, but I thought this was interesting and 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.720 sort of looking at the wolf as this thing that 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:12.480 already mirrors a lot about humans, like not just potential savagery, 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:16.040 but also how social wolves are, something that I think 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.920 is sometimes very often overlooked. Certainly, and we're wolf stories, 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.679 but just in general, I was wonder if you might 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.280 speak to He's touched on this already a little bit, 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:27.840 but speak to just how social wolves are and how 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.280 how like humans they are in this regard. 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.159 Yeah, I think in some ways they're they're almost an 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.880 aspiration or animal. You know, they were obviously genetically far 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.560 closer to chimpanzees, but I think we in wolves we 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:43.720 see qualities of almost how we would like to be. 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:45.919 You know, you go to you go to zoom and 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.760 watch chimpanzees, you obviously see something in them, But to 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.320 watch a wolf is to is to see how humans 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.359 could be. I think, you know, wolves, wolves are excellent parents. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.280 They're one of the very few animals where the males 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.720 will stick around long after the birth to look after 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:05.639 both the pups and the suckling mother. They are incredibly loyal, 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:12.359 They are courageous and resourceful, and you know, often I 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.960 met a lot of people, a lot of farmers on 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.040 my journey through the Apps, who absolutely detested wolves, you know, 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:20.520 for the burdens that they put on their lives. But 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.239 I still got this sense that if they if they 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.679 were to be reincarnated at some point in the future, 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:27.240 if they were going to come back as animal, they'd 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:28.800 really like to come back as a wolf. You know. 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:33.800 Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, how when people think about wolves, 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.360 there is often this aspirational aspect of it, like they 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:38.399 don't actually be a were wolf, but the idea of 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:40.560 being like free like a wolf, of having the wolf 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.560 is kind of like a you know, a symbolic animal 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:44.480 in one's mind. 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:47.960 And it's worth saying we've spoken about the kind of 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.639 hatred and the hatred that we've put on them. That 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:55.359 adulation of the wolf is also a misconception. One of 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.119 the things that I found in this book is that 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.200 almost the hardest thing about a wolf is to see 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.320 it for what it is, which is a wolf. It 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.960 seems to be this vessel for our fears and our 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.639 hopes and our dreams, and particularly how we relate to 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.359 the natural world. And whilst once upon a time that 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:14.240 might have been this sense of destroying the wolf in 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.280 order to kind of manifest progress and civilization, now we 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.240 have all these anxieties about what we're doing to the 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.360 world and what we're doing to our futures, and once 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:25.400 again the wolf has become this vescl but this time 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:27.960 it's something that's almost going to save us from ourselves 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:29.480 rather than destroyers. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.600 In the book, you draw connections between the comeback of 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:36.080 the wild wolf and the refugee crisis in Europe. Can 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:37.840 you elaborate on this for us a bit? 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.040 Yeah, in several ways. I was first drawn to this 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:46.560 story actually because Licinia, which is this small regional park 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.720