Speaker 1: Spooky. All right, we're done. Um, Hello everybody, welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show that this is on the week that
Speaker 1: this is, which is the spooky week of the year
Speaker 1: where things are spooky. Today, my guest Katie Golden. Katie,
Speaker 1: say hello to the audience. Hello, audience, now say goodbye.
Speaker 1: Okay by audience. Now tell the audience that acts of
Speaker 1: industrial sabotage are always morally justified in defense of the
Speaker 1: climate uh acts of Wait, okay, so are you do
Speaker 1: you guys have a team of lawyers that I can
Speaker 1: access or absolutely, they say it's fine. They say it's fine.
Speaker 1: If you tell people that then you know, industrial sabotui
Speaker 1: or whatever. He said, it's cool. I love it, all right, everybody.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have made that kind of aim, but but
Speaker 1: you heard Katie, so you know, there you go. We've
Speaker 1: now made a full throated defense of the Niger Delta Avengers.
Speaker 1: That is true. That is an upcoming episode. Chris, Um, Katie,
Speaker 1: what do you? What do you do? What do we?
Speaker 1: What are we? What are we? What are we? What
Speaker 1: are we? What are We're all? Star? Dust Robert, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that sounds soothing. Actually, Well well, first, Katie of
Speaker 1: of of the Golden's is the host of Creature You
Speaker 1: right for some more news. You're the host of Creature feature.
Speaker 1: Jesus Sophie, you gotta remember these things. Um M, everything's
Speaker 1: always beful. What are we? What are we doing today?
Speaker 1: What do you got? What? What are what's happening? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is your podcast. But I thought, all right, fine,
Speaker 1: it's my podcast. Now, welcome to it could happen. We
Speaker 1: are hosted by Katie. I thought we could talk. I
Speaker 1: thought we could talk about animals because I like animals.
Speaker 1: All right, you got a spooky thing about an animal
Speaker 1: for us? Yeah, I thought, because the theme of your
Speaker 1: podcast seems to be, you know, sort of the future
Speaker 1: and how things could get pretty fucky in the future,
Speaker 1: and I thought, there are some examples of things getting
Speaker 1: fucky with animals in the current present. That seems to
Speaker 1: it could maybe be a bit of a crystal ball
Speaker 1: for things that could happen in the future with climate change.
Speaker 1: That is kind of spooky. All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Have you guys heard of the saiga antelope? I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard of antelopes, and I've heard of the saiga,
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm not surprised that there's antelopes in
Speaker 1: the Saiga. Do me a quick favor and just google
Speaker 1: Siga antelope and just take a gander. Take them all
Speaker 1: in as I I'll describe them to the audio. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are kind of some of the cutest, dufiest little
Speaker 1: in the world. Little little they have the best little face.
Speaker 1: I know, it's weird. It looks like just too it's
Speaker 1: just a big nose. Yeah, it's just a big ridiculous nose.
Speaker 1: My god, that nose looks silly. They must be endangered
Speaker 1: because they look they look like they're terrible at staying alive.
Speaker 1: Their their faces all nose. It's like someone's whole face
Speaker 1: was just a nose, like someone struck an ant eater
Speaker 1: to Like, Yeah, they look delicious. I'm just gonna say it.
Speaker 1: I would hunt them and eat them. They kind of
Speaker 1: like did it with Voldemort's nostrils in the Harry Potter movie.
Speaker 1: But like long, Yeah, they look ridiculous. Yes, they like
Speaker 1: a Star Wars animal. Yea. Some of them they're patterning
Speaker 1: makes it look like they have tear drop tattoos under
Speaker 1: their eyes, which I think means they've all killed someone
Speaker 1: in prison. If I'm remembering go hard correctly. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: want are you going to tell something that is happening
Speaker 1: with them? Katie? Yes? Are they racist? Are these racist antelope? Katie,
Speaker 1: We're gonna milkshake duct these antelopes. Yeah, they're they're all
Speaker 1: um as far as I know, they're not too racist.
Speaker 1: They have some problematic views on like, you know, gender abortion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, all antelope have really regressive attitudes towards
Speaker 1: women's reproductive health, I mean frustrating. Yeah, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: but these guys look like Star Wars animals. To me,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like a Star Wars animal named
Speaker 1: like a grass honker or something. Yeah, they look extremely fake.
Speaker 1: It's looks like a guy you'd meet at the bar
Speaker 1: where the Aliens played jizz. Yes, that type of music
Speaker 1: that Katie's doing is canonically and if you and if
Speaker 1: you are if you, if you are a musician who
Speaker 1: plays jiz, you are a jiz whaler. And the best
Speaker 1: thing about that is that I know all of the
Speaker 1: thought that George Lucas put to that was, Oh, someone
Speaker 1: asked what the type of music they played in the
Speaker 1: jazz Jazz is a real kind of music. Let me
Speaker 1: just put an eye in the vowel. Now, well, that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the day for me. He didn't even put
Speaker 1: an apostrophe in which it could have it could have,
Speaker 1: it could have been, didn't even the effort wasn't there
Speaker 1: because okay, sorry no, I could talk about this for hours.
Speaker 1: I just the differences between J. K. Rowling and and
Speaker 1: George Lucas as creators who both made very popular fiction
Speaker 1: franchises and want people to think they thought about them
Speaker 1: more than they did, is absolutely hysterical because J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling does that by creating all these convoluted backstories, and
Speaker 1: George Lucas replaced the A and jazz with an eye
Speaker 1: and didn't realize that a thing. Right, what an incredible person.
Speaker 1: It is pretty good. Sorry, Katie, No, it's fine. It's fine.
Speaker 1: So these Psyga antelope a k. A. Jiz whalers are
Speaker 1: found in the grasslands and semi deserts in Central Asia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan,
Speaker 1: and Turkmenistan. They actually used to have a much wider range,
Speaker 1: but because of all the Roberts out there wanting to
Speaker 1: taste their delicious, delicious meat, h hunting just that nose
Speaker 1: on a plate. Their population declined and it's now limited
Speaker 1: to a small territory. So yeah, so there's still enough
Speaker 1: for meat to eat a couple. No, Robert, if you
Speaker 1: try to kill one, I'll kill you first. Siga antelope hunting,
Speaker 1: we have to we have to protect the jiz whalers.
Speaker 1: They look they look stupid as shit. It can't possibly
Speaker 1: be good at stuff. Actually, what that knows? I bet
Speaker 1: their senses are. They could do a lot of interesting things. Yeah, anybody,
Speaker 1: let Katie tell the story. You interpreting fox go, Sorry,
Speaker 1: we all got not so it's okay, it's I understand
Speaker 1: the excitement about these guys. Um. I do want to
Speaker 1: paint a mental picture for the audience just so they
Speaker 1: get like why people are freaking out. So they have
Speaker 1: this elephant, like imagine a little antelope, and they're they're small.
Speaker 1: They're about two to three ft tall, about six pounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're little babies. And it looks like you took like
Speaker 1: a cute little deer and just glued like a big
Speaker 1: elephant nose to it. It's not as long as an
Speaker 1: elephant trunk, but it's sort of a like a It
Speaker 1: curls under like an elephant seal nose stuck to a
Speaker 1: little deer, and that snout is called a proboscis, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a they're kind of a they have sort of
Speaker 1: a light tan white coat. Uh, they can get really
Speaker 1: fluffy in the winter. Uh. They have these really huge
Speaker 1: tubular nostrils on that nose, and that gigantic honker helps
Speaker 1: them filter dirt as the huge herds sort of trample
Speaker 1: on the ground and kick up dirt clouds um. And
Speaker 1: it can also act as an ac unit that cools
Speaker 1: the Saga antelopes blood. So as blood flows through it,
Speaker 1: you have this spacious chamber and it cools the blood
Speaker 1: and it recirculates. And then in the winter it can
Speaker 1: act as a space heater that warms the air before
Speaker 1: they breathe it in so ac heater. Yeah, filter system.
Speaker 1: It's really a cool nose, which is why it was
Speaker 1: absolutely horrifying when entire herds of the Saga antelope started
Speaker 1: dropping dead on mass within like days of each other,
Speaker 1: just like a biblical plague. So there are photos. What's
Speaker 1: properly unbelievable. You're so embarrassing sometimes, Katie, I'm so sorry. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's fine. Um, I'm I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how else to sort of add levity to just
Speaker 1: the most adorable little antelope in the world just all
Speaker 1: suddenly dying. Uh. There. So there are photos in Kazakhstans
Speaker 1: of in Kazakhstan of these fields just littered with these
Speaker 1: white lumps, and when you zoom in you realize they're
Speaker 1: all saga antelope corpses just covering the ground. It's pretty
Speaker 1: bone chilling. It kind of looks okay, this is a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh. It kind of looks like a cult death,
Speaker 1: a mass cult death, like Jonestown antelope. Oh boy. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, when you go grenade fishing, but yeah,
Speaker 1: same kind of idea grenade fishing. Yeah, what does you
Speaker 1: drop a grenade in a lake and then it kills
Speaker 1: all the fish and they float to the top so
Speaker 1: you can Okay, I thought it was like you were
Speaker 1: fishing for like running around a field going like that
Speaker 1: a grenade. If you go fishing in a lake where
Speaker 1: people go grenade fishing, you may in fact catch a grenade.
Speaker 1: But but two grenades with one stone. Wow, kind of
Speaker 1: I'm having this image of bobbing for apples, but like
Speaker 1: above the apple yu with lakes in Iraq? Is it
Speaker 1: because they've got grenades in them? Yeah? I don't really,
Speaker 1: that's how you fish. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm still obsession
Speaker 1: looking at these pictures. Okay, so what what caused all this?
Speaker 1: This this nightmare plague that killed all of the all
Speaker 1: of the weird nos the gonzo antelope, right, the gonzo antelope.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a mystery. So in two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand siged died off in that year alone, and literally
Speaker 1: not that many, So I got that. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like the it wiped out the majority of the global
Speaker 1: population because they were already endangered. Um. Yeah, they just
Speaker 1: like keeled over died without explanation, and so researchers were
Speaker 1: obviously horrified and confused and slightly curious and start that's left.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so they're like a hundred thousand left. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they started investigating the mass deaths and they
Speaker 1: found that the cause was a bacterial infection of pastor
Speaker 1: Ella multosita type B bacteria, which is really catchy name um.
Speaker 1: And it caused hemorrhagic septicemia um, which is a horrible
Speaker 1: I looked up the symptoms. It's like internal bleeding and
Speaker 1: just it's like the worst cold ever, but also with
Speaker 1: your organs bleeding inside, which doesn't sound great. It sounds
Speaker 1: and honestly looks captain trips, like the plague from Stephen
Speaker 1: King's The Stand that killed all of the people. Like
Speaker 1: just this horrible plague that makes everybody bleed out and
Speaker 1: drop where they're standing. Yeah, that's essentially what it happened.
Speaker 1: What happens also with a lot of snot like a
Speaker 1: lot of ye that's also very captain trips. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe that yeah yeah, so meat fun. So yeah.
Speaker 1: What is thought to have happened is that basically, this
Speaker 1: bacteria pastor Ella has often been found in siga antelope
Speaker 1: large noses. They're also found in other like a yellow
Speaker 1: noses that have big these big sort of proboscus noses,
Speaker 1: and it lives in there. But it's normally not a
Speaker 1: problem because the immune system is able to fight it
Speaker 1: off fine and maintains his balance. But the climate, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys have heard, but climate is
Speaker 1: kind of getting weird, like that is something I've I've
Speaker 1: heard of, Yeah, learning about it. It may be it
Speaker 1: may be changing from what it used to be. A
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, it's called change of climate kind of
Speaker 1: on a global scale, everything getting slightly warmer, Yeah, usually
Speaker 1: climate hottening climate. Because of climate hottening, this bacteria, it
Speaker 1: had much more ideal, uh, kind of of an environment
Speaker 1: to grow. So inside the beautiful proboscis of the antelope,
Speaker 1: you can imagine, it's moist, it's warm, it's great. It's
Speaker 1: moister with fester inside the nose right exactly. And so
Speaker 1: when it gets more humid on the outside, more hot
Speaker 1: and humid, that nose increases in temperature as well, and
Speaker 1: it became the perfect incubator for hosting this bacteria such
Speaker 1: that it overwhelmed the antelopes immune system and literally they
Speaker 1: just started dropping like flies from this in action, like
Speaker 1: an entire herd dying within a couple of days. When
Speaker 1: when you first mentioned this, you're talking about how they
Speaker 1: can use their nose as like an air conditioner. I
Speaker 1: was thinking like, oh, maybe maybe these animals will be
Speaker 1: like well adapt to climate change so they can stuff regulate.
Speaker 1: But no, of course not. Of course it's not a
Speaker 1: good story. Um Now, I think that's what's so creepy
Speaker 1: about climate change to me is there's like the obvious
Speaker 1: effects are things like more fire, we get real hot
Speaker 1: and we die because it's too hot. But things like oh,
Speaker 1: this means bacteria loves loves living life and like starts
Speaker 1: eating us from the inside out. Like that's not a
Speaker 1: really I guess intuitive consequence of global warming, but it
Speaker 1: is one of the things that seems to be likely
Speaker 1: to happen. So it's really creepy. Well it's fun is
Speaker 1: when you started this and talked about like a whole
Speaker 1: herd of of of these antelopes dropping at once, I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be like, oh, another one
Speaker 1: of those like horrible sulfur bubbles that killed like the
Speaker 1: cities where of animals in a matter of seconds because
Speaker 1: a bunch of ice melted um. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: which is creepier. Actually this is worse moment, Like they
Speaker 1: died in like horrible pain. Yeah, I don't think the
Speaker 1: sulfur wasn't painful, but yeah, but they're both horrifying. The
Speaker 1: sulfur is at least faster. They're both very frightening. And
Speaker 1: it's also both things that like oh yeah that could
Speaker 1: that could that could drop some people that could just
Speaker 1: jump right across. There's there's a couple of ways this
Speaker 1: could go bad for us. This is the thing me
Speaker 1: and Robert was looking a little bit into to put
Speaker 1: together the first five scripted episodes of The Daily As
Speaker 1: we in a few books we read, there were there
Speaker 1: were there were sections, like large sections about how this
Speaker 1: is gonna basically just make plagues be a thing forever. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be hard for people to really get
Speaker 1: their heads around. But imagine a plague hit in in
Speaker 1: in the twenty onet century. How scary that would be
Speaker 1: just really trying to get your head around that global plague. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people drop into frightening, you know. So the coronavirus on viruses,
Speaker 1: technically it's not a plague, right because it's not bati bacteria.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's viral. A lot of people a plague
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's both both both Like viral pathogens
Speaker 1: bacterial pathogens are with with globalization, can spread it much faster, right,
Speaker 1: And now with global warming there's gonna be more breeding
Speaker 1: ground for literally new bacterias. And this is and with
Speaker 1: with stuff melting in the ice captain all the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. There's just a lot of reasons to just
Speaker 1: assume that Yeah, we're just gonna kind of live with
Speaker 1: plugues constantly being a problem now, Like it's that's just
Speaker 1: the were there there. There never is going to be
Speaker 1: a post COVID nineteen world. It's just this forever. COVID
Speaker 1: was just the first plague that really got through the
Speaker 1: defenses that we're never going to hold up to the
Speaker 1: damage we're doing to the climate. Like there were a
Speaker 1: couple of plagues beforehand that like we we were able
Speaker 1: to kind of tamp down on get a lit on,
Speaker 1: and COVID was just the system actually finally shattering and
Speaker 1: it's never gonna get fixed. And the leagues you're just
Speaker 1: gonna get play gear and uh, it'll be fun. But
Speaker 1: on the other side, on the upside, here's some mats. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the upside, capitalism we are back. I've unfortunately I've
Speaker 1: got to the point where I'm scrolling through these pictures
Speaker 1: where I've now found the mountain of dead animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real, fucking the stand ship. Yeah, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of them, a lot of them dead, just in giant pile.
Speaker 1: Like imagine the cutest Sesame street character, cuter than Snuffle
Speaker 1: Up a guess, just lying in heaps, and that big
Speaker 1: nose has to make him extra vulnerable to fucking horrible
Speaker 1: nose bacteria. That's when we were just talking about it's
Speaker 1: literally big nose. That's just what we said, Kate, you
Speaker 1: just explained that. I know. But it's so sad. It
Speaker 1: is very sad. It's very sad. And there there's this
Speaker 1: is not an isolated case that will never happen again.
Speaker 1: Researchers warm that it's very likely stuff like this will
Speaker 1: keep happening with climate change, and they're warning that reindeer
Speaker 1: populations are at risk because reindeer actually also have a
Speaker 1: really even though it doesn't seem like they have a
Speaker 1: huge prick boss, because they have a very impressive nose.
Speaker 1: It's very spacious. It also actually works like a little
Speaker 1: space heater and warms up the air as they breathe
Speaker 1: it in. It's pretty amazing. But those same characteristics that
Speaker 1: are so beneficial to the reindeer now could actually become
Speaker 1: very dangerous for them with climate change if this bacterial
Speaker 1: growth happens. So we're looking at potential um, you know,
Speaker 1: risk to reindeer population, and there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: risk to farm animals as well, like for something similar
Speaker 1: have to happen where this bacteria can infect farm animals
Speaker 1: like cows and other types of ungulate farm animals. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, even if people don't care about
Speaker 1: the adorable psycha antelope, which I guess would be just
Speaker 1: psychopaths murders, you know. Uh, But like you know, we
Speaker 1: also have very important species like you know, reindeer that
Speaker 1: are keystone species and also you know our farm animals
Speaker 1: that you know, Yeah, they're very for a lot of
Speaker 1: people to basically how they live. Their lives are based
Speaker 1: around cultivating these animals and hunting and raising it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean, in my opinion, every species, even if
Speaker 1: no matter how obscured it is, it is typically something
Speaker 1: very important for humans. It's just it's sort of the
Speaker 1: like seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It's like you don't
Speaker 1: have to get too far away to realize that Evan Bacon,
Speaker 1: like his survival is really important to the planet um.
Speaker 1: Except instead of Kevin Bacon, it's like any animal. And
Speaker 1: that is basically all ye, all animals and all ecosystems,
Speaker 1: no matter even if you feel like they're not super important.
Speaker 1: The way our world works and how ecoistms work. They're
Speaker 1: all incredibly intrinsic and reliant on each other. So even
Speaker 1: you know that's that we're seeing stuff about, like why
Speaker 1: don't we just like turn entire deserts into solar fields
Speaker 1: and be like, well, no, because the desert equisystem actually
Speaker 1: very like if they serves a very important purpose, Like
Speaker 1: you can't just be like, oh, deserts are too important,
Speaker 1: Like no, like they have an actual ecoistm that's actually
Speaker 1: very important to the surrounding areas. We can't just bulldoze
Speaker 1: it and turn into a solar just sand garrison, which
Speaker 1: is coarse and irritating, and it gets everywhere, It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Is that an actual quote from from episode two Attack
Speaker 1: of the Clones by hearing Christensen playing Anakin Skywalker the
Speaker 1: padawan with with the rat tail. Yeah? Classic that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his rat tail. Amazing. The courage they used to have,
Speaker 1: the courage of two three. How could Pat May not?
Speaker 1: How could she not want that? How could you resist?
Speaker 1: It's like that Ween song Every girl wants a guy
Speaker 1: with a rat tail. Yeah, I'm just assuming if that
Speaker 1: were a song it would be by Ween called it's
Speaker 1: called a like a love Lover. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: That's right. So what's up with these animals? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want some more animals because I talked about how those
Speaker 1: animals mostly all died. Oh I'm not. I'm just thinking like,
Speaker 1: what's like, what's what like? Do you know, like what's
Speaker 1: happened with them since they all dropped? Thousand of them
Speaker 1: left alive? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, they're not currently all dying
Speaker 1: of this bacterial infection. I think, like some of them are.
Speaker 1: They apparently outside of the dangers and I guess outside
Speaker 1: of the area where that's about the best you can
Speaker 1: say for any species. Some of them aren't in the
Speaker 1: danger area occurringly, but obviously that's going to change as
Speaker 1: global warming progresses. So yeah, it's it's pretty grim. It's
Speaker 1: also I think, you know, obviously, when you think about
Speaker 1: these things, humans obviously don't have like these big snuffle
Speaker 1: off a guess noses, which is really sad because I'm
Speaker 1: imagining us with it, and we're we'd all be dead.
Speaker 1: We would all be dead, but really, which would be
Speaker 1: better for the planet? So but we but we we
Speaker 1: would we would be way better at whaling jizz And honestly,
Speaker 1: I feel we would be whaling the hell out of
Speaker 1: some jizz one man, one can dream would be nose
Speaker 1: deep in a big old pilages. Oh wow, yeah, how
Speaker 1: would How does the Bible quantify jizz um cubits? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what Noah said, but he wanted to get on
Speaker 1: the arc. Yeah, God's like you must two jis of
Speaker 1: every kind. Well, Noah was big into Now we're just
Speaker 1: like drawing that it was ever about music. Alright, Sorry, Katie, No,
Speaker 1: that's all right, I asked, So yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: thought another thing we could talk about is how animal
Speaker 1: folklore is really important to pay attention to and to
Speaker 1: kind of listen to as both information and warnings for
Speaker 1: the future. Um, because we often dismiss folklore as like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, these are just spooky stories that we tell
Speaker 1: around the campfire. They're just legends, they don't mean anything.
Speaker 1: We're especially dismissive, I think when it comes to indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, your folklore, Oh that's so cute and quaint.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we we look at it as we we
Speaker 1: like really like infantilize it as like, oh, look at
Speaker 1: you primitive people still doing folklore, which is extremely extremely
Speaker 1: disrespectful and also like very naive about how things work
Speaker 1: when you look at how heavily engineered all of like
Speaker 1: the forests were in the entirety of the America's like
Speaker 1: from the Amazon of the up to the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: It's a little like like the architect of a building
Speaker 1: comes in and says, hey, you can't knock out that
Speaker 1: retaining wall. The building is gonna collapse and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh, Mr Architect with his magic walls, and
Speaker 1: then the building collapses on us. You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: a bunche of paintings, like there's like drawings from like
Speaker 1: this is like the early sixteen hundreds of of people
Speaker 1: like in North America, and and it will be drawings.
Speaker 1: It's all these European guys standing on a tree and
Speaker 1: what they're watching is like it's it's one of one
Speaker 1: of the I forget exactly what tried. This is one
Speaker 1: of one of the people. Like they figured out how
Speaker 1: to have like a fire that's like it burns it
Speaker 1: like exactly, like like perfectly in this ring around the
Speaker 1: tree does not catch anything else inside of it, like
Speaker 1: and it's funny because it's like you look at this
Speaker 1: and it's like okay, like the people like, the people
Speaker 1: who are drawing this painting cannot do this, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's very clear that they're just like incredibly befuddled
Speaker 1: by this. But it's like, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just sitting there. And then all the people who paint,
Speaker 1: who paint that, you like, all the European artists who
Speaker 1: like do this each like no, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1: We don't know how they're doing this fire control stuff.
Speaker 1: But we're Europeans. Everything we every ignoring everything other people
Speaker 1: say is gonna go fine and great, and we're not
Speaker 1: gonna like turn half the country into a dust bowl.
Speaker 1: What do they have to teach us? We figured out
Speaker 1: how to make boats that only kill half the people
Speaker 1: on them, only half. I mean that, I mean that
Speaker 1: is a really good point. Uh. Controlled burns have been
Speaker 1: practiced by a number of civilizations for millennia, but when
Speaker 1: European settlers came and colonized North America were like controlled burns.
Speaker 1: But we want to sell the timber, and that sounds dangerous,
Speaker 1: so let us handle it. But yeah, this is all
Speaker 1: immortalized in the biographical song Timber Bye Bye pit Bull,
Speaker 1: which which which tells this story in in lyrical version,
Speaker 1: please continue. And in uh and in uh Timberland boots
Speaker 1: and in Timberland boots. That's right. Every Timberland boot has
Speaker 1: a piece of the story. Yeah, and timberwolves. The I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, a hockey team. Yes, the hockey team is yeah. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sophie is shaking your head. I'm sorry, Sophie, Minnesota wolves
Speaker 1: are an I'm sorry, but yeah, I mean so in
Speaker 1: North America, especially in California. Uh, Indigenous American tribes practice
Speaker 1: controlled burns for thousands and thousands of years. Uh. The
Speaker 1: europe Carrick and Hoopa tribes of California did controlled burns, which,
Speaker 1: in addition to preventing larger, more dangerous wildfires by getting
Speaker 1: grid of dead brush, it also promoted new growth of
Speaker 1: vegetation like really important plant species like oak and hazel.
Speaker 1: It even had unexpected effects like supporting the salmon population
Speaker 1: because as you did, these controlled burns created a block
Speaker 1: from the sun so that the ash clouds and then
Speaker 1: that would cool down the temperatures of the streams. And
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking that, Hey, to counter global warming,
Speaker 1: we should burn everything so that I cooled down. Um.
Speaker 1: So the problem with burning everything. Like these uncontrolled burns
Speaker 1: is they also kill living vegetation, and it's just like
Speaker 1: it burns everything in sight and leaves basically nothing, and
Speaker 1: it burns off a huge amount of carbon stores. So
Speaker 1: the great thing about controlled burns is it very slowly
Speaker 1: burns off these carbon stores in this dead wood, and
Speaker 1: then it gives it time to re grow so that
Speaker 1: you recapture the carbon rather than than just like burning
Speaker 1: all this carbon at once, releasing it all at once,
Speaker 1: and then it's like trying to play catchup. It's like
Speaker 1: if you still like a little bit of milk on
Speaker 1: the table and you use a paper towel and wipe
Speaker 1: it up, it works. But if you just like pour
Speaker 1: out the entire milk jug on the table, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: on like a sloppy Saturday, just pouring out that milk,
Speaker 1: it's like if paper towel is not gonna do anything.
Speaker 1: That's like trees and carbon. You know what I'm saying, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, I do, I do, I do. Pick what
Speaker 1: you are putting down. They say, although I still think
Speaker 1: melk analogy, we should try a controlled burn on let's
Speaker 1: say Boston, see how it goes, right. Didn't care for it.
Speaker 1: I didn't care for Boston. Don't see how we need it.
Speaker 1: Even North End, Yeah, I didn't care for it. M hm.
Speaker 1: They've got good Canoli's there, though, I'm sure they do.
Speaker 1: You know where else has good canolis? I don't because
Speaker 1: I don't care for Cannolis either. Okay, well, all right,
Speaker 1: that's uh. I'm actually living in Italy and so if
Speaker 1: they find out I've been on this podcast, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get kicked out of the Oh you need to be yeah,
Speaker 1: very careful. It's filled with Italians. They're everywhere. If you
Speaker 1: can get up to the Alps, there might be some
Speaker 1: Swiss nearby who can protect it. But you're in day
Speaker 1: in jurious territory. I didn't realize their Italians here. That's scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the main problems that Italy has. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah. So but when basically um indigenous tribes
Speaker 1: had a pretty good system of controlled burns in California,
Speaker 1: and then when you know, colonizers came to North America,
Speaker 1: we were like, hey, stop that. In fact, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make it illegal to do controlled burns because that seems dangerous.
Speaker 1: And they focused on fire suppression and protection of timber
Speaker 1: stores rather than you know, paying attention to the way
Speaker 1: people had been doing this for thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: years and how it kind of worked. And so they
Speaker 1: just thought like, hey, if we just stopped fires from
Speaker 1: ever happening, they'll never happen. But spoilers they just started
Speaker 1: happening still happen, and it's worse and they're out of
Speaker 1: control and they're big problems every year. And yeah, learned nothing,
Speaker 1: yep um. But another thing is that we could have
Speaker 1: learned about controlled burns much much earlier if we had
Speaker 1: decided to listen to the Aboriginal peoples in northern Australia.
Speaker 1: UM about fire hawks. So, fire hawks are raptors, that is,
Speaker 1: like birds of prey who seemed to either accidentally or
Speaker 1: intentionally spread wildfire by picking up smoldering twigs and sticks
Speaker 1: from a burning area and dropping them elsewhere. And then
Speaker 1: once they start that fire, they watch for all the
Speaker 1: little scared mice and rodents and lizards and just feast
Speaker 1: upon the fleeing animals. It's extremely metal. It does sound
Speaker 1: like that does sound very fun, yeah uh. And so
Speaker 1: research published in eighteen UH detailed about how three species
Speaker 1: of birds of prey in Australia seemed to do this.
Speaker 1: But of course this is not news because Aboriginal people's
Speaker 1: have no about this for thousands and thousands of years
Speaker 1: and have documented this in their own folklore. There's uh
Speaker 1: even a ceremony called Yabada in which people act out
Speaker 1: birds carrying smoldering branches, which sounds amazing, but essentially they
Speaker 1: are teaching this uh sort of naturalist history of sorry
Speaker 1: of how they have seen these uh, these hawks, these
Speaker 1: fire hawks carrying these burning sticks and distributing it. And
Speaker 1: if this, if we had listened to this, you know, earlier,
Speaker 1: we may have had more research on how you know,
Speaker 1: maybe these birds of prey have been terraforming the Australian
Speaker 1: out back for thousands and thousands of years and that's
Speaker 1: really cool and it may be really informative. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: we kind of really only decided to start researching in
Speaker 1: and those researchers started doing it because they listened to, uh,
Speaker 1: these stories from the Aboriginal people. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like everyone should. I feel like everyone should be
Speaker 1: more okay with understanding why folklore exists and what propose
Speaker 1: it serves. This is this, this is something I got
Speaker 1: into years ago because of the because of the Lower podcast,
Speaker 1: learning about just how folklore influences culture and politics and
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of really interesting and weird ways. And
Speaker 1: that is something I wanted to talk about more because
Speaker 1: it's it's a thing, and folklore is different for us
Speaker 1: now in terms of how we have like a cultural stories,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's still the same, it's still the
Speaker 1: same purpose and we just couldn't deny it in a
Speaker 1: way that is kind of silly. Yep. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's often this idea of there is a clear distinction
Speaker 1: between fact and folklore, and while it's true, like we
Speaker 1: can't necessary really just take folklore for at its exact word,
Speaker 1: because like it's sort of like a telephone game throughout
Speaker 1: years and years. Folklore is going to take on new
Speaker 1: shapes every generation. But we really should take it seriously
Speaker 1: as a part of very important data set of like
Speaker 1: this is human observational history. Maybe some of it has
Speaker 1: been sort of uh turned into myth, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it could be genuine observation that people are relaying
Speaker 1: over many many generations, which I think is really important. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you Katie Golden for talking about those those very
Speaker 1: silly Gonzo things that are unfortunately dropping dead at the
Speaker 1: little Gonzo climate change genocide and then and then the
Speaker 1: other climate change issues are on folklore. Um where where
Speaker 1: can people find you on the old internet interwebs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a podcast. I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 1: about those. Uh, it's called Creature Feature. And I talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like this all the time about animals. It's
Speaker 1: not always about animals dying in horrible ways, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it is a good mix. You know, It's like sometimes
Speaker 1: animals being alive, sometimes animals being dead. Sometimes some animals
Speaker 1: making other animals dead and interesting way animals. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can never predict them. Uh. And you know, uh, you
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Katie Golden. That's ka
Speaker 1: E T I E G O L D I n Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah where I just you know, just posted on the
Speaker 1: twittering that to Creature Feature. Find Katie on Twitter and
Speaker 1: uh shoplift. Sure it could happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. A more pot cast from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
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Speaker 1: cool Zone Media dot com slash Sources. Thanks for listening.