Speaker 1: M what is that an acorn and acorn? What do
Speaker 1: you what do you think when you hear someone say acorn? Like? Where? What?
Speaker 1: I Probably I don't know if I know what that was.
Speaker 1: On this episode of the bar Grease Podcast, we're going
Speaker 1: to get a PhD in acrons, or some of you
Speaker 1: might say a corns. We'll deep dive into acron biology
Speaker 1: with renowned wildlife biologist Dr Craig Harper, learning some fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff that every woodsman should know, and we'll explore how
Speaker 1: we use language every day to define cultural identity with
Speaker 1: Dr Daniel Rupe, will debunk the American myth of rugged
Speaker 1: individualism as we discuss the value and the preservation of
Speaker 1: regional culture. Put on your seatbelts, boys, this is a
Speaker 1: wine the road of biology and social science. As we
Speaker 1: search for the significance of acorns. One of the things
Speaker 1: I'm most pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the
Speaker 1: acorn fruit. Music to my ears, rr Harper. My name
Speaker 1: is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Before
Speaker 1: you get too indoctrinated, I want you to take a
Speaker 1: second and note the way that you pronounced the word
Speaker 1: spelled a c O r in. Say it out loud
Speaker 1: and remember it. It means something. I've always been interested
Speaker 1: in acrens. I've looked for them relentlessly since I was
Speaker 1: a boy. It wasn't until I was an adult that
Speaker 1: I realized there was national tension about the way the
Speaker 1: word was pronounced. I've been in the arena, so to speak,
Speaker 1: on this debate for some time. I imagine it's kind
Speaker 1: of like being born into a war. You didn't know
Speaker 1: you were fighting, and maybe you were even the one
Speaker 1: instigating it, but you didn't know why acorns are important.
Speaker 1: I've always felt this. But we're gonna discuss the puzzle
Speaker 1: piece they play in acquiring wild meat, specifically for white
Speaker 1: tailed deer, but I think we'll find other reasons why
Speaker 1: they're important. In I cooked bear cracklins for Andrew Zimmer
Speaker 1: on his show Bizarre Foods on the Travel chat All.
Speaker 1: The episode was titled the Ozarks. Somehow the pronunciation of
Speaker 1: acorns came up. Heart bears are acorn fed, so when
Speaker 1: you see a bear fat. Can you see an acorn?
Speaker 1: Same stuff that is sweet and clean? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that's those acorns or acorns as you would say. I
Speaker 1: was trying to fit in and be one of the guys.
Speaker 1: As I listened to this audio, I have to ask myself,
Speaker 1: why why do I care how someone pronounces a word?
Speaker 1: Almost a decade later, I'd find myself in the heat
Speaker 1: of incoming fire from none other than my own dear pal,
Speaker 1: Stephen Ranella of meat Eater. In this clip put on
Speaker 1: Instagram by Steve, he's got his back to the camera
Speaker 1: with his children by his side, and they're watching a
Speaker 1: video that I made about oaks and acorns. He's pounding
Speaker 1: the table and emphatically telling his kids how to pronounce
Speaker 1: the word acorn correctly. I could only watch and gasp,
Speaker 1: as I'm certain many of you did as well. Favorite
Speaker 1: but which means highly valued life? What a hill billy?
Speaker 1: Come on, bro, I'm trying to understand what all this means.
Speaker 1: I did a little experiment at a get together the
Speaker 1: other day. I pulled aside three couples from different states,
Speaker 1: handed them an acorn, and asked them how they pronounced
Speaker 1: the word. I was pretty surprised at a few of
Speaker 1: their answers. Okay, I'm gonna take something out of my pocket.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show it to you and you just tell
Speaker 1: me what you would call it. Okay, So what is that?
Speaker 1: An acorn? An acren? Okay? What is this? An acorn?
Speaker 1: And acorn? Yeah? Where are you from? South Dakota? South Dakota?
Speaker 1: Is that normal in South Dakota to say acorn? Have
Speaker 1: you been indoctrinated by Southerners? I have? Now, where are
Speaker 1: you from South Dakota? So you were born raised in
Speaker 1: South Dakota? Like, without a doubt, acorn? What do you
Speaker 1: What do you think when you hear someone say acorn?
Speaker 1: Like where? I probably I don't know if i'd know
Speaker 1: what that was. Yeah, it's not gonna hurt you. Acorn
Speaker 1: definitely an acorn, acorn, not an acren. I'm not a
Speaker 1: clay because I've heard you correct people and I deliberately
Speaker 1: try to say acorn. Now, do you really what would
Speaker 1: you have said before? Though? Yeah? I think I would
Speaker 1: have said acorn acorn? Really, I think it would have
Speaker 1: being like a blend of one of the other. So
Speaker 1: tell us where you're from. Casey, Oh, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, Deep South, So you would say a corn
Speaker 1: though from New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, sir, because it is
Speaker 1: a seat. Oh are incorrect? Acre, because that's what we
Speaker 1: called that. Yeah, where are you from? Southwest? It's an
Speaker 1: acorn and acorn? Would say acorn? Really, you'd say acorn?
Speaker 1: Where are you from? Where? Where we're trying? That would
Speaker 1: be New York? Where did you grow up? Florida? But St. Petersburg,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of Ohio and Michigan. What do
Speaker 1: you think when you hear somebody say acorn? I think
Speaker 1: they're from the south. Absolutely. Do you think this is
Speaker 1: like a hillbilly? No, I just think they're from the
Speaker 1: south South, as they said in North Carolina, they'd say acre.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to understand what all this means. Sharon
Speaker 1: McCrumb is a New York Times bestselling author from Southern Appalachia.
Speaker 1: She has a knack for celebrating the history and folklore
Speaker 1: of the Southern Highlands in her writing. Like me, she's
Speaker 1: particular about the pronunciation of words, specifically the word Appalachian,
Speaker 1: and she considers it a non negotiable. In this clip,
Speaker 1: she gives the reason why semantics are important and how
Speaker 1: they tell a bigger story. But first take note of
Speaker 1: the way that you pronounced the word spelled A P
Speaker 1: P A L A c H I A N. The
Speaker 1: safest way to say it is Appalachia. And I have
Speaker 1: to explain this to people because when I go off
Speaker 1: on book tours, I find myself being appointed as cultural ambassador,
Speaker 1: and I will get somewhere west of the Mississippi and
Speaker 1: people will say Appalachia. I will correct them and they
Speaker 1: will say, well, that's how we say around here. So
Speaker 1: I finally had to come up with a story to
Speaker 1: explain to them why it's not um optional. If you're
Speaker 1: in If you're in Ireland, in the north of Ireland,
Speaker 1: and you start out in Donegal, that city on the
Speaker 1: west coast, and you're headed for Belfast, it will take
Speaker 1: you most of a day to get all the way
Speaker 1: across Ireland, and you'll be driving on the coast road
Speaker 1: where if it's a clear day, you look off to
Speaker 1: your left you'll see Scotland in the distance. Well about
Speaker 1: halfway between Donegal and Belfast, there's a walled city which
Speaker 1: is hundreds of years old, was built by the Irish
Speaker 1: and they named it the Irish word for oak tree,
Speaker 1: which is dairy. But a few hundred years ago the
Speaker 1: British conquered Ireland and they changed the name of that
Speaker 1: town to London Dairy. So it is one town with
Speaker 1: two names. And so if you stop at a little
Speaker 1: store along the way and ask directions on how to
Speaker 1: get to the walled city, you can walk in and
Speaker 1: tell the man behind the counter that you want to
Speaker 1: go to dairy or you want to go to London Dairy,
Speaker 1: and either way he will tell you how to get there.
Speaker 1: But you need to know that when you choose what
Speaker 1: you're going to call that city, you have told that
Speaker 1: man whether or not he can trust you. You have
Speaker 1: told him your politics, your religion, which side you're on,
Speaker 1: and how open he can be with you. In one word,
Speaker 1: because dairy is what the Irish call it, and London
Speaker 1: Dairy means you sympathize with the British rule. Appalachia and
Speaker 1: Appalachia work exactly the same way. Appalachia is the pronunciation
Speaker 1: of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the pronunciation of
Speaker 1: people who do not want to be associated with the place,
Speaker 1: and Appalachia means that you are on the side that
Speaker 1: we trust. In Sharon's exam comple we see the transfer
Speaker 1: of information in an accent, and in many cases in
Speaker 1: history that personal info is carried with high stakes. Jeff
Speaker 1: Shreeve is a podcaster, biblical scholar, author, and longtime friend
Speaker 1: of mine. In the Book of Judges, in the Bible,
Speaker 1: accents were used to determine the region of the country
Speaker 1: that soldiers were from during a regional war, and life
Speaker 1: and death were in the balance. For context. The word
Speaker 1: we're gonna use shibbyth was the name of a river crossing,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's sibyl ef Jeff Shreeve, I am trying
Speaker 1: to understand how language is used. It has been used
Speaker 1: in the past two define people, groups and culture, specifically
Speaker 1: for my word that um dissecting here acorn. But I
Speaker 1: know in the Bible there is the story that very
Speaker 1: clearly shows that this has been going on for a
Speaker 1: long time, using pronunciation of words and accents to identify people.
Speaker 1: Tell me that story and Judges, Yeah, so there's I
Speaker 1: think it's Judges chapter twelve, and there's this It was
Speaker 1: really kind of like a warlord type of guy. His
Speaker 1: name is Jeptha and he was kind of an outcast
Speaker 1: in the land. He had his own band of Ruffians
Speaker 1: that he roamed the land with. The tribes were being
Speaker 1: oppressed by this this other nation, which is what we
Speaker 1: would call him today, the Ammonites, and so the tribe
Speaker 1: they reached out to Jeptha and his band of merry men,
Speaker 1: I guess, and asked for his assistance. He went out,
Speaker 1: conquered the Ammonites and everything was good. Well that a
Speaker 1: neighboring tribe, they were known as the Fremonts, they were
Speaker 1: upset with Jepthah. They were upset that this battle had
Speaker 1: taken place without them, and the Afremats just wanted to
Speaker 1: be a part. Well. They go to Jeptha and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should have called us, and he said, hey, I did.
Speaker 1: You never showed up. We had to go and take
Speaker 1: care of business. And so there's this battle that breaks out.
Speaker 1: They said, well, you need to leave the land, and
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm not leaving the land. I'm staying right here.
Speaker 1: I deserve to be here now. And so this battle
Speaker 1: breaks out between the Afremots and Jeptha's people. Jeptha and
Speaker 1: his people take the river river, They take control of
Speaker 1: the river that separates the Afremots land from the Gileadites land,
Speaker 1: and so the Afremots can't get back, and he starts
Speaker 1: really whipping the Fremots like they want to get back,
Speaker 1: they want to get back home, and so they start fleeing.
Speaker 1: And they would come to the places where you could
Speaker 1: cross the river, and Jephtha's people would go, are you
Speaker 1: an efremote, are you a Gileadite one of our people?
Speaker 1: Are one of their people? And they would say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm Agiliadote, And assumably they look the same. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: all look at the same nation of people. They're all
Speaker 1: Hebrew people, so they would dress the same. They just
Speaker 1: have different ancestors within, except for they have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a dialectical difference in the way that they speak.
Speaker 1: And so they would come to the river and they realize, hey,
Speaker 1: some of these guys are escaping because they're just lying
Speaker 1: and saying that they're they're not freem Mites. And so
Speaker 1: they said, here's what we'll do. We're just gonna set
Speaker 1: up a test when we ask if they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a gillia Dite, let me cross the river. Say okay,
Speaker 1: say shiboleth. Now the area mites. They didn't say that. Evidently,
Speaker 1: they didn't say that shut sound right at the word
Speaker 1: sib They said sibilet instead of hivlet. And so when
Speaker 1: they would say it, it's kind of always imagine like
Speaker 1: Daffy Duck trying to say It's like they couldn't quite
Speaker 1: get it out right, and so they wouldn't say it
Speaker 1: like the frem Mites did, and that's how they would know,
Speaker 1: and they'd kill them right there. There was just this
Speaker 1: distinct exactly, and that's that's going on throughout history, like
Speaker 1: there's always these chivalts, is what it's been called ever
Speaker 1: since then in World War Two, So this has been
Speaker 1: used throughout history as a metaphor. It's used right now.
Speaker 1: It's used in towns, you know, it's used in warfare,
Speaker 1: it's used in culture, it's used everywhere. In World War Two,
Speaker 1: the Allies when they would capture German spies, frequently the
Speaker 1: Germans had been trained how to speak English, and they
Speaker 1: would know how to the about the culture and the
Speaker 1: customs of the Allies, about the American Allies. They would
Speaker 1: know about baseball, they would know I think there's even
Speaker 1: a Twilight Zone episode about one of these captures of
Speaker 1: the Nazi people are Nazi spies, but they were trained
Speaker 1: in British English instead of American English, and so there
Speaker 1: were little words that they would say that would give
Speaker 1: them away. And so frequently they would catch a Nazi spy.
Speaker 1: He would be speaking real clear English. He would talk
Speaker 1: about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would he would say all
Speaker 1: of the right words, and they would say, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: hop in that vehicle over there, and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm hopping in the lor well. The lory is what
Speaker 1: the British would call a truck. And so there's the
Speaker 1: giveaway right there, there's the ship leth and they know
Speaker 1: this is a Nazi spy. What does the pronunciation difference mean.
Speaker 1: It's not a hard word to say, a c O
Speaker 1: r in. I found myself deeply planted on the non
Speaker 1: traditional or at least phonetically speaking pronunciation of the word.
Speaker 1: I've learned that the southeast astern United States, roughly twenty
Speaker 1: of the country geographically pronounces the word the way I do.
Speaker 1: The other pronounces it phonetically. There is certainly something bigger
Speaker 1: at work here, and it might have broader implications. After
Speaker 1: some research, here's what I learned. Basically, the acorn pronunciation
Speaker 1: is a throwback to Old English. It's a combination of
Speaker 1: Low German, whose word for acorn is ecker spelled e
Speaker 1: c k e r, and the Dutch word. It's a
Speaker 1: combination of these and the Dutch word for acorn, which
Speaker 1: is acker spelled a k e r. By the fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: that English still had an urn on the end, and
Speaker 1: that arn still holds strong in much of the southern
Speaker 1: United States. This is the audio from a YouTube video
Speaker 1: titled a Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics. It's on a
Speaker 1: channel simply called rob M. It's a very interesting clip
Speaker 1: about accents in the Southern United States. Most people don't
Speaker 1: realize that the American Southern accent is not a sign
Speaker 1: of ignorance, but actually the fact that, according to linguists,
Speaker 1: we're the only people left in the United States who
Speaker 1: generally still sounded like our ancestors, because if you listen
Speaker 1: to native born Southern speakers, the average Southern attends to
Speaker 1: sound more like this. What we call this moonlight Magnolias draw,
Speaker 1: because if you speed up that Southern draw over time,
Speaker 1: it rapidly becomes a British accent. Most people don't realize
Speaker 1: that people that came here from Europe were largely from
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom, so when they got here this was
Speaker 1: more along the lines of their speaking tones. But that's
Speaker 1: the first and the second generations coming off from boats,
Speaker 1: not their children, but that the unfull generations. The kids
Speaker 1: didn't quite something like mom and dad anymore, because they're
Speaker 1: starting to develop a society elongation of the way they
Speaker 1: talk what's today called the in your tide water accent.
Speaker 1: It's not a complete Southern drawl because that support area,
Speaker 1: but as you go farther into the southern interior and
Speaker 1: the year's progress, the accent tends to get thicker, deeper,
Speaker 1: richer by Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia peg. Yeah, you gotta full
Speaker 1: blow to Southern drawl. But people don't realize that in
Speaker 1: most cases in Louisiana, many of the native speakers don't
Speaker 1: sound like that. They didn't design like these are guarante
Speaker 1: spend a round the Bay youth, because you speed up
Speaker 1: that South Louisiana Cleo accent or time, it becomes Enfans French,
Speaker 1: with of course certain exceptions in New Orleans, which talent
Speaker 1: tend to sound like more like New Yorker's because of
Speaker 1: the Irish and the Sicilian Italian influence, so they didn't
Speaker 1: sound a bit more like this, and people didn't get
Speaker 1: a little confused because they think, what, you're from New York. No,
Speaker 1: I'm from New Orleans, White. So you have to realize
Speaker 1: that at the end of the day, Southern speakers, like
Speaker 1: I said, we're not ignorant, as it's often been assumed,
Speaker 1: but we simply sound like the ancestors that came here
Speaker 1: so many years ago. This is my mother, Judy. We
Speaker 1: call her Juju. She has a master's degree in teaching
Speaker 1: and retired last year after being involved in public schools
Speaker 1: for over forty years. She has a professional connection with
Speaker 1: the words spelled A C O r N. Maybe this
Speaker 1: gives some insight into why I'm so worked up about
Speaker 1: it all. Juju, where are you up here? I've got
Speaker 1: something here, I'm getting mud on your floor. I'm sorry. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is that an acre? It's an acren? Where do
Speaker 1: you work or where did you work? Your Acorn schools
Speaker 1: for thirty two years? Thirty two years? It's a consolidated school.
Speaker 1: Have you ever in your life heard anybody call it
Speaker 1: acorn school? On anybody associated with the school with a
Speaker 1: close knit association. Though no, no, No Acre Acren. We
Speaker 1: go to Acron Elementary. We are the Acron Tigers and
Speaker 1: it's the best school in Arkansas. People who are connected
Speaker 1: to the land can become obsessed with natural cycles. For me,
Speaker 1: a time of celebration is when the acorns start to fall. Typically,
Speaker 1: I'll commemorate the first white dook I find on the
Speaker 1: ground by putting it in my pocket. I just like
Speaker 1: to stare at it when nobody's around. Sometimes I keep
Speaker 1: them in my drawer here in my office. That might
Speaker 1: seem strange for many reasons because I don't eat acorns,
Speaker 1: but they're highly symbolic. My dad was like an obsessed
Speaker 1: drill sergeant when it came to finding them. Mean he
Speaker 1: still is. I spent the formative years of my life
Speaker 1: searching for acrons, and I still searched for them relentlessly.
Speaker 1: Here's my old dad, Gary Newcomb, the Black panther Man himself.
Speaker 1: We're sitting on the front porch in a rainstorm. So
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, we didn't hunt deer. We
Speaker 1: hunted acrons. We weren't looking for deer, we were looking
Speaker 1: for acrons first. And then dear sign, tell me what
Speaker 1: acrons mean to Gary Nucomb, Well, no one tell you can, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can tell us a little backstory about you know,
Speaker 1: no one in my family deer hunted. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about deer hunting. And two really intelligent guys, principle
Speaker 1: of a school and the guy that just had like
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty I Q had a coffee shop and
Speaker 1: the deer hunt it. And I'd go to their coffee
Speaker 1: shop and they talked about deer hunting, and I got
Speaker 1: caught up in it, and they would take me hunting.
Speaker 1: They showed me and showed me how to shoot a
Speaker 1: recurve boat, but they couldn't kill deer. And I related
Speaker 1: it to play in chess. There's gotta be a way
Speaker 1: to get on these deer. And one day we were
Speaker 1: down in South Arkansas and a guy was at our
Speaker 1: camp and he said, deer's favorite food is white oak acorns,
Speaker 1: and if you have it was weird. Turkey hunt was
Speaker 1: real hard for me to learn. A lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is real hard for me to learn. But when I
Speaker 1: heard that, I thought, if I'm hunting humans, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hunt at McDonald's. And I'm not gonna hunt at McDonald's
Speaker 1: unless it's got a lot of trash on the ground,
Speaker 1: a bunch of cars. I mean, there's gonna be some activity,
Speaker 1: you know. I don't want to go to McDonald's where
Speaker 1: there's not very many people. I'm going this has to
Speaker 1: be how to kill him. And keep in mind, I
Speaker 1: don't even hardly know what a deer track looks like.
Speaker 1: So as soon as he tells me, I come back
Speaker 1: to my hunting turf, and I said, I'm not leaving
Speaker 1: here until I find white oak acres dropping. And I
Speaker 1: had enough insight into it to where he didn't tell
Speaker 1: me this, but I thought, there's gotta be deer droppings there.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hunt unless there's deer droppings. And so
Speaker 1: I found two big white oak trees and I killed
Speaker 1: more deer, knowing nothing about deer hunting, and all of
Speaker 1: my buddies who were raised them with a boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's like at a time when very
Speaker 1: few people were doing it consistently. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: I missed a couple of pretty good bucks too. But
Speaker 1: the first morning I set up, I remember going home
Speaker 1: and telling my mother this, and I was a grown man.
Speaker 1: I didn't live at home, but I went to her
Speaker 1: house for breakfast or something, and I said, mother, you
Speaker 1: won't believe what happened. I found this white oakcacren tree
Speaker 1: with droppings under I put my ladder up the day
Speaker 1: ahead of time, and I sit in it this morning,
Speaker 1: and I had eleven deer coming in no more than
Speaker 1: groups of two. It was just like a movement. They
Speaker 1: were coming from my left to my right and it stopped.
Speaker 1: It was just it was like the most exciting thing
Speaker 1: you've ever found. Ticket Do you have any kind of
Speaker 1: like emotional high when you find a big, old, green,
Speaker 1: white of acron on the ground in October? I love it, man,
Speaker 1: I mean I love it. It's the first. It's just
Speaker 1: tells me the time is right, it's killing time. It
Speaker 1: seems honorable to me that if anybody's going to be
Speaker 1: particular about the pronunciation of any word, that same fella
Speaker 1: ought to have some deep knowledge of it, or he
Speaker 1: might as well be indifferent. Here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get a PhD in acrons. We're gonna nerd
Speaker 1: out on acron biology with one of the country's foremost
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat experts, Dr Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee.
Speaker 1: He's about as tall as an average to a high
Speaker 1: school point guard, and he's built like a bobcat. He's
Speaker 1: got a warm smile and overflows with hospitality. His ability
Speaker 1: to functionalize and communicate about the natural world is unusually adept,
Speaker 1: and by the looks of the turkey beards and big
Speaker 1: racked white tails that adorn the walls of his house,
Speaker 1: he is a veteran hunter. This is a deep dive
Speaker 1: into some of the most interesting stuff about acrens that
Speaker 1: I've ever learned. If you get lost in this nerd out,
Speaker 1: please stick around for the last section of the podcast
Speaker 1: with anthropologist Dr Daniel Roupe. It's fascinating, but I'll warn
Speaker 1: you this talk about acres with Dr Harper will likely
Speaker 1: change your life. To meet Dr Craig Harper, pretend like
Speaker 1: I don't know anything and walk me through the life
Speaker 1: cycle of an oak tree in the different species. Uh
Speaker 1: they flower in the spring. There are two different groups,
Speaker 1: of course, of oak species. You have the the red
Speaker 1: oak group and the white oak group. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of real distinguishing character sticks between those. The one of
Speaker 1: the easiest and most recognizes that the lobes of the
Speaker 1: leaves of red oaks have bristle tips, and those of
Speaker 1: the white oak group do not. They have pointed So
Speaker 1: a red oak has a pointed lobe, you know, a
Speaker 1: tree in the white oaks family, and not just a
Speaker 1: point not just a pointed lobe, but it actually has
Speaker 1: a bristle tip. Of more important points of those two
Speaker 1: groups is that, of course, of the species within the
Speaker 1: red oak group, their acrons require two years to develop,
Speaker 1: So they will flower in the spring and what will
Speaker 1: become the acorn begins to form and it grows through
Speaker 1: the summertime, but then it doesn't mature until the following
Speaker 1: summer and then drops the second fall. Red oak species
Speaker 1: thus then can have two acorn crops only at any
Speaker 1: one time. You know, the tree doesn't produce one year,
Speaker 1: oh and then two years later it might produce again.
Speaker 1: It can produce each year because it will have uh
Speaker 1: flowers and the acorn set and then mature two years.
Speaker 1: To an individual. In general terms, the species within the
Speaker 1: red oak group, those acrens have higher tanning contents, which
Speaker 1: is a phenomic compound that causes in a stringic or
Speaker 1: bitter taste they will not germinate until springtime. The acrons
Speaker 1: of red oak species are important into the following spring
Speaker 1: and even uh sometimes into the summer. So what you're
Speaker 1: saying is that red oak acren is gonna fall in
Speaker 1: the fall and late let's just say it falls in
Speaker 1: late October and lay there all winter long. It's gonna
Speaker 1: lay there all winter long, and it's not gonna sprout,
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna rot. Most of them will not rot,
Speaker 1: and wildlife will eat those acrens at that time through
Speaker 1: the fall and winter. But if white oak acorns and
Speaker 1: acrons of different species have different tanning content, those that
Speaker 1: are less astringent are available, you certainly may see various
Speaker 1: wildlife species select those, and thus those that were more
Speaker 1: astringent may lay longer. But the point is those acrons
Speaker 1: are available for a longer period than the white okay
Speaker 1: and and the white oak acrens. They fall in the fall.
Speaker 1: Most of the acron fall of the white oak species
Speaker 1: Quercus alba is in October, but nonetheless all of those
Speaker 1: of the white oak group, they will germinate in the
Speaker 1: fall and winter, and immediately very few, if any of
Speaker 1: them are available into the following spring, they fall, and
Speaker 1: it's not that long until they begin to germinate and
Speaker 1: and try to start, you know, sending down a little route.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you a story. Last week I
Speaker 1: killed a raccoon over my hounds. I cut his stomach
Speaker 1: open full of acrons. I mean they're still in red
Speaker 1: oaka acrens. Yeah, I mean he they're ill eating very
Speaker 1: good red oak acorns in March. And they are extremely digestible. Acrons,
Speaker 1: regardless whether they're eating in the fall, winter, or spring,
Speaker 1: are highly digestible and with a very high fat content,
Speaker 1: which actually increases the digestible energy that is available from
Speaker 1: acorns as opposed to many other foods. Another characteristic that
Speaker 1: distinguishes the red oak acorns from the white Oaka acrenes,
Speaker 1: or another factor is that the red oak acorns typically
Speaker 1: have much higher fat content than the white oak acres.
Speaker 1: So as hunters, at least me and my dad are
Speaker 1: always trying to figure out what the mass crop is
Speaker 1: gonna look like before it actually happens. So and I've
Speaker 1: been anecdotally studying this for twenty years, you know, just
Speaker 1: kind of keeping track of the last frost and when
Speaker 1: I saw oak tassel so I'll be driving down the
Speaker 1: road and yesterday I noticed oak tassels hanging off trees.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to make a even a reasonable
Speaker 1: guess about mass crop based upon all the weather variations
Speaker 1: of the spring. Essentially we're talking about pollination of flowers
Speaker 1: that ultimately turned into acrons. And if there's not successful pollination,
Speaker 1: or if that flower dies before it's pollinated, there's no acron.
Speaker 1: So there's got to be this successful thing that happens
Speaker 1: that's got to be impacted by rain, temperature, wind. It's
Speaker 1: very complicated, and to my knowledge, it is not highly predictable.
Speaker 1: There's another number of studies that have looked at all
Speaker 1: of the different environmental conditions that might influence acron production
Speaker 1: and successful flowering and acron setting. But I remember reading
Speaker 1: in in one paper and where it was somewhat predictable
Speaker 1: based on the number of frost in April, But there's
Speaker 1: no hard number. Oh, if we have three or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, we need to come up with some
Speaker 1: kind of olklore anecdotor with some burglaries. And another influential
Speaker 1: factor might have been rainfall the previous summer. So there's
Speaker 1: lots of things going on that we we really don't
Speaker 1: understand fully because what we see is a pretty dramatic
Speaker 1: like you would if if you didn't know anything about
Speaker 1: natural systems or oaks, you just think that's an oak tree.
Speaker 1: It's gonna produce every year, which we know is not
Speaker 1: the case at all. And on a landscape level, there's
Speaker 1: these vast differences from year to year. You know, some
Speaker 1: years there's very few of a certain species or there's
Speaker 1: no acrons at all, and then other years it's a
Speaker 1: bumper cross and it'll vary along a certain slope gradient.
Speaker 1: You know, up higher there may be acrons, but once
Speaker 1: you get down low or vice versa. You know, you
Speaker 1: just don't know how the weather variables affected the oak
Speaker 1: trees on a given slope, on on a mountain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was doing Turkey research in the
Speaker 1: mountains in North Carolina. At the the top of the mountains,
Speaker 1: they were about fifty feet the oaks up there. Every
Speaker 1: year they would be flower in the first week of June,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously much much later than down down slow.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have years where there's only gonna be
Speaker 1: acrens that made on the top of the mountains, years
Speaker 1: where there's only acrons that made lower on the mountains,
Speaker 1: and usually it's not quite that distinct. But you know,
Speaker 1: as hunters were looking for trends inside of natural systems.
Speaker 1: One thing we found in the research we did looking
Speaker 1: at UH mass production here in East Tennessee, and others
Speaker 1: have found this too, is that among white oaks, you're
Speaker 1: looking at about two good mass crops two years out
Speaker 1: of five. About two years out of five you expect
Speaker 1: good mass crops. And of most of the red oaks species,
Speaker 1: you're looking at a good mass crop one year out
Speaker 1: of three or or three or four years or so.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a little less frequent than with the
Speaker 1: the white oak group. I love it when we find
Speaker 1: places where still in we don't really have all the answers.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a complex system. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like, yeah, I love it when when when somebody
Speaker 1: like you says that Dr Harvard, because you get this
Speaker 1: sense inside of one with everything that we see and
Speaker 1: with the kind of the frequency that's admitted that just
Speaker 1: like the world is discovered, but it's really not. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much that we don't know, we don't understand,
Speaker 1: and I mean the natural systems are so complex it
Speaker 1: just blows your mind. And just the fact that we
Speaker 1: could pick something that seems so insignificant and acorn, and
Speaker 1: we could dive just a few steps past the surface
Speaker 1: and realize that there's things that we don't even know
Speaker 1: about them. You used the word that I believe is
Speaker 1: accurate when you're talking about nature and natural systems, and
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I find that that is a way overused
Speaker 1: word these days, that people just, oh, that's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: I no, it's not that. Most of the time, it's
Speaker 1: not even hardly interesting, but it's certainly not amazing amazing,
Speaker 1: But when when you start talking about nature and natural
Speaker 1: systems and how all of nature fits together, that he
Speaker 1: is amazing. Yeah. Dr Harper did a research project where
Speaker 1: he and his students collected acorns under the same trees
Speaker 1: for ten years and tried various methods to increase acron production.
Speaker 1: To study was in depth and enlightened. Acorns is one
Speaker 1: of those foods that certainly can influence the nutritional status
Speaker 1: of individual animals, as well as influence the populations of
Speaker 1: some species on a year to year basis and even
Speaker 1: groups of years. You know, it trends over you know,
Speaker 1: like the course of three to five years or so.
Speaker 1: Something it we work to try and help people understand
Speaker 1: is that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
Speaker 1: And you know, for example, with regard to deer or
Speaker 1: with bears, immediately people think, oh gosh, you know, we
Speaker 1: we need we got to protect those, uh, those those oaks.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't want to be cutting down our
Speaker 1: acron trees. You know, that's that's what the deer, you know,
Speaker 1: they got to have. Well, it's interesting when you discover that,
Speaker 1: you know, for example, among the white oaks, only thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the trees produced seventy five of the acrons.
Speaker 1: If you do the math, and this is in my opinion,
Speaker 1: this is just math, you literally could cut down, in
Speaker 1: a in a solid oak stand half of the oak
Speaker 1: trees and increase the acron production by releasing the crowns
Speaker 1: of those individual trees that are the good producers. We
Speaker 1: looked at ways to potentially increase the acron production. One
Speaker 1: was by releasing the crowns of the oak trees by
Speaker 1: cutting down or killing the surrounding trees that were uh
Speaker 1: inhibiting additional sunlight to come into the crown of that
Speaker 1: oak tree. And and another was fertilization because you know
Speaker 1: you're reading you know, all the hunting magazines, of course
Speaker 1: you knows. And not only do you increase the acron production,
Speaker 1: you know it makes them sweeter too, do you know that?
Speaker 1: But anyway, we did. We did this for another which
Speaker 1: is not that's where you're going. It didn't, It didn't happen.
Speaker 1: But allowing additional sunlight to the crown did and in
Speaker 1: two ways, and it was really really interesting. Number One,
Speaker 1: once the crown is released, we found that on average
Speaker 1: that crown would increase in size by about twenty five
Speaker 1: in one year. That that's significant right there. But also
Speaker 1: after releasing those trees on a per square meter basis,
Speaker 1: those trees increase their acron production by sixty seven percent.
Speaker 1: While the other thing with regard to deer or bears,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned as well as many other species, is
Speaker 1: if you're killing those competitors, what you're also allowing to
Speaker 1: come into the stand of course as sunlight, and then
Speaker 1: you have the increase in the understory. But where I'm
Speaker 1: going with with this is that if you manage your
Speaker 1: woods in that way, you're not gonna see those differences
Speaker 1: in health of individuals or fluctuations and populations, because dear
Speaker 1: don't have to have acrons. It's nice when they're there,
Speaker 1: but the goal should be to manage your wood, your
Speaker 1: property such that they don't have to have acrens in
Speaker 1: order to have enough digestible energy during the fall winner
Speaker 1: to make it through in good health. And what you're
Speaker 1: saying is is that oaks aren't nearly as important for
Speaker 1: wildlife as we've once maybe maybe as much as we
Speaker 1: gave them cultural value. And I and and I think
Speaker 1: it's because we most deer hunters, well even most people
Speaker 1: that are hunting any kind of wildlife, whether you're a
Speaker 1: squirrel hunter or a bear hunter, you're interacting with that
Speaker 1: animal for the most part during one small sector that
Speaker 1: animals a year. So I mean, like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: kill a white tail deer in October and November, and
Speaker 1: you're looking at what they're eating in mid October as
Speaker 1: opposed to what they're eating. First Gary Nucom said, go
Speaker 1: find white oak acrens and you'll kill a deer. But
Speaker 1: what you're saying, there's a lot of truth. They'll eat them.
Speaker 1: I've been under the assumption that acrons were the super
Speaker 1: food of the Eastern deciduous forest. I asked Dr Harper
Speaker 1: how important they actually are for wildlife. Dr Harper, I
Speaker 1: have for a long time said that the white oak
Speaker 1: acre and is the chicken nugget of the Eastern deciduous forest. Okay,
Speaker 1: my kids, if you if if they walked into a
Speaker 1: room and there was like a variety of food on
Speaker 1: the table and one of these was chicken nuggets, three
Speaker 1: out of four of the kids would go to the
Speaker 1: chicken nuggets before just about anything. So white oak acorns
Speaker 1: when they're on the ground are this highly selected food
Speaker 1: source for lots of games, from turkeys and deer, squirrels
Speaker 1: and everything. I've never heard anybody talk about the actual
Speaker 1: caloric content and nutrient value of it. Doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be white oaka acre necessarily, but just an acron in
Speaker 1: general in general, on average, the killer calories there's about
Speaker 1: three point five to three point six killer calories per gram,
Speaker 1: and and that that's very high. And and the total
Speaker 1: digestible nutrients in acorns is very high. That is higher
Speaker 1: than corn, that's higher than soybeans, that's higher than herbaceous forage,
Speaker 1: that's higher than the woody brows so it is a
Speaker 1: it is a nugget. I don't know if I called
Speaker 1: it a chicken nugging other chicken there, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. It's it's a highly prized it's highly palatable
Speaker 1: with regard to its taste, especially the white oaks. It's
Speaker 1: highly digestible. And and again the very important thing is
Speaker 1: the fat content, and that's what really helps increase the
Speaker 1: digestible energy in in in the acrons. Okay, three point
Speaker 1: six calories per gram. How can you just guess how
Speaker 1: many grams would be in a in an average sized
Speaker 1: white okaycrene as big as the end of your thumb
Speaker 1: if you did the uh the math about eight calories
Speaker 1: is that all? I believe it. It's just and that's
Speaker 1: a that's of a white oaka acern, So like media
Speaker 1: eight calories per acre, that's correct. An interesting thing is
Speaker 1: that the pounds produced is not that much. And I
Speaker 1: did a little calculation on this. I thought you might
Speaker 1: ask some of that. What we found in a good
Speaker 1: year is that there would be you know, around eighty
Speaker 1: acrons per square meter that that have fallen in a
Speaker 1: good year. Well, we wait all of these acrons and
Speaker 1: of white oak acorns, About two hundred acrens are required
Speaker 1: to reach a pound, and if you only count the
Speaker 1: acron meat, then it would be just over three hundred
Speaker 1: acrens required to realize a pound. When you look at
Speaker 1: the average crown size of white oaks, in a good year,
Speaker 1: a white oak tree on average produced about forty seven
Speaker 1: pounds of acrons or twenty nine pounds of acron meat.
Speaker 1: Would an acron be considered a nut? Well, technically it
Speaker 1: is an acron, but we colloquially call it a nut.
Speaker 1: Is a nut a biologically descriptive term of a fruit, Yes,
Speaker 1: but so acren is technically not a nut. That's correct,
Speaker 1: It's not an acorn. One of the things I'm most
Speaker 1: pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the acren fruit.
Speaker 1: Music to my ears, dr Mar, Music to my ear.
Speaker 1: You don't know how many places I go, especially when
Speaker 1: I'm up in Wisconsin and Michigan, and you know I
Speaker 1: love those folks up here. We poked fun at each other,
Speaker 1: of course, but you know every time I'm up here
Speaker 1: and we're talking about deer and have that management here acre?
Speaker 1: And what an acre? Y'all come on down here and
Speaker 1: we'll show you what an acre here, and we'll show
Speaker 1: you how to kill a deer too. I want to
Speaker 1: get down to brass tacks about the pronunciation of words,
Speaker 1: or at least bigger tax than we've already established. Why
Speaker 1: do people say things the way they do? We need
Speaker 1: an expert. Dr Daniel Rupe has a pH d in
Speaker 1: intercultural studies and teaches cultural anthropology to undergrad and graduate students.
Speaker 1: Just for a bit of street cred. The man speaks
Speaker 1: fluent Mandarin, Chinese and as overseas for twelve years, and
Speaker 1: he's a bow hunter. Dr Roupe. I love calling you,
Speaker 1: Dr Rupe because me and you are longtime buddies, and
Speaker 1: so I've never called you Dr Rupe in my life.
Speaker 1: Finally I'm getting the respect that I deserve. But you
Speaker 1: have I know for sure that you have some insight
Speaker 1: into this question that I do not have. And what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand is why are we so particular
Speaker 1: about the way that we say certain words. There's this
Speaker 1: thing that's pretty deep inside of me about certain pronunciation
Speaker 1: of words. No one told me to be particular about those,
Speaker 1: So what does what does that tell me about myself
Speaker 1: well or about our society? Sure? Sure, so I think
Speaker 1: it's a really normal part of the human experience. Everyone essentially,
Speaker 1: at like a primal level, is insecure. And so we're told,
Speaker 1: you know, as certainly as like Western Americans postmodern people,
Speaker 1: that you're an individual and you exist apart from everybody else.
Speaker 1: But really, in some ways your individual, but none of
Speaker 1: us exists apart from a social group. And the stronger
Speaker 1: and more solidly defined that social group is deep down,
Speaker 1: the more you can take a deep breath. And so
Speaker 1: we do all sorts of things, all sorts of behaviors,
Speaker 1: material culture, things we wear, think about like if you
Speaker 1: want to establish a really clear group boundary when you're
Speaker 1: in high school, you want to have the right brand
Speaker 1: tennis shoes or paints or whatever it was. And that's
Speaker 1: the whole reason why our culture has fats. Every you know,
Speaker 1: five or ten years, we recycle another fat. It's because
Speaker 1: everybody wants to fit in, not necessarily with like the
Speaker 1: popular crowd or whatever crowd it is, but as a
Speaker 1: certainly as adults, we want a clearly defined social identity,
Speaker 1: and identity doesn't is apart from a group. So acorn acorn.
Speaker 1: This kind of topic is one more tool that people
Speaker 1: use too so we use we use language in a
Speaker 1: really strong way to define what social group we're a
Speaker 1: part of. Constantly we invent language and culture continually changes,
Speaker 1: and we invent new words and languages all the time.
Speaker 1: And one of the main reasons we do so is
Speaker 1: we're trying to create, maintain, and establish a secure identity. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: what does it tell you when somebody is really particular
Speaker 1: about something, they're highly insecure? Well, I wasn't gonna bring
Speaker 1: this up, but I do think you're very insecure. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of times. I remember. So,
Speaker 1: my wife, you know, is from Michigan, and so twenty
Speaker 1: years ago we got married, I went up there to
Speaker 1: visit her family. One of the first things her, my
Speaker 1: father in law, did was literally take me next door
Speaker 1: and introduced me to their neighbors and say, say something, Daniel,
Speaker 1: because he just wanted them to hear my acts. The
Speaker 1: way you spoke was a novelty too. Yeah. So, and
Speaker 1: I think, in of course, it can be very negative,
Speaker 1: but it can also just be very fun and very
Speaker 1: innocent and really a fun way of doing an establishing
Speaker 1: culture and language. But as we are establishing this cultural
Speaker 1: identity and establishing the groups that were part of there's
Speaker 1: got to be some advantage to that. I mean, like
Speaker 1: going back deep into human history. If me and you
Speaker 1: were the same and you knew I was the same
Speaker 1: as you, and by same, I mean we just had
Speaker 1: this background or some connection point, like there's a higher
Speaker 1: probability that you would help me survive. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the whole point of social groups, is that? Is that about? Right?
Speaker 1: So if you think about like people, and you know thousands, thousands, thousands,
Speaker 1: thounds of years of people, they're pastoralists, they're semi nomadic,
Speaker 1: they're agrarian, they're farming, and you have a close knit,
Speaker 1: extended can ship groups of people who are doing the
Speaker 1: same practical activities every day, day in and out, all
Speaker 1: year long. But they are using literally the same lingo
Speaker 1: to make sure they survive. So we're all talking the
Speaker 1: same talk means safety and security provisions because you might
Speaker 1: say a corn and I don't understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: And essentially, so this is where kind of the switch
Speaker 1: flips when you start talking about fundamental needs and somebody
Speaker 1: is different and uses different lingo. They look different, they
Speaker 1: act different, they smell different, you know, whatever it is
Speaker 1: the switch starts to flip and the question becomes, cannot
Speaker 1: trust this person at a deep level. So the the
Speaker 1: gentleman who really kind of is a seminal author on
Speaker 1: on this topic of of group held identity of Polish
Speaker 1: sociologists of the twentieth century, taj f Henry taj So.
Speaker 1: He was a Jew in Poland obviously at a time
Speaker 1: when he was in a group that was despised. So
Speaker 1: he really looked at this and wrote about it. And
Speaker 1: almost every author, anthropologist, sociologists who interacts with it is
Speaker 1: going to talk about him. And so he certainly sees
Speaker 1: it from a negative view, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: humans really use it in a very broken, destructive way.
Speaker 1: Um So, acorn acre not necessarily that loaded of a topic,
Speaker 1: but it's still the same in distrust totally. It's totally
Speaker 1: about trust. Do you recognize this inside of your life?
Speaker 1: Do you do? You see? Because I deeply identify with
Speaker 1: that now. I mean, if somebody says acorn like I
Speaker 1: don't acorn, I can't. I can hardly even say it.
Speaker 1: I don't inherently distrust, sir. But when I do hear
Speaker 1: someone say acorn, it's it's really strange. Like if I
Speaker 1: take a step back for myself and try to have
Speaker 1: this unbiased look, it's like I feel a connection to
Speaker 1: that person. Sure, Like yeah, when you say that it's
Speaker 1: an issue of trust, Like I kind of get that.
Speaker 1: Do you do you see any Do you recognize that
Speaker 1: in your life? I think maybe not. I'm not as
Speaker 1: insecure as you are, so I think maybe no. Definitely, definitely,
Speaker 1: I think everybody does. Because socially, every day we are
Speaker 1: operating on on what is called scripts, and so you
Speaker 1: kind of have a script of expected ways for conversations
Speaker 1: to go. And when you bump into somebody and they
Speaker 1: follow in general your social script expectations, you take a
Speaker 1: deep breath when they step out of bounds. But it
Speaker 1: causes you to a little bit of a pause. And
Speaker 1: no matter how small you you don't realize it, but
Speaker 1: cognitively you're constantly checking social scripts. Do people fit my expectations?
Speaker 1: Do they not? And almost all the time, difference is
Speaker 1: not seen as a neutral thing, or maybe even an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to be explored, but it's seen as a
Speaker 1: negative thing. The other thing that I'm trying to under
Speaker 1: stand is where is this healthy and where is it unhealthy?
Speaker 1: Because you know, like in this playful in this playful
Speaker 1: word that we're talking about here, acorn and a corn
Speaker 1: describe to me in like to concrete blocks, when is
Speaker 1: it positive and when is it negative? So we've already
Speaker 1: described when it's positive. So we're using creative aspects of culture.
Speaker 1: Things we wear, ways that we talk, behaviors that we
Speaker 1: have that we do um and and as a group
Speaker 1: with these certain people, I do these things together and
Speaker 1: we form a healthy social identity so I don't feel
Speaker 1: alone in the world. You know, that's that's healthy. That's good,
Speaker 1: it's normal, it's natural, and creatures were social creatures. Inherently,
Speaker 1: it becomes negative when in order for me to establish
Speaker 1: and maintain salient or solid social identity with others, I
Speaker 1: need to tear down or oppress the social identity of another.
Speaker 1: If I make identity by saying acorn, great, and I
Speaker 1: can say that all day long, and kind of the
Speaker 1: behaviors and other linguistic patterns that go along with that, fantastic.
Speaker 1: But if I need to like dually construct identity by
Speaker 1: saying acorn and then saying that people that say a
Speaker 1: corn are idiots, and you extrapolate that over behaviors nationalities,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is places you're from, any number.
Speaker 1: I mean, humans do this all the time. We make
Speaker 1: identity in a in a healthy way, but also in
Speaker 1: a broken way. So what is tribalism and how does
Speaker 1: it fit into language? So tribalism would be groups of
Speaker 1: people in a sense, they're bounded. There's a clear boundary
Speaker 1: around this certain social group. And so every individual exists
Speaker 1: in the center of concentric circles, and you keep going out.
Speaker 1: It's like me and there's my immediately immediate kind of
Speaker 1: nuclear family. There's maybe the people at my workplace, the
Speaker 1: people in my hometown, my nation. It just kind of
Speaker 1: keeps on out. A tribe or tribalism is somewhere I
Speaker 1: decided to draw a hard boundary. One of those concentric
Speaker 1: circles becomes my tribe, and we are out for us,
Speaker 1: and everyone else is out for themselves or or or
Speaker 1: potentially against us. And so tribalism becomes problematic because essential
Speaker 1: it is tribalism always negative. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It is certainly not always negative, because it's
Speaker 1: in today's society it's often used as a negative term.
Speaker 1: It certainly has in the contemporary use of the word
Speaker 1: tribalism or the idea of tribalism essentially is weaponized identity.
Speaker 1: So some other group outside of me is going to
Speaker 1: try to force their identity on me, or they're gonna
Speaker 1: demean my our tribe's identity, or I'm going to do
Speaker 1: the same to them. That would be like the contemporary
Speaker 1: idea of the kind of the concept of tribalism would
Speaker 1: be like very native to human nature. That's how we exist.
Speaker 1: We all need a tribe. We can't exist by ourselves,
Speaker 1: which we just can't do it. So COVID nineteen happens,
Speaker 1: everybody's in lockdown, and like mental health plummets, suicide rates
Speaker 1: quadruple because we're isolated from our tribes. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess I'm trying to understand where the boundaries are for
Speaker 1: being positive and negative, because, for instance, then like excuse me,
Speaker 1: Dr Roupe, thank thank you. You know, I enjoy living
Speaker 1: in the Southern United States, like it's my home, it's
Speaker 1: all I know. I like it. I feel like that's healthy.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I see examples from anywhere
Speaker 1: anywhere where that becomes so much a part of someone's
Speaker 1: identity that it becomes almost weaponized and that's not cool.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I can be a Southerner, I
Speaker 1: could be a Northerner, I could be from wherever, and
Speaker 1: like have this love of the culture where you live,
Speaker 1: and that be healthy because you and I feel like
Speaker 1: it's dems in like respect for your own culture means
Speaker 1: to me that you respect someone else's culture, because like
Speaker 1: your wife from Michigan, like very different culture from Arkansas.
Speaker 1: She loves it up there. Family loves it, they've been
Speaker 1: there forever. They understand that they're really strange. They talk
Speaker 1: through their noses, you know, they know. I think so
Speaker 1: like you, there's a there's a place in a posture,
Speaker 1: in a way of living in which I'm certainly comfortable
Speaker 1: celebrating my own social identity, my tribe. But I don't
Speaker 1: need to denigrate another group in order to make that happen.
Speaker 1: If you, if you look at society and human history,
Speaker 1: really only in the last century, which is a whisper
Speaker 1: of time and the whole scope of humanity, have people
Speaker 1: been readily exposed to other groups, other tribes, so to
Speaker 1: speak constantly. I mean, we're just kid, we're more inner technology, technology, globalization.
Speaker 1: But I mean even you don't even have to go
Speaker 1: global aization technology. Think about the interstate system in the US.
Speaker 1: I mean things that really just in a fraction of
Speaker 1: a second human history have connected people unlike ever before.
Speaker 1: Whereas for centuries before that, of years thousands of years
Speaker 1: before that, sure you've had I'm thinking English in terms
Speaker 1: of the English language, You've got centuries of the English
Speaker 1: language and people existing in certain topographical regions and they
Speaker 1: would almost never encounter somebody else unless they were tradesmen
Speaker 1: or their at war, and that was really the only
Speaker 1: other time. And in those times there was expected differences.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're going to be different, but otherwise we
Speaker 1: are in our own little world, in our own little tribe,
Speaker 1: and every day we play with and create our language.
Speaker 1: Like you've got it. Let's say you've got a real
Speaker 1: good buddy and you hang out with this person a
Speaker 1: whole lot, or even like in your marriage, you and
Speaker 1: your wife, your your marriage starts to have its kind
Speaker 1: of own culture and your own way of talking, and
Speaker 1: your family has inside jokes. We do this all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: then you do that on a social level for centuries
Speaker 1: with the English language, and people are isolated from other groups,
Speaker 1: and it becomes even more becomes more defined, and then
Speaker 1: within like a few decades, you build interstates, trains, planes,
Speaker 1: the Internet, and all of a sudden, we're talking to
Speaker 1: people from all over all the time, and we're exposed
Speaker 1: to differences on a level that we've never been before.
Speaker 1: So we were the world is being mixed up way
Speaker 1: more than it's ever been sure, and what happens to
Speaker 1: insecure tribes is that makes them really uncomfortable, and so
Speaker 1: we tend to shut that down in one of two ways.
Speaker 1: We intrench ourselves or again we leave and kind of
Speaker 1: deny our own familial, identificational group. How how can we
Speaker 1: be balanced inside of this? That is one of the
Speaker 1: many human problems. Yeah, I think it takes a whole
Speaker 1: to self awareness, and I think it takes a whole
Speaker 1: lot of being comfortable with your own insecurities and just
Speaker 1: realizing that that mechanism is at work. So I guess
Speaker 1: what you're saying is you're just kind of throwing in
Speaker 1: the towel with saying acorn. You're just kind of okay
Speaker 1: with that. Well, I mean it's not spelled a C.
Speaker 1: There's an O in there. To me, this whole acorn,
Speaker 1: acorn kind of debate is proof that we're not rugged individualists.
Speaker 1: And that really is kind of an American myth that
Speaker 1: we love, and there's lots of great things about it.
Speaker 1: But we kind of like that we are self made man.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm kind of pulled myself up by my bootstraps,
Speaker 1: did it myself kind of a thing. But uh, the
Speaker 1: fact that we would argue about things like this or
Speaker 1: or use language different aspects of culture to find and
Speaker 1: make a social identity a home proves that we're not
Speaker 1: rugged individualists. Were really affected by we need community, we
Speaker 1: need people, we need relationships, and and we need them
Speaker 1: to be healthy. And the more unhealthy our social relationships are,
Speaker 1: the more upset we're gonna get about things like acorns
Speaker 1: and acorns. Even this idea of rugged individualism, which would
Speaker 1: have the idea that it's like the solo person that
Speaker 1: is a cultural group. I mean, like there's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of rugged individualists. When we say we are individualists
Speaker 1: or we are self made men, I mean, you're always
Speaker 1: locating yourself in a group. So there's just as many
Speaker 1: self made men as there are the group that values
Speaker 1: that overtly and purposefully values connection and community. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a It's kind of a semantics deal is
Speaker 1: because the rugged mountain man needed the mountain man rendezvous.
Speaker 1: He needed he needed more mountain men. And Dr Roupe,
Speaker 1: the first white tail buck you ever killed? What was
Speaker 1: he doing on that flat in the Ozark Mountains? He
Speaker 1: walked up? He's about what was he eating? One of
Speaker 1: these right here? Small acorn? The biggest mistake he ever made.
Speaker 1: I'm being serious when I say that the exploration of
Speaker 1: this topic was a genuine learning experience for me, and
Speaker 1: I gained new insight into myself. That's a good thing
Speaker 1: about being a hillbilly. I'm okay with not knowing, and
Speaker 1: perhaps that's the key to really knowing anything at all.
Speaker 1: I continue to be amazed at the things that drive us,
Speaker 1: that are unperceived and not understood. I think what I
Speaker 1: want to say is that culture is amazing. It's fun,
Speaker 1: and it adds context to our lives, and we really
Speaker 1: can't exist without the structure of culture around us in
Speaker 1: some way. But it shouldn't be the most important definer
Speaker 1: of our lives. I love being from the place that
Speaker 1: I am. I have an unusually strong sense of place.
Speaker 1: But if I say acorns or a corn that doesn't
Speaker 1: fully define me. Human life is bigger and more profound
Speaker 1: than the elementary definers of this planet. Perhaps there is
Speaker 1: another podcast being built as we speak, exploring the culture
Speaker 1: behind pronouncing the word as a corn. My goodness of
Speaker 1: the country says it that way. Here's my take home.
Speaker 1: An appreciation of our own culture allows us to appreciate
Speaker 1: and value other cultures. And I think that's significant. But
Speaker 1: I also believe there is great value in the preservation
Speaker 1: of individual culture. I would imagine, as long as there
Speaker 1: is spring and fall, and the oak's flower and acorns
Speaker 1: grow and come to ma surety and fall to the ground,
Speaker 1: and as long as we can hunt white tailed deer
Speaker 1: with bows and arrows and guns, me and mine will
Speaker 1: be searching for acorns. We're putting everything we've got into
Speaker 1: these Burglaries podcast episodes. If you've enjoyed them, I ask
Speaker 1: you to leave us a review and share this podcast
Speaker 1: with a friend. I really appreciate the sport