WEBVTT - Lone Wolf, with Adam Weymouth 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.520 name is Robert Lamb, and on today's episode, I'm going 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.880 to be chatting with Adam Weyman, author of Lone Wolf 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.640 Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness. It's all about 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.800 the European wolf. It's recent comeback in the similarities between 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.840 the human and lupine worlds. Without further ado, let's jump 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:36.840 right in. Hi Adam, Welcome to the show. 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:38.760 Hi, rep thanks for having me on. 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:42.440 The new book is Lone Wolf Walking the Line between 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.120 Civilization and Wilderness, released as of June third and all 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:49.479 major formats. As you describe in the book. Your journey 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:54.600 began in covering the possible reintroduction of wolves into Scotland. 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:57.360 You'd written about this prior, so I thought you might 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.800 walk us through this first. What happened to the wolves 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.000 the British Isles and where do things stand now with 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:04.520 their potential reintroduction? 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:07.320 And what happened to the wolves of the British Isles 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.560 is pretty much the same that happened to the wolf 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.080 across its entire range. The wolf used to be, once 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.720 upon a time, the most widespread terrestrial land mammal on 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:20.600 the planet, all across the northern hemisphere, from the tundra 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.360 right down to the tropics and pretty much everywhere, including 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:26.640 in the British Isles. They were pushed almost to extinction 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:31.000 in the British Isles, completely eradicated. So there's a bunch 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:33.800 of last Wolf stories. It seems that they hung on 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.480 in Scotland later than anywhere else. The last definitive account 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:42.840 for wolf in Scotland is sixteen twenty one, and that's 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:46.040 a note for a bounty that was paid on a wolf. 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:48.120 But it was an exception your high sum, which suggests 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.240 by then that demand was already kind of outstripping supply. 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.840 And then it kind of verges into myth. There's a 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:56.800 lot of people that would like to claim they killed 0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:59.240 the last wolf, whereas actually, of course the last wolf 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.880 probably lived out it's days far from many one, profoundly 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:04.240 isolated and alone. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:08.360 Now you actually looked for the alleged remains of the 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:10.040 last wharf in Scotland, right. 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.720 Yeah, that's right. So, like I said, it's very hard 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.160 to come by. There's one story that I followed, so 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.440 I began my journey in Scotland at in a state 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.320 up near in Verness, where this gentleman called Paul Lister 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.120 has been talking about trying to reintroduce now wolves now 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.160 for about twenty years or so. And I walked across 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:30.160 Scotland and finished it in the south of the Kengorm 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.280 mountain range. And that's one of the places where the 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:36.840 last wolf is meant to have been killed. And then, 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.119 as you say, late, I said out trying to find 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.040 it because it is then meant to have been stuffed 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.640 and had a various journey through different collections and museums, 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.000 but the actual provenance of it is now pretty hard 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.160 to locate. And really, through the course of research it 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:52.880 made me realize that this probably wasn't the last wolf 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.040 at all. This wolf that was being taken around these 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.600 museums in Scotland was being labeled as the last wolf 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.640 in order to sell tickets, but really probably nothing of 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:00.959 the sort. 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:05.160 And what about the reintroduction of the wolf into Scotland 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:10.240 or various other areas where the wolf is no longer present. 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:13.960 Where do we currently stand with that in terms of 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.080 public sentiment and even like governmental opinion. 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:19.160 Well, one of the reasons that the wolf is so 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.480 good to write about is because people are incredibly passionate 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.720 about it from both sides. People love wolves or they 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.840 hate wolves, and you find very little in between, and 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.600 that's essentially where we are there. It's been noted in 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.200 the British Isles as the most popular animal for reintroduction. 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.160 But then you go and speak to people that would 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.000 be actually living alongside it. Once again, we have sheep 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:44.880 farmers in Scotland, hunters, gameskeepers, people like this, even people 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:47.800 that live in villages in the countryside, and there's this 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.520 reputation that the wolf has for better or worse, and 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.360 there are people that are very passionately against it as well. 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.400 It's interesting because in some ways it's quite an arbitrary 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:00.320 decision here wolves. As we're going to talk about wolves 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.520 are making this remarkable come back in Europe, and if 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.200 Britain was still connected by a land bridge to the 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.400 continent as it used to be a couple of hundred 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.680 thousand years ago, then there would be back. There would 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.080 be wolves back on the British Isles now, and we 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.000 wouldn't be having a debate about whether we're not to 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:17.479 introduce them. We'd just be talking about how we deal 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.960 with them. But because we're in Ireland, we get to 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:24.160 make these particular decisions about what we let in and 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:27.520 realistically it's not going to happen here for a long time. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:32.040 It's taken about fifteen years of great debate to allow 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:36.760 the beaver to come back, and that's broadly accepted now. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.560 But there's a lot of other species we'd see back before. 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.920 Wolf is really really the pinnacle of Once wolves are back, 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:45.839 you know, we're not really talking about the worlding anymore. 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.559 It's kind of happened now. Now moving to Condon or Europe. 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:56.640 Here the book is primarily concerned with a particular wolf, Schloats. 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.920 Can you tell us about Schloats and why his particular 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.839 story captured you so and serves as the driving force 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:06.520 of your narrative? 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.160 Sure, Schlutz, it is actually one of the interesting thing. 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.040 I mean, it's a particular Slovenian word. And even in 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.480 the other countries that Schlous ended up in, no one 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:18.760 can really say his name, probably but Schloutz. I first 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.039 read a little piece about Schlutz when I was doing 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:25.920 my research on wolves in Scotland, and it was this 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.720 very small article about this wolf that had been born 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.440 in the south of Slovenia in twenty ten and had 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:34.400 a GPS track and collar put on him by a 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.680 biologist who was researching into wolf behavior. But of course 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.440 that biologist could have no idea what this animal was 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:41.800 going to go on to do. He was really just 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.080 interested in the sort of dynamics of the how a 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:50.240 wolf maintained the territory of the pack. But the following year, 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:52.880 at the end of twenty eleven, when Schlutz is about 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.200 eighteen months old, he left his pack behind and set 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.400 off on this epic one thousand mile journey through the 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.760 app Slovenia. He crossed the whole of Austria, and four 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.159 months later in the spring, came into Italy and it 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.000 was there that he bumped into a female wolf who 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:11.720 was on a walkabout of her own. So somehow in 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.120 there wasn't another wolf for thousands of square miles. Somehow 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.839 these two wolves managed to find each other, and when 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.479 they bred, they became the first wolf pack back in 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.720 the Italian Alps for more than a century. So in 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:25.760 one way, it was this remarkable love story that I 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.200 was drawn to. The female wolf ended up getting called 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:32.000 Juliet because they were very close to Verona and Romeo 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.960 and Julieta still Vona's most famous couple. So I was 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.159 really drawn to this incredible meeting in this love story 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.160 between these two animals. But of course not everyone is 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:44.400 quite so quite so in love with the idea of 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:45.920 having wolves back in the mountains. 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.160 Now, as you definitely discussed in the book, when we 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:53.120 talk about wolves, there's often a lot of separating the 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.640 biological reality of wolves from human mythmaking about wolves and misconceptions. 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.040 Coming back to the title of a book, lone Wolf, 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.120 can you remind us just what a lone wolf actually 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.159 is and in comparison to maybe some of the ideas 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:08.960 that we have about lone wolves. 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.520 Yeah, so I really wanted to call it lone Wolf, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.560 and we had a bit of pushback sort of an 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:16.440 editorial meetings and stuff, But to me, it was really 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.240 important to call it lone Wolf because I wanted to 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:21.200 challenge this idea of what a lone wolf is. We 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.640 think of a lone wolf as this kind of Clint 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.080 Eastward archetype, you know, this hero riding off into the 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:31.120 sunset who doesn't need anyone or anything, Whereas what I 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.679 realized from following Schlaus is that actually a lone wolf 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.840 is simply something that hasn't found what it's looking for yet. 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:38.960 And a lone wolf is looking for the same three 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.560 things that we all are. It's looking for enough land 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:43.400 to live on, it's looking for enough food to eat, 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.160 and it's looking for a mate. So and it's an 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.480 incredibly vulnerable time for a wolf. There is no more 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:51.880 vulnerable time. Wolves don't hunt well alone. They like to 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.400 be part of packs, they like to have a fixed territory. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.760 They're actually an incredibly conservative species, very shy, very hard 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.640 to see. So to set off on these journeys as 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.080 a particular kind of subset of wolves are hardwired to do, 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:10.840 to disperse like this is an incredibly dangerous, perilous time 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:14.160 for them, and not a not a proud, self sufficient 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.120 state that they want to end up in. 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.160 Now. In chronicling this journey, you sometimes write from the 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.280 point of view of Slouts himself in the book, and 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.560 I thought this was a lovely choice. It makes for 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.960 some very poetic passages. Can you describe your process for 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.240 imagining the mindset of the wolf and how this factored 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:32.880 into your approach. 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.800 Yeah, thanks, I toyed with it for a while and 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.360 in the end it felt important. I didn't want to 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:40.400 say that, you know, I was seeing the world as 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.520 a wolf was, but I wanted in some way to 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.720 sort of, however clumsily, kind of get inside Slouse's mind 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.000 in a way. And there was something about following his journey. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.240 So the track and collar that you had to put 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.600 on him, it gave one way point every one hundred 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:57.880 and ninety minutes for the entire four months of his walk, 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.040 And before I set off, transferred each of those waypoints 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:04.320 onto this big stack of maps that I carried in 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.880 my rucksack. And as I walked, as I followed this path, 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:11.480 you started to get some sort of sense of how 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.880 this wolf was seeing the world. You know, on the map, 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:16.839 it might have not seemed to make sense why he'd 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.199 suddenly changed compass point and set off on a different bearing. 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:22.080 But then when I got to this point, I realized 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.480 that I could hear the airport, or hear a highway, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.640 or I could you see a town for the first 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:30.679 time as we come over a hill, or the other 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.960 places where he turned round, because it was a mountain 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.920 pass and the winter that he traveled it was incredibly snowy, 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.480 and a lot of these places was just inaccessible, so 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:41.520 in some way that you couldn't get from just looking 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.400 at the data on the page. By doing this walk, 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:47.480 I started to sense some sort of way that the 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.640 wolf was moving through a landscape in a way, and 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.040 often looking for the easiest route as well, often following 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.000 the river or the bike path down a valley rather 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:59.560 than going over a mountain range. And yeah, I felt 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:01.520 by the end end of this walk, after following in 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:03.120 his footsteps for a few months, that I had kind 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:05.480 of earned the right to at least try and write 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:07.280 a little bit from his from his perspective. 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.440 Yeah, humans have of course long considered the wholf. We've 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:14.520 long seen shades of them and us, and shades of 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.640 us and them. So yeah, this is this is such 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:24.440 a I guess, a long standing area of analysis and consideration, right, like, like, 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.400 how are wolves like us? And how are we like 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:27.880 the wholf? 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.079 Yeah, we obviously go way back. The wolf is the 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.800 first animal we domesticated, it's the first animal we lived alongside. 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:39.480 And there are these really interesting similarities between the two 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.480 of us. We're two of the very few species on 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.120 the planet that hunt prey that are larger than ourselves. 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.080 That's unusual in the animal world, and in order to 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.040 do that, that means that you need to work together 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.080 as a pack. And then when you start working together 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.080 as a pack, that requires division of labor, and it 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.000 requires hierarchy, and it requires some sort of quite complex 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.880 social organization. And so in some ways there's this real 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.040 affinity between how humans work together and how wolves work together. 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.360 And I think that probably is the reason that we 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.040 found each other in kind of hunt gather at times 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.880 and decided to work together, essentially because we had this 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.240 sort of understanding we both like to run after pray 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.080 and tire them out, and that is the way that 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:22.680 that is the way that they hunt, as opposed a 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:26.439 big cat or something like that. And I think it's 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.360 almost that closeness. There was a wolf behavioral scientist that 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:31.920 I met in Austria and he said to me, either 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:33.680 you love your brother or you hate your brother. There's 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.400 nothing in between. And I think it's almost that closeness 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:38.600 that we feel to wolves. And obviously we see that 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:40.720 in our relationship to dogs as well, which you're essentially 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.880 the same animal that we've had this incredible bond with them, 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.600 But that's very easily quickly flipped into a hatred that 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.599 I don't think we have for any other animal either. 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:53.640 And that speaking of that hatred and sort of like 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.640 the dark side of that bond. You write a bit 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.760 in the book about Europe's three centuries of where wolf 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.439 triesles and the we're a wolf panic. Can you tell 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:04.760 us a bit about this period of time and how 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.480 it matches up with the timeline of the Eurasian wolf's decline. 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:13.439 Sure, so, yeah, to kind of to break that down 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:14.960 a bit, maybe I can say a bit first just 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.760 about the kind of the extermination of the wolf in general, 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.520 because we began at that point, as I was saying, 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:24.920 with that sort of hunter gather a relationship to the wolf. 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:27.560 I think it's two hunters almost respecting each other. But 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.880 as soon as we became herders, as soon as we 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.199 put up fences and started to keep livestock, the wolf 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:36.760 became this animal that was on the other side of 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:38.960 the fence. Suddenly we had something that the wolf wanted, 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.480 and very quickly it flipped into the wolf being the 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:48.160 thief the vagabonds. And from a Christian lens, if Jesus 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.439 is the lamb, then the wolf is the devil and 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:56.400 the persecution that they've faced over millennia. Really ever since 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.959 there's been money to pay them. There have been bounties 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.559 out on wolve's heads back to sixth century BC and 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:06.559 Athens there were bounties out on wolves. Charlemagne from about 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.360 eighteen for about eight hundreds sorry in France started trying 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.520 to eradicate the wolf, but it took almost a thousand years. 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.880 It wasn't until nineteen twenty seven that wolves were finally 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.440 gone from France. And in some ways it was in 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.480 the United States where that kind of hatred of the 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:24.600 wolf really reached another reached a pinnacle. Basically, the ways 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.600 that wolves were killed they were set on fire, they 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.600 were pulled apart by horses, they were beaten to death, 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.640 and then paraded through town on the back of horses. 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:36.640 The estimates of up to two million wolves were killed 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.040 in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.760 United States, and the Native Americans saw it as a 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.040 manifestation of insanity. It was said it was seen as 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:51.040 a manifestation of insanity amongst the white settlers that were 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:57.680 killing these animals. Yeah, and there's something you're doing this research. 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.760 It really seemed to border on a hatred to wipe 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.360 out that many animals, right down to the very last animal. 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.640 It feels like it requires a stronger motivation than just 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:10.640 a desire to protect one sheep. And the werewolf trials 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:12.520 that you mentioned at the beginning of that question seemed 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.199 to be one of those particular manifestations of that sort 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.199 of paranoia and hate. I'm sure some of your listeners 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.640 will be familiar with the witch trials, like the Salem 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.880 witch Trials, and we had them a lot in Europe 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.880 as well. Thousands of women were killed over several centuries, 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.280 But I wasn't aware that people were actually put to 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.840 death being accused of being werewolves as well. And one 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:39.000 of the there were two towns actually in Austria that 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.920 Schloutz's route passed through were places whereas late as the 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.920 early eighteenth century people were being put on trial and 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:50.920 hung for being were wolves, and quite often the accused 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:55.680 seemed to be travelers, wanderers, beggars, people that might turn 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.440 up in town. Maybe two sheep were killed that night, 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.240 and the local people sided to put two and two together, 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:06.120 and uh and and and persecute the outsider for for 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.520 bringing this l upon the upon the town. 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:15.760 I'm glad you mentioned, uh, the agricultural aspect of hatred 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.200 of the wolf. I had recently read a couple of 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:23.240 different books looking at and were wolf myths and legends 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.200 and talking about how in some cases you see people 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:30.560 trying to to date the idea of were wolve's back 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.760 to our prehistoric ancestors in this time when we lived 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.560 closer to the wolf, and certainly when we domesticated the wolf. 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.440 But then I think the more convincing stories that I've 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.760 read have have made the argument that it is this. 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.520 These are ultimately agricultural era tales. These are tales of 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.520 fear of the wolf and analysis of the wolf in 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.640 a time when we are worried about our sheep and 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:58.440 our herds and and UH and and our dominion over nature. 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:00.480 I don't think that's to say that it kind of 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.880 obviously it's a misguided assumption. But obviously, you know, to 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.520 these people, it's not like now when you can get 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.160 compensation from the state for a wolf kill on the sheep. 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.160 Wolves don't kill a huge amount of livestock, but they 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:22.680 can target certain farms and certain herds, and so someone 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.000 might lose twenty of their thirty sheep, and that would 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.120 have been an absolutely existential crisis three hundred years ago. 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:30.040 That was your way of getting through the winter, that 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.840 was your way of feeding your fairly large family. It 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.720 would have felt horrifying to be targeted in that way. 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:39.920 And I can see the trials against the were wolves 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.560 and also the kind of ambulets and charms and things 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.600 that people tried to as some way of trying to 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:50.280 have dominion over nature when nature felt really outside of 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:51.000 one's control. 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.920 Now and my recent reading about is where Wolf. That's 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:56.440 one of the books that I was looking at was 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.560 a twenty twenty one book by Daniel Agden called The 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.600 World Wolf in the Ancient World. And there's one quote 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:04.280 in that that I keep coming back to where he 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.000 says the quote wolves are in and of themselves. Where 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.280 wolves already in so far that is, is that they 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.840 combine the qualities of the wildest and most lawless of 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.880 animals with those of civilization and humanity. And I kept 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:17.879 coming back in that, not to just harp on like 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:20.760 negative connotations of the wolf, but I thought this was 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.800 interesting and sort of looking at the wolf as this 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.640 thing that already mirrors a lot about humans, like not 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:33.200 just potential savagery, but also how social wolves are, something 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:36.080 that I think is sometimes very often overlooked, certainly and 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.840 were wolf stories, but just in general. I was wondering 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.320 if you might speak to He's touched on this already 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:44.639 a little bit, but speak to just how social wolves 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.760 are and how how like humans they are in this regard. 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.240 Yeah, I think in some ways they're almost an aspiration 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.840 or animal. You know that we're obviously genetically far closer 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:59.280 to chimpanzees, but I think we in wolves we see 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:01.560 qualities of as how we would like to be. You know, 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.240 you go to you go to zoo and watch chimpanzees, 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.800 you obviously see something in them, But to watch a 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.119 wolf is to is to see how humans could be. 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.040 I think, you know, wolves, wolves are excellent parents. They're 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:16.000 one of the very few animals where the males will 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.440 stick around long after the birth to look after both 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:23.119 the pups and the suckling mother. They are incredibly loyal, 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:29.840 They are courageous and resourceful, and you know, often I 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.439 met a lot of people, a lot of farmers on 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:35.560 my journey through the Apps who absolutely detested wolves, you know, 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.000 for the burdens that they put on their lives. But 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.719 I still got this sense that if they if they 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.199 were to be reincarnated at some point in the future, 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:44.520 if they were going to come back as an animal, 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:46.000 they'd really like to come back as a wolf. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:50.560 You know, Yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah, how when people 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.320 think about wolves there is often this aspirational aspect of it, 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.480 like they don't actually be a were wolf, but the 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.720 idea of being like free like a wolf, of having 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.159 the wolf is kind of like a symbolic animal in 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:01.760 one's mind. 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.480 And it's worth saying we've spoken about the kind of 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.280 hatred and the hatred that we've got in them, that 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.919 adulation of the wolf is also a misconception. One of 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:14.600 the things that I found in this book is that 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:16.720 almost the hardest thing about a wolf is to see 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:18.840 it for what it is, which is a wolf. It 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.440 seems to be this vessel for our fears and our 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.119 hopes and our dreams, and particularly how we relate to 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.840 the natural world. And whilst once upon a time that 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.760 might have been this sense of destroying the wolf in 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.800 order to kind of manifest progress and civilization, now we 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.720 have all these anxieties about what we're doing to the 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:40.880 world and what we're doing to our futures, and once 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:42.880 again the wolf has become this vessel, but this time 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.520 it's something that's almost going to save us from ourselves 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:46.960 rather than destroyers. 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.080 In the book, you draw connections between the comeback of 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.560 the wild Wolf and the refugee crisis in Europe. Can 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:55.360 you elaborate on this for Uce a bit? 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.560 Yeah, in several ways. I was first drawn to this 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:04.080 story actually because Licinia, which is this small regional park 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.240 in Italy where Schlutz finished his journey, where he bumped 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:11.679 into Juliet and where they formed their first pack. It 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:13.640 was also a part of the Alps where a lot 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:17.359 of refugees who were arriving in Italy they divide by 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.280 boat to lamproducer and then they'd straight away get taken 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.640 to these settlement centers. And there was one in Licinia 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:25.560 right up in the Apps and the middle of nowhere, 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.479 completely cut off in winter, and these people that were 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.600 arriving from North Africa from the Middle East were being 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:37.520 taken to these This was a former NATO barracks, and 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:39.159 a lot of the language that was being used by 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.760 the local people living in these mountains about the refugees 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.720 and the wolves was very similar. You know, we were 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:47.760 here first. These people don't belong here. I don't have 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:50.800 a problem with either wolves or migrants, but their place 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.560