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Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely

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Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You

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Speaker 1: can't predict anything coming at you. Um, congested with a

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Speaker 1: sore throat. So it's not sounding pretty sick. You sound off, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that time of year. Um, we're just talking. I want

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Speaker 1: to pick up on a conversation with just having a

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Speaker 1: quick cal Can you can you revisit what you're talking about? John?

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Speaker 1: We can we talk about where you live? Or do

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Speaker 1: you like to keep that secret? No, it's fine, right

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Speaker 1: about it. I don't write about it. But it's not

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Speaker 1: like I live in an undisclosed location. Okay, I just

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Speaker 1: lived there. We're with the writer John Muellum, and you

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Speaker 1: don't go by nature writer, you're just having to write

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Speaker 1: about I think that's kind of silly. You don't like that?

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Speaker 1: Uh what do you? What do you do? You can

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Speaker 1: describe yourself as a generalist. Yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate.

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Speaker 1: But that is a thing these days, right to be

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Speaker 1: a generalist? No, No, to like people take like nature

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Speaker 1: writing these days? Dude? Yeah? Way yeah. Yeah, we're science

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Speaker 1: writer natural history writers. Do you what do you say that? No? No,

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Speaker 1: because I feel like it has a softer connotation, right,

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Speaker 1: like you're gazing at a I'll say that. I'll oftentimes,

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Speaker 1: if I'm trying to deflect a conversation, i will say

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Speaker 1: that I'm an outdoor writer because no one knows what that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I just I'm trying to get in

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Speaker 1: and out of the subject real quick. We all often

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Speaker 1: times throw that out there to see if that allows

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Speaker 1: me to just move on, right, And sometimes it's people like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: it's over. Yeah, But the writer the generalist, John Welm,

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Speaker 1: lives on Bainbridge Island, which is an island in Puget Sound,

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Speaker 1: and hearing this our other guests, frequent contributor and guests

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Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan shared with us his memories of right fishing

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Speaker 1: for chum salmon on Bainbridge. Uh. I want to say

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Speaker 1: it was two thousand and ten, and I could be

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Speaker 1: screwing this up, but we Uh. It was actually back

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Speaker 1: in the days of working with Warren Miller Entertainment, and

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Speaker 1: I was in charge of shipping all of our stuff

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Speaker 1: all across the country, and I also slipped in a

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Speaker 1: container load of our fishing gear so we could fish

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Speaker 1: wherever we were in the country. And we went out

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Speaker 1: and fished the chum round on Bainbridge, and um everything

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Speaker 1: in this area was pretty economically depressed, UM on Bainbridge

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Speaker 1: and the peninsula in general. And and I was very

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Speaker 1: confused as to the fishing regulations because there seemed to

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Speaker 1: be an awful lot of people gut we we we

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Speaker 1: referred to basically snagging salmon and just dragging them on shore.

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Speaker 1: And we were, you know, out there with their flying

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Speaker 1: rod uh fly fishing gear, just trying to catch something

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Speaker 1: in the mouth. And on the way out of uh,

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Speaker 1: the creek that we'd walked down into, ran into some

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Speaker 1: uh fishing game officers and fish cops fish cops, and

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Speaker 1: I had I had. I didn't ask directly, but you

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Speaker 1: know you kind of like, hey, so supposed uh and

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Speaker 1: these officers had basically said like, yeah, we're aware of that.

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Speaker 1: We're not really concerned about it because these folks are

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Speaker 1: taking everything home and smoking them. So they were they

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Speaker 1: were willing to like look, turn turn a blind eye

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Speaker 1: that yeah to the chum thing. The reason I wanted

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Speaker 1: to tell that because some reason it's stuck to putting

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Speaker 1: my mind two things. One my brother man, it winds

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Speaker 1: up being so circular. Can I tell about the book

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Speaker 1: you're working on, John, John's working on the book by Alaska.

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Speaker 1: And as part of that, we got talking about anchored,

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Speaker 1: So I had sort of anchored floating around in my head.

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Speaker 1: Then Cal got talking about salmon, so I have an

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Speaker 1: anchorage and salmon floating around my head. I got to

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Speaker 1: thinking about something. My brother was telling me that it's

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Speaker 1: a derogatory term. I think like the Moonies. John, you

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Speaker 1: know about the Moonies, right? Ye? Are you asking me

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Speaker 1: if that's a derogatory too reading? But can you, because

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Speaker 1: you understand them better, can you explain to me real quick,

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Speaker 1: even though it's not your true right, I'd say I

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Speaker 1: have a D minus great understanding of the Moonies the

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Speaker 1: Unification Church. But you knew that, like you knew some

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Speaker 1: of it. I know that. I think it's in like

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Speaker 1: we didn't start the fire that you know. He's the

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Speaker 1: mass Shaye Stadium. The Reverend moon converted ten thousands, some

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Speaker 1: number of thousands of people a church all at once.

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Speaker 1: The Beatles kind of got into it. They had their heyday.

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Speaker 1: And if you see dudes in the airport who are

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Speaker 1: wearing yellow gowns and have a hairstyle, similar to the

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Speaker 1: Iroquoi Five Nations groups, right, but this is is that

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Speaker 1: still going? And I'm telling you what the reason I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking about this right now is my brother was saying

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Speaker 1: that the Mooney's in Anchorage will rent busses to go

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Speaker 1: fish salmon. I'm telling you the only the guy we're

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Speaker 1: thinking about. And I feel like I already brought it

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Speaker 1: up once, which was just like I talked about this

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Speaker 1: every day now is because the type of salmon you're

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Speaker 1: talking about, a chum, is also known as a dog salmon.

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Speaker 1: And it gets this name because um some people will

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Speaker 1: find that it's that it's best us is to be

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Speaker 1: fed to dogs. So people will catch chums and just

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Speaker 1: freeze the hole to freeze to sled dogs. It's not

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Speaker 1: a popular food fish chump salmon and dog salmon. And

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Speaker 1: I was recently taught about this is someone they're saying

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Speaker 1: that the folks was it was it that is sam

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Speaker 1: as the folks on um Nevakish. Yeah, they liked it

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Speaker 1: though they love it. And I'll touch on that too

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Speaker 1: because uh, chump salmon or coastal spawners, so they spawned

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Speaker 1: close to the ocean. They'll generally enter rivers in pretty

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Speaker 1: shitty shape already. But there's an exception to this that

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Speaker 1: our brother was point now is there's a big run

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Speaker 1: of chums in the Yukon where these chums are traveling

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Speaker 1: a thousand miles and they'll enter the river very nice

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Speaker 1: and clean and very fatty, and so they're they're pretty

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Speaker 1: popular and people will net them out in the open ocean.

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Speaker 1: But people know that chum salmon slash dog salmon is

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Speaker 1: a real ship salmon, so they've tried to rebrand them,

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Speaker 1: and for while they're trying to sell them as calico salmon,

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Speaker 1: because when they're up in the rivers, you ever know,

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Speaker 1: to get that calico color to them. Kind of the

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Speaker 1: other day we were I think we might have talked

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Speaker 1: about this. They uh dirt myth went into a Whole

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Speaker 1: Foods and came out with a little envelope of smoked

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Speaker 1: salmon and on it it says keita salmon. And I

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Speaker 1: know my salmon inside now or thought I did, and

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Speaker 1: I was like, that's not a kind of salmon. But

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Speaker 1: it turns out that the Linnaean name for the chum

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Speaker 1: is on corinthis Keita, it sounds like a Bible verse

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Speaker 1: on corinthis keita, and uh, yeah, the whole food was

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Speaker 1: just trying to sell chums as key to salmon, which

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Speaker 1: is just a play on their Lineian name because people

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Speaker 1: like get stuff in their head and they won't eat

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Speaker 1: it because because of its name. Yeah, but it's still

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Speaker 1: tastes good enough to sell, all right, good enough for

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Speaker 1: people to come back. And the chupic Eskimo they don't.

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Speaker 1: They don't like to catch him. They let the chums

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Speaker 1: run in the river and spawn out, and they don't

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Speaker 1: like to catch him until that sun bitch is washing

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Speaker 1: back out to the ocean mostly dead, at which point

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Speaker 1: they like to catch him. Because their climate is so

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Speaker 1: wet it's very hard to dry fish. And a chum

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Speaker 1: is after he's spawned out and mostly dead, he's very lean,

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Speaker 1: his fat reserve is gone. At that point you can

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Speaker 1: dry him down successfully in a climate that is not

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Speaker 1: appropriate for fish drying. Wow. I talked with that uh,

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Speaker 1: this guy, Dave, Alaska resident who looked at me like

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Speaker 1: I had three eyes because I told him how much

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Speaker 1: I liked the silver salmon. Then we caught up at

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Speaker 1: the fish shack and he was like, you eat. Oh,

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Speaker 1: there's so much bullshit around fish. My brother. My brother

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Speaker 1: has been doing mass been doing blind taste tests where

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Speaker 1: he's like doing where he's cooking pink salmon for people

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Speaker 1: and co ho for people, and he's final about of

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Speaker 1: people prefer the pinks, and then everybod says, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the real problem with pinks they don't freeze well,

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Speaker 1: they turn mushy when you freeze them. So he starts

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Speaker 1: then freezing it all and doing a blind taste test

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Speaker 1: with it, and I think thought, I think six of

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Speaker 1: people preferred the pink, but it just doesn't mark it well. No,

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Speaker 1: So John, back back to John, Uh, you're general How

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Speaker 1: long have you been a generalist writer? Since I've been

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Speaker 1: a writer, really, I've been writing for the New York

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Speaker 1: Times magazine for twelve years and I think, you know,

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Speaker 1: that was not long after I started writing for magazines.

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Speaker 1: And I think just as a freelancer, you know, you

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Speaker 1: why would I say no to a good idea? So

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Speaker 1: did you study journalism? I did, Actually I went to

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Speaker 1: the Berkeley Journalism School. That was how I met Michael Pollen. Uh,

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Speaker 1: But at that point I kind of I didn't scope

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Speaker 1: out journalism schools to go to. It was more a

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Speaker 1: function of we were moving to San Francisco, my wife

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Speaker 1: and I. She was gonna go to grad school. And

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Speaker 1: I tried to get a bunch of jobs in journalism

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Speaker 1: in San Francisco and got turned down. And then I

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Speaker 1: had applied to the journalism school, had to my dad

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Speaker 1: had died recently. I had some money that could pay

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Speaker 1: for the graduate degree, and uh, I couldn't get any work.

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Speaker 1: So that I showed up at Berkeley. I went to

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Speaker 1: go visit when I got admitted, and I was just like,

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Speaker 1: why would I not do this? This is a you know,

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Speaker 1: it's almost like I've been freelancing for a while. So

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Speaker 1: I thought I could show up at this place and

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Speaker 1: just keep freelancing. And now I've got the support of

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Speaker 1: all these people around me, and uh, it was too

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Speaker 1: good to pass up. And that was grad school. That

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Speaker 1: was grad school. Yeah. Yeah, how sick? How sick of

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Speaker 1: talking about? How how sick are you've talked about your

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Speaker 1: your book? Uh, I haven't done it in a while.

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Speaker 1: So I got some questions I want to ask. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we'll see, but my I'm not gonna be as up

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Speaker 1: on my own book as I was. Yeah, we'll just

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Speaker 1: give me the like give me the give people to

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Speaker 1: run down of your book. So the books called wild Ones.

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Speaker 1: The subtitle is a sometimes this maying, wearily reassuring story

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Speaker 1: about looking at people looking at animals in America. And

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Speaker 1: uh it uh it's a book about Uh. Basically, it's

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Speaker 1: a book about conservation and dangered species, although I didn't

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Speaker 1: always want to describe it that way. Uh. And it's

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Speaker 1: so why did you not want? Because it's not a

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Speaker 1: too dismal I think it shuts some a lot of

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Speaker 1: people down right. I think the thing I was interested

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Speaker 1: in doing was writing about those issues from the perspective

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Speaker 1: of someone who had no direct contact with them. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, I was living in San Francisco at the time,

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Speaker 1: and as I write in the book, you know, most

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Speaker 1: of my exposure to animals was you know, watching Planet

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Speaker 1: Earth or uh, you know, Wild America when I was

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Speaker 1: when I was a kid. And then I had my

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Speaker 1: first child and realized how much of a child's life

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Speaker 1: gets flooded with animals, you know, be they on your

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Speaker 1: pajamas or stuffed animals and things like this. And I

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Speaker 1: just started to realize that these animals, which are real

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Speaker 1: animals out there in the ecosystem, are sort of these

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Speaker 1: also these imaginative constructs that people like me are trafficking

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Speaker 1: in every day. And so the book was really about

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Speaker 1: trying to reconcile those two worlds, trying to take what

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Speaker 1: I thought and felt about animals and go out into

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem of some of these endangered species and really

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Speaker 1: think hard about you know, why is it that someone

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Speaker 1: who's never going to see a mountain lion might want

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Speaker 1: to get behind the cause of mountain lion conservation? What

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Speaker 1: are these animals doing for us? Uh? Not maybe not

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Speaker 1: in the physical plane, but you know, just emotionally. When

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Speaker 1: you were when you were thinking about that about you

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Speaker 1: mentioned that your kid's pajamas and the way that childhood

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Speaker 1: is so animal rich, at least in the imagery of it.

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Speaker 1: It's rich in the imagery of animals and sort of

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Speaker 1: the the metaphysical realm. Have you ever thought about like,

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Speaker 1: how is it that the how is it decided? Do

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Speaker 1: you feel? Um, what species sort of make the cut? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: African megafauna is big with it is big with kids.

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Speaker 1: It's big, and it's like big with pajamas. It's big

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Speaker 1: with stuffed animals. Um. And then there are like our

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Speaker 1: many of our own animals are kind of neglected in

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Speaker 1: that world. Yeah, well I think that's that. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a great question, and I think some of it it

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Speaker 1: just speaks to the fact that when we're putting a

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Speaker 1: giraffe on our daughters, you know, Onesie, it's not because

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Speaker 1: of anything having to do with the giraffe itself, right,

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Speaker 1: It has to do with what the giraffe represents, you know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe uh, it's it's colorful, right, Maybe it's something that

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Speaker 1: we think of as gentle um. And I think that

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Speaker 1: there's also the exotic nous of it alone is doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of the work because we want to surround

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Speaker 1: our kids with things that are precious, you know, and

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Speaker 1: give them, uh, kind of take them to another world. Right.

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Speaker 1: So maybe it's a giraffe, or maybe it's a ferry, right,

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Speaker 1: or a princess imaginary right, And sometimes it is, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't often maybe won't work, right. I mean owls,

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Speaker 1: I feel like owls have a good pr right now,

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Speaker 1: like we we think of owls, Owls do take it

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Speaker 1: into the stuffy realm. Yeah, exactly exactly. Squirrels though not

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Speaker 1: so much. I was just trying to think of a

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Speaker 1: squirrel and only character and can come up with this

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Speaker 1: uh rocking, rocking bowl winkle. Yeah, but kids aren't into

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Speaker 1: that anymore. No, definitely not anymore. The hedgehog has gone.

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Speaker 1: His brand is rising. Do you think I think the

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Speaker 1: hedgehog is coming into his own a a child's thing,

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Speaker 1: my kids awareness of animals really, like how it was

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Speaker 1: eye opening for me anyway, like the your story of

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Speaker 1: the Teddy Bear. Oh, that's that's the next thing. I

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Speaker 1: want to have you address that. I thought that was fantastic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: why the hell? Yeah? Can you because we're on the

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Speaker 1: thing with like what sort of like the fantastic sort

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Speaker 1: of representation of animals and kids stuff that you got

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Speaker 1: interested in. Can you talk about um? And I trust

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Speaker 1: me I will move on to like more recent things

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Speaker 1: with you. But keep talking about keep talking about Teddy

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt in the bear. Yeah. I didn't. I didn't know this.

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Speaker 1: You didn't know. I feel like I knew something. No,

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Speaker 1: I didn't. I knew that had something to do with

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Speaker 1: I knew that the Teddy Bear was Teddy Roosevelt, but

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Speaker 1: I didn't know like I didn't know how. Yeah, I'll

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Speaker 1: do a little pitch for the book right now. I

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Speaker 1: think it's worth buying just to read your explanation of

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Speaker 1: that story, because I've heard that story numerous times and

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Speaker 1: I could, you know, vaguely, probably tell it t and

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Speaker 1: someone say, oh, yeah, you know what's nuts the nuts

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Speaker 1: and bolts of it. But you added in just a

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Speaker 1: few details that I didn't know. I was like, now

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Speaker 1: that's fascinating thing in a way I don't agree with

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Speaker 1: with Horniday, Like I know the Horniday story very well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would not tell it the way you told it.

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Speaker 1: How would you tell it? Just different? Are we gonna

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Speaker 1: Can we skip right to that one? Can we skip

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Speaker 1: to that one? And it will come back to the Teddy?

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Speaker 1: Now even now I'm scintillated. No, I have to sit

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Speaker 1: with that discomfort. Tell us about tell us about so

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Speaker 1: the Roosevelt story, Yeah I had. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I knew that story or not. I mean, I think,

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Speaker 1: like you at least knew that Teddy bears Teddy Roosevelt.

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Speaker 1: There's a relationship, and the story goes. I believe it's

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Speaker 1: I could have the year wrong at this point. Was

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Speaker 1: the year that uh scotfy A published the Culinary Guide. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot happening that year. Clearly a big year. Um,

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt goes down to Mississippi and it's gonna go bear hunting,

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Speaker 1: and this is a it's a you know, the press

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Speaker 1: is following him there, and longest story short, they're not

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Speaker 1: finding any bears. One of the last days of his

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Speaker 1: hunt his uh they go out cut stop me from it. Um,

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Speaker 1: what year? When was uh? You know, who's the Mississippi

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Speaker 1: bear hunting writer Faulkner? When was Falkoner? Like active later,

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Speaker 1: I believe I don't know, not my not my Arab expertise.

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Speaker 1: I barely am expert on my own book anymore. Yeah, well, uh,

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Speaker 1: we're forcing you to revisit. Yes, I should have I

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Speaker 1: should have brushed up a little bit more. In any case, Uh,

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Roosevelt is uh, you know, he

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Speaker 1: he gives up. He goes to have lunch, and they're

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Speaker 1: hunting with hounds. They're hunting with hounds and a guide.

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Speaker 1: You know. So his guide was this sort of famous

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Speaker 1: black Mississippi former slave bear hunter guy who you know,

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Speaker 1: was a very storied figure. Yeah, Roosevelt wouldn't cross the

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Speaker 1: street without a guy, I would assume. So yeah, so

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Speaker 1: this guy suddenly he starts blowing on his bugle. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Colin Roosevelt back out into the field because he's found

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Speaker 1: a bear and it's this kind of mangy looking, scrawny

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Speaker 1: animal that he's tied to a tree, and he's the

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Speaker 1: hounds have cornered it. He's tied it to a tree

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Speaker 1: so that the President can come shoot it, have the

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Speaker 1: honor of shooting it. Now, this is where the story

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Speaker 1: and the truth kind of get diverge a little bit,

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Speaker 1: get a little muddy. The story goes that Roosevelt found

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Speaker 1: this all very unsportsmanlike and spared the bear's life. And

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Speaker 1: there's a famous cartoon done at this moment in a

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Speaker 1: Washington newspaper where they show Roosevelt declining to shoot this

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Speaker 1: very cuddly looking bear, and the bear becomes the Teddy

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Speaker 1: Bear that that bear in the cartoon looks, you know,

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Speaker 1: fluffy and cute and cuddly, a little vulnerable. That becomes

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Speaker 1: the Teddy's Bear. Uh. And toy companies start making these

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Speaker 1: stuffed animals name them after the President to sort of

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Speaker 1: celebrate that moment of mercy. The truth is, as far

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Speaker 1: as I could tell, that he did not He did

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Speaker 1: refuse to shoot the bear. Instead, he asked his buddy

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Speaker 1: to knife it with put it out of its misery.

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Speaker 1: That part did not get carried over into the myth

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Speaker 1: um right because it was supposedly like a worn down,

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Speaker 1: scrawny it was out. It just like wasn't doing very good.

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Speaker 1: It was a bad looking bear. It was a bad

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Speaker 1: looking bear. So he did feel that it was unsportsmanlike,

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Speaker 1: but it was more to protect his own sense of

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Speaker 1: sportsmanship than the bear's life that he declared to shoot

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Speaker 1: it um. So that in and of itself, I thought

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Speaker 1: was interesting the way that the story, you know, the

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Speaker 1: parts of the story that we wanted to repeat and

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Speaker 1: the parts that we wanted to ignore. But yeah, in

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Speaker 1: any case, that was the sort of birth of the table.

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Speaker 1: And there's there's other competing stories. I actually got a

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Speaker 1: lot of emails from various people, you know, marshaling historic

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Speaker 1: evidence that but what happened that day, Well what happened

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Speaker 1: that day or about the you know, or linking the

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Speaker 1: origin of the Teddy Bear two different things. And then

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Speaker 1: it was it was this moment with Teddy rizz with

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Speaker 1: that kind of gave it's popularity so that it wasn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily invented because of Teddy Roosevelt. But that was what

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Speaker 1: made it a sensation. Um, Like the Teddy bear is

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Speaker 1: already a thing, but it became more of a thing.

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Speaker 1: There's there's camps as far as I remember, there's there's

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Speaker 1: some some argument about that as well. Um but yeah,

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Speaker 1: but but in the book, I link that to the

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Speaker 1: condition of sort of actual bears in America at that time,

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Speaker 1: where we were sort of shifting from a perspective where

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Speaker 1: they were these menacing threats to something that we had

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Speaker 1: pretty much brought to its knees and now needed to

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Speaker 1: show Mercy's Roosevelt to read that told it, Yeah, sort

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Speaker 1: of resonates, you know, as of course, now is the

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Speaker 1: time to spare the bears life, and we can make

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Speaker 1: them into this adorable thing that we give to our babies.

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Speaker 1: Whereas you know, an eighteen thirty nobody out on the

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Speaker 1: frontier is going to think of a bear as a

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Speaker 1: cuddly thing that their child should should play with, right,

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Speaker 1: it would be like giving your child a monster. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you'd you'd said on the manufacturing kind of backstory, Um,

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Speaker 1: and that's the thing that just like light bulb went

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Speaker 1: off for me, was the one manufacturer had had a

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Speaker 1: stuffed bear on the market, that it was kind of

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Speaker 1: fierce looking with the hump on its back and more

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Speaker 1: of an actual depiction of a representation of a bear

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Speaker 1: complete with a hook through its nose or a ring

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Speaker 1: through its nose and a chain did not sell very well.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, Well that was the thing is that

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Speaker 1: when you look pretty teddy bear, there are no you know,

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Speaker 1: I haven't done the historians have you. You just didn't

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Speaker 1: see bear toys and when you did, this was one

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Speaker 1: of the few examples where it was clearly a scary toy.

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Speaker 1: It was meant to frighten children, It wasn't meant to

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Speaker 1: comfort them. And even when the teddy bear starts taken off,

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Speaker 1: as often happens, the kind of old guard at the

380
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Speaker 1: toy industry is late to catch up. They can't get

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Speaker 1: their heads around why suddenly people think bears are adorable

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Speaker 1: and they're because they're just placing baby dolls. You know,

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Speaker 1: this is scandalous. So there's a lot of there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of backlash, you know, is what is the world

385
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Speaker 1: coming to? That these chips were giving these children bears?

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Speaker 1: And there were actually poems, epic poems about the fights

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Speaker 1: between Teddy Bears and dolls at Christmas time, you know,

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Speaker 1: and that the bears were slaying the dolls and things

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Speaker 1: like this. So that the more I think that there

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Speaker 1: was one called the Passing of the Dolls, which you

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Speaker 1: know it was, it was just slow to catch up

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Speaker 1: to the zeitgeist. Man, do you uh, can you explain

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Speaker 1: shifting baseline syndrome? Yeah? But can we talk about possums first,

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Speaker 1: because that's the take the footnote on the Teddy Bears story,

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Speaker 1: because you were saying that you don't often see possums

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Speaker 1: and the possums are not widely represented in children ship right,

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Speaker 1: and so meaning mobiles, pajamas, teddy Bears, not at all.

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Speaker 1: We do have a book, a children's book um that

399
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Speaker 1: was sent that that my brother and sister in law

400
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Speaker 1: sent us for our kids. It's the favorite of theirs

401
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Speaker 1: and it's a children's book that was written in the

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Speaker 1: sixties or seventies called Possum now to show kind of

403
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Speaker 1: like changing our changing attitudes towards what's appropriate for children.

404
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Speaker 1: Possum is largely about the whittling down of a large

405
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Speaker 1: family unit of possums where there's the mother has It

406
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Speaker 1: starts out the mother's in her den has a litter

407
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Speaker 1: of twelve or thirteen, and throughout her summer's travels, they

408
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Speaker 1: are uh whittled away throwing snakes, other things, snapping turtles,

409
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Speaker 1: cars to where there's just a couple of them. And

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Speaker 1: then one female survives and she gets bred up by

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Speaker 1: a male and goes back into the den to have more.

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Speaker 1: And it's just like the decimation of a possum family.

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Speaker 1: But it's like presented as a children's book. Doc, what's

414
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Speaker 1: the moral? What do you take away from it? Life

415
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: is fleeting, the just make more. Life is fleeting in

416
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Speaker 1: the natural world is at least as harrowing as ours.

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Speaker 1: That's a good book. So I volunteered to go last

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Speaker 1: year with my kids. In first grade, you had to

419
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Speaker 1: volunteer to go read a book, and my wife signed

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Speaker 1: me up to go read a story to the kids

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Speaker 1: in class. And I went and read Possum, and Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I felt like the kids like it.

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Speaker 1: I felt like that it made the teacher uncomfortable. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's interesting because that's the point you bring up in

425
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: the book and how you're saying how there's some research

426
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,679
Speaker 1: done with how kids react to like the brutality of

427
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 1: nature and right, and the young kids are kind of like, yeah,

428
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: like whatever, like protect me, and it's fine. I don't

429
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:45,919
Speaker 1: really care if all those things die, if if I

430
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:48,360
Speaker 1: can live on. And it's only as we get older

431
00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:51,640
Speaker 1: that we sort of don't like that stuff anymore, like

432
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 1: like how nature really. Yeah, there's there's a good research.

433
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this whole field of you know, human

434
00:24:57,080 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 1: of human dimensions of wildlife they started calling it. But

435
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: this Stephen Colored at Yale, I don't know if you

436
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: ever come across this stuff. I think he passed away now,

437
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: but yeah, in the seventies, he he kind of lad

438
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 1: this whole body of research to just look at how

439
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: do people think about animals? You know, what do we

440
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:17,639
Speaker 1: actually think? And the findings are are really counterintuitive and

441
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. I mean also to some of the

442
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,919
Speaker 1: questions they asked. I mean, he asked them to rate animals.

443
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: You know, do you like ladybugs more than cougars? And

444
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:28,439
Speaker 1: we know what's smarter, you know, like a lobster or

445
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,440
Speaker 1: a dolphin. You know, just things like they just gut instincts.

446
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: But one of the things that he he did was

447
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: he got very interested in how children think about animals,

448
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:39,360
Speaker 1: and they don't think about animals the way adults think

449
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:42,120
Speaker 1: about children thinking about animals. So he showed, for example,

450
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 1: that we we want to think of children as these innocent,

451
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: peaceful things, and you know that's probably why we give

452
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: them animals, which we also want to think of as innocent,

453
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: peaceful things. Um. But it turns out, you know, you

454
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:54,680
Speaker 1: ask a three year old or I don't know the

455
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 1: exact ages, but there's an age at which you ask

456
00:25:57,080 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: a small child do you want to camp around other people?

457
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:02,640
Speaker 1: Or do you want to camp among animals? And they're

458
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,479
Speaker 1: gonna say other people because they're afraid of animals obviously, right,

459
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:08,159
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the evolutionary and some in some sense,

460
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:10,680
Speaker 1: but we forget all that, right, we we put these

461
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:12,679
Speaker 1: presumptions on them. So yeah, they want to you know,

462
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: if a if a wolf I maybe getting the species,

463
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 1: it could have been a coyote. But you know, if

464
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,199
Speaker 1: if a wolf of kyote comes and kills the farmer's chickens,

465
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 1: what should the farmer do? Kill all the kill all

466
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:26,400
Speaker 1: the wolves? Right, that's the answer that the kids give you, um,

467
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: and and a slight few adults will give you well,

468
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely, But I think that we think that, you know,

469
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of conservation minded people, there's

470
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: there's this presumption that, you know, the rancher wants to

471
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: kill the wolf, he just has to get back in

472
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: touch with his childlike love of of all living creatures. Right. Yeah.

473
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,199
Speaker 1: What I like about what I like about kids. An

474
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: interesting thing about kids, and you see it, I see

475
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 1: it my own all the time, is the the hard

476
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:59,199
Speaker 1: wired things about animals that come from just our species history,

477
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: like just the innate distrust of serpents. Right, there's a

478
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 1: lot of things that kid will want to go up

479
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:10,400
Speaker 1: and grab, but there's something they just I'm sure there's

480
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: plenty of exceptions, but I find that kids are generally,

481
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:17,359
Speaker 1: without having someone discussed snakes with them, are generally like

482
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 1: repulsed by a snake. Well, I know that there's research

483
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: about that. I don't necessarily remember what it shows, but

484
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:27,880
Speaker 1: I do remember reading studies where they showed a kind

485
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 1: of laddering of fears of animals, so that you know,

486
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: younger kids are afraid of snakes. Thinking when you're on

487
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 1: the ground, when you're crawling, you know you have a

488
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 1: fear of snakes and maybe spiders and things like that,

489
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,199
Speaker 1: and then you're but you're not afraid of predator. You know,

490
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: you're not afraid of a bear because you're probably not

491
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: gonna have the opportunity to be put face to face

492
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: with the bear. And how are fears are? The sort

493
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: of innate fears that you're talking about seemed to be

494
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: triggered as you as you age, which is kind of

495
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: like a good operation, like crawling around on the ground

496
00:27:57,720 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: before you can walk. You're running into a rack and

497
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:03,399
Speaker 1: it's snakes, potentially poisonous. You'll find the kids are kind

498
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: of like they know, don't put that, that's right, and

499
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,399
Speaker 1: they're not and they're not afraid of guns, you know.

500
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: All right? Oh you know what, because because you were

501
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 1: feeling uneasy about it? Um, I want to get into

502
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 1: William T. Hornaday. But do you want to do that

503
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: first or do you want to explain this is nothing

504
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,199
Speaker 1: I've never heard by love it shifting baseline syndrome. I

505
00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: want you to talk to me about horn today. First,

506
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: tell the story of horn today. The story Okay, so um,

507
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: first off, we share and we share, uh a tendency

508
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: to still use the word buffalo. Okay, it's like a

509
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: type of dude to mean you say buffalo. There's the

510
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: type of dude who wants to sort of he feels

511
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: like he's engaging and who knows most about wildlife contest

512
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: where he'll like to point out that there's that it's

513
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: called the bison, as though you could know as much

514
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: as you know about it, like as though I could have,

515
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: for instance, written a whole book about the subject, but

516
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: not picked up. I'm the fact that the name now

517
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: is bison, Like that eluded me, and so someone needs

518
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: to make sure to get ahold of me, because having

519
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,959
Speaker 1: written several hundred pages about this animal's history from the

520
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: place to scene into the future, I had missed that fact.

521
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: So there's like a there's like a who knows most

522
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: e sort of thing about bison buffalo. But I still

523
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:31,360
Speaker 1: have a great affinity for the word buffalo. I noticed

524
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: that you use it well. Horny himself encouraged people. Am

525
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 1: I doing it? Who knows more? Thing? Right now? You

526
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: know Hornaday and one of his books he starts out

527
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, the technical name is bison, but

528
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it buffalo. And I believe Americans should

529
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: call it buffalo because that's the popular term, right now

530
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: and it shows sort of art. It gives us a

531
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: greater investment in the animal to go with the populace.

532
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: It's I have never in my life registered any confusion

533
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: where I had said to someone, hey, man, did you

534
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 1: notice all those buffalo like out that way? And they

535
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: registered confusion when they didn't know what I was talking about, Like, no,

536
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: I saw a bunch of bison, Yeah, you mean the

537
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: bison nickel, do you like? I've never had someone registered confusion.

538
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: So Hornaday now the last big at. I never know

539
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: where to begin this story, I said, it's it begins

540
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 1: in the begins in the place the scene. But at

541
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:33,480
Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War, there's two big herds

542
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: of buffalo. We're gonna go buffalo here, there's two big

543
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: herds buffalo left or people sort of perceived the remaining

544
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 1: animals as being in these two large hurts um there's

545
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: about fifteen million of them. There was what they called

546
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: the Southern herd, which was sort of you can kind

547
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 1: of imagine it being centered around Dodge City, Kansas and

548
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: uh down in the Texas panhandle, the southern plains or

549
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 1: south of the railroad. And then you have the Northern herd,

550
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 1: which you could kind of imagine that being centered around UM, say,

551
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: centered around Miles City, Montana, being up into up into Canada,

552
00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 1: south into Wyoming, and that was like the Northern herd.

553
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: There was two big groups. They kind of shot. They

554
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: killed the North the Southern herd off in eighteen They

555
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: kind of reached a packs of slaughter around eighteen eighteen

556
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: seventy two, and it was about a decade later that

557
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: the Northern Pacific Railroad made it to Miles City and

558
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: then they tapped out the last of the Northern herd

559
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 1: and in that you know, they killed a million or

560
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: two million or some number the hide hunters did, and

561
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: I think it was eighteen seventy three, right pretty quick

562
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: where they thought the last one. Hornaday, like William T.

563
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: Horned a collected specimens for the Smithsonian, was actually very

564
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: influential in the Smithsonian, proved wanted being very influential in

565
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 1: the Bronx Zoo. Was a specimen collector. Hornaday knew that

566
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 1: UM the animals around the way out. He was even

567
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 1: sending letters to people trying to find places where it

568
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 1: might be feasible to go get some specimens and determines

569
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 1: it the best chance would be to take the Northern

570
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: Pacific Railroad into Miles City. Now this is months months

571
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: after the hide hunters were still shooting him for commercial markets.

572
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: He's out just trying to find some and he goes

573
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: up into the big Sandy area north in the tad

574
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,719
Speaker 1: east of Miles City, I believe, and when going up

575
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: around the muscle shell, I think and uh, I was

576
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 1: just trying to shoot museum specimens. Um. The parts of

577
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: the story that I think are most interesting to me

578
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 1: was uh when I said that we would have told

579
00:32:55,880 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: the story differently, is I did don't really see one.

580
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: I didn't see a ton of irony there, which I

581
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:07,479
Speaker 1: feel that you did. Irony in the sense that he

582
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: was killing animals to preserve that. Yeah, I feel like

583
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: you were being a little judgmental of him, as though

584
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: he had sort of, um, who's the guy in the

585
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: Bible that sound his way to go kill a bunch

586
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: of people and get struck by Yeah, he has sort

587
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: of you kind of tell it as though he had

588
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: some sort of epiphany. You don't think he did well

589
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: And then maybe not in that moment. I think the

590
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: irony is that he himself went on to move from

591
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: taxidermy to conservation. I mean, I think in some ways

592
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: he invented, but he was already very he when he

593
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: went out to collect his specimens. It wasn't like, um,

594
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: he was like he was glad about this. No, he

595
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: was tortured by it. Yeah, But but I just got

596
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 1: the sense like um, that he kind of felt like,

597
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: oh my god, and then he's so shortsighted. Oh, I

598
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: see the distinction. Yes, I appreciate that's a that's a

599
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,000
Speaker 1: I get that critique. I guess he's like, there's I

600
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: feel that he was thinking, there's nothing anyone's gonna do.

601
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: There are guys out there right now, including Teddy Roosevelt,

602
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: trying to shoot him. At least we would have some

603
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: specimens for future generations to even understand this thing. Right,

604
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: So my question to you would be, and that's not

605
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: the part. There's two parts I thought were interesting. Was that,

606
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: um that he was wading through during this time, waiting,

607
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: almost literally wading through the carcasses and remains of the

608
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: hide hunters. And two, did he had this observation that

609
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: the people in Miles City when he later wrote about

610
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 1: this experience, that the people in Miles City the hide hunters.

611
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: We're waiting in Miles City, having no idea what they

612
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 1: had done, and that they were just waiting there for

613
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: the next big herd to show up. And over time,

614
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: just while waiting for the next big herd that they

615
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: thought would come out of Canada, some magical thing would

616
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: happen where a million more would would flow through town.

617
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 1: They would get back to their business just kind of

618
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: gradually got into being saloon keepers or ranchers, and only

619
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: gradually over the years realized that like, oh my god,

620
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 1: we killed them all, that there was no comprehension of

621
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:41,879
Speaker 1: the finiteness of that resource. Like that's important to me

622
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: because I feel that people oftentimes go and look at

623
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: the hide hunters and find a sort of like there

624
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 1: was maliciousness and greed, for sure, but there was also

625
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: just a general like not understanding what you were doing

626
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 1: going on. And I feel that relative to the people

627
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: who were at actually out doing this, Hornaday was went

628
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:08,359
Speaker 1: into it a very enlightened individual, not just like yet

629
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: another asshole laying on yet another layer of pathology onto

630
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 1: this whole problem. Yeah, I agree, and I'm I regret

631
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 1: that you felt that I was lumping him in. I mean,

632
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: if that is if that's what you took away from it.

633
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: Then I can see that that might be I might

634
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: have been reading in heavy but now go ahead like maybe, yeah, well,

635
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think he was incredibly enlightened

636
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: relative to the to the thinking of his day. And

637
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:39,279
Speaker 1: I think that is what I wanted to call attention to,

638
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: is what did enlightenment look like in that context? Right?

639
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: I think that a big takeaway I I had from

640
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: from looking at a lot of the issues in the

641
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: book was the arbitrary nous with which people often decide

642
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: what is possible and what is impossible? Bowl Right, he

643
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 1: decided that all that was possible was to shoot a

644
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: dozen buffalo and stuff them, and that was going to

645
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,320
Speaker 1: be how he preserved the species. He later proved himself

646
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: wrong very quickly, you know, within a fifteen years, by

647
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: actually setting up captive breeding programs, reintroduced producing you know

648
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: what is maybe one of the first you know, reintroduction

649
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: programs from a captive breeding program that he was doing

650
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: at the Bronx Zoo. And that's an interesting story that

651
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: people don't know. Yeah, it got so bad that day

652
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: later to repopulate the West, we're bringing animals from the

653
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,800
Speaker 1: Bronx Zoo back west by Rail. Yes, and he was

654
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: probably the major force in that project. So I think

655
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 1: it's interesting that the William Temple Hornaday of could probably

656
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:58,240
Speaker 1: could look back on the William Hornaday of eighteen nineties

657
00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: something and say, and that guy didn't really even understand

658
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:04,359
Speaker 1: what was possible the same way that And that's how

659
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: I'm looking at him, you know, because you kind of

660
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: get into a similar thing about polar bears, not similar,

661
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: but another thing of like of people sort of feeling

662
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: there at the end of something and trying to prevent

663
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah, for a species. I think that we're

664
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 1: quick to I think the polar bears is get example.

665
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 1: I think that we're quick to when we don't know

666
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: the future, fill it in with ah negative assumptions, right,

667
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: and that that was what Hornday is doing. I think that.

668
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,359
Speaker 1: I guess I don't necessarily see the parallel of polar bears.

669
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:41,920
Speaker 1: Do you want to do you want to frame that

670
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: a little bit better? Well, yeah, that right now it's

671
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,799
Speaker 1: not a perfect parallel. But the effort that you're talking about,

672
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 1: like the effort that people go through on the Hudson's

673
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 1: Bay to move polar bears out of the troubled path. Well,

674
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 1: does mean like, um, like extraordinary things we do for

675
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: beleaguered species. Yeah, that was the That was what got

676
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: me going on the book, just realizing the degree to

677
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: which these animals are being managed. You know, I talked

678
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: about uh sort of stage managing a lot of the species.

679
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:28,840
Speaker 1: You know that that were you know, a lot of

680
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: endangered species are being captively bred, reintroduced into ecosystems that

681
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: were also engineering for, you know, so that they can

682
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 1: thrive in them. So all this work is being done

683
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:45,320
Speaker 1: on their behalf. Every part of the equation is being micromanaged. Um.

684
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: The example with the sea turtles, Yeah, yeah, I mean

685
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:51,240
Speaker 1: that was a story I did for the Times magazine

686
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: when during the Gulf oil spill. You know, I went

687
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: down and and they were digging up I don't know

688
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:58,480
Speaker 1: if you guys remember there is a big news story

689
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: at the time, but the government is digging up sea

690
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 1: turtle nests on the Gulf coast, shipping the egg driving

691
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 1: the eggs in a FedEx truck to the East coast

692
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: of Florida to Atlantic coast of Florida, and reburying the

693
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were reburying them or just

694
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: letting them hatch and putting the hatchlings out in the

695
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: water because they didn't want the turtle hatchlings in the

696
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 1: Gulf Coast to be swimming directly into the spill. And

697
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: I went down to Alabama and hung out with this UH,

698
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 1: a group of mostly retired folks who had been for

699
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,879
Speaker 1: years had just been walking around the beach barricading the

700
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 1: nests so that people wouldn't trample them or you know,

701
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: accidentally dig them up to protect them. And then what

702
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 1: they would do is when they were getting close to hatching,

703
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: they would just camp out on the beach around the nests.

704
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: And when the turtle hatchlings started to boil out of

705
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:52,399
Speaker 1: the sand, since they wouldn't want them going away from

706
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 1: the water toward the artificial light, because their their instinct

707
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:57,799
Speaker 1: is to go toward the light UH, and they often

708
00:40:57,840 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: get stranded in parking lots and things they go on

709
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. They wanted him go into the ocean,

710
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: so they would sit around the nest. When the hatchling

711
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 1: start coming up, they would dig a trench to funnel

712
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: them towards the ocean. So they had no other options

713
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: but to go right into the ocean and then they

714
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: would stand with tarps around the trench to block the light,

715
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: so that basically they're just escorting them. I mean they

716
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: could have just dug them up and carried them out,

717
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: and sometimes they had to do that too, but they

718
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:26,360
Speaker 1: would stay up all night waiting for these hatchlings. I

719
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: mean that is people's lives. An ordinate amount of their

720
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: time is being spent to get this these nests. And

721
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: during the spill, it turns out they were the experts

722
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: that the the government had to call on. They were

723
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:39,439
Speaker 1: the people with the relevant experience who could go dig

724
00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: up these It was sort of like this Armageddon situation,

725
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 1: you know, like the movie army Ageddon and that's the

726
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: phone call of your lifetime. Oh they were so psycked,

727
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: you know. And they were and they were also I

728
00:41:50,520 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: don't want to say this with a tone of uh,

729
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: you know, I want to judge them harshly for it.

730
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing. They were let's just say

731
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: they were. They were feeling good about themselves, you know,

732
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 1: they were telling people what to do. They knew they

733
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: were the experts. This was their moment and they weren't

734
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 1: gonna let anyone funk with their turtles and it was

735
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: great to see, you know, it was great to see

736
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,320
Speaker 1: someone who just had this sort of any hobby who's

737
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: you know, kids and nephews and nieces probably tease them about.

738
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:19,640
Speaker 1: You know, you get up every morning and you walk

739
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: on the beach looking for turtle tracks, you know, and uh,

740
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: you know these people they had turtles painted on their

741
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:28,800
Speaker 1: their cars and turtles hanging from their rear view mirrors,

742
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: and their whole life had been about sea turtles and

743
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: now they were stepping in to save this uh, this

744
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: generation of turtles. It was amazing. Yeah, we like in

745
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: the hunting world, you're surrounded by that um all the time.

746
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: With the way that people like people who kind of

747
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: pulled off the turkey reintroduction and recovery and even then,

748
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: so I know people who have like devoted their lives,

749
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: who have devoted their their life to elk, or people

750
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: who devote their life to quail. For people dev over

751
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: their life to turkey. And there I'm always like, I

752
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 1: just understand it right because I see like what it

753
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: was born of. But it is I look at the

754
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:10,640
Speaker 1: turtle thing and I'm like, man, and those people will

755
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,239
Speaker 1: do it without even the promise of having turtle soup.

756
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: It's not even part of the equation. M R. Yeah,

757
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 1: And so what is that value? I mean, that's that's

758
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,759
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm interested in, is when the value of

759
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: the animals gets unmoored from any practical anything. Um, it's

760
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 1: because a guy would be like, man, I've always just

761
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: dreamed of hunting turkeys, so I got real involved and

762
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: bringing turkeys back to my state. But for a turtle guy,

763
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,279
Speaker 1: it's just that turtle hits the water and you will

764
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: never lay eyes on it again. And I agree with you.

765
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:47,879
Speaker 1: The turkey guy on an intuitive level makes a lot

766
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: more sense to me. And I think that's why I'm

767
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: drawn to figure out the other side of it, the

768
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: other part of it. Okay, I was gonna have you.

769
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 1: I can't decide now that's the only talking about shifting

770
00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: baseline syndrome. And oh the term that you've been talking

771
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: about and also want to talk about. I want you

772
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: to touch on conservation reliance of species, but I also

773
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: want to talk about pedals. The bear from your perspective

774
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: is do you see a good order to do that? Uh? Well,

775
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: conservation reliance, I think we can get through pretty quickly.

776
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:17,480
Speaker 1: I mean, that's basically just what I was talking about.

777
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: That's the technical term for the idea that it's going

778
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: to take intensive management on the part of humans to

779
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: keep in endangered species alive. So there was a study

780
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: that came out that introduced this term, I believe in

781
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:36,359
Speaker 1: early two thousand's by a guy named Mike scot who

782
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 1: at the time I was maybe with Fish and Wildlife

783
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 1: some federal agency, and uh, he came up with this

784
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:47,920
Speaker 1: term conservation reliance because they looked at every species on

785
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:51,799
Speaker 1: the dangered species list, and they looked at what, you know,

786
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 1: tried to forecast what outcomes you know are possible, and

787
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: basically realized that some huge percentage something in the eighties,

788
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: I believe just eighty something percent of these species are

789
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: going to be reliant on human intervention for the foreseeqable future.

790
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that, you know, it could just

791
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: be getting weeds out of their ecosystem so that the

792
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: whatever you know, plant they need is there um or

793
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: it could be a much more intensive captive breeding type

794
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 1: of thing, but that the equilibrium in which these species

795
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 1: evolved has been disrupted to such an extent that we're

796
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,919
Speaker 1: always going to be like I'm saying, stage managing. Yeah,

797
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 1: like it would be fair to say you could. You

798
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: can probably name a bunch because your research. But the

799
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: California condor lives in a state of conservation reliance absolutely,

800
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:42,319
Speaker 1: and that that goes from everything from you know, I

801
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: believe they're still captively breeding them, but they're definitely, I mean,

802
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 1: they teach them not to perch on power lines. You know,

803
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: they have to train them to live in the world

804
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: where they have to live. Now, Um, exactly do you

805
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 1: think of other ones? Sure? I mean the one I

806
00:45:57,360 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 1: write about in the book is this butterfly species and

807
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: Lang's metal more arc where it's uh, you know, been

808
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 1: winnowed down to such an extent where they go out

809
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: they collect butterfly eggs off leaves of its host plant.

810
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: They take it to a lab in southern California, is

811
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: outside San Francisco. They take it to a lab in

812
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 1: southern California. They breathed them there, they let the eggs hatch,

813
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 1: they and then they put the larva back on the plant.

814
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: Then they go back collect some of the live butterflies,

815
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: bring them back to the lab, have them uh breed,

816
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,799
Speaker 1: and do the whole process all over again. Meanwhile, they've

817
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: got a full time fish and Wildlife service employer, at

818
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 1: least did it as a couple of years ago. I

819
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: know whose job was to groom the ecosystem. He was

820
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: basically like a caretaker for the butterfly's property, and he

821
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: was doing all sorts of invasive controls to make sure

822
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: that that host plant could get a footing on the

823
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 1: sand dunes where it lives. So that's a pretty extreme

824
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: case I think, where every part of what used to

825
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: be a natural process has to be done by hand,

826
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: by human hand. Yeah, there's a certain type of person

827
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: who looks at that and they feel like an anger

828
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:03,279
Speaker 1: towards the species. Yeah. I think there's part of that

829
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: in me, honestly. I mean I think that's why I

830
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 1: was so wrapped up in this, because I couldn't see

831
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 1: my way through to any you know, discernible, clear, defensible position. Yeah.

832
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:19,440
Speaker 1: I I've always lived, or I just live with this

833
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: sense that it's deeply immoral two um, to allow species

834
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: to go extinct because of our because of our influence,

835
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:40,319
Speaker 1: our influences on the environment. To be like to be

836
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: like there there's parts of creation, whether you take that

837
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 1: in a religious way or in just like an ecological way,

838
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: that there's parts of creation that we've decided are um

839
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 1: that we can just throw away or allowed to be

840
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: thrown away because we don't want to be inconvenience by it.

841
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 1: I feel like if we've a I that if we're there,

842
00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: if we've arrived at that point, we really don't have

843
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 1: any claimed any kind of moral legitimacy anymore. Do you

844
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: think we're not at that point? I don't think a

845
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: lot of people at that point. The person I run

846
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: into on this, I mean, yeah, plenty of people are

847
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: at that point, and I think they don't have any

848
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 1: kind of claimed moral legitimacy either. Is uh we started

849
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 1: talking about well like a migration corrid or you know,

850
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 1: you have to be great if you didn't graze that

851
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 1: down to nothing. It would be better if you uh

852
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,840
Speaker 1: had you know, a clean single top strand with no

853
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: barbs on it, on your barbed wire fans be better

854
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: if there was no barbed wire fans um. And you

855
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:51,359
Speaker 1: always hit this point where well where does it end?

856
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: You know? And that's the person on these when we

857
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:58,719
Speaker 1: get into these arguments and talks on this subject, that's

858
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: the person always shows up like, yeah, but how far

859
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: are you gonna take on well, like I can't I

860
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: put you know demmit or I had the no light

861
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: ordinance on my beach front house. So okay, I did that.

862
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 1: But you know you're now you're asking me to you know,

863
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: not you know, use my back porch at all, or

864
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 1: you know where does it end? Yeah, that's the thing

865
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:27,919
Speaker 1: that people like, let's run this out to the point

866
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:30,920
Speaker 1: where everyone will see the absurdity of yes and yeah.

867
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: And there's another thing about it, Like in the case

868
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:36,480
Speaker 1: of the Condor, there's a there's an interesting argents we

869
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 1: made that the Condor could be considered to be one

870
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: of the Pleistocene extinctions. It just took a long time

871
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 1: to arrive there. So at the Pleistocene Holla scene transition,

872
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: when we lost mastodons, Woolleye mams, giant ground slaw short

873
00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:03,320
Speaker 1: faced bears, we lost all these animals, um and a

874
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,320
Speaker 1: sort of sis in on what what did it? Because

875
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: it wasn't human caused. It's mysterious some combination of some

876
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:17,440
Speaker 1: combination of climate change at the at the end of

877
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: the last Ice Age, some combination of climate change influence

878
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: from uh successional waves of humans coming from Asia, you know,

879
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: Ice Age hunters um. Possibly disease issues no one really understand.

880
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: Possibly there's this the idea that never really dies, whatever

881
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: really gets going of um some like cosmic disturbances that

882
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 1: caused the extinctions. But you have this big gass bird

883
00:50:54,719 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: that's a feeds on carrion, and whether you know lead

884
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:05,319
Speaker 1: ammo or not, or power lines are not, you'd have

885
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 1: just seen that bird fizzle out the way that many,

886
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: many dozens of other species fizzled out at the end

887
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: of the places scene because they just took a long

888
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: time to happen. They were all over the I believe,

889
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: all over the continent, right and they just the last

890
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 1: remaining ones just happened to be the ones at the

891
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 1: very western edge. Because if they found a way to

892
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: begin that, they found a way to kind of exploit

893
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,759
Speaker 1: marine map dead marine mammals, and then people will be like,

894
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 1: there's nothing you were gonna do, or it was just

895
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 1: gonna happen, the same way if we had caught the

896
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: tail end of some other the end of the mammoths

897
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: and we grappled and be like, wow, why what do

898
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: we do when maybe it was just gonna happen. Yeah,

899
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 1: But how do you guys answer that because it's like, okay,

900
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: well who gets to choose? Are you Steve, Rinella or John.

901
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 1: I am not going to be the guy that signs

902
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 1: the paper that says let it go for all humanity

903
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: we just stopped right now. I will not I will

904
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: not be the guy that says it all right, So

905
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: I s want to touch on pebbles. I want to

906
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:10,799
Speaker 1: touch on giant sequoias in the Karl Marx Tree. Want

907
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:14,760
Speaker 1: to talk about uh pedal. I already said pedals shifting

908
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:18,799
Speaker 1: baseline syndrome, right, because it's like an important part of

909
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: your book. Yeah, I think at this point it's important

910
00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:23,320
Speaker 1: part of my life. I think it really has colored

911
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:25,880
Speaker 1: the way I think about a lot of things. Uh

912
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 1: shifting baseline syndrome. I wanted her up Tuesday. This is

913
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: all in. Everything we've covered mostly so far is in.

914
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: It's in wild Ones. Yeah, we're going we're going through

915
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: the book, John wu Allams wild Ones still available, still available,

916
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:46,840
Speaker 1: uh shifting baseline syndrome. So yeah, this is the idea

917
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: I stumbled on when I was actually writing about that

918
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 1: that butterfly, and I find that it's something that gives

919
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: a name to a lot of phenomenon that we come

920
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: across all the time. Shifting baseline syndrome was the phrase

921
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: was coined by a marine fisheries scientist named Daniel Pauly

922
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 1: Ah in the nineties, and what he was what he

923
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: realized was that people in his field, we're coming in

924
00:53:19,080 --> 00:53:23,760
Speaker 1: and and spending their careers documenting the crash of different

925
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 1: fish species. So they were looking at everything happening in

926
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:35,400
Speaker 1: the ocean from the time they started their career to

927
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:38,839
Speaker 1: the time they retired more. I mean, obviously they knew

928
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 1: more than that, but this was their focus. And then

929
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,920
Speaker 1: the next generation of academics would come along or scientists

930
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: would come along, and they would start basically with a

931
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: clean slate intellectually, so they would start documenting the decline

932
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:59,680
Speaker 1: of fish species further. But because we're always looking at

933
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 1: the world through this window of the present, we never

934
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:08,439
Speaker 1: really see that I should start that all over again.

935
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this idea very I'm tracking. I'm tracking,

936
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: but I already understand it again. Shifting baseline syndrome was

937
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: a phrase coined by Daniel Polly, who's a fisheries scientist.

938
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:26,319
Speaker 1: Don't get discouraged, man, discourage it's a discouraging idea. I

939
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:31,319
Speaker 1: guess the idea basically that Uh, he was noticing that

940
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:35,360
Speaker 1: people were documenting the crash of marine species, but no

941
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,879
Speaker 1: one was really putting together that the crashes that they

942
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: were or the declines that they were documented within their

943
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:45,240
Speaker 1: own careers, were actually just slivers on a much longer

944
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: graph of time, so that each time a new generation

945
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: would come along, they would accept the condition in which

946
00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 1: they were looking at the ocean as normal, and they

947
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 1: would document the decline relative to that normal. But if

948
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 1: you zoom out and you look at you know, instead

949
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: of a fifty years span or or thirty year span,

950
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 1: you look at a hundred years span or tuner year span,

951
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:09,080
Speaker 1: you see a much steeper decline, So that these little

952
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: line graphs that we're drawing and and freaking out about

953
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:16,719
Speaker 1: are actually just slivers of this much much bigger graph. UM.

954
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:19,400
Speaker 1: And I think that that there's another term for pretty

955
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 1: much the same phenomenon. UH. Peter Khan is a psychologist

956
00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:25,239
Speaker 1: at the University of Washington. Around the same time, he

957
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 1: coined the term environmental generational amnesia, which actually think is

958
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 1: a cooler term, didn't catch on quite as much, but

959
00:55:33,680 --> 00:55:36,319
Speaker 1: UH and that was more widely applicable, so He would

960
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: go to kids in Houston and he would say, you

961
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:41,359
Speaker 1: know who live among oil refiners And he would say,

962
00:55:41,480 --> 00:55:44,399
Speaker 1: do you think your neighborhoods polluted? They say no, right,

963
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,960
Speaker 1: because that's the you know, we just kind of assume

964
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: it's normal and whatever we inherit, it's normal. Uh. And

965
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:54,279
Speaker 1: so we watch all this stuff happen, and you know,

966
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: people get old and grumpy and talk about how it

967
00:55:56,480 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 1: used to be. But of course when they were kids,

968
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:01,920
Speaker 1: they were grump people you know who are old at

969
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: that time talking about how it used to be a

970
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: generation before that. And I think this is like a

971
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: really important thing to recognize. And then having recognized it,

972
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:13,400
Speaker 1: I don't know what the funk to do about it

973
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 1: because it just screws me up. I still cannot what

974
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 1: do you do with this information? What do you do

975
00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:23,680
Speaker 1: with the information that your perspective is sort of inherently flawed.

976
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:26,400
Speaker 1: I struggle with it all the time, and reading that

977
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 1: term like I've been. My mom still lives in the

978
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 1: house where I was brought up in, you know, born

979
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: and on, and it's on a lake. So I've been

980
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:38,800
Speaker 1: a very careful observer of that lake for forty three years.

981
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: And yes, the Eden, Eden for that lake is when

982
00:56:44,719 --> 00:56:46,759
Speaker 1: I was five, and first I was able to take

983
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:51,640
Speaker 1: it in. But I do oftentimes wonder about like the

984
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: time machine thing. It wouldn't be my first pick, but

985
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:57,879
Speaker 1: if I had ten picks with a time machine, one

986
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:04,880
Speaker 1: stop would be that lake in pre human times, to

987
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 1: go like, so what is the actual baseline? But you're right,

988
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: I in my mind it was like that lake's history

989
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: began when I first gazed upon it, and everything since then.

990
00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 1: And now my child, my boy, who fishes that lake

991
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: a few days every year, will someday have it be

992
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: that that moment when I first took him there to

993
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: fish blue Girls was Eden, and everything will just be

994
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 1: whatever has slipped from that point, And my story is

995
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: about what it was like. He won't. He'll be able

996
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: to understand that, but it won't factor into his own

997
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:46,760
Speaker 1: monitoring of its decline, right, and which it will be

998
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: that lake was born on that day? And which baseline?

999
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,320
Speaker 1: Do you attach the legitimacy too? Because you could dial

1000
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: up your time machine and go back to whatever year.

1001
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: I tend to think of things as being for me,

1002
00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: just because it allows me to like begin to sort

1003
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 1: of put my arms around things I tend to when

1004
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: thinking about wild life in America, the arrival of human

1005
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: beings tends to be where I where this For me,

1006
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:18,920
Speaker 1: that's where the story begins. And I agree with you,

1007
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:21,160
Speaker 1: I think instincially that makes a lot of sense. But

1008
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:25,520
Speaker 1: because some people will be in Wyoming and they'll be

1009
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:29,320
Speaker 1: thinking about when it was the Great Inland Sea whose

1010
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:33,919
Speaker 1: shorelines were populated by dinosaurs, But I don't care about that.

1011
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: I automatically go to what was it like fourteen thousand

1012
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:40,440
Speaker 1: years ago for whatever reason, just because in our effort

1013
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: to understand and make sense of and begin having a conversation,

1014
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: that's just where I jump. But that basically invalidates our

1015
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: presence here. That says that our goal as responsible citizens

1016
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 1: of these ecosystems is to have zero is to be

1017
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:56,920
Speaker 1: as if we were not here, that they would be

1018
00:58:56,960 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 1: repopulated with mammoth. Yes, and yeah, I think you're setting

1019
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:05,000
Speaker 1: yourself up for failure. But yeah, it's it's and it's

1020
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 1: just where. And it's a problem thinking ahead too, right,

1021
00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: it's a problem thinking you know. Use the example in

1022
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:13,440
Speaker 1: the book is the bald eagle recovery. Right, you know

1023
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: that when when the bald eagles were delisted as in

1024
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:20,120
Speaker 1: danger species. There was a lot of triumphant talk about

1025
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: how many you know bald eagles were. Of course it

1026
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:24,760
Speaker 1: was just a minor fraction of the number of bald

1027
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:27,760
Speaker 1: eagles that there were, you know, at well, for example,

1028
00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:30,520
Speaker 1: at your baseline, right, um, And so when do you

1029
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:33,920
Speaker 1: know how many? Benjamin Franklin was criticizing that as being

1030
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 1: scummy exactly, So, how many are there supposed to be? Right?

1031
00:59:37,360 --> 00:59:39,720
Speaker 1: How do we know if we've succeeded, and how do

1032
00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: we know if we failed? If we can't agree on

1033
00:59:42,400 --> 00:59:45,240
Speaker 1: what the legitimate you know, what the should be of

1034
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:50,240
Speaker 1: the equation is. I don't know, but you can find

1035
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: out because we're having this conversation all the time right now.

1036
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:56,040
Speaker 1: We're engaged in it around the idea of wolves and

1037
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: grizzlies in the lower forty eight how many like what

1038
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:06,560
Speaker 1: could like the what is the most reasonable picture of

1039
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 1: recovery based on the fact that there's this thing we

1040
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:12,280
Speaker 1: have to deal with called reality? Well, how many do

1041
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:14,920
Speaker 1: we want? That's the question I like to ask, you know,

1042
01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 1: and I think that's a much more complicated question. I mean,

1043
01:00:18,880 --> 01:00:21,560
Speaker 1: a lot of the conservation, I mean, there's a lot

1044
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:25,880
Speaker 1: of cases of species that have rebounded only to be

1045
01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:30,959
Speaker 1: greeted by distaste or take take the case, go ahead,

1046
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: No I can say, like, yeah, man, it quickly swings

1047
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: that pendulum to where like oh Canada geese, Candida GeSe,

1048
01:00:38,480 --> 01:00:41,840
Speaker 1: is you know, saving them? And now like you can't

1049
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:44,960
Speaker 1: find a person probably like walking in our country that

1050
01:00:45,080 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 1: can even remember when people were trying to save that bird. Yeah,

1051
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Things that we've recovered, like there

1052
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:55,800
Speaker 1: are states who are doing active reintroductions of deer, white

1053
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:59,880
Speaker 1: tailed deer. So now the new villain is the aggressive turkey.

1054
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 1: Yeah I read that keeping people from getting out of

1055
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: their cars, right, these are And meanwhile we had to

1056
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: go through extraordinary measures to recover the species. And now

1057
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: it's like these dumb, violent birds preventing me from getting

1058
01:01:16,040 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: in and out of my car. And now you've got

1059
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:21,920
Speaker 1: the de extinction people you know that. Oh yeah, they

1060
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 1: want to bring back passenger pigeons. Well I don't think

1061
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:29,200
Speaker 1: American civilization is ready for swarms of passenger pigeons. They're

1062
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: gonna block out the sun. Yeah, can you refer our

1063
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: listeners back to our episode. You look at what episode

1064
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:37,200
Speaker 1: we did with the ancient DNA expert Dr beast Shapiro

1065
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: about de extinction can just be good both the goose

1066
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 1: and and the turkey. I mean how they're significant portion

1067
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: portions of our population that if you were to mention

1068
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 1: that species to them, they'd be like, Oh, the goddamn

1069
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: things that ship all over my lawn scratch up my car.

1070
01:01:57,120 --> 01:02:00,880
Speaker 1: They have no reference of those anim roles anywhere other

1071
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:02,960
Speaker 1: than that. It's like I live on a golf course

1072
01:02:03,600 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: and I have to step in their poop every day.

1073
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:11,080
Speaker 1: I hate those things very shortsighted. Or yeah, looking at

1074
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:12,560
Speaker 1: it from the perspective of your own lifetime, do you

1075
01:02:12,560 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 1: find the number? Episode seventy five, we explore date the

1076
01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: extinction with a professor and we cover just that topic

1077
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: about what it would really be like to have, you know,

1078
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:26,000
Speaker 1: billions of passenger pisness back again, and why she thinks

1079
01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: you don't really need to worry about it too much. Um,

1080
01:02:29,600 --> 01:02:32,000
Speaker 1: here's another version of the here's another version of how

1081
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 1: much's too many? And what does recovery look like? So

1082
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 1: we've got it now, we're up to over a half

1083
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:42,880
Speaker 1: million buffalo and so people say, like, what does recovery

1084
01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:44,760
Speaker 1: look like? And they say, there's two types of recovery.

1085
01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 1: There's dealing with its genetic extinction, which we've dealt with.

1086
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: It's no longer at risk of genetic extinction, but it's

1087
01:02:55,720 --> 01:02:59,560
Speaker 1: there's still a risk of ecological extinction because of the

1088
01:02:59,720 --> 01:03:05,080
Speaker 1: half million that we have are privately owned, are managed

1089
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:09,120
Speaker 1: as livestock, so there's no risk of losing the animal.

1090
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: But what we've lost is the species interaction, the species

1091
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: native interaction with the landscape. So we haven't like that

1092
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 1: won't maybe won't be recovered or will recover it, and

1093
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:23,800
Speaker 1: just small little spots where we can kind of replicate

1094
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: what the animal was beyond just it's it's genetic makeup,

1095
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:33,080
Speaker 1: how it influenced and was influenced and was influenced by

1096
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:37,320
Speaker 1: the landscape on which it lived. Um, but yeah, it's

1097
01:03:37,360 --> 01:03:42,320
Speaker 1: going on all the time. Um, what should the world

1098
01:03:42,320 --> 01:03:46,160
Speaker 1: look like? I don't know. I mean I think that

1099
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 1: that gets back to your what you're saying before about

1100
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:51,960
Speaker 1: you know, when do we give up on something because

1101
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:55,560
Speaker 1: it's inconvenient. Well, the reason why it's often perceived as

1102
01:03:55,600 --> 01:03:59,800
Speaker 1: any convenient is because the context in which it existed

1103
01:03:59,880 --> 01:04:02,080
Speaker 1: is gone, you know, I mean I think it the

1104
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:06,200
Speaker 1: questions start to parallel, like palliative care questions, you know,

1105
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:09,320
Speaker 1: and the kind of questions you know, when what is

1106
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:12,200
Speaker 1: the it's not necessarily quality of life. I'm not gonna

1107
01:04:12,200 --> 01:04:14,720
Speaker 1: get into the emotional well being of the animals, but

1108
01:04:15,120 --> 01:04:18,840
Speaker 1: you know, in some sense, these these critters become invasive

1109
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:21,320
Speaker 1: species in their own ecosystem. You know, they're just not

1110
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:23,360
Speaker 1: locked in in the way that they used to be.

1111
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 1: And I don't have an answer for that. I don't

1112
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:28,840
Speaker 1: know when it's not worth preserving them. Yeah, it's like

1113
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 1: preserve it's like keeping a person alive in a vegetative state. Yeah.

1114
01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: What what is your prime example of a native species

1115
01:04:37,200 --> 01:04:41,800
Speaker 1: becoming an invasive species in their own ecosystem. Well, I

1116
01:04:41,840 --> 01:04:45,120
Speaker 1: think that that butterfly goes goes a long way to explain.

1117
01:04:45,120 --> 01:04:48,360
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a sand dune ecosystem about an

1118
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: hour used of San Francisco called the Antioch Dunes that

1119
01:04:52,320 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 1: very quickly became ah leveled after the I think the

1120
01:04:57,960 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: big burst was after the nine earthquake in San Francisco

1121
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:03,840
Speaker 1: when they were mining the dunes for bricks. But just

1122
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:08,480
Speaker 1: wave after wave of exploitation of that resource until literally,

1123
01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:11,080
Speaker 1: you know, you could see talking about shifting. Basically you

1124
01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:14,280
Speaker 1: could actually see you know, the baseline of the dune,

1125
01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:17,680
Speaker 1: you know, lowering um when you look at when you

1126
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:21,120
Speaker 1: look at photographs um and it it stopped being a

1127
01:05:21,160 --> 01:05:24,680
Speaker 1: dune ecosystem. The sand stopped shifting, Uh, you know, trees

1128
01:05:24,800 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: took root. It became a you know, a savanna, and

1129
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:30,960
Speaker 1: it became like a you know, there's oak trees growing

1130
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:33,880
Speaker 1: there now. So to come back and say we want

1131
01:05:33,920 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 1: to preserve this butterfly that is used to living on

1132
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:40,640
Speaker 1: a you know, a particular kind of plant that grows

1133
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:43,440
Speaker 1: in the sand dune ecosystem, you've got to do a

1134
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:46,080
Speaker 1: lot of work to the ground before you start putting

1135
01:05:46,080 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 1: the butterfly back. And I mean, I think the condor

1136
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 1: in some sense too, as you're talking about like the

1137
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:57,200
Speaker 1: you know, the entire matrix of circumstances that allowed it

1138
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:00,720
Speaker 1: to evolve, it's just not really there. It's just hanging

1139
01:06:00,760 --> 01:06:03,360
Speaker 1: onto this because it learned to probably eat you know,

1140
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: marine mammal carcasses and things like that, so it adapted

1141
01:06:05,720 --> 01:06:08,200
Speaker 1: a little bit. But it's not behaving the same way

1142
01:06:08,240 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 1: that a condor would have in the past. And you know,

1143
01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:14,360
Speaker 1: I'm not judging it, but it's something about its condor

1144
01:06:14,480 --> 01:06:18,520
Speaker 1: nest is gone. Yeah, yeah, And I don't know. I mean,

1145
01:06:18,520 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: I just think that the point I got to, you know, basically,

1146
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 1: and I'm surprised that some people find this discouraging because

1147
01:06:25,640 --> 01:06:27,360
Speaker 1: I find it really encouraging. Is the point I got

1148
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:31,160
Speaker 1: to is just a kind of deep acceptance of the

1149
01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:34,240
Speaker 1: fact that these questions are not going to be resolved.

1150
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:38,320
Speaker 1: That being as powerful as species as we are and

1151
01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:40,640
Speaker 1: trying to exist in a world that's as complicated as

1152
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: it is is gonna mean that we're creating all this

1153
01:06:43,040 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 1: friction around us all the time, and it's kind of amazing.

1154
01:06:46,680 --> 01:06:50,560
Speaker 1: We feel somewhat compelled to even be responsible to the

1155
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:54,040
Speaker 1: rest of the planet and to try to minimize that

1156
01:06:54,040 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: that friction or at least you know, put back together

1157
01:06:56,640 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 1: whatever we're breaking as we kind of trundle around. So

1158
01:07:00,440 --> 01:07:03,560
Speaker 1: I don't have any fantasy, you know, this whole idea

1159
01:07:03,600 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 1: that there's some hope that if we just all start,

1160
01:07:06,640 --> 01:07:09,360
Speaker 1: you know, stop drinking bottle water or whatever it is,

1161
01:07:09,440 --> 01:07:11,680
Speaker 1: or you know, driving prius, is that suddenly the Earth

1162
01:07:11,760 --> 01:07:14,760
Speaker 1: is going to be restored to this beautiful equilibrium and

1163
01:07:14,800 --> 01:07:17,160
Speaker 1: we won't have to think about these things anymore. I

1164
01:07:17,200 --> 01:07:19,520
Speaker 1: think is is sort of ludicrous. And I think that

1165
01:07:19,600 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: what we need to be doing is figuring out how

1166
01:07:21,160 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 1: to exist in this tussle of um priorities and clumsiness

1167
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: and uh, just kind of hashing it out. It's just

1168
01:07:28,040 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 1: like a it's like a brawl, you know. We just

1169
01:07:29,800 --> 01:07:32,520
Speaker 1: gotta be in there swinging away trying to fix all

1170
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 1: this stuff because we're going to be constantly destroying it

1171
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 1: all the time. Two, there's a quote you have for

1172
01:07:37,920 --> 01:07:41,160
Speaker 1: another piece you wrote that I wrote down the future

1173
01:07:41,240 --> 01:07:45,760
Speaker 1: is always somebody else's problem. It will very likely feel

1174
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 1: as authentic and only as horrific as our moment does

1175
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:53,320
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, I think I said, I think I a

1176
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: a should said the future is always somebody else's present,

1177
01:07:56,120 --> 01:07:59,080
Speaker 1: which is the shifting baselines thing? Is that what I say,

1178
01:07:59,120 --> 01:08:01,480
Speaker 1: problem probably right here in the future is always somebody

1179
01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:04,640
Speaker 1: else's present. Yeah, well very likely, I'm sorry, it will

1180
01:08:04,720 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 1: very likely feeling as authentic and only as horrific as

1181
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:13,040
Speaker 1: our moment does us. They won't have a new people

1182
01:08:13,080 --> 01:08:17,600
Speaker 1: won't recalibrate to experience all other level of horrific. I

1183
01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:21,599
Speaker 1: hope not. I mean, that's I think even if Corman

1184
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:27,160
Speaker 1: McCarthy's the road right, there's only so much anxiety to

1185
01:08:27,200 --> 01:08:30,920
Speaker 1: go around. I don't think you find a new way

1186
01:08:30,960 --> 01:08:33,880
Speaker 1: to achieve a new level of anxiety. It's normal, it's

1187
01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:36,639
Speaker 1: your normal. It's no. And I think the perfect example

1188
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:39,760
Speaker 1: of it is going back to Hornaday is you're saying, now,

1189
01:08:39,840 --> 01:08:45,040
Speaker 1: he was lamenting that all the kids were playing indoors,

1190
01:08:45,360 --> 01:08:48,400
Speaker 1: none of the kids were getting outside enough. And what

1191
01:08:48,960 --> 01:08:51,960
Speaker 1: is our generation of with young kids lament about right now?

1192
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:55,720
Speaker 1: You know, a hundred years later, it's the same thing, right, Yeah,

1193
01:08:56,360 --> 01:08:58,640
Speaker 1: I think we're, if anything, maybe we're less concerned than

1194
01:08:58,680 --> 01:09:01,160
Speaker 1: he was. You know, he was drive and nuts by that. Yeah.

1195
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:03,200
Speaker 1: I'm just living my life. I wish my kids played

1196
01:09:03,200 --> 01:09:06,160
Speaker 1: outside more, but I'm not writing writing screens about it.

1197
01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:08,840
Speaker 1: Have you read his book of going up into BC No,

1198
01:09:09,320 --> 01:09:13,360
Speaker 1: hunting mountain goats, grizzlies and big horns. That's Horny, right,

1199
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:16,040
Speaker 1: You sent me that book? Yeah, camp fires in the

1200
01:09:16,120 --> 01:09:19,240
Speaker 1: Rocky No, I've never read that one. You haven't read it. No,

1201
01:09:20,280 --> 01:09:24,080
Speaker 1: he's a big game hunter. Yeah he liked it. Oh yeah, Okay, Now,

1202
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:29,680
Speaker 1: how how big explained to me? How big a sequoia is.

1203
01:09:30,360 --> 01:09:33,879
Speaker 1: It's fucking big. I just read your piece about tekoia

1204
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 1: Is and you're as funny because in the beginning our

1205
01:09:38,120 --> 01:09:41,880
Speaker 1: guests John Wullen is saying, like, I suppose I need

1206
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:46,640
Speaker 1: to talk about how big they are. Yeah, that's just

1207
01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:50,400
Speaker 1: everyone talks about how big they're, but no, let's focus

1208
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:52,680
Speaker 1: on how big they are. I figured, I'm gonna sit

1209
01:09:52,720 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 1: down and write a piece about sequoia Is. I can't

1210
01:09:56,520 --> 01:09:59,479
Speaker 1: really try to be cute about it. We're gonna deal

1211
01:09:59,479 --> 01:10:01,560
Speaker 1: with this head on and just get it out of

1212
01:10:01,560 --> 01:10:05,240
Speaker 1: the way, because you really need to. Even if you're

1213
01:10:05,280 --> 01:10:09,320
Speaker 1: not going to understand the feeling of being next to

1214
01:10:09,360 --> 01:10:11,200
Speaker 1: something big that I'm telling you, you at least need

1215
01:10:11,240 --> 01:10:14,800
Speaker 1: to remember that. It's all it's the preoccupation. We can't

1216
01:10:14,840 --> 01:10:21,000
Speaker 1: gloss over it, but you you first off, um, before

1217
01:10:21,040 --> 01:10:22,599
Speaker 1: we talk about how big there, how did it come

1218
01:10:22,640 --> 01:10:25,120
Speaker 1: to be there that you did a piece about visiting

1219
01:10:25,160 --> 01:10:27,600
Speaker 1: the so the because it wasn't like a doom and

1220
01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:31,519
Speaker 1: gloom piece. No, So The Times magazine does a travel

1221
01:10:31,560 --> 01:10:35,080
Speaker 1: issue a couple of times a year, Yeah, a couple

1222
01:10:35,080 --> 01:10:37,280
Speaker 1: of times a year, and this one, this was about

1223
01:10:37,280 --> 01:10:41,320
Speaker 1: a year ago. Their idea was to just ask writers

1224
01:10:41,640 --> 01:10:45,000
Speaker 1: to go somewhere you've always wanted to go in the US. Um,

1225
01:10:45,320 --> 01:10:49,680
Speaker 1: you've never been before. And I mean there was a

1226
01:10:49,680 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 1: lot of places I wanted to go, And partially it

1227
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:54,720
Speaker 1: was dictated by the timing. I didn't have a lot

1228
01:10:54,760 --> 01:10:57,800
Speaker 1: of times I need to go somewhere relatively close. Um,

1229
01:10:57,840 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 1: But I'd always I always wanted to go. I spend

1230
01:10:59,760 --> 01:11:02,600
Speaker 1: some time him in the Redwoods. But something about the Sequoias,

1231
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:04,320
Speaker 1: And I think, honestly, it might just be the name.

1232
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:07,840
Speaker 1: It might have just been the exotic nous of the name.

1233
01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:12,120
Speaker 1: You know, Redwood. You know it's all right there in Sequoia.

1234
01:11:12,120 --> 01:11:14,880
Speaker 1: There's a little more mystery to it. Um. It leaves

1235
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:18,160
Speaker 1: something something to the imagination, it sure does. It feels

1236
01:11:18,160 --> 01:11:21,280
Speaker 1: a little more magical. Um. Yeah, that's just always been

1237
01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:23,080
Speaker 1: fascinated by him. So I just wanted to see what

1238
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:25,760
Speaker 1: would happen if I went and stood around some really

1239
01:11:25,800 --> 01:11:28,479
Speaker 1: big trees. Yeah. It's a cool piece. And in it

1240
01:11:28,560 --> 01:11:30,840
Speaker 1: you're trying to you're struggling with how big they are.

1241
01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:33,600
Speaker 1: And one of the ways you express it would be

1242
01:11:33,640 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: that if you filled the biggest one is what's his name?

1243
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:39,479
Speaker 1: I know that they used to call it the Carl

1244
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:42,320
Speaker 1: Marks Generals General Sherman Tree. That it went from the

1245
01:11:42,360 --> 01:11:44,800
Speaker 1: Carl Marks Tree to the General sherw Is that the

1246
01:11:44,840 --> 01:11:47,360
Speaker 1: General Sherman Tree? I think, yeah, serm, they call it

1247
01:11:47,400 --> 01:11:51,120
Speaker 1: Sherman for short. Yeah, that if you filled that thing

1248
01:11:51,160 --> 01:11:53,320
Speaker 1: with water, you're saying, so it's the largest tree on

1249
01:11:53,439 --> 01:11:56,759
Speaker 1: earth by volume, and if you filled it with water,

1250
01:11:57,640 --> 01:12:01,120
Speaker 1: a person could draw a bath from that reservoir of

1251
01:12:01,160 --> 01:12:06,600
Speaker 1: water every single day for twenty seven years for exhausting

1252
01:12:06,600 --> 01:12:12,640
Speaker 1: the water. Or that a limb fell off it, So

1253
01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:18,519
Speaker 1: a branch off a coniferous tree seven ft thick on

1254
01:12:19,160 --> 01:12:21,519
Speaker 1: fifty ft long, and you point out that that would

1255
01:12:21,520 --> 01:12:24,439
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest that limb would be one

1256
01:12:24,479 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 1: of the biggest trees east of the Mississippi, west of

1257
01:12:27,400 --> 01:12:32,200
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, east of the Mississippi. Sorry, big damn trees. Yeah,

1258
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:33,760
Speaker 1: that was the kind of thing that drove it home

1259
01:12:33,840 --> 01:12:37,120
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, I've never heard that one. A branch

1260
01:12:37,320 --> 01:12:41,360
Speaker 1: that's seven ft across. Yeah, Yeah, that one gets repeated

1261
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:44,800
Speaker 1: a lot around the park. Yeah. What's funny is you

1262
01:12:44,920 --> 01:12:47,120
Speaker 1: talking the piece about how you wanted to take a photo.

1263
01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:51,080
Speaker 1: How frustrating is like you cannot take a photo of

1264
01:12:51,160 --> 01:12:57,120
Speaker 1: the tree because people looking at it will just they'll

1265
01:12:57,160 --> 01:13:00,320
Speaker 1: shrink the other trees. So the trees that it's towering above,

1266
01:13:00,360 --> 01:13:03,519
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, those are shrubs, and your head

1267
01:13:03,560 --> 01:13:07,479
Speaker 1: will always make the tree makes sense. And John though

1268
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:09,479
Speaker 1: about how he finally gets a picture that he really

1269
01:13:09,520 --> 01:13:12,240
Speaker 1: likes and sends to a friend and she mistakes it

1270
01:13:12,320 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 1: for a tree in his backyard. Yeah, it was amazing.

1271
01:13:16,439 --> 01:13:18,800
Speaker 1: Not everything I did to try to get a good

1272
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 1: picture of these trees backfire, like I had. At one point,

1273
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:24,800
Speaker 1: I had someone take a picture of me on a

1274
01:13:25,080 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 1: on a ridge overlooking five or six sequoias, right, and

1275
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:33,040
Speaker 1: so that all that's in the picture is me and

1276
01:13:33,080 --> 01:13:36,800
Speaker 1: these sequoias. And when you look at it, you think

1277
01:13:36,800 --> 01:13:39,599
Speaker 1: that I'm standing in front of a few regular sized

1278
01:13:39,640 --> 01:13:41,599
Speaker 1: trees that are right behind me instead of like two

1279
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 1: feet behind me, because your eye just brings them right up.

1280
01:13:45,360 --> 01:13:47,840
Speaker 1: It just finds a way to make them seem normal.

1281
01:13:47,920 --> 01:13:49,640
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't want to deal with it. It just

1282
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:51,840
Speaker 1: can't deal with it. It just can't deal with it.

1283
01:13:52,439 --> 01:13:55,920
Speaker 1: But when you get up to it, do you feel it? Then? Yes, yeah,

1284
01:13:56,000 --> 01:13:58,200
Speaker 1: I really did. I'm not a as we discussed, I'm

1285
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:01,680
Speaker 1: not a nature writer in the in the sense of

1286
01:14:01,760 --> 01:14:03,640
Speaker 1: someone who wants to go stand next to tree and

1287
01:14:03,680 --> 01:14:08,200
Speaker 1: feel things. Uh, but yeah, I mean it's hard to say.

1288
01:14:08,240 --> 01:14:10,640
Speaker 1: I was there to go see what it's like, to

1289
01:14:10,680 --> 01:14:12,280
Speaker 1: see what it feels like to be next to a tree.

1290
01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:14,200
Speaker 1: So I was, you know, turned on a little bit

1291
01:14:14,200 --> 01:14:16,479
Speaker 1: more than if I was just walking around. But I

1292
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:19,559
Speaker 1: cannot see how that those trees can disappoint you if

1293
01:14:19,560 --> 01:14:22,080
Speaker 1: you go to see them. Um, I mean, if you do,

1294
01:14:22,160 --> 01:14:25,360
Speaker 1: I think there's something dead inside in you. Can you

1295
01:14:25,400 --> 01:14:28,360
Speaker 1: touch real quick on as well as you remember it?

1296
01:14:28,400 --> 01:14:33,080
Speaker 1: Can you touch real quick on? Uh? The sort of

1297
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:37,599
Speaker 1: history with this utopian colony, yeah, yeah, and how they

1298
01:14:37,600 --> 01:14:40,799
Speaker 1: wanted to finance their colony, so there was a Kawak colony.

1299
01:14:40,880 --> 01:14:43,840
Speaker 1: So the history of the park was really interesting in

1300
01:14:43,880 --> 01:14:48,599
Speaker 1: the sense that, ah, you know, we think about these

1301
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:52,439
Speaker 1: um well, there's a couple of things. First is that

1302
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:54,800
Speaker 1: people have always been trying to cut down the sequoias

1303
01:14:54,880 --> 01:14:57,160
Speaker 1: from the time that you know, white people discovered them.

1304
01:14:57,200 --> 01:15:00,479
Speaker 1: They thought it's a bonanza, right, these huge trees. And

1305
01:15:00,479 --> 01:15:03,240
Speaker 1: the problem with sequoias is you can't really cut them

1306
01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 1: down very well because they splinter, so they would there

1307
01:15:07,200 --> 01:15:08,960
Speaker 1: were a lot of trees that were cut down and

1308
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: then just basically you could starts to Yeah, well when

1309
01:15:12,400 --> 01:15:14,320
Speaker 1: when it hits the ground, just it's not good lumber.

1310
01:15:14,960 --> 01:15:17,320
Speaker 1: So a lot of people wasted a lot of trees

1311
01:15:17,360 --> 01:15:19,520
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to use them as resources

1312
01:15:19,520 --> 01:15:23,599
Speaker 1: and just couldn't figure it out. Um, but they kept trying.

1313
01:15:24,040 --> 01:15:28,400
Speaker 1: So in any case, this, uh, there was a federal

1314
01:15:28,439 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 1: act that was encouraging people timber and stone actively was

1315
01:15:32,240 --> 01:15:34,920
Speaker 1: called that was encouraging people to go out west and

1316
01:15:34,920 --> 01:15:38,920
Speaker 1: and uh, you know log trees. And this group of

1317
01:15:38,920 --> 01:15:42,320
Speaker 1: people in San Francisco who are socialists, utopian socialist decided

1318
01:15:42,360 --> 01:15:45,920
Speaker 1: that they were gonna team up and buy a lot

1319
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:49,559
Speaker 1: of land inside what is now Sequoia National Park. Um.

1320
01:15:49,600 --> 01:15:50,920
Speaker 1: And this was gonna be how they were going to

1321
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:53,720
Speaker 1: fund their utopia was by cutting down trees. And I

1322
01:15:53,720 --> 01:15:55,960
Speaker 1: don't know how you do remember how long they were

1323
01:15:56,320 --> 01:15:58,360
Speaker 1: the first they had to build a road. Well, interesting

1324
01:15:58,400 --> 01:16:00,200
Speaker 1: thing about it was because they all lived together other

1325
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:03,120
Speaker 1: yeah they were, they were, They all had the same address.

1326
01:16:03,240 --> 01:16:07,640
Speaker 1: And they found that corporations would do bogus stuff with

1327
01:16:07,720 --> 01:16:11,040
Speaker 1: to do land claims. So their land came claim got

1328
01:16:11,040 --> 01:16:13,000
Speaker 1: messed up because they thought it was just a corporation

1329
01:16:13,120 --> 01:16:18,000
Speaker 1: using fictitious names. Right, Yeah, Well that's the end of

1330
01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:19,800
Speaker 1: the story. That's the whole beginning of the story, is

1331
01:16:19,800 --> 01:16:22,519
Speaker 1: that they actually got the land and started building road,

1332
01:16:22,560 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: started building a w They spent a year or something

1333
01:16:24,640 --> 01:16:27,320
Speaker 1: cutting this road, you know, straight uphill for miles to

1334
01:16:27,400 --> 01:16:30,559
Speaker 1: get to the biggest stand of sequoias, to chop them down,

1335
01:16:30,600 --> 01:16:33,640
Speaker 1: to chop them down. And this whole time there's a

1336
01:16:33,680 --> 01:16:35,960
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a clerical error, you know, there's

1337
01:16:35,960 --> 01:16:38,720
Speaker 1: a bureaucratic wrangling over their claims because, as you say,

1338
01:16:38,760 --> 01:16:41,000
Speaker 1: there was that sort of raised the red flag that

1339
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:43,160
Speaker 1: they all had the same address at this time corporation.

1340
01:16:43,200 --> 01:16:45,160
Speaker 1: They would just go into saloons and they'd you know,

1341
01:16:45,160 --> 01:16:47,120
Speaker 1: buy someone a beer to go down to the to

1342
01:16:47,200 --> 01:16:49,080
Speaker 1: the office and and make a claim on a piece

1343
01:16:49,080 --> 01:16:50,720
Speaker 1: of land so that they could buy it back from them.

1344
01:16:51,360 --> 01:16:53,479
Speaker 1: So the fact that all these utopians where you you

1345
01:16:53,520 --> 01:16:56,880
Speaker 1: all lived, or using the same address, um made them

1346
01:16:56,920 --> 01:17:00,080
Speaker 1: seem like a corporation. So in any case, this is

1347
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:02,040
Speaker 1: all play out. They just they're building their roads on

1348
01:17:02,120 --> 01:17:04,800
Speaker 1: good faith that eventually the government's going to see that

1349
01:17:04,880 --> 01:17:07,760
Speaker 1: this is an honest mistake and validate their claim. But

1350
01:17:07,800 --> 01:17:10,120
Speaker 1: in the meantime, it was actually partially due to the

1351
01:17:10,200 --> 01:17:12,519
Speaker 1: railroad interests who wanted to build the railroad along a

1352
01:17:12,520 --> 01:17:17,160
Speaker 1: certain route. Uh, they built, they founded sequ federal government

1353
01:17:17,160 --> 01:17:19,479
Speaker 1: found in sequa National Park and stripped them of their claim,

1354
01:17:19,520 --> 01:17:21,720
Speaker 1: which they never officially had in the first place. So

1355
01:17:21,760 --> 01:17:24,960
Speaker 1: they had improved all this land. So the big government

1356
01:17:25,000 --> 01:17:27,760
Speaker 1: coming in and screwing the social screw and the socialists

1357
01:17:28,280 --> 01:17:31,839
Speaker 1: at the behest of large corporations in order to create

1358
01:17:31,920 --> 01:17:35,320
Speaker 1: a national park and preserve this kind of national natural treasure.

1359
01:17:35,439 --> 01:17:37,720
Speaker 1: How far we've come, it's all scrambled up. How far.

1360
01:17:38,280 --> 01:17:40,519
Speaker 1: It's really hard to see the you know, the typical

1361
01:17:40,560 --> 01:17:43,000
Speaker 1: good guys and bad guys in that in that story.

1362
01:17:43,160 --> 01:17:45,840
Speaker 1: And they but they recognized the tree is they knew

1363
01:17:45,920 --> 01:17:50,240
Speaker 1: like the biggest one Sherman. They recognized it as like, man,

1364
01:17:50,280 --> 01:17:53,479
Speaker 1: though there's a tree. Yeah, they did. The Coral Mark

1365
01:17:53,600 --> 01:17:55,680
Speaker 1: Street they did. They used to have picnics under it,

1366
01:17:56,080 --> 01:17:57,799
Speaker 1: and they were they would have cut it down anything.

1367
01:17:58,080 --> 01:17:59,760
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, they had a lot of

1368
01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:01,840
Speaker 1: tree used to go through. I mean I also wonder

1369
01:18:01,880 --> 01:18:03,920
Speaker 1: if they would have maybe figured out pretty quickly that

1370
01:18:03,960 --> 01:18:06,040
Speaker 1: these trees were not going to really you know, no

1371
01:18:06,080 --> 01:18:09,960
Speaker 1: one had figured out a way to basically monetize these trees. Um,

1372
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:12,599
Speaker 1: and they were just optimistic enough to figure that they

1373
01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:17,080
Speaker 1: could do it. I guess how lucky for the sequoia

1374
01:18:17,160 --> 01:18:21,680
Speaker 1: is they're not good for longer. That's right. It's a

1375
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:25,160
Speaker 1: touching article. Then I liked it, thanks, Um, And then

1376
01:18:25,479 --> 01:18:27,160
Speaker 1: I still want to come background and talk about your

1377
01:18:27,160 --> 01:18:31,960
Speaker 1: piece about Petals the Bear. Yeah, Petals the Bear. A

1378
01:18:31,960 --> 01:18:34,479
Speaker 1: little synopsis there, Yeah, because you were asked to write

1379
01:18:34,479 --> 01:18:38,720
Speaker 1: about influential people, right, so the influential people of what

1380
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:41,759
Speaker 1: year this was? Last year? This is so the magazine

1381
01:18:41,800 --> 01:18:44,639
Speaker 1: also does a lot the lives they lived. It's an issue.

1382
01:18:44,760 --> 01:18:47,759
Speaker 1: It's like obituaries. It's a bituaries. It's every year between

1383
01:18:47,840 --> 01:18:52,360
Speaker 1: Christmas and New Year's where there's you know, remarkable people

1384
01:18:52,640 --> 01:18:55,719
Speaker 1: that have died. Each get a short essay about them.

1385
01:18:55,880 --> 01:18:58,000
Speaker 1: And the idea I think is, you know you've got

1386
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:00,120
Speaker 1: your big you know, your David Bowie's people like that.

1387
01:19:00,400 --> 01:19:02,600
Speaker 1: You know they'll be definitely some of those, But I

1388
01:19:02,600 --> 01:19:05,920
Speaker 1: think the bulk of the issue is always devoted to

1389
01:19:06,400 --> 01:19:08,960
Speaker 1: people who you may not have heard of, but you

1390
01:19:09,000 --> 01:19:11,200
Speaker 1: know they've had this profound impact in one way or another,

1391
01:19:11,240 --> 01:19:12,840
Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a good time to kind

1392
01:19:12,840 --> 01:19:14,920
Speaker 1: of look back on the people who maybe didn't get

1393
01:19:14,920 --> 01:19:17,280
Speaker 1: their due, either in life or in the year in

1394
01:19:17,320 --> 01:19:19,559
Speaker 1: which they died. Is I'm doing one right now by

1395
01:19:19,600 --> 01:19:22,360
Speaker 1: a sociologist that no one's ever heard of. Um, but

1396
01:19:22,520 --> 01:19:26,120
Speaker 1: last year I did one about a bear, which I

1397
01:19:26,160 --> 01:19:27,880
Speaker 1: think was maybe the only the second time there had

1398
01:19:27,880 --> 01:19:29,320
Speaker 1: been an animal. I can't say it was the first thing.

1399
01:19:29,320 --> 01:19:31,200
Speaker 1: They had also done one about the Remember when the

1400
01:19:31,280 --> 01:19:34,719
Speaker 1: chimp tore off the woman's face. Yeah, so the chimp

1401
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:39,080
Speaker 1: got one? Yeah, um, but yeah, pedals the bear was earlier.

1402
01:19:39,120 --> 01:19:41,040
Speaker 1: Speaking of chimps earlier, I was trying to think of

1403
01:19:41,080 --> 01:19:44,160
Speaker 1: ways to explain horn today, and I was thinking, what

1404
01:19:44,280 --> 01:19:49,080
Speaker 1: if Jane Goodall had gone out to shoot chimps as

1405
01:19:49,080 --> 01:19:51,400
Speaker 1: the way of having a couple of stuffed ones laying around,

1406
01:19:52,479 --> 01:19:54,920
Speaker 1: this would be a very different story. Yeah, I think

1407
01:19:54,920 --> 01:19:56,280
Speaker 1: that's a good way to think about I think that's

1408
01:19:56,280 --> 01:19:59,000
Speaker 1: exactly what it must have been like. Instead, she's like,

1409
01:19:59,040 --> 01:20:01,120
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm no, hold off on that and

1410
01:20:01,160 --> 01:20:03,640
Speaker 1: try to do um but no, but she was just

1411
01:20:03,640 --> 01:20:05,880
Speaker 1: studying them anyways. I didn't mention because I didn't think

1412
01:20:05,880 --> 01:20:07,920
Speaker 1: it was a good analogy, but it did cross my mind.

1413
01:20:08,840 --> 01:20:15,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, pebbles, pedals, Pedals show some respect for the dead. Yeah.

1414
01:20:15,800 --> 01:20:19,439
Speaker 1: Pedals was a black black bear in New Jersey, Northern

1415
01:20:19,479 --> 01:20:22,240
Speaker 1: New Jersey, which is also where I grew up. And

1416
01:20:22,840 --> 01:20:26,160
Speaker 1: he had some kind of injury or deformity on his

1417
01:20:26,280 --> 01:20:30,400
Speaker 1: paws and uh so he had learned to walk upright.

1418
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:34,240
Speaker 1: So he spent a lot of time just cruising around

1419
01:20:34,320 --> 01:20:38,040
Speaker 1: through suburban neighborhoods on his hind legs. Had an affinity

1420
01:20:38,040 --> 01:20:41,000
Speaker 1: for bird feeders. Yeah, I'm sure in garbage cans and

1421
01:20:41,040 --> 01:20:42,840
Speaker 1: so people would you know, there are a lot of

1422
01:20:42,920 --> 01:20:46,200
Speaker 1: videos of Pedals on the internet because it was crazy looking,

1423
01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:48,240
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it looked at People would always

1424
01:20:48,280 --> 01:20:52,200
Speaker 1: describe it as looking like a man in a bear suit. Yeah.

1425
01:20:52,240 --> 01:20:55,240
Speaker 1: He would go quite a few steps. He was good. Yeah,

1426
01:20:55,320 --> 01:20:57,760
Speaker 1: he can move, He can move, and so they called

1427
01:20:57,840 --> 01:21:00,920
Speaker 1: him Pedals. Uh. And then he was shot by bow

1428
01:21:01,000 --> 01:21:05,120
Speaker 1: hunter I believe um or as one. I can't remember

1429
01:21:05,160 --> 01:21:11,720
Speaker 1: what publication in New York he was assassinated. Yeah, there

1430
01:21:11,760 --> 01:21:14,280
Speaker 1: had been a big there had been a big effort

1431
01:21:14,320 --> 01:21:16,280
Speaker 1: to I mean, what I was basically writing about was

1432
01:21:16,360 --> 01:21:19,800
Speaker 1: the big argument that unfolded the summer before he died,

1433
01:21:20,400 --> 01:21:22,720
Speaker 1: about what to do about him, whether there was a

1434
01:21:22,720 --> 01:21:26,800
Speaker 1: big camp of uh, you know, pro pedals partisans who

1435
01:21:26,840 --> 01:21:29,000
Speaker 1: believed that he needed to be brought in from the

1436
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:31,720
Speaker 1: wild and sent to a rehab facility to live out

1437
01:21:31,720 --> 01:21:34,800
Speaker 1: his days. And deeper background is that when we talked

1438
01:21:34,800 --> 01:21:38,599
Speaker 1: about how many is enough, uh, New Jersey had very

1439
01:21:38,640 --> 01:21:42,360
Speaker 1: successfully this is me talking about New Jersey had very

1440
01:21:42,400 --> 01:21:47,800
Speaker 1: successfully recovered the black bear to the point where the

1441
01:21:47,800 --> 01:21:51,240
Speaker 1: state Fish and Game Agency felt that, in execution of

1442
01:21:51,320 --> 01:21:55,719
Speaker 1: their mandate about allowing democratic access to renewable resources, felt

1443
01:21:55,760 --> 01:21:58,960
Speaker 1: that the species had been recovered enough that it was

1444
01:21:59,040 --> 01:22:02,679
Speaker 1: warranted to allow hunting for couple of reasons, One because

1445
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:07,400
Speaker 1: there was a a harvestable surplus of the animals and

1446
01:22:07,479 --> 01:22:10,760
Speaker 1: two that they had hit a point where they felt

1447
01:22:10,760 --> 01:22:14,040
Speaker 1: that they could not have anymore or somewhere needed the

1448
01:22:14,120 --> 01:22:18,439
Speaker 1: lower populations to limit their spread into higher conflict areas.

1449
01:22:19,360 --> 01:22:22,719
Speaker 1: So this is a determination they made, and they allowed,

1450
01:22:22,920 --> 01:22:25,920
Speaker 1: and they came up with a quota system and started

1451
01:22:25,920 --> 01:22:30,280
Speaker 1: a bear season. And I think petals people, I knew

1452
01:22:30,280 --> 01:22:34,040
Speaker 1: what this might mean for pedals, and I think pedals

1453
01:22:34,080 --> 01:22:37,679
Speaker 1: people all along. I mean that that decision to reinstate

1454
01:22:37,720 --> 01:22:40,280
Speaker 1: the bear hunt did not go down well, along a

1455
01:22:40,400 --> 01:22:43,519
Speaker 1: huge share of the population New Jersey. So I think

1456
01:22:43,560 --> 01:22:48,160
Speaker 1: a lot of the the feeling for pedals was already triggering,

1457
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:52,240
Speaker 1: you know, triggered by a lot of upset over the

1458
01:22:52,280 --> 01:22:55,799
Speaker 1: fact that bears are being hunted. Petals became a proxy. Yeah,

1459
01:22:55,880 --> 01:22:58,959
Speaker 1: it's always a proxy, isn't it? Because people can't because

1460
01:22:59,120 --> 01:23:04,639
Speaker 1: not people. A lot of people can't think species level. Yes,

1461
01:23:05,520 --> 01:23:09,240
Speaker 1: they can only think individual level. I think that's exactly right.

1462
01:23:09,640 --> 01:23:12,519
Speaker 1: And even when comprehending their own species, I find that

1463
01:23:12,560 --> 01:23:15,720
Speaker 1: a lot of people do not think species level. When

1464
01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:18,240
Speaker 1: I hear that a plane went down, and then I

1465
01:23:18,280 --> 01:23:24,559
Speaker 1: see that that plane went down in Belarus, I'm like, oh,

1466
01:23:24,760 --> 01:23:28,640
Speaker 1: glad it wasn't America, right, Or if a plane went

1467
01:23:28,680 --> 01:23:32,160
Speaker 1: down in America, I quickly like run in my head,

1468
01:23:32,200 --> 01:23:33,880
Speaker 1: would that be a flight that people I know would

1469
01:23:33,920 --> 01:23:37,960
Speaker 1: be on? I wouldn't know anyone on that plane. So

1470
01:23:38,000 --> 01:23:41,760
Speaker 1: we do. We have a difficult time with species level

1471
01:23:41,800 --> 01:23:46,920
Speaker 1: thinking about we focus on the known and finite. Well,

1472
01:23:47,040 --> 01:23:50,519
Speaker 1: especially when you give the animal name and it becomes

1473
01:23:50,520 --> 01:23:55,599
Speaker 1: a Internet celebrity and yeah, so go on, so follow

1474
01:23:55,640 --> 01:23:58,120
Speaker 1: us through on pebbles. Well, so in the you know,

1475
01:23:58,280 --> 01:24:01,120
Speaker 1: as petals rises to fail. Can call them pebbles. I

1476
01:24:01,160 --> 01:24:05,120
Speaker 1: don't know. Pedal lung was the Yeah, that's because stepping

1477
01:24:05,120 --> 01:24:09,240
Speaker 1: on the joke here, pebbles is the flintstone girl is

1478
01:24:09,360 --> 01:24:11,640
Speaker 1: not pedals because he like with pedal lungs. Yeah, he

1479
01:24:12,000 --> 01:24:14,880
Speaker 1: had wheel he's moving. Uh so. Yeah. So there was

1480
01:24:14,920 --> 01:24:17,400
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of talk about what to do

1481
01:24:17,400 --> 01:24:22,160
Speaker 1: about pedals and a lot of anger that among you know,

1482
01:24:22,280 --> 01:24:25,320
Speaker 1: this one side of the debate that the state was

1483
01:24:25,400 --> 01:24:30,519
Speaker 1: not helping pedals, that the compassionate thing to do would

1484
01:24:30,560 --> 01:24:33,920
Speaker 1: be to bring pedals out of the wild, you know,

1485
01:24:34,000 --> 01:24:36,680
Speaker 1: and let him live in captivity. And when we want

1486
01:24:36,680 --> 01:24:38,559
Speaker 1: to say captivity, I mean, you know, at some sort

1487
01:24:38,560 --> 01:24:41,839
Speaker 1: of sanctuary, not in And what was the state's attitude

1488
01:24:41,800 --> 01:24:45,760
Speaker 1: towards the state's attitude was this bear has adapted to

1489
01:24:45,880 --> 01:24:49,240
Speaker 1: its condition, seems to be doing well. It's doing all

1490
01:24:49,240 --> 01:24:51,640
Speaker 1: the things the bear needs to do to survive. The

1491
01:24:51,720 --> 01:24:54,920
Speaker 1: compassionate thing to do is to let the bear be wild.

1492
01:24:55,760 --> 01:25:00,320
Speaker 1: And that's what intrigued me, is that fundamental predicament where

1493
01:25:00,320 --> 01:25:03,639
Speaker 1: both sides at the same exact facts and both wanted

1494
01:25:03,680 --> 01:25:06,439
Speaker 1: to do the compassionate thing and had completely different ideas

1495
01:25:06,840 --> 01:25:10,600
Speaker 1: about how to how to do it, and then he

1496
01:25:10,680 --> 01:25:13,960
Speaker 1: was then he was killed, so the debate was over.

1497
01:25:14,400 --> 01:25:16,080
Speaker 1: You didn't have any chance to talk to the guy

1498
01:25:16,120 --> 01:25:18,559
Speaker 1: that got it, did you know? So that no, one,

1499
01:25:18,800 --> 01:25:22,719
Speaker 1: that's not public information because there were some rumors about

1500
01:25:23,439 --> 01:25:27,760
Speaker 1: various people who you were the hunter who took Pedals down,

1501
01:25:28,040 --> 01:25:32,920
Speaker 1: and those people received death threats, and so I think

1502
01:25:33,000 --> 01:25:38,200
Speaker 1: one actually sued some people for defamation after that, for

1503
01:25:38,240 --> 01:25:40,720
Speaker 1: outing his name or suggesting that he was the Yeah.

1504
01:25:40,760 --> 01:25:42,720
Speaker 1: I don't know what what ended up with that, but yeah,

1505
01:25:42,720 --> 01:25:44,759
Speaker 1: so it was very tense, and I do wonder about

1506
01:25:44,760 --> 01:25:50,760
Speaker 1: the guy that got it. I'd like to imagine that

1507
01:25:50,840 --> 01:25:56,000
Speaker 1: he was not I hope that he was just not aware. Yeah,

1508
01:25:56,040 --> 01:25:57,760
Speaker 1: well that's the question I asked in the pieces. We

1509
01:25:57,760 --> 01:26:01,920
Speaker 1: don't know if so Pedals did not own stand on too.

1510
01:26:02,000 --> 01:26:05,440
Speaker 1: I mean, he he did walk around on all fours

1511
01:26:05,439 --> 01:26:09,200
Speaker 1: like a regular bear at times. So it's possible, you

1512
01:26:09,200 --> 01:26:12,920
Speaker 1: know that whoever killed Pedals caught him on all four,

1513
01:26:12,960 --> 01:26:14,679
Speaker 1: caught him on all fours, had no way of knowing

1514
01:26:14,960 --> 01:26:16,679
Speaker 1: those different bear on the other On the other hand,

1515
01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:19,599
Speaker 1: if the bear was upright, then the very thing that

1516
01:26:19,640 --> 01:26:24,439
Speaker 1: made Pedals such a survivor ultimately probably drew attention to

1517
01:26:24,520 --> 01:26:30,040
Speaker 1: him caused his death, which I think it's a sad irony. Yeah.

1518
01:26:30,360 --> 01:26:34,559
Speaker 1: And I imagine New Jersey's a state where you have

1519
01:26:34,680 --> 01:26:39,200
Speaker 1: to report your harvest immediately upon kill jeckstation, and they

1520
01:26:39,280 --> 01:26:42,160
Speaker 1: knew the minute it pulled up. I read the Once

1521
01:26:42,200 --> 01:26:49,799
Speaker 1: pedals showed up, They're like, oh god, yeah, well, pals

1522
01:26:52,200 --> 01:26:55,360
Speaker 1: nature of the deformity. Well, I believe I could have

1523
01:26:55,360 --> 01:26:57,360
Speaker 1: this wrong. I believe he was missing one paw and

1524
01:26:57,360 --> 01:27:00,960
Speaker 1: the other was either it was sort of bent inward,

1525
01:27:01,200 --> 01:27:05,920
Speaker 1: so it was kind of useless. Um. Yeah. And and

1526
01:27:05,960 --> 01:27:08,640
Speaker 1: I should stipulate here that the state to this day

1527
01:27:08,840 --> 01:27:13,720
Speaker 1: does not um confirmed at pedals was the bear that

1528
01:27:13,840 --> 01:27:16,040
Speaker 1: was brought to the check station. They will just say

1529
01:27:16,040 --> 01:27:18,879
Speaker 1: that it fit pedals description because they've never tagged pedals

1530
01:27:19,240 --> 01:27:23,200
Speaker 1: and so they don't like to identify the bear. Um So,

1531
01:27:23,800 --> 01:27:25,880
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's significant. Anyway, I thought it

1532
01:27:25,880 --> 01:27:27,519
Speaker 1: was sort of interesting that there's a sort of shrouding

1533
01:27:27,640 --> 01:27:31,160
Speaker 1: or bear aspect to it. You know that even even

1534
01:27:31,200 --> 01:27:36,000
Speaker 1: that is uncertain, you know, technically, That's where it always

1535
01:27:36,040 --> 01:27:38,160
Speaker 1: makes me cringe. We have a running joke about like

1536
01:27:38,160 --> 01:27:40,799
Speaker 1: New Jersey cat ladies, but it always makes me cringe

1537
01:27:40,840 --> 01:27:46,120
Speaker 1: when people who I feel like aren't equipped to begin

1538
01:27:46,360 --> 01:27:52,920
Speaker 1: talking about wildlife when they enter wildlife conversations, like they

1539
01:27:52,960 --> 01:27:55,639
Speaker 1: haven't really earned their place at the table in my

1540
01:27:55,880 --> 01:27:58,360
Speaker 1: in my opinion and my estimation, they haven't earned their

1541
01:27:58,360 --> 01:28:00,880
Speaker 1: place at the table. And I don't think that a

1542
01:28:00,920 --> 01:28:04,519
Speaker 1: position at the table is reliant on the fact that

1543
01:28:04,560 --> 01:28:08,479
Speaker 1: your pro extraction of wildlife resources are pro use. I

1544
01:28:08,520 --> 01:28:10,599
Speaker 1: feel like you can have a place at the table

1545
01:28:11,640 --> 01:28:17,320
Speaker 1: and be ardently anti hunting or anti use of renewable resources.

1546
01:28:17,680 --> 01:28:23,000
Speaker 1: It's like, sure, I welcome those conversations, but oftentimes there's

1547
01:28:23,040 --> 01:28:25,559
Speaker 1: little things will happen that all of a sudden just

1548
01:28:25,680 --> 01:28:31,920
Speaker 1: invite people who are ill prepared, not up to speed,

1549
01:28:32,000 --> 01:28:34,960
Speaker 1: to like get in on it. And that was one

1550
01:28:34,960 --> 01:28:38,839
Speaker 1: of those cases where all of a sudden, just everyone

1551
01:28:39,040 --> 01:28:43,000
Speaker 1: kind of became a bear expert for a minute, and

1552
01:28:43,080 --> 01:28:45,479
Speaker 1: you saw a similar thing happened. There was no poster

1553
01:28:45,640 --> 01:28:49,000
Speaker 1: child for it. But like, did you write about or

1554
01:28:49,080 --> 01:28:52,120
Speaker 1: follow and and like you know you, I want to

1555
01:28:52,160 --> 01:28:55,720
Speaker 1: ask you about hunting the deer in your yard, but um,

1556
01:28:55,840 --> 01:28:58,240
Speaker 1: did did you follow the Florida bear hunt? When Florida

1557
01:28:58,240 --> 01:29:02,160
Speaker 1: went through a similar thing and initiated a yeah. They

1558
01:29:02,160 --> 01:29:05,799
Speaker 1: said they had a population estimate of bears in Florida.

1559
01:29:07,120 --> 01:29:10,280
Speaker 1: Um that it's just based on modeling, so it's a

1560
01:29:10,320 --> 01:29:14,559
Speaker 1: soft number. They set a quota for their bear season.

1561
01:29:15,960 --> 01:29:18,559
Speaker 1: They opened the season up I think it was in

1562
01:29:18,640 --> 01:29:22,240
Speaker 1: two days. They were getting close to this. In two days,

1563
01:29:22,240 --> 01:29:25,759
Speaker 1: they got close enough to their quota, their mortality quota,

1564
01:29:26,360 --> 01:29:29,880
Speaker 1: that they shut the season down because were they to

1565
01:29:29,960 --> 01:29:32,840
Speaker 1: run it a whole other day. They felt that they

1566
01:29:32,920 --> 01:29:35,280
Speaker 1: might go over the quota, so they shut it off

1567
01:29:35,320 --> 01:29:40,320
Speaker 1: before they hit their mortality cap. Some of the world looks,

1568
01:29:40,520 --> 01:29:43,719
Speaker 1: some of the country looks at this and says, wow,

1569
01:29:44,960 --> 01:29:50,920
Speaker 1: Florida did a great job with bears. It almost seems

1570
01:29:50,960 --> 01:29:53,839
Speaker 1: like their model was low and they have more bears

1571
01:29:53,840 --> 01:29:57,559
Speaker 1: than they thought they had. They planned out this hunt

1572
01:29:57,680 --> 01:30:00,400
Speaker 1: and had all the measures put in place to make

1573
01:30:00,400 --> 01:30:06,479
Speaker 1: sure that they didn't surpass their mortality quota, had the

1574
01:30:06,520 --> 01:30:13,960
Speaker 1: restraint and conservative management strategy to shut down before reaching

1575
01:30:13,960 --> 01:30:17,679
Speaker 1: their quota. What a successful launch of a bear hunt.

1576
01:30:18,080 --> 01:30:22,840
Speaker 1: Hooray for Florida, or as some um as one I

1577
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:28,280
Speaker 1: can't Another New York online news magazine I can't remember

1578
01:30:28,360 --> 01:30:33,519
Speaker 1: the name of put it at Florida executes two bears

1579
01:30:33,560 --> 01:30:37,880
Speaker 1: like or there's that version, you know, and the fact

1580
01:30:37,920 --> 01:30:44,479
Speaker 1: that these two versions can just exist together out there,

1581
01:30:47,000 --> 01:30:49,400
Speaker 1: it's just like it befuddles me. But I think it's

1582
01:30:49,400 --> 01:30:51,960
Speaker 1: this kind of conversation we're having in general now about

1583
01:30:52,040 --> 01:30:57,120
Speaker 1: the polarized nature of America. Yeah, I mean, I was

1584
01:30:57,160 --> 01:31:02,680
Speaker 1: gonna say, this kind of partisan deadlock that everything is

1585
01:31:02,720 --> 01:31:06,840
Speaker 1: about now the wildlife people, this is like the most

1586
01:31:06,880 --> 01:31:09,519
Speaker 1: familiar thing in the world, right that, like I was

1587
01:31:09,560 --> 01:31:11,960
Speaker 1: saying before, two sides can have the exact same information,

1588
01:31:12,680 --> 01:31:15,559
Speaker 1: see the situation completely differently and not want to budge.

1589
01:31:15,680 --> 01:31:18,920
Speaker 1: That's the story of wildlife, but also in the case

1590
01:31:19,000 --> 01:31:21,360
Speaker 1: that in this case kind of sort of want the

1591
01:31:21,400 --> 01:31:24,400
Speaker 1: same thing. If you went to said do you want

1592
01:31:24,439 --> 01:31:30,200
Speaker 1: to have a stable, well managed population of bears in Florida,

1593
01:31:30,320 --> 01:31:34,200
Speaker 1: I feel that most people will be like, yep. But

1594
01:31:34,360 --> 01:31:42,160
Speaker 1: then the next question would reveal all those differences, you know, well,

1595
01:31:42,320 --> 01:31:46,400
Speaker 1: because it comes down to killing. Yeah, I mean, if

1596
01:31:46,439 --> 01:31:51,840
Speaker 1: you are against hunting an animal, I don't see how

1597
01:31:51,880 --> 01:31:55,599
Speaker 1: you can argue your way into feeling good about it.

1598
01:31:55,840 --> 01:32:00,200
Speaker 1: You know, if it's morally reprehensible to you. Now want

1599
01:32:00,200 --> 01:32:02,520
Speaker 1: to get personal with you if you don't mind, sure,

1600
01:32:02,560 --> 01:32:04,760
Speaker 1: you like we I've been at your home and we

1601
01:32:05,280 --> 01:32:07,160
Speaker 1: looked at the deer and talked about the deer out

1602
01:32:07,160 --> 01:32:09,720
Speaker 1: in your home, Like how is it? Uh? What is

1603
01:32:09,760 --> 01:32:12,200
Speaker 1: this sort of your thing? Like if you imagine, just

1604
01:32:12,240 --> 01:32:15,840
Speaker 1: like as a writer or whatever, if you imagine like

1605
01:32:15,840 --> 01:32:18,080
Speaker 1: like you eat some meat, not a ton of it,

1606
01:32:18,120 --> 01:32:21,599
Speaker 1: but eat some or would you yeah, and you'll eat

1607
01:32:21,600 --> 01:32:25,040
Speaker 1: dear meat? What do you think about? And I'm honestly

1608
01:32:25,080 --> 01:32:27,000
Speaker 1: curious about this because I like, like I said, you

1609
01:32:27,000 --> 01:32:28,920
Speaker 1: you in my mind, you very much earned your seat

1610
01:32:28,920 --> 01:32:32,519
Speaker 1: at the table. Like I'm like, what do you think

1611
01:32:32,560 --> 01:32:37,040
Speaker 1: when you imagine that when you imagine yourself, like like

1612
01:32:37,240 --> 01:32:39,600
Speaker 1: shooting a deer to eat, Like, what are sort of

1613
01:32:39,600 --> 01:32:43,600
Speaker 1: the pros and cons that run through your head or

1614
01:32:43,640 --> 01:32:45,960
Speaker 1: the like the emotional wrestling or whatever it is that

1615
01:32:45,960 --> 01:32:49,360
Speaker 1: happens in your head. I have many times imagine myself

1616
01:32:49,720 --> 01:32:54,240
Speaker 1: shooting a deer that walked through my property, maybe not

1617
01:32:54,320 --> 01:32:57,400
Speaker 1: with a gun, maybe with more with a bow, for

1618
01:32:57,400 --> 01:33:02,439
Speaker 1: for aesthetic reasons or uh for or earthquake preparedness in

1619
01:33:02,479 --> 01:33:07,160
Speaker 1: an earthquake is sort of a posts just because it

1620
01:33:07,160 --> 01:33:10,760
Speaker 1: wouldn't be pictured with the bo Yeah, I guess I

1621
01:33:10,880 --> 01:33:14,320
Speaker 1: just pictured suffering I have some discomfort around guns. Yeah,

1622
01:33:14,360 --> 01:33:18,000
Speaker 1: that it would suffer a little longer before it died. Uh, yeah,

1623
01:33:18,040 --> 01:33:21,200
Speaker 1: but I would suffer less. I don't know. I guess

1624
01:33:21,200 --> 01:33:23,200
Speaker 1: I haven't thought of that. I haven't thought that's a

1625
01:33:23,200 --> 01:33:25,400
Speaker 1: good case. Maybe I should start thinking about it. Well,

1626
01:33:25,439 --> 01:33:27,080
Speaker 1: I guess because I don't have a gun, but my

1627
01:33:27,200 --> 01:33:31,080
Speaker 1: daughter has a boat, so I can shoo. Gives you

1628
01:33:31,120 --> 01:33:35,040
Speaker 1: a way to start picturing it. Yeah, okay, I'm also pictured.

1629
01:33:35,400 --> 01:33:38,160
Speaker 1: I mean this is way crueler. But like so, I'm

1630
01:33:38,160 --> 01:33:40,160
Speaker 1: writing a book about an earthquake right now, so I

1631
01:33:40,240 --> 01:33:42,719
Speaker 1: constantly I'm looking at the world around me thinking about

1632
01:33:43,320 --> 01:33:46,160
Speaker 1: if there were an earthquake a second. Yeah, it's just

1633
01:33:46,200 --> 01:33:48,479
Speaker 1: sort of running in the background all the time. And

1634
01:33:48,560 --> 01:33:50,600
Speaker 1: I have so that has made me. And also on

1635
01:33:50,600 --> 01:33:53,960
Speaker 1: Bainbridge Island, you're told to be prepared for I think

1636
01:33:54,000 --> 01:33:56,759
Speaker 1: two weeks because the idea is that there's a bridge

1637
01:33:56,760 --> 01:33:59,320
Speaker 1: that connects to the island to the peninsula that may

1638
01:33:59,439 --> 01:34:01,519
Speaker 1: or may not by an earthquake, and that the ferry

1639
01:34:01,560 --> 01:34:04,799
Speaker 1: service man are run and so you know, supplies and whatnot.

1640
01:34:05,040 --> 01:34:07,160
Speaker 1: We'll have it difficult because when when it hits, they

1641
01:34:07,200 --> 01:34:10,640
Speaker 1: imagine a mass tsunami, well, I don't. That's something I

1642
01:34:10,680 --> 01:34:12,760
Speaker 1: need to research because I've been I haven't looked in

1643
01:34:12,880 --> 01:34:15,679
Speaker 1: that myself, but I don't know that Bambridge is necessarily

1644
01:34:15,800 --> 01:34:18,960
Speaker 1: risk of a tsunami, but the faerry boats, oh yes,

1645
01:34:19,360 --> 01:34:23,559
Speaker 1: well yeah, uh so I have actually thought and this

1646
01:34:23,640 --> 01:34:25,840
Speaker 1: was a while ago, but I do remember thinking, like

1647
01:34:25,920 --> 01:34:28,559
Speaker 1: looking around and being like, it happens right now? What

1648
01:34:28,600 --> 01:34:31,080
Speaker 1: do I do? How do how does my family eat?

1649
01:34:31,120 --> 01:34:33,320
Speaker 1: You know? I mean, we have an earthquake kit, but

1650
01:34:34,040 --> 01:34:36,599
Speaker 1: it's probably not good for two weeks. And I thought,

1651
01:34:36,800 --> 01:34:39,439
Speaker 1: we have a garden right with a fence around it,

1652
01:34:39,680 --> 01:34:41,880
Speaker 1: And I thought, this is how far I was going.

1653
01:34:41,960 --> 01:34:43,960
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I thought, is

1654
01:34:43,960 --> 01:34:47,320
Speaker 1: there a way to lure a deer into the garden?

1655
01:34:48,760 --> 01:34:53,800
Speaker 1: Locked the gate and then it's just hand to hand? Right? Well? Then,

1656
01:34:54,000 --> 01:34:55,519
Speaker 1: well I didn't have any you don't have any? I

1657
01:34:55,600 --> 01:34:58,040
Speaker 1: have an ax, right, but like that that would be

1658
01:34:58,080 --> 01:35:01,040
Speaker 1: the first step maybe, right. So this is my experience

1659
01:35:01,080 --> 01:35:04,400
Speaker 1: with hunting so far, is that this level that sort

1660
01:35:04,439 --> 01:35:07,200
Speaker 1: of fantasy, fantasy makes it sound goods It took no

1661
01:35:07,280 --> 01:35:09,360
Speaker 1: pleasure in it, but you realize that that's not The

1662
01:35:09,439 --> 01:35:12,639
Speaker 1: axe is not a legal method. Of take well, you're

1663
01:35:12,640 --> 01:35:18,000
Speaker 1: not apocalyptic now un plus earthquake, it's apocalypic But yeah,

1664
01:35:18,000 --> 01:35:20,960
Speaker 1: so that's I've just emptied all of my thoughts regarding

1665
01:35:21,040 --> 01:35:24,639
Speaker 1: killing deer. That's all I've thought about. That's the extent

1666
01:35:24,680 --> 01:35:26,960
Speaker 1: of it. It's gonna make me think about it more now. Yeah,

1667
01:35:26,960 --> 01:35:28,599
Speaker 1: well just because I'm a little bit curious, just only

1668
01:35:28,640 --> 01:35:30,280
Speaker 1: because I sat there and talked and looked at the

1669
01:35:30,320 --> 01:35:32,439
Speaker 1: deer trails cutting through the yard with you, and like

1670
01:35:32,479 --> 01:35:34,600
Speaker 1: I said, I just want to like find where you

1671
01:35:34,640 --> 01:35:40,479
Speaker 1: are so you would never like you you you, And

1672
01:35:40,520 --> 01:35:42,400
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not trying to I'm not not trying to

1673
01:35:42,439 --> 01:35:47,240
Speaker 1: like like unveil or reveal some sort of inherent hypocrisy

1674
01:35:47,320 --> 01:35:51,840
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you will buy flesh. Yeah, So what

1675
01:35:52,040 --> 01:35:54,760
Speaker 1: is it that, like, what is it that you don't

1676
01:35:54,800 --> 01:35:56,760
Speaker 1: go like, oh, I'll just shoot these deer and eat them.

1677
01:35:58,560 --> 01:36:01,800
Speaker 1: I don't think I I've I don't think I'm squeamish

1678
01:36:01,840 --> 01:36:05,400
Speaker 1: about that. I don't think I would have a problem hunting.

1679
01:36:05,439 --> 01:36:07,920
Speaker 1: It's just something I don't do. This is just like

1680
01:36:07,920 --> 01:36:12,200
Speaker 1: a lack of interest. I've never been Yeah, I've never

1681
01:36:12,240 --> 01:36:14,960
Speaker 1: been driven to go try I did go once, you know,

1682
01:36:15,040 --> 01:36:17,280
Speaker 1: I went with a friend of mine went elk hunting.

1683
01:36:17,520 --> 01:36:19,960
Speaker 1: I couldn't fire the gun or we didn't even see

1684
01:36:19,960 --> 01:36:21,799
Speaker 1: any elk that day, but you know, I was curious

1685
01:36:22,040 --> 01:36:25,000
Speaker 1: to see what it was like. Um, I'm not actually

1686
01:36:25,680 --> 01:36:28,160
Speaker 1: anti hunting, you know, I don't have I don't. I

1687
01:36:28,120 --> 01:36:31,400
Speaker 1: don't know how any aversion to it. Uh. I my

1688
01:36:31,560 --> 01:36:34,000
Speaker 1: entire life have gone to supermarket. I used to be

1689
01:36:34,080 --> 01:36:36,880
Speaker 1: a butcher, right, so I've been on that side of

1690
01:36:36,880 --> 01:36:41,080
Speaker 1: it too. Um, I'm someone who goes to the store

1691
01:36:41,120 --> 01:36:43,479
Speaker 1: and buys me. I'm not someone who kills it myself.

1692
01:36:43,720 --> 01:36:46,200
Speaker 1: And I and I don't have I don't have to.

1693
01:36:46,479 --> 01:36:48,200
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it comes down to a lot

1694
01:36:48,240 --> 01:36:51,120
Speaker 1: of things. I could make my own clothing, right, but

1695
01:36:51,479 --> 01:36:54,360
Speaker 1: it's for the same reason I've never been drawn to

1696
01:36:54,400 --> 01:36:56,479
Speaker 1: do that. I've tried. I've made that point. It's whnny

1697
01:36:56,479 --> 01:36:58,160
Speaker 1: you bring that up about making your own clothing, because

1698
01:36:58,160 --> 01:37:01,280
Speaker 1: I've made and when I've been interviewed, I've been asked

1699
01:37:01,280 --> 01:37:04,120
Speaker 1: by people often times like they're like, so you think

1700
01:37:05,000 --> 01:37:08,600
Speaker 1: that everybody should go out and shoot it, you know

1701
01:37:09,720 --> 01:37:12,479
Speaker 1: that's what you think the only legitimate and I always

1702
01:37:12,479 --> 01:37:16,160
Speaker 1: point out, no, Um, there are a lot of things

1703
01:37:17,560 --> 01:37:22,880
Speaker 1: that people used to have to do that I don't

1704
01:37:22,960 --> 01:37:28,360
Speaker 1: do myself, like process my own raw sewage, stitch my

1705
01:37:28,400 --> 01:37:32,360
Speaker 1: own clothes. Right, I've bowed out of all kinds of

1706
01:37:32,360 --> 01:37:36,080
Speaker 1: stuff and allowed people to step in and handle it

1707
01:37:36,120 --> 01:37:39,400
Speaker 1: for me. It just happens to me that that handful

1708
01:37:39,560 --> 01:37:43,120
Speaker 1: growing vegetables is very important to me. I guess like

1709
01:37:43,280 --> 01:37:49,040
Speaker 1: I've really centered around food ideas. Like somehow food remains

1710
01:37:49,080 --> 01:37:51,640
Speaker 1: like like being in the driver's seat as much as

1711
01:37:51,760 --> 01:37:56,280
Speaker 1: possible on food remains very important to me. I feel

1712
01:37:56,320 --> 01:37:58,040
Speaker 1: the same way. I think I just haven't gone as

1713
01:37:58,080 --> 01:38:00,280
Speaker 1: far as you have gone, you know it. I think

1714
01:38:00,320 --> 01:38:04,640
Speaker 1: we have the same philosophy. It's just I I have

1715
01:38:04,800 --> 01:38:07,000
Speaker 1: not executed it to the degree that you have to

1716
01:38:07,040 --> 01:38:10,800
Speaker 1: the extent. Yeah, So you don't imagine anytime soon you're

1717
01:38:10,800 --> 01:38:15,040
Speaker 1: gonna take up deer hunting, I don't. I mean, I

1718
01:38:15,080 --> 01:38:17,559
Speaker 1: don't know. I want you to so bad. Why because

1719
01:38:17,600 --> 01:38:21,360
Speaker 1: I want you to write about it? Huh, I mean

1720
01:38:21,600 --> 01:38:23,760
Speaker 1: I might that might be the most likely context in

1721
01:38:23,800 --> 01:38:28,840
Speaker 1: which I would go hunting. To be honest, well maybe

1722
01:38:29,040 --> 01:38:32,639
Speaker 1: maybe they will, all right. I want to strongly steer

1723
01:38:32,680 --> 01:38:41,200
Speaker 1: you away from the acts situation. Yeah, I was to

1724
01:38:41,320 --> 01:38:43,559
Speaker 1: kind of put mine, not even te on the table,

1725
01:38:43,640 --> 01:38:45,840
Speaker 1: just as a baseline for the rest of the conversation.

1726
01:38:45,880 --> 01:38:48,479
Speaker 1: But you don't do cheesy, Yeah, you don't do cheesy

1727
01:38:48,560 --> 01:38:53,759
Speaker 1: cold open though. Yeah, like I sharp the sharpened axe

1728
01:38:53,840 --> 01:38:56,759
Speaker 1: was raised over my head. No. If I was driven

1729
01:38:56,800 --> 01:38:59,960
Speaker 1: to kill an ax in my garden, inside my garden fence,

1730
01:39:00,720 --> 01:39:02,360
Speaker 1: kill a deer inside my garden fence with an ax

1731
01:39:02,439 --> 01:39:04,680
Speaker 1: after an earthquake, I would probably write about it. That

1732
01:39:04,760 --> 01:39:08,479
Speaker 1: seems like a remarkable experience that should be documented somewhere.

1733
01:39:08,520 --> 01:39:10,000
Speaker 1: But I hope it doesn't come to that. If it

1734
01:39:10,040 --> 01:39:12,519
Speaker 1: came that, you would later when when tapping into the

1735
01:39:12,520 --> 01:39:16,040
Speaker 1: old well, you would you would just stumble upon that

1736
01:39:16,080 --> 01:39:20,400
Speaker 1: story eventually. Yeah, all right, the last thing, do you

1737
01:39:20,439 --> 01:39:21,840
Speaker 1: guys got I want the last thing. I want to

1738
01:39:21,840 --> 01:39:25,599
Speaker 1: talk about the new book. But but um, we'll talk

1739
01:39:25,640 --> 01:39:27,680
Speaker 1: about that. Then you can ask your final questions. Are

1740
01:39:27,720 --> 01:39:30,080
Speaker 1: you guys good to move on to the new book? Yes?

1741
01:39:31,040 --> 01:39:34,160
Speaker 1: To what degree are you comfortable talking about your new book? Oh?

1742
01:39:34,200 --> 01:39:36,280
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with it. Because here's the thing. A lot

1743
01:39:36,320 --> 01:39:38,200
Speaker 1: of the people listen to the show have an intense

1744
01:39:38,240 --> 01:39:40,680
Speaker 1: interest in Alaska because they come at it from a

1745
01:39:40,760 --> 01:39:43,760
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing perspective, and that's like, you know, well

1746
01:39:43,800 --> 01:39:45,120
Speaker 1: known for that kind of stuff. I don't know if

1747
01:39:45,120 --> 01:39:49,600
Speaker 1: you're aware a lot of people kill them deers with

1748
01:39:49,640 --> 01:39:53,840
Speaker 1: access out there, That's what I've heard. So, yeah, talk

1749
01:39:53,880 --> 01:39:56,280
Speaker 1: about talk about the book. Well, in my book has

1750
01:39:56,320 --> 01:39:58,519
Speaker 1: everything to do with Alaska and almost nothing to do

1751
01:39:58,520 --> 01:40:01,439
Speaker 1: with hunting and fishing. But um, this was actually grew

1752
01:40:01,439 --> 01:40:05,800
Speaker 1: out of a project I did for a podcast Visible, which, UM,

1753
01:40:06,160 --> 01:40:07,640
Speaker 1: you know, anyone listening to this who wants to go

1754
01:40:07,720 --> 01:40:09,799
Speaker 1: check that out would would get a lot better understanding

1755
01:40:09,800 --> 01:40:13,360
Speaker 1: of it. Um. Can you also do talk about the

1756
01:40:13,360 --> 01:40:15,240
Speaker 1: the show as you do with the Yeah. So this

1757
01:40:15,320 --> 01:40:18,200
Speaker 1: was a project I did with a bunch of musicians

1758
01:40:18,400 --> 01:40:21,880
Speaker 1: who are um in the band called the Decembers. So

1759
01:40:21,920 --> 01:40:25,200
Speaker 1: it was, you know, everyone but one member of the

1760
01:40:25,240 --> 01:40:29,000
Speaker 1: Decembers used to be in this uh other band and

1761
01:40:29,120 --> 01:40:32,200
Speaker 1: who I've done some collaborations with over the years. Um,

1762
01:40:32,240 --> 01:40:33,800
Speaker 1: it's sort of tricking out because they don't evenet they

1763
01:40:33,800 --> 01:40:35,080
Speaker 1: have a name anymore, but they used to be called

1764
01:40:35,120 --> 01:40:38,919
Speaker 1: Black Prairie. So we uh, we basically do these projects

1765
01:40:38,960 --> 01:40:42,800
Speaker 1: where um, I tell a story and they write a

1766
01:40:42,880 --> 01:40:46,880
Speaker 1: score to the story. UM, and often songs, uh, sort

1767
01:40:46,880 --> 01:40:49,160
Speaker 1: of based on characters. They did a soundtrack for wild

1768
01:40:49,200 --> 01:40:52,040
Speaker 1: Ones where they wrote songs about in the book. They

1769
01:40:52,040 --> 01:40:55,599
Speaker 1: wrote a song about horn today. Yeah. Um, it sounds

1770
01:40:55,640 --> 01:40:57,599
Speaker 1: a little weird, but it works out all right. And

1771
01:40:57,640 --> 01:41:02,160
Speaker 1: so in this last project uh we did for Visible,

1772
01:41:02,200 --> 01:41:04,080
Speaker 1: it's called This is Chance, which is probably gonna be

1773
01:41:04,080 --> 01:41:05,680
Speaker 1: the name of the book as well. And it was

1774
01:41:05,680 --> 01:41:10,439
Speaker 1: about the nineteen sixty four earthquake uh in Alaska. Uh.

1775
01:41:10,640 --> 01:41:14,720
Speaker 1: Mostly mostly I'm dealing with anchorage. Uh and I'm just

1776
01:41:14,760 --> 01:41:18,320
Speaker 1: basically telling the story of the first three or four

1777
01:41:18,439 --> 01:41:22,920
Speaker 1: days after the earthquake. UM. And thankfully I found just

1778
01:41:22,960 --> 01:41:25,240
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of archival material that's letting me do

1779
01:41:25,280 --> 01:41:28,559
Speaker 1: that in a really intimate, um detail oriented way. Can

1780
01:41:28,560 --> 01:41:30,519
Speaker 1: you talking about just how big and bad that earthquake was.

1781
01:41:30,560 --> 01:41:33,680
Speaker 1: It was a nine point two earthquake. Uh, it was.

1782
01:41:34,920 --> 01:41:38,200
Speaker 1: It was so big that uh it's hard. It's hard.

1783
01:41:38,240 --> 01:41:41,280
Speaker 1: It's like, it's yeah, it's hard. It's it really is

1784
01:41:41,320 --> 01:41:43,479
Speaker 1: like the sequoise in the sense that it's your mind

1785
01:41:43,760 --> 01:41:46,360
Speaker 1: cannot accept, you know, sort of it has no way

1786
01:41:46,400 --> 01:41:48,240
Speaker 1: to endo it the size. But well, like the Richter

1787
01:41:48,360 --> 01:41:51,600
Speaker 1: Scare scale end at ten, well, the Richter scales exponential

1788
01:41:53,280 --> 01:41:56,000
Speaker 1: A nine is ten times worse than the eight. Yeah,

1789
01:41:57,800 --> 01:42:00,280
Speaker 1: it does it end of ten. I don't know, how

1790
01:42:00,280 --> 01:42:02,880
Speaker 1: can there be an end? Right? Well, that's yeah, I

1791
01:42:02,920 --> 01:42:05,000
Speaker 1: don't know, because you just know how bad the earth

1792
01:42:05,040 --> 01:42:07,479
Speaker 1: can get bump bound up. Yeah, I mean this is

1793
01:42:07,520 --> 01:42:09,479
Speaker 1: a you know some of what I what I find

1794
01:42:09,479 --> 01:42:11,960
Speaker 1: really interesting about um this it may be true of

1795
01:42:12,000 --> 01:42:15,320
Speaker 1: all earthquakes, but the degree to which the damage was

1796
01:42:15,360 --> 01:42:18,439
Speaker 1: sort of freakishly random, you know, I mean it wasn't random,

1797
01:42:18,439 --> 01:42:20,519
Speaker 1: and not everything to do with the underlying geology and whatnot,

1798
01:42:20,560 --> 01:42:23,120
Speaker 1: but just looking at pictures of the damage. You know,

1799
01:42:23,200 --> 01:42:24,960
Speaker 1: you have on Fourth Avenue, which is sort of the

1800
01:42:25,000 --> 01:42:27,840
Speaker 1: main drag of Anchorage, you had one side of the

1801
01:42:27,840 --> 01:42:30,639
Speaker 1: street which for two and a half three blocks sank

1802
01:42:30,920 --> 01:42:34,400
Speaker 1: about just in place where you know, all the buildings

1803
01:42:34,439 --> 01:42:37,799
Speaker 1: were still mostly intact, had cars parked next to the

1804
01:42:37,840 --> 01:42:41,200
Speaker 1: parking meters just twenty below. You had guys coming out

1805
01:42:41,200 --> 01:42:43,360
Speaker 1: of bars, you know, just looking up trying to figure

1806
01:42:43,360 --> 01:42:45,000
Speaker 1: out how they're gonna get out the other side of

1807
01:42:45,000 --> 01:42:48,200
Speaker 1: the street. Totally fine, you know. And uh, I was

1808
01:42:48,200 --> 01:42:51,600
Speaker 1: telling John today that my brother hunts ducks in a

1809
01:42:51,680 --> 01:42:55,720
Speaker 1: marsh that used to be farm land, but it just

1810
01:42:56,920 --> 01:43:02,640
Speaker 1: instantly shot downward and became underwater. Yeah, there was an

1811
01:43:02,760 --> 01:43:05,519
Speaker 1: entire little town called Portage. We were saying earlier that

1812
01:43:05,680 --> 01:43:10,120
Speaker 1: is the same same scenario. Um. Yeah, So so this

1813
01:43:10,439 --> 01:43:15,040
Speaker 1: the the magnitude and the destruction from this quake for

1814
01:43:15,200 --> 01:43:20,200
Speaker 1: pretty catastrophic, and yet the death toll was was miraculously small.

1815
01:43:20,200 --> 01:43:23,679
Speaker 1: I think there was a hundred and eleven people um

1816
01:43:23,720 --> 01:43:26,840
Speaker 1: around Alaska, and that included that may or may not

1817
01:43:26,920 --> 01:43:30,639
Speaker 1: include a handful of people that died from Tsunami's down

1818
01:43:30,640 --> 01:43:33,639
Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight as well, um partially because

1819
01:43:34,360 --> 01:43:37,200
Speaker 1: there just wasn't the population density in in Alaska or

1820
01:43:37,240 --> 01:43:40,120
Speaker 1: even an Anchorage at that time. But happened on Good Friday.

1821
01:43:40,800 --> 01:43:43,719
Speaker 1: So what I'm writing about is the story is mostly

1822
01:43:43,720 --> 01:43:47,560
Speaker 1: focused around a radio station in Anchorage called k E

1823
01:43:47,760 --> 01:43:51,120
Speaker 1: and I, which was sort of like the community radio station.

1824
01:43:51,200 --> 01:43:53,639
Speaker 1: You know, they were the people around town. Everyone knew

1825
01:43:53,680 --> 01:43:55,720
Speaker 1: the broadcasters. And there was a woman who were at

1826
01:43:55,720 --> 01:43:58,960
Speaker 1: part time at the station named Genie Chance, who for

1827
01:43:59,080 --> 01:44:02,880
Speaker 1: variety of reason wound up um sort of being recognized

1828
01:44:02,880 --> 01:44:05,839
Speaker 1: as a voice that carried UM a lot of Alaska

1829
01:44:05,880 --> 01:44:08,680
Speaker 1: through that quake. And it was her voice that UM

1830
01:44:08,920 --> 01:44:12,800
Speaker 1: just solely by coincidence, wound up being played all over

1831
01:44:12,840 --> 01:44:16,439
Speaker 1: the world. UM, both her giving reports to stations all

1832
01:44:16,439 --> 01:44:19,120
Speaker 1: over the world, but also just recordings of her that

1833
01:44:19,160 --> 01:44:21,800
Speaker 1: people are picked up outside of Anchorage on the station,

1834
01:44:21,880 --> 01:44:24,920
Speaker 1: just doing local announcements about you know people, you know

1835
01:44:24,960 --> 01:44:27,240
Speaker 1: so and so, your brother is at this place, he's fine.

1836
01:44:27,520 --> 01:44:30,519
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of reconnecting the community. So I'm following

1837
01:44:30,520 --> 01:44:32,320
Speaker 1: her story and she just turned out to be a

1838
01:44:32,320 --> 01:44:34,800
Speaker 1: totally fascinating character both before and after the quake, and

1839
01:44:34,800 --> 01:44:37,639
Speaker 1: then a couple of other people around Anchorage at that time,

1840
01:44:37,720 --> 01:44:41,640
Speaker 1: taking them through these these first few days. Uh, just

1841
01:44:41,760 --> 01:44:44,800
Speaker 1: of that good Friday Easter weekend. When did she die?

1842
01:44:45,320 --> 01:44:47,280
Speaker 1: She died in the nineties. She actually went on to

1843
01:44:47,360 --> 01:44:51,840
Speaker 1: be um a state legislature legislator in Alaska for a

1844
01:44:51,840 --> 01:44:54,920
Speaker 1: few years and had a pretty distinguished career and UM

1845
01:44:55,000 --> 01:44:57,920
Speaker 1: it was really remembered as uh, you know, really fondly

1846
01:44:57,960 --> 01:44:59,920
Speaker 1: by people there for you know, she was real big

1847
01:45:00,000 --> 01:45:01,880
Speaker 1: on kind of feminist issues at a time when that

1848
01:45:01,920 --> 01:45:05,280
Speaker 1: was not necessarily that was real popular, UM and did

1849
01:45:05,320 --> 01:45:08,439
Speaker 1: a lot of work with she had, uh, you know,

1850
01:45:08,479 --> 01:45:11,720
Speaker 1: been abused by her husband at the time around the

1851
01:45:11,720 --> 01:45:13,200
Speaker 1: time of the earthquake, she was in this kind of

1852
01:45:13,320 --> 01:45:16,680
Speaker 1: you know, tough marriage that way, and uh came out

1853
01:45:16,680 --> 01:45:18,400
Speaker 1: of it and did a lot of work for um,

1854
01:45:18,920 --> 01:45:21,720
Speaker 1: you know, other women suffering from that as a legislator

1855
01:45:21,800 --> 01:45:24,320
Speaker 1: and uh so, yeah, so I'm not necessarily dealing with

1856
01:45:24,320 --> 01:45:26,479
Speaker 1: her later life all that much, although I am, I

1857
01:45:26,520 --> 01:45:29,639
Speaker 1: am looking into it, but uh yeah, I think there's

1858
01:45:29,680 --> 01:45:32,640
Speaker 1: just something that really captivated me about the unpredictability, you know,

1859
01:45:32,720 --> 01:45:34,800
Speaker 1: the way that that lay a situation like that lays

1860
01:45:34,840 --> 01:45:37,800
Speaker 1: bare just how chaotic the earth is, and you know,

1861
01:45:37,920 --> 01:45:41,560
Speaker 1: just I want to say metaphorically but not really even metaphorically,

1862
01:45:41,640 --> 01:45:43,800
Speaker 1: just literally just the uncertainty that we all kind of

1863
01:45:43,840 --> 01:45:45,720
Speaker 1: have to live with. And then what do you do

1864
01:45:45,800 --> 01:45:48,559
Speaker 1: when when that cleaves your world right open and all

1865
01:45:48,560 --> 01:45:50,439
Speaker 1: these things that you thought, you you know, you took

1866
01:45:50,479 --> 01:45:53,479
Speaker 1: for granted just the way things were just aren't true anymore, which,

1867
01:45:53,760 --> 01:45:55,800
Speaker 1: you know, more and more seems like a condition where

1868
01:45:56,240 --> 01:46:00,000
Speaker 1: male of us are living with two So uh yeah,

1869
01:46:00,120 --> 01:46:03,360
Speaker 1: what was her name again, Genie Chance? What jumped in

1870
01:46:03,479 --> 01:46:05,719
Speaker 1: my mind when you're talking about that as the woman

1871
01:46:05,960 --> 01:46:08,960
Speaker 1: who won fulsome New Mexico was destroyed by flash flood

1872
01:46:09,880 --> 01:46:13,360
Speaker 1: there was a woman working the switchboard trying to alert

1873
01:46:13,439 --> 01:46:18,240
Speaker 1: everyone and stayed at the post and was killed. Huh.

1874
01:46:18,439 --> 01:46:21,559
Speaker 1: I mean that sacrificed herself to the That's an interesting thing,

1875
01:46:21,600 --> 01:46:24,280
Speaker 1: you know, when I as it didn't take long after

1876
01:46:24,320 --> 01:46:27,639
Speaker 1: I started doing just the basic research for this book

1877
01:46:27,640 --> 01:46:30,600
Speaker 1: that I realized that as remarkable as her story was

1878
01:46:30,680 --> 01:46:33,320
Speaker 1: and what she did was, there were lots of other people,

1879
01:46:33,400 --> 01:46:36,040
Speaker 1: even just around Anchorage, you know, Ham radio operators who

1880
01:46:36,080 --> 01:46:38,960
Speaker 1: stayed up for thirty six hours just relaying messages to

1881
01:46:39,040 --> 01:46:41,280
Speaker 1: the South forty eight. All sorts of people were doing

1882
01:46:41,680 --> 01:46:43,559
Speaker 1: miraculous things. This is what I was telling you before,

1883
01:46:43,600 --> 01:46:48,400
Speaker 1: is that just so happened that this sociology research institute

1884
01:46:48,400 --> 01:46:50,840
Speaker 1: had been set up at Ohio State a few months

1885
01:46:50,920 --> 01:46:53,200
Speaker 1: before the earthquake, and their whole thing was they were

1886
01:46:53,200 --> 01:46:56,200
Speaker 1: going to study the way people behaved in natural disasters

1887
01:46:56,560 --> 01:46:59,559
Speaker 1: after in the aftermath, and they were bankrolled by the military.

1888
01:46:59,600 --> 01:47:02,080
Speaker 1: The military he thought this was a like a natural

1889
01:47:02,160 --> 01:47:05,040
Speaker 1: laboratory in which to study nuclear war. What was gonna happen,

1890
01:47:05,080 --> 01:47:08,240
Speaker 1: what was pandemonium was gonna unfold after a nuclear strike?

1891
01:47:08,280 --> 01:47:11,080
Speaker 1: And how are we gonna, uh, you know, control it

1892
01:47:11,160 --> 01:47:13,599
Speaker 1: or minimize it? And it turned out that these saci'oll

1893
01:47:13,600 --> 01:47:15,639
Speaker 1: just who came to Alaska. This was their first big

1894
01:47:15,720 --> 01:47:18,559
Speaker 1: chance to study a real disaster, and they did hundreds

1895
01:47:18,560 --> 01:47:21,080
Speaker 1: of interviews around town, documented everything, and I you know,

1896
01:47:21,120 --> 01:47:22,920
Speaker 1: have access to their materials. There's a big way I'm

1897
01:47:22,920 --> 01:47:25,519
Speaker 1: telling this story. You know, they started to look around.

1898
01:47:25,560 --> 01:47:27,479
Speaker 1: They realize it's not at all what you know, the

1899
01:47:27,520 --> 01:47:29,559
Speaker 1: military thinks it's gonna be. It's is a lot of

1900
01:47:29,560 --> 01:47:34,679
Speaker 1: people acting very heroically, commonly, rationally, collaboratively. Um. And that's

1901
01:47:34,720 --> 01:47:37,280
Speaker 1: the way these aftermaths tend to play out. You know,

1902
01:47:37,320 --> 01:47:41,400
Speaker 1: sometimes there's mismanagement by authorities. You know, looting turns out

1903
01:47:41,400 --> 01:47:44,280
Speaker 1: to be mostly just a myth. Um although as soon

1904
01:47:44,320 --> 01:47:46,880
Speaker 1: as anything looks like looting, it gets widely reported because

1905
01:47:46,960 --> 01:47:50,680
Speaker 1: you know, the fear of looting is is very high. Um.

1906
01:47:50,840 --> 01:47:53,320
Speaker 1: So yeah, they just kind of that was the beg.

1907
01:47:53,439 --> 01:47:55,680
Speaker 1: That Alaska study was really the beginning of like a

1908
01:47:55,720 --> 01:47:58,680
Speaker 1: half century of social science just debunking a lot of

1909
01:47:58,680 --> 01:48:01,680
Speaker 1: these very pessimistic myths about human nature. That stuff for

1910
01:48:01,760 --> 01:48:04,160
Speaker 1: siss because I think there's still this thing when people

1911
01:48:04,200 --> 01:48:07,960
Speaker 1: who are into disaster preparedness, like when I imagine my

1912
01:48:07,960 --> 01:48:10,320
Speaker 1: own because I live in a seismically active area. When

1913
01:48:10,320 --> 01:48:13,040
Speaker 1: I imagine my own disaster preparedness, I like to think

1914
01:48:13,080 --> 01:48:16,439
Speaker 1: that there's some room in my mind for, um ways

1915
01:48:16,439 --> 01:48:19,240
Speaker 1: in which I would assist my neighbors. But a lot

1916
01:48:19,240 --> 01:48:21,680
Speaker 1: of guys start thinking about disaster preparedness and they're out

1917
01:48:21,680 --> 01:48:23,560
Speaker 1: shopping for a gun with which they will use to

1918
01:48:23,640 --> 01:48:26,600
Speaker 1: kill their neighbors. I feel like there's like two mentalities

1919
01:48:26,640 --> 01:48:30,599
Speaker 1: at Yeah. And even though we see it again again,

1920
01:48:30,640 --> 01:48:32,200
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, it's funny because I'm just writing

1921
01:48:32,200 --> 01:48:35,679
Speaker 1: about about this a little bit. And and uh, even

1922
01:48:35,800 --> 01:48:38,040
Speaker 1: like this year and all that disasters we've had this year,

1923
01:48:38,560 --> 01:48:40,880
Speaker 1: and there have been so many great stories about you know,

1924
01:48:40,920 --> 01:48:43,839
Speaker 1: just ordinary local people helping each other, but it's always

1925
01:48:43,840 --> 01:48:46,880
Speaker 1: framed as this very surprising thing. You know, this it's

1926
01:48:46,920 --> 01:48:48,840
Speaker 1: just as who we are in Houston, you know, like

1927
01:48:48,880 --> 01:48:51,519
Speaker 1: we help one another, but actually, you know everyone, it's

1928
01:48:51,560 --> 01:48:54,320
Speaker 1: who everyone is, right, um, And so there's this weird

1929
01:48:54,400 --> 01:48:57,280
Speaker 1: mix of it we just can't quite accept. Uh, you

1930
01:48:57,320 --> 01:49:00,200
Speaker 1: know that maybe the goodness is not so special all

1931
01:49:00,320 --> 01:49:02,600
Speaker 1: you know that it's this it should be very reassuring,

1932
01:49:02,600 --> 01:49:04,639
Speaker 1: but it just feels deflating something. I think it takes

1933
01:49:04,640 --> 01:49:08,280
Speaker 1: a few it takes a few days of feeling a

1934
01:49:08,320 --> 01:49:14,240
Speaker 1: band and to start bringing out Yeah, and maybe I

1935
01:49:14,240 --> 01:49:15,880
Speaker 1: don't know. Kind of if you just look at like

1936
01:49:15,960 --> 01:49:21,200
Speaker 1: natural disasters is oftentimes it's not people are immediately like, well,

1937
01:49:21,280 --> 01:49:23,840
Speaker 1: let's run out and cause mayhem. It's sort of like, man,

1938
01:49:25,280 --> 01:49:29,080
Speaker 1: we've been completely let down, and then tensions. Well, what

1939
01:49:29,120 --> 01:49:31,400
Speaker 1: they say is I guess my understanding of the research,

1940
01:49:31,479 --> 01:49:33,040
Speaker 1: and I don't know it in and out, but I

1941
01:49:33,080 --> 01:49:35,960
Speaker 1: definitely don't know what what I guess. There's there's a

1942
01:49:35,960 --> 01:49:37,840
Speaker 1: shift that happens when you know, in a in a

1943
01:49:37,920 --> 01:49:41,360
Speaker 1: natural disaster, everyone's suffering together, so everyone has the same

1944
01:49:41,600 --> 01:49:43,960
Speaker 1: we're all, you know, all everyone's afflicted by the same thing.

1945
01:49:44,439 --> 01:49:48,479
Speaker 1: And then when you can stop feeling collectively, you know,

1946
01:49:48,640 --> 01:49:51,639
Speaker 1: joined by your suffering from that disaster, and start pointing

1947
01:49:51,640 --> 01:49:55,400
Speaker 1: fingers at you know, whoever is has botched the recovery

1948
01:49:55,439 --> 01:49:58,200
Speaker 1: to the disaster, that's when the when the trouble starts

1949
01:49:58,200 --> 01:50:00,439
Speaker 1: to you know, at least they will will things starts

1950
01:50:00,439 --> 01:50:01,840
Speaker 1: to rise up. I don't you know, that's my sense

1951
01:50:01,840 --> 01:50:03,719
Speaker 1: from reading what I've read so far. No, I fear

1952
01:50:03,800 --> 01:50:06,840
Speaker 1: for people finding out about my giant rain barrel and

1953
01:50:06,960 --> 01:50:10,120
Speaker 1: just how much mountain house I have stashed around and

1954
01:50:10,160 --> 01:50:12,720
Speaker 1: they're gonna come for it. Meshing to just let it out,

1955
01:50:13,400 --> 01:50:14,920
Speaker 1: Just let the cat out of the bag right there.

1956
01:50:15,640 --> 01:50:19,599
Speaker 1: So cal do you have any concluders? Any final um

1957
01:50:19,800 --> 01:50:24,800
Speaker 1: thanks questions for our our guest, John Wellen oh Man.

1958
01:50:24,880 --> 01:50:27,599
Speaker 1: His work can be found at any number of places

1959
01:50:27,640 --> 01:50:31,920
Speaker 1: online and in his book. I guess once you should

1960
01:50:31,920 --> 01:50:35,520
Speaker 1: say thanks, um wild ones that admit I am not

1961
01:50:35,520 --> 01:50:40,400
Speaker 1: not through it, but it's been great and yeah, a

1962
01:50:40,479 --> 01:50:45,240
Speaker 1: couple of little twists and additions to some of the

1963
01:50:45,280 --> 01:50:48,200
Speaker 1: stories in there, just in a way that I wasn't

1964
01:50:48,200 --> 01:50:53,840
Speaker 1: thinking and and I've really enjoyed it. Um yeah, man,

1965
01:50:53,880 --> 01:50:57,320
Speaker 1: I I what is what is your response to those

1966
01:50:57,320 --> 01:51:00,160
Speaker 1: people who's like, well, how much is too much? Like?

1967
01:51:00,240 --> 01:51:03,639
Speaker 1: When when do you John say, yeah, you gotta pull

1968
01:51:03,680 --> 01:51:06,400
Speaker 1: the plug on that sea turtle. I wish I was

1969
01:51:06,439 --> 01:51:11,479
Speaker 1: that organized to have a group to make these decisions. Yeah.

1970
01:51:11,720 --> 01:51:15,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just you know, going clumsily on my

1971
01:51:15,000 --> 01:51:16,920
Speaker 1: way like everyone else. I think. Or is it better

1972
01:51:16,920 --> 01:51:23,160
Speaker 1: to go to Steve's fourteen thousand years ago? You're you're

1973
01:51:23,320 --> 01:51:27,080
Speaker 1: the first man to that lake. What if what if

1974
01:51:27,200 --> 01:51:29,400
Speaker 1: you you're on your pristine lake and there is not

1975
01:51:29,560 --> 01:51:32,800
Speaker 1: a pan fish to be found. It's full of you know,

1976
01:51:33,040 --> 01:51:36,760
Speaker 1: northern pike. I wonder if that's why i'd like to

1977
01:51:36,800 --> 01:51:40,720
Speaker 1: go visit that's I'd like to go. It's an unrealistic

1978
01:51:41,280 --> 01:51:44,720
Speaker 1: it's an unrealistic goal. But if I it's just where

1979
01:51:44,720 --> 01:51:47,240
Speaker 1: I've decided to fall, and how tempted would you be.

1980
01:51:47,960 --> 01:51:50,280
Speaker 1: But it's it's like academic too, you know. It's like

1981
01:51:50,320 --> 01:51:53,360
Speaker 1: just not like I'm like thinking will arrive there, but

1982
01:51:53,479 --> 01:51:55,720
Speaker 1: just the way that it's it's how I begin to

1983
01:51:55,800 --> 01:51:59,360
Speaker 1: understand things. It's a way I like strive to understand things.

1984
01:52:00,120 --> 01:52:03,840
Speaker 1: There was that was like that was day one. That

1985
01:52:03,960 --> 01:52:06,960
Speaker 1: was day one, and then this is as good as

1986
01:52:06,960 --> 01:52:09,840
Speaker 1: it as best as I can understand what happened on

1987
01:52:10,160 --> 01:52:12,200
Speaker 1: day one through day well, I don't know what day

1988
01:52:12,240 --> 01:52:15,160
Speaker 1: we'd be on now in the hundreds of thousands, as

1989
01:52:15,400 --> 01:52:18,480
Speaker 1: the best as how we'd get there. It's actually pronounced

1990
01:52:18,479 --> 01:52:26,800
Speaker 1: by some bison bison, bison, that's how it's pronounced, trying

1991
01:52:26,840 --> 01:52:30,160
Speaker 1: it's trinomial. Norman Clayture would be bison bites and bison

1992
01:52:31,920 --> 01:52:37,080
Speaker 1: yehney um. Yeah. It's a good book, I think if

1993
01:52:37,120 --> 01:52:39,559
Speaker 1: you if you like listening to this show, you feel

1994
01:52:39,600 --> 01:52:41,639
Speaker 1: probably like reading the book, I feel like a lot

1995
01:52:41,680 --> 01:52:43,840
Speaker 1: of the things that I was surprised by because I

1996
01:52:43,920 --> 01:52:45,400
Speaker 1: really didn't know what to expect that, you know, I

1997
01:52:45,439 --> 01:52:47,639
Speaker 1: just kind of got it, you know, thinking a better readings.

1998
01:52:47,640 --> 01:52:51,400
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk to John and uh, it's like a

1999
01:52:51,439 --> 01:52:53,679
Speaker 1: lot of the thought of the concepts that you've brought

2000
01:52:53,800 --> 01:52:56,320
Speaker 1: up to me just over the last few years. John

2001
01:52:56,439 --> 01:52:58,960
Speaker 1: sort of brings up in that book and then talks

2002
01:52:58,960 --> 01:53:00,800
Speaker 1: about him in just a different way then you and

2003
01:53:00,840 --> 01:53:03,320
Speaker 1: I talked about him. So it's it's been an eye

2004
01:53:03,320 --> 01:53:06,120
Speaker 1: opening for me. I i'ven't I really enjoyed it. I mean,

2005
01:53:06,160 --> 01:53:08,040
Speaker 1: I can ask all kinds of questions you need to

2006
01:53:08,040 --> 01:53:10,519
Speaker 1: get deeper about what I learned in that book so far.

2007
01:53:10,680 --> 01:53:13,080
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I really have any follow up.

2008
01:53:13,640 --> 01:53:15,880
Speaker 1: But I think if you're if your whole understanding like mine,

2009
01:53:15,920 --> 01:53:19,920
Speaker 1: like my understanding of wildlife is inspired, it has been

2010
01:53:19,960 --> 01:53:23,560
Speaker 1: inspired by and is kind of based around right like

2011
01:53:23,600 --> 01:53:30,320
Speaker 1: a hunting efficient perspective. So it's useful. Um, it's useful

2012
01:53:30,360 --> 01:53:37,120
Speaker 1: to go to to go read people read about wildlife

2013
01:53:37,200 --> 01:53:39,559
Speaker 1: from from a different perspective now and then because they

2014
01:53:39,640 --> 01:53:44,639
Speaker 1: just notice things completely different. It's good. That's why I mean,

2015
01:53:44,880 --> 01:53:46,600
Speaker 1: that's not that's kind of why I would sell it

2016
01:53:46,680 --> 01:53:49,479
Speaker 1: to our That's kind why I would sell it to

2017
01:53:49,520 --> 01:53:52,000
Speaker 1: the type of guy that's listening to this type of

2018
01:53:52,080 --> 01:53:59,000
Speaker 1: lady that's listening to this. Yeah, expand outward a little bit. Yeah, totally,

2019
01:54:00,040 --> 01:54:04,360
Speaker 1: and know all about turkeys, how good turkeys are doing

2020
01:54:04,439 --> 01:54:08,840
Speaker 1: right now? Anything else you have? I think that's all

2021
01:54:08,880 --> 01:54:11,240
Speaker 1: I got, John, Do you have any final concluding thoughts?

2022
01:54:12,080 --> 01:54:14,000
Speaker 1: If it's anything you wanted this wedge in. You couldn't

2023
01:54:14,000 --> 01:54:15,519
Speaker 1: find a way to wedge it in. But you're like, man,

2024
01:54:15,560 --> 01:54:17,160
Speaker 1: the one thing I gotta make sure to talk about

2025
01:54:17,240 --> 01:54:19,559
Speaker 1: is blank. And you never got a chance. That's your chance.

2026
01:54:20,000 --> 01:54:21,519
Speaker 1: And I don't think I mean, I would just say,

2027
01:54:22,040 --> 01:54:24,040
Speaker 1: like you're asking me, how do you make those decisions?

2028
01:54:24,240 --> 01:54:26,360
Speaker 1: I'm not really interested in making those decisions, you know,

2029
01:54:26,400 --> 01:54:31,559
Speaker 1: But I think that there's value in trying to acknowledge

2030
01:54:31,560 --> 01:54:34,040
Speaker 1: how complex a lot of these questions are and how

2031
01:54:34,440 --> 01:54:37,960
Speaker 1: complex your own. Like you're saying, well, this is my baseline,

2032
01:54:37,960 --> 01:54:40,120
Speaker 1: but what how can I really defend that? I think

2033
01:54:40,160 --> 01:54:44,200
Speaker 1: the more people do that, the easier it is to

2034
01:54:44,240 --> 01:54:47,080
Speaker 1: deal with this kind of you know, partisan gridlock we

2035
01:54:47,160 --> 01:54:49,600
Speaker 1: find ourselves in and a lot of stuff, because you

2036
01:54:49,680 --> 01:54:53,120
Speaker 1: won't feel so violated by whatever decision is made. You know,

2037
01:54:53,160 --> 01:54:56,040
Speaker 1: if you can understand that it's happening in this kind

2038
01:54:56,040 --> 01:54:59,240
Speaker 1: of climate of great complexity, you know, it gives you

2039
01:54:59,280 --> 01:55:03,360
Speaker 1: some sympathy. Uh. You know, if you think that your

2040
01:55:03,440 --> 01:55:05,760
Speaker 1: thing is absolutely right and there's easy ways to think

2041
01:55:05,760 --> 01:55:09,360
Speaker 1: about all this, then when the decision doesn't meet your criteria,

2042
01:55:09,400 --> 01:55:12,320
Speaker 1: it's gonna feel a lot worse. That's funny you bring

2043
01:55:12,320 --> 01:55:15,800
Speaker 1: it up, because I really there's a handful of things

2044
01:55:15,800 --> 01:55:18,800
Speaker 1: that I remind myself about every day, and one of

2045
01:55:18,800 --> 01:55:20,800
Speaker 1: the things I remind myself about every day is not

2046
01:55:20,920 --> 01:55:23,640
Speaker 1: becoming one of those people who has this sort of

2047
01:55:23,680 --> 01:55:28,160
Speaker 1: attitude like, oh my god, what do they think of next?

2048
01:55:29,400 --> 01:55:32,280
Speaker 1: Yesterday it was this, and no it's that. Like, to

2049
01:55:32,360 --> 01:55:36,120
Speaker 1: be like that type of guy scares me. I think

2050
01:55:36,160 --> 01:55:40,160
Speaker 1: it gets harder to write. It's so easy to become

2051
01:55:40,160 --> 01:55:42,440
Speaker 1: a guy like that. Did I like? I like him?

2052
01:55:42,480 --> 01:55:45,200
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, don't get worced. Don't get divorced today,

2053
01:55:45,320 --> 01:55:48,560
Speaker 1: and don't become a guy who's like, oh my god,

2054
01:55:49,280 --> 01:55:55,560
Speaker 1: what next. They're probably related. I think those are related goals. Yeah,

2055
01:55:55,600 --> 01:56:00,320
Speaker 1: they working. Yeah, your efforts on each of those working tandem.

2056
01:56:00,360 --> 01:56:03,480
Speaker 1: All right, John, Well, thanks for joining us. Tell us

2057
01:56:03,480 --> 01:56:06,400
Speaker 1: again because wild Ones, but give us the great subtitles.

2058
01:56:06,400 --> 01:56:09,879
Speaker 1: I'll mess it up. Wild Ones, A sometimes dismaying, weirdly

2059
01:56:09,960 --> 01:56:13,600
Speaker 1: reassuring story about looking at people, looking at animals in

2060
01:56:13,640 --> 01:56:17,720
Speaker 1: America and all kinds of writings. Um, you're write primarily

2061
01:56:17,760 --> 01:56:21,879
Speaker 1: for New York Times magazine, not the newspaper, but the magazine,

2062
01:56:21,880 --> 01:56:25,200
Speaker 1: which are which our brothers walking hand in hand. And

2063
01:56:25,240 --> 01:56:28,760
Speaker 1: then um in your forthcoming book, like you're not done

2064
01:56:28,760 --> 01:56:30,080
Speaker 1: with it, and then it takes him a year to

2065
01:56:30,120 --> 01:56:32,400
Speaker 1: do it. And that's the ways out. I mean, I

2066
01:56:32,440 --> 01:56:36,200
Speaker 1: just started writing it. So this is a long range teaser. Yeah,

2067
01:56:36,200 --> 01:56:38,960
Speaker 1: I'm deep in the dark tunnel. But in the future,

2068
01:56:39,240 --> 01:56:43,600
Speaker 1: in future, uh, Christmas times, a Christmas time or two

2069
01:56:43,640 --> 01:56:45,720
Speaker 1: from now, when you're like, what do I get my

2070
01:56:45,760 --> 01:56:49,720
Speaker 1: brother or my sister or whatever. UM, give him this

2071
01:56:50,040 --> 01:56:53,400
Speaker 1: as yet unnamed book. Put it on your calendar now,

2072
01:56:54,160 --> 01:56:57,680
Speaker 1: your calendar shoppers from now? All right, John, Thanksgan, Thank

2073
01:56:57,720 --> 01:56:58,120
Speaker 1: you guys.