WEBVTT - Ep. 098: Jon Mooallem 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.319 bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:28.120 can't predict anything coming at you. Um, congested with a 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:33.760 sore throat. So it's not sounding pretty sick. You sound off, Yeah, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.080 that time of year. Um, we're just talking. I want 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:38.680 to pick up on a conversation with just having a 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.320 quick cal Can you can you revisit what you're talking about? John? 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:42.879 We can we talk about where you live? Or do 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.839 you like to keep that secret? No, it's fine, right 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.159 about it. I don't write about it. But it's not 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.320 like I live in an undisclosed location. Okay, I just 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.040 lived there. We're with the writer John Muellum, and you 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.080 don't go by nature writer, you're just having to write 0:00:57.120 --> 0:00:59.440 about I think that's kind of silly. You don't like that? 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:02.120 Uh what do you? What do you do? You can 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:06.080 describe yourself as a generalist. Yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate. 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:07.800 But that is a thing these days, right to be 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.360 a generalist? No, No, to like people take like nature 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:14.880 writing these days? Dude? Yeah? Way yeah. Yeah, we're science 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:21.559 writer natural history writers. Do you what do you say that? No? No, 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.080 because I feel like it has a softer connotation, right, 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.440 like you're gazing at a I'll say that. I'll oftentimes, 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.280 if I'm trying to deflect a conversation, i will say 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.560 that I'm an outdoor writer because no one knows what that. Yeah. 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:38.200 It's like, yeah, I just I'm trying to get in 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:40.120 and out of the subject real quick. We all often 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:44.959 times throw that out there to see if that allows 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.520 me to just move on, right, And sometimes it's people like, Okay, 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:54.160 it's over. Yeah, But the writer the generalist, John Welm, 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:59.400 lives on Bainbridge Island, which is an island in Puget Sound, 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.960 and hearing this our other guests, frequent contributor and guests 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:11.000 Ryan Callahan shared with us his memories of right fishing 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:16.760 for chum salmon on Bainbridge. Uh. I want to say 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.080 it was two thousand and ten, and I could be 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.880 screwing this up, but we Uh. It was actually back 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.560 in the days of working with Warren Miller Entertainment, and 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.320 I was in charge of shipping all of our stuff 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.560 all across the country, and I also slipped in a 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:34.519 container load of our fishing gear so we could fish 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.560 wherever we were in the country. And we went out 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:45.120 and fished the chum round on Bainbridge, and um everything 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:51.239 in this area was pretty economically depressed, UM on Bainbridge 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:57.680 and the peninsula in general. And and I was very 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.400 confused as to the fishing regulations because there seemed to 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:06.320 be an awful lot of people gut we we we 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.640 referred to basically snagging salmon and just dragging them on shore. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.800 And we were, you know, out there with their flying 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.840 rod uh fly fishing gear, just trying to catch something 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:24.240 in the mouth. And on the way out of uh, 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.680 the creek that we'd walked down into, ran into some 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:34.560 uh fishing game officers and fish cops fish cops, and 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.840 I had I had. I didn't ask directly, but you 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:45.120 know you kind of like, hey, so supposed uh and 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:51.600 these officers had basically said like, yeah, we're aware of that. 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.240 We're not really concerned about it because these folks are 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.520 taking everything home and smoking them. So they were they 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.320 were willing to like look, turn turn a blind eye 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:09.160 that yeah to the chum thing. The reason I wanted 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.120 to tell that because some reason it's stuck to putting 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.279 my mind two things. One my brother man, it winds 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:18.039 up being so circular. Can I tell about the book 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:22.040 you're working on, John, John's working on the book by Alaska. 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.000 And as part of that, we got talking about anchored, 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.040 So I had sort of anchored floating around in my head. 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.880 Then Cal got talking about salmon, so I have an 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.080 anchorage and salmon floating around my head. I got to 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.039 thinking about something. My brother was telling me that it's 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.919 a derogatory term. I think like the Moonies. John, you 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.520 know about the Moonies, right? Ye? Are you asking me 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.280 if that's a derogatory too reading? But can you, because 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.280 you understand them better, can you explain to me real quick, 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:49.039 even though it's not your true right, I'd say I 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.520 have a D minus great understanding of the Moonies the 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.719 Unification Church. But you knew that, like you knew some 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:57.840 of it. I know that. I think it's in like 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.640 we didn't start the fire that you know. He's the 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:09.040 mass Shaye Stadium. The Reverend moon converted ten thousands, some 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.480 number of thousands of people a church all at once. 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.359 The Beatles kind of got into it. They had their heyday. 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.640 And if you see dudes in the airport who are 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.159 wearing yellow gowns and have a hairstyle, similar to the 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.680 Iroquoi Five Nations groups, right, but this is is that 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:33.400 still going? And I'm telling you what the reason I'm 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:35.400 thinking about this right now is my brother was saying 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.599 that the Mooney's in Anchorage will rent busses to go 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:45.440 fish salmon. I'm telling you the only the guy we're 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:46.800 thinking about. And I feel like I already brought it 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:48.520 up once, which was just like I talked about this 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.880 every day now is because the type of salmon you're 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.440 talking about, a chum, is also known as a dog salmon. 0:05:55.240 --> 0:06:00.200 And it gets this name because um some people will 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:02.560 find that it's that it's best us is to be 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.680 fed to dogs. So people will catch chums and just 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:08.600 freeze the hole to freeze to sled dogs. It's not 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.720 a popular food fish chump salmon and dog salmon. And 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.480 I was recently taught about this is someone they're saying 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.360 that the folks was it was it that is sam 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:22.800 as the folks on um Nevakish. Yeah, they liked it 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:24.599 though they love it. And I'll touch on that too 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.880 because uh, chump salmon or coastal spawners, so they spawned 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.640 close to the ocean. They'll generally enter rivers in pretty 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.720 shitty shape already. But there's an exception to this that 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.480 our brother was point now is there's a big run 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:40.680 of chums in the Yukon where these chums are traveling 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.719 a thousand miles and they'll enter the river very nice 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.760 and clean and very fatty, and so they're they're pretty 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.000 popular and people will net them out in the open ocean. 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.640 But people know that chum salmon slash dog salmon is 0:06:54.640 --> 0:07:00.159 a real ship salmon, so they've tried to rebrand them, 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.640 and for while they're trying to sell them as calico salmon, 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:04.760 because when they're up in the rivers, you ever know, 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.120 to get that calico color to them. Kind of the 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.080 other day we were I think we might have talked 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.720 about this. They uh dirt myth went into a Whole 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.080 Foods and came out with a little envelope of smoked 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:20.400 salmon and on it it says keita salmon. And I 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.920 know my salmon inside now or thought I did, and 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:24.640 I was like, that's not a kind of salmon. But 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.440 it turns out that the Linnaean name for the chum 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:32.560 is on corinthis Keita, it sounds like a Bible verse 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:37.120 on corinthis keita, and uh, yeah, the whole food was 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.480 just trying to sell chums as key to salmon, which 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.160 is just a play on their Lineian name because people 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:45.760 like get stuff in their head and they won't eat 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.520 it because because of its name. Yeah, but it's still 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.520 tastes good enough to sell, all right, good enough for 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:57.080 people to come back. And the chupic Eskimo they don't. 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.080 They don't like to catch him. They let the chums 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.280 run in the river and spawn out, and they don't 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:07.280 like to catch him until that sun bitch is washing 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.640 back out to the ocean mostly dead, at which point 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.640 they like to catch him. Because their climate is so 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:19.440 wet it's very hard to dry fish. And a chum 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.960 is after he's spawned out and mostly dead, he's very lean, 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:27.320 his fat reserve is gone. At that point you can 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.600 dry him down successfully in a climate that is not 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:35.640 appropriate for fish drying. Wow. I talked with that uh, 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.400 this guy, Dave, Alaska resident who looked at me like 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:44.640 I had three eyes because I told him how much 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.360 I liked the silver salmon. Then we caught up at 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:51.920 the fish shack and he was like, you eat. Oh, 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:56.560 there's so much bullshit around fish. My brother. My brother 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.200 has been doing mass been doing blind taste tests where 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.720 he's like doing where he's cooking pink salmon for people 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.680 and co ho for people, and he's final about of 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.439 people prefer the pinks, and then everybod says, oh, yeah, 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:12.199 but the real problem with pinks they don't freeze well, 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.439 they turn mushy when you freeze them. So he starts 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.640 then freezing it all and doing a blind taste test 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:24.040 with it, and I think thought, I think six of 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:29.800 people preferred the pink, but it just doesn't mark it well. No, 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:38.600 So John, back back to John, Uh, you're general How 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.320 long have you been a generalist writer? Since I've been 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.680 a writer, really, I've been writing for the New York 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:49.040 Times magazine for twelve years and I think, you know, 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.839 that was not long after I started writing for magazines. 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.000 And I think just as a freelancer, you know, you 0:09:57.000 --> 0:09:59.600 why would I say no to a good idea? So 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.680 did you study journalism? I did, Actually I went to 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:07.439 the Berkeley Journalism School. That was how I met Michael Pollen. Uh, 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.520 But at that point I kind of I didn't scope 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:12.640 out journalism schools to go to. It was more a 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:14.880 function of we were moving to San Francisco, my wife 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:16.880 and I. She was gonna go to grad school. And 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.079 I tried to get a bunch of jobs in journalism 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.680 in San Francisco and got turned down. And then I 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.720 had applied to the journalism school, had to my dad 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:28.800 had died recently. I had some money that could pay 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:33.240 for the graduate degree, and uh, I couldn't get any work. 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:35.360 So that I showed up at Berkeley. I went to 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.520 go visit when I got admitted, and I was just like, 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:39.440 why would I not do this? This is a you know, 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:41.959 it's almost like I've been freelancing for a while. So 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:44.400 I thought I could show up at this place and 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.719 just keep freelancing. And now I've got the support of 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.680 all these people around me, and uh, it was too 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.079 good to pass up. And that was grad school. That 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:56.440 was grad school. Yeah. Yeah, how sick? How sick of 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:58.800 talking about? How how sick are you've talked about your 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.960 your book? Uh, I haven't done it in a while. 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.800 So I got some questions I want to ask. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.079 we'll see, but my I'm not gonna be as up 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:13.560 on my own book as I was. Yeah, we'll just 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.199 give me the like give me the give people to 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:17.520 run down of your book. So the books called wild Ones. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.199 The subtitle is a sometimes this maying, wearily reassuring story 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.079 about looking at people looking at animals in America. And 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:29.839 uh it uh it's a book about Uh. Basically, it's 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:32.560 a book about conservation and dangered species, although I didn't 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.240 always want to describe it that way. Uh. And it's 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:37.880 so why did you not want? Because it's not a 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.080 too dismal I think it shuts some a lot of 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.880 people down right. I think the thing I was interested 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.400 in doing was writing about those issues from the perspective 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:50.600 of someone who had no direct contact with them. Um. 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:52.640 You know, I was living in San Francisco at the time, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.040 and as I write in the book, you know, most 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.920 of my exposure to animals was you know, watching Planet 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.960 Earth or uh, you know, Wild America when I was 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:05.560 when I was a kid. And then I had my 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.920 first child and realized how much of a child's life 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.080 gets flooded with animals, you know, be they on your 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.000 pajamas or stuffed animals and things like this. And I 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.360 just started to realize that these animals, which are real 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:21.480 animals out there in the ecosystem, are sort of these 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.600 also these imaginative constructs that people like me are trafficking 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.240 in every day. And so the book was really about 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.400 trying to reconcile those two worlds, trying to take what 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.839 I thought and felt about animals and go out into 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:38.160 the ecosystem of some of these endangered species and really 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.679 think hard about you know, why is it that someone 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.080 who's never going to see a mountain lion might want 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:45.640 to get behind the cause of mountain lion conservation? What 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.960 are these animals doing for us? Uh? Not maybe not 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.520 in the physical plane, but you know, just emotionally. When 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.760 you were when you were thinking about that about you 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.840 mentioned that your kid's pajamas and the way that childhood 0:12:59.920 --> 0:13:03.160 is so animal rich, at least in the imagery of it. 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:05.640 It's rich in the imagery of animals and sort of 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:10.760 the the metaphysical realm. Have you ever thought about like, 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.520 how is it that the how is it decided? Do 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:20.760 you feel? Um, what species sort of make the cut? Yeah, 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:26.520 African megafauna is big with it is big with kids. 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.360 It's big, and it's like big with pajamas. It's big 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.920 with stuffed animals. Um. And then there are like our 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.120 many of our own animals are kind of neglected in 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.319 that world. Yeah, well I think that's that. Yeah, that's 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.320 a great question, and I think some of it it 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.040 just speaks to the fact that when we're putting a 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.840 giraffe on our daughters, you know, Onesie, it's not because 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.560 of anything having to do with the giraffe itself, right, 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.240 It has to do with what the giraffe represents, you know. 0:13:54.480 --> 0:14:00.720 Maybe uh, it's it's colorful, right, Maybe it's something that 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.800 we think of as gentle um. And I think that 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.520 there's also the exotic nous of it alone is doing 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:10.200 a lot of the work because we want to surround 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.040 our kids with things that are precious, you know, and 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:17.360 give them, uh, kind of take them to another world. Right. 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:22.840 So maybe it's a giraffe, or maybe it's a ferry, right, 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:28.760 or a princess imaginary right, And sometimes it is, but 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:31.680 it doesn't often maybe won't work, right. I mean owls, 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:33.960 I feel like owls have a good pr right now, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.600 like we we think of owls, Owls do take it 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.600 into the stuffy realm. Yeah, exactly exactly. Squirrels though not 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.160 so much. I was just trying to think of a 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:45.560 squirrel and only character and can come up with this 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.040 uh rocking, rocking bowl winkle. Yeah, but kids aren't into 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:54.400 that anymore. No, definitely not anymore. The hedgehog has gone. 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.280 His brand is rising. Do you think I think the 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.840 hedgehog is coming into his own a a child's thing, 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.400 my kids awareness of animals really, like how it was 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:10.120 eye opening for me anyway, like the your story of 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.440 the Teddy Bear. Oh, that's that's the next thing. I 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:17.480 want to have you address that. I thought that was fantastic. Yeah, 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:20.000 why the hell? Yeah? Can you because we're on the 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:25.520 thing with like what sort of like the fantastic sort 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.760 of representation of animals and kids stuff that you got 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:34.040 interested in. Can you talk about um? And I trust 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:35.800 me I will move on to like more recent things 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.960 with you. But keep talking about keep talking about Teddy 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:40.640 Roosevelt in the bear. Yeah. I didn't. I didn't know this. 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.520 You didn't know. I feel like I knew something. No, 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:45.560 I didn't. I knew that had something to do with 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.480 I knew that the Teddy Bear was Teddy Roosevelt, but 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:50.680 I didn't know like I didn't know how. Yeah, I'll 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.200 do a little pitch for the book right now. I 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.000 think it's worth buying just to read your explanation of 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:58.760 that story, because I've heard that story numerous times and 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:01.040 I could, you know, vaguely, probably tell it t and 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.880 someone say, oh, yeah, you know what's nuts the nuts 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.040 and bolts of it. But you added in just a 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.440 few details that I didn't know. I was like, now 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:12.520 that's fascinating thing in a way I don't agree with 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:17.160 with Horniday, Like I know the Horniday story very well. Yeah, 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.120 I would not tell it the way you told it. 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:21.320 How would you tell it? Just different? Are we gonna 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:23.280 Can we skip right to that one? Can we skip 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:24.800 to that one? And it will come back to the Teddy? 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.760 Now even now I'm scintillated. No, I have to sit 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.760 with that discomfort. Tell us about tell us about so 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:36.520 the Roosevelt story, Yeah I had. I don't know if 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:38.160 I knew that story or not. I mean, I think, 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.800 like you at least knew that Teddy bears Teddy Roosevelt. 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.160 There's a relationship, and the story goes. I believe it's 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.560 I could have the year wrong at this point. Was 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.800 the year that uh scotfy A published the Culinary Guide. Well, 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:56.560 there's a lot happening that year. Clearly a big year. Um, 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:01.960 Roosevelt goes down to Mississippi and it's gonna go bear hunting, 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.040 and this is a it's a you know, the press 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.359 is following him there, and longest story short, they're not 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:09.879 finding any bears. One of the last days of his 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:14.560 hunt his uh they go out cut stop me from it. Um, 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:19.280 what year? When was uh? You know, who's the Mississippi 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.639 bear hunting writer Faulkner? When was Falkoner? Like active later, 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:26.560 I believe I don't know, not my not my Arab expertise. 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.360 I barely am expert on my own book anymore. Yeah, well, uh, 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.639 we're forcing you to revisit. Yes, I should have I 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.080 should have brushed up a little bit more. In any case, Uh, 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.880 all of a sudden, Roosevelt is uh, you know, he 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.520 he gives up. He goes to have lunch, and they're 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.160 hunting with hounds. They're hunting with hounds and a guide. 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:49.639 You know. So his guide was this sort of famous 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:54.159 black Mississippi former slave bear hunter guy who you know, 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.040 was a very storied figure. Yeah, Roosevelt wouldn't cross the 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.159 street without a guy, I would assume. So yeah, so 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.640 this guy suddenly he starts blowing on his bugle. Uh. 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.439 Colin Roosevelt back out into the field because he's found 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.240 a bear and it's this kind of mangy looking, scrawny 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.520 animal that he's tied to a tree, and he's the 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:16.400 hounds have cornered it. He's tied it to a tree 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.280 so that the President can come shoot it, have the 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.200 honor of shooting it. Now, this is where the story 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.840 and the truth kind of get diverge a little bit, 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.920 get a little muddy. The story goes that Roosevelt found 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:33.560 this all very unsportsmanlike and spared the bear's life. And 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.480 there's a famous cartoon done at this moment in a 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:40.080 Washington newspaper where they show Roosevelt declining to shoot this 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:45.040 very cuddly looking bear, and the bear becomes the Teddy 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.240 Bear that that bear in the cartoon looks, you know, 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:52.520 fluffy and cute and cuddly, a little vulnerable. That becomes 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:57.040 the Teddy's Bear. Uh. And toy companies start making these 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.240 stuffed animals name them after the President to sort of 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.239 celebrate that moment of mercy. The truth is, as far 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:05.600 as I could tell, that he did not He did 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.560 refuse to shoot the bear. Instead, he asked his buddy 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.240 to knife it with put it out of its misery. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.160 That part did not get carried over into the myth 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.240 um right because it was supposedly like a worn down, 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.320 scrawny it was out. It just like wasn't doing very good. 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.200 It was a bad looking bear. It was a bad 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.440 looking bear. So he did feel that it was unsportsmanlike, 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:27.520 but it was more to protect his own sense of 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.879 sportsmanship than the bear's life that he declared to shoot 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.160 it um. So that in and of itself, I thought 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.080 was interesting the way that the story, you know, the 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.480 parts of the story that we wanted to repeat and 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.320 the parts that we wanted to ignore. But yeah, in 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:43.320 any case, that was the sort of birth of the table. 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.520 And there's there's other competing stories. I actually got a 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.120 lot of emails from various people, you know, marshaling historic 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.040 evidence that but what happened that day, Well what happened 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.399 that day or about the you know, or linking the 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:56.360 origin of the Teddy Bear two different things. And then 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.080 it was it was this moment with Teddy rizz with 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.760 that kind of gave it's popularity so that it wasn't 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.840 necessarily invented because of Teddy Roosevelt. But that was what 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.600 made it a sensation. Um, Like the Teddy bear is 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:10.600 already a thing, but it became more of a thing. 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:13.080 There's there's camps as far as I remember, there's there's 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:16.320 some some argument about that as well. Um but yeah, 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.320 but but in the book, I link that to the 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.440 condition of sort of actual bears in America at that time, 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.880 where we were sort of shifting from a perspective where 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.000 they were these menacing threats to something that we had 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.480 pretty much brought to its knees and now needed to 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:35.240 show Mercy's Roosevelt to read that told it, Yeah, sort 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:37.480 of resonates, you know, as of course, now is the 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.080 time to spare the bears life, and we can make 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.000 them into this adorable thing that we give to our babies. 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.439 Whereas you know, an eighteen thirty nobody out on the 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:48.200 frontier is going to think of a bear as a 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.639 cuddly thing that their child should should play with, right, 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.760 it would be like giving your child a monster. Yeah, 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:59.720 and you'd you'd said on the manufacturing kind of backstory, Um, 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.480 and that's the thing that just like light bulb went 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:08.000 off for me, was the one manufacturer had had a 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.040 stuffed bear on the market, that it was kind of 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:13.880 fierce looking with the hump on its back and more 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.760 of an actual depiction of a representation of a bear 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.320 complete with a hook through its nose or a ring 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.040 through its nose and a chain did not sell very well. 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.040 Oh yes, yeah, Well that was the thing is that 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.560 when you look pretty teddy bear, there are no you know, 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:37.640 I haven't done the historians have you. You just didn't 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:39.600 see bear toys and when you did, this was one 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.440 of the few examples where it was clearly a scary toy. 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:45.639 It was meant to frighten children, It wasn't meant to 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.040 comfort them. And even when the teddy bear starts taken off, 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:53.119 as often happens, the kind of old guard at the 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.560 toy industry is late to catch up. They can't get 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.480 their heads around why suddenly people think bears are adorable 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.639 and they're because they're just placing baby dolls. You know, 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.960 this is scandalous. So there's a lot of there's a 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:06.880 lot of backlash, you know, is what is the world 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.320 coming to? That these chips were giving these children bears? 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.479 And there were actually poems, epic poems about the fights 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.480 between Teddy Bears and dolls at Christmas time, you know, 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:19.680 and that the bears were slaying the dolls and things 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:21.720 like this. So that the more I think that there 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.840 was one called the Passing of the Dolls, which you 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:27.119 know it was, it was just slow to catch up 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.320 to the zeitgeist. Man, do you uh, can you explain 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.120 shifting baseline syndrome? Yeah? But can we talk about possums first, 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.680 because that's the take the footnote on the Teddy Bears story, 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:39.680 because you were saying that you don't often see possums 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:44.800 and the possums are not widely represented in children ship right, 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:49.360 and so meaning mobiles, pajamas, teddy Bears, not at all. 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.879 We do have a book, a children's book um that 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:58.360 was sent that that my brother and sister in law 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.119 sent us for our kids. It's the favorite of theirs 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:02.800 and it's a children's book that was written in the 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:08.680 sixties or seventies called Possum now to show kind of 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:14.119 like changing our changing attitudes towards what's appropriate for children. 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:18.520 Possum is largely about the whittling down of a large 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:23.199 family unit of possums where there's the mother has It 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:26.040 starts out the mother's in her den has a litter 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:30.920 of twelve or thirteen, and throughout her summer's travels, they 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:37.720 are uh whittled away throwing snakes, other things, snapping turtles, 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:41.840 cars to where there's just a couple of them. And 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:45.320 then one female survives and she gets bred up by 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:47.480 a male and goes back into the den to have more. 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:51.159 And it's just like the decimation of a possum family. 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.880 But it's like presented as a children's book. Doc, what's 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:58.639 the moral? What do you take away from it? Life 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:01.720 is fleeting, the just make more. Life is fleeting in 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:06.119 the natural world is at least as harrowing as ours. 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:11.520 That's a good book. So I volunteered to go last 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:13.159 year with my kids. In first grade, you had to 0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:15.280 volunteer to go read a book, and my wife signed 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:16.960 me up to go read a story to the kids 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:22.000 in class. And I went and read Possum, and Yeah, 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:24.159 I didn't feel like I felt like the kids like it. 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:28.040 I felt like that it made the teacher uncomfortable. Well, 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:30.159 that's interesting because that's the point you bring up in 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:33.320 the book and how you're saying how there's some research 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:36.679 done with how kids react to like the brutality of 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.520 nature and right, and the young kids are kind of like, yeah, 0:24:40.560 --> 0:24:43.680 like whatever, like protect me, and it's fine. I don't 0:24:43.680 --> 0:24:45.919 really care if all those things die, if if I 0:24:45.960 --> 0:24:48.360 can live on. And it's only as we get older 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:51.640 that we sort of don't like that stuff anymore, like 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:53.920 like how nature really. Yeah, there's there's a good research. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.280 I mean, there's this whole field of you know, human 0:24:57.080 --> 0:24:59.639 of human dimensions of wildlife they started calling it. But 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:01.600 this Stephen Colored at Yale, I don't know if you 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:04.000 ever come across this stuff. I think he passed away now, 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:06.760 but yeah, in the seventies, he he kind of lad 0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:10.160 this whole body of research to just look at how 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:13.000 do people think about animals? You know, what do we 0:25:13.040 --> 0:25:17.639 actually think? And the findings are are really counterintuitive and 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:19.000 kind of crazy. I mean also to some of the 0:25:19.080 --> 0:25:21.919 questions they asked. I mean, he asked them to rate animals. 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:25.439 You know, do you like ladybugs more than cougars? And 0:25:25.680 --> 0:25:28.439 we know what's smarter, you know, like a lobster or 0:25:28.440 --> 0:25:31.440 a dolphin. You know, just things like they just gut instincts. 0:25:31.440 --> 0:25:33.320 But one of the things that he he did was 0:25:33.359 --> 0:25:35.720 he got very interested in how children think about animals, 0:25:36.040 --> 0:25:39.360 and they don't think about animals the way adults think 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:42.120 about children thinking about animals. So he showed, for example, 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:45.080 that we we want to think of children as these innocent, 0:25:45.160 --> 0:25:48.000 peaceful things, and you know that's probably why we give 0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:50.080 them animals, which we also want to think of as innocent, 0:25:50.119 --> 0:25:52.600 peaceful things. Um. But it turns out, you know, you 0:25:52.640 --> 0:25:54.680 ask a three year old or I don't know the 0:25:54.720 --> 0:25:57.040 exact ages, but there's an age at which you ask 0:25:57.080 --> 0:26:00.000 a small child do you want to camp around other people? 0:26:00.240 --> 0:26:02.640 Or do you want to camp among animals? And they're 0:26:02.640 --> 0:26:05.479 gonna say other people because they're afraid of animals obviously, right, 0:26:05.480 --> 0:26:08.159 I mean, here's the evolutionary and some in some sense, 0:26:08.440 --> 0:26:10.680 but we forget all that, right, we we put these 0:26:10.720 --> 0:26:12.679 presumptions on them. So yeah, they want to you know, 0:26:12.720 --> 0:26:15.960 if a if a wolf I maybe getting the species, 0:26:16.000 --> 0:26:17.600 it could have been a coyote. But you know, if 0:26:17.720 --> 0:26:20.199 if a wolf of kyote comes and kills the farmer's chickens, 0:26:20.200 --> 0:26:22.679 what should the farmer do? Kill all the kill all 0:26:22.760 --> 0:26:26.400 the wolves? Right, that's the answer that the kids give you, um, 0:26:26.480 --> 0:26:28.800 and and a slight few adults will give you well, 0:26:28.840 --> 0:26:32.200 absolutely absolutely, But I think that we think that, you know, 0:26:32.320 --> 0:26:34.760 I think for a lot of conservation minded people, there's 0:26:34.960 --> 0:26:38.200 there's this presumption that, you know, the rancher wants to 0:26:38.280 --> 0:26:39.919 kill the wolf, he just has to get back in 0:26:39.960 --> 0:26:44.480 touch with his childlike love of of all living creatures. Right. Yeah. 0:26:44.840 --> 0:26:47.199 What I like about what I like about kids. An 0:26:47.240 --> 0:26:49.720 interesting thing about kids, and you see it, I see 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:52.840 it my own all the time, is the the hard 0:26:52.920 --> 0:26:59.199 wired things about animals that come from just our species history, 0:26:59.800 --> 0:27:06.560 like just the innate distrust of serpents. Right, there's a 0:27:06.600 --> 0:27:07.879 lot of things that kid will want to go up 0:27:07.880 --> 0:27:10.400 and grab, but there's something they just I'm sure there's 0:27:10.520 --> 0:27:13.600 plenty of exceptions, but I find that kids are generally, 0:27:14.440 --> 0:27:17.359 without having someone discussed snakes with them, are generally like 0:27:18.359 --> 0:27:22.199 repulsed by a snake. Well, I know that there's research 0:27:22.240 --> 0:27:24.240 about that. I don't necessarily remember what it shows, but 0:27:24.280 --> 0:27:27.880 I do remember reading studies where they showed a kind 0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:31.679 of laddering of fears of animals, so that you know, 0:27:31.720 --> 0:27:34.040 younger kids are afraid of snakes. Thinking when you're on 0:27:34.080 --> 0:27:36.439 the ground, when you're crawling, you know you have a 0:27:36.480 --> 0:27:38.680 fear of snakes and maybe spiders and things like that, 0:27:38.960 --> 0:27:41.199 and then you're but you're not afraid of predator. You know, 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:43.639 you're not afraid of a bear because you're probably not 0:27:43.680 --> 0:27:45.600 gonna have the opportunity to be put face to face 0:27:45.600 --> 0:27:47.760 with the bear. And how are fears are? The sort 0:27:47.760 --> 0:27:49.520 of innate fears that you're talking about seemed to be 0:27:49.560 --> 0:27:52.000 triggered as you as you age, which is kind of 0:27:52.400 --> 0:27:57.679 like a good operation, like crawling around on the ground 0:27:57.720 --> 0:27:59.600 before you can walk. You're running into a rack and 0:27:59.680 --> 0:28:03.399 it's snakes, potentially poisonous. You'll find the kids are kind 0:28:03.400 --> 0:28:06.240 of like they know, don't put that, that's right, and 0:28:06.240 --> 0:28:08.399 they're not and they're not afraid of guns, you know. 0:28:11.040 --> 0:28:12.879 All right? Oh you know what, because because you were 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:17.400 feeling uneasy about it? Um, I want to get into 0:28:17.440 --> 0:28:19.720 William T. Hornaday. But do you want to do that 0:28:19.800 --> 0:28:22.359 first or do you want to explain this is nothing 0:28:22.400 --> 0:28:25.199 I've never heard by love it shifting baseline syndrome. I 0:28:25.200 --> 0:28:26.840 want you to talk to me about horn today. First, 0:28:28.000 --> 0:28:34.800 tell the story of horn today. The story Okay, so um, 0:28:34.920 --> 0:28:41.000 first off, we share and we share, uh a tendency 0:28:41.040 --> 0:28:45.200 to still use the word buffalo. Okay, it's like a 0:28:45.240 --> 0:28:46.920 type of dude to mean you say buffalo. There's the 0:28:46.960 --> 0:28:49.280 type of dude who wants to sort of he feels 0:28:49.320 --> 0:28:52.520 like he's engaging and who knows most about wildlife contest 0:28:52.800 --> 0:28:55.000 where he'll like to point out that there's that it's 0:28:55.040 --> 0:28:58.000 called the bison, as though you could know as much 0:28:58.040 --> 0:29:01.320 as you know about it, like as though I could have, 0:29:01.640 --> 0:29:03.760 for instance, written a whole book about the subject, but 0:29:03.880 --> 0:29:08.520 not picked up. I'm the fact that the name now 0:29:08.640 --> 0:29:11.640 is bison, Like that eluded me, and so someone needs 0:29:11.680 --> 0:29:13.320 to make sure to get ahold of me, because having 0:29:13.360 --> 0:29:16.959 written several hundred pages about this animal's history from the 0:29:16.960 --> 0:29:21.000 place to scene into the future, I had missed that fact. 0:29:21.600 --> 0:29:24.880 So there's like a there's like a who knows most 0:29:24.920 --> 0:29:29.400 e sort of thing about bison buffalo. But I still 0:29:29.440 --> 0:29:31.360 have a great affinity for the word buffalo. I noticed 0:29:31.400 --> 0:29:35.360 that you use it well. Horny himself encouraged people. Am 0:29:35.400 --> 0:29:38.000 I doing it? Who knows more? Thing? Right now? You 0:29:38.040 --> 0:29:40.160 know Hornaday and one of his books he starts out 0:29:40.160 --> 0:29:43.520 by saying, you know, the technical name is bison, but 0:29:43.600 --> 0:29:46.560 I'm gonna call it buffalo. And I believe Americans should 0:29:46.600 --> 0:29:48.960 call it buffalo because that's the popular term, right now 0:29:49.160 --> 0:29:51.240 and it shows sort of art. It gives us a 0:29:51.240 --> 0:29:54.280 greater investment in the animal to go with the populace. 0:29:55.560 --> 0:29:58.520 It's I have never in my life registered any confusion 0:30:00.320 --> 0:30:03.040 where I had said to someone, hey, man, did you 0:30:03.120 --> 0:30:07.280 notice all those buffalo like out that way? And they 0:30:07.320 --> 0:30:11.640 registered confusion when they didn't know what I was talking about, Like, no, 0:30:11.760 --> 0:30:14.720 I saw a bunch of bison, Yeah, you mean the 0:30:14.800 --> 0:30:18.720 bison nickel, do you like? I've never had someone registered confusion. 0:30:19.120 --> 0:30:25.840 So Hornaday now the last big at. I never know 0:30:25.840 --> 0:30:28.120 where to begin this story, I said, it's it begins 0:30:28.120 --> 0:30:31.600 in the begins in the place the scene. But at 0:30:31.600 --> 0:30:33.480 the end of the Civil War, there's two big herds 0:30:33.680 --> 0:30:37.120 of buffalo. We're gonna go buffalo here, there's two big 0:30:37.120 --> 0:30:41.280 herds buffalo left or people sort of perceived the remaining 0:30:41.400 --> 0:30:44.800 animals as being in these two large hurts um there's 0:30:44.840 --> 0:30:48.040 about fifteen million of them. There was what they called 0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:52.000 the Southern herd, which was sort of you can kind 0:30:52.040 --> 0:30:55.080 of imagine it being centered around Dodge City, Kansas and 0:30:55.760 --> 0:30:58.560 uh down in the Texas panhandle, the southern plains or 0:30:58.600 --> 0:31:01.560 south of the railroad. And then you have the Northern herd, 0:31:01.640 --> 0:31:07.960 which you could kind of imagine that being centered around UM, say, 0:31:08.000 --> 0:31:13.400 centered around Miles City, Montana, being up into up into Canada, 0:31:13.560 --> 0:31:15.960 south into Wyoming, and that was like the Northern herd. 0:31:16.040 --> 0:31:19.440 There was two big groups. They kind of shot. They 0:31:19.520 --> 0:31:23.160 killed the North the Southern herd off in eighteen They 0:31:23.200 --> 0:31:26.960 kind of reached a packs of slaughter around eighteen eighteen 0:31:27.000 --> 0:31:30.320 seventy two, and it was about a decade later that 0:31:30.440 --> 0:31:36.040 the Northern Pacific Railroad made it to Miles City and 0:31:36.080 --> 0:31:39.480 then they tapped out the last of the Northern herd 0:31:40.320 --> 0:31:42.680 and in that you know, they killed a million or 0:31:42.720 --> 0:31:45.760 two million or some number the hide hunters did, and 0:31:45.800 --> 0:31:48.360 I think it was eighteen seventy three, right pretty quick 0:31:48.400 --> 0:31:51.640 where they thought the last one. Hornaday, like William T. 0:31:51.760 --> 0:31:55.160 Horned a collected specimens for the Smithsonian, was actually very 0:31:55.200 --> 0:31:58.520 influential in the Smithsonian, proved wanted being very influential in 0:31:58.560 --> 0:32:03.800 the Bronx Zoo. Was a specimen collector. Hornaday knew that 0:32:04.240 --> 0:32:08.000 UM the animals around the way out. He was even 0:32:08.040 --> 0:32:12.280 sending letters to people trying to find places where it 0:32:12.360 --> 0:32:17.800 might be feasible to go get some specimens and determines 0:32:17.840 --> 0:32:19.560 it the best chance would be to take the Northern 0:32:19.600 --> 0:32:23.560 Pacific Railroad into Miles City. Now this is months months 0:32:23.640 --> 0:32:26.600 after the hide hunters were still shooting him for commercial markets. 0:32:26.960 --> 0:32:31.720 He's out just trying to find some and he goes 0:32:31.800 --> 0:32:36.040 up into the big Sandy area north in the tad 0:32:36.080 --> 0:32:39.719 east of Miles City, I believe, and when going up 0:32:39.720 --> 0:32:43.120 around the muscle shell, I think and uh, I was 0:32:43.120 --> 0:32:49.760 just trying to shoot museum specimens. Um. The parts of 0:32:49.760 --> 0:32:53.080 the story that I think are most interesting to me 0:32:53.600 --> 0:32:55.840 was uh when I said that we would have told 0:32:55.880 --> 0:33:01.080 the story differently, is I did don't really see one. 0:33:01.200 --> 0:33:04.640 I didn't see a ton of irony there, which I 0:33:04.640 --> 0:33:07.479 feel that you did. Irony in the sense that he 0:33:07.560 --> 0:33:10.440 was killing animals to preserve that. Yeah, I feel like 0:33:10.440 --> 0:33:13.720 you were being a little judgmental of him, as though 0:33:13.760 --> 0:33:17.320 he had sort of, um, who's the guy in the 0:33:17.360 --> 0:33:19.280 Bible that sound his way to go kill a bunch 0:33:19.320 --> 0:33:21.880 of people and get struck by Yeah, he has sort 0:33:21.880 --> 0:33:23.600 of you kind of tell it as though he had 0:33:23.640 --> 0:33:27.360 some sort of epiphany. You don't think he did well 0:33:27.400 --> 0:33:29.560 And then maybe not in that moment. I think the 0:33:29.600 --> 0:33:34.120 irony is that he himself went on to move from 0:33:34.200 --> 0:33:37.720 taxidermy to conservation. I mean, I think in some ways 0:33:37.760 --> 0:33:40.400 he invented, but he was already very he when he 0:33:40.440 --> 0:33:46.680 went out to collect his specimens. It wasn't like, um, 0:33:46.760 --> 0:33:49.160 he was like he was glad about this. No, he 0:33:49.280 --> 0:33:52.560 was tortured by it. Yeah, But but I just got 0:33:52.600 --> 0:33:56.120 the sense like um, that he kind of felt like, 0:33:56.280 --> 0:33:59.520 oh my god, and then he's so shortsighted. Oh, I 0:33:59.560 --> 0:34:02.440 see the distinction. Yes, I appreciate that's a that's a 0:34:02.720 --> 0:34:05.000 I get that critique. I guess he's like, there's I 0:34:05.040 --> 0:34:07.680 feel that he was thinking, there's nothing anyone's gonna do. 0:34:09.000 --> 0:34:13.400 There are guys out there right now, including Teddy Roosevelt, 0:34:13.760 --> 0:34:17.000 trying to shoot him. At least we would have some 0:34:17.200 --> 0:34:22.719 specimens for future generations to even understand this thing. Right, 0:34:22.760 --> 0:34:25.080 So my question to you would be, and that's not 0:34:25.160 --> 0:34:30.600 the part. There's two parts I thought were interesting. Was that, 0:34:31.040 --> 0:34:36.400 um that he was wading through during this time, waiting, 0:34:36.840 --> 0:34:42.840 almost literally wading through the carcasses and remains of the 0:34:42.880 --> 0:34:46.160 hide hunters. And two, did he had this observation that 0:34:47.360 --> 0:34:51.680 the people in Miles City when he later wrote about 0:34:51.680 --> 0:34:55.960 this experience, that the people in Miles City the hide hunters. 0:34:57.960 --> 0:35:01.560 We're waiting in Miles City, having no idea what they 0:35:01.600 --> 0:35:05.400 had done, and that they were just waiting there for 0:35:05.480 --> 0:35:09.160 the next big herd to show up. And over time, 0:35:10.200 --> 0:35:12.600 just while waiting for the next big herd that they 0:35:12.600 --> 0:35:16.319 thought would come out of Canada, some magical thing would 0:35:16.360 --> 0:35:19.000 happen where a million more would would flow through town. 0:35:19.080 --> 0:35:21.759 They would get back to their business just kind of 0:35:21.800 --> 0:35:26.440 gradually got into being saloon keepers or ranchers, and only 0:35:26.560 --> 0:35:30.279 gradually over the years realized that like, oh my god, 0:35:30.400 --> 0:35:33.719 we killed them all, that there was no comprehension of 0:35:34.800 --> 0:35:41.879 the finiteness of that resource. Like that's important to me 0:35:42.560 --> 0:35:45.120 because I feel that people oftentimes go and look at 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:49.719 the hide hunters and find a sort of like there 0:35:49.800 --> 0:35:52.320 was maliciousness and greed, for sure, but there was also 0:35:52.400 --> 0:35:55.080 just a general like not understanding what you were doing 0:35:56.040 --> 0:35:59.360 going on. And I feel that relative to the people 0:35:59.400 --> 0:36:03.000 who were at actually out doing this, Hornaday was went 0:36:03.160 --> 0:36:08.359 into it a very enlightened individual, not just like yet 0:36:08.400 --> 0:36:13.680 another asshole laying on yet another layer of pathology onto 0:36:13.680 --> 0:36:17.160 this whole problem. Yeah, I agree, and I'm I regret 0:36:17.200 --> 0:36:19.879 that you felt that I was lumping him in. I mean, 0:36:19.880 --> 0:36:21.960 if that is if that's what you took away from it. 0:36:22.000 --> 0:36:25.160 Then I can see that that might be I might 0:36:25.200 --> 0:36:28.640 have been reading in heavy but now go ahead like maybe, yeah, well, 0:36:28.800 --> 0:36:31.480 I agree with you. I think he was incredibly enlightened 0:36:31.920 --> 0:36:36.040 relative to the to the thinking of his day. And 0:36:36.080 --> 0:36:39.279 I think that is what I wanted to call attention to, 0:36:39.520 --> 0:36:43.160 is what did enlightenment look like in that context? Right? 0:36:43.160 --> 0:36:47.799 I think that a big takeaway I I had from 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:49.360 from looking at a lot of the issues in the 0:36:49.400 --> 0:36:56.000 book was the arbitrary nous with which people often decide 0:36:56.719 --> 0:37:02.239 what is possible and what is impossible? Bowl Right, he 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:06.600 decided that all that was possible was to shoot a 0:37:06.640 --> 0:37:09.520 dozen buffalo and stuff them, and that was going to 0:37:09.600 --> 0:37:13.320 be how he preserved the species. He later proved himself 0:37:13.360 --> 0:37:17.000 wrong very quickly, you know, within a fifteen years, by 0:37:17.040 --> 0:37:21.719 actually setting up captive breeding programs, reintroduced producing you know 0:37:21.840 --> 0:37:25.080 what is maybe one of the first you know, reintroduction 0:37:25.120 --> 0:37:27.200 programs from a captive breeding program that he was doing 0:37:27.280 --> 0:37:30.719 at the Bronx Zoo. And that's an interesting story that 0:37:30.760 --> 0:37:35.120 people don't know. Yeah, it got so bad that day 0:37:35.239 --> 0:37:38.680 later to repopulate the West, we're bringing animals from the 0:37:38.680 --> 0:37:42.800 Bronx Zoo back west by Rail. Yes, and he was 0:37:44.040 --> 0:37:47.359 probably the major force in that project. So I think 0:37:47.360 --> 0:37:54.680 it's interesting that the William Temple Hornaday of could probably 0:37:54.840 --> 0:37:58.240 could look back on the William Hornaday of eighteen nineties 0:37:58.239 --> 0:38:02.600 something and say, and that guy didn't really even understand 0:38:02.640 --> 0:38:04.359 what was possible the same way that And that's how 0:38:04.400 --> 0:38:06.480 I'm looking at him, you know, because you kind of 0:38:06.480 --> 0:38:09.920 get into a similar thing about polar bears, not similar, 0:38:09.960 --> 0:38:14.840 but another thing of like of people sort of feeling 0:38:14.840 --> 0:38:16.960 there at the end of something and trying to prevent 0:38:17.040 --> 0:38:19.719 the end. Yeah, for a species. I think that we're 0:38:19.800 --> 0:38:22.120 quick to I think the polar bears is get example. 0:38:22.120 --> 0:38:25.319 I think that we're quick to when we don't know 0:38:25.400 --> 0:38:32.200 the future, fill it in with ah negative assumptions, right, 0:38:33.160 --> 0:38:36.160 and that that was what Hornday is doing. I think that. 0:38:37.160 --> 0:38:39.359 I guess I don't necessarily see the parallel of polar bears. 0:38:39.520 --> 0:38:41.920 Do you want to do you want to frame that 0:38:41.960 --> 0:38:50.680 a little bit better? Well, yeah, that right now it's 0:38:50.719 --> 0:38:54.799 not a perfect parallel. But the effort that you're talking about, 0:38:54.840 --> 0:38:58.960 like the effort that people go through on the Hudson's 0:38:59.000 --> 0:39:05.400 Bay to move polar bears out of the troubled path. Well, 0:39:05.480 --> 0:39:08.680 does mean like, um, like extraordinary things we do for 0:39:08.760 --> 0:39:12.719 beleaguered species. Yeah, that was the That was what got 0:39:12.719 --> 0:39:16.239 me going on the book, just realizing the degree to 0:39:16.320 --> 0:39:21.120 which these animals are being managed. You know, I talked 0:39:21.120 --> 0:39:26.000 about uh sort of stage managing a lot of the species. 0:39:26.080 --> 0:39:28.840 You know that that were you know, a lot of 0:39:28.920 --> 0:39:33.640 endangered species are being captively bred, reintroduced into ecosystems that 0:39:33.719 --> 0:39:37.600 were also engineering for, you know, so that they can 0:39:37.640 --> 0:39:39.680 thrive in them. So all this work is being done 0:39:39.680 --> 0:39:45.320 on their behalf. Every part of the equation is being micromanaged. Um. 0:39:45.480 --> 0:39:49.080 The example with the sea turtles, Yeah, yeah, I mean 0:39:49.080 --> 0:39:51.240 that was a story I did for the Times magazine 0:39:51.239 --> 0:39:54.000 when during the Gulf oil spill. You know, I went 0:39:54.080 --> 0:39:56.960 down and and they were digging up I don't know 0:39:57.000 --> 0:39:58.480 if you guys remember there is a big news story 0:39:58.480 --> 0:40:01.759 at the time, but the government is digging up sea 0:40:01.840 --> 0:40:05.400 turtle nests on the Gulf coast, shipping the egg driving 0:40:05.400 --> 0:40:08.160 the eggs in a FedEx truck to the East coast 0:40:08.200 --> 0:40:12.120 of Florida to Atlantic coast of Florida, and reburying the 0:40:13.160 --> 0:40:14.400 I don't know if they were reburying them or just 0:40:14.480 --> 0:40:16.480 letting them hatch and putting the hatchlings out in the 0:40:16.560 --> 0:40:18.640 water because they didn't want the turtle hatchlings in the 0:40:18.680 --> 0:40:21.799 Gulf Coast to be swimming directly into the spill. And 0:40:21.840 --> 0:40:26.520 I went down to Alabama and hung out with this UH, 0:40:26.320 --> 0:40:30.279 a group of mostly retired folks who had been for 0:40:30.360 --> 0:40:33.879 years had just been walking around the beach barricading the 0:40:33.920 --> 0:40:37.319 nests so that people wouldn't trample them or you know, 0:40:37.360 --> 0:40:40.480 accidentally dig them up to protect them. And then what 0:40:40.520 --> 0:40:43.680 they would do is when they were getting close to hatching, 0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:46.120 they would just camp out on the beach around the nests. 0:40:46.840 --> 0:40:49.200 And when the turtle hatchlings started to boil out of 0:40:49.239 --> 0:40:52.399 the sand, since they wouldn't want them going away from 0:40:52.440 --> 0:40:54.960 the water toward the artificial light, because their their instinct 0:40:55.040 --> 0:40:57.799 is to go toward the light UH, and they often 0:40:57.840 --> 0:40:59.719 get stranded in parking lots and things they go on 0:40:59.760 --> 0:41:02.520 the wrong direction. They wanted him go into the ocean, 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:04.960 so they would sit around the nest. When the hatchling 0:41:05.000 --> 0:41:08.160 start coming up, they would dig a trench to funnel 0:41:08.200 --> 0:41:10.640 them towards the ocean. So they had no other options 0:41:11.080 --> 0:41:12.719 but to go right into the ocean and then they 0:41:12.719 --> 0:41:16.960 would stand with tarps around the trench to block the light, 0:41:17.880 --> 0:41:20.440 so that basically they're just escorting them. I mean they 0:41:20.440 --> 0:41:22.040 could have just dug them up and carried them out, 0:41:22.040 --> 0:41:24.000 and sometimes they had to do that too, but they 0:41:24.000 --> 0:41:26.360 would stay up all night waiting for these hatchlings. I 0:41:26.400 --> 0:41:29.920 mean that is people's lives. An ordinate amount of their 0:41:29.920 --> 0:41:32.080 time is being spent to get this these nests. And 0:41:32.160 --> 0:41:34.600 during the spill, it turns out they were the experts 0:41:34.960 --> 0:41:37.040 that the the government had to call on. They were 0:41:37.040 --> 0:41:39.439 the people with the relevant experience who could go dig 0:41:39.520 --> 0:41:41.520 up these It was sort of like this Armageddon situation, 0:41:41.600 --> 0:41:45.520 you know, like the movie army Ageddon and that's the 0:41:45.560 --> 0:41:48.000 phone call of your lifetime. Oh they were so psycked, 0:41:48.200 --> 0:41:50.480 you know. And they were and they were also I 0:41:50.520 --> 0:41:53.680 don't want to say this with a tone of uh, 0:41:53.719 --> 0:41:55.080 you know, I want to judge them harshly for it. 0:41:55.120 --> 0:41:59.160 I thought it was amazing. They were let's just say 0:41:59.160 --> 0:42:00.920 they were. They were feeling good about themselves, you know, 0:42:00.960 --> 0:42:03.000 they were telling people what to do. They knew they 0:42:03.000 --> 0:42:05.600 were the experts. This was their moment and they weren't 0:42:05.600 --> 0:42:08.360 gonna let anyone funk with their turtles and it was 0:42:08.400 --> 0:42:09.960 great to see, you know, it was great to see 0:42:10.000 --> 0:42:13.320 someone who just had this sort of any hobby who's 0:42:13.920 --> 0:42:17.600 you know, kids and nephews and nieces probably tease them about. 0:42:17.760 --> 0:42:19.640 You know, you get up every morning and you walk 0:42:19.680 --> 0:42:22.480 on the beach looking for turtle tracks, you know, and uh, 0:42:22.520 --> 0:42:25.200 you know these people they had turtles painted on their 0:42:25.239 --> 0:42:28.800 their cars and turtles hanging from their rear view mirrors, 0:42:29.000 --> 0:42:31.040 and their whole life had been about sea turtles and 0:42:31.040 --> 0:42:33.680 now they were stepping in to save this uh, this 0:42:33.840 --> 0:42:37.920 generation of turtles. It was amazing. Yeah, we like in 0:42:37.960 --> 0:42:42.640 the hunting world, you're surrounded by that um all the time. 0:42:44.080 --> 0:42:47.279 With the way that people like people who kind of 0:42:47.440 --> 0:42:52.640 pulled off the turkey reintroduction and recovery and even then, 0:42:52.680 --> 0:42:54.920 so I know people who have like devoted their lives, 0:42:55.280 --> 0:42:58.160 who have devoted their their life to elk, or people 0:42:58.160 --> 0:43:01.040 who devote their life to quail. For people dev over 0:43:01.080 --> 0:43:03.440 their life to turkey. And there I'm always like, I 0:43:03.480 --> 0:43:06.600 just understand it right because I see like what it 0:43:06.680 --> 0:43:08.719 was born of. But it is I look at the 0:43:08.760 --> 0:43:10.640 turtle thing and I'm like, man, and those people will 0:43:10.680 --> 0:43:13.239 do it without even the promise of having turtle soup. 0:43:13.960 --> 0:43:16.560 It's not even part of the equation. M R. Yeah, 0:43:16.560 --> 0:43:19.399 And so what is that value? I mean, that's that's 0:43:19.400 --> 0:43:21.759 exactly what I'm interested in, is when the value of 0:43:21.760 --> 0:43:27.960 the animals gets unmoored from any practical anything. Um, it's 0:43:27.960 --> 0:43:31.080 because a guy would be like, man, I've always just 0:43:31.280 --> 0:43:34.400 dreamed of hunting turkeys, so I got real involved and 0:43:34.440 --> 0:43:38.120 bringing turkeys back to my state. But for a turtle guy, 0:43:39.840 --> 0:43:42.279 it's just that turtle hits the water and you will 0:43:42.320 --> 0:43:44.680 never lay eyes on it again. And I agree with you. 0:43:44.760 --> 0:43:47.879 The turkey guy on an intuitive level makes a lot 0:43:47.920 --> 0:43:50.480 more sense to me. And I think that's why I'm 0:43:50.560 --> 0:43:52.239 drawn to figure out the other side of it, the 0:43:52.239 --> 0:43:54.680 other part of it. Okay, I was gonna have you. 0:43:54.719 --> 0:43:57.200 I can't decide now that's the only talking about shifting 0:43:57.200 --> 0:44:01.680 baseline syndrome. And oh the term that you've been talking 0:44:01.719 --> 0:44:03.239 about and also want to talk about. I want you 0:44:03.320 --> 0:44:06.680 to touch on conservation reliance of species, but I also 0:44:06.719 --> 0:44:09.000 want to talk about pedals. The bear from your perspective 0:44:10.680 --> 0:44:13.480 is do you see a good order to do that? Uh? Well, 0:44:13.600 --> 0:44:15.799 conservation reliance, I think we can get through pretty quickly. 0:44:15.800 --> 0:44:17.480 I mean, that's basically just what I was talking about. 0:44:17.480 --> 0:44:21.360 That's the technical term for the idea that it's going 0:44:21.440 --> 0:44:25.080 to take intensive management on the part of humans to 0:44:25.320 --> 0:44:28.040 keep in endangered species alive. So there was a study 0:44:28.080 --> 0:44:32.560 that came out that introduced this term, I believe in 0:44:32.560 --> 0:44:36.359 early two thousand's by a guy named Mike scot who 0:44:36.400 --> 0:44:39.480 at the time I was maybe with Fish and Wildlife 0:44:40.600 --> 0:44:44.840 some federal agency, and uh, he came up with this 0:44:44.960 --> 0:44:47.920 term conservation reliance because they looked at every species on 0:44:47.920 --> 0:44:51.799 the dangered species list, and they looked at what, you know, 0:44:51.840 --> 0:44:56.880 tried to forecast what outcomes you know are possible, and 0:44:56.920 --> 0:44:59.840 basically realized that some huge percentage something in the eighties, 0:45:00.040 --> 0:45:03.440 I believe just eighty something percent of these species are 0:45:03.480 --> 0:45:07.160 going to be reliant on human intervention for the foreseeqable future. 0:45:07.680 --> 0:45:09.799 And that doesn't mean that, you know, it could just 0:45:09.880 --> 0:45:12.920 be getting weeds out of their ecosystem so that the 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:16.600 whatever you know, plant they need is there um or 0:45:16.640 --> 0:45:19.799 it could be a much more intensive captive breeding type 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:24.400 of thing, but that the equilibrium in which these species 0:45:24.719 --> 0:45:28.120 evolved has been disrupted to such an extent that we're 0:45:28.120 --> 0:45:30.919 always going to be like I'm saying, stage managing. Yeah, 0:45:30.920 --> 0:45:32.480 like it would be fair to say you could. You 0:45:32.480 --> 0:45:34.600 can probably name a bunch because your research. But the 0:45:34.640 --> 0:45:38.880 California condor lives in a state of conservation reliance absolutely, 0:45:38.960 --> 0:45:42.319 and that that goes from everything from you know, I 0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:44.920 believe they're still captively breeding them, but they're definitely, I mean, 0:45:44.920 --> 0:45:47.920 they teach them not to perch on power lines. You know, 0:45:47.920 --> 0:45:50.080 they have to train them to live in the world 0:45:50.760 --> 0:45:54.560 where they have to live. Now, Um, exactly do you 0:45:54.560 --> 0:45:57.360 think of other ones? Sure? I mean the one I 0:45:57.360 --> 0:45:59.279 write about in the book is this butterfly species and 0:45:59.320 --> 0:46:02.000 Lang's metal more arc where it's uh, you know, been 0:46:02.080 --> 0:46:04.520 winnowed down to such an extent where they go out 0:46:04.560 --> 0:46:08.920 they collect butterfly eggs off leaves of its host plant. 0:46:09.200 --> 0:46:11.040 They take it to a lab in southern California, is 0:46:11.040 --> 0:46:12.960 outside San Francisco. They take it to a lab in 0:46:13.080 --> 0:46:17.160 southern California. They breathed them there, they let the eggs hatch, 0:46:17.400 --> 0:46:20.880 they and then they put the larva back on the plant. 0:46:21.640 --> 0:46:24.200 Then they go back collect some of the live butterflies, 0:46:24.400 --> 0:46:27.520 bring them back to the lab, have them uh breed, 0:46:27.760 --> 0:46:30.799 and do the whole process all over again. Meanwhile, they've 0:46:30.840 --> 0:46:33.120 got a full time fish and Wildlife service employer, at 0:46:33.200 --> 0:46:34.640 least did it as a couple of years ago. I 0:46:34.680 --> 0:46:37.560 know whose job was to groom the ecosystem. He was 0:46:37.560 --> 0:46:40.719 basically like a caretaker for the butterfly's property, and he 0:46:40.800 --> 0:46:43.640 was doing all sorts of invasive controls to make sure 0:46:43.680 --> 0:46:45.520 that that host plant could get a footing on the 0:46:45.600 --> 0:46:47.880 sand dunes where it lives. So that's a pretty extreme 0:46:47.960 --> 0:46:50.520 case I think, where every part of what used to 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:54.160 be a natural process has to be done by hand, 0:46:54.520 --> 0:46:57.120 by human hand. Yeah, there's a certain type of person 0:46:57.239 --> 0:46:59.880 who looks at that and they feel like an anger 0:47:00.040 --> 0:47:03.279 towards the species. Yeah. I think there's part of that 0:47:03.320 --> 0:47:05.640 in me, honestly. I mean I think that's why I 0:47:05.719 --> 0:47:07.839 was so wrapped up in this, because I couldn't see 0:47:07.880 --> 0:47:15.719 my way through to any you know, discernible, clear, defensible position. Yeah. 0:47:16.080 --> 0:47:19.440 I I've always lived, or I just live with this 0:47:19.520 --> 0:47:32.759 sense that it's deeply immoral two um, to allow species 0:47:32.760 --> 0:47:37.120 to go extinct because of our because of our influence, 0:47:37.160 --> 0:47:40.319 our influences on the environment. To be like to be 0:47:40.440 --> 0:47:44.960 like there there's parts of creation, whether you take that 0:47:45.160 --> 0:47:47.960 in a religious way or in just like an ecological way, 0:47:48.000 --> 0:47:51.520 that there's parts of creation that we've decided are um 0:47:51.600 --> 0:47:53.840 that we can just throw away or allowed to be 0:47:53.880 --> 0:47:58.520 thrown away because we don't want to be inconvenience by it. 0:47:58.960 --> 0:48:01.319 I feel like if we've a I that if we're there, 0:48:01.360 --> 0:48:04.279 if we've arrived at that point, we really don't have 0:48:04.360 --> 0:48:08.920 any claimed any kind of moral legitimacy anymore. Do you 0:48:08.960 --> 0:48:11.520 think we're not at that point? I don't think a 0:48:11.560 --> 0:48:14.279 lot of people at that point. The person I run 0:48:14.280 --> 0:48:16.440 into on this, I mean, yeah, plenty of people are 0:48:16.440 --> 0:48:18.040 at that point, and I think they don't have any 0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:22.640 kind of claimed moral legitimacy either. Is uh we started 0:48:22.640 --> 0:48:27.040 talking about well like a migration corrid or you know, 0:48:27.239 --> 0:48:28.880 you have to be great if you didn't graze that 0:48:28.880 --> 0:48:35.440 down to nothing. It would be better if you uh 0:48:35.800 --> 0:48:38.840 had you know, a clean single top strand with no 0:48:38.960 --> 0:48:42.600 barbs on it, on your barbed wire fans be better 0:48:42.640 --> 0:48:46.880 if there was no barbed wire fans um. And you 0:48:47.000 --> 0:48:51.359 always hit this point where well where does it end? 0:48:52.680 --> 0:48:55.040 You know? And that's the person on these when we 0:48:55.080 --> 0:48:58.719 get into these arguments and talks on this subject, that's 0:48:58.760 --> 0:49:01.799 the person always shows up like, yeah, but how far 0:49:01.840 --> 0:49:05.840 are you gonna take on well, like I can't I 0:49:05.960 --> 0:49:10.520 put you know demmit or I had the no light 0:49:10.800 --> 0:49:13.680 ordinance on my beach front house. So okay, I did that. 0:49:14.719 --> 0:49:19.440 But you know you're now you're asking me to you know, 0:49:19.520 --> 0:49:22.600 not you know, use my back porch at all, or 0:49:23.040 --> 0:49:25.160 you know where does it end? Yeah, that's the thing 0:49:25.200 --> 0:49:27.919 that people like, let's run this out to the point 0:49:27.920 --> 0:49:30.920 where everyone will see the absurdity of yes and yeah. 0:49:31.160 --> 0:49:33.120 And there's another thing about it, Like in the case 0:49:33.120 --> 0:49:36.480 of the Condor, there's a there's an interesting argents we 0:49:36.640 --> 0:49:42.680 made that the Condor could be considered to be one 0:49:42.760 --> 0:49:47.000 of the Pleistocene extinctions. It just took a long time 0:49:47.440 --> 0:49:50.719 to arrive there. So at the Pleistocene Holla scene transition, 0:49:50.760 --> 0:49:55.520 when we lost mastodons, Woolleye mams, giant ground slaw short 0:49:55.560 --> 0:50:03.320 faced bears, we lost all these animals, um and a 0:50:03.440 --> 0:50:06.320 sort of sis in on what what did it? Because 0:50:06.320 --> 0:50:13.040 it wasn't human caused. It's mysterious some combination of some 0:50:13.160 --> 0:50:17.440 combination of climate change at the at the end of 0:50:17.440 --> 0:50:22.759 the last Ice Age, some combination of climate change influence 0:50:22.880 --> 0:50:32.080 from uh successional waves of humans coming from Asia, you know, 0:50:32.239 --> 0:50:38.480 Ice Age hunters um. Possibly disease issues no one really understand. 0:50:38.920 --> 0:50:42.160 Possibly there's this the idea that never really dies, whatever 0:50:42.200 --> 0:50:50.279 really gets going of um some like cosmic disturbances that 0:50:50.400 --> 0:50:54.120 caused the extinctions. But you have this big gass bird 0:50:54.719 --> 0:51:01.680 that's a feeds on carrion, and whether you know lead 0:51:01.719 --> 0:51:05.319 ammo or not, or power lines are not, you'd have 0:51:05.400 --> 0:51:09.040 just seen that bird fizzle out the way that many, 0:51:09.080 --> 0:51:12.520 many dozens of other species fizzled out at the end 0:51:12.560 --> 0:51:14.719 of the places scene because they just took a long 0:51:14.760 --> 0:51:17.440 time to happen. They were all over the I believe, 0:51:17.480 --> 0:51:20.480 all over the continent, right and they just the last 0:51:20.520 --> 0:51:22.239 remaining ones just happened to be the ones at the 0:51:22.320 --> 0:51:25.520 very western edge. Because if they found a way to 0:51:25.600 --> 0:51:27.600 begin that, they found a way to kind of exploit 0:51:27.640 --> 0:51:31.759 marine map dead marine mammals, and then people will be like, 0:51:31.800 --> 0:51:34.319 there's nothing you were gonna do, or it was just 0:51:34.400 --> 0:51:36.600 gonna happen, the same way if we had caught the 0:51:36.600 --> 0:51:39.840 tail end of some other the end of the mammoths 0:51:40.400 --> 0:51:42.480 and we grappled and be like, wow, why what do 0:51:42.560 --> 0:51:45.960 we do when maybe it was just gonna happen. Yeah, 0:51:46.000 --> 0:51:48.480 But how do you guys answer that because it's like, okay, 0:51:48.520 --> 0:51:52.440 well who gets to choose? Are you Steve, Rinella or John. 0:51:52.680 --> 0:51:54.400 I am not going to be the guy that signs 0:51:54.440 --> 0:51:58.200 the paper that says let it go for all humanity 0:51:58.480 --> 0:52:01.239 we just stopped right now. I will not I will 0:52:01.239 --> 0:52:03.120 not be the guy that says it all right, So 0:52:03.160 --> 0:52:05.560 I s want to touch on pebbles. I want to 0:52:05.560 --> 0:52:10.799 touch on giant sequoias in the Karl Marx Tree. Want 0:52:10.840 --> 0:52:14.760 to talk about uh pedal. I already said pedals shifting 0:52:14.800 --> 0:52:18.799 baseline syndrome, right, because it's like an important part of 0:52:18.800 --> 0:52:21.080 your book. Yeah, I think at this point it's important 0:52:21.080 --> 0:52:23.320 part of my life. I think it really has colored 0:52:23.440 --> 0:52:25.880 the way I think about a lot of things. Uh 0:52:26.120 --> 0:52:30.120 shifting baseline syndrome. I wanted her up Tuesday. This is 0:52:30.160 --> 0:52:34.200 all in. Everything we've covered mostly so far is in. 0:52:36.200 --> 0:52:38.239 It's in wild Ones. Yeah, we're going we're going through 0:52:38.280 --> 0:52:42.600 the book, John wu Allams wild Ones still available, still available, 0:52:43.680 --> 0:52:46.840 uh shifting baseline syndrome. So yeah, this is the idea 0:52:46.840 --> 0:52:50.680 I stumbled on when I was actually writing about that 0:52:50.680 --> 0:52:53.880 that butterfly, and I find that it's something that gives 0:52:53.880 --> 0:52:57.600 a name to a lot of phenomenon that we come 0:52:57.640 --> 0:53:02.160 across all the time. Shifting baseline syndrome was the phrase 0:53:02.239 --> 0:53:06.520 was coined by a marine fisheries scientist named Daniel Pauly 0:53:07.280 --> 0:53:12.880 Ah in the nineties, and what he was what he 0:53:12.920 --> 0:53:19.000 realized was that people in his field, we're coming in 0:53:19.080 --> 0:53:23.760 and and spending their careers documenting the crash of different 0:53:25.120 --> 0:53:31.560 fish species. So they were looking at everything happening in 0:53:31.600 --> 0:53:35.400 the ocean from the time they started their career to 0:53:35.480 --> 0:53:38.839 the time they retired more. I mean, obviously they knew 0:53:38.840 --> 0:53:41.920 more than that, but this was their focus. And then 0:53:41.920 --> 0:53:45.920 the next generation of academics would come along or scientists 0:53:45.920 --> 0:53:50.400 would come along, and they would start basically with a 0:53:50.440 --> 0:53:55.120 clean slate intellectually, so they would start documenting the decline 0:53:55.120 --> 0:53:59.680 of fish species further. But because we're always looking at 0:54:01.040 --> 0:54:05.160 the world through this window of the present, we never 0:54:05.200 --> 0:54:08.439 really see that I should start that all over again. 0:54:08.440 --> 0:54:10.800 I'm not doing this idea very I'm tracking. I'm tracking, 0:54:10.880 --> 0:54:17.480 but I already understand it again. Shifting baseline syndrome was 0:54:18.400 --> 0:54:22.000 a phrase coined by Daniel Polly, who's a fisheries scientist. 0:54:22.360 --> 0:54:26.319 Don't get discouraged, man, discourage it's a discouraging idea. I 0:54:26.360 --> 0:54:31.319 guess the idea basically that Uh, he was noticing that 0:54:31.640 --> 0:54:35.360 people were documenting the crash of marine species, but no 0:54:35.400 --> 0:54:37.879 one was really putting together that the crashes that they 0:54:37.920 --> 0:54:40.600 were or the declines that they were documented within their 0:54:40.600 --> 0:54:45.240 own careers, were actually just slivers on a much longer 0:54:45.719 --> 0:54:50.200 graph of time, so that each time a new generation 0:54:50.239 --> 0:54:52.799 would come along, they would accept the condition in which 0:54:52.880 --> 0:54:55.040 they were looking at the ocean as normal, and they 0:54:55.040 --> 0:54:58.400 would document the decline relative to that normal. But if 0:54:58.440 --> 0:55:01.080 you zoom out and you look at you know, instead 0:55:01.120 --> 0:55:04.000 of a fifty years span or or thirty year span, 0:55:04.080 --> 0:55:05.960 you look at a hundred years span or tuner year span, 0:55:06.040 --> 0:55:09.080 you see a much steeper decline, So that these little 0:55:09.120 --> 0:55:12.200 line graphs that we're drawing and and freaking out about 0:55:12.640 --> 0:55:16.719 are actually just slivers of this much much bigger graph. UM. 0:55:16.760 --> 0:55:19.400 And I think that that there's another term for pretty 0:55:19.480 --> 0:55:23.040 much the same phenomenon. UH. Peter Khan is a psychologist 0:55:23.040 --> 0:55:25.239 at the University of Washington. Around the same time, he 0:55:25.320 --> 0:55:29.040 coined the term environmental generational amnesia, which actually think is 0:55:29.520 --> 0:55:32.920 a cooler term, didn't catch on quite as much, but 0:55:33.680 --> 0:55:36.319 UH and that was more widely applicable, so He would 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:39.160 go to kids in Houston and he would say, you 0:55:39.160 --> 0:55:41.359 know who live among oil refiners And he would say, 0:55:41.480 --> 0:55:44.399 do you think your neighborhoods polluted? They say no, right, 0:55:45.520 --> 0:55:47.960 because that's the you know, we just kind of assume 0:55:48.000 --> 0:55:51.640 it's normal and whatever we inherit, it's normal. Uh. And 0:55:51.719 --> 0:55:54.279 so we watch all this stuff happen, and you know, 0:55:54.280 --> 0:55:56.400 people get old and grumpy and talk about how it 0:55:56.480 --> 0:55:58.960 used to be. But of course when they were kids, 0:55:59.360 --> 0:56:01.920 they were grump people you know who are old at 0:56:01.920 --> 0:56:03.719 that time talking about how it used to be a 0:56:03.760 --> 0:56:06.520 generation before that. And I think this is like a 0:56:06.640 --> 0:56:11.200 really important thing to recognize. And then having recognized it, 0:56:11.520 --> 0:56:13.400 I don't know what the funk to do about it 0:56:13.440 --> 0:56:16.520 because it just screws me up. I still cannot what 0:56:16.560 --> 0:56:18.600 do you do with this information? What do you do 0:56:18.640 --> 0:56:23.680 with the information that your perspective is sort of inherently flawed. 0:56:24.239 --> 0:56:26.400 I struggle with it all the time, and reading that 0:56:26.560 --> 0:56:29.920 term like I've been. My mom still lives in the 0:56:29.960 --> 0:56:31.920 house where I was brought up in, you know, born 0:56:32.280 --> 0:56:34.680 and on, and it's on a lake. So I've been 0:56:34.680 --> 0:56:38.800 a very careful observer of that lake for forty three years. 0:56:39.760 --> 0:56:44.719 And yes, the Eden, Eden for that lake is when 0:56:44.719 --> 0:56:46.759 I was five, and first I was able to take 0:56:46.800 --> 0:56:51.640 it in. But I do oftentimes wonder about like the 0:56:51.680 --> 0:56:55.200 time machine thing. It wouldn't be my first pick, but 0:56:55.239 --> 0:56:57.879 if I had ten picks with a time machine, one 0:56:58.000 --> 0:57:04.880 stop would be that lake in pre human times, to 0:57:05.080 --> 0:57:11.480 go like, so what is the actual baseline? But you're right, 0:57:11.600 --> 0:57:14.400 I in my mind it was like that lake's history 0:57:14.480 --> 0:57:19.160 began when I first gazed upon it, and everything since then. 0:57:19.440 --> 0:57:22.880 And now my child, my boy, who fishes that lake 0:57:23.480 --> 0:57:27.080 a few days every year, will someday have it be 0:57:27.200 --> 0:57:29.520 that that moment when I first took him there to 0:57:29.600 --> 0:57:33.560 fish blue Girls was Eden, and everything will just be 0:57:33.840 --> 0:57:38.040 whatever has slipped from that point, And my story is 0:57:38.040 --> 0:57:41.560 about what it was like. He won't. He'll be able 0:57:41.600 --> 0:57:43.720 to understand that, but it won't factor into his own 0:57:43.880 --> 0:57:46.760 monitoring of its decline, right, and which it will be 0:57:46.800 --> 0:57:49.680 that lake was born on that day? And which baseline? 0:57:49.800 --> 0:57:52.320 Do you attach the legitimacy too? Because you could dial 0:57:52.400 --> 0:57:55.040 up your time machine and go back to whatever year. 0:57:55.240 --> 0:57:57.920 I tend to think of things as being for me, 0:57:58.120 --> 0:58:00.760 just because it allows me to like begin to sort 0:58:00.760 --> 0:58:07.320 of put my arms around things I tend to when 0:58:07.360 --> 0:58:11.880 thinking about wild life in America, the arrival of human 0:58:11.920 --> 0:58:16.720 beings tends to be where I where this For me, 0:58:16.800 --> 0:58:18.920 that's where the story begins. And I agree with you, 0:58:18.960 --> 0:58:21.160 I think instincially that makes a lot of sense. But 0:58:21.360 --> 0:58:25.520 because some people will be in Wyoming and they'll be 0:58:25.560 --> 0:58:29.320 thinking about when it was the Great Inland Sea whose 0:58:29.360 --> 0:58:33.919 shorelines were populated by dinosaurs, But I don't care about that. 0:58:35.240 --> 0:58:37.960 I automatically go to what was it like fourteen thousand 0:58:38.000 --> 0:58:40.440 years ago for whatever reason, just because in our effort 0:58:40.480 --> 0:58:43.440 to understand and make sense of and begin having a conversation, 0:58:43.480 --> 0:58:46.960 that's just where I jump. But that basically invalidates our 0:58:47.040 --> 0:58:51.920 presence here. That says that our goal as responsible citizens 0:58:51.920 --> 0:58:55.080 of these ecosystems is to have zero is to be 0:58:55.240 --> 0:58:56.920 as if we were not here, that they would be 0:58:56.960 --> 0:59:02.000 repopulated with mammoth. Yes, and yeah, I think you're setting 0:59:02.000 --> 0:59:05.000 yourself up for failure. But yeah, it's it's and it's 0:59:05.000 --> 0:59:09.000 just where. And it's a problem thinking ahead too, right, 0:59:09.040 --> 0:59:10.960 it's a problem thinking you know. Use the example in 0:59:10.960 --> 0:59:13.440 the book is the bald eagle recovery. Right, you know 0:59:13.960 --> 0:59:16.800 that when when the bald eagles were delisted as in 0:59:16.880 --> 0:59:20.120 danger species. There was a lot of triumphant talk about 0:59:20.240 --> 0:59:22.000 how many you know bald eagles were. Of course it 0:59:22.080 --> 0:59:24.760 was just a minor fraction of the number of bald 0:59:24.760 --> 0:59:27.760 eagles that there were, you know, at well, for example, 0:59:27.800 --> 0:59:30.520 at your baseline, right, um, And so when do you 0:59:30.600 --> 0:59:33.920 know how many? Benjamin Franklin was criticizing that as being 0:59:33.920 --> 0:59:37.360 scummy exactly, So, how many are there supposed to be? Right? 0:59:37.360 --> 0:59:39.720 How do we know if we've succeeded, and how do 0:59:39.760 --> 0:59:42.040 we know if we failed? If we can't agree on 0:59:42.400 --> 0:59:45.240 what the legitimate you know, what the should be of 0:59:45.240 --> 0:59:50.240 the equation is. I don't know, but you can find 0:59:50.240 --> 0:59:52.960 out because we're having this conversation all the time right now. 0:59:53.000 --> 0:59:56.040 We're engaged in it around the idea of wolves and 0:59:56.040 --> 0:59:59.800 grizzlies in the lower forty eight how many like what 1:00:00.120 --> 1:00:06.560 could like the what is the most reasonable picture of 1:00:06.560 --> 1:00:09.920 recovery based on the fact that there's this thing we 1:00:09.920 --> 1:00:12.280 have to deal with called reality? Well, how many do 1:00:12.320 --> 1:00:14.920 we want? That's the question I like to ask, you know, 1:00:15.000 --> 1:00:18.840 and I think that's a much more complicated question. I mean, 1:00:18.880 --> 1:00:21.560 a lot of the conservation, I mean, there's a lot 1:00:21.640 --> 1:00:25.880 of cases of species that have rebounded only to be 1:00:25.960 --> 1:00:30.959 greeted by distaste or take take the case, go ahead, 1:00:31.040 --> 1:00:34.280 No I can say, like, yeah, man, it quickly swings 1:00:34.320 --> 1:00:38.400 that pendulum to where like oh Canada geese, Candida GeSe, 1:00:38.480 --> 1:00:41.840 is you know, saving them? And now like you can't 1:00:41.880 --> 1:00:44.960 find a person probably like walking in our country that 1:00:45.080 --> 1:00:48.880 can even remember when people were trying to save that bird. Yeah, 1:00:48.960 --> 1:00:51.840 that's a good point. Things that we've recovered, like there 1:00:51.920 --> 1:00:55.800 are states who are doing active reintroductions of deer, white 1:00:55.800 --> 1:00:59.880 tailed deer. So now the new villain is the aggressive turkey. 1:01:00.880 --> 1:01:03.240 Yeah I read that keeping people from getting out of 1:01:03.280 --> 1:01:06.960 their cars, right, these are And meanwhile we had to 1:01:07.080 --> 1:01:11.520 go through extraordinary measures to recover the species. And now 1:01:11.640 --> 1:01:16.040 it's like these dumb, violent birds preventing me from getting 1:01:16.040 --> 1:01:18.400 in and out of my car. And now you've got 1:01:18.400 --> 1:01:21.920 the de extinction people you know that. Oh yeah, they 1:01:21.920 --> 1:01:24.800 want to bring back passenger pigeons. Well I don't think 1:01:25.400 --> 1:01:29.200 American civilization is ready for swarms of passenger pigeons. They're 1:01:29.200 --> 1:01:31.120 gonna block out the sun. Yeah, can you refer our 1:01:31.160 --> 1:01:33.560 listeners back to our episode. You look at what episode 1:01:33.560 --> 1:01:37.200 we did with the ancient DNA expert Dr beast Shapiro 1:01:37.280 --> 1:01:41.960 about de extinction can just be good both the goose 1:01:42.000 --> 1:01:45.360 and and the turkey. I mean how they're significant portion 1:01:45.560 --> 1:01:49.520 portions of our population that if you were to mention 1:01:49.800 --> 1:01:53.160 that species to them, they'd be like, Oh, the goddamn 1:01:53.240 --> 1:01:56.360 things that ship all over my lawn scratch up my car. 1:01:57.120 --> 1:02:00.880 They have no reference of those anim roles anywhere other 1:02:00.880 --> 1:02:02.960 than that. It's like I live on a golf course 1:02:03.600 --> 1:02:05.200 and I have to step in their poop every day. 1:02:05.280 --> 1:02:11.080 I hate those things very shortsighted. Or yeah, looking at 1:02:11.120 --> 1:02:12.560 it from the perspective of your own lifetime, do you 1:02:12.560 --> 1:02:16.240 find the number? Episode seventy five, we explore date the 1:02:16.320 --> 1:02:20.400 extinction with a professor and we cover just that topic 1:02:20.440 --> 1:02:22.640 about what it would really be like to have, you know, 1:02:23.040 --> 1:02:26.000 billions of passenger pisness back again, and why she thinks 1:02:26.040 --> 1:02:29.320 you don't really need to worry about it too much. Um, 1:02:29.600 --> 1:02:32.000 here's another version of the here's another version of how 1:02:32.080 --> 1:02:34.880 much's too many? And what does recovery look like? So 1:02:35.080 --> 1:02:37.600 we've got it now, we're up to over a half 1:02:37.680 --> 1:02:42.880 million buffalo and so people say, like, what does recovery 1:02:42.880 --> 1:02:44.760 look like? And they say, there's two types of recovery. 1:02:45.280 --> 1:02:51.360 There's dealing with its genetic extinction, which we've dealt with. 1:02:51.600 --> 1:02:55.560 It's no longer at risk of genetic extinction, but it's 1:02:55.720 --> 1:02:59.560 there's still a risk of ecological extinction because of the 1:02:59.720 --> 1:03:05.080 half million that we have are privately owned, are managed 1:03:05.080 --> 1:03:09.120 as livestock, so there's no risk of losing the animal. 1:03:09.600 --> 1:03:14.080 But what we've lost is the species interaction, the species 1:03:14.240 --> 1:03:17.680 native interaction with the landscape. So we haven't like that 1:03:17.760 --> 1:03:20.840 won't maybe won't be recovered or will recover it, and 1:03:20.960 --> 1:03:23.800 just small little spots where we can kind of replicate 1:03:25.120 --> 1:03:28.480 what the animal was beyond just it's it's genetic makeup, 1:03:28.640 --> 1:03:33.080 how it influenced and was influenced and was influenced by 1:03:33.120 --> 1:03:37.320 the landscape on which it lived. Um, but yeah, it's 1:03:37.360 --> 1:03:42.320 going on all the time. Um, what should the world 1:03:42.320 --> 1:03:46.160 look like? I don't know. I mean I think that 1:03:46.160 --> 1:03:49.000 that gets back to your what you're saying before about 1:03:49.080 --> 1:03:51.960 you know, when do we give up on something because 1:03:51.960 --> 1:03:55.560 it's inconvenient. Well, the reason why it's often perceived as 1:03:55.600 --> 1:03:59.800 any convenient is because the context in which it existed 1:03:59.880 --> 1:04:02.080 is gone, you know, I mean I think it the 1:04:02.200 --> 1:04:06.200 questions start to parallel, like palliative care questions, you know, 1:04:06.240 --> 1:04:09.320 and the kind of questions you know, when what is 1:04:09.360 --> 1:04:12.200 the it's not necessarily quality of life. I'm not gonna 1:04:12.200 --> 1:04:14.720 get into the emotional well being of the animals, but 1:04:15.120 --> 1:04:18.840 you know, in some sense, these these critters become invasive 1:04:18.880 --> 1:04:21.320 species in their own ecosystem. You know, they're just not 1:04:21.440 --> 1:04:23.360 locked in in the way that they used to be. 1:04:23.680 --> 1:04:25.240 And I don't have an answer for that. I don't 1:04:25.240 --> 1:04:28.840 know when it's not worth preserving them. Yeah, it's like 1:04:28.880 --> 1:04:32.680 preserve it's like keeping a person alive in a vegetative state. Yeah. 1:04:32.960 --> 1:04:36.960 What what is your prime example of a native species 1:04:37.200 --> 1:04:41.800 becoming an invasive species in their own ecosystem. Well, I 1:04:41.840 --> 1:04:45.120 think that that butterfly goes goes a long way to explain. 1:04:45.120 --> 1:04:48.360 I mean, this was a sand dune ecosystem about an 1:04:48.400 --> 1:04:51.560 hour used of San Francisco called the Antioch Dunes that 1:04:52.320 --> 1:04:57.920 very quickly became ah leveled after the I think the 1:04:57.960 --> 1:05:00.720 big burst was after the nine earthquake in San Francisco 1:05:00.760 --> 1:05:03.840 when they were mining the dunes for bricks. But just 1:05:04.000 --> 1:05:08.480 wave after wave of exploitation of that resource until literally, 1:05:08.680 --> 1:05:11.080 you know, you could see talking about shifting. Basically you 1:05:11.120 --> 1:05:14.280 could actually see you know, the baseline of the dune, 1:05:15.120 --> 1:05:17.680 you know, lowering um when you look at when you 1:05:17.680 --> 1:05:21.120 look at photographs um and it it stopped being a 1:05:21.160 --> 1:05:24.680 dune ecosystem. The sand stopped shifting, Uh, you know, trees 1:05:24.800 --> 1:05:28.760 took root. It became a you know, a savanna, and 1:05:28.840 --> 1:05:30.960 it became like a you know, there's oak trees growing 1:05:31.000 --> 1:05:33.880 there now. So to come back and say we want 1:05:33.920 --> 1:05:37.960 to preserve this butterfly that is used to living on 1:05:38.000 --> 1:05:40.640 a you know, a particular kind of plant that grows 1:05:40.680 --> 1:05:43.440 in the sand dune ecosystem, you've got to do a 1:05:43.440 --> 1:05:46.080 lot of work to the ground before you start putting 1:05:46.080 --> 1:05:49.240 the butterfly back. And I mean, I think the condor 1:05:49.320 --> 1:05:51.600 in some sense too, as you're talking about like the 1:05:52.040 --> 1:05:57.200 you know, the entire matrix of circumstances that allowed it 1:05:57.240 --> 1:06:00.720 to evolve, it's just not really there. It's just hanging 1:06:00.760 --> 1:06:03.360 onto this because it learned to probably eat you know, 1:06:03.400 --> 1:06:05.720 marine mammal carcasses and things like that, so it adapted 1:06:05.720 --> 1:06:08.200 a little bit. But it's not behaving the same way 1:06:08.240 --> 1:06:11.240 that a condor would have in the past. And you know, 1:06:11.400 --> 1:06:14.360 I'm not judging it, but it's something about its condor 1:06:14.480 --> 1:06:18.520 nest is gone. Yeah, yeah, And I don't know. I mean, 1:06:18.520 --> 1:06:22.560 I just think that the point I got to, you know, basically, 1:06:22.560 --> 1:06:25.640 and I'm surprised that some people find this discouraging because 1:06:25.640 --> 1:06:27.360 I find it really encouraging. Is the point I got 1:06:27.360 --> 1:06:31.160 to is just a kind of deep acceptance of the 1:06:31.200 --> 1:06:34.240 fact that these questions are not going to be resolved. 1:06:34.520 --> 1:06:38.320 That being as powerful as species as we are and 1:06:38.320 --> 1:06:40.640 trying to exist in a world that's as complicated as 1:06:40.640 --> 1:06:42.960 it is is gonna mean that we're creating all this 1:06:43.040 --> 1:06:46.640 friction around us all the time, and it's kind of amazing. 1:06:46.680 --> 1:06:50.560 We feel somewhat compelled to even be responsible to the 1:06:50.560 --> 1:06:54.040 rest of the planet and to try to minimize that 1:06:54.040 --> 1:06:56.640 that friction or at least you know, put back together 1:06:56.640 --> 1:06:59.520 whatever we're breaking as we kind of trundle around. So 1:07:00.440 --> 1:07:03.560 I don't have any fantasy, you know, this whole idea 1:07:03.600 --> 1:07:06.200 that there's some hope that if we just all start, 1:07:06.640 --> 1:07:09.360 you know, stop drinking bottle water or whatever it is, 1:07:09.440 --> 1:07:11.680 or you know, driving prius, is that suddenly the Earth 1:07:11.760 --> 1:07:14.760 is going to be restored to this beautiful equilibrium and 1:07:14.800 --> 1:07:17.160 we won't have to think about these things anymore. I 1:07:17.200 --> 1:07:19.520 think is is sort of ludicrous. And I think that 1:07:19.600 --> 1:07:21.120 what we need to be doing is figuring out how 1:07:21.160 --> 1:07:25.640 to exist in this tussle of um priorities and clumsiness 1:07:25.720 --> 1:07:28.000 and uh, just kind of hashing it out. It's just 1:07:28.040 --> 1:07:29.760 like a it's like a brawl, you know. We just 1:07:29.800 --> 1:07:32.520 gotta be in there swinging away trying to fix all 1:07:32.560 --> 1:07:35.080 this stuff because we're going to be constantly destroying it 1:07:35.120 --> 1:07:37.880 all the time. Two, there's a quote you have for 1:07:37.920 --> 1:07:41.160 another piece you wrote that I wrote down the future 1:07:41.240 --> 1:07:45.760 is always somebody else's problem. It will very likely feel 1:07:45.880 --> 1:07:50.160 as authentic and only as horrific as our moment does 1:07:50.200 --> 1:07:53.320 to us. Yeah, I think I said, I think I a 1:07:53.280 --> 1:07:55.680 a should said the future is always somebody else's present, 1:07:56.120 --> 1:07:59.080 which is the shifting baselines thing? Is that what I say, 1:07:59.120 --> 1:08:01.480 problem probably right here in the future is always somebody 1:08:01.480 --> 1:08:04.640 else's present. Yeah, well very likely, I'm sorry, it will 1:08:04.720 --> 1:08:08.520 very likely feeling as authentic and only as horrific as 1:08:08.520 --> 1:08:13.040 our moment does us. They won't have a new people 1:08:13.080 --> 1:08:17.600 won't recalibrate to experience all other level of horrific. I 1:08:17.640 --> 1:08:21.599 hope not. I mean, that's I think even if Corman 1:08:21.640 --> 1:08:27.160 McCarthy's the road right, there's only so much anxiety to 1:08:27.200 --> 1:08:30.920 go around. I don't think you find a new way 1:08:30.960 --> 1:08:33.880 to achieve a new level of anxiety. It's normal, it's 1:08:33.920 --> 1:08:36.639 your normal. It's no. And I think the perfect example 1:08:36.720 --> 1:08:39.760 of it is going back to Hornaday is you're saying, now, 1:08:39.840 --> 1:08:45.040 he was lamenting that all the kids were playing indoors, 1:08:45.360 --> 1:08:48.400 none of the kids were getting outside enough. And what 1:08:48.960 --> 1:08:51.960 is our generation of with young kids lament about right now? 1:08:52.280 --> 1:08:55.720 You know, a hundred years later, it's the same thing, right, Yeah, 1:08:56.360 --> 1:08:58.640 I think we're, if anything, maybe we're less concerned than 1:08:58.680 --> 1:09:01.160 he was. You know, he was drive and nuts by that. Yeah. 1:09:01.320 --> 1:09:03.200 I'm just living my life. I wish my kids played 1:09:03.200 --> 1:09:06.160 outside more, but I'm not writing writing screens about it. 1:09:06.320 --> 1:09:08.840 Have you read his book of going up into BC No, 1:09:09.320 --> 1:09:13.360 hunting mountain goats, grizzlies and big horns. That's Horny, right, 1:09:13.400 --> 1:09:16.040 You sent me that book? Yeah, camp fires in the 1:09:16.120 --> 1:09:19.240 Rocky No, I've never read that one. You haven't read it. No, 1:09:20.280 --> 1:09:24.080 he's a big game hunter. Yeah he liked it. Oh yeah, Okay, Now, 1:09:24.080 --> 1:09:29.680 how how big explained to me? How big a sequoia is. 1:09:30.360 --> 1:09:33.879 It's fucking big. I just read your piece about tekoia 1:09:34.000 --> 1:09:38.040 Is and you're as funny because in the beginning our 1:09:38.120 --> 1:09:41.880 guests John Wullen is saying, like, I suppose I need 1:09:41.880 --> 1:09:46.640 to talk about how big they are. Yeah, that's just 1:09:47.880 --> 1:09:50.400 everyone talks about how big they're, but no, let's focus 1:09:50.439 --> 1:09:52.680 on how big they are. I figured, I'm gonna sit 1:09:52.720 --> 1:09:56.479 down and write a piece about sequoia Is. I can't 1:09:56.520 --> 1:09:59.479 really try to be cute about it. We're gonna deal 1:09:59.479 --> 1:10:01.560 with this head on and just get it out of 1:10:01.560 --> 1:10:05.240 the way, because you really need to. Even if you're 1:10:05.280 --> 1:10:09.320 not going to understand the feeling of being next to 1:10:09.360 --> 1:10:11.200 something big that I'm telling you, you at least need 1:10:11.240 --> 1:10:14.800 to remember that. It's all it's the preoccupation. We can't 1:10:14.840 --> 1:10:21.000 gloss over it, but you you first off, um, before 1:10:21.040 --> 1:10:22.599 we talk about how big there, how did it come 1:10:22.640 --> 1:10:25.120 to be there that you did a piece about visiting 1:10:25.160 --> 1:10:27.600 the so the because it wasn't like a doom and 1:10:27.640 --> 1:10:31.519 gloom piece. No, So The Times magazine does a travel 1:10:31.560 --> 1:10:35.080 issue a couple of times a year, Yeah, a couple 1:10:35.080 --> 1:10:37.280 of times a year, and this one, this was about 1:10:37.280 --> 1:10:41.320 a year ago. Their idea was to just ask writers 1:10:41.640 --> 1:10:45.000 to go somewhere you've always wanted to go in the US. Um, 1:10:45.320 --> 1:10:49.680 you've never been before. And I mean there was a 1:10:49.680 --> 1:10:52.000 lot of places I wanted to go, And partially it 1:10:52.000 --> 1:10:54.720 was dictated by the timing. I didn't have a lot 1:10:54.760 --> 1:10:57.800 of times I need to go somewhere relatively close. Um, 1:10:57.840 --> 1:10:59.760 But I'd always I always wanted to go. I spend 1:10:59.760 --> 1:11:02.600 some time him in the Redwoods. But something about the Sequoias, 1:11:02.640 --> 1:11:04.320 And I think, honestly, it might just be the name. 1:11:04.720 --> 1:11:07.840 It might have just been the exotic nous of the name. 1:11:08.320 --> 1:11:12.120 You know, Redwood. You know it's all right there in Sequoia. 1:11:12.120 --> 1:11:14.880 There's a little more mystery to it. Um. It leaves 1:11:14.880 --> 1:11:18.160 something something to the imagination, it sure does. It feels 1:11:18.160 --> 1:11:21.280 a little more magical. Um. Yeah, that's just always been 1:11:21.280 --> 1:11:23.080 fascinated by him. So I just wanted to see what 1:11:23.080 --> 1:11:25.760 would happen if I went and stood around some really 1:11:25.800 --> 1:11:28.479 big trees. Yeah. It's a cool piece. And in it 1:11:28.560 --> 1:11:30.840 you're trying to you're struggling with how big they are. 1:11:31.000 --> 1:11:33.600 And one of the ways you express it would be 1:11:33.640 --> 1:11:38.240 that if you filled the biggest one is what's his name? 1:11:38.280 --> 1:11:39.479 I know that they used to call it the Carl 1:11:39.520 --> 1:11:42.320 Marks Generals General Sherman Tree. That it went from the 1:11:42.360 --> 1:11:44.800 Carl Marks Tree to the General sherw Is that the 1:11:44.840 --> 1:11:47.360 General Sherman Tree? I think, yeah, serm, they call it 1:11:47.400 --> 1:11:51.120 Sherman for short. Yeah, that if you filled that thing 1:11:51.160 --> 1:11:53.320 with water, you're saying, so it's the largest tree on 1:11:53.439 --> 1:11:56.759 earth by volume, and if you filled it with water, 1:11:57.640 --> 1:12:01.120 a person could draw a bath from that reservoir of 1:12:01.160 --> 1:12:06.600 water every single day for twenty seven years for exhausting 1:12:06.600 --> 1:12:12.640 the water. Or that a limb fell off it, So 1:12:12.760 --> 1:12:18.519 a branch off a coniferous tree seven ft thick on 1:12:19.160 --> 1:12:21.519 fifty ft long, and you point out that that would 1:12:21.520 --> 1:12:24.439 be one of the biggest that limb would be one 1:12:24.479 --> 1:12:27.360 of the biggest trees east of the Mississippi, west of 1:12:27.400 --> 1:12:32.200 the Mississippi, east of the Mississippi. Sorry, big damn trees. Yeah, 1:12:32.360 --> 1:12:33.760 that was the kind of thing that drove it home 1:12:33.840 --> 1:12:37.120 for me. Yeah, I've never heard that one. A branch 1:12:37.320 --> 1:12:41.360 that's seven ft across. Yeah, Yeah, that one gets repeated 1:12:41.360 --> 1:12:44.800 a lot around the park. Yeah. What's funny is you 1:12:44.920 --> 1:12:47.120 talking the piece about how you wanted to take a photo. 1:12:47.760 --> 1:12:51.080 How frustrating is like you cannot take a photo of 1:12:51.160 --> 1:12:57.120 the tree because people looking at it will just they'll 1:12:57.160 --> 1:13:00.320 shrink the other trees. So the trees that it's towering above, 1:13:00.360 --> 1:13:03.519 they'll be like, oh, those are shrubs, and your head 1:13:03.560 --> 1:13:07.479 will always make the tree makes sense. And John though 1:13:07.479 --> 1:13:09.479 about how he finally gets a picture that he really 1:13:09.520 --> 1:13:12.240 likes and sends to a friend and she mistakes it 1:13:12.320 --> 1:13:16.280 for a tree in his backyard. Yeah, it was amazing. 1:13:16.439 --> 1:13:18.800 Not everything I did to try to get a good 1:13:18.840 --> 1:13:21.320 picture of these trees backfire, like I had. At one point, 1:13:21.320 --> 1:13:24.800 I had someone take a picture of me on a 1:13:25.080 --> 1:13:31.360 on a ridge overlooking five or six sequoias, right, and 1:13:31.360 --> 1:13:33.040 so that all that's in the picture is me and 1:13:33.080 --> 1:13:36.800 these sequoias. And when you look at it, you think 1:13:36.800 --> 1:13:39.599 that I'm standing in front of a few regular sized 1:13:39.640 --> 1:13:41.599 trees that are right behind me instead of like two 1:13:41.920 --> 1:13:45.360 feet behind me, because your eye just brings them right up. 1:13:45.360 --> 1:13:47.840 It just finds a way to make them seem normal. 1:13:47.920 --> 1:13:49.640 Like it doesn't want to deal with it. It just 1:13:49.680 --> 1:13:51.840 can't deal with it. It just can't deal with it. 1:13:52.439 --> 1:13:55.920 But when you get up to it, do you feel it? Then? Yes, yeah, 1:13:56.000 --> 1:13:58.200 I really did. I'm not a as we discussed, I'm 1:13:58.240 --> 1:14:01.680 not a nature writer in the in the sense of 1:14:01.760 --> 1:14:03.640 someone who wants to go stand next to tree and 1:14:03.680 --> 1:14:08.200 feel things. Uh, but yeah, I mean it's hard to say. 1:14:08.240 --> 1:14:10.640 I was there to go see what it's like, to 1:14:10.680 --> 1:14:12.280 see what it feels like to be next to a tree. 1:14:12.320 --> 1:14:14.200 So I was, you know, turned on a little bit 1:14:14.200 --> 1:14:16.479 more than if I was just walking around. But I 1:14:16.840 --> 1:14:19.559 cannot see how that those trees can disappoint you if 1:14:19.560 --> 1:14:22.080 you go to see them. Um, I mean, if you do, 1:14:22.160 --> 1:14:25.360 I think there's something dead inside in you. Can you 1:14:25.400 --> 1:14:28.360 touch real quick on as well as you remember it? 1:14:28.400 --> 1:14:33.080 Can you touch real quick on? Uh? The sort of 1:14:33.160 --> 1:14:37.599 history with this utopian colony, yeah, yeah, and how they 1:14:37.600 --> 1:14:40.799 wanted to finance their colony, so there was a Kawak colony. 1:14:40.880 --> 1:14:43.840 So the history of the park was really interesting in 1:14:43.880 --> 1:14:48.599 the sense that, ah, you know, we think about these 1:14:48.760 --> 1:14:52.439 um well, there's a couple of things. First is that 1:14:52.720 --> 1:14:54.800 people have always been trying to cut down the sequoias 1:14:54.880 --> 1:14:57.160 from the time that you know, white people discovered them. 1:14:57.200 --> 1:15:00.479 They thought it's a bonanza, right, these huge trees. And 1:15:00.479 --> 1:15:03.240 the problem with sequoias is you can't really cut them 1:15:03.240 --> 1:15:07.200 down very well because they splinter, so they would there 1:15:07.200 --> 1:15:08.960 were a lot of trees that were cut down and 1:15:09.000 --> 1:15:12.360 then just basically you could starts to Yeah, well when 1:15:12.400 --> 1:15:14.320 when it hits the ground, just it's not good lumber. 1:15:14.960 --> 1:15:17.320 So a lot of people wasted a lot of trees 1:15:17.360 --> 1:15:19.520 trying to figure out how to use them as resources 1:15:19.520 --> 1:15:23.599 and just couldn't figure it out. Um, but they kept trying. 1:15:24.040 --> 1:15:28.400 So in any case, this, uh, there was a federal 1:15:28.439 --> 1:15:32.240 act that was encouraging people timber and stone actively was 1:15:32.240 --> 1:15:34.920 called that was encouraging people to go out west and 1:15:34.920 --> 1:15:38.920 and uh, you know log trees. And this group of 1:15:38.920 --> 1:15:42.320 people in San Francisco who are socialists, utopian socialist decided 1:15:42.360 --> 1:15:45.920 that they were gonna team up and buy a lot 1:15:45.960 --> 1:15:49.559 of land inside what is now Sequoia National Park. Um. 1:15:49.600 --> 1:15:50.920 And this was gonna be how they were going to 1:15:51.000 --> 1:15:53.720 fund their utopia was by cutting down trees. And I 1:15:53.720 --> 1:15:55.960 don't know how you do remember how long they were 1:15:56.320 --> 1:15:58.360 the first they had to build a road. Well, interesting 1:15:58.400 --> 1:16:00.200 thing about it was because they all lived together other 1:16:00.560 --> 1:16:03.120 yeah they were, they were, They all had the same address. 1:16:03.240 --> 1:16:07.640 And they found that corporations would do bogus stuff with 1:16:07.720 --> 1:16:11.040 to do land claims. So their land came claim got 1:16:11.040 --> 1:16:13.000 messed up because they thought it was just a corporation 1:16:13.120 --> 1:16:18.000 using fictitious names. Right, Yeah, Well that's the end of 1:16:18.040 --> 1:16:19.800 the story. That's the whole beginning of the story, is 1:16:19.800 --> 1:16:22.519 that they actually got the land and started building road, 1:16:22.560 --> 1:16:24.559 started building a w They spent a year or something 1:16:24.640 --> 1:16:27.320 cutting this road, you know, straight uphill for miles to 1:16:27.400 --> 1:16:30.559 get to the biggest stand of sequoias, to chop them down, 1:16:30.600 --> 1:16:33.640 to chop them down. And this whole time there's a 1:16:33.680 --> 1:16:35.960 there's a kind of a clerical error, you know, there's 1:16:35.960 --> 1:16:38.720 a bureaucratic wrangling over their claims because, as you say, 1:16:38.760 --> 1:16:41.000 there was that sort of raised the red flag that 1:16:41.000 --> 1:16:43.160 they all had the same address at this time corporation. 1:16:43.200 --> 1:16:45.160 They would just go into saloons and they'd you know, 1:16:45.160 --> 1:16:47.120 buy someone a beer to go down to the to 1:16:47.200 --> 1:16:49.080 the office and and make a claim on a piece 1:16:49.080 --> 1:16:50.720 of land so that they could buy it back from them. 1:16:51.360 --> 1:16:53.479 So the fact that all these utopians where you you 1:16:53.520 --> 1:16:56.880 all lived, or using the same address, um made them 1:16:56.920 --> 1:17:00.080 seem like a corporation. So in any case, this is 1:17:00.120 --> 1:17:02.040 all play out. They just they're building their roads on 1:17:02.120 --> 1:17:04.800 good faith that eventually the government's going to see that 1:17:04.880 --> 1:17:07.760 this is an honest mistake and validate their claim. But 1:17:07.800 --> 1:17:10.120 in the meantime, it was actually partially due to the 1:17:10.200 --> 1:17:12.519 railroad interests who wanted to build the railroad along a 1:17:12.520 --> 1:17:17.160 certain route. Uh, they built, they founded sequ federal government 1:17:17.160 --> 1:17:19.479 found in sequa National Park and stripped them of their claim, 1:17:19.520 --> 1:17:21.720 which they never officially had in the first place. So 1:17:21.760 --> 1:17:24.960 they had improved all this land. So the big government 1:17:25.000 --> 1:17:27.760 coming in and screwing the social screw and the socialists 1:17:28.280 --> 1:17:31.839 at the behest of large corporations in order to create 1:17:31.920 --> 1:17:35.320 a national park and preserve this kind of national natural treasure. 1:17:35.439 --> 1:17:37.720 How far we've come, it's all scrambled up. How far. 1:17:38.280 --> 1:17:40.519 It's really hard to see the you know, the typical 1:17:40.560 --> 1:17:43.000 good guys and bad guys in that in that story. 1:17:43.160 --> 1:17:45.840 And they but they recognized the tree is they knew 1:17:45.920 --> 1:17:50.240 like the biggest one Sherman. They recognized it as like, man, 1:17:50.280 --> 1:17:53.479 though there's a tree. Yeah, they did. The Coral Mark 1:17:53.600 --> 1:17:55.680 Street they did. They used to have picnics under it, 1:17:56.080 --> 1:17:57.799 and they were they would have cut it down anything. 1:17:58.080 --> 1:17:59.760 I don't know. I mean, they had a lot of 1:17:59.800 --> 1:18:01.840 tree used to go through. I mean I also wonder 1:18:01.880 --> 1:18:03.920 if they would have maybe figured out pretty quickly that 1:18:03.960 --> 1:18:06.040 these trees were not going to really you know, no 1:18:06.080 --> 1:18:09.960 one had figured out a way to basically monetize these trees. Um, 1:18:10.000 --> 1:18:12.599 and they were just optimistic enough to figure that they 1:18:12.600 --> 1:18:17.080 could do it. I guess how lucky for the sequoia 1:18:17.160 --> 1:18:21.680 is they're not good for longer. That's right. It's a 1:18:21.680 --> 1:18:25.160 touching article. Then I liked it, thanks, Um, And then 1:18:25.479 --> 1:18:27.160 I still want to come background and talk about your 1:18:27.160 --> 1:18:31.960 piece about Petals the Bear. Yeah, Petals the Bear. A 1:18:31.960 --> 1:18:34.479 little synopsis there, Yeah, because you were asked to write 1:18:34.479 --> 1:18:38.720 about influential people, right, so the influential people of what 1:18:38.800 --> 1:18:41.759 year this was? Last year? This is so the magazine 1:18:41.800 --> 1:18:44.639 also does a lot the lives they lived. It's an issue. 1:18:44.760 --> 1:18:47.759 It's like obituaries. It's a bituaries. It's every year between 1:18:47.840 --> 1:18:52.360 Christmas and New Year's where there's you know, remarkable people 1:18:52.640 --> 1:18:55.719 that have died. Each get a short essay about them. 1:18:55.880 --> 1:18:58.000 And the idea I think is, you know you've got 1:18:58.000 --> 1:19:00.120 your big you know, your David Bowie's people like that. 1:19:00.400 --> 1:19:02.600 You know they'll be definitely some of those, But I 1:19:02.600 --> 1:19:05.920 think the bulk of the issue is always devoted to 1:19:06.400 --> 1:19:08.960 people who you may not have heard of, but you 1:19:09.000 --> 1:19:11.200 know they've had this profound impact in one way or another, 1:19:11.240 --> 1:19:12.840 and so it's a it's a good time to kind 1:19:12.840 --> 1:19:14.920 of look back on the people who maybe didn't get 1:19:14.920 --> 1:19:17.280 their due, either in life or in the year in 1:19:17.320 --> 1:19:19.559 which they died. Is I'm doing one right now by 1:19:19.600 --> 1:19:22.360 a sociologist that no one's ever heard of. Um, but 1:19:22.520 --> 1:19:26.120 last year I did one about a bear, which I 1:19:26.160 --> 1:19:27.880 think was maybe the only the second time there had 1:19:27.880 --> 1:19:29.320 been an animal. I can't say it was the first thing. 1:19:29.320 --> 1:19:31.200 They had also done one about the Remember when the 1:19:31.280 --> 1:19:34.719 chimp tore off the woman's face. Yeah, so the chimp 1:19:34.800 --> 1:19:39.080 got one? Yeah, um, but yeah, pedals the bear was earlier. 1:19:39.120 --> 1:19:41.040 Speaking of chimps earlier, I was trying to think of 1:19:41.080 --> 1:19:44.160 ways to explain horn today, and I was thinking, what 1:19:44.280 --> 1:19:49.080 if Jane Goodall had gone out to shoot chimps as 1:19:49.080 --> 1:19:51.400 the way of having a couple of stuffed ones laying around, 1:19:52.479 --> 1:19:54.920 this would be a very different story. Yeah, I think 1:19:54.920 --> 1:19:56.280 that's a good way to think about I think that's 1:19:56.280 --> 1:19:59.000 exactly what it must have been like. Instead, she's like, 1:19:59.040 --> 1:20:01.120 you know what, I'm no, hold off on that and 1:20:01.160 --> 1:20:03.640 try to do um but no, but she was just 1:20:03.640 --> 1:20:05.880 studying them anyways. I didn't mention because I didn't think 1:20:05.880 --> 1:20:07.920 it was a good analogy, but it did cross my mind. 1:20:08.840 --> 1:20:15.760 But yeah, pebbles, pedals, Pedals show some respect for the dead. Yeah. 1:20:15.800 --> 1:20:19.439 Pedals was a black black bear in New Jersey, Northern 1:20:19.479 --> 1:20:22.240 New Jersey, which is also where I grew up. And 1:20:22.840 --> 1:20:26.160 he had some kind of injury or deformity on his 1:20:26.280 --> 1:20:30.400 paws and uh so he had learned to walk upright. 1:20:31.160 --> 1:20:34.240 So he spent a lot of time just cruising around 1:20:34.320 --> 1:20:38.040 through suburban neighborhoods on his hind legs. Had an affinity 1:20:38.040 --> 1:20:41.000 for bird feeders. Yeah, I'm sure in garbage cans and 1:20:41.040 --> 1:20:42.840 so people would you know, there are a lot of 1:20:42.920 --> 1:20:46.200 videos of Pedals on the internet because it was crazy looking, 1:20:46.280 --> 1:20:48.240 you know, I mean it looked at People would always 1:20:48.280 --> 1:20:52.200 describe it as looking like a man in a bear suit. Yeah. 1:20:52.240 --> 1:20:55.240 He would go quite a few steps. He was good. Yeah, 1:20:55.320 --> 1:20:57.760 he can move, He can move, and so they called 1:20:57.840 --> 1:21:00.920 him Pedals. Uh. And then he was shot by bow 1:21:01.000 --> 1:21:05.120 hunter I believe um or as one. I can't remember 1:21:05.160 --> 1:21:11.720 what publication in New York he was assassinated. Yeah, there 1:21:11.760 --> 1:21:14.280 had been a big there had been a big effort 1:21:14.320 --> 1:21:16.280 to I mean, what I was basically writing about was 1:21:16.360 --> 1:21:19.800 the big argument that unfolded the summer before he died, 1:21:20.400 --> 1:21:22.720 about what to do about him, whether there was a 1:21:22.720 --> 1:21:26.800 big camp of uh, you know, pro pedals partisans who 1:21:26.840 --> 1:21:29.000 believed that he needed to be brought in from the 1:21:29.000 --> 1:21:31.720 wild and sent to a rehab facility to live out 1:21:31.720 --> 1:21:34.800 his days. And deeper background is that when we talked 1:21:34.800 --> 1:21:38.599 about how many is enough, uh, New Jersey had very 1:21:38.640 --> 1:21:42.360 successfully this is me talking about New Jersey had very 1:21:42.400 --> 1:21:47.800 successfully recovered the black bear to the point where the 1:21:47.800 --> 1:21:51.240 state Fish and Game Agency felt that, in execution of 1:21:51.320 --> 1:21:55.719 their mandate about allowing democratic access to renewable resources, felt 1:21:55.760 --> 1:21:58.960 that the species had been recovered enough that it was 1:21:59.040 --> 1:22:02.679 warranted to allow hunting for couple of reasons, One because 1:22:02.760 --> 1:22:07.400 there was a a harvestable surplus of the animals and 1:22:07.479 --> 1:22:10.760 two that they had hit a point where they felt 1:22:10.760 --> 1:22:14.040 that they could not have anymore or somewhere needed the 1:22:14.120 --> 1:22:18.439 lower populations to limit their spread into higher conflict areas. 1:22:19.360 --> 1:22:22.719 So this is a determination they made, and they allowed, 1:22:22.920 --> 1:22:25.920 and they came up with a quota system and started 1:22:25.920 --> 1:22:30.280 a bear season. And I think petals people, I knew 1:22:30.280 --> 1:22:34.040 what this might mean for pedals, and I think pedals 1:22:34.080 --> 1:22:37.679 people all along. I mean that that decision to reinstate 1:22:37.720 --> 1:22:40.280 the bear hunt did not go down well, along a 1:22:40.400 --> 1:22:43.519 huge share of the population New Jersey. So I think 1:22:43.560 --> 1:22:48.160 a lot of the the feeling for pedals was already triggering, 1:22:48.280 --> 1:22:52.240 you know, triggered by a lot of upset over the 1:22:52.280 --> 1:22:55.799 fact that bears are being hunted. Petals became a proxy. Yeah, 1:22:55.880 --> 1:22:58.959 it's always a proxy, isn't it? Because people can't because 1:22:59.120 --> 1:23:04.639 not people. A lot of people can't think species level. Yes, 1:23:05.520 --> 1:23:09.240 they can only think individual level. I think that's exactly right. 1:23:09.640 --> 1:23:12.519 And even when comprehending their own species, I find that 1:23:12.560 --> 1:23:15.720 a lot of people do not think species level. When 1:23:15.720 --> 1:23:18.240 I hear that a plane went down, and then I 1:23:18.280 --> 1:23:24.559 see that that plane went down in Belarus, I'm like, oh, 1:23:24.760 --> 1:23:28.640 glad it wasn't America, right, Or if a plane went 1:23:28.680 --> 1:23:32.160 down in America, I quickly like run in my head, 1:23:32.200 --> 1:23:33.880 would that be a flight that people I know would 1:23:33.920 --> 1:23:37.960 be on? I wouldn't know anyone on that plane. So 1:23:38.000 --> 1:23:41.760 we do. We have a difficult time with species level 1:23:41.800 --> 1:23:46.920 thinking about we focus on the known and finite. Well, 1:23:47.040 --> 1:23:50.519 especially when you give the animal name and it becomes 1:23:50.520 --> 1:23:55.599 a Internet celebrity and yeah, so go on, so follow 1:23:55.640 --> 1:23:58.120 us through on pebbles. Well, so in the you know, 1:23:58.280 --> 1:24:01.120 as petals rises to fail. Can call them pebbles. I 1:24:01.160 --> 1:24:05.120 don't know. Pedal lung was the Yeah, that's because stepping 1:24:05.120 --> 1:24:09.240 on the joke here, pebbles is the flintstone girl is 1:24:09.360 --> 1:24:11.640 not pedals because he like with pedal lungs. Yeah, he 1:24:12.000 --> 1:24:14.880 had wheel he's moving. Uh so. Yeah. So there was 1:24:14.920 --> 1:24:17.400 a there's a lot of talk about what to do 1:24:17.400 --> 1:24:22.160 about pedals and a lot of anger that among you know, 1:24:22.280 --> 1:24:25.320 this one side of the debate that the state was 1:24:25.400 --> 1:24:30.519 not helping pedals, that the compassionate thing to do would 1:24:30.560 --> 1:24:33.920 be to bring pedals out of the wild, you know, 1:24:34.000 --> 1:24:36.680 and let him live in captivity. And when we want 1:24:36.680 --> 1:24:38.559 to say captivity, I mean, you know, at some sort 1:24:38.560 --> 1:24:41.839 of sanctuary, not in And what was the state's attitude 1:24:41.800 --> 1:24:45.760 towards the state's attitude was this bear has adapted to 1:24:45.880 --> 1:24:49.240 its condition, seems to be doing well. It's doing all 1:24:49.240 --> 1:24:51.640 the things the bear needs to do to survive. The 1:24:51.720 --> 1:24:54.920 compassionate thing to do is to let the bear be wild. 1:24:55.760 --> 1:25:00.320 And that's what intrigued me, is that fundamental predicament where 1:25:00.320 --> 1:25:03.639 both sides at the same exact facts and both wanted 1:25:03.680 --> 1:25:06.439 to do the compassionate thing and had completely different ideas 1:25:06.840 --> 1:25:10.600 about how to how to do it, and then he 1:25:10.680 --> 1:25:13.960 was then he was killed, so the debate was over. 1:25:14.400 --> 1:25:16.080 You didn't have any chance to talk to the guy 1:25:16.120 --> 1:25:18.559 that got it, did you know? So that no, one, 1:25:18.800 --> 1:25:22.719 that's not public information because there were some rumors about 1:25:23.439 --> 1:25:27.760 various people who you were the hunter who took Pedals down, 1:25:28.040 --> 1:25:32.920 and those people received death threats, and so I think 1:25:33.000 --> 1:25:38.200 one actually sued some people for defamation after that, for 1:25:38.240 --> 1:25:40.720 outing his name or suggesting that he was the Yeah. 1:25:40.760 --> 1:25:42.720 I don't know what what ended up with that, but yeah, 1:25:42.720 --> 1:25:44.759 so it was very tense, and I do wonder about 1:25:44.760 --> 1:25:50.760 the guy that got it. I'd like to imagine that 1:25:50.840 --> 1:25:56.000 he was not I hope that he was just not aware. Yeah, 1:25:56.040 --> 1:25:57.760 well that's the question I asked in the pieces. We 1:25:57.760 --> 1:26:01.920 don't know if so Pedals did not own stand on too. 1:26:02.000 --> 1:26:05.440 I mean, he he did walk around on all fours 1:26:05.439 --> 1:26:09.200 like a regular bear at times. So it's possible, you 1:26:09.200 --> 1:26:12.920 know that whoever killed Pedals caught him on all four, 1:26:12.960 --> 1:26:14.679 caught him on all fours, had no way of knowing 1:26:14.960 --> 1:26:16.679 those different bear on the other On the other hand, 1:26:16.720 --> 1:26:19.599 if the bear was upright, then the very thing that 1:26:19.640 --> 1:26:24.439 made Pedals such a survivor ultimately probably drew attention to 1:26:24.520 --> 1:26:30.040 him caused his death, which I think it's a sad irony. Yeah. 1:26:30.360 --> 1:26:34.559 And I imagine New Jersey's a state where you have 1:26:34.680 --> 1:26:39.200 to report your harvest immediately upon kill jeckstation, and they 1:26:39.280 --> 1:26:42.160 knew the minute it pulled up. I read the Once 1:26:42.200 --> 1:26:49.799 pedals showed up, They're like, oh god, yeah, well, pals 1:26:52.200 --> 1:26:55.360 nature of the deformity. Well, I believe I could have 1:26:55.360 --> 1:26:57.360 this wrong. I believe he was missing one paw and 1:26:57.360 --> 1:27:00.960 the other was either it was sort of bent inward, 1:27:01.200 --> 1:27:05.920 so it was kind of useless. Um. Yeah. And and 1:27:05.960 --> 1:27:08.640 I should stipulate here that the state to this day 1:27:08.840 --> 1:27:13.720 does not um confirmed at pedals was the bear that 1:27:13.840 --> 1:27:16.040 was brought to the check station. They will just say 1:27:16.040 --> 1:27:18.879 that it fit pedals description because they've never tagged pedals 1:27:19.240 --> 1:27:23.200 and so they don't like to identify the bear. Um So, 1:27:23.800 --> 1:27:25.880 I don't know if that's significant. Anyway, I thought it 1:27:25.880 --> 1:27:27.519 was sort of interesting that there's a sort of shrouding 1:27:27.640 --> 1:27:31.160 or bear aspect to it. You know that even even 1:27:31.200 --> 1:27:36.000 that is uncertain, you know, technically, That's where it always 1:27:36.040 --> 1:27:38.160 makes me cringe. We have a running joke about like 1:27:38.160 --> 1:27:40.799 New Jersey cat ladies, but it always makes me cringe 1:27:40.840 --> 1:27:46.120 when people who I feel like aren't equipped to begin 1:27:46.360 --> 1:27:52.920 talking about wildlife when they enter wildlife conversations, like they 1:27:52.960 --> 1:27:55.639 haven't really earned their place at the table in my 1:27:55.880 --> 1:27:58.360 in my opinion and my estimation, they haven't earned their 1:27:58.360 --> 1:28:00.880 place at the table. And I don't think that a 1:28:00.920 --> 1:28:04.519 position at the table is reliant on the fact that 1:28:04.560 --> 1:28:08.479 your pro extraction of wildlife resources are pro use. I 1:28:08.520 --> 1:28:10.599 feel like you can have a place at the table 1:28:11.640 --> 1:28:17.320 and be ardently anti hunting or anti use of renewable resources. 1:28:17.680 --> 1:28:23.000 It's like, sure, I welcome those conversations, but oftentimes there's 1:28:23.040 --> 1:28:25.559 little things will happen that all of a sudden just 1:28:25.680 --> 1:28:31.920 invite people who are ill prepared, not up to speed, 1:28:32.000 --> 1:28:34.960 to like get in on it. And that was one 1:28:34.960 --> 1:28:38.839 of those cases where all of a sudden, just everyone 1:28:39.040 --> 1:28:43.000 kind of became a bear expert for a minute, and 1:28:43.080 --> 1:28:45.479 you saw a similar thing happened. There was no poster 1:28:45.640 --> 1:28:49.000 child for it. But like, did you write about or 1:28:49.080 --> 1:28:52.120 follow and and like you know you, I want to 1:28:52.160 --> 1:28:55.720 ask you about hunting the deer in your yard, but um, 1:28:55.840 --> 1:28:58.240 did did you follow the Florida bear hunt? When Florida 1:28:58.240 --> 1:29:02.160 went through a similar thing and initiated a yeah. They 1:29:02.160 --> 1:29:05.799 said they had a population estimate of bears in Florida. 1:29:07.120 --> 1:29:10.280 Um that it's just based on modeling, so it's a 1:29:10.320 --> 1:29:14.559 soft number. They set a quota for their bear season. 1:29:15.960 --> 1:29:18.559 They opened the season up I think it was in 1:29:18.640 --> 1:29:22.240 two days. They were getting close to this. In two days, 1:29:22.240 --> 1:29:25.759 they got close enough to their quota, their mortality quota, 1:29:26.360 --> 1:29:29.880 that they shut the season down because were they to 1:29:29.960 --> 1:29:32.840 run it a whole other day. They felt that they 1:29:32.920 --> 1:29:35.280 might go over the quota, so they shut it off 1:29:35.320 --> 1:29:40.320 before they hit their mortality cap. Some of the world looks, 1:29:40.520 --> 1:29:43.719 some of the country looks at this and says, wow, 1:29:44.960 --> 1:29:50.920 Florida did a great job with bears. It almost seems 1:29:50.960 --> 1:29:53.839 like their model was low and they have more bears 1:29:53.840 --> 1:29:57.559 than they thought they had. They planned out this hunt 1:29:57.680 --> 1:30:00.400 and had all the measures put in place to make 1:30:00.400 --> 1:30:06.479 sure that they didn't surpass their mortality quota, had the 1:30:06.520 --> 1:30:13.960 restraint and conservative management strategy to shut down before reaching 1:30:13.960 --> 1:30:17.679 their quota. What a successful launch of a bear hunt. 1:30:18.080 --> 1:30:22.840 Hooray for Florida, or as some um as one I 1:30:22.880 --> 1:30:28.280 can't Another New York online news magazine I can't remember 1:30:28.360 --> 1:30:33.519 the name of put it at Florida executes two bears 1:30:33.560 --> 1:30:37.880 like or there's that version, you know, and the fact 1:30:37.920 --> 1:30:44.479 that these two versions can just exist together out there, 1:30:47.000 --> 1:30:49.400 it's just like it befuddles me. But I think it's 1:30:49.400 --> 1:30:51.960 this kind of conversation we're having in general now about 1:30:52.040 --> 1:30:57.120 the polarized nature of America. Yeah, I mean, I was 1:30:57.160 --> 1:31:02.680 gonna say, this kind of partisan deadlock that everything is 1:31:02.720 --> 1:31:06.840 about now the wildlife people, this is like the most 1:31:06.880 --> 1:31:09.519 familiar thing in the world, right that, like I was 1:31:09.560 --> 1:31:11.960 saying before, two sides can have the exact same information, 1:31:12.680 --> 1:31:15.559 see the situation completely differently and not want to budge. 1:31:15.680 --> 1:31:18.920 That's the story of wildlife, but also in the case 1:31:19.000 --> 1:31:21.360 that in this case kind of sort of want the 1:31:21.400 --> 1:31:24.400 same thing. If you went to said do you want 1:31:24.439 --> 1:31:30.200 to have a stable, well managed population of bears in Florida, 1:31:30.320 --> 1:31:34.200 I feel that most people will be like, yep. But 1:31:34.360 --> 1:31:42.160 then the next question would reveal all those differences, you know, well, 1:31:42.320 --> 1:31:46.400 because it comes down to killing. Yeah, I mean, if 1:31:46.439 --> 1:31:51.840 you are against hunting an animal, I don't see how 1:31:51.880 --> 1:31:55.599 you can argue your way into feeling good about it. 1:31:55.840 --> 1:32:00.200 You know, if it's morally reprehensible to you. Now want 1:32:00.200 --> 1:32:02.520 to get personal with you if you don't mind, sure, 1:32:02.560 --> 1:32:04.760 you like we I've been at your home and we 1:32:05.280 --> 1:32:07.160 looked at the deer and talked about the deer out 1:32:07.160 --> 1:32:09.720 in your home, Like how is it? Uh? What is 1:32:09.760 --> 1:32:12.200 this sort of your thing? Like if you imagine, just 1:32:12.240 --> 1:32:15.840 like as a writer or whatever, if you imagine like 1:32:15.840 --> 1:32:18.080 like you eat some meat, not a ton of it, 1:32:18.120 --> 1:32:21.599 but eat some or would you yeah, and you'll eat 1:32:21.600 --> 1:32:25.040 dear meat? What do you think about? And I'm honestly 1:32:25.080 --> 1:32:27.000 curious about this because I like, like I said, you 1:32:27.000 --> 1:32:28.920 you in my mind, you very much earned your seat 1:32:28.920 --> 1:32:32.519 at the table. Like I'm like, what do you think 1:32:32.560 --> 1:32:37.040 when you imagine that when you imagine yourself, like like 1:32:37.240 --> 1:32:39.600 shooting a deer to eat, Like, what are sort of 1:32:39.600 --> 1:32:43.600 the pros and cons that run through your head or 1:32:43.640 --> 1:32:45.960 the like the emotional wrestling or whatever it is that 1:32:45.960 --> 1:32:49.360 happens in your head. I have many times imagine myself 1:32:49.720 --> 1:32:54.240 shooting a deer that walked through my property, maybe not 1:32:54.320 --> 1:32:57.400 with a gun, maybe with more with a bow, for 1:32:57.400 --> 1:33:02.439 for aesthetic reasons or uh for or earthquake preparedness in 1:33:02.479 --> 1:33:07.160 an earthquake is sort of a posts just because it 1:33:07.160 --> 1:33:10.760 wouldn't be pictured with the bo Yeah, I guess I 1:33:10.880 --> 1:33:14.320 just pictured suffering I have some discomfort around guns. Yeah, 1:33:14.360 --> 1:33:18.000 that it would suffer a little longer before it died. Uh, yeah, 1:33:18.040 --> 1:33:21.200 but I would suffer less. I don't know. I guess 1:33:21.200 --> 1:33:23.200 I haven't thought of that. I haven't thought that's a 1:33:23.200 --> 1:33:25.400 good case. Maybe I should start thinking about it. Well, 1:33:25.439 --> 1:33:27.080 I guess because I don't have a gun, but my 1:33:27.200 --> 1:33:31.080 daughter has a boat, so I can shoo. Gives you 1:33:31.120 --> 1:33:35.040 a way to start picturing it. Yeah, okay, I'm also pictured. 1:33:35.400 --> 1:33:38.160 I mean this is way crueler. But like so, I'm 1:33:38.160 --> 1:33:40.160 writing a book about an earthquake right now, so I 1:33:40.240 --> 1:33:42.719 constantly I'm looking at the world around me thinking about 1:33:43.320 --> 1:33:46.160 if there were an earthquake a second. Yeah, it's just 1:33:46.200 --> 1:33:48.479 sort of running in the background all the time. And 1:33:48.560 --> 1:33:50.600 I have so that has made me. And also on 1:33:50.600 --> 1:33:53.960 Bainbridge Island, you're told to be prepared for I think 1:33:54.000 --> 1:33:56.759 two weeks because the idea is that there's a bridge 1:33:56.760 --> 1:33:59.320 that connects to the island to the peninsula that may 1:33:59.439 --> 1:34:01.519 or may not by an earthquake, and that the ferry 1:34:01.560 --> 1:34:04.799 service man are run and so you know, supplies and whatnot. 1:34:05.040 --> 1:34:07.160 We'll have it difficult because when when it hits, they 1:34:07.200 --> 1:34:10.640 imagine a mass tsunami, well, I don't. That's something I 1:34:10.680 --> 1:34:12.760 need to research because I've been I haven't looked in 1:34:12.880 --> 1:34:15.679 that myself, but I don't know that Bambridge is necessarily 1:34:15.800 --> 1:34:18.960 risk of a tsunami, but the faerry boats, oh yes, 1:34:19.360 --> 1:34:23.559 well yeah, uh so I have actually thought and this 1:34:23.640 --> 1:34:25.840 was a while ago, but I do remember thinking, like 1:34:25.920 --> 1:34:28.559 looking around and being like, it happens right now? What 1:34:28.600 --> 1:34:31.080 do I do? How do how does my family eat? 1:34:31.120 --> 1:34:33.320 You know? I mean, we have an earthquake kit, but 1:34:34.040 --> 1:34:36.599 it's probably not good for two weeks. And I thought, 1:34:36.800 --> 1:34:39.439 we have a garden right with a fence around it, 1:34:39.680 --> 1:34:41.880 And I thought, this is how far I was going. 1:34:41.960 --> 1:34:43.960 I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I thought, is 1:34:43.960 --> 1:34:47.320 there a way to lure a deer into the garden? 1:34:48.760 --> 1:34:53.800 Locked the gate and then it's just hand to hand? Right? Well? Then, 1:34:54.000 --> 1:34:55.519 well I didn't have any you don't have any? I 1:34:55.600 --> 1:34:58.040 have an ax, right, but like that that would be 1:34:58.080 --> 1:35:01.040 the first step maybe, right. So this is my experience 1:35:01.080 --> 1:35:04.400 with hunting so far, is that this level that sort 1:35:04.439 --> 1:35:07.200 of fantasy, fantasy makes it sound goods It took no 1:35:07.280 --> 1:35:09.360 pleasure in it, but you realize that that's not The 1:35:09.439 --> 1:35:12.639 axe is not a legal method. Of take well, you're 1:35:12.640 --> 1:35:18.000 not apocalyptic now un plus earthquake, it's apocalypic But yeah, 1:35:18.000 --> 1:35:20.960 so that's I've just emptied all of my thoughts regarding 1:35:21.040 --> 1:35:24.639 killing deer. That's all I've thought about. That's the extent 1:35:24.680 --> 1:35:26.960 of it. It's gonna make me think about it more now. Yeah, 1:35:26.960 --> 1:35:28.599 well just because I'm a little bit curious, just only 1:35:28.640 --> 1:35:30.280 because I sat there and talked and looked at the 1:35:30.320 --> 1:35:32.439 deer trails cutting through the yard with you, and like 1:35:32.479 --> 1:35:34.600 I said, I just want to like find where you 1:35:34.640 --> 1:35:40.479 are so you would never like you you you, And 1:35:40.520 --> 1:35:42.400 I'm definitely not trying to I'm not not trying to 1:35:42.439 --> 1:35:47.240 like like unveil or reveal some sort of inherent hypocrisy 1:35:47.320 --> 1:35:51.840 or whatever. But you will buy flesh. Yeah, So what 1:35:52.040 --> 1:35:54.760 is it that, like, what is it that you don't 1:35:54.800 --> 1:35:56.760 go like, oh, I'll just shoot these deer and eat them. 1:35:58.560 --> 1:36:01.800 I don't think I I've I don't think I'm squeamish 1:36:01.840 --> 1:36:05.400 about that. I don't think I would have a problem hunting. 1:36:05.439 --> 1:36:07.920 It's just something I don't do. This is just like 1:36:07.920 --> 1:36:12.200 a lack of interest. I've never been Yeah, I've never 1:36:12.240 --> 1:36:14.960 been driven to go try I did go once, you know, 1:36:15.040 --> 1:36:17.280 I went with a friend of mine went elk hunting. 1:36:17.520 --> 1:36:19.960 I couldn't fire the gun or we didn't even see 1:36:19.960 --> 1:36:21.799 any elk that day, but you know, I was curious 1:36:22.040 --> 1:36:25.000 to see what it was like. Um, I'm not actually 1:36:25.680 --> 1:36:28.160 anti hunting, you know, I don't have I don't. I 1:36:28.120 --> 1:36:31.400 don't know how any aversion to it. Uh. I my 1:36:31.560 --> 1:36:34.000 entire life have gone to supermarket. I used to be 1:36:34.080 --> 1:36:36.880 a butcher, right, so I've been on that side of 1:36:36.880 --> 1:36:41.080 it too. Um, I'm someone who goes to the store 1:36:41.120 --> 1:36:43.479 and buys me. I'm not someone who kills it myself. 1:36:43.720 --> 1:36:46.200 And I and I don't have I don't have to. 1:36:46.479 --> 1:36:48.200 I mean, that's what it comes down to a lot 1:36:48.240 --> 1:36:51.120 of things. I could make my own clothing, right, but 1:36:51.479 --> 1:36:54.360 it's for the same reason I've never been drawn to 1:36:54.400 --> 1:36:56.479 do that. I've tried. I've made that point. It's whnny 1:36:56.479 --> 1:36:58.160 you bring that up about making your own clothing, because 1:36:58.160 --> 1:37:01.280 I've made and when I've been interviewed, I've been asked 1:37:01.280 --> 1:37:04.120 by people often times like they're like, so you think 1:37:05.000 --> 1:37:08.600 that everybody should go out and shoot it, you know 1:37:09.720 --> 1:37:12.479 that's what you think the only legitimate and I always 1:37:12.479 --> 1:37:16.160 point out, no, Um, there are a lot of things 1:37:17.560 --> 1:37:22.880 that people used to have to do that I don't 1:37:22.960 --> 1:37:28.360 do myself, like process my own raw sewage, stitch my 1:37:28.400 --> 1:37:32.360 own clothes. Right, I've bowed out of all kinds of 1:37:32.360 --> 1:37:36.080 stuff and allowed people to step in and handle it 1:37:36.120 --> 1:37:39.400 for me. It just happens to me that that handful 1:37:39.560 --> 1:37:43.120 growing vegetables is very important to me. I guess like 1:37:43.280 --> 1:37:49.040 I've really centered around food ideas. Like somehow food remains 1:37:49.080 --> 1:37:51.640 like like being in the driver's seat as much as 1:37:51.760 --> 1:37:56.280 possible on food remains very important to me. I feel 1:37:56.320 --> 1:37:58.040 the same way. I think I just haven't gone as 1:37:58.080 --> 1:38:00.280 far as you have gone, you know it. I think 1:38:00.320 --> 1:38:04.640 we have the same philosophy. It's just I I have 1:38:04.800 --> 1:38:07.000 not executed it to the degree that you have to 1:38:07.040 --> 1:38:10.800 the extent. Yeah, So you don't imagine anytime soon you're 1:38:10.800 --> 1:38:15.040 gonna take up deer hunting, I don't. I mean, I 1:38:15.080 --> 1:38:17.559 don't know. I want you to so bad. Why because 1:38:17.600 --> 1:38:21.360 I want you to write about it? Huh, I mean 1:38:21.600 --> 1:38:23.760 I might that might be the most likely context in 1:38:23.800 --> 1:38:28.840 which I would go hunting. To be honest, well maybe 1:38:29.040 --> 1:38:32.639 maybe they will, all right. I want to strongly steer 1:38:32.680 --> 1:38:41.200 you away from the acts situation. Yeah, I was to 1:38:41.320 --> 1:38:43.559 kind of put mine, not even te on the table, 1:38:43.640 --> 1:38:45.840 just as a baseline for the rest of the conversation. 1:38:45.880 --> 1:38:48.479 But you don't do cheesy, Yeah, you don't do cheesy 1:38:48.560 --> 1:38:53.759 cold open though. Yeah, like I sharp the sharpened axe 1:38:53.840 --> 1:38:56.759 was raised over my head. No. If I was driven 1:38:56.800 --> 1:38:59.960 to kill an ax in my garden, inside my garden fence, 1:39:00.720 --> 1:39:02.360 kill a deer inside my garden fence with an ax 1:39:02.439 --> 1:39:04.680 after an earthquake, I would probably write about it. That 1:39:04.760 --> 1:39:08.479 seems like a remarkable experience that should be documented somewhere. 1:39:08.520 --> 1:39:10.000 But I hope it doesn't come to that. If it 1:39:10.040 --> 1:39:12.519 came that, you would later when when tapping into the 1:39:12.520 --> 1:39:16.040 old well, you would you would just stumble upon that 1:39:16.080 --> 1:39:20.400 story eventually. Yeah, all right, the last thing, do you 1:39:20.439 --> 1:39:21.840 guys got I want the last thing. I want to 1:39:21.840 --> 1:39:25.599 talk about the new book. But but um, we'll talk 1:39:25.640 --> 1:39:27.680 about that. Then you can ask your final questions. Are 1:39:27.720 --> 1:39:30.080 you guys good to move on to the new book? Yes? 1:39:31.040 --> 1:39:34.160 To what degree are you comfortable talking about your new book? Oh? 1:39:34.200 --> 1:39:36.280 I'm comfortable with it. Because here's the thing. A lot 1:39:36.320 --> 1:39:38.200 of the people listen to the show have an intense 1:39:38.240 --> 1:39:40.680 interest in Alaska because they come at it from a 1:39:40.760 --> 1:39:43.760 hunting and fishing perspective, and that's like, you know, well 1:39:43.800 --> 1:39:45.120 known for that kind of stuff. I don't know if 1:39:45.120 --> 1:39:49.600 you're aware a lot of people kill them deers with 1:39:49.640 --> 1:39:53.840 access out there, That's what I've heard. So, yeah, talk 1:39:53.880 --> 1:39:56.280 about talk about the book. Well, in my book has 1:39:56.320 --> 1:39:58.519 everything to do with Alaska and almost nothing to do 1:39:58.520 --> 1:40:01.439 with hunting and fishing. But um, this was actually grew 1:40:01.439 --> 1:40:05.800 out of a project I did for a podcast Visible, which, UM, 1:40:06.160 --> 1:40:07.640 you know, anyone listening to this who wants to go 1:40:07.720 --> 1:40:09.799 check that out would would get a lot better understanding 1:40:09.800 --> 1:40:13.360 of it. Um. Can you also do talk about the 1:40:13.360 --> 1:40:15.240 the show as you do with the Yeah. So this 1:40:15.320 --> 1:40:18.200 was a project I did with a bunch of musicians 1:40:18.400 --> 1:40:21.880 who are um in the band called the Decembers. So 1:40:21.920 --> 1:40:25.200 it was, you know, everyone but one member of the 1:40:25.240 --> 1:40:29.000 Decembers used to be in this uh other band and 1:40:29.120 --> 1:40:32.200 who I've done some collaborations with over the years. Um, 1:40:32.240 --> 1:40:33.800 it's sort of tricking out because they don't evenet they 1:40:33.800 --> 1:40:35.080 have a name anymore, but they used to be called 1:40:35.120 --> 1:40:38.919 Black Prairie. So we uh, we basically do these projects 1:40:38.960 --> 1:40:42.800 where um, I tell a story and they write a 1:40:42.880 --> 1:40:46.880 score to the story. UM, and often songs, uh, sort 1:40:46.880 --> 1:40:49.160 of based on characters. They did a soundtrack for wild 1:40:49.200 --> 1:40:52.040 Ones where they wrote songs about in the book. They 1:40:52.040 --> 1:40:55.599 wrote a song about horn today. Yeah. Um, it sounds 1:40:55.640 --> 1:40:57.599 a little weird, but it works out all right. And 1:40:57.640 --> 1:41:02.160 so in this last project uh we did for Visible, 1:41:02.200 --> 1:41:04.080 it's called This is Chance, which is probably gonna be 1:41:04.080 --> 1:41:05.680 the name of the book as well. And it was 1:41:05.680 --> 1:41:10.439 about the nineteen sixty four earthquake uh in Alaska. Uh. 1:41:10.640 --> 1:41:14.720 Mostly mostly I'm dealing with anchorage. Uh and I'm just 1:41:14.760 --> 1:41:18.320 basically telling the story of the first three or four 1:41:18.439 --> 1:41:22.920 days after the earthquake. UM. And thankfully I found just 1:41:22.960 --> 1:41:25.240 a tremendous amount of archival material that's letting me do 1:41:25.280 --> 1:41:28.559 that in a really intimate, um detail oriented way. Can 1:41:28.560 --> 1:41:30.519 you talking about just how big and bad that earthquake was. 1:41:30.560 --> 1:41:33.680 It was a nine point two earthquake. Uh, it was. 1:41:34.920 --> 1:41:38.200 It was so big that uh it's hard. It's hard. 1:41:38.240 --> 1:41:41.280 It's like, it's yeah, it's hard. It's it really is 1:41:41.320 --> 1:41:43.479 like the sequoise in the sense that it's your mind 1:41:43.760 --> 1:41:46.360 cannot accept, you know, sort of it has no way 1:41:46.400 --> 1:41:48.240 to endo it the size. But well, like the Richter 1:41:48.360 --> 1:41:51.600 Scare scale end at ten, well, the Richter scales exponential 1:41:53.280 --> 1:41:56.000 A nine is ten times worse than the eight. Yeah, 1:41:57.800 --> 1:42:00.280 it does it end of ten. I don't know, how 1:42:00.280 --> 1:42:02.880 can there be an end? Right? Well, that's yeah, I 1:42:02.920 --> 1:42:05.000 don't know, because you just know how bad the earth 1:42:05.040 --> 1:42:07.479 can get bump bound up. Yeah, I mean this is 1:42:07.520 --> 1:42:09.479 a you know some of what I what I find 1:42:09.479 --> 1:42:11.960 really interesting about um this it may be true of 1:42:12.000 --> 1:42:15.320 all earthquakes, but the degree to which the damage was 1:42:15.360 --> 1:42:18.439 sort of freakishly random, you know, I mean it wasn't random, 1:42:18.439 --> 1:42:20.519 and not everything to do with the underlying geology and whatnot, 1:42:20.560 --> 1:42:23.120 but just looking at pictures of the damage. You know, 1:42:23.200 --> 1:42:24.960 you have on Fourth Avenue, which is sort of the 1:42:25.000 --> 1:42:27.840 main drag of Anchorage, you had one side of the 1:42:27.840 --> 1:42:30.639 street which for two and a half three blocks sank 1:42:30.920 --> 1:42:34.400 about just in place where you know, all the buildings 1:42:34.439 --> 1:42:37.799 were still mostly intact, had cars parked next to the 1:42:37.840 --> 1:42:41.200 parking meters just twenty below. You had guys coming out 1:42:41.200 --> 1:42:43.360 of bars, you know, just looking up trying to figure 1:42:43.360 --> 1:42:45.000 out how they're gonna get out the other side of 1:42:45.000 --> 1:42:48.200 the street. Totally fine, you know. And uh, I was 1:42:48.200 --> 1:42:51.600 telling John today that my brother hunts ducks in a 1:42:51.680 --> 1:42:55.720 marsh that used to be farm land, but it just 1:42:56.920 --> 1:43:02.640 instantly shot downward and became underwater. Yeah, there was an 1:43:02.760 --> 1:43:05.519 entire little town called Portage. We were saying earlier that 1:43:05.680 --> 1:43:10.120 is the same same scenario. Um. Yeah, So so this 1:43:10.439 --> 1:43:15.040 the the magnitude and the destruction from this quake for 1:43:15.200 --> 1:43:20.200 pretty catastrophic, and yet the death toll was was miraculously small. 1:43:20.200 --> 1:43:23.679 I think there was a hundred and eleven people um 1:43:23.720 --> 1:43:26.840 around Alaska, and that included that may or may not 1:43:26.920 --> 1:43:30.639 include a handful of people that died from Tsunami's down 1:43:30.640 --> 1:43:33.639 in the lower forty eight as well, um partially because 1:43:34.360 --> 1:43:37.200 there just wasn't the population density in in Alaska or 1:43:37.240 --> 1:43:40.120 even an Anchorage at that time. But happened on Good Friday. 1:43:40.800 --> 1:43:43.719 So what I'm writing about is the story is mostly 1:43:43.720 --> 1:43:47.560 focused around a radio station in Anchorage called k E 1:43:47.760 --> 1:43:51.120 and I, which was sort of like the community radio station. 1:43:51.200 --> 1:43:53.639 You know, they were the people around town. Everyone knew 1:43:53.680 --> 1:43:55.720 the broadcasters. And there was a woman who were at 1:43:55.720 --> 1:43:58.960 part time at the station named Genie Chance, who for 1:43:59.080 --> 1:44:02.880 variety of reason wound up um sort of being recognized 1:44:02.880 --> 1:44:05.839 as a voice that carried UM a lot of Alaska 1:44:05.880 --> 1:44:08.680 through that quake. And it was her voice that UM 1:44:08.920 --> 1:44:12.800 just solely by coincidence, wound up being played all over 1:44:12.840 --> 1:44:16.439 the world. UM, both her giving reports to stations all 1:44:16.439 --> 1:44:19.120 over the world, but also just recordings of her that 1:44:19.160 --> 1:44:21.800 people are picked up outside of Anchorage on the station, 1:44:21.880 --> 1:44:24.920 just doing local announcements about you know people, you know 1:44:24.960 --> 1:44:27.240 so and so, your brother is at this place, he's fine. 1:44:27.520 --> 1:44:30.519 I'm just kind of reconnecting the community. So I'm following 1:44:30.520 --> 1:44:32.320 her story and she just turned out to be a 1:44:32.320 --> 1:44:34.800 totally fascinating character both before and after the quake, and 1:44:34.800 --> 1:44:37.639 then a couple of other people around Anchorage at that time, 1:44:37.720 --> 1:44:41.640 taking them through these these first few days. Uh, just 1:44:41.760 --> 1:44:44.800 of that good Friday Easter weekend. When did she die? 1:44:45.320 --> 1:44:47.280 She died in the nineties. She actually went on to 1:44:47.360 --> 1:44:51.840 be um a state legislature legislator in Alaska for a 1:44:51.840 --> 1:44:54.920 few years and had a pretty distinguished career and UM 1:44:55.000 --> 1:44:57.920 it was really remembered as uh, you know, really fondly 1:44:57.960 --> 1:44:59.920 by people there for you know, she was real big 1:45:00.000 --> 1:45:01.880 on kind of feminist issues at a time when that 1:45:01.920 --> 1:45:05.280 was not necessarily that was real popular, UM and did 1:45:05.320 --> 1:45:08.439 a lot of work with she had, uh, you know, 1:45:08.479 --> 1:45:11.720 been abused by her husband at the time around the 1:45:11.720 --> 1:45:13.200 time of the earthquake, she was in this kind of 1:45:13.320 --> 1:45:16.680 you know, tough marriage that way, and uh came out 1:45:16.680 --> 1:45:18.400 of it and did a lot of work for um, 1:45:18.920 --> 1:45:21.720 you know, other women suffering from that as a legislator 1:45:21.800 --> 1:45:24.320 and uh so, yeah, so I'm not necessarily dealing with 1:45:24.320 --> 1:45:26.479 her later life all that much, although I am, I 1:45:26.520 --> 1:45:29.639 am looking into it, but uh yeah, I think there's 1:45:29.680 --> 1:45:32.640 just something that really captivated me about the unpredictability, you know, 1:45:32.720 --> 1:45:34.800 the way that that lay a situation like that lays 1:45:34.840 --> 1:45:37.800 bare just how chaotic the earth is, and you know, 1:45:37.920 --> 1:45:41.560 just I want to say metaphorically but not really even metaphorically, 1:45:41.640 --> 1:45:43.800 just literally just the uncertainty that we all kind of 1:45:43.840 --> 1:45:45.720 have to live with. And then what do you do 1:45:45.800 --> 1:45:48.559 when when that cleaves your world right open and all 1:45:48.560 --> 1:45:50.439 these things that you thought, you you know, you took 1:45:50.479 --> 1:45:53.479 for granted just the way things were just aren't true anymore, which, 1:45:53.760 --> 1:45:55.800 you know, more and more seems like a condition where 1:45:56.240 --> 1:46:00.000 male of us are living with two So uh yeah, 1:46:00.120 --> 1:46:03.360 what was her name again, Genie Chance? What jumped in 1:46:03.479 --> 1:46:05.719 my mind when you're talking about that as the woman 1:46:05.960 --> 1:46:08.960 who won fulsome New Mexico was destroyed by flash flood 1:46:09.880 --> 1:46:13.360 there was a woman working the switchboard trying to alert 1:46:13.439 --> 1:46:18.240 everyone and stayed at the post and was killed. Huh. 1:46:18.439 --> 1:46:21.559 I mean that sacrificed herself to the That's an interesting thing, 1:46:21.600 --> 1:46:24.280 you know, when I as it didn't take long after 1:46:24.320 --> 1:46:27.639 I started doing just the basic research for this book 1:46:27.640 --> 1:46:30.600 that I realized that as remarkable as her story was 1:46:30.680 --> 1:46:33.320 and what she did was, there were lots of other people, 1:46:33.400 --> 1:46:36.040 even just around Anchorage, you know, Ham radio operators who 1:46:36.080 --> 1:46:38.960 stayed up for thirty six hours just relaying messages to 1:46:39.040 --> 1:46:41.280 the South forty eight. All sorts of people were doing 1:46:41.680 --> 1:46:43.559 miraculous things. This is what I was telling you before, 1:46:43.600 --> 1:46:48.400 is that just so happened that this sociology research institute 1:46:48.400 --> 1:46:50.840 had been set up at Ohio State a few months 1:46:50.920 --> 1:46:53.200 before the earthquake, and their whole thing was they were 1:46:53.200 --> 1:46:56.200 going to study the way people behaved in natural disasters 1:46:56.560 --> 1:46:59.559 after in the aftermath, and they were bankrolled by the military. 1:46:59.600 --> 1:47:02.080 The military he thought this was a like a natural 1:47:02.160 --> 1:47:05.040 laboratory in which to study nuclear war. What was gonna happen, 1:47:05.080 --> 1:47:08.240 what was pandemonium was gonna unfold after a nuclear strike? 1:47:08.280 --> 1:47:11.080 And how are we gonna, uh, you know, control it 1:47:11.160 --> 1:47:13.599 or minimize it? And it turned out that these saci'oll 1:47:13.600 --> 1:47:15.639 just who came to Alaska. This was their first big 1:47:15.720 --> 1:47:18.559 chance to study a real disaster, and they did hundreds 1:47:18.560 --> 1:47:21.080 of interviews around town, documented everything, and I you know, 1:47:21.120 --> 1:47:22.920 have access to their materials. There's a big way I'm 1:47:22.920 --> 1:47:25.519 telling this story. You know, they started to look around. 1:47:25.560 --> 1:47:27.479 They realize it's not at all what you know, the 1:47:27.520 --> 1:47:29.559 military thinks it's gonna be. It's is a lot of 1:47:29.560 --> 1:47:34.679 people acting very heroically, commonly, rationally, collaboratively. Um. And that's 1:47:34.720 --> 1:47:37.280 the way these aftermaths tend to play out. You know, 1:47:37.320 --> 1:47:41.400 sometimes there's mismanagement by authorities. You know, looting turns out 1:47:41.400 --> 1:47:44.280 to be mostly just a myth. Um although as soon 1:47:44.320 --> 1:47:46.880 as anything looks like looting, it gets widely reported because 1:47:46.960 --> 1:47:50.680 you know, the fear of looting is is very high. Um. 1:47:50.840 --> 1:47:53.320 So yeah, they just kind of that was the beg. 1:47:53.439 --> 1:47:55.680 That Alaska study was really the beginning of like a 1:47:55.720 --> 1:47:58.680 half century of social science just debunking a lot of 1:47:58.680 --> 1:48:01.680 these very pessimistic myths about human nature. That stuff for 1:48:01.760 --> 1:48:04.160 siss because I think there's still this thing when people 1:48:04.200 --> 1:48:07.960 who are into disaster preparedness, like when I imagine my 1:48:07.960 --> 1:48:10.320 own because I live in a seismically active area. When 1:48:10.320 --> 1:48:13.040 I imagine my own disaster preparedness, I like to think 1:48:13.080 --> 1:48:16.439 that there's some room in my mind for, um ways 1:48:16.439 --> 1:48:19.240 in which I would assist my neighbors. But a lot 1:48:19.240 --> 1:48:21.680 of guys start thinking about disaster preparedness and they're out 1:48:21.680 --> 1:48:23.560 shopping for a gun with which they will use to 1:48:23.640 --> 1:48:26.600 kill their neighbors. I feel like there's like two mentalities 1:48:26.640 --> 1:48:30.599 at Yeah. And even though we see it again again, 1:48:30.640 --> 1:48:32.200 you know, it's like, it's funny because I'm just writing 1:48:32.200 --> 1:48:35.679 about about this a little bit. And and uh, even 1:48:35.800 --> 1:48:38.040 like this year and all that disasters we've had this year, 1:48:38.560 --> 1:48:40.880 and there have been so many great stories about you know, 1:48:40.920 --> 1:48:43.839 just ordinary local people helping each other, but it's always 1:48:43.840 --> 1:48:46.880 framed as this very surprising thing. You know, this it's 1:48:46.920 --> 1:48:48.840 just as who we are in Houston, you know, like 1:48:48.880 --> 1:48:51.519 we help one another, but actually, you know everyone, it's 1:48:51.560 --> 1:48:54.320 who everyone is, right, um, And so there's this weird 1:48:54.400 --> 1:48:57.280 mix of it we just can't quite accept. Uh, you 1:48:57.320 --> 1:49:00.200 know that maybe the goodness is not so special all 1:49:00.320 --> 1:49:02.600 you know that it's this it should be very reassuring, 1:49:02.600 --> 1:49:04.639 but it just feels deflating something. I think it takes 1:49:04.640 --> 1:49:08.280 a few it takes a few days of feeling a 1:49:08.320 --> 1:49:14.240 band and to start bringing out Yeah, and maybe I 1:49:14.240 --> 1:49:15.880 don't know. Kind of if you just look at like 1:49:15.960 --> 1:49:21.200 natural disasters is oftentimes it's not people are immediately like, well, 1:49:21.280 --> 1:49:23.840 let's run out and cause mayhem. It's sort of like, man, 1:49:25.280 --> 1:49:29.080 we've been completely let down, and then tensions. Well, what 1:49:29.120 --> 1:49:31.400 they say is I guess my understanding of the research, 1:49:31.479 --> 1:49:33.040 and I don't know it in and out, but I 1:49:33.080 --> 1:49:35.960 definitely don't know what what I guess. There's there's a 1:49:35.960 --> 1:49:37.840 shift that happens when you know, in a in a 1:49:37.920 --> 1:49:41.360 natural disaster, everyone's suffering together, so everyone has the same 1:49:41.600 --> 1:49:43.960 we're all, you know, all everyone's afflicted by the same thing. 1:49:44.439 --> 1:49:48.479 And then when you can stop feeling collectively, you know, 1:49:48.640 --> 1:49:51.639 joined by your suffering from that disaster, and start pointing 1:49:51.640 --> 1:49:55.400 fingers at you know, whoever is has botched the recovery 1:49:55.439 --> 1:49:58.200 to the disaster, that's when the when the trouble starts 1:49:58.200 --> 1:50:00.439 to you know, at least they will will things starts 1:50:00.439 --> 1:50:01.840 to rise up. I don't you know, that's my sense 1:50:01.840 --> 1:50:03.719 from reading what I've read so far. No, I fear 1:50:03.800 --> 1:50:06.840 for people finding out about my giant rain barrel and 1:50:06.960 --> 1:50:10.120 just how much mountain house I have stashed around and 1:50:10.160 --> 1:50:12.720 they're gonna come for it. Meshing to just let it out, 1:50:13.400 --> 1:50:14.920 Just let the cat out of the bag right there. 1:50:15.640 --> 1:50:19.599 So cal do you have any concluders? Any final um 1:50:19.800 --> 1:50:24.800 thanks questions for our our guest, John Wellen oh Man. 1:50:24.880 --> 1:50:27.599 His work can be found at any number of places 1:50:27.640 --> 1:50:31.920 online and in his book. I guess once you should 1:50:31.920 --> 1:50:35.520 say thanks, um wild ones that admit I am not 1:50:35.520 --> 1:50:40.400 not through it, but it's been great and yeah, a 1:50:40.479 --> 1:50:45.240 couple of little twists and additions to some of the 1:50:45.280 --> 1:50:48.200 stories in there, just in a way that I wasn't 1:50:48.200 --> 1:50:53.840 thinking and and I've really enjoyed it. Um yeah, man, 1:50:53.880 --> 1:50:57.320 I I what is what is your response to those 1:50:57.320 --> 1:51:00.160 people who's like, well, how much is too much? Like? 1:51:00.240 --> 1:51:03.639 When when do you John say, yeah, you gotta pull 1:51:03.680 --> 1:51:06.400 the plug on that sea turtle. I wish I was 1:51:06.439 --> 1:51:11.479 that organized to have a group to make these decisions. Yeah. 1:51:11.720 --> 1:51:15.000 I mean, I'm just you know, going clumsily on my 1:51:15.000 --> 1:51:16.920 way like everyone else. I think. Or is it better 1:51:16.920 --> 1:51:23.160 to go to Steve's fourteen thousand years ago? You're you're 1:51:23.320 --> 1:51:27.080 the first man to that lake. What if what if 1:51:27.200 --> 1:51:29.400 you you're on your pristine lake and there is not 1:51:29.560 --> 1:51:32.800 a pan fish to be found. It's full of you know, 1:51:33.040 --> 1:51:36.760 northern pike. I wonder if that's why i'd like to 1:51:36.800 --> 1:51:40.720 go visit that's I'd like to go. It's an unrealistic 1:51:41.280 --> 1:51:44.720 it's an unrealistic goal. But if I it's just where 1:51:44.720 --> 1:51:47.240 I've decided to fall, and how tempted would you be. 1:51:47.960 --> 1:51:50.280 But it's it's like academic too, you know. It's like 1:51:50.320 --> 1:51:53.360 just not like I'm like thinking will arrive there, but 1:51:53.479 --> 1:51:55.720 just the way that it's it's how I begin to 1:51:55.800 --> 1:51:59.360 understand things. It's a way I like strive to understand things. 1:52:00.120 --> 1:52:03.840 There was that was like that was day one. That 1:52:03.960 --> 1:52:06.960 was day one, and then this is as good as 1:52:06.960 --> 1:52:09.840 it as best as I can understand what happened on 1:52:10.160 --> 1:52:12.200 day one through day well, I don't know what day 1:52:12.240 --> 1:52:15.160 we'd be on now in the hundreds of thousands, as 1:52:15.400 --> 1:52:18.480 the best as how we'd get there. It's actually pronounced 1:52:18.479 --> 1:52:26.800 by some bison bison, bison, that's how it's pronounced, trying 1:52:26.840 --> 1:52:30.160 it's trinomial. Norman Clayture would be bison bites and bison 1:52:31.920 --> 1:52:37.080 yehney um. Yeah. It's a good book, I think if 1:52:37.120 --> 1:52:39.559 you if you like listening to this show, you feel 1:52:39.600 --> 1:52:41.639 probably like reading the book, I feel like a lot 1:52:41.680 --> 1:52:43.840 of the things that I was surprised by because I 1:52:43.920 --> 1:52:45.400 really didn't know what to expect that, you know, I 1:52:45.439 --> 1:52:47.639 just kind of got it, you know, thinking a better readings. 1:52:47.640 --> 1:52:51.400 We're gonna talk to John and uh, it's like a 1:52:51.439 --> 1:52:53.679 lot of the thought of the concepts that you've brought 1:52:53.800 --> 1:52:56.320 up to me just over the last few years. John 1:52:56.439 --> 1:52:58.960 sort of brings up in that book and then talks 1:52:58.960 --> 1:53:00.800 about him in just a different way then you and 1:53:00.840 --> 1:53:03.320 I talked about him. So it's it's been an eye 1:53:03.320 --> 1:53:06.120 opening for me. I i'ven't I really enjoyed it. I mean, 1:53:06.160 --> 1:53:08.040 I can ask all kinds of questions you need to 1:53:08.040 --> 1:53:10.519 get deeper about what I learned in that book so far. 1:53:10.680 --> 1:53:13.080 But I don't know if I really have any follow up. 1:53:13.640 --> 1:53:15.880 But I think if you're if your whole understanding like mine, 1:53:15.920 --> 1:53:19.920 like my understanding of wildlife is inspired, it has been 1:53:19.960 --> 1:53:23.560 inspired by and is kind of based around right like 1:53:23.600 --> 1:53:30.320 a hunting efficient perspective. So it's useful. Um, it's useful 1:53:30.360 --> 1:53:37.120 to go to to go read people read about wildlife 1:53:37.200 --> 1:53:39.559 from from a different perspective now and then because they 1:53:39.640 --> 1:53:44.639 just notice things completely different. It's good. That's why I mean, 1:53:44.880 --> 1:53:46.600 that's not that's kind of why I would sell it 1:53:46.680 --> 1:53:49.479 to our That's kind why I would sell it to 1:53:49.520 --> 1:53:52.000 the type of guy that's listening to this type of 1:53:52.080 --> 1:53:59.000 lady that's listening to this. Yeah, expand outward a little bit. Yeah, totally, 1:54:00.040 --> 1:54:04.360 and know all about turkeys, how good turkeys are doing 1:54:04.439 --> 1:54:08.840 right now? Anything else you have? I think that's all 1:54:08.880 --> 1:54:11.240 I got, John, Do you have any final concluding thoughts? 1:54:12.080 --> 1:54:14.000 If it's anything you wanted this wedge in. You couldn't 1:54:14.000 --> 1:54:15.519 find a way to wedge it in. But you're like, man, 1:54:15.560 --> 1:54:17.160 the one thing I gotta make sure to talk about 1:54:17.240 --> 1:54:19.559 is blank. And you never got a chance. That's your chance. 1:54:20.000 --> 1:54:21.519 And I don't think I mean, I would just say, 1:54:22.040 --> 1:54:24.040 like you're asking me, how do you make those decisions? 1:54:24.240 --> 1:54:26.360 I'm not really interested in making those decisions, you know, 1:54:26.400 --> 1:54:31.559 But I think that there's value in trying to acknowledge 1:54:31.560 --> 1:54:34.040 how complex a lot of these questions are and how 1:54:34.440 --> 1:54:37.960 complex your own. Like you're saying, well, this is my baseline, 1:54:37.960 --> 1:54:40.120 but what how can I really defend that? I think 1:54:40.160 --> 1:54:44.200 the more people do that, the easier it is to 1:54:44.240 --> 1:54:47.080 deal with this kind of you know, partisan gridlock we 1:54:47.160 --> 1:54:49.600 find ourselves in and a lot of stuff, because you 1:54:49.680 --> 1:54:53.120 won't feel so violated by whatever decision is made. You know, 1:54:53.160 --> 1:54:56.040 if you can understand that it's happening in this kind 1:54:56.040 --> 1:54:59.240 of climate of great complexity, you know, it gives you 1:54:59.280 --> 1:55:03.360 some sympathy. Uh. You know, if you think that your 1:55:03.440 --> 1:55:05.760 thing is absolutely right and there's easy ways to think 1:55:05.760 --> 1:55:09.360 about all this, then when the decision doesn't meet your criteria, 1:55:09.400 --> 1:55:12.320 it's gonna feel a lot worse. That's funny you bring 1:55:12.320 --> 1:55:15.800 it up, because I really there's a handful of things 1:55:15.800 --> 1:55:18.800 that I remind myself about every day, and one of 1:55:18.800 --> 1:55:20.800 the things I remind myself about every day is not 1:55:20.920 --> 1:55:23.640 becoming one of those people who has this sort of 1:55:23.680 --> 1:55:28.160 attitude like, oh my god, what do they think of next? 1:55:29.400 --> 1:55:32.280 Yesterday it was this, and no it's that. Like, to 1:55:32.360 --> 1:55:36.120 be like that type of guy scares me. I think 1:55:36.160 --> 1:55:40.160 it gets harder to write. It's so easy to become 1:55:40.160 --> 1:55:42.440 a guy like that. Did I like? I like him? 1:55:42.480 --> 1:55:45.200 I was like, hey, don't get worced. Don't get divorced today, 1:55:45.320 --> 1:55:48.560 and don't become a guy who's like, oh my god, 1:55:49.280 --> 1:55:55.560 what next. They're probably related. I think those are related goals. Yeah, 1:55:55.600 --> 1:56:00.320 they working. Yeah, your efforts on each of those working tandem. 1:56:00.360 --> 1:56:03.480 All right, John, Well, thanks for joining us. Tell us 1:56:03.480 --> 1:56:06.400 again because wild Ones, but give us the great subtitles. 1:56:06.400 --> 1:56:09.879 I'll mess it up. Wild Ones, A sometimes dismaying, weirdly 1:56:09.960 --> 1:56:13.600 reassuring story about looking at people, looking at animals in 1:56:13.640 --> 1:56:17.720 America and all kinds of writings. Um, you're write primarily 1:56:17.760 --> 1:56:21.879 for New York Times magazine, not the newspaper, but the magazine, 1:56:21.880 --> 1:56:25.200 which are which our brothers walking hand in hand. And 1:56:25.240 --> 1:56:28.760 then um in your forthcoming book, like you're not done 1:56:28.760 --> 1:56:30.080 with it, and then it takes him a year to 1:56:30.120 --> 1:56:32.400 do it. And that's the ways out. I mean, I 1:56:32.440 --> 1:56:36.200 just started writing it. So this is a long range teaser. Yeah, 1:56:36.200 --> 1:56:38.960 I'm deep in the dark tunnel. But in the future, 1:56:39.240 --> 1:56:43.600 in future, uh, Christmas times, a Christmas time or two 1:56:43.640 --> 1:56:45.720 from now, when you're like, what do I get my 1:56:45.760 --> 1:56:49.720 brother or my sister or whatever. UM, give him this 1:56:50.040 --> 1:56:53.400 as yet unnamed book. Put it on your calendar now, 1:56:54.160 --> 1:56:57.680 your calendar shoppers from now? All right, John, Thanksgan, Thank 1:56:57.720 --> 1:56:58.120 you guys.