Speaker 1: Crack and open a cold Sadi pop. You ready for this?
Speaker 1: This is a fun one, this is a weird one.
Speaker 1: It's an audiobook mixtape for you. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the librarian who smells like vanilla extract
Speaker 1: and never judges you for your queries. Ali ward and
Speaker 1: come take a seat fireside for this. This is our
Speaker 1: third ever audio book mixtape, wherein we read you excerpts
Speaker 1: from books written by beloved ologists that you already know.
Speaker 1: So the holidays are upon us. Gift lists are full
Speaker 1: of bullshit, so maybe get a loved one. The magic
Speaker 1: of knowledge, perhaps about how to build a bathouse, or
Speaker 1: indigenous thoughts on animal crossings if you have ADHD, the
Speaker 1: flies that make your birthday cake even better, strapping machines
Speaker 1: to your brain, the dark secrets that America is built on,
Speaker 1: and how to cultivate hope for the future. But before
Speaker 1: we crack the spine of these impressive works of nonfiction,
Speaker 1: just a quick caution for Apple podcast users. So I
Speaker 1: just foind out that the new iOS seventeen update unsubscribes
Speaker 1: people if they haven't listened to an episode in more
Speaker 1: than two weeks, So please make sure that you hit
Speaker 1: the follow button next to ologies or else you're going
Speaker 1: to miss on some real quality stuff that we got
Speaker 1: coming around, So tell your friends. Also, if you'd like
Speaker 1: to become a patron, sign up for as little as
Speaker 1: a buck a month at patreon dot com slash ologies,
Speaker 1: you can submit questions for ologists. We also have discussion
Speaker 1: threads every week that I chime in on. You can
Speaker 1: also support the show with ologies merch at Ologiesmarch dot com,
Speaker 1: or by leaving us a review such as this new
Speaker 1: wet winged one from Liz Fan sixty seven, who wrote
Speaker 1: dlight Ology. I present as a grumpy, unwashed, fifty six
Speaker 1: year old sis, straight white male, but this show brings
Speaker 1: out my inner rainbow butterfly and I flit about giggling
Speaker 1: the whole time I listen. So informative, is so funny,
Speaker 1: absolutely adorable. Liz Fan sixty seven, You've never looked better.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that and everyone who left reviews.
Speaker 1: And again, if you listen on Apple, make sure that
Speaker 1: you stay subscribed, check that button. It really matters a lot.
Speaker 2: In a lot of.
Speaker 1: Podcasters, quite frankly, are pissed about this update because people
Speaker 1: are missing episodes, So spread the word Okay. I love
Speaker 1: making these appetizer platter of books for you.
Speaker 2: So onto this wonderful milage.
Speaker 1: Of book excerpts to what your appetite, fill your shopping list,
Speaker 1: and expand your brain a little bit.
Speaker 2: As I read some to you with my mouth, It's
Speaker 2: like I'm reading a book.
Speaker 1: Tuck in and open your ears for audiobook mixtape number three. Okay,
Speaker 1: this first one is from an episode that was clearly
Speaker 1: fascinating in its transparency and intrigue. So what if you
Speaker 1: could cruise through life and subway turnstiles without anyone detecting you?
Speaker 1: How far are we from that? And can it happen soon?
Speaker 1: So that I can be a stowaway on a first
Speaker 1: class flo to an island. Get a gander at the
Speaker 1: writing of our Invisible Photology guest doctor Greggebor, who wrote
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three book Invisibility, The History and Science
Speaker 1: of How Not To Be Seen, So he chose this
Speaker 1: nippet for me to read. Okay. The announcement in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand of a perfect lens made of artificial
Speaker 1: materials not found in nature, now called mena materials could
Speaker 1: be said to mark an entirely new era in optical physics.
Speaker 1: For the entire history of natural inquiry, scientists and natural
Speaker 1: philosophers had been asking what is light and what can
Speaker 1: light do? With the introduction of meta materials, researchers were
Speaker 1: now asking how can we make light do whatever we
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Many of the rules that optical scientists
Speaker 1: had labored under for years now turned out to be
Speaker 1: more like guidelines. This naturally led many researchers to wonder
Speaker 1: what else can we do with such materials. One answer,
Speaker 1: as we now see, was design a cloak of invisibility.
Speaker 1: So that was from doctor Greg Goebor's Invisibility The History
Speaker 1: and Science of How Not to Be Seen, and unlike
Speaker 1: its topic, you can see and buy this book. I'll
Speaker 1: do that now if only a moose could lope into
Speaker 1: a bass Pro shop and buy an invisibility cloak. Although, honestly,
Speaker 1: when it comes to cars and collisions, some wildlife does
Speaker 1: not need invisibility tech because we're watching tiktoks as we drive.
Speaker 1: So we had a recent episode on Roadkill with author
Speaker 1: Ben Goldfarb, who wrote Eager, which is your favorite book
Speaker 1: about the beaver, and his new one is called Crossings.
Speaker 1: How roade ecology is shaping the future of our planet.
Speaker 2: And we got to talk to him a.
Speaker 1: Few weeks ago, but we missed so much of what's
Speaker 1: in his book. So I'm going to read you a
Speaker 1: little bit about bears, boneyards, how roads bisected wetlands, how
Speaker 1: dedicated passages are helping, and how this man started researching
Speaker 1: and describing and smelling roadkill as a job, he writes.
Speaker 1: My own introduction to rhodocology came in twenty thirteen, the
Speaker 1: year that I embarked on a trip across the continent
Speaker 1: to write about an extraordinary scheme called the Yellowstone to
Speaker 1: Yukon Conservation Initiative. The goal of Yellowstone to Yukon, or
Speaker 1: Why to Why is boggling Its advocates envision and network
Speaker 1: of connected habitats that would permit animals to wander unhindered
Speaker 1: along the spine of the Rockies, a region that spans
Speaker 1: five American states and four Canadian provinces and territories. Such
Speaker 1: a corridor would preserve migration routes for elk and caribou,
Speaker 1: permit far ranging creatures such as wolves to mingle and mate,
Speaker 1: and help sensitive animals like woolverraines flee northward as climate
Speaker 1: change nips at their heels. The initiative's emblem is the grizzly,
Speaker 1: whose expansive requirements make it a useful proxy for other
Speaker 1: forms of life. An ecosystem that can support bearers is
Speaker 1: probably healthy enough for everyone else. To the uninitiated, it
Speaker 1: sounded far fetched. Soon after Yellowstone to Yukon's inception, the
Speaker 1: West Wing peried it as the Wolve's only roadway, the
Speaker 1: vanity project of humorless tree huggers who get left out
Speaker 1: of the White House. But the show's writers, like most
Speaker 1: of Wide o Wi's critics, misunderstood the concept. Why do
Speaker 1: I wasn't a discreete pathway. It was a continental jigsaw
Speaker 1: riddled with missing pieces, most of them at the fragile
Speaker 1: margins where wild lands and settlements collided. The mission of
Speaker 1: Wide to Wye and its many partners was to plug
Speaker 1: those holes to help bearers and other animals safely navigate
Speaker 1: the rockies without running a foul of humans. In British Columbia,
Speaker 1: I toured protected grain fields that grizzlies used to commute
Speaker 1: between mountain ranges at night. In Montana, I sniffed offal
Speaker 1: in an electric fenced paddock where ranchers were composting their
Speaker 1: dead cows rather than permitting them to fester in bare,
Speaker 1: enticing boneyards. Few travelers human or ursine can resist fast food,
Speaker 1: Yet Wideawi's deepest cuts remained mostly unhealed. The region was
Speaker 1: riven by enough numbered roads to Fillisidoku puzzle I ninety
Speaker 1: and Highway three and Highway twenty, Routes ninety five and
Speaker 1: forty and twelve and two twelve spiderwebbed otherwise wild lands.
Speaker 1: I drove highways that ended lives. I lost track of
Speaker 1: how many elk littered the shoulder on Crow's Nest Pass,
Speaker 1: and others that cleaved grizzly populations into lonely clusters. Roads
Speaker 1: I began to realize were not merely a symptom of civilization,
Speaker 1: but a distinct disease.
Speaker 2: Among the roads.
Speaker 1: Within the Wide to Wi corridors ambit was US ninety three,
Speaker 1: which traverses Montana on its thirteen hundred mile jaunt from
Speaker 1: Arizona to the Canadian border. Like so many highways, US
Speaker 1: ninety three had been built heedlessly in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: plowing through wetlands, elk meadows, and a vast reservation belonging
Speaker 1: to the Confederated Elk Meadows and the vast reservation belonging
Speaker 1: to the Confederated Salish and Kutene tribes. When in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, state and federal agencies sought to expand US
Speaker 1: ninety three from two lanes to four, tribal officials demanded
Speaker 1: the chance to provide input on the reconstruction. A wider,
Speaker 1: faster road might be safer for drivers, but it would
Speaker 1: also slaughter more deer, elk, bears, and other animals. Foundational
Speaker 1: to the tribe's culture, the road is a visitor. The
Speaker 1: tribes insisted that should respond to and be respectful of
Speaker 1: the land and the spirit of place. The Salish and
Speaker 1: Koutene flexed their legal and moral muscles, and when US
Speaker 1: ninety three was finally reconstructed, engineers included around forty wildlife crossings,
Speaker 1: a network of underpasses, tunnels, and culverts that allowed animals
Speaker 1: to slink beneath the highway unimpeded. Roadside fencing kept creatures
Speaker 1: off the highway and guided them toward the passages. The
Speaker 1: project's flagship structure was an elegant bridge designed principally for
Speaker 1: that avatar of wildness. The grizzly bear. In aerial photos.
Speaker 1: The overpass looked at once futuristic and anachronistic, a green
Speaker 1: parabola that vaulted over the highway with Middle Earthish grace.
Speaker 1: If roads were a disease, wildlife crossings seemed like a treatment.
Speaker 1: So our darling, dashing and vulnerable critters need you to
Speaker 1: maybe slow down, especially during this time of year when
Speaker 1: collisions with wildlife are most common. So be especially vigilant
Speaker 1: at night because you don't want animals to have a
Speaker 1: funeral because of you, or your relatives to have your funeral.
Speaker 1: Not to get too dark, but yes, you can see
Speaker 1: the road Ecology episode for more. So let's move along
Speaker 1: to two kid friendly books for the wee ones on
Speaker 1: your list. So the first comes to you from Georgia,
Speaker 1: written by wildlife biologist mister Al Troutman, who you may
Speaker 1: have heard in twenty twenties Black af in stem episode
Speaker 1: about black Birders Week, and Al has written numerous field
Speaker 1: guides for kids and adults of places like Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado,
Speaker 1: New York, and now Georgia. So Al Alex is just
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy. He's hilarious and kind and a dedicated
Speaker 1: nature nerd with a really warm heart. And his latest
Speaker 1: release is just a few months old, Critters of Georgia
Speaker 1: Pocket Guide to Animals in your State, which features photos
Speaker 1: and really fascinating info of local fauna. So here's a
Speaker 1: bit from that which I think you will like, he writes.
Speaker 1: My passion for nature started when I was young. I
Speaker 1: was always amazed by the sunlit fiery glow of the
Speaker 1: red tailed hawks as a sword overhead when I went
Speaker 1: fishing with my family. The red tailed hawk was my
Speaker 1: spark bird, the bird that captures your attention and gets
Speaker 1: you into birding. Through many encounters with red tailed hawks
Speaker 1: and other species like garter's aches and coyotes, I found
Speaker 1: a passion for nature and the environment. Stumbling across conservationists
Speaker 1: like Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin and Jack Hannah introduced
Speaker 1: me to the field of wildlife biology as a career
Speaker 1: and gave birth to a dream that I was to
Speaker 1: accomplish and live out, serving as a fish and wildlife
Speaker 1: biologist for government agencies as well as in the private sector.
Speaker 1: My childhood dream was driven by a desire to learn
Speaker 1: more about the different types of ecosystems and the animals
Speaker 1: that call our wild places home. Books and field guides
Speaker 1: like this wet my thirst for knowledge. Even before I
Speaker 1: could fully understand the words on the pages, I was
Speaker 1: drawn to books and flash cards that had animals on them.
Speaker 1: I could soon identify every animal I was shown and.
Speaker 2: Tell a fact about it.
Speaker 1: I hope that this edition of Crutters of Georgia can
Speaker 1: be the fuel that sustains your passion for not only
Speaker 1: learning about wildlife, but also for caring for the environment
Speaker 1: and making sure that all are welcome in the outdoors.
Speaker 1: For others, May this book be the spark that ignites
Speaker 1: a flame for wildlife preservation and environmental stewardship. I hope
Speaker 1: that this book inspires children from lower socioeconomic and minority
Speaker 1: backgrounds to pursue their dreams to the fullest and be
Speaker 1: unapologetically themselves. By a profession, I'm a fish and wildlife biologist,
Speaker 1: and I'm a nature enthusiast through and through my love
Speaker 1: for nature includes making sure that everyone has an equal
Speaker 1: opportunity to enjoy the outdoors in their own way. So
Speaker 1: as you use this book, I encourage you to be
Speaker 1: intentional in inviting others to appreciate nature with you, enjoy
Speaker 1: your discoveries, and stay curious Alex Trautman, he writes of Georgia,
Speaker 1: Georgia is famous for its warm climate, rich history, and
Speaker 1: its many peach orchards. For more than twelve thousand years,
Speaker 1: Georgia has been home to many groups of indigenous people,
Speaker 1: from the Paleo Indian period twelve thousand to eight thousand
Speaker 1: years ago to familiar groups such as the Cherokee, the Creek, Chicksaw, Choctaw,
Speaker 1: the Appalachi, and many others. The first Europeans to visit
Speaker 1: Georgia were Spanish conquistra doors, including Hernando Jisoto, who visited
Speaker 1: in fifteen forty. The British named Georgia as a colony
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty two, making it one of the original
Speaker 1: thirteen colonies. It was named for the king at the time,
Speaker 1: King George the Second. After the Revolutionary War, Georgia became
Speaker 1: an American state, and the US government forcibly removed many
Speaker 1: of the indigenous people on the Trail of Tiers, a
Speaker 1: forced march to reservations in Oklahoma without adequate food or clothing,
Speaker 1: leading to the death of thousands of people. Georgia was
Speaker 1: later the site of many important events in US history,
Speaker 1: from famous Civil War battles to the Civil Rights movement,
Speaker 1: and today the state is well known for high tech industries,
Speaker 1: as a popular filming location, and of course, for its agriculture.
Speaker 1: Georgia has several different biomes or large areas with different
Speaker 1: plant and animal communities. In the northwest is the Appalachian Plateau,
Speaker 1: which has a two thousand, three hundred and ninety foot
Speaker 1: tall lookout mountain. The Blue Ridge Mountains are found in
Speaker 1: the northeast, with the highest point being four thousand and
Speaker 1: seven one hundred and eighty four feet. The area also
Speaker 1: includes forests of poplar, oak, and hickory trees, many of
Speaker 1: which are covered in the creepy at cool Spanish moss.
Speaker 1: The southern part of the state is home to the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Coastal Plain with rivers, swamps, and the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 1: Georgia is home to part of the Okafanoki Swamp, one
Speaker 1: of the largest swamps in North America. These many types
Speaker 1: of environments shelter huge variety of animals and plants. The
Speaker 1: state is home to more than eighty different kinds of mammals,
Speaker 1: more than four hundred bird species, and more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy species of reptiles and amphibians. This is
Speaker 1: your guide to the animals, birds, and reptiles and amphibians
Speaker 1: that called Georgia home.
Speaker 2: So that was from Critters.
Speaker 1: Of Georgia written by Alex Trautman, who has an incredible
Speaker 1: name for someone who looks at fish and mammals and
Speaker 1: reptiles doing his dream job. So from the wetlands and
Speaker 1: beaches and forests of Georgia, we head to the jungles,
Speaker 1: which are the focus of fieldwork for doctor Terra Stowinsky,
Speaker 1: who you may remember from the Gorilla Ology episode. So
Speaker 1: she wrote a book called The Fantastic World of Monkeys
Speaker 1: and Apes and more, and educational children's primate book featuring gorillas, lemurs, orangutans, babboons,
Speaker 1: chimpanzees and more, a Wonderful Primates book for jungle loving kids.
Speaker 1: And doctor Stewinsky is the president and the CEO of
Speaker 1: the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund, which is a gorilla conservatory
Speaker 1: in Africa, and she's authored over ninety scientific publications and books.
Speaker 1: She cut her PhD from the Georgia Institute for Technology.
Speaker 1: So here some monkey and ape facts that you can
Speaker 1: tell your coworker over the holiday party punch ball when
Speaker 1: you've exhausted the topic of whether it will snow tomorrow
Speaker 1: or not. Here we go some fun facts. So mandrels
Speaker 1: are the largest monkeys and one of the most colorful primates.
Speaker 1: So males have vibrant colors of red, blue, and purple
Speaker 1: on their face, with golden yellow beards, and the more
Speaker 1: colorful they are, the more attractive they appear. Have also
Speaker 1: red and blue butts to attract mates and be more
Speaker 1: visible in the forests. Male mandrels will lose color as
Speaker 1: they lose status in social groups, which has gotta hurt.
Speaker 1: They're like as big as a baseball bat, but chunkier,
Speaker 1: and they live in the middle of the continent of Africa,
Speaker 1: but headed to Japan. Are Japanese macaques, and they are
Speaker 1: also known as snow monkeys, and they're famous for using
Speaker 1: hot springs to bathe and warm up when the weather
Speaker 1: gets cold. And young Japanese macacs they roll up snowballs
Speaker 1: just for fun, and then they shed their thick winter
Speaker 1: coat in the summer when the temperatures rise.
Speaker 2: Overall, though their fur is.
Speaker 1: Much thicker to keep them warm in snowy environments. They're
Speaker 1: like as big as a car tire. Moving on to bonobos.
Speaker 1: In chimpanzees, there are closest living relatives, but unlike chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: the bonobo society is matriarchal, where females are dominant over males,
Speaker 1: even though males are like one hundred pound and four
Speaker 1: feet and females were like sixty five pounds. But Pinobo's
Speaker 1: are capable of laughing as a display of emotion and
Speaker 1: playful behavior, and they have dark skin on their face
Speaker 1: and hands and feet. They're a little smaller than chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: but they have longer legs and they're more comfortable walking
Speaker 1: upright than chimpanzees are. They live in the Democratic Republic
Speaker 1: of Congo, and her book doesn't say this, but I
Speaker 1: hear that they're very horny. So there's a book that
Speaker 1: gives you a peek into what it's like to howl
Speaker 1: from a tree and display your butt to your family,
Speaker 1: and maybe eat bugs off the scalp of your best friend,
Speaker 1: and play around with snowballs, because as a monkey you
Speaker 1: get to sometimes just hang out in a spa and
Speaker 1: have snowball fights. How can you be a human ape?
Speaker 1: And play Forever. I don't know. Ask ginicular traumatology guest
Speaker 1: and orthopedic surgeon doctor Kevin Stone, who fixed Jarrett's shredded
Speaker 1: ACL a few years ago. So he's like a well
Speaker 1: regarded wizard of sports injuries and creaky knees. And his
Speaker 1: book is called Play Forever, How to Recover from Injury
Speaker 1: and Thrive, And he gives us kind of a gentle
Speaker 1: kick in the pants to stay active for fun and
Speaker 1: for our mental health, and also to reduce the costs
Speaker 1: of fixing a shredded ACL. I'm just going to lay
Speaker 1: down and read my book. I wish we had this
Speaker 1: book sooner. To be honest, let's hear some he writes
Speaker 1: the obvious lesson. We defeat ourselves far more often than
Speaker 1: our opponents defeat us. Unforced errors in tennis are not
Speaker 1: just the problems of novices.
Speaker 2: They pervade sports.
Speaker 1: Despite the best coaching, phenomenal physical training, fitness, vast sums
Speaker 1: of money, and even decades of experience, we often remain
Speaker 1: our own worst enemies. The patterns that serve or obstruct
Speaker 1: even great athletes are often learned on children's playgrounds, on
Speaker 1: youth teams, and through parenting. The phenomenal success of players
Speaker 1: such as Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and Serena Williams are
Speaker 1: brought to a stop by psychological weaknesses distraction that cause
Speaker 1: them to lose their swing, their temper, or their confidence
Speaker 1: despite seeming at the top of their game. Federer, Woods,
Speaker 1: and Williams were coached to stunning physical success but left
Speaker 1: mentally exposed consistently. The one weakness that is most difficult
Speaker 1: to fix in athletes lies in the mind itself. Mental conditioning,
Speaker 1: the approach to an injury and its recovery, the overcoming
Speaker 1: of psychological blocks that prevent a physical superstar from being
Speaker 1: a winner. These are so ingrained that they remain the
Speaker 1: most difficult weaknesses to fix. Yet it's not impossible to change.
Speaker 1: We can work on these issues, and many doctors and
Speaker 1: mental empowerment coaches are successful at it. The first step,
Speaker 1: a simple but crucial one, is to understand that the
Speaker 1: body and mind are irrevocably linked. This does not only
Speaker 1: apply to competitive athletes, but to everyone, whether they're dealing
Speaker 1: with a changing body, playing amateur sports, or simply living.
Speaker 1: A brain is attached to each body. I repair this
Speaker 1: is obvious, but in treating the whole patient. I'm cognizant
Speaker 1: of the importance of mental processes as they relate to treatment.
Speaker 1: The mental health of an injured patient brings another dimension
Speaker 1: both to their healing and their ability to excel. In short,
Speaker 1: our daily mental health defines what our body is able
Speaker 1: to achieve. Naomi Osaka poignantly brought this to light in
Speaker 1: her refusal to undergo the ritual press conference drilling in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty one French Open. Over decades of practicing medicine,
Speaker 1: I have identified particular mental qualities that enable people to shine,
Speaker 1: not just athletically, but in all they do. This is
Speaker 1: a good place to start this book in the unseen
Speaker 1: and often underappreciated aspect of fitness and health that can
Speaker 1: ensure you play forever and play well. These eight mental
Speaker 1: fitness objectives are competitiveness, grit, attention, fantasy, patience, acceptance, grace
Speaker 1: and kindness, and competency. While these qualities are what take
Speaker 1: supreme athletes to the top, they're applicable to all aspects
Speaker 1: of your life. So pay attention to your own mental
Speaker 1: game on the court or the playfield or the race course,
Speaker 1: and in day to day interactions at work and home.
Speaker 1: Strengthening each of these qualities is the cornerstone of fitness,
Speaker 1: so don't ignore your noggins. People Now on the topic
Speaker 1: of playing, but maybe in a less active way, like
Speaker 1: when you're done rowing for the day. Doctor Jane McGonagall
Speaker 1: is a lidologist and in her episode we chatted all
Speaker 1: about video games and what they do for our brains
Speaker 1: and friendships. So if you're looking for a dose of
Speaker 1: hope from someone who has a PhD in it, She
Speaker 1: recently came out with a book called Imaginable, How to
Speaker 1: see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even
Speaker 1: things that seem impossible today, and in it she writes,
Speaker 1: before we start your imagination training, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you three questions that will give you a baseline sense
Speaker 1: of your future mindset. Question one, when you think about
Speaker 1: the ten years, do you think things will mostly stay
Speaker 1: the same and go on as normal or do you
Speaker 1: expect that most of us will dramatically rethink and reinvent
Speaker 1: how we do things. Rate your outlook on a scale
Speaker 1: of one to ten. One is almost everything stays the same.
Speaker 1: Ten is almost everything will be dramatically different. Question number two,
Speaker 1: When you think about how the world and your life
Speaker 1: will change over the next ten years. Are you mostly
Speaker 1: worried or mostly optimistic? Rate your outlook on a scale
Speaker 1: of one to ten. One is extremely worried and ten
Speaker 1: is extremely optimistic. Question number three, how much control or
Speaker 1: influence do you feel you personally have in determining how
Speaker 1: the world and your life changes over the next ten years.
Speaker 1: Rate your outlook on a scale one to ten. One
Speaker 1: is almost no control or influence. Ten is almost complete
Speaker 1: control or influence. So these three questions give you a
Speaker 1: good idea of the kind of imagination training we're going
Speaker 1: to do in this book. In fact, each of the
Speaker 1: three parts of the book is specifically designed to increase
Speaker 1: your or on one of these questions by at least
Speaker 1: one point. First, we're going to focus on the opportunity
Speaker 1: for rethinking and reinventing. Why rethinking and reinventing, Well, it's
Speaker 1: easy to prepare for futures that are similar today. It's
Speaker 1: the dramatically different stuff that catches us off guard, so
Speaker 1: it's important to spend time getting ready for the futures
Speaker 1: that will feel stranger and less familiar. Focusing on rethinking
Speaker 1: and reinventing also puts us in a better position to
Speaker 1: help decide how the future will be different. Having lived
Speaker 1: through the COVID nineteen pandemic, each of us will know
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives that almost anything can
Speaker 1: change virtually overnight, for worse or for better. We know
Speaker 1: that it's absolutely possible to make radical changes on how
Speaker 1: we live, work, learn, and care for each other, and
Speaker 1: to make those changes fast.
Speaker 2: This gives us a collective.
Speaker 1: Power of imagination unprecedented in human history. We need to
Speaker 1: use this moment strategically and creatively. Second, I want to
Speaker 1: help you create a more balanced mindset between hopes and
Speaker 1: worries for the future. At the Institute for the Future,
Speaker 1: we call this using your positive imagination and your shadow imagination.
Speaker 1: Positive imagination ask the question what's something good that could happen?
Speaker 1: It builds confidence that the future will be better. Shadow
Speaker 1: imagination ask the question, what's something bad that could happen?
Speaker 1: And it builds readiness to face future challenges. So, whatever
Speaker 1: your instinctive feelings are about the future right now, you'll
Speaker 1: benefit from cultivating at least a little bit of the
Speaker 1: flip side feeling. So I'll teach you imagination techniques that
Speaker 1: help you see both sides of the future. The risks
Speaker 1: that it makes sense to worry about, and the opportunities
Speaker 1: that are cause for optimism. Just note that wherever you
Speaker 1: are right now in your outlook on the future is fine,
Speaker 1: whether you're super worried, super optimistic, or somewhere in between.
Speaker 1: Be ready to stretch your imagination in the opposite direction
Speaker 1: so you can hold both hopes and worries in mind
Speaker 1: at the same time. As you develop your positive and
Speaker 1: shadow imagination, you might be surprised to find seeing risks
Speaker 1: more clearly and defining your worries more concretely can actually
Speaker 1: help you feel more hopeful. As you get better at
Speaker 1: anticipating global challenges, you'll feel more optimistic overall. There's a
Speaker 1: good reason for this paradox. You're increasing your awareness not
Speaker 1: just of what might go wrong, but also of the
Speaker 1: bold plans and innovative solutions that are already being enistioned
Speaker 1: and implemented. And deep down you know that you're putting
Speaker 1: yourself in a stronger position to help yourself and others
Speaker 1: by seriously imagining a future crisis instead of denying that
Speaker 1: it could ever happen. Finally, we'll focus on building your
Speaker 1: confidence and how much influence you have to help determine
Speaker 1: how the future turns out. So this book is more
Speaker 1: than just anticipating the future. It's about acting to create
Speaker 1: the future. You want healthier, safer, more just more sustainable,
Speaker 1: more beautiful, more equitable. So that is a book on
Speaker 1: how to hope for the future by doctor Jane McGonagall.
Speaker 1: And what else is in store for us in the future.
Speaker 1: Maybe some wearable tech that reads our dang minds. So
Speaker 1: doctor Nita Farhani of the Neurotechnology which was the AI
Speaker 1: and Brain Tech episode, wrote this book called The Battle
Speaker 1: for Your Brain, Defending the right to think freely in
Speaker 1: the Age of Neurotechnology, And she tells us about wearing
Speaker 1: a brain scanner device just casually connected to a phone.
Speaker 1: Oh hi, the future. I didn't realize that you were
Speaker 1: standing right there, So she writes, I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: the birds to sing. If I can calm my mind
Speaker 1: just enough, they will sing. Though I've tried to convince
Speaker 1: my children otherwise. I don't have magical powers. I'm wearing
Speaker 1: a simple headband embedded with electrodes that detect my brain
Speaker 1: wave activity and send it via bluetooth to an application
Speaker 1: on my iPhone. Brain waves the oscillating electrical voltages in
Speaker 1: your brain are small in size, just a few millions
Speaker 1: of a vault, but they reveal a lot about the
Speaker 1: inner workings of your mind. When I relax into a
Speaker 1: meditative state, my alpha brain wave activity rises, and the
Speaker 1: app rewards me with the sound of singing birds. This
Speaker 1: neurofeedback technique has proven powerful in preventing the migrain attacks
Speaker 1: that have dogged me since childhood. Having used the device
Speaker 1: a number of times, I know how to increase my
Speaker 1: alpha waves, the pattern of electrical activity produced by the
Speaker 1: brain when you're feeling calm and peaceful, and reduce my
Speaker 1: beta wave activity, the higher speed brain waves that occur
Speaker 1: when you're wide awake and thinking. I focus on a
Speaker 1: happy memory. My eldest daughter, Aristella, is just three years old,
Speaker 1: and we are hiking as a family to a waterfall
Speaker 1: in the mountains of North Carolina. The season is late fall.
Speaker 1: Afternoon sun glistens through the trees still dotted with red
Speaker 1: and orange. As we crunch through the fallen leaves beneath
Speaker 1: our feet, I can almost feel the sun on my
Speaker 1: face and hear the water gurgling over water worn rocks.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I hear our Stellus peals of laughter
Speaker 1: as she raises a leaf downstream against one tossed in
Speaker 1: by my husband. Feed Sure, the app confirms that my
Speaker 1: brain is responding. Whether we're meditating, doing a math calculation,
Speaker 1: we're calling a phone number, or browsing through our mental
Speaker 1: thesaurus for just the right word. Neurons are firing in
Speaker 1: our brains, creating minuscule electrical discharges. When a mental state
Speaker 1: like relaxation or stress is dominant, hundreds and thousands of
Speaker 1: neurons are firing in characteristic patterns that can be measured
Speaker 1: with an electrocephalogram or EEG. Scientists used to have to
Speaker 1: place electrodes directly on the periostium, the inner layer of
Speaker 1: the scalp, to pick up brain waves, and the proceed
Speaker 1: required surgery under anesthesia and carried risks including fever, infection,
Speaker 1: and leaking brain fluid. Today, the electrodes can be placed
Speaker 1: externally on the forehead or the surface of the scalp.
Speaker 1: EEG devices detect and record brain waves in terms of
Speaker 1: cycles per second known as hertz alpha waves. For example,
Speaker 1: clock in it at the eight to thirteen hertz range. Had
Speaker 1: I wanted to, I also could have placed electrodes over
Speaker 1: the muscles on my body to measure the signals I
Speaker 1: sent to them while I was meditating. Our brains are
Speaker 1: constantly transmitting signals to our peripheral nervous system, the parts
Speaker 1: of the nervous system beyond the brain and the spinal cord.
Speaker 1: Electromiography or EMG, can be used to detect the electrical
Speaker 1: activity in response to a nerve's stimulation of the muscle
Speaker 1: in millivolts ranging from zero to ten millivolts. Together, EEG
Speaker 1: and EMG give us a window on what our brain
Speaker 1: is up to at any given moment, including the instructions
Speaker 1: it's sending to.
Speaker 2: The rest of the body.
Speaker 1: Our use of EG and EMG draws on discoveries made
Speaker 1: by two Italian scientists in the late seventeen hundreds regarding
Speaker 1: the electric battery and bioelectric activity in the body. More
Speaker 1: recent technological leaps in neuroscience and artificial intelligence have converged
Speaker 1: to give us consumer neurotech devices, a catch all term
Speaker 1: for gadgets that connect human brains to computers and the
Speaker 1: ever more sophisticated algorithms that allow those computers to analyze
Speaker 1: the data they receive at first, neuroscientists rightly dismissed all
Speaker 1: these consumer devices as inaccurate and unvalidated, little better than toys.
Speaker 1: But as both the hardware and software improved, consumer neurotech
Speaker 1: became more accurate and harder to dismiss. The average tech
Speaker 1: saving person can now see their emotions and arousal and alertness,
Speaker 1: and track how efficiently they are meditating. Personal neurotech devices
Speaker 1: are just one part of the growth category of wearable tech,
Speaker 1: which allows the average technophile to quantify their bodily functions.
Speaker 1: The category is so popular that as of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: nearly one out of every five Americans was using one.
Speaker 1: There are more than three hundred thousand different mobile health
Speaker 1: apps available worldwide, a number that's doubled in just five years,
Speaker 1: with an estimated market value surpassing one hundred billion dollars globally.
Speaker 1: The market for neurotechnology is growing at a compounded annual
Speaker 1: rate of twelve percent and is expected to reach twenty
Speaker 1: one billion dollars by twenty twenty six. Consumers can see
Speaker 1: graphic displays of their brain activity in real time DELTA,
Speaker 1: which is dreamless sleep, theta deep relaxation, daydreaming inwardly focused, alpha,
Speaker 1: very relaxed, taking a break, meditating, beta, aroused, engaged, stressed,
Speaker 1: and gamma concentrating waves, as well as patterns of blood
Speaker 1: flow in their brains and even bioelect changes in their muscles.
Speaker 1: Self tracking is far more than a fad. It's a
Speaker 1: new way of living and thinking about ourselves. So that
Speaker 1: was from Doctor Nita for Honey's The Battle for Your Brain,
Speaker 1: Defending the right to think freely in the age of neurotechnology.
Speaker 1: And on the topic of your brain and mind, let's
Speaker 1: learn a little more about ADHD. Shall we y'all loved
Speaker 1: the Attention deficit Neuropsychology episode with Global ADHD expert doctor
Speaker 1: Russell Barkley, who's written so many books on the topic.
Speaker 1: Most notable, perhaps is the updated edition of Taking Charge
Speaker 1: of Adult ADHD. Proven strategies to succeed at work, at home,
Speaker 1: and in relationships. But how do you know if it's ADHD?
Speaker 1: That is the biggest question I feel like I hear
Speaker 1: from listeners. So doctor Barkley gives us some examples of
Speaker 1: the patience he might see. There's a funny thing about ADHD.
Speaker 1: Perhaps because its impact on achievement is so well known,
Speaker 1: many people blame the disorder when they don't meet their
Speaker 1: own standard for accomplishment. Do any of these people sound
Speaker 1: like you. Joe decided to become a doctor when he
Speaker 1: was in high school, so he chose a college with
Speaker 1: a great biology department and a high rate of admission
Speaker 1: to medical schools. He got into that university only on
Speaker 1: the waiting list, but at least he got in once
Speaker 1: he was there, though, every science course was a struggle
Speaker 1: for him. By junior year, his GPA was hovering under
Speaker 1: three point zero and he had already taken organic chemistry
Speaker 1: three times without passing.
Speaker 2: Joe started to wonder what in the world was wrong
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 1: He worked so hard, he wanted this so badly, and
Speaker 1: he was just as intelligent as an ex guy, wasn't he.
Speaker 1: By the time Joe had graduated from college and taken
Speaker 1: the MCAT with disappointing results, he was convinced there was
Speaker 1: something really wrong with him. An awful lot of his
Speaker 1: fellow students seemed to have glided along the path that
Speaker 1: Joe had carved out for himself, yet he was stalled.
Speaker 1: It was looking like he might never get into medical school,
Speaker 1: so Joe decided to have himself evaluated for ADHD. More
Speaker 1: he read about it, the more he thought this explained
Speaker 1: his whole problem. The evaluator disagreed, so did the one
Speaker 1: from whom Joe sought a second opinion, and then a third.
Speaker 1: Carrie fell into a similar trap. Identified as gifted when
Speaker 1: she was young, she had been brought up to believe
Speaker 1: that she should be gifted in doing just about everything
Speaker 1: in life. When Carrie started hopping from one type of
Speaker 1: job to another after college, she and her family decided
Speaker 1: she might have ADHD, which was the only explanation they
Speaker 1: could come up with for why she kept failing at
Speaker 1: jobs that should, according to her IQ, be a snap
Speaker 1: for her. As it turned out, ADHD wasn't the problem,
Speaker 1: but anxiety was. Carrie didn't like to admit that she
Speaker 1: found herself almost paralyzed by fear when she started a
Speaker 1: new job, and that this made it really hard for
Speaker 1: her to concentrate on our work. Fortunately, the evaluator from
Speaker 1: whom she sought a diagnosis of ADHD discovered the real
Speaker 1: problem and was able to refer her to a therapist
Speaker 1: who specialized in anxiety disorders. This therapist offered not only
Speaker 1: treatment and coping strategies, but helped Carrie accept her diagnosis
Speaker 1: without shame. Cal didn't have any particular reason, which is
Speaker 1: just not a Q score or comparison to a peer group,
Speaker 1: for believing that he had ADHD other than that he
Speaker 1: was currently in a dead end job, changed jobs often
Speaker 1: and impulsively, and had very few friends.
Speaker 2: And no girlfriend.
Speaker 1: He believed his life should be different and had apparently
Speaker 1: cast around over the years for an explanation for why
Speaker 1: it wasn't. My colleagues and I have seen numerous people
Speaker 1: like Cal who simply feel that if they're not getting
Speaker 1: what they want out of life, there must be some
Speaker 1: psychological deficit at work. None of us can explain this phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It's almost the opposite of the TV singing contest shows,
Speaker 1: where the contesting clearly can't stay on key and yet
Speaker 1: believes rigidly that she's destined for vocal stardom. In this case,
Speaker 1: the person believes he cannot perform well in life, when
Speaker 1: in fact he does perform as well as most people,
Speaker 1: even if it's not up to his own internal standard.
Speaker 1: To adopt a standard for defining the term impairment other
Speaker 1: than comparison with the true norm is like something out
Speaker 1: of Alice in wonderland where nothing is as it seems,
Speaker 1: and words can have whatever meaning one wishes to give them.
Speaker 1: Saying that a person functioning as well as or even
Speaker 1: better than the average or typical population yet can still
Speaker 1: be impaired makes a mockery of the term disorder and
Speaker 1: does a disservice to those struggling with really not being
Speaker 1: able to function as well as the norm. If the
Speaker 1: professional says you do not have ADHD, any of the
Speaker 1: following could be responsible for ADHD like symptoms, like being
Speaker 1: over the age of five or perimenopausal. When increased forgetfulness, distractability,
Speaker 1: and disorganization are normal recent medical problems such as thyroid dysfunction,
Speaker 1: sleep disorder, or apnea or strep throat, though this particular
Speaker 1: connection is rare. Excessive recreational drug use like marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine,
Speaker 1: and so on, which can result in attention, memory, and
Speaker 1: organizational problems unusual stress, though the ADHD like symptoms would
Speaker 1: then be temporary or injury to the regions of the
Speaker 1: brain responsible for sustained attention, behavioral inhibition, working memory, and
Speaker 1: emotional self control. Any of these possible cost is should
Speaker 1: have been uncovered by the evaluation and the practitioner should
Speaker 1: refer you to the appropriate.
Speaker 2: Professionals to follow up on them.
Speaker 1: So those are explanations for why people may not have ADHD.
Speaker 1: But get yourself to the three part episode we did
Speaker 1: on ADHD, which is linked on our website. It'll be
Speaker 1: at Alleyward dot com slash ologies slash Bookworm three. But
Speaker 1: you do not have to remember that it's linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes. So see those episodes about what it's
Speaker 1: like to have ADHD, where it comes from, therapies, all
Speaker 1: kinds of studies on that with doctor Russell Barkley. But
Speaker 1: his book is Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. So if
Speaker 1: that's adding up, see a doc speaking of a edition.
Speaker 1: Hey is math reel? It's not a not smart question,
Speaker 1: so says doctor Eugenia Chang of the Abstract Mathematology episode.
Speaker 1: So she wrote this book is Mathreel? How simple questions
Speaker 1: lead us to mathematics deepest truths. And let's just shoot
Speaker 1: out of the gate with an excerpt from her introduction
Speaker 1: in which I learned that we have the same hairstylist.
Speaker 1: She writes, When I was in school, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite classes was one in which we made stuffed animals.
Speaker 1: I made a fluffy poodle and a sleeping puppy with soft,
Speaker 1: velvety ears. I love the whole process, from cutting out
Speaker 1: the pieces, seeing how they miraculously fit together to make
Speaker 1: it animal, and sewing them together, to the magical moment
Speaker 1: of turning the whole thing inside out, and the joy
Speaker 1: of stuffing it so that it seemed to come alive.
Speaker 1: Why make a stuffed animal when you can just buy one?
Speaker 1: Why make anything yourself when you can just get it
Speaker 1: ready made instead? Sometimes it's because the ones we make
Speaker 1: ourselves are better. I find homemade cakes much more delicious
Speaker 1: than store bought ones, But sometimes the things we make
Speaker 1: ourselves aren't objectively better. I enjoy playing the piano, although
Speaker 1: I can hear much better performances if I put on
Speaker 1: a recording or go to a concert. I even enjoy
Speaker 1: occasionally making my own clothes, although they're far from perfect.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's because it's cheaper. It's much cheaper for me
Speaker 1: to cut my own hair, so I do, even though
Speaker 1: a professional haircut would look better. But often it's just
Speaker 1: satisfying to make something yourself. This is true for me
Speaker 1: for food, music, clothes, but different people find different things
Speaker 1: satisfying Another variation on this theme is the idea of
Speaker 1: climbing a rock face just with your bare hands. Thanks
Speaker 1: climbing Mount Everest without oxygen also not for me, or
Speaker 1: rowing across the Atlantic I'll pass on that too.
Speaker 2: Or perhaps it's.
Speaker 1: Like going on a camping expedition where you carry everything
Speaker 1: on your back, including your food and your tent, so
Speaker 1: that you can spend a little while being self sufficient
Speaker 1: out in the wild. For me, math is also about
Speaker 1: making something myself. It's about making truth myself. It's about
Speaker 1: being self sufficient out in the wild world of ideas.
Speaker 1: This to me is an immensely exciting, daunting, awe inspiring,
Speaker 1: and ultimately joyful experience. And this is what I want
Speaker 1: to describe. I want to describe what math feels like
Speaker 1: in a way that is quite different from how it's
Speaker 1: often thought of. I will describe the expansive side of math,
Speaker 1: the creative, the imaginative, the exploratory, the part where we dream,
Speaker 1: follow our nose, listen to our gut instinct, and feel
Speaker 1: the joy of understanding, like sweeping away fog and seeing sunshine.
Speaker 1: This is not a math text book, nor is it
Speaker 1: a math history book. It's a math emotions book. Math
Speaker 1: inspires rather different emotions in different people, and unfortunately, for
Speaker 1: some people, it mostly represents fear and the memory of
Speaker 1: being made feel stupid. I would like to show math
Speaker 1: in a different emotional light. Some people love math and
Speaker 1: some people hate it, and unfortunately, the way some of
Speaker 1: the math lovers talk about it makes the other people
Speaker 1: hate it even more. The thing is that there are
Speaker 1: two very different reasons people love math. Some people like
Speaker 1: it because they think it has clear right and wrong answers.
Speaker 1: They find it easy to get the answers, and this
Speaker 1: makes them feel smart. Some people dislike it for more
Speaker 1: or less the same reason, but the other way around.
Speaker 1: It has clear right and wrong answers, but they find
Speaker 1: it hard to get the answers, and this makes them
Speaker 1: feel stupid, or most likely, they're made to feel stupid
Speaker 1: by people who get the answers more easily. And they
Speaker 1: don't even like the idea of clear answers. They see
Speaker 1: the subtle nuances of life, and they don't think that
Speaker 1: something so black and white can capture what they find
Speaker 1: most interesting about life. However, this image of a rigid
Speaker 1: world with clear answers is a very limited view of
Speaker 1: what math is like. Abstract math really doesn't have such
Speaker 1: clear right and wrong answers, especially not at a research level.
Speaker 1: But only a small proportion of people ever make it
Speaker 1: to that stage to see what it's really like. And
Speaker 1: the extraordinary thing is that those mathematicians often love math
Speaker 1: for the same reasons that math phobic people dislike it.
Speaker 1: They are interested in subtlety and nuance to express and
Speaker 1: explore what is most interesting about life. Deep down, math
Speaker 1: isn't about clear answers, but about increasingly nuanced worlds in
Speaker 1: which we can explore different things being true.
Speaker 2: So there is this curious effect.
Speaker 1: Research mathematicians and math phobic people have some similar attitudes
Speaker 1: toward math, just that for the former group those attitudes
Speaker 1: are nurtured and celebrated, but for the latter they are
Speaker 1: met with disdain or even ridicule. And the latter people
Speaker 1: may never find out how close their thoughts and feelings
Speaker 1: are to those of a research mathematician. So you are
Speaker 1: smarter than you think, and your brain works more like
Speaker 1: smart people when you ask not smart questions verified by
Speaker 1: a mathematician. And yeah, sometimes DIY offers gratification that buying
Speaker 1: things with one single clique just can't unless It's a
Speaker 1: book by one of my favorite guests of all time.
Speaker 1: Chiropterologist Doctor Merlin Tuttle is a legend in the world
Speaker 1: of bat experts. See the two part Chiropterology episode to
Speaker 1: fall in love with his bat filled brain and his
Speaker 1: giant heart. So in his twenty twenty two book The
Speaker 1: Bat House Guide, Merlin Tuttle affirms diy aspirations so long
Speaker 1: as it helps our flying little friends, and he writes
Speaker 1: bats are essential, but populations are an alarming decline nearly everywhere,
Speaker 1: often due to loss of natural roosts. Countless colonies have
Speaker 1: lost their homes as forests have been cleared, caves have
Speaker 1: been converted for human use, and fearful humans have killed
Speaker 1: or evicted those attempting to take refuge in buildings. However,
Speaker 1: by simply providing accommodations, you may help dozens, hundreds, or
Speaker 1: even thousands of destitute bats. As many Americans are discovering,
Speaker 1: bats provide safe pest control, unique entertainment, and outstanding educational opportunities.
Speaker 1: Attracting bats may be easier than you think. Thousands of
Speaker 1: little brown miotis and big brown bats are relying on
Speaker 1: bath houses as they slowly recover For more than a
Speaker 1: decade of massive losses from white nose syndrome, private citizens
Speaker 1: are helping some of the hardest hit species recover. Dramatic
Speaker 1: recovery has often been achieved through provision of artificial roosts
Speaker 1: or restoration and protection of damaged roosts. Rapid growth of
Speaker 1: colonies in bathouses strongly suggests that roost shortage is a
Speaker 1: key impediment to their recovery.
Speaker 2: The Florida bonneted.
Speaker 1: Bat, believed to be extinct for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: was rediscovered in nineteen seventy eight living in.
Speaker 2: A backyard bathouse.
Speaker 1: The species is now recovering in small, easy to build bathhouses.
Speaker 1: The more you can learn about bats, the more you
Speaker 1: can help share your personal experience with friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1: Helping people overcome needless fear of bats is key to
Speaker 1: their survival now getting started. The nearer you live to
Speaker 1: a river, a lake, or wetland, especially where natural vegetation remains,
Speaker 1: the greater the odds of attracting bats. Such areas are
Speaker 1: prime breeding grounds for reliable and diverse insect prey that
Speaker 1: can sustain colonies at times when yard or crop pests
Speaker 1: are not available. But bathouses are least likely to attract
Speaker 1: occupants in areas of intense urbanization or industrialized agriculture. Depending
Speaker 1: on the bat species where you live, there may be
Speaker 1: a variety of options for bathouse success. Bats attempting to
Speaker 1: live in buildings or other human made structures are a
Speaker 1: good indicator of suitable feeding habitat nearby. Well built and
Speaker 1: located bathouses are more than eighty percent successful, rising to
Speaker 1: ninety percent where colonies have been excluded from buildings. So
Speaker 1: what kind of bathouse? Single chamber bathhouses have long been
Speaker 1: viewed as minimally attractive to bats, in part because vendors
Speaker 1: have frequently sold ones that were destined to fail due
Speaker 1: to poor construction or inadequate instructions. When painted, different colors
Speaker 1: are located in different amounts of sun. Two or more
Speaker 1: single chamber houses may meet as well as test bat
Speaker 1: needs better than one multi chambered house, and thus prove
Speaker 1: more attractive. Providing varied options roughly doubles the odds of success.
Speaker 1: Multiple houses allow bats to move in response to changes
Speaker 1: in weather or to escape parasites or predators. Now diy
Speaker 1: if you choose to build your own, providing a bathouse
Speaker 1: for bats may require no more tools than a saw,
Speaker 1: screwdriver and paintbrush. Depending on your level of interest and
Speaker 1: available mounting locations, you might consider two or three easy
Speaker 1: to build single chamber houses. The detailed bath house instructions
Speaker 1: we provide are simply intended as starting guides. Most houses
Speaker 1: can be substantially enlarged or improved once you understand bat needs.
Speaker 1: We also introduce a wide range of options from around
Speaker 1: the world and strongly encourage testing of new materials, designs,
Speaker 1: and ideas. So build a little bathouse for your soul
Speaker 1: and get doctor Merlin Tuttle's book. And again that's doctor
Speaker 1: Merlin Tuttle of Austin, Texas, mister Batman himself from the
Speaker 1: Chiropterology episode. So if you want a book on how
Speaker 1: to make bats, your friends and your neighbors, the Bathouse Guide.
Speaker 1: It's a great gift, especially if you're embarking on a
Speaker 1: building project with a loved one who doesn't love the
Speaker 1: smell of coffee and sawdust as you make some memps. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick pause to donate to a charity
Speaker 1: and an apt one this week is a two six LA,
Speaker 1: which is a nonprofit supporting students age six to eighteen
Speaker 1: with free programs to develop their creative and expository writing
Speaker 1: skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to get involved, they can always use
Speaker 1: volunteers to serve as tutors, mentors, role models for students,
Speaker 1: to lead writing workshops and support publishing projects to illustrate
Speaker 1: student written books and guide students through the storytelling process.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be a volunteer, you can
Speaker 1: learn more or donate at eight two six la dot org.
Speaker 1: They have programs all over the US as well, and
Speaker 1: that donation was me possible by sponsors of the show.
Speaker 3: Here are some other.
Speaker 1: Books that you might like. What you don't have to
Speaker 1: take my word for it, Well, I guess you do,
Speaker 1: because I'm the one reading them. But y'all loved the
Speaker 1: onerrology episode on dreaming, and so here are some select
Speaker 1: bits hand chosen by author and ownrologist, doctor G. William Domhoff,
Speaker 1: Because yes, you can be a research scientist with I
Speaker 1: guess the Ultimate dream Job because it's about dreams, and
Speaker 1: then you can write a pile of books about it,
Speaker 1: such as his latest their Neurocognitive Theory of dreaming, Where, how, when,
Speaker 1: what and why of dreams and here's what he chose
Speaker 1: for me to read to you. The neurocognitive theory of
Speaker 1: dreaming is first and foremost based on a synthesis of
Speaker 1: neuroimaging and leision studies of both the waking and sleeping brain.
Speaker 1: It also draws on studies of the development of dreaming
Speaker 1: from preschool to adolescents and on quantitative content analysis of
Speaker 1: dream reports collected in both laboratory and non laboratory settings.
Speaker 1: The neurocognitive theory of dreaming explains the major findings on
Speaker 1: dream content as well as the unexpected findings on what
Speaker 1: does not appear very often in dreaming. In addition, the
Speaker 1: long standing findings on dream content can be combined with
Speaker 1: more recent neuroimaging and developmental findings to suggest that dreaming
Speaker 1: has no adaptive evolutionary function. Instead, it seems more likely
Speaker 1: that dreaming is a byproduct of the rapid selection for
Speaker 1: waking imagination, sociolity, and an enhanced self system over the
Speaker 1: past fifty two three hundred thousand, which have enormous adaptive advantages.
Speaker 1: Dreaming is a unique form of spontaneous, internally generated thought
Speaker 1: that shares features in common with mind wandering and even
Speaker 1: more with daydreaming. But dreaming is far more intense than
Speaker 1: daydreaming because dreamers experience themselves as being in real life
Speaker 1: hypothetical scenarios that almost always include other human beings and
Speaker 1: or animals. In addition, the other human beings and animals
Speaker 1: are usually interacting with the dreamer in the context of
Speaker 1: vivid sensory environments. Dreams are first and foremost characterized by
Speaker 1: pan human dimensions on the one side, and by large
Speaker 1: individual differences on the other. The few gender, cross national
Speaker 1: and cross cultural differences, although real and often replicated in
Speaker 1: the sense of gender, pale in importance. Then to the
Speaker 1: character networks in dream series, which were discovered by mathematical
Speaker 1: psychologists with expertise in waking memory, provide indications that dreaming
Speaker 1: in general may be rooted in the same principles governing
Speaker 1: waking memory to a greater extent than is usually realized.
Speaker 1: So dreams ah certainly food for thought, but books are
Speaker 1: not going to fill your belly. Nobody knows that better
Speaker 1: than doctor Psychie Williams. Forcen from our Black American Magnarology
Speaker 1: episode about food, race and culture, and she wrote a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two book Eating While Black, Food Shaming, and
Speaker 1: Race in America, and she wanted me to read this
Speaker 1: passage to engage your mind and your literary appetite. The
Speaker 1: notion of wholesomeness, along with the requirement of the healthiness
Speaker 1: of the food, are the twin weapons for issuing shame
Speaker 1: and culinary policing. Because we all operate out of our
Speaker 1: own experiences, we can often miss the nuances of how
Speaker 1: shopping in places like the dollar store and other budget
Speaker 1: outlets enables those who do the shopping to accomplish more
Speaker 1: than just purchasing food. For example, once I was in
Speaker 1: the company of a food advocate who strongly believed in
Speaker 1: agricultural education and outreach. As we were talking, she began
Speaker 1: extolling the virtues of her work and why her message
Speaker 1: was a necessary one for helping communities of people relieve hunger.
Speaker 1: At one point during our conversation, I told her that
Speaker 1: farmers' markets were not necessarily a feasible shopping option for
Speaker 1: many people. She sharply responded, everyone deserves fresh food, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I said, but that is not my point. How we
Speaker 1: obtain foods is of interest and importance to me. It
Speaker 1: is critical for me that we not insist that there
Speaker 1: is only one correct way of obtaining food. We continued
Speaker 1: to banter while driving to our destination. Along the way,
Speaker 1: we happened to pass a busy shopping center that had
Speaker 1: a variety of stores, including a wal Mart, a Rainbow,
Speaker 1: an urban centered clothing store for women and girls, and
Speaker 1: a Dollar Tree. I could not help but think of
Speaker 1: the many errands that I had to run when I
Speaker 1: returned home, and the number of tasks I could accomplish
Speaker 1: in one hour or so just by going to the
Speaker 1: three stores we just passed, or even one of them. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: the thought of needing to figure out the time and
Speaker 1: location of the next farmer's market and how it would
Speaker 1: fit within the scope of the many other things I
Speaker 1: had to do, was daunting, to say the least. I
Speaker 1: explained to my companion how I, as a middle class
Speaker 1: black woman, would find relief in the option of large
Speaker 1: stores with varied merchandise. After I said this, we rode
Speaker 1: in silence for the rest of the trip, each of
Speaker 1: us lost in our own thoughts, perhaps thinking about the
Speaker 1: privileges of our own lives. I was not angry with
Speaker 1: my driving companion so much as I was frustrated and
Speaker 1: tired by the need to share continuously this kind of
Speaker 1: information in order to help people check their privileges. I
Speaker 1: am perpetually amazed by the freedoms enjoyed by so many
Speaker 1: who choose to tell Black people how we should.
Speaker 2: Practice our food cultures.
Speaker 1: It is clear they most often have little or no
Speaker 1: clue about our cultural history, heritage, sustainability, or even how
Speaker 1: we manage life on a.
Speaker 2: Day to day basis.
Speaker 1: These advocates are determined in their zeal to impress upon
Speaker 1: me the need to acquire fresh food, and they feel
Speaker 1: justified by their outrage to impress upon me that I,
Speaker 1: as a human being, have a right to have this
Speaker 1: freshness in my life. Yes, of course I do. But
Speaker 1: what my companion and others seem to miss is that
Speaker 1: it is also my right to acquire food and other
Speaker 1: goods in ways that work best for me, even if
Speaker 1: that means going outside the confines of what others consider acceptable.
Speaker 1: But some people get this. In the article The Buck
Speaker 1: Shops here, ron At King explains that not only our
Speaker 1: dollar store is now being frequented by those with incomes
Speaker 1: greater than seventy thousand, but also that they appeal to
Speaker 1: customers who might not want to trapes across a huge
Speaker 1: store and its accompanying parking lot just to pick up
Speaker 1: a few items. And this is especially the case when
Speaker 1: you're busy with families or live alone. It's absolutely true
Speaker 1: that everyone deserves to have fresh food, and it is
Speaker 1: absolutely true that people need to be able to eat
Speaker 1: what they want and get their food from where they
Speaker 1: need while they're in the meantime of their lives, that
Speaker 1: is well, they're waiting for things to change or improve.
Speaker 1: So when you sit down to holiday meals, eating while
Speaker 1: black is a great one to have under the tree
Speaker 1: and gift to someone or yourself. And before you hurl
Speaker 1: your fresh leftovers in the trash, consider the work of
Speaker 1: the wonderful doctor Robin Nagel of the Discard Anthropology episode
Speaker 1: All about Garbage. She's an NYU professor and a one
Speaker 1: time New York City sanitation worker and author of the
Speaker 1: book Picking Up on the Streets and Behind the Trucks
Speaker 1: with the Sanitation Workers of New York City Now on
Speaker 1: the topic of grubbing and also grubbiness.
Speaker 2: She selected this.
Speaker 1: Passage for you, a Buddhist prayer of thanks said at
Speaker 1: the start of a meal acknowledges that the food about
Speaker 1: to be consumed is the work of many hands and
Speaker 1: the sharing of many forms of life. So is the
Speaker 1: accumulation at a garbage dump. The garbage here and in
Speaker 1: every other dump the world over reflects lives lived well
Speaker 1: or in desperation, or too fast, or in pain or
Speaker 1: enjoy even without the status of worth or a claim
Speaker 1: of possession. Each bag stuffed with trash, each wad of
Speaker 1: spent tissue, every shred of shrink wrap, every moldy vegetable
Speaker 1: and maggot covered turkey leg hints of countless stories. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: of contemporary household waste have demonstrated this. Indeed, insights that
Speaker 1: the field has given us about our own past often
Speaker 1: rest on analysis of nothing more than the garbage of
Speaker 1: civilization's long dead. We understand such artifacts to be treasures.
Speaker 1: Less tangible and more metaphysical is the sense that all
Speaker 1: these unloved things hold traces of their former owners. Marcel
Speaker 1: Maas and early twentieth century sociologists propose that even when
Speaker 1: an object has been abandoned by the giver, it still
Speaker 1: possesses something of him. The original notion referred to gift
Speaker 1: exchanges in small scale or tribal societies, but the point
Speaker 1: can stand for any thing that has passed through a
Speaker 1: life and been cast off. Imagine if we were capable
Speaker 1: a form of empathy that lets us know one another
Speaker 1: by savoring the aura we leave on the things we've touched,
Speaker 1: we could go to a dump to get drunk on
Speaker 1: one another's souls. But we haven't yet evolved such sensitivities.
Speaker 1: We generate our dregs, we create their hazards, and then
Speaker 1: we invent the dump as one of the places to
Speaker 1: which we banish them so that we can pretend they
Speaker 1: won't harm us. But who plays the role of Karen
Speaker 1: ferrying our deceased belongings out of our daily lives and
Speaker 1: across that river sticks into the imagined safe zone of
Speaker 1: the dump, Or, to put it more bluntly, who keeps
Speaker 1: us safe from ourselves?
Speaker 3: Not me?
Speaker 1: So yes, do pick up picking up on the streets
Speaker 1: behind the trucks with the sanitation workers of New York
Speaker 1: City by doctor Nagle to get a whole new appreciation
Speaker 1: for where your garbage goes from a sack on the street.
Speaker 2: To the grape beyond.
Speaker 1: But what's under the streets and also in the Grape Beyond,
Speaker 1: Oh a bunch of Human Bones. If you're in Paris,
Speaker 1: I get a chance to chat with doctor Aaronbrae Legacy
Speaker 1: in the Metropolitan Tomology episode and record my own creeping
Speaker 1: around the Paris Catacombs. And as a rare expert in
Speaker 1: this field, doctor Legacy wrote the book Making Space for
Speaker 1: the Day, Catacombs, Cemeteries and the Reimagining of Paris seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty to eighteen thirty, and here's an excerpt from her.
Speaker 1: In December seventeen eighty five, the dead moved from Paris's
Speaker 1: heart into what Victor Hugo would later call its intestines.
Speaker 1: Shadowy figures entered the city's oldest and largest cemetery, the
Speaker 1: Cemetery of the Holy Innocence, and began to dig. Inhabitants
Speaker 1: of neighboring buildings watched, some from their windows, some from
Speaker 1: the street, as these men, working by torchlight, began the
Speaker 1: lugubrious and unprecedented process of emptying this historic burial space
Speaker 1: of its sacred contents. These city workers spent the next
Speaker 1: year digging human remains out of the cemetery's deep mass
Speaker 1: graves and collecting the millions of bones that had accumulated
Speaker 1: in the charnel houses around its perimeter. They then systematically
Speaker 1: transported carts full of bones and human remains to an
Speaker 1: underground quarry on the city's southern periphery, a.
Speaker 2: Newly designated Minuis Municipal.
Speaker 1: Osuary that would soon be better known as the Paris Catacombs.
Speaker 1: This radical relocation was the culmination of a long campaign
Speaker 1: to end urban burial in the French capital. More specifically,
Speaker 1: it was a consequence of a seventeen eighty royal ordinance
Speaker 1: that declared the Cemetery of the Innocence to be an
Speaker 1: intolerable and illegal threat to the city, owing to the
Speaker 1: stinking vapors that constantly seeped from its muddy enclosure and
Speaker 1: endangered the health and well being of anyone living in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. The famous eighteenth century chronicler of Parisian urban life,
Speaker 1: Louis Sebastian Mercier, characterized the cemetery as an imminent danger
Speaker 1: whose cadaverous miasmas threatened to poison the atmosphere of Paris.
Speaker 1: He further alleged that wine, milk and bullion served in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of the cemetery soured within hours and warned
Speaker 1: that the cadaverous humidity that clung to the nearby walls
Speaker 1: had lethal effects. Yes, he explained, to absent mindedly place
Speaker 1: one's hand against a wall impregnated with this moisture was
Speaker 1: to expose oneself to the effects of venom. Ew No,
Speaker 1: in this ancient space, the dead were quite literally deadly.
Speaker 1: So venture Underground with her book, which will be linked
Speaker 1: on the website. You can also listen to the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Tumology episode to hear more about that. Now, do you
Speaker 1: want to read less about death and more about dolphin sex?
Speaker 2: I thought so?
Speaker 1: Or rather doctor Justin Gregg of the Delphinology episode on
Speaker 1: dolphins did. He wrote Our Dolphins Really Smart in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: But his latest title is If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal,
Speaker 1: which just came out in paperback and makes an excellent
Speaker 1: and entertaining airport read or a gift. Now, he told me,
Speaker 1: here are some dramatic paragraphs that might be fun to
Speaker 1: include in a mixtape from If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal.
Speaker 1: The conclusion here is that humans, through our complex capacity
Speaker 1: for moral thinking, have taken something that does not constitute
Speaker 1: a normative problem for any other species, and turned it
Speaker 1: into an issue for which we can justify marginalization, criminalization, execution,
Speaker 1: and even genocide. This is, argue, a case of animals
Speaker 1: having a far superior, that is, less violent and destructive,
Speaker 1: normative system for dealing with difference than almost all human cultures.
Speaker 1: Homosexuality is quite clearly not just normal in the animal world,
Speaker 1: but entirely non destructive, maybe even beneficial for maintaining animal societies.
Speaker 1: Why then, are humans uniquely homophobic? It's a mystery that
Speaker 1: can only be solved if you understand how we can
Speaker 1: reason ourselves into a corner via our capacity.
Speaker 2: For moral thinking.
Speaker 1: A handful of cultures and religions have convinced themselves that
Speaker 1: homosexuality is a moral problem and millions of our fellow
Speaker 1: humans must suffer because of it. Not only does anti
Speaker 1: gay sentiment have no real counterpart in the behavior of
Speaker 1: any other species, but it actively creates barriers to our
Speaker 1: species success and not only so's societal discord, but leads
Speaker 1: to the suffering of a large swath of the human population.
Speaker 1: What biological benefit has been given to our species through
Speaker 1: our bizarre moral posturing around the non problem problem of
Speaker 1: homosexuality precisely none. It is a sad testament to the
Speaker 1: cruelty of human moral reasoning. Intelligence is not a biological fact.
Speaker 1: This idea of human intellectual or behavioral exceptionalism has no
Speaker 1: basis in science. We feel in our guts that intelligence
Speaker 1: is both real and good.
Speaker 2: But when we look at.
Speaker 1: The ways in which non human animals manage to eke
Speaker 1: out a living on this planet, the jaw dropping solutions
Speaker 1: they've come up with for solving ecological problems, it becomes
Speaker 1: clear that neither of these gut beliefs holds up to scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Intelligence is the grand mcguffin, a concept we've been chasing
Speaker 1: in the study of human, animal, and robot minds that
Speaker 1: has distracted us from the reality of the natural world.
Speaker 1: A reality in which natural selection has never once acted
Speaker 1: on a biological trait that we can distill into a
Speaker 1: singular concept known as intelligence. A reality in which our
Speaker 1: intellectual and teens technology feats born of a mish mash
Speaker 1: of cognitive traits shared by many other species are not
Speaker 1: quite as important or exceptional as we'd.
Speaker 2: Like to believe.
Speaker 1: A reality in which the earth is bursting with animal
Speaker 1: species that have hit on solutions for how to have
Speaker 1: a good life in ways that put the human species
Speaker 1: to shame. Human intelligence is not the miracle of evolution
Speaker 1: we like to think it is. We love our little accomplishments,
Speaker 1: our moon landings and megacities like a parent loves their
Speaker 1: newborn baby, but nobody loves a baby as much as
Speaker 1: the parents. The planet does not love us as much
Speaker 1: as we love our intellect. Because we are indeed exceptional,
Speaker 1: if not necessarily good. We have generated more death and
Speaker 1: destruction for life on this planet than any other animal
Speaker 1: past and present. Our many intellectual accomplishments are currently on
Speaker 1: track to produce our own extinction, which is exactly how
Speaker 1: evolution gets rid of adaptations that suck. It is the
Speaker 1: greatest of paradoxes that we should have an exceptional mind
Speaker 1: which seems hell bent on destroying itself. Unless we can
Speaker 1: pull out a star Trek solution in the nick of time,
Speaker 1: human intelligence is going to wink out of existence. So
Speaker 1: instead of looking at the cows and chickens and nar
Speaker 1: walls in your life with pity because they lack human
Speaker 1: cognitive capacities, first think about the value of those capacities.
Speaker 1: Do you experience more pleasure than your pets because of them.
Speaker 1: Is the world a better place thanks to our species intelligence?
Speaker 1: If we are honest about the answers to those questions,
Speaker 1: then there's good reason to tone down our smugness, because,
Speaker 1: depending on where we go from here, human intelligence may
Speaker 1: just be the stupidest thing that has ever happened. Haha,
Speaker 1: we got you with dolphinsex. Now we have to think
Speaker 1: about our own brains destroying things. So obviously, some humans
Speaker 1: just don't get communing with the natural world, and some do.
Speaker 1: We did a Wichology episode in October with a real
Speaker 1: life witch and author fee Garde Parma, and some of
Speaker 1: you freaked out because it contained their experiences and opinions,
Speaker 1: and some of you freaked out because you discovered being
Speaker 1: a witch is for you. Now, if the latter is
Speaker 1: a case, you may want to pick up their twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three book, The Witch Belongs to the World a
Speaker 1: Spell of Becoming and Fio selected this passage for y'all.
Speaker 1: Witches belong to the world. Etymologically, the roots of the
Speaker 1: word world position this concept in terms of the age
Speaker 1: of man an epic. The quantity of the known world,
Speaker 1: this place, this time, not some other place, not some
Speaker 1: other time, definitely not the other world. Whiches belong to
Speaker 1: the world, and we are emissaries to and of the
Speaker 1: other world. To the other world we travel, and with
Speaker 1: the mysteries of the other world we return born to
Speaker 1: both which is our blessing and abane to the human
Speaker 1: societies who have feared and revered us. We are part
Speaker 1: of the fate and destiny of humankind. We have always
Speaker 1: been here. Stories and legends about us are as old
Speaker 1: as written records in oral traditions. We are older than
Speaker 1: revivalist traditions bearing our names. We are older than initiatory
Speaker 1: lineages and orders of witchery. We are older than the persecutions,
Speaker 1: the Pyramids, the cave painting, the stone axes. But who
Speaker 1: and what were we before empire? What have we become?
Speaker 1: Who are we becoming? So that was the witch belongs
Speaker 1: to the world? Which book to get? There's so many,
Speaker 1: and we're not done.
Speaker 2: Yet, folks, books, more books.
Speaker 1: So as long as we're lurking in the mist in
Speaker 1: the darkness, let's hear a little bit from territologist and
Speaker 1: monster low expert doctor W. Scott Poole from the slam
Speaker 1: Dunk fan favorite recent episode Our Monsters. So doctor Pool
Speaker 1: has monster books, of course, such as Monsters in America,
Speaker 1: but his latest book is titled Dark Carnivals, Modern Horror
Speaker 1: and the Origins of American Empire, and he chose this
Speaker 1: creepy and thought provoking passage for us empires stand alone.
Speaker 1: There's so often an immense lilafe loneliness at the heart
Speaker 1: of contemporary horror films, the stories leeching out of our
Speaker 1: inner poisons, replaying for us the terrors of living in
Speaker 1: a fortified nation state, even before the pandemic of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Themes of blindness, deafness, and above all, isolation saturated contemporary
Speaker 1: horror films like bird Box, A quiet place, the silence,
Speaker 1: hush here alone, it comes at night, the wind, and
Speaker 1: don't breathe. Empire's apocalypse has come to mean suffering alone,
Speaker 1: a particularly haunting echo of the failed promises and the
Speaker 1: horrors of the global village. The writer lings End, in
Speaker 1: his novel Love Like Hate, admits that Vietnam, especially his
Speaker 1: beloved Saigon, is a disaster, but he adds that at
Speaker 1: least one doesn't die alone in the desolation. The solitary
Speaker 1: nightmare of America Americans are so cool they manage to
Speaker 1: be quiet about their desperation. Isolation may seem a strange
Speaker 1: condition at empire's twilight. Perhaps it's the pondering of the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the world we made that horror plays with now.
Speaker 1: The clowns are terrifying. The sound of the calliope tingles
Speaker 1: the spine with its weirdness. The music of the carousel
Speaker 1: jangles its Warlitzer tune, broken and serrated. But once something
Speaker 1: wicked coming this way has passed, what does it leave behind?
Speaker 1: Is our insatiate need to victimize, or at least glamorize
Speaker 1: those who victimize in our name. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: for our polarizations and isolations. American myths adore the loner
Speaker 1: and the rogue, the quiet man of action. Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: tore a canal into Panama, and Ted Bundy tore apart
Speaker 1: sorority girls. John Wayne buried his kills by Old Red River,
Speaker 1: and John Wayne Gacy laid his to rest in a
Speaker 1: crawl space at eighty two thirteen West Summerdale Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Speaking softly and carrying a big stick has been the
Speaker 1: American way, as has using that stick to bludgeon others
Speaker 1: into paralysis and death. It's lonely at the top of
Speaker 1: the bone pile. Have Americans chosen the chainsaw or the shark?
Speaker 1: The last one hundred years suggest they've wanted both. The
Speaker 1: certainty that the monsters waiting in the deep can be
Speaker 1: slain by American tough giary means we are never afraid
Speaker 1: to wade back into the water. We still feel the saw,
Speaker 1: but refuse to let its blind roar unsettle our sleep.
Speaker 1: We can even reimagine it a weapon. We make our
Speaker 1: own ash of the evil dead films, putting a chainsaw
Speaker 1: on his bloody stump of an arm and marching against
Speaker 1: an army of darkness with panache, even a John Wayne swagger.
Speaker 1: War stories are difficult. War stories are so often horror
Speaker 1: stories that try to ignore their own tropes. Too often,
Speaker 1: when the lights go up, you think war is hell
Speaker 1: but also damn exciting. It has to be done, But
Speaker 1: look at it. It's also the sort of empire that
Speaker 1: demands full cooperation, your taxes, your apathy, your willingness to
Speaker 1: hate what you see in the floating gun sight that
Speaker 1: ranges across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific world.
Speaker 1: Horror movies, fiction, and games draw on these poisoned waters
Speaker 1: and reimagine these piles of corpses in a country that
Speaker 1: taught itself to become history's most powerful war machine while
Speaker 1: keeping less than one percent of its population under arms.
Speaker 1: Horror offers one of the few places where the true
Speaker 1: war story can unfold. The truth of war is not
Speaker 1: about what happens on the front lines. It's a story
Speaker 1: about what Americans consume, what we're willing to allow our
Speaker 1: government to do so we can keep binging, and whether
Speaker 1: we are willing to all play at answering the call
Speaker 1: of duty, becoming a nation of first person shooters, most
Speaker 1: of whom will never have to pick up an actual
Speaker 1: rifle unless it's to kill other Americans out of rage
Speaker 1: and frustration. Instead, the working class avatars we'd call the
Speaker 1: cops on if they walked through our neighborhood do the
Speaker 1: killing for us. We'll just wrap ourselves and the softer
Speaker 1: side of empire tales of soldiers in our wars defending
Speaker 1: our freedoms, and not the truth that they are ponds
Speaker 1: in a larger game of taking what belongs to others.
Speaker 1: The war story of America has become the very apotheosis
Speaker 1: of Aslan Clark's dictum about horror. The worst thing is true.
Speaker 1: So yes.
Speaker 2: That is from doctor W.
Speaker 1: Scott Poole's book Dark Carnivals about Empire and America and
Speaker 1: much darkness that's well written and well thought out.
Speaker 2: Now in those.
Speaker 1: City streets of America are not just mysteries and power
Speaker 1: struggles but people. And Aaron Foley, an expert in Detroit
Speaker 1: history and culture from the Detroit Oology episode, Well, he
Speaker 1: wrote a beautiful novel called Boys Come First. But he
Speaker 1: also authored a really straightforward and hilarious guide to the
Speaker 1: Motor City titled How to Live in Detroit Without Being
Speaker 1: a Jackass, which also has really beautiful reflections on how
Speaker 1: we treat each other. And he gave this passage to
Speaker 1: read to you to people, real people. Life in Detroit
Speaker 1: cannot be gleaned from an article, no matter how shareable
Speaker 1: on social media. It seems you have to absorb everything
Speaker 1: here in real time. Not be easy, but do not
Speaker 1: put the blame on Detroit. Life is an obstacle course
Speaker 1: no matter where you are, but people are paramount. Treat
Speaker 1: people with respect and dignity, not just in Detroit, but
Speaker 1: especially in Detroit.
Speaker 2: It's pretty basic.
Speaker 1: But you'd be surprised how many people don't abide by this.
Speaker 1: And why is that? Because people get so wrapped up
Speaker 1: in things like coney dogs that they forget about humanity.
Speaker 1: Which is beautiful writing about Detroit and American culture at large.
Speaker 1: And again, life is an obstacle course, no matter where
Speaker 1: you are. Also, did someone say obstacle course. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about chickens now, So Tova Danovich is not only a chickenologist,
Speaker 1: and yes that's a real word. Look it up. I
Speaker 1: swear to frogs. But also she is an author and
Speaker 1: I'd like you to hear part of her twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three book Under the Henfluence, Inside the World of Backyard
Speaker 1: Chickens and the.
Speaker 2: People who love them.
Speaker 1: In it, she describes an experience she had firsthand. The
Speaker 1: workshop seems ordinary. There are rows of tables and chairs,
Speaker 1: a large screen for PowerPoint presentations, and an area for
Speaker 1: coffee and snacks. If it weren't for the dusty smell
Speaker 1: when you walk in the door and the sounds coming
Speaker 1: from downstairs, this could be a one to one workshop
Speaker 1: in any conference room in the US. The spell is
Speaker 1: broken quickly when I hear a booker from downstairs. Someone
Speaker 1: has laid an egg. This is chicken Camp, a multi
Speaker 1: day class that is ostensibly all about clicker training chickens.
Speaker 1: Most people in the workshop work with animals. Some are professionals,
Speaker 1: while others just want to learn how to train their
Speaker 1: puppy when they get back home. One woman does wildlife rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: another is a primate researcher. A few of them work
Speaker 1: with feral cats. But for the next few days or longer,
Speaker 1: for those who stay for both the beginning and advanced
Speaker 1: chicken training classes, we will learn how to clicker train
Speaker 1: chickens to do all kinds of things a chicken doesn't
Speaker 1: normally do. Some will teeter across balanced beams. Others will
Speaker 1: walk confidently around a parking cone. They will complete obstacle
Speaker 1: courses and matching games. These hungry chickens will do amazing
Speaker 1: things in exchange for food, but for now they know
Speaker 1: very little. Nothing has ever been expected of them besides
Speaker 1: laying the occasional egg. Today that's all about to change.
Speaker 1: So yes, you've been wanting chickens, get yourself under the
Speaker 1: influence inside the world of back your chickens and the
Speaker 1: people who love them, or get it as a gift
Speaker 1: for your partner and beg them for chickens. Let's continue
Speaker 1: on the topic of eggs, but also zombies. Come with
Speaker 1: me into the world of neuroparasitology aka nature zombies with
Speaker 1: author Matt Simon, who wrote Plight of the Living Dead.
Speaker 1: What real life zombies reveal about our world and ourselves?
Speaker 2: Zombies really, really, he.
Speaker 1: Writes, the zombie may as well be real, because it
Speaker 1: actually is, only in a far more incredible and diabolical
Speaker 1: and horrifying way than a screenwriter could ever dream up.
Speaker 1: Because all across the animal kingdom, parasites are climbing into
Speaker 1: other creatures and mind controlling them, be they worms or
Speaker 1: wasps or microbes. Certain organisms have figured out how to
Speaker 1: brainwash their victims in weighs so clever and precise they
Speaker 1: make Hollingwood's creations look downwriting ir responsible. In September twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: I was pacing in my kitchen talking on the phone
Speaker 1: with presumably a madman in South America. He told me
Speaker 1: a fungus invades ants' bodies and takes over their minds,
Speaker 1: manipulating them with unreal precision and consistency. The parasite steers
Speaker 1: the ants out of the colony and up a tree,
Speaker 1: always at noon, always ordering them to bite onto a leaf,
Speaker 1: always about a foot off the ground. This just so
Speaker 1: happens to be where the temperature and humidity are ideal
Speaker 1: for the fungus's growth, and the body snatcher has positioned
Speaker 1: its host right above the colony's trail, so as it
Speaker 1: erupts out of the back of the zombie ant's head
Speaker 1: and sprays its spores, it infects more victims. A parasite
Speaker 1: without a brain of its own has brainwashed one of
Speaker 1: the most loyal creatures on earth to betray its family
Speaker 1: in spectacular fashion. And so for more on that, see
Speaker 1: that neuroparasitology episode with Matt Simon. His book is Plight
Speaker 1: of the Living Dead. Oh it's so good, and I
Speaker 1: realize you may feel a beef with bugs right now,
Speaker 1: but let's change that mighty verse with the book Eyes
Speaker 1: on Flies by doctor bry The Fly Guy, written by
Speaker 1: dipter ology guest doctor Brian Lasard. He wants you to
Speaker 1: love flies like he does, and he makes it easy
Speaker 1: with passages such as no flies, no chocolate. Without flies,
Speaker 1: there would be no chocolate.
Speaker 2: True story.
Speaker 1: This is because midge flies are the most important pollinators
Speaker 1: of the cocoa plant that gives us chocolate. These teeny
Speaker 1: tiny flies are the size of a pinhead and are
Speaker 1: the only pollinators small enough to crawl inside the cocoa flowers.
Speaker 1: Turns out these flies have a sweet tooth as a
Speaker 1: buzz from flower to flower, drinking sweet. They get doused
Speaker 1: in pollend to help pollinate the flowers that eventually ripen
Speaker 1: into delicious cocoa pots. Next time you piece of chocolate,
Speaker 1: make sure to thank the chocolate fly will do. He
Speaker 1: also writes new species realness category is new species Extravaganza.
Speaker 1: One charismatic and unique soldier fly looks like a shiny
Speaker 1: rainbow jewel sashing around the forest floor, so I named
Speaker 1: it Oppolluma rue Paul, after the glamazon Rue Paul. The
Speaker 1: first specimens of Appolluma flies were collected in nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: and waited more than one hundred years before someone came
Speaker 1: along with the nerve and the talent to name them.
Speaker 1: That's why I wanted to give them big, bold names
Speaker 1: so they can get the much needed attention they deserved
Speaker 1: from researchers and community scientists.
Speaker 2: Even rue.
Speaker 1: Paul saw the resemblance and posted a picture of the
Speaker 1: fly on social media. The rest was herstory. He also writes,
Speaker 1: want to know the secret of looking pretty fly? Believe
Speaker 1: it or not, some cosmetic companies have a secret ingredient
Speaker 1: in their aged flying face creams that keep you looking younger.
Speaker 1: Oil from a maggot. Pardon, and not just any kind
Speaker 1: of maggot, but the youthful black soldier fly. Turns out,
Speaker 1: the oil found in black soldier fly larvae is rich
Speaker 1: in fats, oils, and vitamin e that are supposed to
Speaker 1: nourish the skin and help it look healthier and younger.
Speaker 1: After all, beauty is in the fly of the beholder,
Speaker 1: he writes, So get his book Eyes on Flies by
Speaker 1: Doctor Bryan the Fly Guy, and y'all that's it. Ask
Speaker 1: smart books, not smart questions, or get some as gifts
Speaker 1: to delight and entertain your love once. Head to the
Speaker 1: link in the show description aliware dot com slash ologies
Speaker 1: slash bookworm three for links to the original episodes that
Speaker 1: we talked about and the ologists books, as well as
Speaker 1: a link to Literacy Charity which we donated eight two
Speaker 1: six LA. If you're listening on Apple, make sure you
Speaker 1: have hit the follow button to subscribe so you always
Speaker 1: have episodes as soon as they go up. We have
Speaker 1: some great ones coming on every week you don't want
Speaker 1: to miss. You can follow us at Ologies on Instagram
Speaker 1: where we post your art tagged Ologies art on Fridays
Speaker 1: and your merch pis on Monday that are tagged Ologies Merch.
Speaker 1: I'm on there and Twitter at ali Ward we also
Speaker 1: have so many kid friendly Smologies episodes you can download
Speaker 1: at alliward dot com slash Smologies for free, which is
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admin's our Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is managing director.
Speaker 2: Kelly R.
Speaker 1: Dwyer does our website. Emily White of the Wordery makes
Speaker 1: our professional transcripts. Smologies have been edited by Zee Coudorguez,
Speaker 1: Thomas Andre Sleeper of Mindjam Media, as well as our
Speaker 1: lead editor, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, who wrote the
Speaker 1: book on piecing together podcasts Well She Might One Day.
Speaker 1: The theme music was written by Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 1: band Islands and if you stick around until the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this
Speaker 1: week let's do book related.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So in college and in my early twenties, I did
Speaker 1: some TV shows and it helped pay for college, and
Speaker 1: I also was catering on the side and had like
Speaker 1: four jobs. But I really like doing the TV stuff
Speaker 1: until one day I was mugged by these two guys
Speaker 1: with giant kitchen knives in real life, and then my
Speaker 1: appetite for simulating violence on like crime shows just kind
Speaker 1: of disappeared with my wallet that day. But on my
Speaker 1: first audition ever, like years before, I was so nervous.
Speaker 1: It was for like a moody college student, and I
Speaker 1: had practiced the audition and in the waiting room there
Speaker 1: were like fifteen other girls who looked just like me,
Speaker 1: and so to distract myself, I took out a book
Speaker 1: from my bag and it was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar,
Speaker 1: and I was like, how perfect am I for this?
Speaker 1: I'm already reading a really depressing book. And then I
Speaker 1: looked up and there was literally a girl across the
Speaker 1: room also reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't even assigned for a class. We just, I
Speaker 1: guess both happened to be reading it. And I was
Speaker 1: like was even the point of being here so easily.
Speaker 1: There's nothing interesting about me, and I guess I was
Speaker 1: so defeated that I seemed like an actual depressed college kid,
Speaker 1: which I was, so I got the part. And when
Speaker 1: I found out via a pager that I was shooting,
Speaker 1: like the next day, I called my parents from a
Speaker 1: payphone in San Francisco and I was screaming so much
Speaker 1: that my dad thought that I was gravely injured or
Speaker 1: being held.
Speaker 2: Hostage, but I was just happy.
Speaker 1: But then years later, when I actually did get mugged,
Speaker 1: I could not make a noise at all, Like it
Speaker 1: opened my mouth, nothing would come out, as kind of
Speaker 1: like when you're in a nightmare or a cartoon and
Speaker 1: you're like like nothing. But don't be sad about all that,
Speaker 1: because if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been like
Speaker 1: h luck and then become like a writer and done science.
Speaker 2: TV and madeologies. So it all worked out.
Speaker 1: And I also learned that when you're like authentic in
Speaker 1: your life and your work, you've become irreplaceable. But when
Speaker 1: you try to be just like everybody else, then things
Speaker 1: don't work out so great. You also become a little
Speaker 1: bit less depressed when you're just you. Okay, next week
Speaker 1: another new ology, so make sure you're subscribed to phone
Speaker 1: user pass it on and thank you for listening. To
Speaker 1: the very end of this audiobook mixtape number three, I
Speaker 1: would you like it?
Speaker 2: My throat is so sore?
Speaker 3: Okay, Bye bye, Pacadermatology, abiology or doo Zoology, Lithology, new Technology,
Speaker 3: Meteorology and Metatology, nanthology, zeriology, silidology.
Speaker 1: I like the books.