In the Weeds

Predators are a two-faced god for humans, according to Dan Flores, historian and author of Coyote America:  A Natural and Supernatural History. After all, we were once both predators and prey.

With this episode, we continue to explore this complex relationship of humans and predators by looking to the song dogs of the prairie.  

Coyotes inspired several Aztec dieties, served as the model for the protagonist of the earliest American stories, and, in defiance of a concerted effort by federal and state agencies to wipe them off the face of the earth, thrive throughout the lower 48 states today. As such, they have much to teach us about the natural and cultural history of America and, more broadly, about our own species.

Thank you to David Larzelere for playing the guitar on the "Coyote National Anthem."

For more see in-the-weeds.net

In 1967, medieval historian Lynn White published a now-infamous paper that traces the current environmental crisis back to a Judeo-Christian worldview… essentially, he blames the creation story in Genesis, especially the part in which God gives humans the task of “ruling” over animals. 

I wanted to take a closer look and knew the thing to do was to ask a rabbi.

I got help from Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, rabbi-in-residence for Hazon, the Jewish lab for sustainability.

We talk about Rabbi Rothstein’s own background - he grew up in a mixed-race family in an ultra-orthodox community, in Monsey, New York - and how this led to his current position with Hazon; about the current Jewish environmental movement and Hazon’s declaration that the Jewish new year, 5270, is the year of the Environmental Teshuva, and I ask Rabbi Rothstein to walk me through the Hebrew of the creation story in Genesis.

Buckle your seatbelts and get ready for a bumpy (and fascinating) theological ride!

For more information see:

hazon.org/environmentalteshuva
in-the-weeds.net

I’m having trouble letting go of wolves…I’m fascinated with the way we use these predators as models for who we are, as humans, and who we are, as animals. 

So, before we move on to our next topic, I thought it would be fun to look at an example from popular culture. 

My friend Alisa Hartz and I discuss the Twilight movies, based on the YA novels by Stephenie Meyer, in which Bella, a teenage girl who has recently moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest to live with her father, has to choose between two rivals for her affections, Edward (secretly a vampire) and Jacob (a werewolf).

We talk about all the cultural “stuff” these movies trade in, from fairy tales to represenations of predation and how to make sense of it all. 

Spoiler Alert: We are solidly Team Jacob.

in-the-weeds.net

Last time, we looked at Little Red Riding Hood and the “big, bad wolf” of the fairy-tale tradition. This time, we turn to actual wolves and their situation in North America today. 

I interview Maggie Howell, the Director of The Wolf Conservation Center. We talk about why wolves are important to the ecosystem (and how the Northeast has suffered in their absence) and what is being done to protect endangered wolf species, including a rather unusual approach to reintroducing captive wolves into the wild. 

For more information, go to in-the-weeds.net and nywolf.org.

How did the wolf come to be “carnivore incarnate”? Why do we project our own beastliness onto wolves? With the help of Maria Tatar, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, and Aleksander Pluskowski, Associate Professor of Archeology at  the University of Reading, I deconstruct the figure of the fairy-tale wolf.

How do you shop for a good bottle of olive oil? What’s the difference between organic and conventional? 1 percent and .25% acidity? Learn this and much more from my conversation with Philip Asquith, Master Miller of Ojai Olive Oil - oh, and, my brother. We recorded this interview while exploring the olive grove and mill, on the edge of the Sespe Wilderness Area.

Environmentalists tell us that to save our species - and many others that depend on us - we need a change in our culture, not just our technology, but what exactly is culture?

With the help of Michael Ziser, Associate Professor of English at UC Davis, and Caleb Scoville, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley, I explore the history and meanings of the word culture. 

It turns out this history has a lot to tell us about our relationship to the natural world.

I'm traveling, so I don't have time to produce a full episode this week, but I hope you'll enjoy this segment of my interview with Doug Tallamy that didn't make it into my first episode.

In this part of our conversation, Tallamy talks about his recent research on the impact of coffee production on bird habitat and the new "Bird Friendly" label he's developed with the Smithsonian.

Part 2 of my inquiry into the connections between wood and music and, by extension, trees and people. 

I interview Judy Nelson, violist for the New York Philharmonic, who tells me stories of violas, old and new, teaches me what makes an instrument "speak" and gives me insight into the dynamic relationship between a musician and her fiddle.

For pictures and more info see in-the-weeds.net.

In my quest to understand the relationship between trees and music, I seek out Brian Skarstad, an expert violin maker (he scoffs at the term "luthier") who makes violins by hand, employing many of the same techniques that violin makers have been using for hundreds of years. I talk to him about tonewood, how a violin is made and the myriad details that affect a violin’s sound and quality. It’s like opening a portal to a secret world.