The Wild Quiet

There’s basically a wolf descendant sleeping on our couch. Wildcats live in our houses. And a bird that once lived in the forests of Southeast Asia is now one of the most familiar animals on Earth.

So how did wolves, wildcats, and junglefowl become so tangled in human life that we almost forgot they were ever wild?

Bre talks with Professor Greger Larson of the University of Oxford, who studies the origins and evolution of domesticated animals through archaeology, genetics, and ancient DNA.

And the stories we tell about domestication? They might be a lot messier than we think.

Greger shares the rabbit origin story that completely fell apart when his team tried to trace it back to its source, why wolves becoming dogs may have looked more like a relationship than a human takeover, what ancient dog burials can tell us about lives shared with people thousands of years ago, and one possible explanation for the rise of domestic cats involving ancient Egypt, religious pilgrims, and counterfeit cat mummies.

We also get into the surprisingly strange history of chickens, why humans are so drawn to tidy stories about where things came from, and what changes when we stop thinking of ourselves as separate from the rest of nature.

Because maybe domestication isn't really a story about humans conquering the wild.

Maybe it's a story about what happens when species begin living alongside one another—and neither comes out of the relationship quite the same.

In this episode:

Greger Larson is an evolutionary biologist in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford who uses ancient DNA datasets to understand the deep-time relationships between people and animals.

Greger Larson, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and director of the PalaeoBARN (Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network).

Bluesky: @gregerlarson.bsky.social

Coming up next: Did Dogs Change Us, Too? We usually ask how humans changed wolves. Next time, we're turning that question around.

Stay Curious 🌿

@thewildquietpod

Humans were using plants as medicine—and poison—long before anyone knew what an alkaloid was or how the nervous system worked.

So how did we know what plants could do before we understood why they worked?

For this Halloween companion episode, I’m following that question through screaming mandrakes, poisonous nightshades, witches’ flying ointments and foxglove—a plant people were using medicinally long before science could explain what it was doing to the heart.

Along the way, we’ll get into what atropine and scopolamine actually do to the nervous system, why plants make these chemicals in the first place, how people learned about medicinal plants before modern pharmacology, and why the popular story that accused witches were really persecuted herbalists is a whole lot messier than it sounds.

Because sometimes humans know that something works long before we know why.

And somewhere in that gap, we tend to tell stories.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Where did we get monsters?

Dragons. Werewolves. Vampires. The Kraken. A whirlpool that could swallow a ship. Strange lights floating over a swamp.

Humans are very good at making things up—but we didn't necessarily make all of this up.

This week, I’m talking with science writer Matt Kaplan, author of The Science of Monsters, about the real animals, fossils, diseases and natural phenomena hiding underneath some of our oldest monster stories.

We get into ancient Greek monsters showing up on actual maps, the surprisingly gross science behind vampires, what rabies may have had to do with werewolves, whether a giant squid could really sink a ship, and why sometimes a monster was simply a really effective way of saying: don't go over there.

Because the more you dig into these stories, the question gets really interesting:

How much of a monster comes from the thing that's actually out there—and how much do we add to it?

Plus, Finn has a very important Kraken question.

Guest: Matt Kaplan, science writer and author of The Science of Monsters, Science of the Magical, and I Told You So: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Do animals have names for each other—or is naming one more human idea we keep trying to find reflected in the rest of nature?

After giving a backyard downy woodpecker named Needo an entire family life and personal history, Bre begins wondering what other woodpeckers might call him.

This episode follows the evidence from bottlenose dolphin signature whistles and socially learned parrot calls to receiver-specific elephant rumbles and the scientific debate surrounding marmoset “names.” Together, these animals reveal several possible ways of communicating something very close to: you, specifically.

Because “we cannot translate it” is not the same as “nothing is being said.”

This is a companion episode to Why Does a Wild Animal’s Life Feel Different Once We Know Its Name? — with Samantha Miller

Listen and consider: Is a signal only a name if it works the way a human name does?

Follow The Wild Quiet:

Instagram: @thewildquietpod

Substack: https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

Why does a wild animal’s life feel different once we recognize it as an individual?

P-22 was not simply a mountain lion. Grizzly 399 was not simply a bear. Jackie was not simply one Bald Eagle among many.

Once we learn an animal’s name, recognize its face or follow its family over time, information begins attaching itself to a particular life. It survived that winter. It crossed that road. It returned to that nest. It raised those young.

But why do we so often need to recognize one individual before we care about what happens to the rest?

In this episode of The Wild Quiet, Bre talks with Samantha Miller, Senior Carnivore Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Together, they explore how individual animals can become doorways into much larger conservation stories—from P-22 and Southern California’s wildlife crossings to Grizzly 399, Yellowstone’s Mollie’s pack, Colorado’s Copper Creek wolves, and Jackie and Shadow’s Big Bear Valley habitat.

They also examine the risks that come with wildlife celebrity. Familiarity can create empathy and political action, but it can also encourage crowds, expose an animal’s location and tempt humans to turn a wildlife into a character expected to behave according to our story.

• Why Samantha once asked Santa Claus to save mountain lions
• How one recognizable animal can make a population-level issue feel real
• P-22, urban development and wildlife connectivity
• Grizzly 399 and the complicated effects of wildlife celebrity
• The young Copper Creek wolf who survived a winter alone
• Mollie’s pack and the invisible boundary surrounding Yellowstone
• Why names and numbers can influence how humans understand wild animals
• How Jackie and Shadow helped make an entire landscape visible
• The difference between witnessing wildlife and demanding access to it
• Why calling an animal a “problem” can prevent us from examining the human side of a conflict
• Which animal would arrive at a wildlife commission meeting most prepared—and most outraged

Samantha Miller is the Senior Carnivore Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she works on carnivore issues nationwide with a focus on state-level progress.

Her career spans wildlife commission reform, political advocacy and coalition building to advance carnivore policy across the American West. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University.

Center for Biological Diversity:

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/biodiversitycowgirl/

https://www.instagram.com/savingwolvesorg/

https://www.instagram.com/centerforbiodiv/

Listen to Wildlife Wire:

https://wildlifewire.podbean.com/

Saving America’s Wolves:

https://savingwolves.org/

Wolf Planning:

https://www.wolfplanning.org/

Read the episode article:

Why Does a Wild Animal’s Life Feel Different Once We Know Its Name?

Watch Shadow and Kaydee on the official Big Bear Bald Eagle livestream:

https://friendsofbigbearvalley.org/livestream/

Companion episode: Do Animals Have Names for Each Other?

Available Friday, October 23.

Is there one particular wild animal you have followed over time? Did learning its story change how you thought about the rest of its species—or the place it lived?

Find The Wild Quiet on Instagram at @thewildquietpod.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

This is The Wild Quiet. Until next time, stay curious.

A caterpillar and a butterfly are the same animal—but they barely seem to have anything in common.

One crawls around chewing leaves. The other flies, drinks nectar through a proboscis and may travel thousands of miles.

In this solo episode of The Wild Quiet, Bre goes inside the chrysalis to explore what really happens during metamorphosis, why a caterpillar does not completely dissolve into “insect soup,” and whether anything it learns can survive the transformation.

Along the way, we meet Catty Kathy, a monarch caterpillar living in Bre’s milkweed patch, and tobacco hornworms that were trained to associate an odor with danger—and still remembered that connection after becoming moths.

Because the butterfly is not a reward waiting at the end of a caterpillar. It is the caterpillar’s life continuing.

In this episode:

• Whether a caterpillar and butterfly are truly the same animal
• The difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon
• What really happens inside a monarch chrysalis
• Why a caterpillar does not completely dissolve into soup
• Imaginal discs and the adult structures already developing inside a larva
• How an insect’s nervous system changes during metamorphosis
• The experiment testing whether moths remember something learned as caterpillars
• The difference between learned associations and autobiographical memory
• Why we value the beautiful butterfly differently from the hungry caterpillar
• How monarchs navigate toward a destination they have never visited

This episode accompanies Bre’s conversation with cartoonist and educator Peter Kuper: Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?

RESOURCES

Retention of Memory Through Metamorphosis:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001736

Monarch Growth and Development — Monarch Joint Venture:

https://monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/monarch-life-cycle

Monarch Biology FAQ — Monarch Joint Venture:

https://monarchjointventure.org/faq

Monarch Migration — Monarch Joint Venture:

https://monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/monarch-migration

Explore Peter Kuper’s work:

https://www.peterkuper.com/

Monarch’s Journey — American Museum of Natural History:

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/monarchs-journey

Follow The Wild Quiet on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thewildquietpod/

Read the episode companion:

Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?

This is The Wild Quiet—curious conversations about nature, and our place within it.

What would humans look like inside a museum curated by insects?

Cartoonist and educator Peter Kuper uses art, storytelling and humor to change who appears to be observing whom. A 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Peter has written and illustrated SPY vs. SPY for MAD magazine since 1997, co-founded World War 3 Illustrated and created more than two dozen books, including Insectopolis: A Natural History, Ruins and Wish We Weren’t Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse.

In this episode, we explore whether imagining another creature’s experience can change how we value its life—and what art can make visible that information alone sometimes cannot.

We get into:

The cicadas that captured Peter’s attention as a child

How comics and wordless images communicate across age and language

What a monarch sees when it crosses highways, power plants and human borders

Why humor can help us stay present with frightening environmental issues

The New York City cockroach that revealed how much Peter’s perspective had changed

The overlooked people who helped build our knowledge of insects

Why dung beetles are sacred, ecologically essential and extremely funny

What insects might place inside a museum exhibit about humans

Peter’s exhibition, Monarch’s Journey, opens October 16, 2026, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Explore Peter’s work:

https://www.peterkuper.com/

Follow Peter on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kuperart/

Learn about Monarch’s Journey:

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/monarchs-journey

Episode Companion:

Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?

What animal have you already placed into a category—and what might change if you looked at it a little longer?

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Instagram: @thewildquietpod

Substack: The Wild Quiet Co.

A caterpillar and a butterfly are the same animal. But after everything that happens inside a chrysalis, could anything the caterpillar learned still be there?

Bre starts with a missing monarch caterpillar named Catty Kathy, then follows the question through metamorphosis and a rather rude experiment with moths. The result is fascinating—but it doesn’t mean we know what a butterfly remembers of its former life.

This is a companion to Bre’s conversation with cartoonist Peter Kuper about insects, art, and noticing lives we might otherwise miss.

What do you find yourself paying attention to: the caterpillar, the butterfly, or both?

Research: the moth memory study and Monarch Joint Venture’s life cycle guide.

Years ago, hundreds of moths appeared inside a tiny cabin in the Black Hills. They covered the walls, flew around the beds and held what appeared to be the annual meeting of every moth in South Dakota directly above a terrified three-year-old. That kid...was my stepdaughter.

It was chaos—but it also raises a question most of us have never thought very hard about:

Why does a moth fly toward a light?

The answer is stranger—and much less embarrassing for the moth—than we’ve been led to believe.

In this companion episode to my conversation with author Leigh Ann Henion, we explore research suggesting that moths and other flying insects may not be deliberately steering toward artificial light. They may be trying to keep the brightest part of the world above their backs—and becoming trapped when humans put the sky in the wrong place.

We’ll also meet moths away from the porch light: moving pollen through the dark, feeding young birds and using some spectacular defenses against hunting bats.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The night hundreds of moths filled a cabin in the Black Hills
• Why moths may not actually be choosing to fly toward artificial light
• How flying insects use light to determine which direction is up
• What happens when humans mount a miniature sun beside the garage
• The microscopic scales covering moth wings
• The overlooked work moths do as nighttime pollinators
• Why moth caterpillars are important food for young birds
• The evolutionary argument between bats and moths
• How a luna moth’s tails can misdirect a bat’s attack
• The effects artificial light can have on moths and their caterpillars
• Simple ways to return some darkness to the night

KEEP EXPLORING

Listen to my conversation with Leigh Ann Henion:

What Happens After Dark? - W/ Leigh Ann Henion

Explore the full episode companion—with photographs, resources and something to try after dark:

What Happens After Dark

Why flying insects gather around artificial light:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44785-3

Mothing 101 from National Moth Week:

https://nationalmothweek.org/mothing-101/

Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting:

https://darksky.org/resources/guides-and-how-tos/lighting-principles/

YOUR TURN

The next time you see a moth circling a porch light, turn it off for a while if you can. Give its eyes a chance to find the real sky.

What changes when you let the night actually be dark?

Follow The Wild Quiet Co.

Instagram: @thewildquietpod

Substack: https://thewildquietco.substack.com

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Once the sun goes down, even a familiar backyard can feel like an entirely different place.

We often talk about darkness as if it is empty—or as if danger automatically arrives when the lights go out. But darkness is not simply the daytime world with the lights turned off. It is alive with its own flowers, sounds, relationships and living light.

In this episode, Bre talks with author Leigh Ann Henion about her book Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark.

After traveling around the world in search of natural wonders, Leigh Ann turned her attention toward the nighttime world close to her home in southern Appalachia. Together, we explore why darkness makes so many of us uneasy, what our artificial lights may look like from the other side and how much of our own familiar landscapes we have never truly met.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why darkness can make familiar places feel frightening or unknown
• Glowworms, moon gardens and the living lights of southern Appalachia
• What changes when we allow our eyes to adjust to the dark
• Why nighttime is not simply a quieter version of daytime
• How artificial light changes life for nocturnal plants and animals
• What our homes and cities may look like from another creature’s perspective
• The difference between seeking wonder far away and noticing it close to home
• How stepping outside after sunset can reshape our relationship with darkness

ABOUT LEIGH ANN HENION

Leigh Ann Henion is the author of Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark and the New York Times bestseller Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World. Her work explores wonder, place and the extraordinary lives unfolding within the natural world.

LEARN MORE

Leigh Ann Henion:

https://leighannhenion.com/

Explore Night Magic:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/leigh-ann-henion/night-magic/9781643753362/

Episode companion:

Moths, Moon Gardens, Glowworms— What Appears After Dark?

YOUR TURN

Step outside after dark and give your eyes time to adjust. What appears when you stop treating darkness as something to get through—and actually go out to meet it?

Tell me what you notice. You do not need to know its name. Noticing comes first.

FOLLOW THE WILD QUIET CO.

Instagram: @thewildquietpod

Substack: https://thewildquietco.substack.com

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.