The Natural Curiosity Project

This is an audio essay, presented in three parts, about the need to balance the forces of industry and the forces of conservation. We need both, so what I'm about to say, I think, is important. Let me begin by telling you what this audio essay is not about. It is not another tiresome, ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling' story of environmental doom. It is not another finger wagging, how-dare-we-mistreat-the-planet-this-way paean of conservation woe. It is not yet another in a long line of left-wing assaults on the energy sector, nor is it an attack on the right-wing players who want to drill, baby, drill. We are living in a time when society seems to believe that our future MUST be binary. “We can reduce our dependency on oil, or we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change. In fact, “we can reduce our dependency on oil, and we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change.” Here's how.

This is an audio essay, presented in three parts, about the need to balance the forces of industry and the forces of conservation. We need both, so what I'm about to say, I think, is important. Let me begin by telling you what this audio essay is not about. It is not another tiresome, ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling' story of environmental doom. It is not another finger wagging, how-dare-we-mistreat-the-planet-this-way paean of conservation woe. It is not yet another in a long line of left-wing assaults on the energy sector, nor is it an attack on the right-wing players who want to drill, baby, drill. We are living in a time when society seems to believe that our future MUST be binary. “We can reduce our dependency on oil, or we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change. In fact, “we can reduce our dependency on oil, and we can be global leaders in conservation and climate change.” Here's how.

Older media just never seem to go away...as you're about to find out.

Like every part of our planetary geography, oceans have identifiable regions. Beginning at the beach and gradually dropping to about 650 feet is the continental shelf. This shallow region of the ocean is called the sunlit or Epiplagic zone. From sunlight we move into the beginnings of oceanic darkness: we leave the continental shelf and step onto the much steeper continental slope where we enter the twilight or Mesopelagic zone, which descends to about 4,000 feet—the better part of a mile. Here, light from the surface disappears. We continue in darkness down the continental slope into the midnight or Bathypelagic zone, all the way to 13,000 feet—a crushing depth of nearly two miles. But we're nowhere near the bottom yet. At 13,000 feet, the slope begins to level as it becomes the continental rise on its way to the sea floor, at about 20,000 feet. This is the Abyss, or the Abyssopelagic zone, the dwelling place of creatures that are the stuff of nightmares. Even their names conjure darkness: gulper eels. Angler fish. Vampire squid. Coffinfish. But this is still not the deepest part of the ocean. That honor goes to the Hadal zone, named after Hades, the underworld. These are the ocean's deep trenches, and they descend to unimaginable depths of nearly 37,000 feet. Mount Everest could be dropped into these canyons and its peak would lie under deep water. In this program, we look at these deep regions, at the organisms that lives there, and at the sounds of the deep.

Because I do so much work in the world of sound, I'm always looking for resources that will inspire and challenge me. One of them is earth.fm, an online resource for people who appreciate the sounds of the natural world. Sound recordists from all over the world—and I mean ALL over the world—contribute tracks to earth.fm to be shared with anyone who wants to listen. They have a great Web site, which is just earth-dot-fm, and a terrific app, available in your favorite app store. In the process of getting to know them I got to know Melissa Pons, their primary content curator. Melissa is enormously talented: beyond earth.fm, her award-winning work as a sound designer and content creator has been featured on the BBC and NPR, among others. But as I got to know Melissa's work, I began to think of her as much more than a skilled recordist: I also saw her as a thoughtful and deliberate listener. Her field recording albums cover the acoustic waterfront, and her contributions to earth.fm are as varied as they are beautiful. So, I asked Melissa, who is based in Portugal, to join me for a conversation about field recording, sound design, and the importance of going outside, being quiet, and listening to the voice of the natural world. In the program, you get to meet Melissa Pons.

Weird, isn't it, that wind is completely silent--silent, that is, until it hits something. Then, it bursts out in myriad voices.

In this episode we travel from central Turkey, the region known as Anatolia, to northern Norway, on the island of Svalbard, to visit two extraordinary subterranean places.

IT's hard to believe that I have created 300 episodes of the Natural Curiosity Project. Thank you so much--SO much--for staying with me on the adventure. In this episode, Pete Mulvihill recalls some of his favorite episodes--and asks me for mine. The episodes mentioned in the program are 84 (Bud and the tumbleweeds); 77 (How to Read Movie Credits with Bob Verlaque); 181 (Rob Prince and Dark Winter Nights); 206 (Dewitt Jones); 15 (How Trees Work); 16 (Forest Bathing); and 97, 99 and 109 (Letter-writing). Enjoy!

Acronyms are "words" that are abbreviations. But they differ from abbreviations because they can be pronounced like a word. Many of these acronyms, like the 'ZIP' in 'Zip Code,' aren't even known as acronyms anymore. In this episode, my friend Pete Mulvihill helps me decode some of the most common acronyms in modern lexicon.

Author John Stilgoe exhorts us to go outside, take a walk or a bike ride, and tune in to the world before us that we miss when we whiz by in a car. I implore you to do the same thing--but instead of paying attention to what you see, pay attention to what you hear.

I was listening to music the other day while driving to and from the dump, and one of my favorites came on: Mr. Bojangles, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Like most of the songs that rise to the top of my favorites list, Mr. Bojangles has the best qualities of storytelling. But as I listened, I started thinking, something that always gets me in trouble. And, it did. I wanted to know: Who was Mr. Bojangles? Was he real? Well, it turns out that yeah, he was, but there's a lot more to the story than a single person.

Some additional thoughts on the craft of writing.

Episode 295-The Most Complicated Machine Ever Built by Dr. Steven Shepard

I spent a great deal of my life in Monterey, California, most of it under the water while teaching SCUBA diving. I recently discovered a Monterey story that held me spellbound. It begins like this: A marine biologist, a mythologist, and a novelist walk into a bar...

An homage to Jane Goodall and others like her. This is a repost from 2021.

This essay contains an important story for the ages. Given current events, and the absolute truth that history does repeat, the lesson is plain, and chilling. 1492 and the years leading up to it in Medieval Spain, were times that should not be repeated. And yet…

Sometimes, curiosity, awe and wonder are the only tools we have. But when it comes to the majesty and magnitude of the night sky, of all the things about it we can't possibly comprehend, they're actually the best tools we can have. In this episode we talk about the magic and wonder that happens late at night, when it'd just you, the sky, and pure awe.

I recently had a conversation about technology's impact on research today. It's an argument I could make myself—that technology has resulted in access to more data and information. For example, before the invention of moveable type and the printing press, the only books that were available were chained to reading tables in Europe's great cathedrals—they were that rare and that valuable. BUT: Does technology give me access to BETTER data and information? I believe the answer to that is no, for a very specific reason: It leaves out the all-important human element in the knowledge molecule, the element that makes sense of the data and then converts it to information. Have a listen.

It's human nature for each generation to criticize the generation that preceded it, often using them as a convenient scapegoat for all that's wrong in the world. The current large target is my own generation, the Baby Boomers. I recently overheard a group of young people—mid-20s—complaining at length about their belief that the Boomers constitute a waste of flesh who never contributed much to society. Respectfully, I beg to differ; this is my response, along with a plea to ALL generations to think twice about that conclusion.

Musings on science, philosophy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Short and Sweet: A challenge to our government and our politicians--all of them--to do their jobs. In good conscience, I can't NOT post this audio essay.

I read something the other day that had a reference in it to a new book that had just come out. The book's called, “Sing Like Fish,” and it's written by author and science writer Amorina Kingdon. Needless to say, I immediately ordered the book, and I have to tell you, I burned through it in three days. The subtitle is, “How Sound Rules Life Underwater,” which you can imagine, as a wildlife sound recordist, really caught my attention. Actually, a few things in the book caught my attention, including this quote: “For all the wonders and worries of this subject, the truth is that noise does not match the deep threat posed to the oceans by climate change. And yet, neither issue is monolithic or exists in a vacuum. Warming or acidifying waters will conduct sound differently: Sound's effect on ecosystems like reefs or Arctic food webs will ricochet into animals' responses to climate change. Yet I believe that it is never a waste to examine the world though a new lens, through a new sense.” That's powerful writing. So, as I tend to do, I went looking for the author, and I found her north of the border in British Columbia. Amorina and I had a nice chat, discovered that we have a lot of common interests, including, of all things, the acoustic work done by Bell Laboratories, and she agreed to be on the program. Our conversation wandered all over the landscape—I recorded more than three hours of tape—but I edited it down to the most important points. Here's Amorina.

On a warm fall day in eastern Nebraska, I met up with wildlife biologist Bethany Ostrom of the Crane Trust. As we talked, we took a long walk along the banks of the Platte River, watching as small grasshoppers by the hundreds boiled out from under our feet like popcorn, listening to meadowlarks and bobolinks calling from the scrubby brush along the river. The Crane Trust monitors the health and welfare of North America's population of both migratory sandhill cranes, which number in the hundreds of thousands, as well as the highly endangered whooping cranes, which number less than a thousand in the entire migratory population. The health of the crane population is a bellwether for other species, and underlines the importance of the work done by Bethany and her colleagues.

Imagine a place right here on Earth—not on Mercury or Venus—where it's not particularly unusual for the summer temperature to soar to 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 degrees C). Now imagine a 20-meter or 60-foot-tall building in that hellish place where ice can be safely stored, completely frozen, for the entire summer. Oh—I should also add that the building has no electricity and is made out of mud, goat hair, ash, and egg whites. These buildings exist, and they're called Yakhchals. They're found in the Middle East, mostly in Iran, in places where it gets very cold in the winter, when ice can be made, and very hot in the summer. They're a type of evaporative cooler—in the dry parts of the American south, a similar technology is called a swamp cooler—and these Yakhchals been in continuous use since at least the fourth-century BCE.

Every once in a while, an idea hits me that causes one of those stop-the-presses moments, usually caused by some triggering event—in this case, the senseless, ongoing attacks on and defunding of scientific research by a group of decision-makers who aren't sure if there's an ‘I' in the word ‘science.' They make me think of a line from the movie Armageddon, in which the Air Force general says to Billy Bob Thornton, one of the NASA executives, “You're asking me to put the future of the planet into the hands of a group of people that I wouldn't trust with a potato gun.” The world reveres art, especially music and the artists who create it. The same is true of sports figures. Look at the way we hold up rock musicians and professional athletes as if they were celestial deities, sitting beside Zeus and Apollo and the rest of the pantheon. But when's the last time we saw such reverence for science and the scientists who strive to understand the ways of the universe? In fact, I know you can name musicians and sports figures. But how many scientists can you name, once you get past Einstein, and maybe Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson? It's time to change that, don't you think?

I just got a package in the mail, which contains a signed copy of a brand-new book that just came out from science fiction author Rob Dircks, called “Sunnyside,” along with a cloth patch that I can sew onto a shirt or a baseball cap. The patch says, “HISTORY REPAIR TECHNICIAN: CORRECT THE PAST, PROTECT THE FUTURE.” I won't give it away, but it's related to Sunnyside. As you've probably already figured out, Rob is my guest my guest in this episode. I'm already halfway through the eBook version of Sunnyside, which came out before the physical book did, but Rob was kind enough to send me a physical copy as well, and that's what just got here. Man, I love this patch. In this episode, Rob and I are going to talk about writing with a focus on science fiction, but we're also going to talk about curiosity, creativity, and the challenge of balancing work and the creative pursuits that feed our souls. But there's more to Rob Dircks that just being a science fiction author and Podcaster. Yes, he's written a lot of material, and talk about diverse! His books include “You're Going to Mars!”, a trilogy called “Where the Hell is Tesla,” and “The Wrong Unit.” And those are just his science fiction titles. He's also the author of “Alphabert: An A-B-C Bedtime Adventure, and “Unleash the Sloth: 75 Ways to Reach Your Maximum Potential by Doing Less” (And I DARE you to hear that title and NOT check it out, along with Rob's other books).

Curiosity can lead to some weird and wacky places—how about Sopchoppy, Florida, home of the American Worm Gruntin' Festival? But there's more to this story than that. Have a listen.

HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED that every child, by the time they're 13 or so, should have a good grounding in three specific skills. They should be able to read well; they should have a decent understanding of their individual rights, especially freedom of speech and the sanctity of a free press; and they should understand the scientific method and how it works. Science is real, and it is as accurate as anything can possibly be BECAUSE it is designed to be ferociously self-critical. What if our political system worked the same way? Wow—what an amazing thing THAT would be! Let me say that another way: what if we were to unleash the scientific method on POLITICAL science? What would THAT look like! In this episode, I take a look at that, with the help of none other than Carl Sagan. Have a listen.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates underwater microphone arrays throughout the world's oceans, going them th ability to listen to goings-on below the surface. Many sounds capture by those hydrophones they recognize--but some, they don't. In this episode I'll share some of these mysterious sounds with you. What do YOU think they are?

To combat disease, we have the opportunity to go to the doctor and get a vaccine, which helps us create antibodies to resist disease. But how do we inoculate ourselves against a very different and insidious attacker--bias and disinformation? I'll tell you.

Anyone who has listened to more than two episodes of this program knows that I'm about as weird and geeky as they come. I'm a sucker for science and nature, and in spite of the fact that as a kid I would have rather looked for turtles and snakes in the vacant lots around our town than play sports, a fact that led to more than a few schoolyard brawls, my passion and curiosity have never left me—and hopefully, never will. One of the best things I ever built, one of the most magical, was something called a crystal radio. And listen: if you have a young person in your life, pay attention—this is a great project to do together. The very best resource I've found online about crystal radios is maintained by Professor David Goldenberg at the University of Utah. You can find his page at https://goldenberg.biology.utah.edu/fun.shtml. This episode's cover image is from my good friend, Kenn Sato.

One of the most effective yet most overlooked and under appreciated techniques for assessing the biodiversity of an environment is sound--the voice of the place. In this episode, I describe why sound is such a powerful and accurate indicator of bioacoustics health.

Jared Blake is one of the most important human voices in the natural world today. His unceasing commitment to exhort us all to slow down and listen to the voices of the natural world, to work hard to understand what we're being told, is a cause and effort to be celebrated. in this episode, Jared tells us about his months-long recording expedition to the American Southwest, and about the extraordinary, often eerie, voices he heard while in the wild.

Here's a childhood question for you. And I should qualify that—for the most part I'm talking to people who were kids during the 60s, and who shared the books they read with their own children. Here's the question: What do Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, Kenneth Robeson, Laura Lee Hope, and Victor Appleton have in common? Hopefully, you remember some of those names. The answer is that they're all well-known authors to anyone who read The Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, Doc Savage, the Campfire Girls, The Happy Hollisters, and a few others. The other thing they have in common? None of them exist, and they never did. They're all pseudonyms. Here's why.

Were you aware that deep in the Amazon Jungle of Brazil there lies an abandoned American town, built in the 1920s by none other than Henry Ford? Check it out.

Remember the movie, “Tombstone”? There's a scene where Val Kilmer, who plays Doc Holliday, confronts the outlaw, Johnny Ringo. Doc says, “I'm your huckleberry,” which causes Johnny Ringo to go pale as a ghost, because he knows that people don't generally walk away from a gunfight with Doc Holliday. But here's the thing: that's not what he said. The other evening, Sabine told me what he actually said, and that got me thinking about words—you know how I am with stuff related to language—and the next thing I knew I had assembled a list of words that I had never heard in my life, but that now I can't wait to find a reason to use. Here you go.

A few months ago, I did an interview on the program with Sarah and Derek Solomon, who are safari guides in southern Africa. If you listened to that episode, you may recall that their work is pretty unique. First, in addition to doing traditional photo and wildlife viewing safaris, they also do sound safaris, usually at night. Their safari guests can't see the animals, but they can hear them, thanks to special microphones mounted on the front of the safari vehicle and headphones at each seat. Then, they met a young South African filmmaker who was producing a documentary about a remarkable young South African girl, blind since birth, and her experiences of seeing the world through sound. Brett, the filmmaker, needed a safari guide to help this young girl “see” African wildlife in her own way—with her ears, rather than with her eyes. Sarah and Derek were perfect for the job. The film, “Call of the Wild,” has been a big hit at film festivals ever since its release. But equally important is the impact that the experience has had on Sarah and Derek. After working with Brett, and the young girl, Annika, A thought struck them: Why not offer sound safaris for people who can't see? Well, after a great deal of effort and planning, their idea has become a reality. I reached out, and asked them to give me an update on how things are going.

As most of you know, I released a new novel reently called Russet. It's my fourth book of fiction; all my prior titles have been about technology, history, photography, writing, sound recording, biography, and a few other genres. The book is doing well; it's my first science fiction book, and I had a blast writing it. For the last six weeks or so, pretty much since Russet hit the shelves, I've been getting an unusual number of emails and messages from people, asking me how to write a book. Actually, they're asking more than that. Many feel like they have a book inside themselves begging to be written, and want to know how to get it from mind to paper. Or, they have an idea that they think would make a good book, but don't know how to bridge the gap between their idea and a finished work. And others want to know how I manage to jump between genres in my writing. It's true—I write about a lot of different things. Well, I've thought about these questions, because they intrigue me, too, and I've assembled some thoughts about them.

I had the opportunity today to sit down with someone who is truly an expert in navigating the turbulent waters of global geopolitics. He's an expert in one particularly troublesome region, a place that most of us are quite familiar with. Not only does he describe the kinds of threats that can be encountered there, but he also explains scenarios and techniques for dealing with them. This is a great episode--enjoy.

Jerry Berrier is a birder, a wildlife sound recordist, and an outspoken advocate for the natural world. And, he's been blind since birth. In this episode he tells his remarkable story, and explains how his blindness, while clearly not an advantage in the modern world, does not slow him down.

I saw a story headline last week that inspired this episode. It told me that Elwood Edwards had died at 74. Don't know who he is? He received $200 to record all the original AOL sounds and inspired at least one really great movie. That got me thinking about other sounds from the more-or-less recent past, so I dove into my sound archives and found a bunch of them. And what I didn't have, Wikipedia did, so hats off to them for being such an important archive in so many different ways. By the way, if you use Wikipedia, even once a month, please send them the five bucks they ask for each year. We're talking about the cost of a cup of coffee here, folks—they deserve it. So—sounds. I've collected a bunch of them here for your nostalgic listening pleasure. I'll tell you what they are at the end of the program, but for now, just have a listen. These are not in chronological order, by design; they're just sounds of the technological past.

A couple of months ago I was wandering around a small bookstore here in Vermont, where I ran across a book with the magnetic title, “Abandoned Vermont and New Hampshire,” by one Marie Desrosiers. I picked it up and started reading; the next day, I finished it. The book was so compelling that I found Marie online and sent her a message. A few days later we had a chat about her work, and she agreed to do an interview about the books she writes and the photographs of she makes of abandoned places—a field she calls the study of abandonment. Please enjoy.

Sabine and I just came back from a big, looping three-week road trip that took us as far west as the sand hills of Nebraska, where I wanted to record the sounds of the prairie in the early fall. But we also spent a lot of our time trying to see the country differently than we ever have. Because we've both lived in more than one country, we live by Mark Twain's quote, that “travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrowmindedness.” We're in a pretty weird political time right now, so we wanted to get a better understanding of just what this country, this place, is. I'm not sure if we actually managed to do that—I don't that anyone can—but we definitely came home more enlightened than we were when we left.

According to many sources, Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon in July 1969, drew the attention of the entire world. But subsequent missions to the Moon and other ambitions efforts by NASA and its partner agencies drew far less attention. How quickly the sense of awe and wonder wanes. We take computers for granted; our mobile phones are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything that got Apollo to the Moon—and trust me on this, the Apollo on-board computers were wondrous devices for the time, automatically controlling pitch and yaw and roll and the firing of thrusters and retrorockets at precise times. Flying around the world has become mundane, more a chore than an incredible opportunity. We even have electric cars on the road. That's a different scale of wonder, but you know what I mean. People pay no attention to space launches, yet they're impressed by cars that run on batteries and can go 250 miles without recharging. But here's the thing. It ain't all that impressive. Sorry, Elon. Electric cars are a good idea, and they're good for the environment—mostly—but they're not a new idea. In fact, the first truly electric vehicle—a car—was built in 1965. And it wasn't designed for smooth, modern highways, with conveniently spaced charging stations along the way. No, it was designed to be driven on the Moon. And it did. In fact, three of them made the trip. Let me tell you the story, with a little help from NASA.

The best thing about doing this Podcast is that it forces me to constantly be on the lookout for topics and the people associated with them that might lead to interesting episodes. So, when I learned during a meeting of the Williston Historical Society that South Ridge, the neighborhood where I live in Vermont, yielded archaeological artifacts during the planning, site preparation, and excavation of the neighborhood, I got curious, and went in search of the archaeologists who I assumed were called in to ensure that sacred or culturally significant sites weren't being disturbed. And that's how I found Douglas Frink. Douglas is an archaeologist, but more than that, as you'll hear, he's a soil scientist. But he's even more than that. He's sort of a soil whisperer, because he believes that if we pay attention to the soil, we pay attention to the history.

Occasionally, in the course of developing topics and themes for this program, I run across a genuine treasure. So, full disclosure—as if you need me to tell you this—I'm a pretty serious, card-carrying geek of the highest order. I like science, I tend to geek out on it, and I'm always looking for new sources of knowledge about topics that most people don't care much about. So, you can imagine my delight when I ran across Brian Malow. Brian is equal parts science enthusiast, educator, speaker, comedian, and a few other things, as you're about to hear. I heard him speak at a conference years ago in Berkeley, and recently, I asked him if he'd join me on the program sometime. He said yes, so here's our conversation. By the way, you can learn more about Brian's work and booking him for your event (an excellent idea!) at https://sciencecomedian.com.

What is it about that sound of a foghorn, or a bell buoy, or a whistle or gong buoy? For some people, like Dianne Ballon, these sounds magical, and mystical, hearkening to a world that most of us don't know. Dianne is a Maine-based artist who shares a passion for the sea—and most specifically, a passion for the devices whose voices warn fog-cloaked vessels about the presence of hazards. Not just foghorns, but also bell, whistle, and gong buoys. I came across Dianne Ballon while I was in the middle of one of my down-the-rabbit-hole projects, researching the history of lighthouses and foghorns. I was looking for foghorn sounds to augment my own recordings, and the Maine Maritime Museum's Web site popped up, because Dianne has an ongoing exhibit there about the sounds of the Maine coast. I reached out to her, and Dianne agreed to chat with me. You can learn more about Dianne's work at https://www.dianneballonsound.com.

The sun was barely above the horizon by the time I reached the meadow during my morning walk. The bright, flat light hit the tall grasses and wildflowers from the side, creating a silhouette effect that made them glow. But that wasn't all: the horizontal light also backlit the dozens of orb weaver webs that stretched between the tall plant stems, bejeweled by the droplets of dew that had condensed on them as tiny, transparent, concentric strings of pearls. I was entranced by these gorgeous structures. So—rabbit hole time. How do spiders build those things? How do they know to create THAT shape? Are the webs strictly structural and for capturing prey? In this episode, we walk briefly through their remarkable physiology—and how scientists are looking intensely at spider silk for a range of applications.

My newest novel, "Russet," has just been released. It's a 600-page saga about mounting a mission to Mars, an unimaginably complex undertaking. Sending astronauts to the Moon took four days; Mars is a one-way journey of at least five months. How could we possibly build a ship large enough and safe enough to accommodate their needs, for a round-trip journey of at least 18 months? In my story, NASA has the answer—an extraordinary plan to put 30 people on the Red Planet—unless those who oppose the mission can destroy the ship first.

The year was 1977. The top selling cars were the Ford LTD and the Chevy Impala. The top movies were Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever. Gas was 65 cents a gallon. Stephen King published The Shining, and Farrah Fawcett published the poster. Meanwhile, over at NASA, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were carried aloft for a five-year mission. Yet here we are, 47 years later, and they're still going strong. Voyager I is 15.2 billion miles from Earth; Voyager II is 12.7 billion miles away, and both are traveling at about 35,000 miles-per-hour. And as amazing as all that is, that's not what I want to talk with you about in this program. I want to talk with you about the payload they both carry—specifically, the golden record.

I read a lot. It fuels my writing, gives me a better view of the world, and is a great way to travel through time and space. Every once in a while, I run across a book that really hits me as a must-read. Episode two was about Sam Kean's book, The Disappearing Spoon; Episode eleven was about The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes; and Episode 255 was about William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways. In this program, I'm going to talk about Lynda Rutledge's novel, West with Giraffes, which I finished last night. Sabine recommended this one to me; as I closed the back cover, I realized that there were tears on my face. This is one great book. But there's more to the story of this episode. The book made me think about current events in the context of past events and made me realize that we're far better off now than we were in 1938—or any year hence. Those who feel otherwise and who look to the past to find “the good old days” won't find them, because they don't exist: “The Good Old Days” is a dangerous and misleading myth. Better days only lie ahead, in our collective future, and it is our job to make them real. Please have a listen—this is an important message. Note: Image copyright San Diego Zoo Global.