Audiobook Mixtape 3: Gift Ideas from the Ologists’ Brains

of bullshit, so maybe get a loved one. The magic of knowledge, perhaps about how to build a bathouse, or indigenous thoughts on animal crossings if you have ADHD, the flies that make your birthday cake even better, strapping machines to your brain, the dark secrets that America is built on, and how to cultivate hope for the future. But before we crack the spine of these impressive works of nonfiction,

just a quick caution for Apple podcast users. So I just foind out that the new iOS seventeen update unsubscribes people if they haven't listened to an episode in more than two weeks, So please make sure that you hit the follow button next to ologies or else you're going to miss on some real quality stuff that we got coming around, So tell your friends. Also, if you'd like to become a patron, sign up for as little as a buck a month at patreon dot com slash ologies,

you can submit questions for ologists. We also have discussion threads every week that I chime in on. You can also support the show with ologies merch at Ologiesmarch dot com, or by leaving us a review such as this new wet winged one from Liz Fan sixty seven, who wrote dlight Ology. I present as a grumpy, unwashed, fifty six year old sis, straight white male, but this show brings out my inner rainbow butterfly and I flit about giggling the whole time I listen. So informative, is so funny,

absolutely adorable. Liz Fan sixty seven, You've never looked better. Thank you very much for that and everyone who left reviews. And again, if you listen on Apple, make sure that you stay subscribed, check that button. It really matters a lot.

class flo to an island. Get a gander at the writing of our Invisible Photology guest doctor Greggebor, who wrote the twenty twenty three book Invisibility, The History and Science of How Not To Be Seen, So he chose this nippet for me to read. Okay. The announcement in the year two thousand of a perfect lens made of artificial materials not found in nature, now called mena materials could be said to mark an entirely new era in optical physics.

For the entire history of natural inquiry, scientists and natural philosophers had been asking what is light and what can light do? With the introduction of meta materials, researchers were now asking how can we make light do whatever we wanted to do. Many of the rules that optical scientists had labored under for years now turned out to be more like guidelines. This naturally led many researchers to wonder

what else can we do with such materials. One answer, as we now see, was design a cloak of invisibility. So that was from doctor Greg Goebor's Invisibility The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen, and unlike its topic, you can see and buy this book. I'll do that now if only a moose could lope into a bass Pro shop and buy an invisibility cloak. Although, honestly, when it comes to cars and collisions, some wildlife does not need invisibility tech because we're watching tiktoks as we drive.

So we had a recent episode on Roadkill with author Ben Goldfarb, who wrote Eager, which is your favorite book about the beaver, and his new one is called Crossings. How roade ecology is shaping the future of our planet.

Yukon Conservation Initiative. The goal of Yellowstone to Yukon, or Why to Why is boggling Its advocates envision and network of connected habitats that would permit animals to wander unhindered along the spine of the Rockies, a region that spans

five American states and four Canadian provinces and territories. Such a corridor would preserve migration routes for elk and caribou, permit far ranging creatures such as wolves to mingle and mate, and help sensitive animals like woolverraines flee northward as climate change nips at their heels. The initiative's emblem is the grizzly, whose expansive requirements make it a useful proxy for other forms of life. An ecosystem that can support bearers is

probably healthy enough for everyone else. To the uninitiated, it sounded far fetched. Soon after Yellowstone to Yukon's inception, the West Wing peried it as the Wolve's only roadway, the vanity project of humorless tree huggers who get left out of the White House. But the show's writers, like most of Wide o Wi's critics, misunderstood the concept. Why do I wasn't a discreete pathway. It was a continental jigsaw riddled with missing pieces, most of them at the fragile

margins where wild lands and settlements collided. The mission of Wide to Wye and its many partners was to plug those holes to help bearers and other animals safely navigate the rockies without running a foul of humans. In British Columbia, I toured protected grain fields that grizzlies used to commute between mountain ranges at night. In Montana, I sniffed offal in an electric fenced paddock where ranchers were composting their dead cows rather than permitting them to fester in bare,

enticing boneyards. Few travelers human or ursine can resist fast food, Yet Wideawi's deepest cuts remained mostly unhealed. The region was riven by enough numbered roads to Fillisidoku puzzle I ninety and Highway three and Highway twenty, Routes ninety five and forty and twelve and two twelve spiderwebbed otherwise wild lands. I drove highways that ended lives. I lost track of how many elk littered the shoulder on Crow's Nest Pass,

and others that cleaved grizzly populations into lonely clusters. Roads I began to realize were not merely a symptom of civilization, but a distinct disease.

to the Confederated Salish and Kutene tribes. When in the nineteen nineties, state and federal agencies sought to expand US ninety three from two lanes to four, tribal officials demanded the chance to provide input on the reconstruction. A wider, faster road might be safer for drivers, but it would also slaughter more deer, elk, bears, and other animals. Foundational to the tribe's culture, the road is a visitor. The tribes insisted that should respond to and be respectful of

the land and the spirit of place. The Salish and Koutene flexed their legal and moral muscles, and when US ninety three was finally reconstructed, engineers included around forty wildlife crossings, a network of underpasses, tunnels, and culverts that allowed animals to slink beneath the highway unimpeded. Roadside fencing kept creatures off the highway and guided them toward the passages. The project's flagship structure was an elegant bridge designed principally for

that avatar of wildness. The grizzly bear. In aerial photos. The overpass looked at once futuristic and anachronistic, a green parabola that vaulted over the highway with Middle Earthish grace. If roads were a disease, wildlife crossings seemed like a treatment. So our darling, dashing and vulnerable critters need you to maybe slow down, especially during this time of year when

collisions with wildlife are most common. So be especially vigilant at night because you don't want animals to have a funeral because of you, or your relatives to have your funeral. Not to get too dark, but yes, you can see the road Ecology episode for more. So let's move along to two kid friendly books for the wee ones on

your list. So the first comes to you from Georgia, written by wildlife biologist mister Al Troutman, who you may have heard in twenty twenties Black af in stem episode about black Birders Week, and Al has written numerous field guides for kids and adults of places like Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, New York, and now Georgia. So Al Alex is just a wonderful guy. He's hilarious and kind and a dedicated

nature nerd with a really warm heart. And his latest release is just a few months old, Critters of Georgia Pocket Guide to Animals in your State, which features photos and really fascinating info of local fauna. So here's a bit from that which I think you will like, he writes. My passion for nature started when I was young. I was always amazed by the sunlit fiery glow of the red tailed hawks as a sword overhead when I went

fishing with my family. The red tailed hawk was my spark bird, the bird that captures your attention and gets you into birding. Through many encounters with red tailed hawks and other species like garter's aches and coyotes, I found

a passion for nature and the environment. Stumbling across conservationists like Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin and Jack Hannah introduced me to the field of wildlife biology as a career and gave birth to a dream that I was to accomplish and live out, serving as a fish and wildlife biologist for government agencies as well as in the private sector. My childhood dream was driven by a desire to learn more about the different types of ecosystems and the animals

that call our wild places home. Books and field guides like this wet my thirst for knowledge. Even before I could fully understand the words on the pages, I was drawn to books and flash cards that had animals on them. I could soon identify every animal I was shown and.

unapologetically themselves. By a profession, I'm a fish and wildlife biologist, and I'm a nature enthusiast through and through my love for nature includes making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to enjoy the outdoors in their own way. So as you use this book, I encourage you to be intentional in inviting others to appreciate nature with you, enjoy your discoveries, and stay curious Alex Trautman, he writes of Georgia, Georgia is famous for its warm climate, rich history, and

its many peach orchards. For more than twelve thousand years, Georgia has been home to many groups of indigenous people, from the Paleo Indian period twelve thousand to eight thousand years ago to familiar groups such as the Cherokee, the Creek, Chicksaw, Choctaw, the Appalachi, and many others. The first Europeans to visit Georgia were Spanish conquistra doors, including Hernando Jisoto, who visited

in fifteen forty. The British named Georgia as a colony in seventeen thirty two, making it one of the original thirteen colonies. It was named for the king at the time, King George the Second. After the Revolutionary War, Georgia became an American state, and the US government forcibly removed many of the indigenous people on the Trail of Tiers, a forced march to reservations in Oklahoma without adequate food or clothing,

leading to the death of thousands of people. Georgia was later the site of many important events in US history, from famous Civil War battles to the Civil Rights movement, and today the state is well known for high tech industries, as a popular filming location, and of course, for its agriculture. Georgia has several different biomes or large areas with different plant and animal communities. In the northwest is the Appalachian Plateau, which has a two thousand, three hundred and ninety foot

tall lookout mountain. The Blue Ridge Mountains are found in the northeast, with the highest point being four thousand and seven one hundred and eighty four feet. The area also includes forests of poplar, oak, and hickory trees, many of which are covered in the creepy at cool Spanish moss. The southern part of the state is home to the Atlantic Coastal Plain with rivers, swamps, and the Atlantic Ocean. Georgia is home to part of the Okafanoki Swamp, one

of the largest swamps in North America. These many types of environments shelter huge variety of animals and plants. The state is home to more than eighty different kinds of mammals, more than four hundred bird species, and more than one hundred and seventy species of reptiles and amphibians. This is your guide to the animals, birds, and reptiles and amphibians that called Georgia home.

who you may remember from the Gorilla Ology episode. So she wrote a book called The Fantastic World of Monkeys and Apes and more, and educational children's primate book featuring gorillas, lemurs, orangutans, babboons, chimpanzees and more, a Wonderful Primates book for jungle loving kids. And doctor Stewinsky is the president and the CEO of the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund, which is a gorilla conservatory in Africa, and she's authored over ninety scientific publications and books.

She cut her PhD from the Georgia Institute for Technology. So here some monkey and ape facts that you can tell your coworker over the holiday party punch ball when you've exhausted the topic of whether it will snow tomorrow or not. Here we go some fun facts. So mandrels are the largest monkeys and one of the most colorful primates. So males have vibrant colors of red, blue, and purple on their face, with golden yellow beards, and the more

colorful they are, the more attractive they appear. Have also red and blue butts to attract mates and be more visible in the forests. Male mandrels will lose color as they lose status in social groups, which has gotta hurt. They're like as big as a baseball bat, but chunkier, and they live in the middle of the continent of Africa, but headed to Japan. Are Japanese macaques, and they are also known as snow monkeys, and they're famous for using hot springs to bathe and warm up when the weather

gets cold. And young Japanese macacs they roll up snowballs just for fun, and then they shed their thick winter coat in the summer when the temperatures rise.

and hands and feet. They're a little smaller than chimpanzees, but they have longer legs and they're more comfortable walking upright than chimpanzees are. They live in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and her book doesn't say this, but I

hear that they're very horny. So there's a book that gives you a peek into what it's like to howl from a tree and display your butt to your family, and maybe eat bugs off the scalp of your best friend, and play around with snowballs, because as a monkey you get to sometimes just hang out in a spa and have snowball fights. How can you be a human ape? And play Forever. I don't know. Ask ginicular traumatology guest and orthopedic surgeon doctor Kevin Stone, who fixed Jarrett's shredded

ACL a few years ago. So he's like a well regarded wizard of sports injuries and creaky knees. And his book is called Play Forever, How to Recover from Injury and Thrive, And he gives us kind of a gentle kick in the pants to stay active for fun and for our mental health, and also to reduce the costs of fixing a shredded ACL. I'm just going to lay down and read my book. I wish we had this book sooner. To be honest, let's hear some he writes

the obvious lesson. We defeat ourselves far more often than our opponents defeat us. Unforced errors in tennis are not just the problems of novices.

youth teams, and through parenting. The phenomenal success of players such as Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and Serena Williams are brought to a stop by psychological weaknesses distraction that cause them to lose their swing, their temper, or their confidence despite seeming at the top of their game. Federer, Woods, and Williams were coached to stunning physical success but left mentally exposed consistently. The one weakness that is most difficult

to fix in athletes lies in the mind itself. Mental conditioning, the approach to an injury and its recovery, the overcoming of psychological blocks that prevent a physical superstar from being a winner. These are so ingrained that they remain the most difficult weaknesses to fix. Yet it's not impossible to change. We can work on these issues, and many doctors and mental empowerment coaches are successful at it. The first step, a simple but crucial one, is to understand that the

body and mind are irrevocably linked. This does not only apply to competitive athletes, but to everyone, whether they're dealing with a changing body, playing amateur sports, or simply living. A brain is attached to each body. I repair this is obvious, but in treating the whole patient. I'm cognizant of the importance of mental processes as they relate to treatment. The mental health of an injured patient brings another dimension

both to their healing and their ability to excel. In short, our daily mental health defines what our body is able to achieve. Naomi Osaka poignantly brought this to light in her refusal to undergo the ritual press conference drilling in the twenty twenty one French Open. Over decades of practicing medicine, I have identified particular mental qualities that enable people to shine,

not just athletically, but in all they do. This is a good place to start this book in the unseen and often underappreciated aspect of fitness and health that can ensure you play forever and play well. These eight mental fitness objectives are competitiveness, grit, attention, fantasy, patience, acceptance, grace and kindness, and competency. While these qualities are what take supreme athletes to the top, they're applicable to all aspects

of your life. So pay attention to your own mental game on the court or the playfield or the race course, and in day to day interactions at work and home. Strengthening each of these qualities is the cornerstone of fitness, so don't ignore your noggins. People Now on the topic of playing, but maybe in a less active way, like when you're done rowing for the day. Doctor Jane McGonagall is a lidologist and in her episode we chatted all about video games and what they do for our brains

and friendships. So if you're looking for a dose of hope from someone who has a PhD in it, She recently came out with a book called Imaginable, How to see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today, and in it she writes, before we start your imagination training, I want to ask you three questions that will give you a baseline sense

of your future mindset. Question one, when you think about the ten years, do you think things will mostly stay the same and go on as normal or do you expect that most of us will dramatically rethink and reinvent how we do things. Rate your outlook on a scale of one to ten. One is almost everything stays the same. Ten is almost everything will be dramatically different. Question number two, When you think about how the world and your life will change over the next ten years. Are you mostly

worried or mostly optimistic? Rate your outlook on a scale of one to ten. One is extremely worried and ten is extremely optimistic. Question number three, how much control or influence do you feel you personally have in determining how the world and your life changes over the next ten years. Rate your outlook on a scale one to ten. One is almost no control or influence. Ten is almost complete

control or influence. So these three questions give you a good idea of the kind of imagination training we're going to do in this book. In fact, each of the three parts of the book is specifically designed to increase your or on one of these questions by at least one point. First, we're going to focus on the opportunity for rethinking and reinventing. Why rethinking and reinventing, Well, it's

easy to prepare for futures that are similar today. It's the dramatically different stuff that catches us off guard, so it's important to spend time getting ready for the futures that will feel stranger and less familiar. Focusing on rethinking and reinventing also puts us in a better position to help decide how the future will be different. Having lived through the COVID nineteen pandemic, each of us will know for the rest of our lives that almost anything can

change virtually overnight, for worse or for better. We know that it's absolutely possible to make radical changes on how we live, work, learn, and care for each other, and to make those changes fast.

It builds confidence that the future will be better. Shadow imagination ask the question, what's something bad that could happen? And it builds readiness to face future challenges. So, whatever your instinctive feelings are about the future right now, you'll benefit from cultivating at least a little bit of the flip side feeling. So I'll teach you imagination techniques that help you see both sides of the future. The risks that it makes sense to worry about, and the opportunities

that are cause for optimism. Just note that wherever you are right now in your outlook on the future is fine, whether you're super worried, super optimistic, or somewhere in between. Be ready to stretch your imagination in the opposite direction so you can hold both hopes and worries in mind at the same time. As you develop your positive and shadow imagination, you might be surprised to find seeing risks more clearly and defining your worries more concretely can actually

help you feel more hopeful. As you get better at anticipating global challenges, you'll feel more optimistic overall. There's a good reason for this paradox. You're increasing your awareness not just of what might go wrong, but also of the bold plans and innovative solutions that are already being enistioned and implemented. And deep down you know that you're putting yourself in a stronger position to help yourself and others by seriously imagining a future crisis instead of denying that

it could ever happen. Finally, we'll focus on building your confidence and how much influence you have to help determine how the future turns out. So this book is more than just anticipating the future. It's about acting to create the future. You want healthier, safer, more just more sustainable, more beautiful, more equitable. So that is a book on how to hope for the future by doctor Jane McGonagall. And what else is in store for us in the future.

Maybe some wearable tech that reads our dang minds. So doctor Nita Farhani of the Neurotechnology which was the AI and Brain Tech episode, wrote this book called The Battle for Your Brain, Defending the right to think freely in the Age of Neurotechnology, And she tells us about wearing a brain scanner device just casually connected to a phone. Oh hi, the future. I didn't realize that you were standing right there, So she writes, I'm trying to get the birds to sing. If I can calm my mind

just enough, they will sing. Though I've tried to convince my children otherwise. I don't have magical powers. I'm wearing a simple headband embedded with electrodes that detect my brain wave activity and send it via bluetooth to an application on my iPhone. Brain waves the oscillating electrical voltages in your brain are small in size, just a few millions of a vault, but they reveal a lot about the

inner workings of your mind. When I relax into a meditative state, my alpha brain wave activity rises, and the app rewards me with the sound of singing birds. This neurofeedback technique has proven powerful in preventing the migrain attacks

that have dogged me since childhood. Having used the device a number of times, I know how to increase my alpha waves, the pattern of electrical activity produced by the brain when you're feeling calm and peaceful, and reduce my beta wave activity, the higher speed brain waves that occur when you're wide awake and thinking. I focus on a happy memory. My eldest daughter, Aristella, is just three years old, and we are hiking as a family to a waterfall

in the mountains of North Carolina. The season is late fall. Afternoon sun glistens through the trees still dotted with red and orange. As we crunch through the fallen leaves beneath our feet, I can almost feel the sun on my face and hear the water gurgling over water worn rocks. In my mind, I hear our Stellus peals of laughter as she raises a leaf downstream against one tossed in by my husband. Feed Sure, the app confirms that my

brain is responding. Whether we're meditating, doing a math calculation, we're calling a phone number, or browsing through our mental thesaurus for just the right word. Neurons are firing in our brains, creating minuscule electrical discharges. When a mental state like relaxation or stress is dominant, hundreds and thousands of neurons are firing in characteristic patterns that can be measured

with an electrocephalogram or EEG. Scientists used to have to place electrodes directly on the periostium, the inner layer of the scalp, to pick up brain waves, and the proceed required surgery under anesthesia and carried risks including fever, infection, and leaking brain fluid. Today, the electrodes can be placed externally on the forehead or the surface of the scalp. EEG devices detect and record brain waves in terms of cycles per second known as hertz alpha waves. For example,

clock in it at the eight to thirteen hertz range. Had I wanted to, I also could have placed electrodes over the muscles on my body to measure the signals I sent to them while I was meditating. Our brains are constantly transmitting signals to our peripheral nervous system, the parts of the nervous system beyond the brain and the spinal cord. Electromiography or EMG, can be used to detect the electrical activity in response to a nerve's stimulation of the muscle

in millivolts ranging from zero to ten millivolts. Together, EEG and EMG give us a window on what our brain is up to at any given moment, including the instructions it's sending to.

the electric battery and bioelectric activity in the body. More recent technological leaps in neuroscience and artificial intelligence have converged to give us consumer neurotech devices, a catch all term for gadgets that connect human brains to computers and the ever more sophisticated algorithms that allow those computers to analyze the data they receive at first, neuroscientists rightly dismissed all these consumer devices as inaccurate and unvalidated, little better than toys.

But as both the hardware and software improved, consumer neurotech became more accurate and harder to dismiss. The average tech saving person can now see their emotions and arousal and alertness, and track how efficiently they are meditating. Personal neurotech devices are just one part of the growth category of wearable tech, which allows the average technophile to quantify their bodily functions.

The category is so popular that as of twenty twenty, nearly one out of every five Americans was using one. There are more than three hundred thousand different mobile health apps available worldwide, a number that's doubled in just five years, with an estimated market value surpassing one hundred billion dollars globally. The market for neurotechnology is growing at a compounded annual rate of twelve percent and is expected to reach twenty

one billion dollars by twenty twenty six. Consumers can see graphic displays of their brain activity in real time DELTA, which is dreamless sleep, theta deep relaxation, daydreaming inwardly focused, alpha, very relaxed, taking a break, meditating, beta, aroused, engaged, stressed, and gamma concentrating waves, as well as patterns of blood flow in their brains and even bioelect changes in their muscles. Self tracking is far more than a fad. It's a

new way of living and thinking about ourselves. So that was from Doctor Nita for Honey's The Battle for Your Brain, Defending the right to think freely in the age of neurotechnology. And on the topic of your brain and mind, let's learn a little more about ADHD. Shall we y'all loved the Attention deficit Neuropsychology episode with Global ADHD expert doctor Russell Barkley, who's written so many books on the topic. Most notable, perhaps is the updated edition of Taking Charge

of Adult ADHD. Proven strategies to succeed at work, at home, and in relationships. But how do you know if it's ADHD? That is the biggest question I feel like I hear from listeners. So doctor Barkley gives us some examples of the patience he might see. There's a funny thing about ADHD. Perhaps because its impact on achievement is so well known, many people blame the disorder when they don't meet their own standard for accomplishment. Do any of these people sound

like you. Joe decided to become a doctor when he was in high school, so he chose a college with a great biology department and a high rate of admission to medical schools. He got into that university only on the waiting list, but at least he got in once he was there, though, every science course was a struggle for him. By junior year, his GPA was hovering under three point zero and he had already taken organic chemistry three times without passing.

so Joe decided to have himself evaluated for ADHD. More he read about it, the more he thought this explained his whole problem. The evaluator disagreed, so did the one from whom Joe sought a second opinion, and then a third. Carrie fell into a similar trap. Identified as gifted when she was young, she had been brought up to believe that she should be gifted in doing just about everything

in life. When Carrie started hopping from one type of job to another after college, she and her family decided she might have ADHD, which was the only explanation they could come up with for why she kept failing at jobs that should, according to her IQ, be a snap for her. As it turned out, ADHD wasn't the problem, but anxiety was. Carrie didn't like to admit that she found herself almost paralyzed by fear when she started a new job, and that this made it really hard for

her to concentrate on our work. Fortunately, the evaluator from whom she sought a diagnosis of ADHD discovered the real problem and was able to refer her to a therapist who specialized in anxiety disorders. This therapist offered not only treatment and coping strategies, but helped Carrie accept her diagnosis

without shame. Cal didn't have any particular reason, which is just not a Q score or comparison to a peer group, for believing that he had ADHD other than that he was currently in a dead end job, changed jobs often and impulsively, and had very few friends.

believes rigidly that she's destined for vocal stardom. In this case, the person believes he cannot perform well in life, when in fact he does perform as well as most people, even if it's not up to his own internal standard. To adopt a standard for defining the term impairment other than comparison with the true norm is like something out of Alice in wonderland where nothing is as it seems, and words can have whatever meaning one wishes to give them.

Saying that a person functioning as well as or even better than the average or typical population yet can still be impaired makes a mockery of the term disorder and does a disservice to those struggling with really not being able to function as well as the norm. If the professional says you do not have ADHD, any of the following could be responsible for ADHD like symptoms, like being

over the age of five or perimenopausal. When increased forgetfulness, distractability, and disorganization are normal recent medical problems such as thyroid dysfunction, sleep disorder, or apnea or strep throat, though this particular

connection is rare. Excessive recreational drug use like marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, and so on, which can result in attention, memory, and organizational problems unusual stress, though the ADHD like symptoms would then be temporary or injury to the regions of the brain responsible for sustained attention, behavioral inhibition, working memory, and

emotional self control. Any of these possible cost is should have been uncovered by the evaluation and the practitioner should refer you to the appropriate.

his book is Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. So if that's adding up, see a doc speaking of a edition. Hey is math reel? It's not a not smart question, so says doctor Eugenia Chang of the Abstract Mathematology episode. So she wrote this book is Mathreel? How simple questions lead us to mathematics deepest truths. And let's just shoot out of the gate with an excerpt from her introduction in which I learned that we have the same hairstylist.

She writes, When I was in school, one of my favorite classes was one in which we made stuffed animals. I made a fluffy poodle and a sleeping puppy with soft, velvety ears. I love the whole process, from cutting out the pieces, seeing how they miraculously fit together to make it animal, and sewing them together, to the magical moment of turning the whole thing inside out, and the joy of stuffing it so that it seemed to come alive. Why make a stuffed animal when you can just buy one?

Why make anything yourself when you can just get it ready made instead? Sometimes it's because the ones we make ourselves are better. I find homemade cakes much more delicious than store bought ones, But sometimes the things we make ourselves aren't objectively better. I enjoy playing the piano, although I can hear much better performances if I put on a recording or go to a concert. I even enjoy occasionally making my own clothes, although they're far from perfect.

Sometimes it's because it's cheaper. It's much cheaper for me to cut my own hair, so I do, even though a professional haircut would look better. But often it's just satisfying to make something yourself. This is true for me for food, music, clothes, but different people find different things satisfying Another variation on this theme is the idea of

climbing a rock face just with your bare hands. Thanks climbing Mount Everest without oxygen also not for me, or rowing across the Atlantic I'll pass on that too.

to describe. I want to describe what math feels like in a way that is quite different from how it's often thought of. I will describe the expansive side of math, the creative, the imaginative, the exploratory, the part where we dream, follow our nose, listen to our gut instinct, and feel the joy of understanding, like sweeping away fog and seeing sunshine. This is not a math text book, nor is it

a math history book. It's a math emotions book. Math inspires rather different emotions in different people, and unfortunately, for some people, it mostly represents fear and the memory of being made feel stupid. I would like to show math in a different emotional light. Some people love math and some people hate it, and unfortunately, the way some of the math lovers talk about it makes the other people hate it even more. The thing is that there are

two very different reasons people love math. Some people like it because they think it has clear right and wrong answers. They find it easy to get the answers, and this makes them feel smart. Some people dislike it for more or less the same reason, but the other way around. It has clear right and wrong answers, but they find it hard to get the answers, and this makes them feel stupid, or most likely, they're made to feel stupid by people who get the answers more easily. And they

don't even like the idea of clear answers. They see the subtle nuances of life, and they don't think that something so black and white can capture what they find most interesting about life. However, this image of a rigid world with clear answers is a very limited view of what math is like. Abstract math really doesn't have such clear right and wrong answers, especially not at a research level. But only a small proportion of people ever make it

to that stage to see what it's really like. And the extraordinary thing is that those mathematicians often love math for the same reasons that math phobic people dislike it. They are interested in subtlety and nuance to express and explore what is most interesting about life. Deep down, math isn't about clear answers, but about increasingly nuanced worlds in which we can explore different things being true.

a mathematician. And yeah, sometimes DIY offers gratification that buying things with one single clique just can't unless It's a book by one of my favorite guests of all time. Chiropterologist Doctor Merlin Tuttle is a legend in the world of bat experts. See the two part Chiropterology episode to fall in love with his bat filled brain and his

giant heart. So in his twenty twenty two book The Bat House Guide, Merlin Tuttle affirms diy aspirations so long as it helps our flying little friends, and he writes bats are essential, but populations are an alarming decline nearly everywhere, often due to loss of natural roosts. Countless colonies have lost their homes as forests have been cleared, caves have been converted for human use, and fearful humans have killed

or evicted those attempting to take refuge in buildings. However, by simply providing accommodations, you may help dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of destitute bats. As many Americans are discovering, bats provide safe pest control, unique entertainment, and outstanding educational opportunities.

Attracting bats may be easier than you think. Thousands of little brown miotis and big brown bats are relying on bath houses as they slowly recover For more than a decade of massive losses from white nose syndrome, private citizens are helping some of the hardest hit species recover. Dramatic recovery has often been achieved through provision of artificial roosts

or restoration and protection of damaged roosts. Rapid growth of colonies in bathouses strongly suggests that roost shortage is a key impediment to their recovery.

the greater the odds of attracting bats. Such areas are prime breeding grounds for reliable and diverse insect prey that can sustain colonies at times when yard or crop pests are not available. But bathouses are least likely to attract occupants in areas of intense urbanization or industrialized agriculture. Depending on the bat species where you live, there may be a variety of options for bathouse success. Bats attempting to live in buildings or other human made structures are a

good indicator of suitable feeding habitat nearby. Well built and located bathouses are more than eighty percent successful, rising to ninety percent where colonies have been excluded from buildings. So what kind of bathouse? Single chamber bathhouses have long been viewed as minimally attractive to bats, in part because vendors have frequently sold ones that were destined to fail due to poor construction or inadequate instructions. When painted, different colors

are located in different amounts of sun. Two or more single chamber houses may meet as well as test bat needs better than one multi chambered house, and thus prove more attractive. Providing varied options roughly doubles the odds of success. Multiple houses allow bats to move in response to changes in weather or to escape parasites or predators. Now diy if you choose to build your own, providing a bathouse for bats may require no more tools than a saw,

screwdriver and paintbrush. Depending on your level of interest and available mounting locations, you might consider two or three easy to build single chamber houses. The detailed bath house instructions we provide are simply intended as starting guides. Most houses can be substantially enlarged or improved once you understand bat needs. We also introduce a wide range of options from around the world and strongly encourage testing of new materials, designs,

and ideas. So build a little bathouse for your soul and get doctor Merlin Tuttle's book. And again that's doctor Merlin Tuttle of Austin, Texas, mister Batman himself from the Chiropterology episode. So if you want a book on how to make bats, your friends and your neighbors, the Bathouse Guide. It's a great gift, especially if you're embarking on a building project with a loved one who doesn't love the

smell of coffee and sawdust as you make some memps. Okay, let's take a quick pause to donate to a charity and an apt one this week is a two six LA, which is a nonprofit supporting students age six to eighteen with free programs to develop their creative and expository writing

skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write. And if you'd like to get involved, they can always use volunteers to serve as tutors, mentors, role models for students, to lead writing workshops and support publishing projects to illustrate student written books and guide students through the storytelling process. So if you want to be a volunteer, you can learn more or donate at eight two six la dot org.

They have programs all over the US as well, and that donation was me possible by sponsors of the show.

because I'm the one reading them. But y'all loved the onerrology episode on dreaming, and so here are some select bits hand chosen by author and ownrologist, doctor G. William Domhoff, Because yes, you can be a research scientist with I guess the Ultimate dream Job because it's about dreams, and then you can write a pile of books about it, such as his latest their Neurocognitive Theory of dreaming, Where, how, when, what and why of dreams and here's what he chose

for me to read to you. The neurocognitive theory of dreaming is first and foremost based on a synthesis of neuroimaging and leision studies of both the waking and sleeping brain. It also draws on studies of the development of dreaming from preschool to adolescents and on quantitative content analysis of dream reports collected in both laboratory and non laboratory settings.

The neurocognitive theory of dreaming explains the major findings on dream content as well as the unexpected findings on what does not appear very often in dreaming. In addition, the long standing findings on dream content can be combined with more recent neuroimaging and developmental findings to suggest that dreaming

has no adaptive evolutionary function. Instead, it seems more likely that dreaming is a byproduct of the rapid selection for waking imagination, sociolity, and an enhanced self system over the past fifty two three hundred thousand, which have enormous adaptive advantages. Dreaming is a unique form of spontaneous, internally generated thought that shares features in common with mind wandering and even

more with daydreaming. But dreaming is far more intense than daydreaming because dreamers experience themselves as being in real life hypothetical scenarios that almost always include other human beings and or animals. In addition, the other human beings and animals are usually interacting with the dreamer in the context of vivid sensory environments. Dreams are first and foremost characterized by pan human dimensions on the one side, and by large

individual differences on the other. The few gender, cross national and cross cultural differences, although real and often replicated in the sense of gender, pale in importance. Then to the character networks in dream series, which were discovered by mathematical psychologists with expertise in waking memory, provide indications that dreaming in general may be rooted in the same principles governing waking memory to a greater extent than is usually realized.

So dreams ah certainly food for thought, but books are not going to fill your belly. Nobody knows that better than doctor Psychie Williams. Forcen from our Black American Magnarology episode about food, race and culture, and she wrote a twenty twenty two book Eating While Black, Food Shaming, and Race in America, and she wanted me to read this

passage to engage your mind and your literary appetite. The notion of wholesomeness, along with the requirement of the healthiness of the food, are the twin weapons for issuing shame and culinary policing. Because we all operate out of our own experiences, we can often miss the nuances of how shopping in places like the dollar store and other budget outlets enables those who do the shopping to accomplish more

than just purchasing food. For example, once I was in the company of a food advocate who strongly believed in agricultural education and outreach. As we were talking, she began extolling the virtues of her work and why her message was a necessary one for helping communities of people relieve hunger. At one point during our conversation, I told her that farmers' markets were not necessarily a feasible shopping option for

many people. She sharply responded, everyone deserves fresh food, absolutely, I said, but that is not my point. How we obtain foods is of interest and importance to me. It is critical for me that we not insist that there is only one correct way of obtaining food. We continued to banter while driving to our destination. Along the way, we happened to pass a busy shopping center that had a variety of stores, including a wal Mart, a Rainbow, an urban centered clothing store for women and girls, and

a Dollar Tree. I could not help but think of the many errands that I had to run when I returned home, and the number of tasks I could accomplish in one hour or so just by going to the three stores we just passed, or even one of them. Alternatively, the thought of needing to figure out the time and location of the next farmer's market and how it would fit within the scope of the many other things I

had to do, was daunting, to say the least. I explained to my companion how I, as a middle class black woman, would find relief in the option of large stores with varied merchandise. After I said this, we rode in silence for the rest of the trip, each of us lost in our own thoughts, perhaps thinking about the privileges of our own lives. I was not angry with my driving companion so much as I was frustrated and tired by the need to share continuously this kind of

information in order to help people check their privileges. I am perpetually amazed by the freedoms enjoyed by so many who choose to tell Black people how we should.

But some people get this. In the article The Buck Shops here, ron At King explains that not only our dollar store is now being frequented by those with incomes greater than seventy thousand, but also that they appeal to customers who might not want to trapes across a huge store and its accompanying parking lot just to pick up a few items. And this is especially the case when

you're busy with families or live alone. It's absolutely true that everyone deserves to have fresh food, and it is absolutely true that people need to be able to eat what they want and get their food from where they need while they're in the meantime of their lives, that is well, they're waiting for things to change or improve. So when you sit down to holiday meals, eating while black is a great one to have under the tree

and gift to someone or yourself. And before you hurl your fresh leftovers in the trash, consider the work of the wonderful doctor Robin Nagel of the Discard Anthropology episode All about Garbage. She's an NYU professor and a one time New York City sanitation worker and author of the book Picking Up on the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City Now on the topic of grubbing and also grubbiness.

of possession. Each bag stuffed with trash, each wad of spent tissue, every shred of shrink wrap, every moldy vegetable and maggot covered turkey leg hints of countless stories. Archaeologists of contemporary household waste have demonstrated this. Indeed, insights that the field has given us about our own past often rest on analysis of nothing more than the garbage of civilization's long dead. We understand such artifacts to be treasures.

Less tangible and more metaphysical is the sense that all these unloved things hold traces of their former owners. Marcel Maas and early twentieth century sociologists propose that even when an object has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. The original notion referred to gift exchanges in small scale or tribal societies, but the point can stand for any thing that has passed through a

life and been cast off. Imagine if we were capable a form of empathy that lets us know one another by savoring the aura we leave on the things we've touched, we could go to a dump to get drunk on one another's souls. But we haven't yet evolved such sensitivities. We generate our dregs, we create their hazards, and then we invent the dump as one of the places to which we banish them so that we can pretend they

won't harm us. But who plays the role of Karen ferrying our deceased belongings out of our daily lives and across that river sticks into the imagined safe zone of the dump, Or, to put it more bluntly, who keeps us safe from ourselves?

In December seventeen eighty five, the dead moved from Paris's heart into what Victor Hugo would later call its intestines. Shadowy figures entered the city's oldest and largest cemetery, the Cemetery of the Holy Innocence, and began to dig. Inhabitants of neighboring buildings watched, some from their windows, some from the street, as these men, working by torchlight, began the lugubrious and unprecedented process of emptying this historic burial space

of its sacred contents. These city workers spent the next year digging human remains out of the cemetery's deep mass graves and collecting the millions of bones that had accumulated in the charnel houses around its perimeter. They then systematically transported carts full of bones and human remains to an underground quarry on the city's southern periphery, a.

the neighborhood. The famous eighteenth century chronicler of Parisian urban life, Louis Sebastian Mercier, characterized the cemetery as an imminent danger whose cadaverous miasmas threatened to poison the atmosphere of Paris. He further alleged that wine, milk and bullion served in the vicinity of the cemetery soured within hours and warned that the cadaverous humidity that clung to the nearby walls

had lethal effects. Yes, he explained, to absent mindedly place one's hand against a wall impregnated with this moisture was to expose oneself to the effects of venom. Ew No, in this ancient space, the dead were quite literally deadly. So venture Underground with her book, which will be linked on the website. You can also listen to the Metropolitan Tumology episode to hear more about that. Now, do you want to read less about death and more about dolphin sex?

The conclusion here is that humans, through our complex capacity for moral thinking, have taken something that does not constitute a normative problem for any other species, and turned it into an issue for which we can justify marginalization, criminalization, execution, and even genocide. This is, argue, a case of animals having a far superior, that is, less violent and destructive, normative system for dealing with difference than almost all human cultures.

Homosexuality is quite clearly not just normal in the animal world, but entirely non destructive, maybe even beneficial for maintaining animal societies. Why then, are humans uniquely homophobic? It's a mystery that can only be solved if you understand how we can reason ourselves into a corner via our capacity.

What biological benefit has been given to our species through our bizarre moral posturing around the non problem problem of homosexuality precisely none. It is a sad testament to the cruelty of human moral reasoning. Intelligence is not a biological fact. This idea of human intellectual or behavioral exceptionalism has no basis in science. We feel in our guts that intelligence is both real and good.

A reality in which natural selection has never once acted on a biological trait that we can distill into a singular concept known as intelligence. A reality in which our intellectual and teens technology feats born of a mish mash of cognitive traits shared by many other species are not quite as important or exceptional as we'd.

if not necessarily good. We have generated more death and destruction for life on this planet than any other animal past and present. Our many intellectual accomplishments are currently on track to produce our own extinction, which is exactly how evolution gets rid of adaptations that suck. It is the greatest of paradoxes that we should have an exceptional mind which seems hell bent on destroying itself. Unless we can pull out a star Trek solution in the nick of time,

human intelligence is going to wink out of existence. So instead of looking at the cows and chickens and nar walls in your life with pity because they lack human cognitive capacities, first think about the value of those capacities. Do you experience more pleasure than your pets because of them. Is the world a better place thanks to our species intelligence?

If we are honest about the answers to those questions, then there's good reason to tone down our smugness, because, depending on where we go from here, human intelligence may just be the stupidest thing that has ever happened. Haha, we got you with dolphinsex. Now we have to think about our own brains destroying things. So obviously, some humans just don't get communing with the natural world, and some do.

We did a Wichology episode in October with a real life witch and author fee Garde Parma, and some of you freaked out because it contained their experiences and opinions, and some of you freaked out because you discovered being a witch is for you. Now, if the latter is a case, you may want to pick up their twenty twenty three book, The Witch Belongs to the World a Spell of Becoming and Fio selected this passage for y'all.

Witches belong to the world. Etymologically, the roots of the word world position this concept in terms of the age of man an epic. The quantity of the known world, this place, this time, not some other place, not some other time, definitely not the other world. Whiches belong to the world, and we are emissaries to and of the other world. To the other world we travel, and with the mysteries of the other world we return born to both which is our blessing and abane to the human

societies who have feared and revered us. We are part of the fate and destiny of humankind. We have always been here. Stories and legends about us are as old as written records in oral traditions. We are older than revivalist traditions bearing our names. We are older than initiatory lineages and orders of witchery. We are older than the persecutions, the Pyramids, the cave painting, the stone axes. But who and what were we before empire? What have we become?

Who are we becoming? So that was the witch belongs to the world? Which book to get? There's so many, and we're not done.

There's so often an immense lilafe loneliness at the heart of contemporary horror films, the stories leeching out of our inner poisons, replaying for us the terrors of living in a fortified nation state, even before the pandemic of twenty twenty. Themes of blindness, deafness, and above all, isolation saturated contemporary horror films like bird Box, A quiet place, the silence, hush here alone, it comes at night, the wind, and

don't breathe. Empire's apocalypse has come to mean suffering alone, a particularly haunting echo of the failed promises and the horrors of the global village. The writer lings End, in his novel Love Like Hate, admits that Vietnam, especially his beloved Saigon, is a disaster, but he adds that at least one doesn't die alone in the desolation. The solitary nightmare of America Americans are so cool they manage to be quiet about their desperation. Isolation may seem a strange

condition at empire's twilight. Perhaps it's the pondering of the aftermath of the world we made that horror plays with now. The clowns are terrifying. The sound of the calliope tingles the spine with its weirdness. The music of the carousel jangles its Warlitzer tune, broken and serrated. But once something wicked coming this way has passed, what does it leave behind? Is our insatiate need to victimize, or at least glamorize those who victimize in our name. Part of the reason

for our polarizations and isolations. American myths adore the loner and the rogue, the quiet man of action. Teddy Roosevelt tore a canal into Panama, and Ted Bundy tore apart sorority girls. John Wayne buried his kills by Old Red River, and John Wayne Gacy laid his to rest in a crawl space at eighty two thirteen West Summerdale Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Speaking softly and carrying a big stick has been the American way, as has using that stick to bludgeon others

into paralysis and death. It's lonely at the top of the bone pile. Have Americans chosen the chainsaw or the shark? The last one hundred years suggest they've wanted both. The certainty that the monsters waiting in the deep can be slain by American tough giary means we are never afraid to wade back into the water. We still feel the saw, but refuse to let its blind roar unsettle our sleep.

We can even reimagine it a weapon. We make our own ash of the evil dead films, putting a chainsaw on his bloody stump of an arm and marching against an army of darkness with panache, even a John Wayne swagger. War stories are difficult. War stories are so often horror stories that try to ignore their own tropes. Too often, when the lights go up, you think war is hell but also damn exciting. It has to be done, But

look at it. It's also the sort of empire that demands full cooperation, your taxes, your apathy, your willingness to hate what you see in the floating gun sight that ranges across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific world. Horror movies, fiction, and games draw on these poisoned waters and reimagine these piles of corpses in a country that taught itself to become history's most powerful war machine while keeping less than one percent of its population under arms.

Horror offers one of the few places where the true war story can unfold. The truth of war is not about what happens on the front lines. It's a story about what Americans consume, what we're willing to allow our government to do so we can keep binging, and whether we are willing to all play at answering the call of duty, becoming a nation of first person shooters, most of whom will never have to pick up an actual rifle unless it's to kill other Americans out of rage

and frustration. Instead, the working class avatars we'd call the cops on if they walked through our neighborhood do the killing for us. We'll just wrap ourselves and the softer side of empire tales of soldiers in our wars defending our freedoms, and not the truth that they are ponds in a larger game of taking what belongs to others. The war story of America has become the very apotheosis of Aslan Clark's dictum about horror. The worst thing is true. So yes.

read to you to people, real people. Life in Detroit cannot be gleaned from an article, no matter how shareable on social media. It seems you have to absorb everything here in real time. Not be easy, but do not put the blame on Detroit. Life is an obstacle course no matter where you are, but people are paramount. Treat people with respect and dignity, not just in Detroit, but especially in Detroit.

swear to frogs. But also she is an author and I'd like you to hear part of her twenty twenty three book Under the Henfluence, Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the.

has laid an egg. This is chicken Camp, a multi day class that is ostensibly all about clicker training chickens. Most people in the workshop work with animals. Some are professionals, while others just want to learn how to train their puppy when they get back home. One woman does wildlife rehabilitation, another is a primate researcher. A few of them work

with feral cats. But for the next few days or longer, for those who stay for both the beginning and advanced chicken training classes, we will learn how to clicker train chickens to do all kinds of things a chicken doesn't normally do. Some will teeter across balanced beams. Others will walk confidently around a parking cone. They will complete obstacle courses and matching games. These hungry chickens will do amazing things in exchange for food, but for now they know

very little. Nothing has ever been expected of them besides laying the occasional egg. Today that's all about to change. So yes, you've been wanting chickens, get yourself under the influence inside the world of back your chickens and the people who love them, or get it as a gift for your partner and beg them for chickens. Let's continue

on the topic of eggs, but also zombies. Come with me into the world of neuroparasitology aka nature zombies with author Matt Simon, who wrote Plight of the Living Dead. What real life zombies reveal about our world and ourselves?

make Hollingwood's creations look downwriting ir responsible. In September twenty thirteen, I was pacing in my kitchen talking on the phone with presumably a madman in South America. He told me a fungus invades ants' bodies and takes over their minds, manipulating them with unreal precision and consistency. The parasite steers the ants out of the colony and up a tree, always at noon, always ordering them to bite onto a leaf,

always about a foot off the ground. This just so happens to be where the temperature and humidity are ideal for the fungus's growth, and the body snatcher has positioned its host right above the colony's trail, so as it erupts out of the back of the zombie ant's head and sprays its spores, it infects more victims. A parasite without a brain of its own has brainwashed one of the most loyal creatures on earth to betray its family in spectacular fashion. And so for more on that, see

that neuroparasitology episode with Matt Simon. His book is Plight of the Living Dead. Oh it's so good, and I realize you may feel a beef with bugs right now, but let's change that mighty verse with the book Eyes on Flies by doctor bry The Fly Guy, written by dipter ology guest doctor Brian Lasard. He wants you to love flies like he does, and he makes it easy with passages such as no flies, no chocolate. Without flies, there would be no chocolate.

make sure to thank the chocolate fly will do. He also writes new species realness category is new species Extravaganza. One charismatic and unique soldier fly looks like a shiny rainbow jewel sashing around the forest floor, so I named it Oppolluma rue Paul, after the glamazon Rue Paul. The first specimens of Appolluma flies were collected in nineteen twelve and waited more than one hundred years before someone came along with the nerve and the talent to name them.

That's why I wanted to give them big, bold names so they can get the much needed attention they deserved from researchers and community scientists.

of maggot, but the youthful black soldier fly. Turns out, the oil found in black soldier fly larvae is rich in fats, oils, and vitamin e that are supposed to nourish the skin and help it look healthier and younger. After all, beauty is in the fly of the beholder, he writes, So get his book Eyes on Flies by Doctor Bryan the Fly Guy, and y'all that's it. Ask smart books, not smart questions, or get some as gifts

to delight and entertain your love once. Head to the link in the show description aliware dot com slash ologies slash bookworm three for links to the original episodes that we talked about and the ologists books, as well as a link to Literacy Charity which we donated eight two six LA. If you're listening on Apple, make sure you have hit the follow button to subscribe so you always have episodes as soon as they go up. We have some great ones coming on every week you don't want

to miss. You can follow us at Ologies on Instagram where we post your art tagged Ologies art on Fridays and your merch pis on Monday that are tagged Ologies Merch. I'm on there and Twitter at ali Ward we also have so many kid friendly Smologies episodes you can download at alliward dot com slash Smologies for free, which is linked in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admin's our Facebook group. Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is managing director.

It was for like a moody college student, and I had practiced the audition and in the waiting room there were like fifteen other girls who looked just like me, and so to distract myself, I took out a book from my bag and it was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and I was like, how perfect am I for this? I'm already reading a really depressing book. And then I looked up and there was literally a girl across the room also reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. And

it wasn't even assigned for a class. We just, I guess both happened to be reading it. And I was like was even the point of being here so easily. There's nothing interesting about me, and I guess I was so defeated that I seemed like an actual depressed college kid,

which I was, so I got the part. And when I found out via a pager that I was shooting, like the next day, I called my parents from a payphone in San Francisco and I was screaming so much that my dad thought that I was gravely injured or being held.