Show Notes
Sometimes, modern life can feel like an endless cacophony of distractions. We spend our days being inundated with noise and traffic, news and emails, obligations and hectic schedules. Many of us long to escape to nature or the wilderness — someplace simpler, quieter — where we can find peace and reconnect with what's really important. But can we ever truly get away? We tend to think of the wilderness as land that's untouched by human hands — vast, and pristine. But the more you seek out that version of nature, the blurrier the idea seems to become. Even the most remote landscapes on Earth carry traces of human history and human borders. And preserving the wilderness, and having access to it, also means managing it. On this episode, the paradox of the wilderness — how we try to protect and control the wild.
We talk with writer Cal Flyn about the myth of untouched nature, and what drives us to experience it. She talks about how our views of the wilderness have changed over time, from fearsome and untamed lands to places of spiritual escape; what she discovered about the human histories of supposedly wild spaces; and what the paradox presented by our desire to both preserve and interact with nature means for how we think of the wild. Flyn’s new book is “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness.”
It started with a tip received by a dutiful New Hampshire Fish and Game warden — and quickly turned into a twisted tale of illegal baiting and hunting, one-upmanship, digital trophy rooms, and one of the biggest poaching cases in recent state history. New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Nate Hegyi tells the story in the podcast “Operation Night Cat.” We’ll hear an excerpt and talk to Hegyi about the case.
More from The Pulse
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On this episode, we explore ADHD in adults — how to spot it, how to treat it, and how to function with it. We talk with a leading psychologist about what’s behind ADHD’s often frustrating symptoms, hear about what it’s like receiving a diagnosis late in life, and find out why people with ADHD are often very sensitive.
It’s a story that’s unfolding across America, from Texas to Tennessee, Kansas to the Rust Belt — rural hospitals are struggling or closing, leaving residents, towns, and entire regions without access to important healthcare services, from cancer screenings to maternity care. For some people, it can even mean a several-hour drive to the nearest emergency room — and in life-or-death situations, those extra miles can make a big difference.
On this encore episode, we explore the world of color — from how we perceive it, to our efforts to describe and differentiate its many shades. We talk with a lexicographer about efforts to standardize synthetic colors, and how we describe them, and investigate how we know that the colors we see are the same as the ones everyone else sees.