Episodes
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This month, we’re trying something different. Instead of our usual audio essay, we’re bringing you an appreciation collage from southern VT, made up of a whole bunch of "man on the street" interviews.
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We live in a world buried under an avalanche of content. More than 720,000 hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every day. A new book is published every eight seconds. There are so many posts and tweets and comments that they seem to be unraveling our very ability to focus. Will making something new do anything but add to the noise?
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Missing episodes?
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Ask around and you’ll find plenty of people who hate to run. It’s hard. It’s hot. It’s sweaty. You feel like you’re doing it wrong. And, man, it’s just boring. Who wants to just swing their legs for an hour? For much of my life, I never thought of myself as a runner. In this episode, a story about how I fell in love with it.
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There can be miracles when you believe … but today … an ode to doubt. Here’s a look at the virtues of not knowing, of questioning what you know, of second-guessing. And how they make us better.
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In this episode, Ben makes the case that despite its poor reputation, humanity does not suck. In thirty-five minutes, Ben outlines why people think humans are terrible, deliver a scathing rebuttal, point out why humans are his favorite species, and hopefully convince you to look at Homo sapiens in whole new ways.
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“If you like nerds, raise your hand. If you don’t raise your standards.” Today's episode, like vertebrate lungs, comes to you in two parts. The first is a celebration of the joy of finding people who share your love of something, no matter how unusual it is. The second is a celebration of the joy I’ve found with people who love science in particular. So grab your pocket protectors and push your glasses up your nose.
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The world is on fire both figuratively and literally. How do we deal? In this episode, delivered as a live talk for UCONN chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Ben draws on poetry, science, history, and philosophy to explore how we all might live in a world where we have no idea what is going on.
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Many of us enjoy talking about politics about as much as we enjoy paying taxes or going to the dentist. But this month on I Heart This, I suggest that we have good reasons to feel grateful for political disagreements.
ReferencesGreen, T. V. (2021, November 23). Republicans and Democrats alike say it’s stressful to talk politics with people who disagree. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/23/republicans-and-democrats-alike-say-its-stressful-to-talk-politics-with-people-who-disagree/
Josh, L. (2022, January 6). “A republic if you can keep it”: Elizabeth Willing Powel, Benjamin Franklin, and the James McHenry Journal | Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress. Blogs.loc.gov. https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabeth-willing-powel-benjamin-franklin-and-the-james-mchenry-journal/
Jurkowitz, M., & Mitchell, A. (2020, February 5). Almost half of Americans have stopped talking politics with someone. Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/02/05/a-sore-subject-almost-half-of-americans-have-stopped-talking-politics-with-someone/
Kolbert, E. (2017, February 19). Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
Thich Nhat Hanh. (1991). Peace Is Every Step. Toronto Bantam Books.
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Bread might seem like the boring food, the backdrop for the stuff you put in the sandwich. But actually, in a world of strange foods, bread may be the strangest, most unlikely substance that humans have ever ingested. The story of what bread is and how we came to eat it, is one of alien biology and lost civilizations. It turns out that we only have bread because of a long chain of bizarre and unlikely coincidences.
ReferencesArranz-Otaegui, A., Gonzalez Carretero, L., Ramsey, M. N., Fuller, D. Q., & Richter, T. (2018). Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), 7925–7930. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801071115
Bietz, J. A. (1982). Cereal prolamin evolution and homology revealed by sequence analysis. Biochemical Genetics, 20(11-12), 1039–1053. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00498931
Cassidy, C. (2020, May 4). What Do We Know About the Neolithic-Age Woman Who Invented Leavened Bread? Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/leavened-bread-yeast-invention-history.html
Encyclopedia Brittanica. (2023, December 25). How did Neolithic technologies spread outward from the Fertile Crescent? | Britannica. Www.britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/question/How-did-Neolithic-technologies-spread-outward-from-the-Fertile-Crescent#:~:text=The%20earliest%20farmers%20raised%20barley
Gregory Clark. (2007). A farewell to alms. In Internet Archive. Princeton University Press. https://archive.org/details/farewelltoalmsbr00clar/page/286/mode/2up
Igbinedion, S. O., Ansari, J., Vasikaran, A., Gavins, F. N., Jordan, P., Boktor, M., & Alexander, J. S. (2017). Non-celiac gluten sensitivity: All wheat attack is not celiac. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 23(40), 7201–7210. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v23.i40.7201
Kim, K.-H., & Kim, J.-Y. (2021). Understanding Wheat Starch Metabolism in Properties, Environmental Stress Condition, and Molecular Approaches for Value-Added Utilization. Plants, 10(11), 2282. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10112282
Liu, W., Wu, Y., Wang, J., Wang, Z., Gao, J., Yuan, J., & Chen, H. (2023). A Meta-Analysis of the Prevalence of Wheat Allergy Worldwide. Nutrients, 15(7), 1564. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15071564
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease. (2020, October). Definition & Facts for Celiac Disease | NIDDK. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/celiac-disease/definition-facts#:~:text=gluten%2Dsensitive%20enteropathy.-
Piperno, D. R., Weiss, E., Holst, I., & Nadel, D. (2004). Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis. Nature, 430(7000), 670–673. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02734
Revedin, A., Aranguren, B., Becattini, R., Longo, L., Marconi, E., Lippi, M. M., Skakun, N., Sinitsyn, A., Spiridonova, E., & Svoboda, J. (2010). Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(44), 18815–18819. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1006993107
Shewry, P. (2019). What Is Gluten—Why Is It Special? Frontiers in Nutrition, 6(101). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2019.00101
The Serious Eats Team. (2021, March 7). What Is Gluten? The Science Behind Great Dough. Serious Eats. https://www.seriouseats.com/what-is-gluten-free-bread-dough-pasta
Urade, R., Sato, N., & Sugiyama, M. (2017). Gliadins from wheat grain: an overview, from primary structure to nanostructures of aggregates. Biophysical Reviews, 10(2), 435–443....
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Thanksgiving: An “I Heart This Manifesto”
IntroductionIn October of 2022, I decided to start a podcast about things that I loved. At the time, this seemed like a not-terrible idea. It turns out that I am the world’s foremost authority on things that I love, so I was actually somewhat qualified to speak on the subject. And seeing how it was focused on my own obsessions,it was also pretty much guaranteed to interest me . But mostly, in a media world populated with trolls, cynics, and conspiracy-pedaling gadflies … well … talking about delightful things seemed like a novelty. Like I said, all in all, a not-so-terrible idea.
The next thing I probably should have asked myself was “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” But I kinda skipped that part.
Instead, I asked myself, “What do I love? What do I want to talk about?” I liked that question better because it meant I got to write a list. And I really love writing lists. In fact, “making lists” is #20 on my list of things that I like, and it will probably end up with its own episode at some point. I put this list in a spreadsheet, because, well, I also really like spreadsheets. (They’re #65).
But now that I Heart This has reached the end of its first season, it seems like it's probably time to ask the existential questions that I avoided asking at the beginning.
Because, y’all know, the last thing the world needs is a new podcast. We’ve got enough “influencers” and “personalities” and hucksters and reminders to like and subscribe. We’ve got enough people feeding the algorithms, thank you very much. What good could it possibly do to add yet another voice to the media circus. It’s like shouting into the void.
Why spend hours of a good life scripting and revising and recording and listening to the same sentence over and over again to edit out all the weird noises my voice makes?
And … why listen? There are a thousand other things you could tune into to right now. You could listen to the news … or someone who will make you laugh … or financial advice … or, y’know, like nine out of ten podcast listeners, you could tune into an endless and moderately disturbing stream of true crime.
So, even it is a bit belatedly, let’s go there. “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” Why gratitude? Why a project like this at all?
Move over Karl Marx. It’s a Thanksgiving I Heart This manifesto.
I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
Story of me. Kamana Naturalist Training Program.First, let me tell you a bit about how I came to be such a gratitude cheerleader in the first place.
In my mid-twenties, I enrolled in a nature study correspondence course for cavemen. Okay, it wasn’t really a course for aspiring cavemen … but it was for people interested in wilderness survival and wild edible plants and stalking around in the woods and getting close to wildlife. So … y’know … cave man stuff. And it really was a good old-fashioned, pre-Zoom correspondence course. Assignments would arrive in my literal IRL mailbox. And I would use these things called stamps to send envelopes full of my work back to the school.
About half of these assignments had me researching local animals and plants in books. But the other half were a kind of in-the-woods practicum. The approach was simple. Go to the same spot in the woods every single day. Sit there until all the things I’d scared away relaxed and returned to going about their business. And then … watch.
Does that sound boring? I guess that sometimes it was. And sometimes it...
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Colin Tudge's amazing book, The Variety of Life is not a field guide, but it is a survey and celebration of all the things that have ever lived. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Newcomb's Wildflower Guide truly is the most effective key that I have ever used. Positively genius.
A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs by George Petrides is the best guide to woody plants in my region.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's first widely distributed field guide was Flore Francaise.
Lawrence Griffings paper about Richard Waller's rediscovered key can be found in its entirety here.
The National Library of Medicine has this amazing series of blog posts on the history of herbals and floras, books that were the precursors to field guides in medieval Europe.
Cornell Ornithology Lab's Merlin app really is amazing and is available to download for free.
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IHT Ep 010 School
Fresh NotebooksWhen I was a kid, the best thing about school was getting new notebooks. Man, I loved ‘em. All those crisp, blank pages just called out to be filled. Some kids like to draw, and yeah, I had a fair number of doodles in the lined leaves of my Steno 5-subject, but that wasn't the real reason I loved all that fresh paper. And, yeah, I also wrote the occasional story in the back pages of my math or my science notebooks, but that wasn’t really it either. The big reason I got so stoked every August for back to school shopping was … for actually taking notes.
I know, right? Nerd from the womb.
But it's true. I took notes on everything--my classes, of course, but not just them. I'd take notes on library books about the rise of the Roman Empire, on the birds I saw at the feeder. I took notes on what Garfield did in the Sunday comics, and schemes for the most efficient way to clean my room … and dinosaurs, of course, lots and lots of dinosaurs.
That might seem like a weird thing to love, I know, but it’s not that different from those fans of Mary Kondo or the self-help section of Barnes and Noble. There is something deeply satisfying, about everything having its place, something seductive about the thought that this wild and contradictory and complicated life could all somehow make sense if we could just get it organized. I just happen to have always been the guy who liked to organize ideas into instead of towels and linens into closets.
After buying fresh office supplies, my second favorite thing about school was getting textbooks, especially if they were new, and I was the first person to write my name on the little plate on the inside front cover. “Name Ben Lord, Condition: new.” I had barely gotten them covered with those trusty paper shopping bags before I’d start flipping through the pages, looking at the math symbols I didn't understand, or the diagrams of a cell or the timelines of world history. Now here were some programs you could sink your teeth into. You could learn everything there was to know, all you had to do was start at page one and work your way through step-by-step.
All of this is to say, I guess, that if anyone was ever set up to love school, it was me. Maybe it’s destiny or maybe it’s DNA but there is something in me that is uniquely and inherently built for school. What better place for a guy who loved programs and systems and step-by-step directions.
So why for most of my schooling was I so abjectly miserable?
This episode of “I Heart This,” like all of our episodes, is a love story--the story of my love affair with school. But this story is a troubled one. It’s not just the feel-good rom-com kind of tale; it's less Bridget Jones diary and more Charles and Camilla. It’s a story of youthful dreams and disappointment. Of being excluded and of finding my place. And it’s a story about what happens when one of your favorite things … is taking notes. It took me a long time to appreciate school for what it really was. Here’s how I got there. I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
Middle SchoolOn my first day at Joseph A. DePaulo Junior High School, eleven-year-old me walked into an auditorium so full that I couldn't see an open place to sit. My last school had been a tiny affair. Its entire student body would have easily fit in the first few rows here. And, on top of that, it had been in another town. So … in all of that giant room’s hormonal pandemonium … in that crowd of hundreds and hundreds of teenagers, I saw not a single … familiar … face. I knew nobody. I’m sure I was standing there, frozen, wondering what to do, when a deep-voiced teacher bellowed over at me to hurry up and find a seat instead of clogging up the aisle.
Once the staff had finally...
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Robin Hood: I cannot find the version of the legend of Robin Hood that I read on my grandfather's shelves when I was young. The book was old, maybe over a hundred years. The glue in the binding had long since crumbled. I remember that the one that I read was written in verse. But you know how memory is. All of this information is suspect. Anyway, if you're interested in this older version of the story, it made its way into the popular novelization of the story written by Howard Pyle called The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood which was published in 1883 and can be found here in both print and audio.
Park History: I highly recommend The National Parks: America's Best Idea, which includes the story of Acadia as well as many other iconic parks.
Tourism and Rolf Potts: My thoughts on travel, tourism, and tourists has been greatly influenced by a small but remarkable book by Rolf Potts called Vagabonding. If you are a traveler, you've got to read this book. If you aren't, this book will make you one.
Public Piano: Here's some pics.
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Coming Soon
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Voicemail
Special thanks to my daughter, Eva Lord, for providing the voice of America's voicemail message.
Tisallee
Actually, this is my wife, Laura's, story. She went for years believing that Tisallee was America's other name before someone straightened her out in the third grade.
Mountains of California
When I was 15, I got to fly across the country to work in the backcountry of the Sierra National Forest with a Student Conservation Association trail crew. I would recommend it to any young person who loves wild places. And while the over-the-top eroticization of the landscape here is hyperbolic, I really did swoon over mountains and waterfalls all summer. I like to think that I was exuberant. My fellow trail crew members, however, usually described me as giddy.
Africa
This is a true story as best as I (and my wife who accompanied me) can remember it. This particular excursion was a kind of "bonus" to a safari that we'd gone on through Kruger National Park. Neither of us had any idea that it was part of the package. But it was as influential in my life as seeing one of the greatest wildlife parks in the world.
Farmstand
This farmstand is also a real place, a place that is still just down the road from the town where I now live. Walker Farm is a 250 year old organic farm. Their heirloom tomatoes are amazing.
American Poetry
"The Gold of Her Promise" is from Maya Angelou's poem "America." "Let America be the dream" is from Langston Hugh's poem "Let America be America Again." Both of these poems manage to celebrate America and indict her at the same time. And they are both beautiful. "I Hear America Singing" is from the eponymous poem by Walt Whitman. The re-imagining of "My Country, Tis of Thee" was written by Libby Roderick, the Alaskan folk singer. Her 1990 album, "If You See a Dream" is passionate and wise and was the soundtrack to my first summer in Vermont. The final track on that album, "America, America" ends with this lyric.
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We are surrounded by a force of remarkable power, by a substances that pervades us and every living thing, by inspiration itself ... and nobody can see it. In this episode we explore why every breath you take is truly remarkable.
Check out:
some video footage of an imploding tanker car. this famous illustration of Otto Von Guericke's magical Magdeburg sphere.
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Check out the theatrical trailer for Captain Fantastic.
You can watch Captain Fantastic on Amazon Prime Video if you already subscribe. Or you can rent or buy it on iTunes or Google Play.
I owe a great debt to Sheila O'Malley. Her review led to so many insights about art. story, politics, the way we think about "raising" children, and the way we think about movies. You can read her review of Captain Fantastic on rogerebert.com.
My thinking about how we parent and school our children has been greatly influenced by the Sudbury Valley School and their radical experiments in democratic education as well as my own experiences with democratic education at College of the Atlantic, a place that I am profoundly grateful to have been a part.
Do you love Captain Fantastic? Do you NOT love it? Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me about your thoughts on the movie.
Don't forget to visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.
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Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me about your favorite walks in the woods.
Visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.
This story about John Muir can be found in many sources, but my favorite is the one as told by Lee Stetson in his Evening with John Muir one-man stage production that I first saw in Yosemite Valley when I was 12 years old.
Carlos Castaneda, for those who don't know, was a cult-leader who passed off a fictional account of an apprenticeship with a "sorcerer" as fact. Originally published as a master's thesis at UCLA (ha!), The Teachings of Don Juan centered on peyote-induced hallucinations and captured the imaginations of the 1960s counterculture. But I still love this quote. Just goes to show that even charlatans can get it right sometimes … even if just by accident.
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Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me about your conflicted loves.
And, of course, visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.
Root beer is the tastiest thing ever! But like all comforts and pleasures, it comes with a cost. How do we love something that's not good for us or for our planet?
For an account of my adventures brewing my own traditional root beer with foraged ingredients check out this article that wrote for the fantastic Northern Woodlands magazine. And if you want to read more about my early adventures in foraging, check out my old blog, The Foraging Family.
If you're interested in foraging yourself, I highly recommend the incomparable works of Samuel Thayer as a place to get started.
Check out this New York Times Magazine article on the barbaric history of sugar.
Here's a source for John Muir's quote, "Eat bread in the mountains ..."
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Libraries are magical places. In this episode we celebrate the work, time, effort, and love that it takes to keep them magical.
Check out some of my favorite libraries:
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Check out the wild architecture of this place--an enormous glass-encased tower of rare books and manuscripts (including the Voynich Manuscript), housed in an exoskeleton of translucent marble.
The library where I grew up--Southington Public.
The library where I had the best job ever (and where I still go to work and write)--Landmark College Library.
My current library--Putney Public.
And of course the magical library that starts off this episode--the Williston Library at Mount Holyoke College.
Send me a message at [email protected]. Tell me your stories of library love.
Visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love.
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