Bonus: Creature Needs with Lucy Spelman, Susan Tacent, and Christopher Kondrich

A scientific abstract can tell you a species is declining. A story can make you feel what that loss means and why it should change how you live. In this episode Claudia talks to Lucy Spelman, Susan Tacent, and Christopher Kondrich, the co-editors behind Creature Needs, a striking book that juxtaposes conservation science with poems, essays, and fiction written in response. They discuss the book, writing as a means of connection, and the politics of conservation.  

Date Recorded: 29 June 2025

Featured: 

• Creature Conserve
• Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation Edited by Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman and Susan Tacent
• Animals and Sound on The Animal Turn
• Feral Atlas by Anna Tsing 
• What is it like to be a bat? By Thomas Nagel
• The Animal Highlight
• Compassionate Conservation with Daniel Ramp, The Animal Turn

The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and Instagram

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder. 

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Connection As A Starting Point

Susan Tacent 0:00

This is another iROAR podcast. You know what and and how can we feel connected enough to nature, connected enough to each other and to someone who lives in another part of the world who might be in a habitat that's highly, highly pressured by development. How do we help? You know, it's very, very complicated. But the first step is where we've been beginning. We have to understand the threats, we have to feel empathy, and we need to feel connected that we can actually reach out and do something about it. Um and if we feel excluded because we're not in conservation, you know, that's not a we don't want and we don't like how it's done. Those are all very important um factors. But I think as as humans, as animals, our fate as a species is also on the line.

Show Welcome And What’s Ahead

Meet The Three Co-Editors

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:08

2026 is going to be full of wonderful content. We have a season coming up in the mere future focused on animals and history, and another one focused on wild animals. Uh so it's all coming, it's all happening. Uh but for now, thank you for coming back. Thank you for listening to the Animal Turn Podcast. And in today's episode, I'm gonna be joined with three people who are all co-editors of a wonderful book called Creature Needs. We had this conversation last year in 2025, a little while ago now, and it was a lovely conversation. I still remember the conversation very well, and editing it and going through it was a delight. Creature Needs is a beautiful book that outlines what can be done when you bring science and art together in the same frame. Each chapter starts with a scientific abstract, and then an artist or a poet or a writer responds. In this conversation today, we touch on a whole host of different themes and ideas, a lot of them to do with how we know animals, the role of art and writing, and the ways in which we do that knowing and sharing. And we, yeah, we go in a whole bunch of winding pathways as happens on the show, and particularly as happens when we've got three guests. It's a wonderfully generative uh conversation, and I think you're going to enjoy listening to it. Let me tell you a little bit about my guests today. Lucy Spelman is a board-certified zoological veterinarian, senior lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design and executive director and founder of Creature Conserve. We speak a little bit about Creature Conserve in this episode today, and the book is somewhat testament to the work Creature Conserve does. But do yourselves a favor, go to their websites, check it out. It's really inspiring and it's it's beautiful, and I think it's really well done and it's it's worth the visit. In addition to co-editing Creature Needs, Lucy also co-edited The Rhino with Glue on Shoes, and she's the author of the National Geographic Kids Animal Encyclopedia. Susan Tassins is a writer, scholar, and educator from Brooklyn, New York. Her fiction has appeared in Black Murder, Diagram, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Tin House Online, amongst many others. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University and has taught literature and creative writing at Oberlin College, Roger Williams University, Lit Arts RI, and elsewhere. She's the writer in residence for Creature Conserve and co-editor of the book we speak about today. Christopher Conright is also a co-editor of the book, and he is also a poet and a writer. His books include Trade Upon with Copper Canyon Press, as well as Valuing with University George Press. And it's cool because I haven't spoken to many poets, but speaking to Christopher, I was kind of struck at how poetry and philosophy straddle different realms and similar realms at the same time. Christopher currently teaches the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Maryland, as well as Eastern Oregon University's low residency MFA in creative and environmental writing. It was a delight to speak to the three of them. They come with different views. They thought about the book differently, and we all approach this conversation with alternative ideas. I hope you enjoy and let's get to it. It's always fun when we have multiple guests on the show. Christopher, Lucy, and Susan. Welcome. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to talk to you today about your book, which I enjoyed reading very much. It was unexpected and interesting in so many ways. So I'm looking forward to diving into it. But as always, on the show, uh, I like to get to know a little bit about you first before we get to the um the main event. So uh welcome to the show. And perhaps uh we can get started with learning a little bit about you. Uh Susan, why don't we start with you? Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and uh how you came to be interested in animal studies?

Susan Tacent 5:14

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Um what keeps coming to mind is I probably was six or seven years old, and a stray cat had kittens in our backyard, and we were renting, and the landlord said, No cats, no kittens, do not feed these kittens. And I um did not listen and would sneak out at odd times when I knew that the landlord wasn't parking his car and feed the cat and the kittens and pet the kittens and name the cat and the kittens and sneak on narrow ledges and really try not to get caught. I felt like a spy. And we found homes for the kittens, the mama cat. I don't know what happened to her. She remained an outdoor cat. But I was thinking that's in a way, that's where my memory went when I thought about what brought me to this point where we're having this conversation. And I think a short answer is it's a no-brainer. Um, I love animals and I love plants. I like some people, I love some people. Um, and so it's just kind of where my heart and my interests went. That's that's the kind of the long and the short of it. And if it was a friendship with Lucy and then studying with Chris that brought this trio that is now sitting here with you together. Um, and again, it was where my heart and my mind went. It just was comfortable and natural and just kind of perfect.

Susan’s Childhood Animal Origin Story

Claudia Hirtenfelder 6:40

That's such an uplifting like start to the show. I think it's quite interesting how often folks, when I ask them this question, hearken back to childhood memories. A lot of people will say, you know, as a child, I grew up with animals or I loved animals. So it's uh it's there's a strong connection, I think, between that, although I suspect there's a lot of people who are not doing animal studies that also really loved animals as children. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your professional trajectory as well?

Susan Tacent 7:10

Uh, let's see. So, you know, kept going to school until I ran out of grades and uh got a PhD in comparative literature and was writing and continue to write fiction and um opened a school and ran a school for a while where we got to do all sorts of things with animals, which was kind of great, in addition to math and and science and um reading and writing. And so it's it's always been, I guess it's been books, animals, and and teaching that have been my professional trajectory. And as I move along on that and the world moves along on its trajectory, I keep trying to find ways to use all three of those things, the reading and writing and the love of animals, and the interest in how the science affects um what I care about and what I live with, and to find as many people. I'm I there's nothing better than, well, feeding cats and feeding pigeons and feeding squirrels is pretty good. But talking to like-minded people or people who are interested in learning with me is is an incredible experience that that I just hope I can keep having more of on a professional level, on a personal level, on the community level.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 8:26

Great. And and you said you studied with Lucy. Uh Lucy, why don't you tell us a bit about uh you and how you came to be here?

Books Teaching And Animal Studies

Lucy’s Path From Vet To Nonprofit

Lucy Spelman 8:32

Nice to meet you, Claudia. Uh I am um I'm a scientist, so I'm a scientist in this uh room of creatives. Um and uh honestly, science is a creative discipline. You know, we we um we're really doing the same thing in our fields, and and maybe we'll end up talking about that. But anyway, I'm trained as a biologist and then as a Zoom wildlife, Zoom Wildlife Veterinarian. And um, you know, I got to a point in my career, I mean, I've worked with all kinds of amazing creatures and people and in and places, but I felt as though there just still weren't enough of us involved. And yet there are so many people involved, but not maybe not um with jobs called, you know, wildlife conservation. And so I was really wanting to explore how can I share what I know and what I've done and what I, you know, what I where I have skill and talent with others and and find others who can complement that that understanding, you know, of how humans are impacting nature and what, you know, that we're all animals too, and how we all need the same thing. Uh so I I got to a point where I really wanted to uh yeah, work more broadly. And so that let this sort of went from being a clinical vet to a zoo director to a mountain gorilla vet to deciding to teach science to non-majors uh here in the US and um at Brown University for the first year. And then I was invited to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. And uh and after teaching a semester of science, biology to uh art design and architecture students, I realized that uh there was a whole world that I had not explored that maybe I had touched upon in my work, you know, maybe doing exhibit design, or uh I had also previously co-edited a book of stories. So you know, art and science coming together seemed to me to be this whole area that wasn't necessarily new, but also wasn't called out as, hey, let's do more of this. So this is this is 20 um 11 or 12, quite a while ago. And so my students and all the animals that I've taken care of over the years, you know, have basically taught me that um, you know, the the broader perspective it allows more people to come in and to more voices to come in. And I think that is what it's gonna take to change the way we treat each other as well as the creatures on the planet. And I met, I've known Susan for many years, and I started Creature Conserve, which is a nonprofit. We bring artists, scientists, writers, creatives of all kinds together. Um, and we're really growing a community where we we have programming that allows folks to, yeah, learn about threats to wildlife, share empathy, find solutions. Um and it's largely grown out of the fact that most scientists, and I would be an example, have sort of a place of work, a place where they go, or they have subjects they're studying, or a particular problem they're trying to solve, and they have a job for that. And yet, how do we bring creatives in? How do we create opportunities for artists, writers to be there with us? And so I started a nonprofit and raising funds to facilitate that kind of collaboration. And I started with visual artists because, as I just mentioned, I started teaching at a visual arts school. And a few years in, Susan was like, well, what about writers? So uh we, you know, we did our first workshop together. That's how I met Christopher and uh it's Christopher and Susan who had the idea for the book, and I'll let them say more about that. But I feel you know very fortunate. I'm always learning, learning from not just the artists who I work with, but you know, from everybody out there who cares about animals and is is actually working to help help them. It's just not necessarily something that everyone knows about. I think that's the idea of the book and of the work a creature conserve is to you know create a community of all of us and help us connect. We're like-minded, we care, we have different backgrounds, different disciplines. But when you combine them all, that this is how we reach each other.

Creature Conserve And Collaboration

Claudia Hirtenfelder 13:00

Yeah, I think those types of collaborative efforts are not only interesting, but I think uh something you pointed to there, it's institutionally significant too. Because I, you know, any of us that have been in academic circles know that there is a certain flow that money goes towards. And um science is respected and valued in a way that the arts are not as respected and valued in higher education institutions. Um, I mean, design is a is an interesting, it's an interesting place, I think, where it perhaps is valued a bit more. But um, you know, these it's also about creating infrastructure and creating space. And and I think organizations like yours do that not only conceptually, but materially as well. And that's really, really important. Uh, the number of people who I meet who are, yeah, they they they just don't have access to the funds or the time to get their ideas off the ground. And they're good ideas. They're good ideas that would communicate science in a much more interesting, accessible way. Uh, and instead of asking scientists to become everything, right? Like this is another failure of academic institutions at the moment where you're a researcher, you need to be a researcher, communicator, uh, social media experts. You have to wear all of these hats and you end up burnt out. And I think the answer is right in front of us, like you suggest, it's more collaboration, it's more cross-pollination. Um, and and I think you achieve that quite well in in the book. Uh, and yeah, when you when you speak about different mediums that open up your mind, I mean, writing I think is is beautiful, uh, but I did a season and sound that I'd never thought about. And then you start to think in these different mediums, and it really like bends your brain a little bit. Now, Christopher, you're a poet, right?

Christopher On Poetry Climate Ethics

Christopher Kondrich 14:49

I am, yeah. I am the the poet of of the the group. And um, yeah, I I speaking about sort of um collective action and and working collectively, I I didn't realize that this was something that I needed both professionally and personally until I met Susan and then and then Lucy through Susan and um working with Creature Conserve and on this project, this book in particular, has been such a joy. Um, yeah, that um it has opened up new ways of for me to think about um how writing can connect us. Um and you know, some thinking about connecting scientists and artists and writers were surely not something that I really thought about, you know, many years ago before I met the two of them, you know, because uh writing, poetry, you know, these are very solitary acts. Um and yeah, so um when I met Susan, she I I remember she took a creative writing class uh of mine many years ago. Um, you know, in my own work, um, I was already interested in writing about the social and political drivers of climate change um and uh the failures to adequately address it here in the US. Um, that was a big part of what I was writing about in poems. And, you know, I think on some level, of course, I understood that the ethics of failing uh to address climate change must include animals. They they, you know, much like um the least wealthy countries are are bearing the brunt of the the you know the biggest impacts of the all the emissions that the the wealthiest countries are are producing, you know, it's it's I think it's important to bear in mind that you know animals, you know, they don't have rights. And so there's an ethical component to it too that's been always been deeply meaningful to me as um a writer and community member, but just also as a citizen and and a citizen who you know deeply wants to be deeply engaged. And so yeah, I think that you know my my work as a poet was was very much centered around these um environmental issues, the political issues revive uh revolving climate change, and you know, meeting Lucy and and Susan, you know, uh absolutely sort of fed on, you know, of course, that the that inclination and affinity towards animals that I think we all have growing up. You know, I too have childhood stories like Susan does. Um but I you know I never saw animals as being a part of that. And then I and then I started to, and it became just as deeply important to me as anything else that I would be writing about and working on. And yeah, so I I I I I was just so happy and thrilled to become a part of the Creature Conserve community, so grateful to Lucy that she established this community, and so grateful, just not just because the book came out of it, but just as sort of an outlet for what I didn't realize that I needed, which was um just sort of um an outlet for this desire to to work collectively towards the kinds of things that I care deeply about, right? It's it's it's very frustrating to work on on your own and to feel like your creative work is is doing any good in the world. We we are so disconnected um you know to one another. You know, as writers, we sit, you know, uh by ourselves at our desks and we you know we live in this digital world in which it is very deep, it's it's very hard to see all the impacts of of individual actions, which is why I think collective actions are so um are so needed.

Why Creature Needs Looks This Way

Claudia Hirtenfelder 19:03

And and I think particularly when you start to do work related to animals, while animals seem important, and again, this depends on the discipline and the space you're working, and this is an area where I think natural scientists and biologists, in fact, tend to be better than social scientists and creatives. They often work in teams when they're considering and looking at animals. They'll do field explorations together uh in groups. Um, I was fortunate enough to do my PhD in geography, and I was doing social geography, but there were a lot of uh, you know, physical and natural geographers. And they they would go to the field together, you know, and there's nothing like spending six weeks in the field together to really get to know one another and understand what to understand what a collaborative effort is. Yet I didn't see that surprisingly with the social scientists, with the the folks in the humanities and the social sciences often tended to be alone, isolated in in their offices. And I think we craved um this kind of connection as well. But let's talk about the book now. Uh Creature Needs. Uh, I really loved the layout of the book. I thought it was obvious that a lot of thought and attention went into thinking not only about the substance, the content that is in the book, but its layout. So it's called Creature Needs, and you've got it's broken up into these kinds of basic sections called, you know, you've started out with your introduction where the three of you give it the lay of the land, what you think the contribution is, and then you go through these themes air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. And each of the chapters is in essence an academic or scientific abstract, followed by a creative writing uh where a creative has taken some form, something from that abstract and then run with it in a variety of different ways. So walk me through the logic of the book, why this layout, why this breakdown, what was the what was the thinking here?

The Six Needs Framework Explained

Susan Tacent 21:06

Claudia, I love your run with it as a sort of a I think that should be a technical term. A pedagogical technical term, run with it. So thank you for the the kind words. The actual feel of the book is University of Minnesota Press is amazing, um, editors and uh whoever they've got behind the scenes putting books together, and our artist, our creature conserve artist Franco Zacca, and um the cover art by Lisa Ericsson. So it looks the way it does and it feels the way it does because of the press uh it working with us. But we realized after we conceived the book that it needed to be structured somehow, and what how should we start to do that? And how should we um what what is it gonna be called? And you know, after coming up with sort of more academic longer phrases, we realized, well, I'm always asking Lucy, what are those six needs again that all living creatures need, no matter who what they are, species, political, um bent, um how, you know, who they are. Um and it was air food, water shelter, room to move and each other. And I could never rattle that off and I could never remember it. And I kept asking Lucy, and I do have the original pink sticky note with the six things on it, because eventually it was ridiculous to keep texting her in the middle of the day and could you please remind me? And she would rattle them off and I couldn't kind of keep up with that. So I had we have it. It's our it's in our archives now. Um the little um sticky note that and then so you know I said to Chris what about those six needs and Chris did the thing that he does so well which is he chewed on it in his amazing brain for a moment and then it's like yes let's do that. And it was it was perfect. It was straightforward it was real and it was an easy ask when we were writing to writers and poets to pick a top pick a top you want air do you want shelter do you want room to move?

Lucy Spelman 23:10

And you know people it resonated immediately with people as and then they would get a so that's how the it's its skeletal existence came to be and Lucy what are these are these like official needs or are these these like you know where where do these six things come from yes that's a great question because it uh you know it's it's nothing's really new right so I'm not with those categories I'm not saying anything new but I I came up with them because you know what connects us to other creatures right is that we all need the same thing. So it's really a way of s of thinking about well why does our biology why does the fact that you know I'm a mammal and your dog, my dog is a mammal like what what is it that we need that's similar or different and how how do we kind of break that down and if you're talking about a bird or an insect you know where's the common ground there? And so it really came out of that. So we all need to breathe you know so we all need clean air we all need to eat. And it the second piece of that is it comes from my work in conservation where the conflict over resources, right? Or the humans are in charge of the resources and we have a lot of conflict with each other about them. And then the animals are also sort of caught up in that so how do we think about if we want to let's say solve these big problems instead of saying well the mountain gorillas need habitat what if we think about well all of the people in Rwanda need a place to live and the gorillas need a place to live so we think about there's a shared need for shelter for food for water. So it's kind of a way of connecting our needs with animal needs and recognizing that we may control access to those needs but we still need them to be healthy. We still need the same healthy forest that the gorillas need. So that's the origin of it and um you know I think in the book and we had a fabulous editor as well at the press who you know we kind of wanted to I write a little science around what is air, right? But then we want it to be like yeah but what is air? Air is so many things to all of us. And I think that's so the categories are meant to just be a starting point and um maybe just to say you know this these are some ways that we break down the problems that we face in wildlife conservation that that also connect those problems to the problems that humans face. So that was really the idea and I think with Susan um you know I use those categories in my teaching and I use them in our first workshop that we taught at Creature Conservative and I think Susan um you know really saw a nugget there and then as did Chris and Chris should take it from here because Chris is the one who really under figured out how to organize the book this way.

Simple Headings With Hidden Complexity

Christopher Kondrich 26:08

Yeah I just want to highlight something that that Lucy was talking about before I I I say say a little bit more about the structure and that and that is that I really, you know, the the the the structure of the book is intended to provide these windows into how we talk about a multifaceted and seemingly daunting task of conservation work. That it's not about we need to save a species that's endangered and take it one endangered species at a time, right? It's more like if we think about it in these and we take a step back and think about it in these categories that the conservation work might actually the solutions to these problems might actually be more effective right if we think about think about them in these categories that all species need. So I I really love that that you mentioned that Lucy but I also want to highlight that you know these these six needs air food water shelter each other room to move right they're seemingly simple right they they provide these these entry these these pathways into the the book for readers right they remind us that we're animals that we all need that every species need the same thing so on and so forth but they're the actual the simplicity of it belies the complexity within each section right that that it's it's not just when we think about shelter that it's not just we need to think about every species having a habitat to live right that that there are these insidious seemingly unseen systemic ways in which shelter in a myriad different conceptions is being impacted by anthropocentric dominance the within each section right because each of these scientific articles is is sort of engaging with the concept of shelter or the concept of of each other in a variety of different ways it's revealing the um the various ways um species are being impacted within that category that's that's shelter and just having you know the availability of food right it it's it's much more complex than that and that we need to keep that in mind in order to have the kind of nuanced understanding of the problems so that we can arrive at um effective solutions right that the solutions that meet that nuance solutions that that that meet um you know all of the ways that um human cru cruelty is is is permeating um non-human uh non-human lives yeah I hear you I mean because it's it would be easy to kind of say well food how do you eat this right like to just get sustenance to think about food as calories kind of but for any of us food is so much more than just calories right it's culture it's living it's breathing it's connection and same thing with where you choose to live or um you you know you mentioned air people would be like how could how could you be complex with air air is massively political and economic it's not just the the act of it moving through your body right so it's I think I mean I definitely hear you in terms of the the the complexity would be easy to just kind of think about it in a kind of sterilized way of saying food sustenance air breathing but it often misses I think the cultural components of that and very frequently the cultural components that animals have in connection with that right the ways in which animals connect even of the same species to things like food and shelter varies considerably depending on where you are and the different ecological connections that those animals in that location have made. Yeah and I and I just want to say that right these the these these sections these categories that we're talking about right you know readers will be surprised by the ways in which you know that food or water are being impacted by what humans are doing right and that pollution isn't just waste or hazardous waste or something like that. That pollution comes in a variety of different forms and it it doesn't just take up space right it it impacts the lives of ocean creatures um uniquely right if we're talking about the kinds of um noise pollution let's say right so I I yeah I mean I think that the that the book is trying to expand and add nuance to the the our our conceptions of of pollution um and and access to these resources and the ways in which humans are have control over and are dominating these resources to the detriment of other species.

Lucy Spelman 31:11

I I I wanted to just uh go back to the when I first introduced the you know the work of creature conserve and the book and um you know the idea of because you guys are just speaking of all the connections and all the different ways all of that all of these um big categories connect that that is precisely why we need that collaborative open many voices multidisciplinary approach because no single person in particular scientists can have that broad view of of what their work uh means applies we need all those perspectives for it to mean something in our culture right and so that is uh the idea of uh of creature needs and our collaboration the three of us and uh and the nonprofit work is to say all of these perspectives we we we we require all of that to begin to understand our impact on each other and on the creatures but then in particular the arts because they tap into our emotions because they tap into our subconscious they can direct more of us uh our attention to what's happening and what we can do about it and I think that's really the key of this work is while that art this writing may be informed by the science and you mentioned the science articles the the app the um excerpt from the actual journal of our article sits there. Some of these works may seem like or may be informed by the science but others are inspired by by it or prompted by it or um imagined by it. And it's and it's all of those things I think that uh we get really excited when we when we um when we think about the potentials of doing so much more of this work because it it allows everybody in.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 33:18

And it also creates I think like Christopher was saying that kind of conceptual space that's necessary to really understand the nuance right and and I think in many of the the articles so the excerpts that stand there and it's a theme that comes up often on the podcast kind of how to navigate this tension between speaking about large groups species, what species need, but also taking really seriously how this impacts individuals or small groups in very specific locales. And it's something that's really hard to do it's it's hard it's hard to do and to take both of these things seriously at the same time and it's I mean it's one of my key concerns with conservation. I've I've mentioned this I think a couple of times on on the show and we'll we'll get into that.

Susan Tacent 34:03

But before we do Susan I saw your your hand up um before we move on we move on yeah just to to what you just said that's why I think of the book as a map um it has a very for me and has always had that sort of feeling that it's a map of you know if we if we mapped out all the creatures we'd still have a map right that and you could see proximity you could see distance you could see shared space. What I was going to say about the six basic needs is that um from a point of view of an editorial uh from a project point of view it was an it was fun to say which category would you like you get to pick one is sort of like which chocolate do you want here the you know the six types of of candy you get to pick from and it really resonated with people. It was you know as for the creative the poets and the writers it's like oh I get to pick which one do I care about. And so it they immediately entered into a process of um trying to understand their own what they what we were you know what each writer was bringing to it because it immediately then becomes reflective and reflexive right and and so that was just a great it worked.

Are The Needs Equal?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 35:12

I have to say I love when you say a map it makes me I'm sure you've seen it Annette Singh's website where she also she tries to like disrupt so she also brings together kind of uh the the natural sciences and and art in really interesting ways and she's got an awesome website where it all just moves around. It's a bit chaotic it's not as um I think neatly structured as as your themes here are um and at the same time these needs make me think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know I think about them uh and then that it is a very kind of simple story. There is also something to be said about a simple story. He he kind of put forward a simple narrative and I think a lot of people pick up on it and have used it time and again. So I think the last kind of question I want to think about or dwell on with these categories is are they all fundamental? When you thought about them are they kind of equally weighted or did you either before starting the book or in the process of writing the book kind of get a sense that there is a a hierarchy of needs. Are all these needs equal or are some of them more fundamental than others?

Lucy Spelman 36:21

I'll start uh and then see how Christopher and Susan want to add I I'd say no because my lens is about the animals and I don't think they have a choice in putting one above the other right and secondly they're all connected uh you know the water isn't healthy if the air over it isn't healthy. So I think we I think as you get into the book you realize that many of these pieces could be in another section of the book. So I think they're meant to be yeah not not exclusive and not not ordered really and not uh not one more than the other.

Susan Tacent 37:02

And and in a way that's the book's magic secret, right? Or one of them, one of many, because it's not it's a magic trick. You know I guess you could be a reader and you could read it in any order. You can read all the science first you could read one category first you can read it back to front front to back you know you can do anything you want with it and it won't hurt the map it won't take you know you can take you can pick your destination from your starting point. But I think the secret that you will discover at some point in the interaction with the book um is that it's all it's all it's the same. It's all it's all of it. It's not you can't put borders in categories because they're all connected and they're all interconnected and you just start to realize how complex it a system we are as a human animal, how complex a system it is as a grasshopper that I saved this morning in um my hair salon where there was a um all of a sudden all these extremely competent extremely experienced women were very upset that there was um a grasshopper walking around on the floor and it was about two or three inches and I by the time I left it was thank goodness you were here to me because I said I need a cup and a piece of paper please and I, you know, the grasshopper and I negotiated the cup, got the grasshopper outside into the lawn and they were I thank goodness I was there because I don't know what they would have done, but you know their panic and their absolute inability to to tolerate and these are women who've gone through marriages and kids and things and businesses and this grasshopper all that grasshopper wanted was you know I was making jokes like I think the grasshopper wanted to be um have purple hair or something you know I couldn't you know so they laughed and everything but I said think for a minute how that grasshopper feels like it that what do you look like you know so I think the book is poised right from its inception you know um to do that to make people sort of see all of those needs and and to see in a way they're necessary and yet arbitrary in terms of they could have been in a different order they could have been um presented differently that we didn't necessarily have to you know we could have done it geographically right these are the New England creatures these are the southwestern creatures um that never even occurred to us honestly but but I think the book has it has that secret code to it you know it's the Easter egg that it that you will find eventually when you realize like I need all these things and so does everybody else.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 39:51

I guess the one critique I had of the book and uh it's a book I really enjoyed um again the layout and the creativity and this is and it's it's perhaps an unfair critique I'll say that ahead of time and because I tend to privilege animals all the time I did feel as though many of the stories because they are so well poised to do that imaginative work to think about what is the experience of the grasshopper. And I I did wonder did you did you feel in your connections with the artists that they struggled to actually position the animals perspectives or the animals because it did seem weighted in my opinion that actually the human interactions with the animals was what was privileged. How how do I as a human respond to the loss of the animals or how do I as a human respond to the presence of the animals in my space or um what is the emotional impact for human society for the loss of these animals. And it was done in a beautiful way that does touch onto these emotive elements and there were some really I think brilliant examples that dove into kind of um trying to see or reaching for an understanding of how animals might experience these shifts in access to water air my favorite I think was probably the one with the frogs I think Exodus where where I think that really touched on the complexity of what it means to share a risky environment and what would it mean to actually give up your space for the needs of the frogs and gave me goosebumps see that's what writing can do. But yeah I think that was my my one critique is sometimes I felt that even though this was focused on creatures needs that animals sometimes did become invisible in the stories.

Susan Tacent 41:39

Yeah I I had the same goosebumps by the way so they made it all the way across to to this room um the exact same that's Ben Goldfarb's piece and it's yes and he goes through time. All I want to say is that besides the goosebumps is that this is that's a very interesting um observation. I want to hear what Chris was thinking about that because I saw you nodding Chris um we but I would what I will say as preface to um thinking about that really really interesting observation is we debated about giving any kind of instruction as we would if we were teaching a workshop with people who hadn't come up with this process and who weren't as far along in their writing careers and their experience with writing. And we decided you know let's just give them page limits and word limits and give them the piece and let them go because you know and and pretty much everybody said yes when we asked would they write and some some extremely experienced and and wonderful writers came back said I hope this is okay you know this is what I did as though you know they were handing out a paper in a college class and all right it was it was remarkable to see that. But um so we gave them no instructions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 42:55

And I think that open-endedness shows in the work even in terms of the layout like some people play with how their sentences are laid out or the the shortness or the length of their sentences or some are doing short poems where they take up a page others are doing long narrative essays that really build in and build develop a character right so it was obvious to me that you left things open and I think that's what creativity is. Creativity is creating possibilities for openings right um and and it was it was interesting right it meant you could read a chapter and then the next chapter could be something completely different, which was great.

How Close Can We Get To Animals?

Christopher Kondrich 43:31

I I think that I just want to highlight the fact that I think that there are many different ways that a poem or story can highlight or center animal perspectives and decenter the human perspective from pieces that are in this book. What comes to mind immediately is the way that the poem by Allenisaciliano Um the way that her poem um through the this the sonics of the language of the poem mimic the swishing grasses as uh um foxes go through it, as if foxes go through it, that comes to mind. I'm thinking about the way the Sean Hill poem, um, American Pika is formatted so that it evokes the uh burrow or den of a pika. So I think that there are ways in which the these these pieces are tr are are trying to do something that I think is deeply impossible. And that is to see through the eyes of another species or see through the eyes of an animal that is looking back at us, right? We will never know what it is like to look back through other eyes. Um, but it is the work of it is the the work of a creative of a poem or a story to attempt that impossibility, try to bridge that, and to uh communicate or evoke that attempt to bridge to the various meaning-making ways that a poem or a story um communicates to to readers, you know, through form, through sound, through image, through metaphor. Yeah, so I think I would high like to highlight that. I think that that it's important to keep that in mind. But it, you know, at the same time, it is that you know, that impossibility of being able to experience the world as though another species experiences it is an impossibility that I think the imaginative work of a poem or story is uniquely capable of doing. And I think that to a certain extent, there will never be enough decentering of the human or centering of a particular animal species in a collection like this, that it will always feel as though the humans are too much at the center when it should be more about the animals because uh because underneath all of the work that these pieces are doing is that impossibility, right? And we're confronted with that impossibility of completely decentering and and centering the animal as we're confronted with that as readers, I think.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 46:27

I I wonder if you're not overstating it, this kind of impossibility. You know, like I think we could say it's impossible to, I mean, it's impossible to fully know another being's reality. Sometimes it's impossible to know my own views, right? Like who was I yesterday or 10 years ago? Like that seems perhaps like an impossibility. But I think there are perhaps ways to be more or less informed or have closer approximations to, right? Because it would be to me, it would almost be the equivalent of a man saying, Well, it's impossible to know a woman, right? Whatever those categories mean. Um, and and and it makes me think of like Nagel's what it's what it's like to be a bat, right? Where he ends up saying, Well, it's impossible, so you know, he just throws everything out. Uh if it's impossible, why even try? And I know that that's not what you're you're saying. Um, because I think that in this act of writing, uh, which is what you're kind of getting at, I correct me if I'm wrong, that there is something powerful in the act of trying to understand. And and that uh, and and I I just wouldn't go as far as saying that it's impossible. I think that that is the work of understanding. And and I think that if we're honest with ourselves and how we know ourselves and others, it's always an approximation. I wouldn't go so far as calling it impossibility, but maybe I'm just being pedantic.

Christopher Kondrich 47:50

Well, and I and I think that you know the science is helping us to get a little bit closer um to see the ways in which the lived experiences of other species are changing or are yeah. I mean, I I guess what I'm saying is, you know, the Western that the science as we know it, right, uh as as is presented in this book, is one additional way of knowing or means of understanding and helping us to make that imaginative leap. Um yeah.

Why Conservation And Why The US

Lucy Spelman 48:26

So to going back to the structure of the book on this topic, you know, we there's so much science out there, right? There's so much. And we have animals are going away, you know, rate of extinction is you know a thousand, ten thousand times they're going away because of us. And we what we're doing is not working. So studying them from a scientific standpoint and understanding everything about them is not helping them. You know, it is in a one level, but what will make a difference is when just it's part of our, you know, our culture and our society to think about how are the other animals? How are they doing? And I think that's that's really the larger question here, not so much what is it like to be a fox, but where are the foxes and does the fox ever come into your brain? You know, I think we're trying to reach more broadly, and as you were just talking about, um that not being able to know or or on the edge of that's impossible to know, that's also piques our curiosity, right? So I think another thing the book is doing is making us curious why why did that author go that way with that? You know, so I think I understand your beginning question to us, and the critique is totally solid. And maybe it's the title of the book, because we we are not writing about the creature and its needs. You know, we are we asked writers to respond to how they would integrate their sense or understanding or inspiration of what a creature needs, and it's different, but that's what I think we don't have enough of in the world, because there are many of us who've dedicated and will continue. I think animals all day, but I'm I'm not normal. Like it it we are humans and humans dominate. So I think that part of what the book is doing and what the work of Creature Conserve is doing is trying to create, yeah, more understanding, as you guys were just saying. And the second point I wanted to make is that um there I think we all have a tendency tell me how I can help that creature. Tell me how what I should be doing, because I don't know what to be doing. And it's very hard because to take action is something is personal. And so uh a lot of another sort of goal that we have is to just yeah, call attention, help people engage, have that understanding, find that sense of compassion. And it takes all those understanding, compassion, and then add into that your cultural traditions, your religion, whatever, all the other things, there's your context, your background. And from that will come an action. And that's not something that can be scripted. And if it comes, if it is scripted, it's you know, join this effort to save this species. And that's the only way we have saved species, and we have. We've done an amazing amount of work, but we're not going to stop this rapid loss of biodiversity unless much, many, many more of us are involved. So I think it's trying to open that door and just start that level of connection. And I think our writers, in many ways, are great examples of people who care deeply about nature and the environment, but maybe they've never thought about a frog until we, until they got that paper. And that's, I think, the fun thing is there's so much there to discover and um and and our and build on our curiosity, which fundamentally is a positive, uh, even if maybe for that given species, we'd actually don't have a good solution.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 52:02

Yeah, and I mean we've I've got a sister podcast to the animal turn called the Animal Highlight. And I work together with fellows um on creating scripts. And my one goal of the script is you have to send to the animals. And it's it's hard. It's really, really hard to not kind of get swept up in just listing biological, interesting facts, and to also not get swept up in just speaking about humans' views of these animals. And I think this is why the the medium you've chosen here, writing and poetry, really is because there's something in the method, in the action of trying to open it, we have to figure it out. I think, like you say, we've for so long centered humans that we really haven't developed the tools yet, even cognitive tools, the the speech tools with which to do this kind of work. Uh, and I think it's hard work. I think writing is underestimated as being kind of easy, and it's it's hard to be this kind of creative with with writing.

Susan Tacent 53:00

I love this this conversation where you where your question or your critique um brought us because it reminds me of when we first talked to um Minnesota Press, we didn't know what that first conversation was gonna be like, and we were, you know, appropriately nervous about it. And we just sat there and heard them tell us what they understood of the book and the project. And so we learned about the book. And your question, your critique is helping me learn about the book again and look at it in a different light. So I'm grateful for that. I was also gonna say that Talia Field's jump scare piece does um give the story from the side blotch lizard point of view, and it's devastating. Absolutely devastating and appropriately so. Every time I read it, I feel like she's punched me in the face. Um, and it hurts. It physically hurts.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 53:52

This was the one with the um the soil of farms, right?

Susan Tacent 53:55

Yes. Yes, yes. And yes, yes. And um the other thing I was going to say in terms of the critique, um Annie Hartnett's piece, Everything Is Wonderful, which is the polar bears. Um, it's a hard topic, right, to write about. It's um painful to think about. She um did such a beautiful job of having creating a couple, an older couple where the wife always cuts out the articles that are sad in the newspapers. And of course, eventually there's gonna be a polar bear article or and it's connected to their daughter and the the daughter's work. And it's it's a sad story that she protects him from. And so it's almost like a meta moment. Like this is your experience of reading the book. This book is not gonna cut those sections out for you. Um, and I read that book with uh an assisted living group that I run, and I read that story, and I had two responses to it. The first was Alice, who's 99 years old, and she said, that's what love is. You protect your loved one from the sad stories at all costs if they need protection, and that's pure love. And she thought it was a brilliant story. And Marianne, who's had three husbands and two strokes, said, if that husband doesn't, and I'm quoting her now, grow a pair, she should divorce him. And so they they each had one was do not protect your anybody from the sad stories and the important stories because that's not helping anything. And the other was, yes, protect your loved ones. And I think the book sort of, you know, um orbits around those questions as well. Do you really want to read this? Do you want to see this as something you can stand learning about? And um I actually wrote to Annie Hartnett and said I told her those two stories, and she said, they're both right.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 55:43

Yeah, and it speaks to the complex. I mean, I remember it was beautiful because we do. We want to shy away from the horrible stories, we want to protect those around us. Um, and I mean, I think the beautiful thing with some of those stories is they don't give you neat endings. Like it's not trying to give you an answer, it's trying to give you a um an opening to think about. Um, and so something that we haven't really gotten to just yet is kind of the focus which was on conservation and conservation in the US. You had a specific geographical focus and you had a specific kind of conceptual focus on conservation. Um why why conservation? Why the focus on on conservation?

Conservation Ethics Harm And Funding

Lucy Spelman 56:25

You know, the book grew out of the work of Creature Conserve, and we we briefly spoke about that. It's a nonprofit, it's global, it's for anybody, and it's it's to say, you know, we we need to we need to create space for to bring art and science together to diversify the voices involved in conservation because what we've been doing is working, and we have this rapid loss of species, and the success of humans on this earth depends on all of the biodiversity that we have on this earth. And I think that's and that's a perspective that I bring, and the the perspective that I brought, the reason I founded the nonprofit was that you know we we need the arts to um, as I said earlier, informed, inspired, prompted by that understanding, that that fact that we have this loss of biodiversity. We need the arts to get us to pay attention to the fact that we we also have a chance to solve it. So I see um there's so much we can do from tiny things to big things. And I think when we talked about the book, we felt the audience, we were American, we thought the audience would be an American audience, and we should look at species within the United States that were in trouble that maybe people haven't heard about. Um we have a lot of amazing creatures, some of which are really, really endangered. And I tried to pick articles for the book that were largely um highlighting endangered species that where there's actually a lot of active science. I also wanted to pick creatures that that um from all different groups, animal groupings. And so that that really, and then as we also um touched upon, there's so much science. I mean, it's and it's all open source, the boat the science we use for the book is open source. So I think we and we have a reader's guide, and if we're gonna get to talk about that, but we did a reader's guide for the book. And one of the elements is how do you even get through a science article? How do you even navigate if you're not a scientist? How do you get into this information? And I think, I think people hear the word conservation and they think science, but conservation itself is a problem-solving thing. It's a we're solving a problem and it's only part science. The science tends to be the piece that says, here's how many lizards there are, here's what the habitat is like, here's the state of this, and here's maybe a pathway, what we could monitor going forward. But the actual doing of the conservation is not a science.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 59:03

Yeah, it's it's I mentioned earlier that I've I've had some critiques of conservation. One of my kind of concerns that often comes up with conservation is that in many ways, I think the the doing of conservation. A lot of conservation also involves a harm, um, which I think a lot of people going into or hearing about conservation outside of it don't know, uh is you know, to to save a species or a particular set of um genetic markers or whatever it is, often entails killing a lot of animals. Um and I spoke to Daniel Ramp on the show not not too long ago about compassionate conservation, and he said something very similar to you in that, you know, there is a need to kind of find the compassion and conservation to make these connections that it's not just about a biodiversity marker or a uh a genetic marker. It's about so much more than counting numbers, right? And I think we we started touching on that a little bit when we were talking about like culture and and how art helps us to see some of those cultural connections.

Lucy Spelman 1:00:07

You know, I think what you're also going, where you're also going with this is what do we even mean by conservation, right? It's a loaded term. But it in the end, it's some if it's an action. And who's doing that action? And if for me, if I have a monarch butterfly out of my milkweed in my yard, I planted the milkweed for the butterfly. That's a conservation action. So I think we also don't call all the all the things we all do on a daily basis. I don't think those get credit. And and yet uh Yeah, I don't mean to diminish the coordinated efforts and the and all the work that does go on, but I think you're you're it doesn't make sense to save a species if this if society doesn't uh value that species. And does and we can't value things that we don't know. And we are urban, we're increasingly urban, and most of us don't see nature. We don't want to be dirty. And I've worked in many, many rural parts of the world, and the people who are there in these beautiful forests or beautiful rivers, amazing habitat, and they're uh they're supportive of an effort to maintain this area because it's their homeland. But if they could, they would move to a city. You know, so humans want, we want to have lives that are more and more progressive. And we, I think our challenge is how is nature surviving with us? What does that look like? And I think it's a both and, right? It's it's saving the black-footed ferret and all that that has entailed, all that money after all these years, and it's it's planting for pollinators. And and and I think the book is acknowledging we again, we all have a role to play, and it's not simple.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:02:09

No, uh and it's deeply political and geographical, and um, and yeah, it's easy to be critical. It's easy to sit and point fingers and and say, you know, from my armchair to say, like people that have dedicated their lives to conserving a species being like, oh, but it involves some killing. Like that's that's uh that's a I mean, I think it's an important critique, but it's perhaps also a critique that's leveled too easily. Um I mean, I I I guess my main critique is just how often killing ends up serving a role in conservation efforts. But to your point, there's a lot more to conservation than these large-scale um programs and projects that we tend to hear about. Uh and and maybe there's purchase and reframing and started to think about conservation in these more complex ways.

Stories That Move People To Act

Lucy Spelman 1:02:58

A lot of the money that our that our humans put into nature protection, species protection is from hunting and fishing tax, uh, right? So when we we have uh we we that's the food piece, right? So we uh we have to make taking care of nature work financially. And that could be uh yeah, feeding ourselves, feeding others. So it's it's complicated. And um I think and I think that integrating what needs to be done in a given place for a given problem that helps a given community, uh I think this is where we in the conservation world, you know, working from the bottom up, understanding everybody, all the, you know, all the stakeholders and what is needed, finding, building a solution and implementing it. I think we all know that's the way we want to do it. But sometimes it comes down from, you know, above, if you will, or here's the money. We're gonna put, we have money to purchase this land, or we want to help this animal. And until we are more of societies involved on a daily basis, those those uh approaches will be necessary, right? So I think we have to find uh a way where more of us are involved and are willing to pay, because this is a fundamental question. Who pays for conservation? Who's going to pay to take care of a, say, a rhino that you've never seen? You know what, and and how can we feel connected enough to nature, connected enough to each other and to someone who lives in another part of the world who might be in a habitat that's highly, highly pressured by development? How do we help? You know, it's very, very complicated. But the first step is where we've been beginning. We have to understand the threats, we have to feel empathy, and we need to feel connected that we can actually reach out and do something about it. Um and if we feel excluded because we're not in conservation, you know, that's not a we don't want and we don't like how it's done. Yeah, those are all very important um factors. But I think as as humans, as animals, our fate as a species is also on the line. We are not going, and we are not, we are suffering. You know, we we are we are harming uh more than just the uh the non-human world.

Susan Tacent 1:05:25

Yeah, as you were speaking, I kept thinking about those bridges that we put over highways and those tunnels that we put under highways and how many lives we save and how wonderful it is if you put a camera there and you find out who's crossing. Um it's so wonderful. And I was thinking, if only we would just do that everywhere, I personally would be happier. Um because the roadkill problem, it's obviously there are a lot of other problems. But what I was thinking about was um I think that there's power in the poems, right? In the poetry, in the sounds, and the language, in the imagery, in the shape of the Words on the page and the way the words sit next to each other, the white space. And I think there's even a different kind of power in story. And I think that we're narrative creatures. And as soon as we can put, like, if I can write a story about that rhino, I can make a lot of people actually care, and maybe some of them even cry. And that will change them. You know, instead of cutting out the article that's disturbing, you have to read it and you don't know right away. There's a lot of stories like Hester Kaplan's brackish. We don't know how that dolphin's going to get in there right away. We just know that we're in bed with a woman who's got menopausal symptoms and her husband is the narrator, and he's trying to hang in there with her, even though she kind of doesn't need him at that point. Um, he's trying to be sympathetic and empathetic. And the dolphin doesn't come in to break your heart until later, and it's connected to his mother and her death and the dolphin's death. So if we can get at this, if we can tell the stories somehow and include the more than human characters who also participate in these stories as best we can. Um, maybe acknowledging what we don't know and we can't know. We can get right to the heart, right to to move people. And that's when resources get allocated. That's when people make signs and they put them up. That's when people slow down. Actually, that that brings me to thinking of the quote that I was going to read. Yeah, because I just realized I'm I'm circling it right now. So it's from the book and it's from my um introduction, Six Basic Needs. My gut tells me to do more. I want to keep the bird feeders filled day and night and in all seasons, but I've learned that if I do so, I risk inviting avian illnesses in species that would never feed so incessantly or in such close proximity to one another. I want to put up blankets and raw meat for the coyote, but I've learned that if the coyote becomes too comfortable with me, other human coyote interactions may not go so well. I want to scoop up the mama bunny and her six lovely babies and bring them inside when it's stormy outside. I want to stand in the busy street that runs by my house and force every car to detour or at the very least, slow the hell down. The anxiety I can produce in myself by worrying about every creature who happens to live in close proximity to me or passes by isn't healthy for me or for them. More importantly, it isn't helpful.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:08:42

I I love that quote because it really, I mean, it pulls together the complexity of trying to make and do the right thing. And I think a lot of us feel that tension. You want to do the right thing. I don't know if any of you have seen the good place, um, but this speaks directly to uh the good place. You know, you you think you're buying an apple and you're contributing to slave labor somewhere, you know. It's the the complexity of the problems are really huge, and it can end up leading you feeling defeated. And and that kind of defeatism can lead to not wanting to do anything, feeling as though that your contribution doesn't matter. And to come back to what you were saying before that the stories show the mattering, right? So the stories show uh the mattering at different levels and different scales. You filling your bathtub with water matters to those frogs. You creating a sign for cars to slow down matters to those ducks. Uh it it matters at levels that's uh, you know, we always think in these grand ways that like, how are we gonna change the world or save the species? Or um and sometimes I think bringing the scale down, because it does matter at those huge existential levels, it does matter. But I think stories really do help to make the how personal this really is.

Lucy Spelman 1:10:00

Well, I was gonna maybe just read my quote because it it it's it's it's uh it's following on what you're just pointing out and what Susan is saying. It's also from my introduction in the book. So, you know, just picking up on uh this in the book I'm talking about this moment with a baby gorilla, where I'd working as a gorilla veterinarian and um mountain gorilla veterinarian, and um, I have no sense of direction. So I I we're we're in the middle of the forest. This isn't Rwanda, and I'm worried about a sick baby gorilla, and I don't realize that how close we are to the um edge of the park. And I and I get a little bit freaked out that it's like there's this gorilla and the family of gorillas, and then there's people, and I can hear cars and a baby and drumming. And why am I there? Why am I given this responsibility? Why am I there? It doesn't make sense, you know. It doesn't make sense for any one group of animals depend to depend on so few people. So my quote as I write in the introduction is I still feel this way. Um, you know, we all all children grow up loving their stuffed animals and book or video characters. The emotion is still there. We just have to tap into it. The only way to change course is to rapidly increase the number of people engaged in wildlife conservation. This is our greatest challenge. Few of us consider ourselves conservationists, even though we are indeed taking informed action, whether recycling or planting for pollinators or saving energy at home. The information is out there, it's on the internet in books and in journal articles, but it is meaningless without connection both to nature and to each other.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:11:42

And I think this builds on what you were saying earlier about there's perhaps power in taking on that as an identity marker as well. Like important things can happen when you take a stand or you position yourself and it opens up. Uh, I mean, when I became a feminist or vegan or whatever, it wasn't just about the feminism or the veganism, it opened up different ways of thinking and of identifying with the world, right? Like veganism was not only about not eating animals, I started to read food labels and I started to read clothing labels and I started to understand the geography of our consumption. And and yeah, to your to your point, I wonder if adding that label or understanding of yourself as a conservationist, how much it would ripple out, like what the effects would be of I'm a conservationist. What does that mean in my city, in my neighborhood? How how do I contribute?

Christopher Kondrich 1:12:37

Yeah. And what you're talking about is adding is storying a political decision that you're making, an ethical decision, right? Giving and adding it via the story that you tell yourself about yourself into your identity, right? And that the story that we establish for ourselves informs future decisions, right, that we make. And those future decisions that we make informs the larger stories that are happening, right, on social in these larger social scales. So yeah, and I I think that that's and that actually is, you know, the the the a quote that I want to read from from my introduction, I think, you know, provides You guys are doing my work for me.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:13:20

It's great.

Christopher Kondrich 1:13:21

I mean, I think that like we're constructing a little mini essay with these quotes here, you know. So this is from my um my introduction, What Humans Owe Animals. This is where the arts come in. What conservation science provides writers with gets at the heart of what a writer must do. Make the real feel real to readers, make a number statistic assessment, a theory feel embodied, stories, make information into knowledge, the kind that is quote, proved upon the pulses, as Keats once wrote, and maybe even truth. If what scientists through research and analysis reveal to us are facts and their interpretation of them, what can be measured, observed, verified, uh, then perhaps one way of considering what writers do is distilling the facts of the world into truth, the kind of truth that stirs us, moves us, stays with us long after the poem, story or essay or over is over. Truth is the realm where facts take on meaning beyond what exactly they state. And so it is the realm of literature.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:14:29

Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, and I really do think you have tied together a an essay here. It's uh really, really beautiful. And yeah, do you want to do you want to extrapolate more on that? I mean, literature really this is the power of words and of literature, uh, it's it's power to move, right?

Christopher Kondrich 1:14:47

Well, yeah, and I think that that like that's ultimately what is at at the heart of what this project is all about. Right. I think that like when we talk about bringing scientists and artists together, what we're talking about is magnifying their individual impact so that when they are brought together, they actually move us more than if they if we had encountered them separately. Right. Like I feel like, you know, when you encounter factual or truthful things within a story, right, it's much harder to shake it off, right? Because stories and poems put faces and lives to things that we learn about through, you know, the science and that sort of thing. You know, and I I think what I'm just trying to say is that like ultimately I think what we all want is to move the needle, is to get people out of their chairs and into involved into an in more involved means of traveling through the world, right? And you know, it it maybe, and we this is what we hope is that it's more likely to happen, is that if that it's more likely that a you know that that personal needle is moved, so to speak, if you are reading, okay, there's this this excerpt from the science article, right? This has this this is a factual basis, this is verified information, etc. And then you encounter that within a work of literature, right? Um and you know, ultimately we want people to actually do something. We actually want we don't just saying that we want to move people and stir people, right? Like it's it and I think that like at the end of the day, it it it is up to us to actually go out there and make changes that we want to see in the world. But at the same time, right, like the the the the impetus, the fire that that it is needed, I think, and I hope it's there, is is is coming from um these two kinds of knowledge, right? The the the the science and and and the the the literature, right? Like coming together that like it's actually going to move people in a way that's that's meaningful and makes discern a discernible difference.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:17:13

Is the flow of these stories flowing back to the scientists? So you you know you shared the excerpts from the science and the the creatives responded to it. Are you are you sending your book to the uh the scientists so that they can be moved differently? Um and and but uh what do you think about the idea of a future volume two, where you've got you start with the poem and you have the scientist respond? Um because sometimes I think the onus is often flipped where you know the positioning of the abstract and then the art somehow creates this um elevation of the you know that that the artist is having to respond to the science, that the science is the fact. But as your quote kind of said, the the the the art in some ways makes the fact alive, it brings the fact to life. So them together is really powerful. Um, but I think sometimes people will view perhaps that the science is just used as that jumping off point, and then the art can, to go back to the beginning, run with it. Um, again, not inherently anything wrong with that, but perhaps people still create this kind of dichotomy of, well, science is fact and big and important, and art is just fluffy and nice. And um without really, I mean, what you're saying here, Christopher, is it's significant and it's important, and these stories, as we were saying, they're they're they matter not only for moving thought, which I think is fundamental, but creating action, right?

Susan Tacent 1:18:44

I I just I want to I I'm imagining a conversation um with Lucy and Chris after saying, uh-oh, we just got our second book. Now we have to we have to start over again. Oh my God, and just feel that pressure just started knuckling into us. Um but I but it also reminded me that we um one of the things we insisted on when we asked people to write for it was it had to be a new piece. It couldn't be something they had already written. And most people didn't, you know, question that. Once one or two thought maybe they could send us something they already had, and we were not interested in that. We were interested in this particular process. Um I'm also imagining taking 39 books, which are is the number of contributors, and putting them in the mail to each of you know the lead scientists of those articles. Um, that might actually be the next step. And I I love my post office people, so that that could happen. We haven't done it yet.

What They’re Building Next

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:19:43

I love the focus on method in this book. I really think like so often we don't talk about method, right? Like we talk about the findings and the outcomes and we, but like the process matters. The process is important. And I think folks that, you know, I've done work in animal histories, um, actually writing about urban animal histories, and I use creative writing in my own work. And really I it ended up becoming a critical method in my PhD because it was an important part of how I made the animals and their stories present, because it's very easy for them to just not be present, for them to be absent. And your focus on method is really great. So thank you, the three of you, for for your contributions for this book. Um, I now believe that you've got several books in the making. Um, but all jokes aside, what are you what are you currently working on? And if people want to learn more about your work, uh how how can they get in touch with you?

Susan Tacent 1:20:39

Um you can find me through Creature Conserve. That's that's one way. Um, the website, creatureconserve.org or just my name, susantossent.com, I think works as well. And the thing I'm working on now is um taking a landscaper who wants to bring Rhode Island where I live back to the original soil and the original plants and to make it healthy again and get rid of all the lawns. And a couple, um, Cindy and Ed, who run a small nursery that only sells pollinator plants and native plants to this area. And Lucy and a visual artist named Carrie King. And I'm trying to put this together so that it will be at a bookstore. And we will have books for sale and plants for sale, and we will use that process of Lucy speaking about pollinators, um, the three landscapers speaking about what it's like to sell plants for the last five years to the local population and um how how their clients have changed. They've seen them change as they learn more and more about what's healthy and what's not healthy and why and what shouldn't be planted ever, because it's detrimental to the health of so many species and what it means to have healthy soil and that it's it's doable and affordable. And then we're gonna use the science of that to ask people to either sketch a plant or create a character who has a conversation with their own backyard or that kind of so, and then share that material. So that process that came out of the book process came out of the teaching process, and now the book is feeding that process, which is what you're hearing, and it's vital to this. And and so that's that's what I'm working on right now.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:22:20

Amazing. Will you be upticking that at all to let like um I guess the urban governance structures know? Because Vienna does a really great job of integrating um pollinator plants. They've stopped like, and I think that kind of work can, as you're talking about change, actually facilitate urban policy, right?

Susan Tacent 1:22:37

Right. Yes, yes. And uh yes, the book is going to one of our senators who's very involved with that. And uh yeah, yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:22:45

Wow, what a great project. Uh, Christopher, how about you?

Christopher Kondrich 1:22:50

Well, um, folks, in addition to the Creature Conserve site, folks can find me at ChristopherCondrich.com. And um, I am right now putting putting the finishing touches on my third book of poems, um, which is a book-length sequence. Um it's about the social, political, and spiritual uh and economic drivers um of climate change, uh the chronic devaluation of the living world. Um, and it also explores uh questions uh and notions of individual responsibility amidst corporate misinformation about climate change. Um and that book is going to be published um by Copper Canyon Press next year. Um yeah, so um doing that and uh looking forward to uh Creature Needs 2, which is uh which we will get started on um uh when this conversation is over.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:23:53

Congratulations on on the book. And um I really I respect poets so much. Um I think poets and philosophers are like kin with one another. They sit in the same space where when you have a conversation with a poet or philosopher, you're gonna go places. Um it's it's always interesting. And uh yeah, so you you think methodically and and creatively at the same time, which is just Absolutely, yeah, which is just it's almost like a mathematical brain. I know people wouldn't think about maths as philosophy, but maths is actually philosophical if you speak. Anyway, I'm going down a tangent. It's almost 9 p.m. here, and I think I'm losing my wits. Um, congrats on the book, Christopher. And Lucy, how about you?

Lucy Spelman 1:24:34

Oh, I I'm always always working on just growing creature conserve, which I'm so inspired by all of the people who are part of the community and all the people who we we hope will join. So I creatureconserve.org and uh drlucyspelman.com, or uh our emails are all on the website. And I think I've just heard from Susan that that's that project's developing, which is exciting. The book Creature Needs will also be uh taking it to New York City too. There's a we have a collaboration with a dance company doing like a 10-day performance on creatures. So we're gonna do a workshop around the book and um hope to have some authors are reading that's in October. So that's exciting. And you were uh saying earlier about sound and performance. So uh one of uh Creature Conserve has four main programs, and we're just uh launching one of them, which is our six-month mentorship program. It's the the most intense of our programs, and um, you know, we might have between 15 and 20 mentees, and they're paired with a mentor. And what's so great is each year we run it, this is at seventh year? Oh my should know. Anyway, more variety of creatives, right? So we had a um beautiful musician who writes for the cello, and she's a cellist, and it's she got it's based on um studying monk seals in the Mediterranean, and we had a uh uh uh actor who created a whole uh worked with another actor, and they did a whole clown performance around elephants. So, like mentorship in our Edward Creature Observe is really uh kind of a place to safe space to try something out, get some feedback, and develop a project. And so um that program is just uh we launched it with a workshop where our mentorship director, uh and then we have three fellows, they will select um the mentees. So I'm excited about that, and I could go on and on. Um yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:26:28

Well, congratulations on creating such important infrastructure. Uh, I mean, Susan and Christopher's testimonies, testimonies. Um, I mix up words. No, your their testimonies speak, I think, to the power of the space and the place you've created. Um, community matters, uh, so just as much as the stories we were talking about matters. So um thank you so much for the work you do and for for joining me on the show today. I really enjoyed talking to you three. Thank you.

Lucy Spelman 1:26:55

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:27:01

Thank you so much to Lucy, Susan, and Christopher for joining me on the show today and for giving so generously of your time and ideas and for being open to critique and suggestions. It's really wonderful to have such engaging conversations. I really appreciate it. Uh, thank you also to Back of the House at the Animal Turn. Thank you to Christian Mentz, Rebecca Shinn, Hera De Bont, and Carla Solzani for all of the work you do for the Animal Turn, including creating artwork, writing blog posts, editing sound. It's amazing. Thank you for giving freely of your time and uh helping to make the show what it is today. This episode was edited, produced, and hosted by myself. And of course, this is The Animal Turn. With me, Claudia Hotenfelder.

Lucy Spelman 1:28:01

For more great iRull podcasts, visit irallpod.com. That's ir o arpod.com.