Our February podcast features a conversation between Mary and author Mark Spragg. She describes the time as a unique pleasure.

Mark is a man of the land - a deservedly celebrated author of Where Rivers Change Direction, and the novels The Fruit of Stone, An Unfinished Life, and Bonefire. All four were top-ten Book Sense selections, and his work has also been translated into eleven languages. An Unfinished Life also became a critically acclaimed movie, starring Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez.

From birth, Mark's life has unfolded iin and near rural Wyoming. He lived his younger years with his family on the Crossed Sabers Ranch, a rustic dude ranch eight miles east of Yellowstone National Park. He graduated from the University of Wyoming Laramie in 1974 with a major in English, then proceeded to work on an oil rig, shod horses, and led pack trips to support his writing.

In 1999 he published a memoir - Where Rivers Change Direction - about his unusual childhood - one with no TV or radio but surrounded instead by vast expanses of rugged outdoor beauty.

You can learn more about Mark Spragg at his website markspragg.com. And for truly fine reads, check out his books. Mark is a superb storyteller. He is a master in the craft of writing - fully devoted to serving the exquisite interplay of language and wild nature, the human and the more than human, as they unfold into being.

MUSIC

Raindrops. Music by Sound Music from Pixabay

Inspiring Folk Acoustic Guitar. Music by Music_for_Creators from Pixabay

Inside You. Music by Vitaliy Levkin from Pixabay

Original theme music, composed and performed by Gary Ferguson.

This month, Mary had the opportuinity to spend time with Dr Alexandra Adams. Alex is Director of the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Excellence (CAIRHE), an NIH-funded center focusing on building research partnerships with rural and Native communities and mentoring junior investigators. Her research focus is community-based and participatory. She works in close partnership with Native American communities to understand and solve health challenges using both scientific rigor and crucial community knowledge.

Alex has focused her career on the promotion of family and community wellness and healing trauma through community building. Addressing the effects of climate surprises on health has been central to her work. She also uses storytelling, filmmaking, and other strategies to engage communities and support health.

In their conversation, Alex and Mary explored her experience at the interface of Western medicine and rural, American Indian and other indigenous communities. Alex described ways for building healing relationships of trust and sharing - acknowledging the deep wisdom of local communities and of ancestral indigenous knowledge. What Alex describes is medicine at its most responsive. Fully honoring the fact that the health of the land is the health of the people and drawing across the arts to practice what is perhaps the greatest of all healing arts, listening.

You can learn more about Dr. Alexandra Adams by visiting her personal website and substack, Longing for Belonging. and her substack. Also check the website for the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Excellence (CAIRHE) where you can learn more about Alex’s initiatives with that organization. And here's the link to the Turtle Island Tales website and videos Alex described.

Through all of her creative endeavors, Alex lives fully in her relatedness with all beings. This is good medical practice, it’s good art, and it’s solidly consistent with climate repair. Let’s all join her.

MUSIC

Mystical Flute Music. Music by morel dua from Pixabay

Tabla Flute 102. Music by Johnson Cherian from Pixabay

Acoustic Guitar and Flute Fairytale. Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

Original theme music, composed and performed by Gary Ferguson.

This month, Mary got to have a fascinating exchange with Dr. Dan Papaj, a Full Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with the University of Arizona. Vastly dedicated to pollinators - in particular, the Blue Swallowtail, Dan is an esteemed and longstanding researcher and faculty member. He completed his undergraduate work at Cornell University and earned his PhD in zoology from Duke University. He's a fellow in the Animal Behavior Society and has won fellowships with Bellagio and Fullbright. All along the way, he's retained inspiring relationships with his students. His inflluence now spreads through scholarly and ecological communities.

In their conversation, Mary and Dan dipped into the social life of bees, the evolutionary trajectory of humans and the impact of drought on the desert. Listen in for new insights into how it looks to an active entemolotist.

You can learn more about Dan by checking out his University of Arizona faculty profile. Just below, he’s also provided a few links to some of his writing, and to resources on cultural evolution. Check them out. Learn more. And as Dan suggests, always make choices for our relatives, the pollinators.

And a quick postscript. Early in the life of HILFH, we had the delightful honor of welcoming Sara Mapelli Tink as a guest (HILFH episode 5). Sara is known for her activism in support of bees - she dances with them covering her body. Check out her interview - it never gets old!

LEARN MORE

The role of similarity of stimuli and responses in learning by nectar-foraging bumble bees: a test of Osgood’s model

M Baek & DR Papaj. Animal Behaviour 219, 123036

The relationship between preference and switching in flower foraging by bees

DR Papaj & AL Russell. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 78 (3), 40

______

Dan's recommendations for learning more about cultural evolution:

Cumulative cultural evolution. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. (1985). University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo5970597.html

Dan’s comment, “Boyd and Richerson's 1985 Culture and the Evolutionary Process is still in print at U. Chicago Press and for good reason.”

An article by Gerbauly et al. on the development of lactose tolerance in humans. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgzQcqtjBxVGRsHBrrNlBrnwFXxPC?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1

And a very cool photo of Bees ~

https://photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-222523-21

MUSIC

Jazz Restaurant Café Music. Music by