2023 Holiday Gift Special – The Evolutionary Lens #202
In this special 2023 gift episode of DarkHorse, we talk about some gifts that might make your loved ones happy.Mentioned in this episode:From Silk to Pastries: https://open.substack.com/pub/naturalselections/p/giftingDarkHorse Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0uPv6Wgj23sMscnYzFB15M?si=f479e10d92114632Hand carved wooden spoons, and “Carving Out a Living on the Land,” both by Emmet Von Driesche: https://www.emmetvandriesche.comChelsea Green Publishing: https://www.chelseagree...
Hey folks, welcome back to the Dark Horse podcast live stream guest episode 2023, where Also known as 202.5, just because the one we just finished was 202.
Oh yes.
And you guys wouldn't let me enter this as a number last year, so we're just going to go with like the guest episodes.
The gift episodes are not within the normal numbering scheme.
Yes, it's an extra dimension orthogonal.
Oh, it's such a grudge.
Yeah, it's gonna come up every year.
Okay, well, I get it.
Thank you for warning me.
Alright, so...
Warning you?
Well, sure.
That I've caused a problem with the numbering scheme.
Oh, this wasn't you.
Oh.
It was him.
Oh.
Oh, excellent.
All right.
That is a load off my mind.
Yeah.
So here we are, ready to talk about some gifts, gift ideas.
And I'll just say that we get sent some amazing things by people in our audience.
And it's a little loud for air, so I didn't wear it during my livestream, but this is this beautiful scarf that was just sent to me by a woman, wonderful woman, clearly, in Oregon.
And she also made this amazing critter sitting behind us, which... I don't trust him.
I just love it.
And it's like the sort of thing which, if you describe it to me, I'd be like, okay, fine.
But it's a felted critter dude, and he's completely freaking awesome.
He's really awesome, and she made it entirely.
And she does warn us to keep it away from the cats.
It looks like exactly the sort of thing a cat would Did she make it from wool pulled off of people's eyes?
Eyes?
Yes.
No, does not seem like that sort of woman at all.
Seems cruel.
No, no, I think it's good to remove the wool from people's eyes.
The wool?
Yes, the wool that has been pulled over people's eyes has been removed and turned into felted creatures like that.
That's what I'm hoping.
I don't know.
All right.
I've, again, over-complicated things.
Maybe, maybe.
Let's just start with one paragraph from the piece that our friend Drew and I wrote in advance of the holiday season in 2021 for my substat called, From Silk to Pastries, Gifting Traditions Across Time, Space, and Species.
And I just want to read the final paragraph from this, if I can find it.
There we go.
I guess you can show my computer now.
So this is, again, from Silk to Pastries, gifting traditions across time, space, and species.
We talk about frogs.
We talk about spiders.
We talk about the Kung.
Maybe we don't talk about spiders.
People in Iran.
Lots of good stuff.
But the very end... Okay, I just want to share this one paragraph.
Gifts, therefore, that indicate true attention to the other.
A knowledge of what drives them, what skills and interests they have, what they are thinking about, are more likely to be well-received than are generic gifts.
Unlike in Iran, the weird world does not tend to explicitly recognize the difference between private gifts and public ones.
As such, we move between those boundaries with little awareness that they might even exist.
Gifts that are not mere commodities indicate attention to the gifted particularly well, the promise of a shared experience, a walk together, a simple meal, or a fancy one, a trip.
Handcrafted gifts, in part because they cannot be easily replicated, in part because they are often of higher quality than their mass-produced counterparts, are lovely as well.
And gifts made with your own hands, with your own thoughts and warmth built right in, are the least fungible of all.
This makes them high risk.
What if the recipient doesn't like the hat you made, or the bowl, the jewelry, or the cake?
Beautiful.
Perfectly in keeping.
comes the potential for high reward though.
And even if something is not exactly to the recipient's taste, that does not negate the affection and effort that goes into creating something with your own hands.
Beautiful.
Perfectly in keeping.
If I may have my screen back to figure out where we're going next.
We can either jump right into a wooden spoons and reading material or something on your list.
Yeah, I would like to start, actually, with a gift from us to our audience, which is of an odd sort.
Okay.
But a playlist.
And this is following from a conversation that you have all heard us have about the importance of shared stuff, whether that is a shared origin story, shared narratives of history, shared musical tradition.
And we have lamented the fact that as much as there's lots of great stuff available to us, let's say musically, we don't share very much.
And that is, I think, tearing us apart.
So we have a playlist of songs that are selected for various reasons.
Some of them there are very particular reasons that they're included.
Just to be clear, I don't even know what's on this playlist.
So you created this?
Yeah, I'll admit to creating this.
I don't worry that you're going to put something on there that I'm going to object to.
We didn't actually create this.
You created this.
It's been played for you.
You have not objected to anything.
So in any case, it is a Dark Horse playlist.
The thought is it would be great.
These are songs that I at least think are worth your time.
I am very lyric focused, so I believe they all stand up to scrutiny at the level of lyrics, and I would suggest at a personal level that I think it's very valuable
to learn to sing stuff even if you're just gonna sing to yourself even if you're not gonna sing the whole song and you're just gonna there's one stanza that particularly strikes you um figure out what it says i would advise you to look up the lyrics of all of these songs so that you know what's being said and then find that stanza and then it's always difficult unless you're especially musically gifted to sing it right the first time um it takes practice and uh anyway
I would advise that, you know, if we all came to know these songs together, I think we'd be better off.
And I can't defend it beyond that.
But anyway, do you want to show the... You said you wanted me not to show it.
It is in the description.
Can you show the cover?
I don't really care.
What?
Yeah.
Yes, I can show it.
So this is a Spotify playlist that Zach has made available, and it is labeled Dark Horse 23, and... Can you show the cover?
Does it allow you to do that?
Okay, that's fine.
So we will make the link available, and anyway, you can Peruse it as you like.
Oh, I will just give one caveat.
There are several songs at the end that are a bit edgier.
And I did that because if you're driving your kids in the car and those songs aren't ones you want to play, or if they're too edgy for you, then you can just stop at the point that you get to those songs at the end.
What does edgy mean in this context?
The content may be advanced.
Are you talking about words that people may not want to hear or ideas?
Um, there's a certain amount of darkness, there's a certain amount of conceptual advancedness, and there is a certain amount of risk in genre.
Okay, so conceptual advancedness, I would say there's no, there's no reason for a trigger warning, right?
Like, if you get there and you don't understand it, you don't like it, whatever, it doesn't matter.
I don't think there's a reason for a trigger warning for adults.
Yeah.
Suffice it to say, those were put at the end so that if you didn't... Conceptual advances or, like, mature themes?
Yeah.
Let's put it this way.
There is a song here that I quite like and cannot explain why it has not become well known amongst dissident-minded people.
It has reached a certain number, but lots of people who I would have thought would know this song very well have never encountered it.
And anyway, it's a hip-hop song, which would ordinarily not be to my taste.
This song is very much to my taste.
But it covers, it's basically... It has the themes of hip-hop?
No, it's not even the themes of hip-hop.
It musically presents an argument Beautifully.
Oh, I would also say that it is among three songs for which it is important.
The song stands up on its own as music, but I believe it is actually part of a type of art that it goes beyond music.
That the visual presentation is integral.
It's not like a song that somebody appended a video to.
The video was conceptualized by the artist.
In this case, I'm talking about Aaron Francis.
Also true for Five Times August.
But in those cases, Aaron Francis and Five Times August, I would say you definitely need to go through the video once.
For one thing, it will present you with the lyrics and it will do so in a way that is artfully integrated.
It's not closed captioned.
It's artistically cool.
But anyway, those songs are at the end.
So if you find they are not to your taste or you don't want to play them for your guests or your kids, you can just stop at some point.
All right.
Awesome.
Okay, how about spoons and books?
Fair enough.
Spoons and books.
I love hand-carved wooden spoons, as you know.
And as such, I've ended up collecting quite a few, and we use most of them.
We don't Put them aside and never use them.
This was actually given to me when we left, and it's old and it's just beginning to crack, when we left Michigan by a friend whose, I think it was her mother-in-law, made it.
And it's still got the, yeah, 2001.
It was made in 2001.
We were gifted it to her in 2002.
So the virtue of handmade gifts is that fondling them, using them, using them to cook, In this case, reminds you of the person, whereas the more towards a commodity the gift is, the less likely the thing is to remind you of that person because you've run into it in many other contexts.
I would add something to it, which is obviously implied, but there is also the fact of the handmade gift not only reminding you of the person who made it, but that If the person made it for you, then they also thought about you and what you would think about it as they were constructing it.
And so there is a kind of bonding in that process that is fundamental and not reproduced by regular, normal gift culture these days.
Yes, exactly.
So there are many artisan spoon makers now, but I have been lucky to be in contact with Emmet von Dreisch, I hope I'm not butchering your name, and he has a Spoon of the Month Club, which I think is just a fantastic thing.
So this is one of the spoons from his Spoon of the Month Club, And I learned about his Spoon of the Month Club by reading his book, which I believe he sent to us.
I may have ordered, I may have ordered, I don't actually remember for sure.
You can show my screen here.
It's called Carving Out a Living on the Land, Lessons in Resourcefulness and Craft from an Unusual Christmas Tree Farm.
He is an unlikely, unexpected Purveyor, I guess, of Christmas trees.
And he and, gosh, it's been a while since I read the book, but I think wife run this farm together.
And growing Christmas trees for people wasn't the thing that he thought he'd be doing, but this is what land and real, honest, physical work presented itself.
And then he also does things like Like, make these spoons.
So this book is fabulous for anyone who might be interested in not just, you know, a true story of a man working the land, but for me, I actually found it really useful in terms of, you know, what it is to find yourself an unlikely entrepreneur.
Like, oh my god, he's running a business now, and there are all these things, and like, how do you get your stuff together?
So it's interesting from that perspective, too.
And then, no, keep it on my screen for a little bit here.
Chelsea Green is the publisher of Von Dreisch's book, and I would say if you're looking for gifts for a book lover in your life, there are many, many amazing small publishers.
But I want to just bring your attention to two of them today.
Chelsea Green being one of them, and here's just their larger site where they actually have a 35% off every purchase right now.
Again, like this episode, there's nothing we're getting paid for.
Everything is we're presenting entirely because we think that you might enjoy it.
But they have, they do an incredible diversity of types of books, everything from sort of homesteading and alternative ways of heating your home to, I believe they republished Celia Farber's series Adverse Events.
So, you know, they're doing a ton of excellent work.
And then another small publisher is Godin, I think, or it's Godin.
I actually have no idea how to pronounce their name.
But they've got a lot of very small, like both, you know, nature writing, but just surprising, surprising books.
I'm not even going to try to classify what it is that they're doing, but another publisher that is worth your attention, for sure.
And in terms of reading material, just two more things.
This is one I recommended last year.
This is Tara Couture's Slowdown Farmstead substack, which is fantastic.
She writes about, at this point, she and her husband are growing absolutely everything on their land in Ontario, I believe, that they eat.
So they're eating their eating nothing from off-site, which is incredible, not far north.
But she's just a remarkable writer and human being and thoughtful across so many domains.
I highly recommend that as a gift to someone.
You could, of course, consider natural selections as well.
Oh, no, two more pieces of reading.
Two more pieces of reading.
There is, so you can take down my screen at this point, there is this... I'm going to lose that, aren't I?
And then all will be lost.
There's this book, which we continue to recommend, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.
I don't have the versions of most of the other languages that's been published in, but I do have French.
I have French.
A little more, a little more, yeah, and I'm not, again, I'm not going to, no.
Oh boy, 21st, or did I say 21st in French?
I'd say I didn't prepare at all.
And then, I'm not going to try to pronounce this, but you are.
This is the French, French, that was the French, this is the Czech version.
This is great, not only for people who are citizens of the Czech Republic, but for anybody who speaks Czech.
That's a hilarious joke, because the only people who speak Czech are citizens of the Czech Republic.
So our book's been published in many languages.
I don't know, more than 20 at this point.
And this is the newest on the list.
And we've talked about having just been in Prague for the baptism of the book.
But it's just super thrilling.
Actually, it's a bestseller in the Czech Republic still.
And yes, this may be of little interest to you if you don't speak Czech, but they've actually added a bunch of original art in here.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Every chapter gets a little piece of original art.
I don't even know what is that... I don't know what chapter that's about.
Childhood?
Yeah.
Oh, no, this is the sex... Oh, this is a Bowerbird.
It's a sex chapter.
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
So, anyway.
Yes, this book was lovingly translated into Czech, which we appreciate.
We obviously can't Czech all of the other versions.
Can't Czech the Czech, no.
But this version, I have no doubt, was done Yeah, I think so too.
Oh, another piece of reading material that you should seriously consider getting for yourself or gifting to other people is this fine, fine publication.
It's America's only newspaper, so if you think that there are others, you're wrong.
And frankly, if you've read any of the other things that are passing for newspapers, you will know already that there aren't any others left.
This is County Highway.
This is the third issue that I'm holding in my hands.
It comes out every two months and it's not available online.
You've got to hold it.
So you can find it in some, boy, bookstores, feed stores, record stores across the country, but the best way to know that you're going to get it is to subscribe online and then you'll get some Regular columns from Amanda Fortini.
This week, this month's issue is on dandelions.
It's actually totally fascinating, even if your first reaction is, dandelions?
What?
I have a column called Field Notes in County Highway.
There's often writing from David Samuels and Walter Kern in this one.
One of my favorites in this particular episode, why I can't issue, Um, is Malibu vs. Nobu, Why SoCal's Surfing Paradise Stinks, um, by, it turns out, someone that, well I guess you didn't, but that I went to high school with.
Um, you were just, you started... Later.
Later, and he was a couple years older than us.
Um, and there's a big music section in the back.
There's actually three different articles on, on, or three different page, three whole pages on, on music.
It's fabulous.
It's America's only newspaper.
Seriously consider it.
Subscribe.
Subscribe, yeah.
I got more, but you want to try something out?
So I had kind of a theme, and it's actually perfectly consistent with what you read.
And my thought was, this is me as I've gotten older and I think wiser.
About life.
And I'm realizing that there is... I think you should consider the fact that you live on a planet that has been damaged, yes, but is still absolutely full of miracles.
And most times folks who are devoted thinkers about evolution don't use that term, but the fact is It is full of miracles.
They're all around and that you can give access to them and you can facilitate seeing them and you can, in the best case, you can join somebody in going and looking at these things.
And I just don't think there's anything better.
So I wanted to just provide some sort of examples of what I'm talking about.
One of them, the uncruise trip that we went on is something that I know has tremendous value because I know how many times I have stopped to think about it in the aftermath.
It really affected me and us.
And they're absolutely not paying us to talk about them in this episode.
But I thought I would show some of the stuff That I managed to capture on our adventure because it would give people a sense, you know, it's obviously not an inexpensive gift, but it is something that pays back tremendous dividends.
So would you show my screen, Zach?
So I just wanted to show some stuff.
Here we have a sea otter.
This is a picture taken, you'll note that we are down at water level because this is taken from a kayak in the rain.
And that's a pretty amazing thing to be this close to such a marvelous animal in, you know, real weather.
Yes, you're moving the cursor off the end.
But anyway, that was a pretty great experience and we had many such encounters with otters and other creatures down at eye level like that.
There were some spots where there were like several dozen sea otters.
Yeah.
You couldn't see several dozen at a time, but you could tell that you were surrounded by more than two dozen.
And otters with their babies, which is a particularly remarkable thing to see.
In this case, this is a grizzly bear that was taken from the shore of our ship.
Here is a, this photo looks better on my screen than yours, but this is an otter with a baby.
Here we have a puffin.
And here we've got some Doll's Porpoise, which Doll's Porpoise is like a, it has the coloration of an orca, and they love to ride the bow waves of ships.
And so anyway, in the middle of dinner one day, we picked up a pod of Doll's Porpoises, and I leapt up and grabbed my camera and hung over the front of the boat and tried to capture them.
And anyway, Here, I just wanted to show you, this is a series I'm going to run through, and you're going to see what these animals were doing.
Here's an orca that we encountered.
Bald eagle leaving its nest.
I don't know.
I've forgotten what bird this is.
Angry little bird.
This was also taken from kayak.
Heather and I kayaked right up to the shore and saw quite a number of interesting birds.
Here we have... I've forgotten what that is.
Here we've got a humpback whale.
These guys were hanging out on a little iceberg.
These are harbor seals.
And this is a photograph I struggled with.
I knew that this was possible, and I decided I was going to try to capture it, and it worked out better than I'd hoped.
So I wanted the glacier, this is the face of a glacier, meeting the water, and these are arctic terns, which happen to be migrating through at the time.
These are animals that migrate from one pole to the other, and if you zoom in on that photograph, you see that this arctic tern is carrying a small fish, and you can even see its eye.
The fish's eye?
That's crazy.
It's so good.
And here's a bald eagle.
The ship passed, and so you were pretty close to looking eye-to-eye with it.
Back whale again.
Saw multiple of... Some kind of shorebird.
Yeah, shorebirds.
These were... Pigeons, I think.
Not pigeons, no.
Oh, and here I'm going to show this is I started taking what I called video postcards.
So the scenery looked like this day after day after day.
So anyway, lots of gorgeous stuff to see.
Here's yet one more sea otter, super close up.
Oh, there's our oyster catchers.
They're hilarious.
They allowed me to approach them and they squawked at me.
More otters and babies.
Anyway, so that is one example of Un-cruise and where it can take you.
The company was lovely.
Both senses of the term.
Both the operation that took us out there, took great care of us.
The people that decided to go on such an adventure were very game to get on kayaks and go hiking and all of this.
Anyway, it's a cool thing and it's obviously not a cheap thing, but There's a discount code for Dark Horse viewers.
We will link it, and you could go see once-in-a-lifetime stuff with people that you love, and there's no way that it's not worth it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep.
Zach, you want to show us some stuff from the store?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You might want to talk about it while I show it.
Yeah, no, we won't just let it be quiet.
So, we mentioned in the live stream, we got this new one, Cut That Shit Out, which I think speaks for itself.
Let's hope the world listens.
Blueberries, because oxidants happen.
Easier to, yeah.
Very, very nice.
Jake's Micro Pizza, of course.
Oh, yeah.
Dad, you want to speak a little bit on our in-house pizza?
Yes, our new gourmet pizza venture.
I'm glad you decided to make it gourmet.
Is it organic?
It is organic.
It is hypoallergenic.
It is guaranteed for life.
And it is... Really?
For its life?
Both.
Any life.
All life.
It's guaranteed.
As long as there is life, there will be Jake's Micro Pizza.
A universal guarantee.
A universal guarantee.
That is amazing.
Isn't that not remarkable?
I can't believe you got insurance for this.
Well, the thing is, it's a whole different world when you're dealing in microscopic foods.
Sure.
I would think so.
Yes.
So anyway, Jake's Micro Pizza is not only delicious and Not as nutritious as it might be, but you can pick up your nutrition elsewhere.
You can get your micronutrients from Jake's Micropizza.
I don't think you can.
You can't get very many of them at a time, but it is delightful and geometrically accurate.
Oh, good, yeah.
Eight slices per pie or 12?
There are eight slices.
You know how sometimes you get pizzas and the guy clearly half-assed it?
There are eight well-cut slices.
They're thoroughly cut.
You won't be tearing it and the cheese goes one way and pepperoni goes the other.
Yeah, or you get a piece that's like, there's not enough, I don't have enough at the perimeter for the size of the slice to make out what's going on here.
This is actually a laser cut.
Laser cut?
Laser cut, which cauterizes the cheese at the edges of the slices so they are, you won't cut yourself.
They don't cheese bleed.
Right, exactly.
So anyway, it is excellent pizza.
It is also capable, because the slices are so small, it is capable of alleviating some of the burdens of a mask mandate because you can just keep eating the stuff.
Because it is going to take you a while to get enough.
Like, I'm still feeling peckish.
Right.
Even five hours into Jake's Micro Pizza, I'm still feeling a little peckish.
It's not satisfying, and therefore you can just keep eating.
And you buy them in those unending bags, right?
It goes on and on and on.
It goes on.
That much we know.
Indefinitely deep bags of Jake's Micro Pizza.
And anyway, it's great.
And it anticipates the return of mask mandates, which, you know, most pizzas don't anticipate anything.
Right.
Pizza tends not to be forward-thinking, but this pizza is.
Correct.
Yes.
The world's only forward-thinking pizza.
Exactly.
There it is.
Yeah.
Lots of other cool stuff here, too.
So much other cool stuff.
Saddle up the dire wolves we ride tonight.
Lie to a tyrant.
Both of our sons have Lie to a Tyrant hoodies, which they wear around.
Yeah.
And even just the the Dark Horse brand.
I just got Dark Horse hoodie in this nice navy color.
Lovely.
Excellent.
Yeah, there's lots of cool stuff here.
Cool.
You want to be a little bit snarky on a number of issues.
Exactly.
Yeah, we got your snark for you.
Yeah.
All right.
Um, let's see.
How about you have some more things?
Yes.
Let's let's talk about Oh, okay.
Yeah, let me do the rest of what I wanted to do here.
Well, I forgot, when I was talking about books, I wanted to mention, as I always do, book darts.
Because if you haven't heard me talk about book darts, I don't know that I want to repeat myself for those who already know what they are.
But they come in these beautiful little tins.
This one happens to have that famous Japanese tsunami wave on it.
And this happens to be a mixed metal bat, so I've got three different colors of book darts in here.
And you can Any book you can be reading along, pretending that you read Czech, for instance, like, oh, that right there, yeah, I want to be able to come back to that section, even though I have no idea what it says in this case, because I don't, in fact, read Czech.
But you affix it to the page, and you close it, and it closes flat, and you can see it.
You can see it from the side.
I don't know if you can see it from the side, but When you are holding a book that has been book darted up, which many books that I own are, you can immediately see from the side, okay, there are like two or twenty spots in this book that I want to come back to.
You don't end up doing any permanent damage to the book.
This is, of course, for people who actually still prefer to have books in hand.
I have always preferred to have books in hand.
Now that we see actual books being changed by the publishers and the powers that be, I feel even more forward-thinking, like our pizza, for having insisted on having just rows and rows and bookshelves and bookshelves and bookshelves of actual books.
But no matter how many – I have yet to reach the limit of a book for book darts wherein it no longer laid flat, like that thin.
I would point out that the book darts Effectively let you reversibly highlight a book, but that means that the book can go permanently back on your shelf in its highlighted form, or if it's part of a research project, it can be book darted until you're done with the research project, and if, you know... If it's a library book, you can book dart up a library book and not piss off your librarians.
Yes, I would... one caution.
Do not mix up your book darts with your Jake's Micro Pizza.
That's dangerous.
No, and these are in fact, this is, I'd say it's five, four orders of magnitude larger?
I'd say it's four hundred.
Orders of magnitude?
Jake's Pizza is quite small.
I guess.
Okay.
Couple, couple, three, four, four more, four more products.
Now that we're talking about products a little bit.
Bookdarts product.
I've talked about this before.
This is Epic Dermis from Pharoah, Pharoah Life.
It comes with a cute little pig Pigsticker, and this is lard and tallow based skincare.
This happens to be their newest product, which I got for the first time right before we went to Alaska, actually, on the uncruised trip.
And Alaska in April and May, especially if you're spending most of your time outside, can be chafing.
And this stuff is magic.
The ingredients are lard, tallow, honey, bergamot, wild orange, basil, and black spruce essential oils.
Those last four are just essential oils basically to make it smell good.
Bergamot, wild orange, basil, and black spruce.
The three Ingredients that are doing good for your skin are lard, tallow, and honey.
It feels great.
It smells great.
It's fantastic stuff.
Epic Dermis is the beautiful name of the product, and it's from Farrow, F-A-R-R-O-W, which was a sponsor of ours, but we are not.
This is for free.
We are recommending this.
You have something to say?
Jake's Micro Pizza, if you do need to eat it, even though that's not its really intended purpose, it has lots and lots of calories and is fully- I imagine you could.
You read the ingredients.
Yeah, I feel like it would actually be cheaper to buy steak if you want to get your calories from- I'm saying in an emergency, if it's all you have and you need to go another day- Okay, note to self, I'm going to hide this so that you don't know where it lives.
Yeah, we don't know what he defines as an emergency.
Exactly!
The stores are closed and I'm feeling a little peckish and I'm chock full out of, chock out of Jake's micro pizza.
He's a GMC that could easily be counted as an emergency.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay, three more things here.
We have talked before about Giant Herbs & Tea, a wonderful herbalist in Portland who actually we've never met, but we've been in contact with, and who actually sent some of his healing tonics and herbs for you when you were recently sick with what is certainly COVID.
And so I just have brought out a couple.
He makes these chais, he makes bitters.
I'm just going to read from a couple of them.
Yes, they are quite something at many different levels.
They're fantastic, they're unusual, and he's got text on all of them that is often hilarious.
So this is Rorganized Chai.
This is a Lapsang, Sichuan pepper, and fennel chai.
And this is basically named for Joe Rogan.
He says on the front, one man revealing evil, one interview at a time.
It begins with all of us, a world of individuals with the ability to critically think.
And on the back, each able to make our own difference or be content to be told how to think.
The choice is ours.
There is no easy path to freedom.
Ask questions, talk to your neighbors, build community, and most importantly, be kind to one another.
One world, all of us together.
We're organized.
P.S.
Canceling only makes us stronger.
So that's awesome.
It's all, I mean, he has such a huge number of these chai.
So let me just read one more.
There's also a dark horse chai.
I just didn't, I think we're out.
I didn't find that when I went looking just now.
Whifster chai, a galangala, lemongrass, and ginger chai.
If at first you don't get antibodies, try and try again.
A little bit doesn't go a long way.
In fact, you will need more before three months are up.
And on the back, That's great for us, but not so great for your tax dollars.
This chai does not stop contraction, transmission, or sterilize anything.
We actually don't know what the long-term effects of drinking chai are, but if adults can drink it, we think kids should have it, too.
If our pals at the FDA came through for us, we could have said secret ingredients from 2021 to 2076.
And then the bitters are also amazing.
These are my two favorite.
He makes a huge number of bitters, but these are my two favorites.
Revolutionary Evolutionary.
Revolutionary Evolutionary Bitters.
Mole Spice Cocktail Bitters, which have in them tequila, cacao, cinnamon, and other spices in the Revolutionary Evolutionary.
And Cacanero Cocktail Bitters.
So, and the flavor notes on this are a quick cacao front note followed by a wickedly spicy finish.
It's got cacao, habanero, hibiscus, and other spices.
Utterly fantastic.
Utterly fantastic.
Yeah, it is fantastic.
Yeah, the spicy chai's in particular are so good.
Every one of them.
Yeah, I love all of them that I've had.
And one of those chai's that I read has fennel in it.
I'm not usually a big fan of fennel, but he does just brilliantly.
Speaking of drinks, I think last time I talked about a couple of shrubs that were being made up here on the islands.
I have since found one that is being made nearby Bellingham.
I found these people at the Anacortes Art Fair this summer and I cannot get enough.
So shrub is basically a fruit infused vinegar.
They make their raw apple cider vinegar themselves and then they infuse it and basically you put some in sparkling water for an alcohol-free drink.
If you want a drink with alcohol then you add alcohol.
It's not that hard.
Yeah, you got it.
And then, if that's what you're doing, you can also add some bitters and, boy, fantastic combinations.
These guys shrub farm out of Bellingham, and they ship probably not anywhere, but any place that I've thought to ship.
They have lots of amazing flavors.
Here are two of my favorites.
This is shiso and citrus.
Shiso is... I've forgotten and it doesn't say on here.
No, here it does.
Shiso and citrus shrub, they say, has a global soul and hometown roots.
Shiso is a Japanese herb which adds a berry-like burst of flavor to goddess dressing, botanical gin and tonics, and refreshing sparklers.
And it's also grown locally here in Mount Vernon, the shiso, even though it's a Japanese herb.
And then this is my absolute favorite of theirs, ginger and Hawaiian chili shrubs.
So that's two kinds of hot, that's two kinds of spicy, and they use real ginger.
And so it like settles in the bottom.
There's this like white gingery deliciousness in the bottom.
And this will wake you up.
If you're suffering from microsleeps while driving, try some of this ginger and Hawaiian chili shrub.
Totally, utterly amazing.
You know, people drink so much generic, factory-made garbage.
Yeah.
And this is just the opportunity to, you know, to create a drink that's your own.
Yeah.
You know, figuring out what to mix it with.
And anyway, it's just it's a whole different ballgame.
Yeah, I mean, obviously you can drink cheaper, but I don't think you can do some more deliciously.
And with regard to the shrubs and the chai, they're healthy, they're good for you.
The shrubs are apple cider vinegar, which is Absolutely good for you, and it's just delightful.
So one more recent discovery in terms of a product that was local where I bought it, and it's not local to us now, but it's Bjorn's Bees.
This is just a little jar.
They have these jars which are I don't know how big they are.
Three ounces, and then they have these 10 ounce jars.
They have a number of honeys and other products, and you can buy the stuff online.
But this is their Lemon Honey, and they're based in, or at least they have a store in Golden, Colorado, which I spent a day in when I was in Denver recently.
And I bought a little jar like this of the lemon honey.
I was feeling just a little tiny bit under the weather, like my throat tends to, you know, go before anything else does.
And just a little bit of lemon honey.
Feels the trick.
Sounds delightful.
It's so good.
And they have propolis honey.
They have these explicitly medicinal honeys, too, which still taste amazing.
You can do all the normal things you would with honey.
Some of them, they say, if you want the full medicinal stuff, don't cook it.
So just, you know, eat it raw.
But anyway, that's Bjorn's Bees with their lemon honey and other honeys.
Shrub Farm with their apple cider vinegar shrubs.
And Giant Herbs and Tea out of Portland with their chais and bitters and other good stuff.
And all of that will be in the show notes with links.
Cool.
I'm just going to make a spelling joke.
I don't know how to spell Lynx of the Felid variety.
Yeah, you do.
I do.
Is it L-Y-N-X?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I do know how to spell it.
My God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, if I if we get a Lynx, I'm not putting it in the show notes.
I'm keeping the Lynx to myself.
Yes, I imagine.
Yeah.
All right.
So I wanted to continue on the theme of giving miracles and really best if you share those miracles, if you take people somewhere or show them something.
But I kind of wanted to just point out That the miracles exist at every scale and every level of difficulty.
And one thing I've increasingly tried to do is everywhere I go, even if it's someplace I'm not especially excited to go, if I'm invited somewhere, let's say, and I have to give a talk, but I'm not somewhere, I try to figure out where I can find cool stuff that I've never seen nearby and I was in Fort Lauderdale some months ago and I actually found a little waterway right there in town and it was full of all kinds of interesting stuff.
I don't have any pictures of it because I didn't have a camera with me at the time.
A couple things.
One, I wanted to suggest fewer and fewer people have binoculars.
I actually neglect to take my binoculars to Florida.
And I was kicking myself the whole time.
I needed binoculars and I had too much stuff with me and I dispensed with them.
But binoculars don't have to be incredibly expensive.
And there's a diminishing returns to it, right?
You know, the difference between a $50 pair of binoculars and a $200 pair of binoculars is substantial.
And you know, that might be the same difference between a $200 and $1,000 pair of binoculars.
But the ability to get in close with what you're looking at changes the experience dramatically.
You are not necessarily looking for the highest magnification.
That's the error I always make.
Yeah, no you don't.
You don't need it.
10x is about as much as you want.
12x actually makes it hard to... Unless it's image-stabilized.
There are image-stabilized binoculars.
Even so, it's just it's harder to find, especially if you're looking at birds.
If you're looking at things that are moving fast or erratically or both across a landscape, it's harder to find them the more magnified you are.
That is quite true.
So 8x are actually great.
10x is sort of the sweet spot.
Either 8 or 10 is really where you want to be.
And the second number, And so these are 10x42s, is how much light they gather.
So you can get a really nice optical set that, you know, is a lot smaller than this, but the point is the point in the evening at which it's not useful anymore is much earlier.
Yeah, 10x42s, that's sweet right there.
Yeah, you do want that second number to be high.
Yeah, and these are... Right, it's not a denominator, right?
No, it's a multiplier.
Yeah.
But anyway, these are not incredibly fancy, but the number of times that this is exactly what I want is most of the time.
Yeah, I will.
I know they're not your favorite, but I will just make a pitch for the binoculars that I've had forever that I absolutely adore.
And that until I had them, I couldn't quite make binoculars work for me.
I think I've just matured so I can make a lot of binoculars work for me now.
But it's Viper Vortex.
Viper, I think, is the make because you just got a different pair of Vipers in Alaska, actually.
I don't love their...
They were like discounted.
They were like...
Anyway, but...
But the Vortex ones are fancy.
They are expensive.
But they are, if you are looking for an amazing pair of binoculars and can spend money, I find them to be the most extraordinary.
Yeah.
Okay, so then I wanted to, can you show my screen again?
I just wanted to sort of show that there's sort of different levels, that miracles come at every scale and every difficult scene.
These happen to be Ecuadoran grasshoppers, so that's hard to get to, but the point is it's grasshoppers, right?
These are not jaguars.
And these guys were fascinating to watch.
And as a mammologist, how do you know?
That they're fascinating?
That they're not jaguars.
Oh, interesting.
They lack any of the synapomorphies of the mammalia, let alone jaguars.
So here's a spider that was sitting on a rock in the middle of a river.
This is probably six inches across.
Fascinating creature.
Can't make bats, which you're going to have a hard time finding, though.
If you go to a tropical forest in the neotropics, you'll be walking by them.
This is super difficult to get to.
This is a pygmy marmoset, which is, I think, the smallest monkey on earth, and seeing them requires somebody who knows where to find them.
Caiman used to be much more common.
We have been going in the Amazon.
They've decreased for reasons we don't know.
Here's Watson, the incredible gut-fermenting birds.
Again, you need to know where to look, but not hard to see if somebody can point you to a place where they live.
Ah, these photos may be out of order.
This is a sea turtle in the Galapagos.
Here is the penguin that we were talking about in the main live stream.
With the great personality.
Yeah, with that picture I see it.
It's not the most beautiful penguin, but they do have a great personality.
Oh man, do they?
Which goes a long way.
God, the color of that water looks like it's in a swimming pool.
Yeah, it sure does.
Yeah, here's a marine iguana in the Galapagos.
And this is from the series that you have as the banner on the YouTube channel.
Yes, exactly.
It might still be.
Or it was.
Here is a sea lion.
Cleaning his feet?
Yep.
Okay, and then... Is this going to be Colombia?
Yeah, this is Colombia.
Our friend Benoit, after he had me down to a conference to give a talk, took me to Pañon, which is up in the mountains, a cliff area.
Lots of stuff to see.
Oh man, that's glorious.
Look at these.
This is all Colombia?
Yep.
Um, and now this is Santa Cruz.
This is stuff you can see right off.
Uh, this is, I took this one off the pier in Santa Cruz.
Guys are flying all around.
Um, and this is, uh, right here in the San Juan Islands.
These are foxes.
They're, uh, they were introduced to control the rabbit population, which was introduced to feed the lighthouse keeper.
But these things are actually not that hard to see if you're here in the right season.
You can see foxes anytime of year, but, uh, in the spring.
The wild puppies.
Yeah, the wild puppies.
Unbelievable.
They are just, like, could they be any cuter?
Right.
And so, you know, there's no part of me that, you know, to see such a thing in person, just to simply look with your own eyes and see these creatures doing this as if you're not there, is stunning and possible.
And I would point out, although we haven't taken on cruise to the San Juan Islands, They do come here.
Yeah, they do.
But you can also come here without an uncruise.
There are so many amazing places to go, and as you pointed out, I've never been to Fort Lauderdale.
Sounds like you got there, you didn't have much time, you weren't sure how to find anything interesting, and yet you found something interesting.
And this is what both of us do wherever we are.
I think I've mentioned this, I have in my organizational software a recurring event that shows up.
I don't remember exactly what the periodicity is, but it's less than every two weeks.
Go someplace you've never been.
Now that's hard now that we live on an island, because an island is much more finite than a mainland.
But just even set foot someplace you haven't been.
Regularly.
Yeah.
It is literally eye-opening.
And if, I don't know how to describe it exactly, but if you set yourself the goal of seeing some creature that you've never looked at before, this is possible for pretty much everybody, pretty much everywhere.
And the point is, you know, if it takes, you know, if you're in some place, if you're in the middle of LA, you may have trouble doing this, you have to get to the outskirts.
But once you get to the outskirts, it becomes possible again.
And Um, that they're all miracles, right?
Um, so here actually you show my screen again.
You know, here's an example.
This is a simple bee approaching a simple flower.
And once you saw the flower, you could be pretty sure this was going to happen.
This was a wildflower here in the San Juans.
This was wild.
This was not the one that volunteered in our garden.
No, this was at American Camp.
Yeah, that's right.
And I just saw this flower growing on this windswept hill.
And I was like, you know, if I sit there, I bet you some interesting stuff comes and, you know, it was an interesting photographic challenge to try to catch it and get the bee in focus and all that.
But anyway, the point is, miracles everywhere.
They really are.
Absolutely.
And here, this is my recent trip to the Keys.
This is on, actually, this is on the wall of Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West.
Fort Zachary Taylor?
Yeah.
That is a beautiful lizard.
It is a beautiful lizard.
He's gorgeous.
Quite enchanting.
Yeah.
And then here's the key deer that we were talking about.
But so anyway, you know, there's stuff to go see and mostly people, because they don't think of it as as special as it is, they don't think to go pursue it.
But if you, you know, you can give your life an upgrade and you can give those you wish to give a gift to a life upgrade by just really just tapping into the miracles that are all around you, not declaring themselves ever.
Yeah, be here now and open your senses and don't assume that you already know what you're going to see.
Yep, exactly.
And I would also just point out, there's a saying amongst photographers, the very best camera in the world is the one you have with you.
And we all now carry, or almost all of us carry, an incredibly powerful camera.
It's not what you want, To capture wildlife far away, it's tough to do with such a small lens, but there's a lot you can capture with such a camera, and I just was going to suggest this one other thing in terms of inexpensive gifts.
A case that allows you to take your phone, which is somewhat waterproof, but not great when it's exposed, when it's submerged.
It matters a lot.
This was a relatively inexpensive case that actually has a pretty high quality set of the plastic does not interfere with the quality of the photos and you can submerge it and you've got an underwater camera you know it's not going to you know if you dove to 20 feet it wouldn't work but mostly you're up near the surface anyway.
If you're snorkeling.
Yeah if you're snorkeling or if you you know hop into a river and there's all kinds of interesting stuff swimming snakes and you know all sorts of Uh, things you might capture.
So, anyway.
Yeah, as much as I love snakes, I don't actually recommend swimming with snakes so much.
Depends on the snake, you know, and stuff.
A bit.
There are lots of snakes that are no problem.
This has not decided the argument I expected to be on.
Um, swimming snakes are cool.
Some of them are... They look amazing.
Yeah.
They just, uh, a lot of the, a lot of the swimming snakes, if you see a swimming snake in saltwater, they tend to be very docile, but those are elapids.
Those are related to cobras.
Um, so they probably won't, uh, bite you, but if they do, you're done.
You were probably asking for it.
No, you... My God.
Um, so yeah, I feel like I'm, I feel like I've forgotten something, but, uh, I think we're good.
Yeah.
Does he?
Let's prepare to be surprised.
Here we go.
Is it wooden forks?
Oh yes, I was going to suggest...
This is an image by Bob Moran, who has become an extraordinary voice for the dissidents in the COVID era.
He's got some very powerful images.
This is my favorite of them.
The mother standing firm against the vaccinating demon protecting her child would be a natural thing to do.
But anyway, There is something to the gift of art, and there's something to supporting artists who have stood up against a mighty, censorious tide.
And anyway, Bob Moran is a good one.
Yeah.
So we will leave a link to his site.
Absolutely.
In the show notes.
Fantastic.
All right.
All right.
We're there.
I think we are there.
We're there.
So we'll be back next week, and we will do a Q&A next week.
That's been a couple weeks since we've done it, since this replaced that this week.
There's a lot of this's and that's, but you followed along.
Yes.
No, you didn't.
I'm on the replay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I will have followed along.
You will have after the replay replay.
Yes, absolutely.
Excellent.
All right, well, we will see you next week, or you will see us next week, or you may choose not to.
I don't know.
But please do!
We will be back at 11.30 Pacific on Wednesday, December something.
I don't know what that's going to be.
12th maybe?
Someone has a calendar in front of them.
It'll be a Wednesday, yeah.
And yeah, until we see you next time, be good to the ones you love, eat good food, and get outside.
