HOUR ONE
For his editorial cartoons, Mike Luckovich has won two Pulitzer Prizes – which he calls “the ultimate coloring contest.” Luckovich is the staff editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution but his work is also syndicated to hundred of papers nationwide and regularly appears in Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Writer Ruth Reichl is editor in chief for Gourmet magazine, former food critic for both the New York and the Los Angeles Times, and the author of three best-selling memoirs. Her latest, Not Becoming My Mother and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way, is a tribute to her mother, Miriam Brudno, whose larger than life personality dominated Reichl’s younger years.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from Herbert Lehman. He co-founded the Lehman Brothers investment banking firm in 1908 and served in the Army during World War I, rising to the rank of colonel. Lehman, a Democrat, was Governor of New York from 1933 to 1942, and served as U.S. Senator from 1949 until 1957.
HOUR TWO
A third of all pet owners admit to buying birthday presents for their furry friends. Many pet groomers now offer pedicures as part of their routine service. And if your dog is deemed to be suffering from separation anxiety, your vet might prescribe puppy Prozac. It’s all part of the $43 BILLION a year pet care industry. Michael Shaffer has written a new book about our pet-obsessed culture called One Nation Under Dog.
Author and journalist Peter Laufer tells Bob all about his new book The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists. It touches on the relationships between butterflies and organized crime, ecological devastation, species depletion, the integrity of natural history museum collections and the role butterflies play in the art world.
I have been listening to your interview with Peter Laufer and was very disappointed by some of the misinformation that he presented. Two things were especially unfortunate:
1. Migrating monarch butterflies do not make a round trip to the exact place that they started, but it IS those same butterflies overwintering in Mexico that return to the southern tier of states, laying eggs as they move north, some of them getting as far north as Kansas and the Carolinas.
2. The idea that caterpillars become a soup in the chrysalis is nonsense, as is the statement that scientists do not know how they change during metamorphosis. Scientists do know a great deal, it is Mr. Laufer who does not. Butterfly metamorphosis is going on even during the caterpillar stage. By the time that a caterpillar is in its 3rd instar (half grown) it is already growing wing buds.
I teach teachers how to use monarch butterflies in the classroom and am in the process of writing a book with internationally known monarch scientist Dr. Karen Oberhauser on the lives of lepidoptera (butterflies, moths and skippers). Our book will make the scientific knowledge about butterfly metamorphosis and physiology accessible for the many butterfly enthusiasts who raise caterpillars and participate in citizen science tracking monarchs and other butterflies each year. Perhaps when our book is ready you would be willing to talk to us and correct some of the misconceptions Mr. Laufer has introduced. Our book Milkweed, Monarchs and More ( http://www.basrelief.org/Pages/MMM.html ) was created to help citizen scientists participating in the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (http://www.mlmp.org ) monitoring milkweed patches all over North America understand what they see in the field. It is now also used in classrooms all over the country. I also wrote and illustrated a book, Monarch Come Play with Me ( http://www.basrelief.org/Pages/MCP.html ) that explains the life cycle of the monarch butterfly for pre-school and early elementary age children.
Love your show, just want to help it be more accurate. I was really happy to hear references to Edith Smith and Shady Oak Butterfly farm. She is a sweetheart.
Ba Rea