Mark: Alright Michelle, I have a book for you. It’s called Our Wild Calling. Based on the title alone, what do you think it’s about? Michelle: Our Wild Calling... Hmm. It sounds like a self-help book for people who have adopted too many rescue dogs and now need to justify why their chihuahua, Sir Reginald, gets a seat at the dinner table. It’s about the call of the wild... inside your suburban home. Mark: That is... surprisingly close, but also wonderfully cynical. You're not entirely wrong about the dogs at the dinner table, but the book we're diving into today, Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives—and Save Theirs by Richard Louv, goes so much deeper. Michelle: Richard Louv... that name sounds familiar. Mark: It should! He's the journalist and author who famously coined the term "Nature-Deficit Disorder" in his hugely influential book, Last Child in the Woods. He’s the guy who kicked off a global movement to get kids back outside. Michelle: Oh, that guy! I remember that. It was everywhere. So is this book like the sequel for all those kids who are now grown-ups, staring at screens all day and feeling like something is missing? Mark: That's exactly it. Louv argues that it's not just kids who are disconnected. Adults are suffering from what he calls "species loneliness"—a deep, existential ache that comes from our separation from other animals. And he believes that reconnecting is not just a nice hobby, but a fundamental human need. Michelle: Species loneliness. Wow, that's a powerful phrase. It sounds almost spiritual. Mark: It is. And that's where Louv starts—not with data, but with mystery. He dives into these profound, almost inexplicable moments of connection that people have with animals, encounters that seem to bend the rules of reality.

Michelle: Okay, you have my attention. "Bend the rules of reality" is a big claim. Are we talking about people who think their cat is sending them psychic messages? Mark: Not quite that, but close to that feeling. Louv fills the book with these incredible stories, but one stands out. It’s about a marine ecologist named Paul Dayton. Back in the 1960s, he was a young diver, studying marine life in Washington State, often alone, with very primitive gear. Michelle: Diving alone with primitive gear already sounds like a recipe for a mind-altering experience. Mark: Exactly. So one day, he's 80 feet down, inspecting a starfish, and he realizes his air tank is almost empty. He’s in that critical moment of preparing for a slow, careful ascent when he feels a shadow fall over him. Michelle: Oh no. Shark? Mark: Worse, in a way. He looks up, and a giant Northwestern octopus, maybe fourteen feet across, is descending right on top of him. It envelops him completely. Its arms are wrapping around his mask, his regulator, his body. He said, "All of a sudden I’m covered with octopus." Michelle: That is pure nightmare fuel. I would be panicking. Mark: And he did, for a moment. He tried to pry the tentacles off, but they were immensely powerful. Then, something shifted. He realized struggling was useless, so he just... relaxed. And the moment he relaxed, he felt the octopus relax too. It stopped constricting and just started exploring him with its suckers, curiously. Michelle: Wow. Okay. So what happened? Mark: He knew he had to get to the surface. So he pushed off the ocean floor and began to ascend, with the octopus still wrapped around him. They rose together. When they broke the surface, the octopus, which was covering his head, slid back. And for a moment, they just looked at each other. Dayton said he felt a profound sense of communication in that gaze, something ancient and intelligent. Then the octopus transformed its arms into these wing-like shapes and just glided silently back down into the dark water. Michelle: That's an incredible story. But here’s the skeptic in me talking: he was low on oxygen, in a life-or-death situation. How do we know that feeling of 'communication' wasn't just his brain creating a narrative to cope with the trauma and the lack of air? Mark: That's the perfect question, and Louv addresses this head-on. He doesn't claim it's a telepathic conversation. He introduces this beautiful concept called the "habitat of the heart." It’s this idea of a third space, a liminal world that’s neither our inner world nor the outer physical world. It's a shared space of empathy and connection that we can enter with another being. Michelle: A habitat of the heart. What does that actually feel like? Is it just a metaphor? Mark: Louv describes it as a state where the boundaries of the self seem to dissolve. The story of a six-year-old boy named Aidan captures it perfectly. His mom finds him lying on the floor, stroking their big retriever, Jack. He looks up at her and says, completely seriously, "Mommy, I don’t have a heart anymore. My heart is in Jack." Michelle: Oh, wow. That gives me chills. Kids say things like that with such sincerity. Mark: Exactly. For that boy, the boundary was literally gone. Louv argues that these moments, like Dayton's with the octopus or Aidan's with his dog, are glimpses into this shared habitat. It’s a pre-verbal, intuitive connection. It’s not about understanding what an animal is thinking in human terms, but about sharing a moment of being. It's a feeling of being seen by another form of life, across what one writer called "an abyss of non-comprehension." Michelle: That abyss is what makes it so powerful, I guess. It’s a connection without the baggage of human language and judgment. You’re just two beings, existing. Mark: Precisely. And Louv’s point is that in our modern world, we've built walls around this habitat. We've forgotten how to access it. This "species loneliness" is the ache we feel from being locked out of that profound, ancient part of our own humanity.

Mark: And that feeling of being locked out naturally leads to the next big question Louv tackles: If this connection is real, how do we get better at it? How do we move from a fleeting, mystical moment to a genuine understanding? Michelle: Right. It can't all be about waiting for an octopus to hug you. There has to be a more practical way in. So how do we actually learn to communicate? Mark: This is where Louv gets into the art and science of it, and he wades into some very controversial territory: anthropomorphism. Michelle: Ah, yes. Attributing human traits to animals. I know that's a huge taboo in a lot of scientific circles. You can't say a dog is "happy" or a cat is "angry" without getting some serious side-eye from a biologist. Mark: Exactly. For centuries, going back to Descartes and his idea of the 'bête machine'—the animal as a machine—science has been terrified of anthropomorphism. It was seen as sentimental, unscientific, and just plain wrong. And Louv acknowledges that it can lead to misunderstandings. He cites a study where kids who learned about animals from fantasy books were more likely to think real animals could talk and less likely to remember actual biological facts. Michelle: Okay, so it can be a problem. But we all do it. I definitely tell my dog he's being a 'grumpy old man' when he sighs. Mark: And Louv argues that a total rejection of it has been even more damaging. It "ruined the field," as one scientist put it, preventing researchers from even asking questions about animal consciousness or emotion for decades. So Louv proposes a middle path, something called "critical anthropomorphism." Michelle: Critical anthropomorphism. Okay, break that down for me. Mark: It's the idea of using our human imagination and empathy, but grounding it in rigorous scientific observation. It's not just projecting our feelings onto an animal. It's trying to imagine what it's like to be that animal, within its own world. One researcher playfully called it "wearing the snake's shoes." Michelle: 'Wearing the snake's shoes.' I love that. So it's about trying to understand their perspective, not just assuming they have ours. Mark: Precisely. And the book is filled with examples of where this leads. Take the work of Con Slobodchikoff, an animal behaviorist who has spent decades studying prairie dogs. For years, people thought their chirps and yips were just simple alarm calls. Michelle: Yeah, like "Hawk!" or "Danger!" Mark: But by using sound-frequency analysis and AI, Slobodchikoff discovered it's a language of incredible complexity. They don't just say "Danger." They have distinct calls for "tall human in a blue shirt approaching slowly" versus "short human in a yellow shirt approaching quickly." They can describe the shape, color, and speed of a predator. They can even invent new words for things they've never seen before. Michelle: Come on. That's insane. They have adjectives? Mark: They have what amounts to adjectives. They are composing sentences. Slobodchikoff is now working on a device—a sort of prairie-dog-to-English translator. His hope is that one day we can have genuine partnerships with animals, rather than just exploiting them. Michelle: That's mind-blowing. So this "critical anthropomorphism" isn't just about feeling a connection, it's a tool for scientific discovery. It's what allows a scientist to even ask the question, "What if those barks aren't just noise? What if they're words?" Mark: You've got it. It's about opening the door to possibility. And it's not just vocalizations. It's understanding that communication is happening all around us, all the time. Louv talks about how squirrels and chipmunks eavesdrop on the alarm calls of the tufted titmouse. They've learned a foreign language to survive. The world is a constant conversation, and we've just had our ears plugged. Michelle: It makes you think about all the things we're missing. We're so focused on our own human chatter, we don't even notice the complex drama unfolding in our own backyards. Mark: And that's the bridge to Louv's final, and perhaps most ambitious, idea. If we can reconnect personally, and if we can start to understand scientifically, what does that mean for how we live together on a massive scale?

Michelle: Okay, so if we're not just talking about individual experiences anymore, what is the big picture? Louv isn't just writing a book to make us feel warm and fuzzy about animals, right? He has a larger agenda. Mark: A much larger one. He believes these personal and scientific shifts need to lead to a societal one. He asks us to imagine moving out of the Anthropocene—the age of human domination—and into what he calls the "Symbiocene." Michelle: The Symbiocene. I'm guessing that means an age of symbiosis? Mark: Exactly. An age of living together. And he's not just talking about preserving distant wilderness. He's talking about creating the "Symbiocene City"—a city designed for peaceful coexistence between humans and all other creatures. Michelle: That sounds like a beautiful, utopian ideal. But it also sounds a little... chaotic. I mean, I love animals, but do I want a bear as my next-door neighbor? The book has that story about a bear in a jacuzzi, right? Mark: It does! A man in Virginia found a bear had ripped the cover off his hot tub and was just having a nice, warm soak. And Louv uses these wild, almost comical stories to show that this isn't a future possibility—it's already happening. The animals are already here. Michelle: That's a good point. We have coyotes in Chicago, raccoons that are basically tiny, masked cat burglars everywhere, and I even read about the stray dogs in Moscow that have learned to navigate the subway system. Mark: Louv details that exact story! They ride the trains from the suburbs into the city center to scavenge for food during the day, and then ride back home in the evening. They've learned to pick the quietest carriages and even how to time their exits. The animals are adapting to our world with incredible intelligence. The question is, can we adapt to them? Michelle: So how does a Symbiocene City actually work without it becoming a complete mess? How do we manage the risk? Mark: Louv points to real-world examples. He talks about Singapore's "City in a Garden" initiative, where they are weaving nature back into the urban fabric with green corridors, rooftop gardens, and extensive park systems. It's about biophilic design—an architecture that recognizes our innate need for nature. It's also about creating wildlife overpasses and underpasses so animals can move safely through our landscapes. Michelle: So it's about smart design, not just letting nature run wild. Mark: It's about intentional design. And it's also about a shift in mindset. Louv tells the story of the Cook County Coyote Project in Chicago. When coyotes first started appearing, there was a lot of fear. But through a long-term research project that tracked the coyotes and educated the public, attitudes completely changed. People went from being scared to being proud of their urban wildlife. They started to see the coyotes not as invaders, but as fellow residents. Michelle: It's like we need a new social contract with animals. Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. Louv argues for a new contract of cohabitation. We have to recognize that these animals aren't just visitors; they're citizens of the same ecosystem. And this requires us to be more observant, more respectful, and frankly, more creative in how we share our space. It's a call to see our cities not as human fortresses, but as complex, shared habitats.

Michelle: It really feels like Louv's entire argument is a perfect circle. It starts with this very personal, internal ache—this "species loneliness" you mentioned—and it ends with a massive, external, architectural solution: redesigning our cities. Mark: That's a brilliant synthesis. The solution to our inner void is to reshape our outer world. He’s saying that the path to healing our own loneliness and anxiety is paved with the same bricks we use to build a home for all creatures. The personal and the planetary are inseparable. Michelle: And it’s not just about some abstract love for "Mother Nature." It's about concrete actions. Mark: Exactly. He makes a powerful distinction, borrowing from the philosopher Arne Naess. He contrasts a "moral act" with a "beautiful act." A moral act is something you do out of a sense of duty or obligation, because you feel you should. You recycle because it's the right thing to do. Michelle: Right, it can feel like a chore. Mark: But a "beautiful act," he says, is one you do out of pure inclination and love. You don't rescue a fallen bird from the sidewalk because of a moral calculus; you do it because your heart tells you to. Louv's ultimate call is for us to fill our lives, and our world, with more of these beautiful acts. That, he believes, is what will truly fuel a new nature movement. Michelle: I love that. It shifts the motivation from guilt to joy. It makes you wonder, what's one 'beautiful act' you could do this week? Not out of obligation to 'save the planet,' but just out of a simple, quiet connection to an animal or a piece of nature right outside your door? Maybe it's just stopping to actually watch the squirrels instead of shooing them away. Mark: Or maybe it's just learning the name of one new bird you hear on your way to work. A small act of seeing, of acknowledging another life. That seems to be the wild calling he’s talking about. Michelle: A beautiful way to end it. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.