Ghosts in the machine
Perhaps you’re familiar with our Outside/Inbox hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. Anyone can leave us a voicemail sharing questions about the natural world, and we periodically answer them on the show.
A few weeks ago, it came to our attention that we hadn't gotten a new voicemail in some time. Turns out our hotline has been bugging out for at least six months, and we have a lot of catching up to do.
So, we present: Outside/Inbox, the lost voicemails edition.
Featuring Stephanie Spera, with contributions from Ariel, Joe, Carolyn, Maverick, Jarrett, Eben, a rooster, and a closet (?) full of snakes.
Editor's note: A previous version of this episode incorrectly stated that Forest Park is the biggest public park in the United States. It is the biggest in St. Louis, Missouri and arguably bigger than Central Park. The audio and transcript have been updated. Thank you to listener D. Boisvert for the correction.
SUPPORT
Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member.
Subscribe to our newsletter to get occasional emails about new show swag, call-outs for listener submissions, and other announcements.
Follow Outside/In on Instagram or X, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.
LINKS
This is the study Marina mentioned with a comparative life cycle assessment of hand dryers vs. paper towel dispensers.
If you want to learn more about chronic wasting disease, Nate recommends listening to Bent Out of Shape, a three-part series from KUNC. For a quick read, here’s a fact sheet from the CDC.
Listen to Outside/In’s behind-the-scenes journey into a human decomposition facility, aka “body farm,” reported by Felix Poon.
If you’ve been to Acadia National Park in Maine and taken photos of the fall foliage anytime since 1950, you can participate in research about how climate change is shifting the timing of peak foliage. Contribute your pictures of the autumn leaves to the Acadia National Park Fall Foliage Project here.
Many are predicting that fall 2024 will be a banner season for spectacular foliage, including our colleagues at NHPR’s Something Wild. Plus, here’s more on the dynamics of fall foliage, precipitation, and anthocyanin.
CREDITS
Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi
Reported by Justine Paradis, Nate Hegyi, and Marina Henke.
Produced and mixed by Justine Paradis.
Edited by Taylor Quimby
NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie
Our staff also includes Kate Dario.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Brigham Orchestra, Guustavv, Katori Walker, John B. Lund, and Bonkers Beat Club.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Audio Transcript: Ghosts in the machine
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: Hey, you're listening to Outside/In. I'm Nate Hegyi. Today here with producers Justine Paradis…
Justine Paradis: Hello hello!
Nate Hegyi: And debuting here on the show, our newest addition to the team. I kind of want to do it like Oprah does. Marina Henke!
Marina Henke: And then I walk out screaming or dancing, but on a microphone.
Nate Hegyi: Hailing from the beautiful town of Saint Louis, Missouri. If one of our listeners is going, they've got one day in Saint Louis. Where should they go?
Marina Henke: They should go to Forest Park. It is the biggest park in St. Louis. It is bigger than Central Park, if you include the golf course, which makes it sort of a controversial argument.
Nate Hegyi: Is the golf course public? Can anyone play on it?
Marina Henke: Yes you can. You can cross country, ski on it. You can walk your dog on it.
Nate Hegyi: That’s public space, I think. Sorry, Central Park.
Marina Henke: That's that's what I'm telling every New Yorker I see, it's the first thing I say. They love me.
Nate Hegyi: Is the golf course public? Can anyone play on it?
Marina Henke: Yes you can. You can cross country, ski on it. You can walk your dog on it.
Nate Hegyi: That’s public space, I think. Sorry, Central Park.
Marina Henke: That's that's what I'm telling every New Yorker I see, it's the first thing I say. They love me.
MUSIC: Satin Slipper, Brigham Orchestra
Nate Hegyi: All right. Let's get down to brass tacks. So we here at Outside/In have a confession to make.
A few weeks ago, we noticed something or I guess, rather, the absence of something. Listeners, you all know our Outside/Inbox hotline, right? We put it in the show notes. We mention it every time we answer your questions. Well, a few weeks ago, Justine noticed that we hadn't gotten a new voicemail in, like five months.
Justine Paradis: I know, I was like, no one calls us anymore. This is kind of weird, right?
Voicemail TQ: Hi, you've reached the Outside Inbox where we answer your questions about the natural world. No question is too silly or too serious. So let’s hear it.
Operator: New message.
Voicemail Justine: This is Justine calling from Maine testing our hotline to see if it's broken or not.
MUSIC: Plataz, Blue Dot Sessions
Nate Hegyi: Long story short, as it turns out, our listener hotline has been bugging out for at least six months. You’ve been calling. And it’s been recording them. We just… weren’t getting them. And once we figured out what the problem was, it turned out we have a lot of catching up to do.
Operator: You have 47 new messages and nine saved messages.
Marina Henke: Can I just say that when, you know, I'm new here, and so when I started and I, you know, we see where the where the messages come in. And I actually thought, wow, they haven't been getting messages for a while. Like I guess people are forgetting about them.
Nate Hegyi: I know.
Justine Paradis: Like, ‘weird. I thought the show was more popular.’
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/Inbox: lost voicemails edition.
[hi Outside/In, hi outside/in, hi hi hi]
Nate Hegyi: I’m Nate Hegyi. And together with producers Justine Paradis and Marina Henke, we are listening back to some of those 47 messages, as many we can get through in the next 20 minutes.
Justine Paradis: Marina, this is not usually how this goes, FYI.
Marina Henke: I love it. I'm so here for it. I want 100 messages.
Nate Hegyi: Let’s get to it.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: Okay. Ready?
Nate Hegyi: Yes yes.
Marina Henke: Ready.
Operator: New message. May 9. Time: 7:56 am.
[Indistinct voices – rooster]
Justine Paradis: So some of these are butt dials.
Marina Henke: It sounds like every butt dial my dad has ever sent me.
Nate Hegyi: Oh my God. Except do you get roosters in the background?
Marina Henke: We don't get roosters. Not yet. Not yet.
Justine Paradis: I think that the people here are speaking in Spanish, it’s a little hard to tell. If they are, I ran it through like a Google Translate, and it came back saying they were talking about, like, the music being bad or maybe the podcast being bad. Unclear.
Nate Hegyi: Fair.
Justine Paradis: This next one, actually, Nate, came specifically for you.
Ariel: Hi, my name is Ariel Chamberlain, and I currently reside in Portland, Oregon… I want to preface I'm a long time listener of and listening pretty much as long as y’all have been around. And then I took a break for a couple of years. I don't know what happened, but then I was like, ‘oh my God, why am I not listening to Outside/In?’ So I'm doing a big backlog and lo and behold, I hear that Nate Hegyi is spending so much time in Juneau, Alaska, and that is my hometown…
Nate Hegyi: Whaat!
Ariel: And so my question is very selfish… I don't expect to hear this on the podcast. Uh, I was just really curious what you're doing up there and how you liked it. And tell me if you've eaten pelmeni. Okay, bye.
Nate Hegyi: Oh my gosh!
Justine Paradis: Uh, Nate, this is actually perhaps an opportunity for you to give a little life update.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. So me and my wife, over the past couple of years, we have moved a lot, including a stint in Juneau. And I have to say, it’s a wonderful town. It’s got rain, giant mountains and ocean and a lot of ice and snow and really friendly people. It is a beautiful place, uh, with a housing crisis that makes it very hard to live there.
Justine Paradis: But wait, did you eat pelmeni? You forgot that part of the question.
Nate Hegyi: Oh!
Justine Paradis: What is pelmeni?
Nate Hegyi: Oh my gosh. It is, I’m pretty sure they're referring to these kind of Russian potato balls that you can get downtown. I got them once. They’re dumplings, that's what they are. They’re dumplings.
Marina Henke: Got it.
Nate Hegyi: And it's very famous. It's a place that like they used to have, like lines going down the street to eat and this, this little Russian shop. Um, and yes, I went there and I ate them and, um, I'm on a podcast, so I will say that they were amazing. They were really delicious. Okay. I thought they were a little bland. I'm sorry. I feel terrible saying that. The space was really cool.
Justine Paradis: Do they come with, like, sauces?
Marina Henke: Exactly. Dips?
Nate Hegyi: Maybe. Maybe I didn't get the dips.
Justine Paradis: Well, what do you feel like is the iconic food of Juneau?
Nate Hegyi: I would say smoked salmon, hands down. Smoked salmon and crab.
Marina Henke: I love it, I love it, I love it.
Justine Paradis: Well, thank you Ariel. I love getting individualized voicemails on this hotline, so keep them coming.
MUSIC: Barranca, Guustavv
Joe: Hey Outside/In, this is Joe calling you from North Carolina… I have a question that plagues me sometimes multiple times a day, and I don't think anyone else but you can help.
Justine Paradis: No one but us.
Marina Henke: Nobody else.
Joe: And the issue is: you use a public restroom and then you are faced with the decision after washing your hands, do I use the electric hand dryer or do I use the paper towel? …which one has a larger carbon footprint? And then it gets worse because it's like, well, one uses electricity, but how is the machine manufactured? But sometimes the paper towel dispenser runs on electricity too… and I just never know what to do.
Justine Paradis: The existential note in his voice.
Nate Hegyi: Yup.
Marina Henke: You can feel it.
Joe: Oh! My seven year old daughter Ella Pearl is in the background –
Nate Hegyi: Wonderful name.
Joe: – waving me, saying, we also think about trees like the paper towels use trees... It's so hard… We just wipe our hands on our pants and move on with our lives. Thanks so much. Hope you can help. Bye!
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so so Marina, you actually did look into this one. What did you find?
Marina Henke: I did look into this. I have sort-of-kind-of answers. Um, okay. So first off, like ignoring any environmental anxiety that you might feel, like, when you two are in a public restroom and you are about to dry your hands, what is like the immediate method that you both want to use, of these two?
Justine Paradis: A paper towel.
Nate Hegyi: Paper towel.
Marina Henke: Paper towel.
Nate Hegyi: It feels cleaner. I dunno why.
Marina Henke: It feels so much cleaner. I think so many people feel this, right?
Justine Paradis: Yeah.
Marina Henke: Personally, my least favorite is, you know, those old hand dryers that like, sort of just puff out air, right? And they like, seem to go for like two minutes. I always at some point just walk away and they're still going, you know.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah! Yup.
Marina Henke: So that does like get to the heart of of Joe's question, which is there are so many variables to this problem.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Marine Henke: Um, like Joe said, it's not a matter of the environmental impact of that singular moment of us washing our hands. Right? It's coming from everything that leads up to the hand drying and then everything that comes after it.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Marina Henke: And so to answer the question, you have to look at it from what's called a life cycle analysis. So you look at like, okay, what are all the pieces of energy that go into making it and disposing of it? Um, which I should say, Joe, like hit on a lot of those. Right?
Justine Paradis: Right, yeah. He kind of answered a lot of it in the question. Yeah.
Marina Henke: He mentioned the manufacturing of the hand drying machines. He even mentioned the electricity of the paper towel dispensers.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: Right.
Marina Henke: Right. Uh, and then shout out to his daughter, the paper mill and the trees. Um, but I will say that there are even things that I did not consider upon looking into this. Think about the fact that when you use paper towels, usually, do you ever notice that those bathrooms are a little bit messier?
Nate Hegyi: Oh yeah.
Justine Paradis: Totally. It's always overflowing, the trash can.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Marina Henke: And if it's always overflowing, well what does that mean? Maybe a janitor has to come in, clean more, use more chemicals.
Justine Paradis: The plastic trash bags.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Marina Henke: And use more plastic trash bags. Exactly.
Nate Hegyi: Good point.
Marina Henke: And then you have to think about where the electricity is coming from. Right? Like each different bathroom is pulling from a different electrical grid. So some of that electricity is much more carbon intensive and some of it is not. So a couple hand dryer companies looked into this. You might guess, what did they think was far more efficient to use?
Nate Hegyi: Oh, I wonder what.
Marina Henke: Hardcore in favor of hand dryers. I'm not looking at that to answer this question, but what they did lay out, really, in a persuading way, is that the new hand dryers that you probably are used to use way less energy than the old hand dryers. Do you two like the new hand dryers? You know what I'm talking about?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, the Dyson ones that you can, like, put your hands in and they've got the glowing lights and it's warm.
Justine Paradis: It's kind of like a, like a blade of air. It feels a lot more targeted.
Marina Henke: I feel like I'm on a spaceship when I use them. There's just something about it where I should be, like drying my hands and then walking into, like, you know, like the control center. These new hand dryers are – some of them are, like, 30% more effective than the old hand dryers that we know. The amount of time that it takes to dry your hands is like upwards of like half the amount of time.
Nate Hegyi: Right
Marina Henke: So like that is way less electricity used, which again, is like a very, a very compelling reason.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Marina Henke: But and this is like the heart of the problem, this question, is it's really hard to compare these, these two options because how we study them, there's so many variables. Which gets me to my last question for you too, which is when you use a paper towel, how many paper towels do you use to dry your hands? And be honest.
Justine Paradis: I use too many, like 3 or 4, I think...
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. 2 or 3 is kind of my thing.
Justine Paradis: Maybe. Maybe 2 or 3 if I'm feeling better. But it's never one.
Nate Hegyi: No, no. It's not. It's, it's a waste. Yeah.
Marina Henke: Wow. I was actually really expecting both of you to say one each because that's what I use. And now I'm being a little snotty.
Nate Hegyi: Wow, Marina, you're so good, so environmentally friendly.
Justine Paradis: I mean, I got to say, I often wipe my hands on my pants also, so I just, I feel like it evens out. It averages out.
Nate Hegyi: I do that most of the time.
Marina Henke: Well, so most of these studies are saying two pieces of paper per person. That is across the board. Two pieces of paper. But as we can see here, you know, it sounds like Justine is using 25. I'm using –
Justine Paradis: Wow, Marina, you were just raised right. Okay!
Marina Henke: But it’s really hard to come up with these comparisons. It is probably most efficient to use newer hand dryers.
Nate Hegyi: Okay.
Marina Henke: But the study that I, that I most sort of loved the scientific methods of, it was in 2015 out of Canada. It said even though that's the case, really, you would have to do a life cycle analysis of every single bathroom and, and compare, you know, the electric grid in the bathroom, the like janitorial cycles, all of that. And so like, is it really possible to say yay or nay to one? Like not really.
Nate Hegyi: And we've kind of talked about this on the show a lot. There are things that really matter, like what you eat when it comes to the environment. But I think like how you dry your hands and the big scheme of things probably doesn't have that huge of an impact globally.
Marina Henke: Well, and I thought about this like I think there are choices that we make that are tiny that can matter. But like this choice is so tiny and the margins seem to be so muddy and narrow that it's not the tiny choice that I want to focus on.
MUSIC: Bias, Katori Walker
Nate Hegyi: Alright, thanks Marina. And listener, if you think there’s something we’re missing here, because apparently hand dryers versus paper towels is kind of a hot topic, you should leave us a voicemail. Is it working now?
Justine Paradis: It is working now. I mean, actually it’s not working. But we are checking it much more often, so we will get it this time.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, cool. So, it’s kind of working. We are checking it. Please, give us a call, at 1-844-GO-OTTER. Alright, we’ll be right back.
//// BREAK ////
Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi. Producer Justine Paradis and Marina Henke and I are finally checking the Outside/Inbox voicemail hotline, which was broken for months, apologies again and we did not notice for way too long. Alright, hit it up, Justine.
Justine Paradis: Okay, so this one came in right after we published an episode reported by our colleague Felix Poon about green burial – so, what are the best ways to handle our bodies after death?
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Marina Henke: Yeah.
Carolyn: Hi there, Outside/In. My name is Carolyn. I'm calling from Wappingers Falls, New York… I actually wanted to call in after listening to your most recent episode about green burial options, because I think you missed one… and that is, uh, body farm donation. I did choose several years ago to donate myself after I pass to Texas State Forensic Anthropology department… I consider it green because you are oftentimes decomposing naturally… and you are not being burned or buried or anything like that, or embalmed… and I also think of it as an interesting way of connecting with my own mortality… I feel happy knowing that everything is set up for me, and that my body will be handled with respect and contribute to potentially solving some crimes in the future… Alright. Love the show. Thanks, guys.
Nate Hegyi: So, uh, that is a really great point about the body farms. I don't think we did touch it on that specific episode, but I do want to say that Felix actually did a whole episode about body farms a couple of years ago that we'll put a link to in the show notes, that's really, really amazing. He's kind of our death beat reporter, and I like that one in particular.
Justine Paradis: I loved hearing from you, Carolyn, though, about walking through the process of why you chose this for yourself.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Marina Henke: Totally. I also just think like, man, anything that does make us think forwardly about death. It's kind of a somber thought, but like, man, it feels really important and doesn't feel like something I do.
MUSIC: Dolly Pop, Blue Dot sessions
Operator: New message. Saturday, March 30th. Time 1:41 a.m.
Nate Hegyi: Whoa!
Maverick: Hello. Outside/In people. Um. Hi, my name is Maverick Cuccia. I'm calling from, um, Chicagoland area. And it is currently 12:45ish. And I have done something to myself that I've done too many times.
Nate Hegyi: Oh no!
Maverick: And that is I fell down a frightening Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Marina Henke: Oh, yeah…
Nate Hegyi: Oh, okay.
Maverick: And tonight's Wikipedia rabbit hole was chronic wasting disease. I know it's a thing in, um, affecting white tailed deer populations. I know it's prion disease. I know prion diseases are weird and scary. But if you guys can, like, look into that… if you couldn't tell, I'm a little loopy. Anyways, I love your show. Thank you so much.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, I just, I just like, what if it wasn't a voicemail, but it was just a phone that we all had that just, like, rang. And at like 1:45 a.m., you had to, like, pick up the phone and you're like, yes, this is the Outside/In hotline. I'll look into that. Yeah.
Marina Henke: Sorry, guys, I can't be out late tonight. I'm on call for the Outside/Inbox hotline.
Nate Hegyi: I’m on call. We get some late night calls sometimes.
Justine Paradis: We're just always waiting.
Nate Hegyi: So I actually looked into this one, and I am very familiar with chronic wasting disease.
Justine Paradis: Why?
Nate Hegyi: I grew up in Wisconsin, and I remember there was billboards everywhere that said “CWD-free by 2003.” And then like a hunter with a gun. And it's just like seared into my memory. It was just everywhere. “CWD Free by 2003.”
Justine Paradis: I don't know what that means.
Nate Hegyi: They wanted the state of Wisconsin to be free of chronic wasting disease by 2003. Spoiler alert: didn't work. So chronic wasting disease, as Maverick said, it is a prion disease. So prion diseases essentially cause an abnormal buildup of protein inside the brain, which can lead to some really bad neurological stuff.
Justine Paradis: Ooh, weird.
Nate Hegyi: You're all familiar with mad cow disease, right?
Marina Henke: Yes. Well, loosely.
Nate Hegyi: That’s a prion disease.
Justine Paradis: I know the words.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so so chronic wasting disease. It primarily infects cervids, which are your deer, elk, that kind of thing. And if they have it, uh, they'll start losing their fear of humans. They'll struggle with walking. They'll start to drool a lot. They'll stop eating. Thus the name chronic wasting disease.
Justine Paradis: It sounds like rabies or something.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, and just like rabies, once you start showing signs, it is always fatal.
Marina Henke: Ohh.
Nate Hegyi: You're done. Um. And so, deer get this by coming into contact with the saliva, urine, feces or the dead bodies of other infected deer. It is incredibly contagious. And prions, they can last in the soil for years where a deer had decomposed.
Justine Paradis: Oh my god.
Nate Hegyi: It was first identified in Colorado and Wyoming in the 1960s and 1970s. It has since spread to 35 states, two Canadian provinces, parts of Europe and Asia. By the way, I'm feeling like Maverick right now and going down the Wikipedia wormhole of terrifying-ness. Yeah, we I think we can all…
Marina Henke: Yeah. I’m feeling weird.
Justine Paradis: Feels like it's 1 a.m. in Chicago… What is a prion? Is it like a virus?
Nate Hegyi: Don’t ask that question. It’s essentially, this is where it’s tricky, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. I guess it’s like – it is a protein. Once it’s in your bloodstream it triggers other proteins in the brain to fold on themselves, and that creates a buildup of protein that then creates neurological problems… uh, it's very bad for deer populations. It's also a slow developing disease. It can take years to kill a deer.
Justine Paradis: Really?
Nate Hegyi: But one study found that once it's present in a population, that population can be wiped out within five decades. Now, there has never been a diagnosed case of a human being having CWD. It is not known if we can get it.
Marina Henke: Oh.
Nate Hegyi: But it is related to other prion diseases that humans can contract. And the CDC does consider it to be a theoretical risk. This is a conversation that happens in the hunting world. Um, and you can send in your deer to be tested for CWD once you've taken it to find out whether it was CWD-free or not.
Justine Paradis: But how long does that take? Don't you want your fresh venison?
Nate Hegyi: I mean you can freeze venison, and –
Justine Paradis: Okay.
Nate Hegyi: But you're also touching it and everything. When you're breaking apart a deer after you've shot it, you're definitely, your hands are in there. So, it is very scary to read about in the middle of the night, and it’s definitely not good for deer populations, but no human has ever gotten it. I hunt and I have eaten deer, and I don't think that I have chronic wasting disease.
Justine Paradis: It takes a while to develop, Nate.
Nate Hegyi: Shh!
Justine Paradis: You don't know. You'll start to lose your fear of humans.
[laughter]
MUSIC: Blacklight, John B. Lund
Jarett: Hello, my name is Jarett. I’m calling from San Francisco, California. With fall on the horizon, I just learned a lot about this back east pastime called “leaf-peeping.” It just seems so cool that leaves change to mark the coming of fall. Out here I just wait for pumpkin spice lattes and Uggs to be back in style. That said, I’d love to know more about what makes leaves change color, and how they know to drop leaves to prepare for the coming winter. Love the show, love all the work you guys do, thanks so much! Bye.
Nate Hegyi: All right, Jarett, this is not on you. But I did make a promise on this podcast that we would never use the term leaf peeping ever again. Because nobody peeps at leaves. You look at ‘em. You're looking at leaves. Peeping is looking over a corner, popping up, ‘Oh, I'm peeping at something.’ Nobody does that.
Justine Paradis: It's also like a, like a 1930s term like, ‘Jeepers creepers.’
Nate Hegyi: ‘Where'd you get those peepers?’
Marina Henke: And I was like, wow. Jared, thank you for asking this because I didn't know that that was Nate's thoughts. And now I will never say the word leaf peeping again.
Justine Paradis: Yeah. Careful.
Nate Hegyi: I’m gonna be a diva about this one.
Justine Paradis: Alright, so I looked into this one. Um, and let's talk now about chlorophyl.
Nate Hegyi + Marina Henke: Oooh!
Justine Paradis: As many of us learn in school, this is the pigment that powers photosynthesis and helps make sugar inside plant leaves. It also happens to be green, but then, as summer tilts into fall, trees are picking up on certain cues specifically shorter days like less sunlight and falling temperatures, and they get the message that it is fall. And then chlorophyl production starts to break down, and that reveals other pigments that were hiding in the leaves all along.
Marina Henke: Huh.
Justine Paradis: And these pigments are called carotenoids, and they are the oranges and yellows of autumn. So once we see these carotenoids, that's also when you start to smell that pumpkin spice. And the flannels come out and it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.
Nate Hegyi: [laughs]
Stephanie Spera: Fall is my favorite season. I love wearing sweaters. I love changing the colors. I love crisp air. I love feeling cold. I miss feeling cold.
Justine Paradis: This is Stephanie Spera. Stephanie is a professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, but she grew up in New England and maintains a strong correct bias towards east coast foliage. There is actually something especially abundant in New England trees, which for real, gives our leafscape a real edge. And it's another pigment called anthocyanin. You'll find anthocyanin in lots of red and purplish fruits and veggies like strawberries, cherries, red onions and as some trees are trying to squeeze the last bit of sugar out before winter, they actually produce anthocyanin in their leaves as the leaves are dying.
Nate Hegyi: Oh wow.
Marina Henke: Huh.
Stephanie Spera: And those are your reds. So if you have cool nights with sunny days in the fall, you're gonna get brilliant reds. Um, because that enhances sugar production and anthocyanin production.
Justine Paradis: And in New England, there's a particularly high percentage of trees here which produce anthocyanin in the fall. Does that make sense?
Nate Hegyi: Yes it does. It also like, so, I've recently moved to New England, and something I hear everybody talk about is like how, oh, last year wasn't that great of a season for colors. And I was just wondering, is it because those sugars weren't being produced as much?
Justine Paradis: You know, we got another missing voicemail on that subject last fall.
Eben: Hi. My name is Eben. I'm calling from Lincoln, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. And I'm curious because I've been walking around Lincoln recently and kind of noticing that the leaves, as they're turning colors, have been much more vibrant here than they were farther north over the past few weeks. And I'm kind of curious as to why, because usually it's the other way around.
Justine Paradis: Again, here’s Stephanie Spera.
Stephanie Spera: Um, so that is such a hilariously complicated question.
Justine Paradis: You know how some questions, you just think that they're going to be kind of straightforward. And it turns out–
Nate Hegyi: I did figure that would be straightforward.
Marina Henke: No, it's always the most basic ones.
Justine Paradis: Stephanie, by the way, is not just a fall lover. She is also a geographer who studies fall foliage and climate change. So this, this answer might fly in the face of like expectations around foliage. Because a big reason people associate New Hampshire and Vermont and Maine with foliage is that there are just so many trees that the effect is spectacular.
Nate Hegyi: That's what I figured.
Justine Paradis: But yeah, local weather conditions do make a difference.
Stephanie Spera: What happened last year? I joked that it was like the year without a summer. It rained all the time, right? Particularly Vermont, New Hampshire. So what happened was a lot of these trees actually got a fungus that really dampened the colors in Boston and outside of Boston was a little bit drier.
Justine Paradis: And therefore Boston last year had better or let's say more colorful foliage.
Marina Henke: And so did that fungus affect or kill the anthocyanin?
Justine Paradis: Well, so, you know, trees are producing the anthocyanin, right?
Marina Henke: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: And so they're putting resources investment in making that pigment. Because basically when trees are stressed…
Stephanie Spera: When trees are stressed, they just don't have the energy to allocate into like leaf production and like maintaining and like, honestly, just like being their best selves.
Justine Paradis: Like, you know, when you're sick?
Marina Henke: I am not my best self when I'm sick.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, yeah. You can't like, rise to the occasion.
Justine Paradis: And they and there's like a million complicated factors. And this actually brings us back to like when we get a particularly spectacular foliage year, it's because the region is experiencing what people refer to as Goldilocks conditions like an all or most of the trees are turning at once.
Marina Henke: Oh.
Justine Paradis: And so you need rain. Not too much, not too little, but just right. And some are predicting that actually this year will be a banner season
Nate Hegyi: See that's – sorry, that's not fair because I have just moved to northern New Hampshire and now I am back in Montana moving more of our stuff. And I am going to miss this perfect fall foliage season. I mean, like, that's the whole point of being out there is to be able to see the colors. And I'm going to miss like one of the best ones in years. Unfair.
Justine Paradis: It is all about you, yes.
Marina Henke: You have to embrace post-peak foliage. That's what I'm always saying, you know.
Nate Hegyi: Stick season?
Marina Henke: No, the dark, the rusty browns, the reds. I love it.
Nate Hegyi: Ah, gotcha okay.
Marina Henke: I love it so much.
Justine Paradis: Okay, I think we have time for one more.
Operator: New message… Friday, June 7th. Time: 5:53 p.m.
Mysterious person: I washed my hands because that snake was gross. It had stuff on it.
Marina Henke: Snake?!
Mysterious person: They were all over the place. It's like. This is the old school.
Nate Hegyi: What?
Mysterious person: Open the closet. And I was like, that's cool. And that's exactly what it was. Yeah.
Marina Henke: Shoot, they might need more than an Outside Inbox.
Nate Hegyi: They had a snake in the closet.
Mysterious person: Yeah. It says emergency. They were all over the place. It's like. This is the old stuff. Oh, I saw it on the outside. Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: It feels like there's like a group of like, ten people talking about the thousands of snakes that they found inside and outside of the walls of their house.
Marina Henke: And it's the thing of nightmares.
Nate Hegyi: Not a thing that you need to call 1-844-GO-OTTER. We cannot help you with snakes in your wall.
Justine Paradis: Uh, however, we do want to know the rest of the story.
Nate Hegyi: So if you recognize this conversation…
Marina Henke: …please call us back.
Nate Hegyi: Please. Yeah.
Marina Henke: The voicemail is working again.
MUSIC: Streamer, Bonkers Beat Club
Nate Hegyi: And that number once again, 1-844-GO-OTTER. We promise to check the voicemail much more often from now on. This episode was reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis, with contributions from me, Nate Hegyi, and Marina Henke.
It was edited by Taylor Quimby, our executive producer, who does not have snakes in the walls, but did have mushrooms growing in his carpet at one point, so that was definitely an issue.
Our outfit’s director of podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie. Our staff also includes Felix Poon and Kate Dario.
Music in this episode came from Blue Dot Sessions, Brigham Orchestra, Guustavv, Katori Walker, John B. Lund, and Bonkers Beat Club.
Outside/In is a production of NHPR.