Episode 571
with Ken Jennings, Erica Berry, and Making Movies
Author and Jeopardy host Ken Jennings takes us on a journey to the afterlife with his latest book, 100 Places to See After You Die, and explains why contestant interviews are so darn awkward; writer Erica Berry discusses her debut book Wolfish, which examines all things "wolf" – from fables to fears; and international rock group Making Movies performs "Porcelina" from their album XOPA. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share versions of the perfect afterlife, according to our listeners.
Ken Jennings
Record-breaking Jeopardy! contestant and best-selling author
Ken Jennings used to be an anonymous Salt Lake City software engineer, but almost overnight he became a nerd folk icon via his record-breaking six-month streak on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! In his 75 appearances on the show, Ken won 74 games and $2.52 million, both American game show records. Barbara Walters named him one of the ten most fascinating people of the year, and Slate magazine dubbed him "the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom." Since his Jeopardy! streak ended, Ken has become a best-selling author. His books include Brainiac, about the phenomenon of trivia in American culture, Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac, the biggest American trivia book ever assembled, Maphead, about his lifelong love of geography, and Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down Its Kids. His latestet book, 100 Places to See After You Die, is a "bucket list" travel book filled with destinations that can only be reached after death!
Erica Berry
Award-winning environmental writer, journalist, and educator
Portland-based writer Erica Berry knows when to cry wolf on the page, and she does so beautifully. In her debut book Wolfish, a kaleidoscopic blend of memoir, environmental writing, and societal criticism, Berry studies the cultural legacy of the wolf and the complex relationship between humans and wolves. She was the winner of the 2018 Steinberg Essay Prize and a 2018 AWP Intro Journals Award, and has received multiple grants, fellowships, and residencies for her writing. She also teaches writing workshops at Literary Arts, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the New York Times Student Journeys, and Oxford Academia. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, Literary Hub, and The New York Times Magazine, among many others.
Making Movies
Latinx rock band incorporating traditional instruments
Latinx rockers Making Movies are “breaking down walls in the U.S” (Rolling Stone). Formed by Panamanian brothers Enrique and Diego Chi, and joined by percussionist/keyboardist Juan-Carlos Chaurand and drummer Duncan Burnett, the band showcases its Latin American roots by incorporating traditional instruments like the Panamanian mejorana, and swapping drums and percussion for a dueling zapateado huasteco. The band has shared the stage with such artists as Arcade Fire, Los Lobos, Thievery Corporation, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Hurray for the Riff Raff. Their fourth LP, XOPA, due out in June 2022, features guest artists Marc Ribot, Rubén Blades, Dolores Huerta, Los Lobos, The Sensational Barnes Brothers, Jeremy Kittel, Martha Gonzales, Rev. Charles Hodges, Asdru Sierra and Alaina Moore.
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going great. I am pretty excited to play this round of SLIE with you this week. I feel like you're going to nail this one. Are you ready for a little station location identification examination?
Elena Passarello: I think so.
Luke Burbank: All right. This is where I quiz Elena about somewhere in the country where Live Wire's on the radio. She's got to guess where I am talking about. Okay, so Johnny Cash wrote a song about the loggers from this town in 1960. The song is called Lumberjack. Tall timber.
Elena Passarello: Right. Tall timber.
Luke Burbank: Hmm. That kind of narrows it down to a a quadrant of the country.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, definitely not in Nevada for you. Well, it could be in Nevada. Could be over by Reno. In Lake Tahoe.
Luke Burbank: We can rule Nevada out.
Elena Passarello: Okay. Huh? I wonder if it's in our neck of the woods in the Pacific Northwest.
Luke Burbank: Just might be. How about this? The highest point in this town is Mt. Nebo, which is actually a 1200 foot hill. It was known for its band of feral angora goats that were living there. And apparently, residents of this place said they could predict the weather by watching where the goats were on the mountain.
Elena Passarello: I have no idea what this place is, but I am on my way once you tell me the name of this town.
Luke Burbank: It's Roseburg, Oregon.
Elena Passarello: Not far from me.
Luke Burbank: That's where we're on K M P Q Radio, which is part of Oregon Public Broadcasting. So shout out to everyone and all of the Angora goats there in Roseburg. You ready to get on with the show?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's LIVE WIRE! This week, author and Jeopardy! Host Ken Jennings.
Ken Jennings: For me, the best thing about hosting Jeopardy is just how much I love Jeopardy! It was always my favorite thing as a kid, and now I feel like the kid that won the chocolate factory, you know, I get to hang out there. All the other hosts got sucked up the chocolate pipe or whatever.
Elena Passarello: And writer Erica Berry.
Erica Berry: Part of the book is recognizing that I have a different wolf in my head that's like a shadow wolf than than you might have. And I'm kind of interested in that.
Elena Passarello: With music from our fabulous house band, I'm your announcer Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country to this week's live wire. Of course, we have asked listeners a question based on Ken Jennings book 100 Places to See After You Die. We've asked the listeners to describe their ideal afterlife, and we're going to hear those responses coming up in a moment. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show. There's some good news happening out there in the world. We don't have a lot of time this week, Elena, So hit me with your best news.
Elena Passarello: Oh, it's good. This one's fast because it takes place on a rapid speed bike ride in Toronto, Canada, where an artist and painting teacher named Dmitry Bondarenko was biking, and he didn't even hear it when his prized five by seven Moleskine artists notebook fell out the back of his bag. This is he's had this thing for ten years and he does his painting studies in it. So it's not you know, my Moleskine is like has like four sentences of a book and then like a grocery list.
Luke Burbank: Mine always has a to do list with the first item being make it to do list.
Elena Passarello: Or wake up. You know, this is this is this gorgeous book. And he was pretty despondent, but he retraced the steps. He put up fliers. He called park services to no avail. As a last ditch effort. He put it on this Facebook site called Weird Toronto. And that got shared among all the neighborhoods that he traveled to on his long bike commute. And it ended up on Facebook page called I Am a Leslievillian and it's the Leslieville neighborhood of Toronto where a 75 year old cyclist named Chris Ellam saw the Post and he had found this book on the trail. And the minute he opened it, he knew it was something extremely special. It had these gorgeous portraits and still lifes, had just this amazing work inside of it. So instead of just like leaving it on like the closest park bench, he took it home with him. He felt very uncomfortable, but then he saw it on that Facebook page. But then they had no idea how they were going to get it back In touch with Dmitry. Series of Facebook hands across Canada, things happened. They managed to broker a return and Chris Ellam asked for no reward. He was just so happy to be able to return it. But he did exercise his right as an elder to scold Dmitry for not putting his name, address, phone number, email address, next of kin in case of emergency contact airport. You know anything else you need for something that precious.
Luke Burbank: QR code just like all of it.
Elena Passarello: Yes.
Luke Burbank: Oh, that's a great story. I love that he got that back. The best news I heard this week is coming out of Key West, Florida, where they recently held their annual Hemingway days celebration. This is a big deal down there. Of course, Hemingway lived in Key West for a lot of the 1930s, and he wrote a lot of his best work. Some people think while he was down there and he used to hang out at a place called Sloppy Joes Bar. And so, yeah, this festival kind of everybody shows up at Sloppy Joes Bar. They do like a fake running of the Bulls, which I believe was more in like Pamplona than it was in Key West, but
Elena Passarello: Yeah, it's Hemingway, adjacent.
Luke Burbank: Let's not get hung up in the details. But it turns out that not unlike Santa Claus, if you're a guy of a certain age at a certain, let's just say, body style and you grow your beard out, you start to look weirdly like Hemingway pretty fast.
Elena Passarello: So you. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Hemingway lookalike contest and a guy named Garrett Marshall. He's a retired TV broadcast engineer from Madison, Wisconsin. For the last 11 years, he's been entering the Hemingway lookalike contest in Key West. (Oh, wow.) And he has not won. And this year, on his actual 68th birthday, he was declared the winner of the Hemingway lookalike contest.
Elena Passarello: He's the Susan Lucci of Hemingway look alike contest. I'm dating myself with that reference, but oh, my gosh.
Luke Burbank: Always nominated for those, like, Daytime Emmys but never winning or something was her story. Well, yeah.
Elena Passarello: Like 30 years.
Luke Burbank: He is a Lucci-no-more because he has now actually won. I don't know what changed; if his beard got more Hemingway-esque, if his waistline did. I don't know what he did in year 11 that he wasn't doing in the previous ten years but he did manage to win on his birthday. It's the best birthday he's ever had. This is like a big deal to this guy. He also says that he shares many characteristics with Ernest Hemingway. He also is a writer and he's written nonfiction and also short fiction. He says he loves fishing. He loves all the stuff that Hemingway loved. The one difference he points out is that he has only been married once, whereas Hemingway was married four times. He says, I only have one wife, but that doesn't matter because she's all I need, according to Marshall. So congrats. There was 140 people entered the Hemingway lookalike contest. So this was it like a give. This was just like a couple. The couple of dudes with beards. It's like a serious thing that he won. So congratulations. A success down there at Hemingway days. That's the best news that I heard this week. All right. Let's get our first guest on over to the show this week. Now, he was living a quiet life in Salt Lake City as a software engineer in 2003 when he managed to get on a TV quiz show called Jeopardy. And 74 games and two and a half million dollars in winnings, later, a trivia legend was born. In fact, these days, he is actually one of the hosts of Jeopardy! And when he's not doing that, he's hosting his podcast, Omnibus with John Roderick. And he also writes hit books, including his latest 100 Places to See After You Die A Travel Guide to the Afterlife. Take a listen to our conversation with Ken Jennings, recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. Ken, welcome to the show.
Ken Jennings: Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: Are you at this point now getting used to this version of your life now as one of the hosts of Jeopardy and as a person who is that much more recognizable?
Ken Jennings: It's been a bit of a bump, actually, and hopefully the last one. I mean, the great thing about being a contestant on Jeopardy is you're cured of stage fright forever. Like nothing. Nothing else you ever do will be as terrifying as playing Jeopardy. When you're on TV, it seems very calm and pleasant. But like those contestants are terrified. They are civilians and they don't know what's about to happen to them.
Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, I want to talk about the book, but I think we have to also address a quirk of coincidence, which is our own. Elena Pasarello was a contestant on Jeopardy not long ago while you were actually hosting. Do you remember anything?
Ken Jennings: That's right, yes.
Luke Burbank: I don't I don't feel like you're going to be taking over the world of acting anytime soon. Okay.
Ken Jennings: Well, there's like two a night. They all have a story about their banjo playing or whatever, and it's. It's all a blur. And except for you, of course, who really stands out.
Elena Passarello: But it was great. And you're not kidding. It was. It was the most terrifying, strangest thing that I've ever done. Probably ever.
Ken Jennings: In hindsight, is it a good memory? Did you have fun?
Elena Passarello: I did. I had a really good time.
Ken Jennings: You don't have to say that because I'm here.
Elena Passarello: And I'm going to say something else. And the not just because you're here. Everybody felt better because you were there. There are like 30 of us or something. It felt like in the room and taped several episodes at a time and you all get to know each other over the course of the day because it's kind of a long day. We all felt at ease, like in the Breaks. You'd be like, I remember when that happened to me, but in general it was so lovely.
Ken Jennings: Yeah, I don't think my memory is Alex, who is a lovely man and amazing host. He didn't really go out of his way to make the contestants feel like they were his friends and guests. You know, he had kind of a level of remove, I don't want to say disdain, but it's a chilly kind of a you know, he was he was a little more unapproachable. And I just remember how terrifying it is to hold that buzzer. And I will go out of my way to say, listen, I just want all of you to know I'm on your side. I want you to look good. I want you to have fun. I think that's going to be a better show. And because I know it's very intense and I hope that people do have fond memories because you're putting yourself out there.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, it's terrifying.
Ken Jennings: It's like internet dating, but worse because, like, 9 million elderly people are watching, right?
Luke Burbank: Like. Is it true, Ken, that this book came to you when you misread a different book in the airport?
Ken Jennings: I was in an airport bookseller, and I saw one of those many kind of things to do before you die. Bestsellers. But I was on the other side of the table and it was upside down. And I thought it said 100 places to die before you see. And I thought, that's actually that's actually I don't know what it is, but that's a book idea. And I sold the book based on the title.
Luke Burbank: So up to that point, when you misread that thing in the Hudson Bookseller or whatever. Did you have any sort of interest in the afterlife as far as like, you know, the various different ways the afterlife is kind of speculated on and religiously and in pop culture and stuff? It was just something that was a big topic in your brain anyway.
Ken Jennings: When you write a book, you always reverse engineer and origin story. And when I think back to my childhood, it was very much about how much of the universe I learned about through pop culture. Like the the first deaths I remember grappling with in my own life were not neighbors or grandparents. It was like Mr. Spock or or Mr. Hooper from from Sesame Street or that that I'm still a wreck from that. I don't know. I don't know about you guys.
Luke Burbank: This is the first I'm hearing about that.
Ken Jennings: Are you on that? Are you still on season eight? (Yeah, I was taping that.) It's on my DVR. Mr. Hooper dies. It's a drug shootout.
Luke Burbank: I'm I'm wondering because you grew up in the in the LDS church, right? Yeah. And I grew up in a very evangelical kind of Christian environment. And I know in my life I was extremely afraid of hell as a young kid. It loomed very large in my life. I'm wondering for you, like as a kid growing up in that in that religion, were you afraid of going to hell? Did you assume you're going to heaven? Like, how much did you think about it as a kid?
Ken Jennings: You know, I went to a very Protestant high school because my family moved overseas, and I'm kind of familiar with the kind of the evangelical treatment of hell and as a as a motivator, shall we say. Yeah, it's a lake of fire. You don't want that, Luke!
Luke Burbank: No, no.
Ken Jennings: And but that's not so at home. In my own Mormon tradition, which is a much cozier kind of a you're going to be with your family. It's going to be great. So maybe there's some of that in addition to my Gen X, like, you know, plumbing the great mysteries of life, you know, UFOs and Bermuda Triangle and what happens in the life to come, which was a big part of my childhood. I think there was also my Sunday school lessons where the afterlife kind of sounded great.
Luke Burbank: Do they deemphasize hell or is it that you were such a good kid that you were not? AS Because I was a very bad kid. My parents are actually here and they will testify. I was I mean, I was giving God a lot of material to send me. Yeah, to the lake of fire.
Ken Jennings: They gave me a different set of scriptures. No, I think it was more that there's really no theological place for hell in in Mormonism. (Really?) Yeah. Latter Day Saints theology, there's like multiple kingdoms you can go to, but they're all pretty good, really. Like even the economy class one, it's pretty good, right? It's better than here for sure. Not. Not here in Portland. Portland's lovely
Luke Burbank: But I think could be better.
Ken Jennings: But this world.
Luke Burbank: Okay. We have to take a quick break. We're talking to Ken Jennings. His latest book is 100 Places to See After You Die. Stay with us. This is Live Wire Radio. Back in a moment. We. Welcome back to Livewire from pr X. I'm luke burbank. That's the line pazuello. We're coming to you from the Alberta Rose Theater right here in Portland, Oregon, this week. And we are talking to Ken Jennings, one of the hosts of Jeopardy. Also the author of the new book, 100 Places to See After You Die A Travel Guide to the Afterlife. So you've kind of broken this book up into different, I guess, sections mythology, religion, books, movies and television, music and theater all like the ways that these different art
Ken Jennings: Art forms.
Luke Burbank: Forms kind of address the idea, I'm curious. And the mythology category. What is one of the more like out there mythologies around the afterlife?
Ken Jennings: The Maori afterlife journey begins with a cliff dive. Ooh, You literally go to a cliff and you jump off into the ocean. So like extreme sports, like from the get go, which sounds pretty great. Yeah. There's an ancient Chinese tradition about hell that the worst thing that can happen to you is you can see what's going on back at home.
Luke Burbank: Oh, man.
Ken Jennings: And it's not what you want. Like, you're everybody's forgotten you. Your spouse is remarried. Your kids have a new stepdad. They're misspending their inheritance. That's. That's the Chinese idea. (Really?) Yeah.
Luke Burbank: In the part where you're talking about how books, certain books address the afterlife. You point out this thing that I hadn't really considered, which is like how hardcore C.S. Lewis is being by basically killing off all the kids in the Chronicles of Narnia.
Ken Jennings: I think you have to be you have to be a pretty Narnia superfan to know this. But the last Narnia book ends with all of the Lucy and Edmund and all the rest. They all get to go to heaven and stay in Narnia forever because they've all just died in a train crash back on earth. (Really?) And this is just it's like a one sentence thing as lines like, Hey, don't worry, you and all your family's just died in the train crash. You get to stay in Narnia forever. And they're like, Yeah, go look at the book. I'm not wrong about this.
Luke Burbank: The, like, animated version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe that was released probably in like the late seventies, Early eighties, (I remember)
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Haunts my night scapes to this day. Like the The White Witch and Mr. Tumnus and. Oh, yeah, just the actual rendering of them. Very, very traumatizing.
Ken Jennings: I have a very fond memory of staying up late to watch that on TV as a kid, and it got preempted for a Sonics game, and I was furious. I was furious. In hindsight, I should have just watched the game.
Luke Burbank: Right. I. I also thought, boy, Turkish delight must be just the absolute greatest. Then I had someone. I was like, This is what all the hype is about. This is what you're selling your friends out for, dude.
Ken Jennings: Homeboy, who traded his siblings are the world's worst candy, you know? Right. It would be like you want some Snow Caps, you want Mike and Ikes?
Luke Burbank: Hey, you got some applets and cotlets? Some marzipan.
Ken Jennings: That's what it is. It's basically that, right? It's basically applets and or cotlets.
Luke Burbank: You you finally give the movie Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey its due in this book as far as their and that's, of course, the sequel to Bill and Ted's excellent Adventure. And it's the sort of maybe less focused on, but they go through the afterlife. What what do you think is is interesting or ambitious about how that movie handles it?
Ken Jennings: It's a great movie. Do we remember Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey? Yeah, I feel like everybody remembers them beating death at twister and and the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots or whatever it is. But the visions of heaven and hell are great. Hell is full of traumatic memories from your life. So you get punished by your most awkward, cringeworthy, traumatic, painful memories from life. There's no new tortures at all, right? And heaven is just an amazing kind of purple and green. You have to give some bit of wisdom to get in. And I think Bill and Ted say every rose has its thorn and that and that. And that gets them into heaven. Poison lyrics get you into Heaven.
Luke Burbank: How was the research on this book? Because you've written a number of books and you put together like puzzles and things that appear in various publications. Where was this on the list of like intense research projects for you?
Ken Jennings: I just for me, the research is the best part of writing a book. For one thing, it's not writing which authors love. Authors love not writing, let me tell you. Yeah, But also you get to sit in the library all day, which, you know, was very much bringing me back to my childhood. And it's like. It's like recess. I'm in the library.
Luke Burbank: I love it that we were both indoors during recess, but for very different reasons. As kids. Yours was voluntary. Mine was not.
Ken Jennings: So there was a lot of just trying to find, you know, the old Buddhist sutras that describe the Paradise the most vividly or have the weirdest details about Islamic hell or Jewish heaven or whatever it is. It was a lot of fun.
Luke Burbank: So for you, writing a book is not a come down from being one of the hosts of Jeopardy, where there's like a studio audience and millions of people are seeing you, and then writing a book is like hiding from your children, you know, going to the library, trying to get Wi-Fi at the Starbucks or something. Do you enjoy the process of writing a book differently or less so? More so now that you have this other life is like a TV personality?
Ken Jennings: I think I'm very much the second kind of person. Like I'm an indoor kid, you know, like the real me is me sitting in a library being like, Oh, boy. Let me let me see if I can find some more text about the Inuit afterlife, you know? And going on TV is, you know, I get that out of my system. You know, it's nice to have an outlet for that. And, you know, it's for me, the best thing about hosting Jeopardy is just how much I love Jeopardy! It was always my favorite thing as a kid. And now I feel like the kid that won the chocolate factory, you know, I. I get to hang out there all the other all the other hosts got sucked up the chocolate pipe or whatever.
Elena Passarello: And what is their afterlife?
Luke Burbank: I mean, I was actually wondering about that because, like, you're somebody who liked the show Jeopardy! Got on the show Jeopardy! Set the record and you're now the host. Do you ever wonder if you're dead and this is heaven?
Ken Jennings: I think it's clearly a simulation. Life like my life is 100% evidence that we're living in a simulation. This could not happen. I feel very lucky.
Luke Burbank: What are the parts of the job of hosting Jeopardy that were more challenging than you were expecting when you went from being somebody who had played it a lot to somebody who's actually trying to run the game?
Ken Jennings: I was expecting it to be hard and it was. Alex made it look easy, but it moves very fast and it's a it's a very intense process. You're trying to be a referee and a play by play announcer and a narrator all at the same time. The thing that surprised me with how hard it is and I'm still not great at it is Final Jeopardy. Like you get a card that has the wagers and all the permutations on them, but it's full of numbers. It's like, here's what she has. Here's what she'll have this year, what she wagered, here's what she'll have. If she gets it right, here's what she'll have if she gets it wrong. Here's what she had yesterday. Here's the total. If she becomes a four day champion, you know, so it's like a Sudoku. You're looking at this card and you've got to figure out how to create TV drama out of this thing. And it's by far the hardest part of the show for me.
Luke Burbank: So harder than doing the interviews with the contestants, because now.
Ken Jennings: The only hard on the audience, I think.
Luke Burbank: I mean, it was in fact, there's a the interview with you in The New Yorker that just came out recently that where they they said you've definitely made that much less awkward than it used to be. And I can attest as a viewer, like you seem to have a pretty good handle on that because it's a very challenging thing, right? You're trying to do like 3 45-second interviews with people that are not on TV a lot and find a way to get out of each one. I mean, Alex Trebek's things seem to be to just go, I'm not going to go there. Like when in doubt.
Ken Jennings: Okay, Right now he's going, Oh, he's just good. Good for you.
Luke Burbank: Right? Like, have you find yourself starting to develop some of these same little like in case of emergency break glass?
Ken Jennings: Somebody told me that my "Good for you" is "That's fantastic." You know, that's that's the upbeat Mormon version of Good for You. I guess I'm Jimmy Osmond. And that's fantastic.
Luke Burbank: Of what is the level of prep that you have for those interviews? Like what do you know going in? Is somebody talking in your ear going like, get out, Get out. Eject.
Ken Jennings: No, there's hardly. The host does wear an earpiece, but it gets used like twice a show. It's it's basically like one more clue and then go to commercial. And that's about all we use it for. The the thing about the contestant interviews is I remember having to do that. And it's a tough ask for these people who have as you know, I just have 8 minutes of TV experience in many cases. And now it's like, hey, stop playing a trivia game and tell a funny story, right? Like, what is happening on this game show? And so I remember that. And I have I feel like I have actually have rapport with them. You know, I'm I'm genuinely interested in the stories. You know, I want to know what happened. And and I think the fun of Alex was he did not care to convey that he cared at all. Right. And that's kind of the beauty of his hosting.
Luke Burbank: One of the things that I have to say I really loved about your run was no one had had to do that many guest interviews as a guest in history. So you just started to get really loose, like in about the forties, like because you were like out of stories probably, right?
Ken Jennings: I was out of stories on day three. Like, like who here has like six amazing anecdotes about their life they want to tell on national TV? It's it's I think it's very rare. And luckily, I realized quickly that nobody is fact checking these stories. Like it's like I didn't I didn't claim I had a Purple Heart or anything, But like, like if you if you tell Alex you were briefly a birthday clown in college, he's not going to go online and try to try to. So occasionally I would say something like, you know, Alex would be like, Ken, it says here you like airline food. What? And I'd be like, I know, Alex. It's nuts. Just can't get enough of airline food. So a non-story will work if told with confidence.
Luke Burbank: Ken Jennings, thank you so much. And that was Ken Jennings right here on Live Wire. His new book, 100 Places to See After You Die A Travel Guide to the Afterlife is available now and in perpetuity. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco. And as a member of the OneWorld alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska AirCon. This is live wire from PR X. Of course, each week on the show we ask our listeners a question in honor of Ken Jennings book about the afterlife. We wanted to find out about the ideal afterlife of our listeners. We asked them to please describe that for us. Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Well, Craig has, I think, my number one answer. Craig's ideal afterlife is I am reunited with every pet I've ever had, and I find out that they're all friends with each other now. So, you know, your childhood pet from decades ago and maybe your best friend that you just lost a little bit ago, turns out they, like, started a poker game together.
Luke Burbank: I've seen a painting of that, actually. Right. And like, even pets that maybe didn't like each other when they lived together under the same roof. Now they're all just like on a cloud, playing harp next to each other, just chillin.
Elena Passarello: That is the number one perk of the afterlife, as far as I'm concerned, is I get to see all of my beloved pets again.
Luke Burbank: I know I always say this when it comes up, but it is a really lousy system that we tend to outlive them unless they're a tortoise, apparently, because I just learned about tortoise estate planning, which we can talk about on another episode. It's a real thing. What's another ideal afterlife that one of our listeners would like to visit?
Elena Passarello: Oh, this one's pretty good. Second only to pets is Dennis's idea. In Dennis's afterlife, I get to hang out with Prince and David Bowie. I feel like one of them is a little more sociable than the other. I've always heard the David Bowie, especially in the last 25, 30 years of his life, was like incredibly fun to hang out with and kind. And I think Prince may be a little shyer, a little more of an introvert.
Luke Burbank: That's what I've heard. I wonder if in heaven I will have more chill because I would have zero chill if I was me like on this astral plane. If I were to meet David Bowie and Prince, I would not be able to keep it together them being two of my all time very favorite artists. But maybe in heaven, like, you know, we're all a little different and like, I can just hang out with them and be not be weird.
Elena Passarello: Not be Chris Farley in that SNL.
Luke Burbank: All right. One more ideal afterlife that one of our listeners wants to visit.
Elena Passarello: Oh, this one is perfect. It's from Diana. In Diana's ideal afterlife, I get to hang out with the younger versions of my grand parents. Whoa. I would love Charlie Passarello, a World War two vet and just all around handsome man was He looked like a matinee idol in the forties, and he was apparently a real trickster. And I would have loved to. I mean, he's still around. He's almost 99 years old, but I would love to like, party with my grandfather in the forties and fifties, like straight up beach blanket bingo party with him. It'd be so fun.
Luke Burbank: I have this one picture of my granddad, Jack Kelly of Philadelphia, PA, who I was like maybe two when he passed away. But it's a picture of him on the beach and he's got these Hawaiian shorts on. And I remember when I was younger, I thought he seemed, you know, like he was older or middle aged in the photo. He's probably like 30 he's like 17 years younger than I am now. But like, first thing is, every year I look more and more like this guy. Like my face and head is kind of morphing into this, this kind of the look that he had. But also, I would love to have been down the seashore with Jack Kelly in that picture when he's got his Hawaiian shorts on. He's got my grandma Flora with him and they're just like having a time.
Elena Passarello: Aw.
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much. To everybody who responded to our audience. Question this week. We've got another question for next week's show coming up. All right. Our next guest's writing has appeared in The New York Times magazine, The Guardian and a bunch of other places. Her latest book, Wolfish: The Stories We Tell about fear, ferocity and Freedom was called Exhilarating in the Washington Post. Vulture magazine calls it a powerful exploration of predators and their prey, delivered with an unflinching and vulnerable honesty. Here is Erica Berry, recorded in front of a live audience at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Take a listen. Erica, welcome to the show.
Erica Berry: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: Let's start with OR-106 who was OR-106 and why were you so fascinated with them.
Erica Berry: OR-106 was found on the side of the road. And I first sort of heard about or when I was six, when I was reading about the poaching of this wolf, whose body was found after New Year's and shot by the side of the road. And so I opened the book in this sort of crime scene way where I'm thinking about this body of a wolf that was it was unsolved. And there's most of the poaching of wolves in Oregon are unsolved. And so part of this book is thinking about wolves not as the predator that we're sort of inherit the stories around them, but as a sort of prey to. And this slipperiness between those two roles.
Luke Burbank: Now, why do you think that that story of this this, Wolf, that people thought maybe had been hit by a car or something, but then it turned out it had been poached, Why did that capture you in your imagination? Was there something going on in your life? Like why why do you think it became such a big deal in your mind?
Erica Berry: I became interested in real wolves and symbolic wolves around the same time, and it was when I was in my early twenties and wolves were repopulating Oregon, my home state, and I was interested in their position, I guess. And the ecosystem had never occurred to me. I thought of them as like, this would be this nice thing to see on a hill. I like the idea of seeing a wolf. I had this sort of hiker mentality. My grandfather has a sheep farm, so I was aware of wolves as like a presence in that way too. But my mom got really sick when I was in college and she had a really high fever that nobody could solve. And she was hospitalized and it was all very dire. And at some point they some a doctor in there said, well, it's a tick related illness and if we only had more wolves, the deer and the rodents would be a little more in check. And it was a throwaway comment made in the emergency room. But across the country where I was worrying about her and also studying wolves academically from my environmental studies thesis is like something clicked that there was this relationship between my mother's body and my body and the wolf and the animal, and I suddenly saw myself as a part of this system. And so I at the same time was interested in this sort of symbolism of fear and this irrational fear game, because I was grappling with fear in my own life and a couple of experiences that happened that made me very aware of, say, Little Red Riding Hood and the sort of scaffolding that I was carrying through the world as a young woman. Those stories felt really poignant, too, and I wanted to kind of free the wolf from those stories.
Luke Burbank: I guess I hadn't thought until I read this book a lot about like what actual threat wolves might pose to people. But you write in the book, it's very, very low, like extremely low. You write about a woman in Alaska who was killed by a wolf, but you also write about how rare like how rare is it for something like that?
Erica Berry: Oh, my gosh. I have a list of things that are statistically more likely to kill you than a wolf. It's like falling off ladders, vending machines falling on you, death by cow. You know, there's a whole list of things that everyone should be fearing more than wolves.
Luke Burbank: And yet wolves, you know, we've been afraid of them. Since when? I mean, when did we start as humans becoming afraid of wolves? Probably irrationally.
Erica Berry: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I tried to sort of like linguistically traced that an early Prussian, Iranian Slavic words, the word for wolf and outlaw are the same. And at one point I started thinking like, when did humans start projecting onto wolves this danger? It became apparent to me that if I went into this project thinking, I'm going to write about the wolves sort of journalistically, scientifically, just look at the wolf. As I see it, I felt like everyone was looking at the wolf through these like thick goggles that had many different lenses. Part of the book is recognizing that I have a different wolf in my head that's like a shadow wolf than than you might have. And I'm kind of interested in that.
Luke Burbank: Now, you talk in the book a lot about the the issue that a lot of people, particularly in the West, ranchers and farmers, have with wolves repopulating areas, and they see it as a real threat to their livestock and to their lifestyle. And on the one hand, I think the wolf is such a majestic and kind of solitary creature, and we think of them and they're written very, I think, warmly in the book. And yet they can do some pretty devastating things to livestock. Does that move your needle at all? Like I mean, do those people have any sort of point when they say maybe it's not great to have wolves in close proximity to a bunch of like, you know, cows?
Erica Berry: I mean, I think this was interesting, too, because my grandfather having sheep like I grew up with this awareness of like the lamb is in the bathtub because it was attacked by the coyote or it's being sewed back together. And so but my grandfather was also a conservationist and an environmentalist and believed that there was a place for wolves in the ecosystem. Statistically, wolves kill not a large proportion of livestock compared to cougars, say, or bears. So I can really empathize and doing interviews with these. Livestock producers who feel so much care for what they're taking care of. And their, their animals. That's that's real. And at the same time, people have been living beside wolves for thousands of years.
Luke Burbank: This is Livewire Radio from Parkes. We're talking to Erica Berry about her new book, Wolfish. When you started writing this book, would you have considered yourself to be a fearful person?
Erica Berry: I don't know that I would have when I so I started this essentially ten years ago for my undergraduate thesis project. And at that time I was just writing about the wolf as like the four legged thing. And then I got to graduate school a few years later. I was leaving a brewery right as I got there. I'm like, very bright eyed and so excited to be living on my own in a big city for the first time. And I heard footsteps behind me and I sort of thought, You're probably making this up. There's nobody running after you. And I turned right as a man that I didn't know grabbed me, and that experience rewired completely, my experience of walking down the street. And it was interesting talking to a biologist who studies these ecologies of fear. It's called like this idea that we live in these landscapes of fear where there's like topographies of threat that animals are aware of in the ecosystem. And I started thinking about that in my own life, and I was like, I'm not sure that I should be looking to the science in this way and extrapolating it, but I'm my own topography of fear has changed. So I would say that learning about those sort of reactions helped me live beside it in a different way, which in so many ways is like the project of growing older. It's like learning to live beside your fear.
Luke Burbank: Let's talk about OR-7 a little bit, the big star of this book, who is OR-7 and why were people so captivated with them?
Erica Berry: So OR-7 was the seventh wolf collared in Oregon, and he left his pack in northeastern Oregon in 2011 and just started walking. And lots of wolves leave their packs and start walking. That's dispersal, normal behavior. But OR-7 was going further and farther, and he was collared, so he was trackable. And he became the first wolf in western Oregon and then the first wolf in California. And the hype grew. There's one headline that said he was the most famous wolf in the world. So...
Luke Burbank: On the subject of which, can we hear a little reading from the book that kind of talks about some of the fame that OR-7 enjoyed?
Erica Berry: Within a week or so of OR-7's crossing into the state the California Department of Fish and Wildlife created a Twitter account for him sharing rough plot points of his journey while hiding his location. Their bio for Wolf OR-7 parentheses. Two year old Wolf from Oregon left family to find wife and new home was joined by fan accounts too, mostly run anonymously. Bio native Oregonian, California tourist grew up in troubled family hobbies. Wandering ungulates. Facebook pages classified him as a public figure where fans came together to comment things like He is an amazing symbol of hope and strength and too cool what a beaut. By mid-January, the New York Times had published an article about the Wolf's almost cult like status. They quoted a senior policy adviser for the CDFW who said random citizens were suddenly calling the office saying we should find him a girlfriend as soon as possible and let them just settle down. Others wanted to expunge humans from parts of the Golden State and revert the land to total wolf sanctuary. Quote People are going to get wolf tattoos, a wolf sweaters, wolf keychains, wolf hats. A board member for a California wolf advocacy organization told the Times. The National Enquirer wrote about OR-7. There is even a bumper sticker OR-7 for president. The swag made me think of a line about fandom from critic Michelle Orange's memoir claiming and being identified with a love of this or that is integral to the pleasure to the experience of loving it. People wanted to be identified by their love of Wolf.
Luke Burbank: The book is Wolfish. Erica Berry, everyone. That was Erica Berry right here on Live Wire, recorded at the Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon. Her book, Wolfish The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity and Freedom, is available now. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. And you are listening to Live Wire. We've got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to hear some music from the truly fantastic international rock band Making Movies. So don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get to our musical guest this week, the band Making Movies. A little preview of what we have in store for you on next week's show. We're going to talk to the bestselling writer and all around amazing person, George Saunders. He has written so many great books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize. We're going to talk to George about his creative process and also what it's like for him to teach writing, which he does at Syracuse University while also being a writer. That's something you know about Elena as a writer who also teaches writing.
Elena Passarello: I'm not nearly as charming as Mr. Saunders.
Luke Burbank: Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't want to get in a charm off with you, Elena. I think most people are going to lose. Then we're also going to talk to the award winning singer and songwriter Samantha Crane. She's from Oklahoma and she plays a style of music that she describes as y'alternative. And it's really good. You're not going to want to miss it. Plus, we're going to want to get your answer to our listener question. Elena, what are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: What's the most impactful thing a teacher has ever said to you? Oh, this is going to be heartwarming. Amazing.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, absolutely. If you have a memory of something impactful a teacher said to you, go ahead and let us know via Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio out there on the social media. Thread us. I don't know if we have a Threads account yet, but just try it. We'll see what happens. All right. This is Live Wire from PRX. NPR calls our musical guests one of the most unique groups around today. Making Movies incorporates traditional Latin American instruments and sounds into their truly one of a kind style, creating American music, as they say with an asterisk because it represents all of the Americas. They've shared the stage with such artists as Arcade Fire, Los Lobos, Thievery Corporation, Rodrigo y Gabriela. Their fourth album, XOPA, is available now. This is making movies recorded live on stage at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. Good evening. Hello there. Welcome to the show.
Making Movies: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us.
Luke Burbank: Well, what song are we going to hear?
Making Movies: It's a little song called Porcelina.
Luke Burbank: Okay. Is that the new record? Yeah, it is off the new record. All right, here we go. This is Making Movies on Live Wire.
Making Movies: I've got to say, this song is dedicated to the many women who have been counselors and mentors in our lives. Women seem a little more tapped into the divine. And and coincidentally, one of the folks who we feel that way about is is here tonight. She moved from Chicago to Portland and she brought us dinner right now. So it's specially dedicated to Sheila, our dear friend.
Making Movies: [plays Porcelina]
Luke Burbank: That was making movies right here on Live Wire. Their album, XOPA, is available right now. That's going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A very, very big thanks to our guests, Ken Jennings, Erica Berry, and Making Movies. Live Wire's brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Making Movies: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. And our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. Tre Hester is our assistant editor. Rosa Garcia is our operations associate. And Julienne McElmurry is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the James F and Marian L Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Kerry Tymchuk from Beaverton, Oregon. For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire Crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.