Did you know that the entire family of canids – from dire wolves to African jackals – emerged in what is now the American Southwest/ northern Mexico? Did you know that there are many stories older than Gilgamesh that feature Coyote as their protagonist? Or that you can think of Wile E. Coyote as an…

In 1967, medieval historian Lynn White published a now-infamous paper that traces the current environmental crisis back to a Judeo-Christian worldview… essentially, he blames the creation story in Genesis, especially the part in which God gives humans the task of “ruling” over animals.  But is Genesis really to blame? To understand more, I spoke with…

Moving on from fairy-tale wolves to actual wolves, I speak to Maggie Howell, the Director of The Wolf Conservation Center. I was not surprised that Maggie Howell dispelled certain misconceptions (wolves don’t pose a threat to humans, at least under normal circumstances). But I was surprised to encounter familiar themes. Pluskowski, whom I interviewed for…

How did the wolf come to be “carnivore incarnate”? Why do we project our own beastliness onto wolves? With the help of Maria Tatar, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, and Aleksander Pluskowski, Associate Professor of Archeology at  the University of Reading and author of the fascinating…