Episode 239
#239 - Interview with author David Auge
David Auge joins the pod to explore the deep, often overlooked world of insects. The wisdom of nature’s smallest engineers. The honeybee, and the desert locust. Drawing from decades of environmental work, personal beekeeping. David's book "Man’s Search for Sustainability." David breaks down why some of the most hated and loved insects on Earth both offer critical lessons. For our future, and better understanding of the science behind their behavior.
From hive hierarchy to desert swarms. We dive into how these insect communities handle stress, chaos, and survival. What that means for our own fractured human systems. It's part philosophy, part ecology, and all about what it means to build a life. That lasts not just for us, but for those who come next.
Where to Find the Guest?
🌐 Website: https://davidaugebooks.com
🎧 Work: Man’s Search for Sustainability available via Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Sustainability-David-Auge/dp/1962893324
And of course, you can find all the links for L.I.T.G, and where to listen at:
👉 www.linktr.ee/lostinthegroove
Transcript
David
No, there's something really to be gained from things like that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Literally the tiny underdog crafters of our planet. And I mean, they're not the only species that's like this. I mean, i think what happens a lot of the times is we as humans tend to like to look at the bigger scope of things, right? We see the advancements of skyscrapers, you know, advancements of larger machines and the availability of us entering into the space age and entering...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But then when we start getting the conversation about you know what means for a planet or even our own environment being inhabited, we tend to only fall into you know vegetation and water supply.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But there's so many other pieces, the underlying to that skin that makes that real, that we don't look at.
::David
right
::David
Yeah, I agree.
::David
You're already singing my song.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. Yes!
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I try. You know... we I think it's incredible, especially when you're able to be able to write a story, because it's not just a story. It's not just an author's interpretation of things. It's basically like, even in your case, it's like coming from real life setting and analysis.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's coming from your own experience of what you see and what you perceive, and then taking that information and creating something with it, which may seem common, but a lot of the times it's quite rare.
::David
Yeah, I agree. you know And that's one of the reasons why i put this together, because so many of us just think, oh, it's just a bunch of raw materials. We have skyscrapers, we have rockets.
::David
We have a sophistication so much beyond the nature that's around us that we miss the fact that we haven't looked deep enough into the nature that's all around us and take the lessons from what it can teach us.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, I think um um I think one thing that I want ah definitely to touch in is like regarding your book, but even more so is like you were telling me earlier and how like you're even checking on your bees, right?
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Even that thought process, right, as a human being saying, hey, let me check out on let me check this insect or something that I'm caring for. And it goes to the same mindset of farmers, you know, farmers that are raising cattle, you know, where like they wake up five o'clock in the morning, like, let me check my horses.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Let me check my cows. know, let me see how my livestock is doing.
::David
Right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That is almost a symbiotic level of human thinking. Planet environment energy eco all working in one giant circle Right
::David
Yeah, yeah, it is. i I mean, I went into the hive, let's see, this past week and things were not healthy. You know, there was, there just was, well, I'll go through it, but there's something called a laying worker.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, okay
::David
You know, you have a queen, a queen iss ah is the the monarch, the the ruler. And also one of the things she does within the hive is she is the only one of all those female bees that's laying eggs.
::David
Every single one of them is working. And if they take it upon themselves to start laying eggs, which they can, every single one of them has an o has ovaries. You know, it's like 99.5% female.
::David
If they take it upon themselves, they create a bee that doesn't work.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right.
::David
See, a female bee is the only one that works. And the worker bees who all of a sudden say, we're missing something, you know, this this importance of the queen is somehow missing because she's either got crushed because, you know, as you're pulling the frames out of the of the hive, you rolled her.
::David
And in rolling her, you killed her. Or somehow she was... you know, you've got to be really gentle when you're looking at the beehive. You could kill something very, and you do, you know, by just moving things around. So you're trying not to make that happen.
::David
And, and that's what I, I went in, pulled out this frame.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right.
::David
I was getting ready to, to, to do a little bit harvesting. It's the springtime. Usually by this time, you've got enough honey that can be taken from the hive. You know, when you can turn it into gifts from people whatnot.
::David
And opened it up and all of a sudden within this, what should be a, a frame that has nothing in there but honey capped i find brood i find what are called ah drones and a drone is a male bee and a male bee has one job and that is to procreate he's going to be very big very fast yeah and die and and that's all the lane workers can do because they haven't uh they haven't been to what's called a
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And then die. Yeah.
::David
an area where they can be inseminated by a drone themselves. though The worker bees can only lay that type of bee, which destroys the hive. it destroys the hive because you've got now a bunch of bees that don't work and the thing just starts to collapse these bees come out what do they do they eat they grow to a size where they can fly and they leave and they come back at night you know and they continue to eat and then they fly out so by the time all of a sudden you've got this transformation because the queen's not in there the worker beast thinks that she's got um the proper pheromones in order to make the hive stronger
::David
you'll have this small civil war taking place because other worker bees will do the same thing. And then you've got this growing group of drones inside of a hive that don't help the hive mature and continue to cycle forward in life.
::David
And anyway, that's what I'm dealing with. So I went out.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, that's crazy.
::David
Yeah. yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know what's what's hilarious is that we're you talking about bees. In bee culture, um men are not very much liked.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's very dominated by a female.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like it is. It's very much dominated by the female um antagonist because, you know, it's survival of the fittest. Like you've been saying is we're if you've got that queen bee and obviously, like you said, the rest of them have ovaries and they have the ability to make babies, but they don't because, you know, it's almost we're like, OK, there's one.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
queen she is the ruler we don't do this we're just workers you know we're bumblebees or we're pollinators whatever the case may be and that's it but the second there's a slip in there where all of a sudden those worker bees get this thing in their mind like okay well the queen's no longer necessary well i'm gonna become the dominant later on the next one's like no i'm gonna become the dominant kind of kind of sounds like humans a little bit kind of sounds like what we do to each other yeah
::David
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
::David
And like you mentioned about hearing in the hive, all of hive noise, there's this nice light hum that you hear in a hive that's that's healthy. As this starts to change because you've got maybe one or two or three worker bees that think that they're going to take over the position of the hierarchy, and of course they can't, but as they start to think they can, they also start to gain little parochial control over portions of one part of the hive against another.
::David
And there's actually noise of this the slow battles over nor regions of the hive that begin because you're gonna slowly run out of honey. These bees are gonna start to realize, uh-oh, something's amiss here and they they fight.
::David
and You know, many times it'll just, the hive will just get destroyed. Other things will move in because they'll see the bees are no longer ah joining together to get rid of things that are coming in like beetles or wax moths or, you know, other types of pests that work their way into the hive.
::David
And they need to be able to defend against them as a group. Because if they don't defend against them as a group, just like you pointed out, that's a little tiny insect. It's pretty vulnerable. It doesn't fly very well.
::David
It's awfully colorful, easy to spot. You know, things think it's lunch. You know, when a bee comes out front, there's a bunch of, many times, wasps wondering which ones they're going to take off and take home and eat for lunch.
::David
You know, they don't make it
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. No, they don't. You know, and on the other side of that, like I remember growing up in New York, we have a massive roach problem, like massive, even like throughout upstate New York.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And um I don't know what kind of beetle they are, but there's ah they're quite large. They eat roaches. And I like I remember even my dad telling me whenever you see those beetles running around in the basement, it's like, don't kill them.
::David
okay
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like, don't hurt them because they're the only thing that has literally survived off of killing roaches. They've like basically mimicked and figured out where roaches go. They're like, oh, they go indoors. So they follow them along and they just start murdering them one after the other.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it's It's so wild on how we're even in the little tiny like insect kingdom. It's like one insect figures out like, ooh, this is a tasty lunch. Like, let me figure out how can keep on eating this.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And you're right. Like the same thing happens with bees too. Like there are a lot of insects within that realm that's like, ooh, going to make this i make this breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
::David
Yeah.
::David
yeah Yeah. First time you see him just floating around or, you know, they're flying and they're just buzzing back and forth and on on the landing board. You go, what is this? I had no idea that they would be so quickly ready to, you know, kind of abscond with this bee coming back with a, with his gullets full of,
::David
nectar
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That's crazy. And I mean, you know, even with hornets, um you know, there are different like bees. Like we're talking about like there's murder hornets. um there know There's wasps and different things like that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What's weird is when you get into the territory of hornets and wasps. You're not even dealing with normal bees anymore. Like, you're almost dealing with, like, tyrannical little, like, not big, like, big murderers.
::David
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like, these are just killing machines. You know, there guys on YouTube, like, they use the slow cam cameras and things, like macro cameras to kind of zoom in.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Just watch a video of a wasp attacking another insect. It'll make a prey mantis look like you're like a sweet little old mother.
::David
yeah
::David
yeah i agree you know there's another have you seen on on youtube also they'll show the landing board of bees and they usually it's associated with the music of oh i can't remember something um
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
there They're insane. They're insane. Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Is it like metal? No, it's not metal. I know yeah i know what you're talking about. It's like very beady music. It's like very heavy that side. Right? Yeah? Yeah. like it's very like heavy on that right
::David
right
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::David
Well, no, it's a classical piece.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, it's classical music.
::David
and what they're It's comical. What they're doing is they're showing the landing board, and as these bees come back in, they're about 30% to 50% heavier than when they took off. So the bee's a lot like a minivan.
::David
you know All of a sudden, as it flies through the air, it's it does okay, but when it comes back, it's got way too much weight, and it will hit the landing board and tumble and smash against the side of it.
::David
It's a full, I mean, it's really a, so you laugh the first time you see it because you don't realize, yeah, that's a pretty stumbly, stupid looking insect, you know, from a, from at least at that point of it.
::David
It's not the the wasp, the stingray of the insect community. it's ah It's the minivan of the insect community, you know, just kind of wandering around out there, carrying back what's necessary to keep the hive going.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, and, you know, it's – I think that's really fascinating too, right? Because when we're talking about some of these species, they have been around longer than we have. A lot of insects, have especially bees, they've been around for, i don't know, I think like millions of years at this point, probably way before, probably like the run of the dinosaurs or whatever that may be.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But – They've evolved just like we have, but it's interesting on how even though they've evolved, they still have that issue. Like you said, like they're literally almost minivans where you think like somewhere along the revolution where like maybe we should have bigger wings like wasps.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Maybe we should have larger sacks in the back.
::David
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Maybe we shouldn't have where if we just jab our needle in that we just die. But I think the reason why they've stayed pretty much the same that they have is because it's the most efficient way of them being...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like we said, bumblebee and when worker bees. That's literally the most efficient design.
::David
right
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, it was really interesting talking about this. There was a guy um that tried to scale up a bee, almost like the size of ah like a human being, to figure out like size-wise.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And based off of that information, he was a scientist. He realized that bees are extremely inefficient if they're our size. They can't fly.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
um Obviously, they'd just be bumbling around all over the floor, but because of how small they are, even because of how heavy they are, they're still almost able to manipulate our gravity and still get over that hurdle.
::David
yeah yeah It's a fast... I never thought about bringing it to the human size, but I can imagine that to be the case. If you ever see a bee yard in Germany, it's got little ramps from the ground up to the landing board.
::David
The first time I saw that, I thought... what is this and it's once again the germans realizing this insect has a tendency to become overweight when it's flying back and it can just barely make it so it gives us this little like it's a bridge that appears to be about an inch wide and has little toothpicks on it so that they can crawl back up into the hive encumbered with all of what they're carrying you know the pollen on their back legs the uh the stomach that's filled with the nectar that they've collected And i thought, wow.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah Yeah, it's interesting
::David
I mean, it's good that the Germans been able to figure that. I'm not going to put little ramps up there because at the same time, you ants seem to find that same ramp as do the bees and they get inside your hive. And now you're dealing with the infestation of little ants that, you know, can be become bothersome too.
::David
Now the bees get rid of them.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, it's interesting how like a lot of insects, unlike a lot of mammals, because we were talking about this earlier, a lot of mammals can kind of thrive and live want amongst each other.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Insects, not so much. like The second you start mixing certain insects together, they start... i mean, it's worse than apocalypse now.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's bad. they They start becoming like almost cannibals and start murdering each other. like Like I was telling you earlier, like literally you have species of beetles in New York that they hunt and prey and kill cockroaches for a living.
::David
Yeah.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Thank you. You're saving us a lot of money from pest control. But it's weird in insects culture that like the separation and division is very much an alive thing that exists there, which is.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's odd. it It is. It's very strange.
::David
Well, that's another thing about bees. I mean, bees have not only a tendency to defend and have to against other insects, but they'll have to fight against other bees.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, yeah.
::David
There is a, yeah, a robber bee tendency because they're great hoarders.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::David
If they can find a beehive that's somewhat weaker, They will attack that. you know One of the things with the Langstroth hive that's the kind of the standard one is you change the entrance based upon the perceived strength that you have in this particular collection of bees.
::David
And when there's a weakness, you start to close the opening because it helps the bees to defend less. They don't have to worry about... um You know, a collection of bees rushing in and being able to open up the that access opening so that the robber bees can come in in there and just kind of take over and start to kill what's in place.
::David
And I found, oh yeah, and if you see ah a Langstroth hive that's in the middle of a battle, you'll come out there and the thing's covered black entirely, all on the outside with bees that are fighting each other.
::David
and and to for the domination of that particular hive to take away whatever's been collected from that hive, you know, the the pollen, the the honey, to where their hive's at. It's something else. And this is an insect, though, that, you know, we usually give a little halo to.
::David
We say, this is a good one. These are, honeybees are great. And all of a sudden, you see them robbing another hive and you go, well, Not quite. you know, they are still an insect trying their very best to become the king of the hill in this group of ah hives that are out there.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know what? I think a lot of that comes from not being able to grow up in environments that have wild animals or, you know, insects and stuff like I you know i grew up 90 minutes outside of New York City, but I remember seeing wildlife all over the place.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And I'm one of those people that are very well aware that even with bears, okay, I know how cute black bears look.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They are dangerous. Any type of bear is dangerous. And I mean, they go after bees. They go after honey.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you know And if you think about that for a second, it's something you don't think about for a second.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay, you have and animal that has no problem being stung. by thousands of bees just so that they can get something that's a little treat for them.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You really think that thing is like nice, sweet, and cuddly. You can go over and pet and say, a you little sweetheart.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That is scary. That just tells you something about but just tells you something about bears right there.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
were It's true, though. There are a lot of animals that don't really give a shit about bees. They're like, go ahead, sting me. don't I don't um't care.
::David
oh yeah Yeah, and if you ever get the bees, if they do attack your your boxes, and they do, down here in North Carolina, we've got bees all over the place. They're going to go for the brood box.
::David
And that's because bees, though they like the honey, they like the brood even more. There's a higher protein strength in it. um And when I say brood box as opposed to super, a brood box is where the the the queen is laying and the younger bees are developing.
::David
ah She can lay as many as 1,800 eggs a day So you've got a continual cycle and it takes, you know, seven to 21 days for bees to develop and finally move out of their, uh, those different stages. And so the bee's going to go for the brood box. He's going to rip apart the brood box. That's what he's going to eat.
::David
Um, the honey might come along with it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Thank
::David
i mean, he's going to be smeared with honey by the time he's done, but you will find that all of a sudden that that's the box of the three. Usually you have a brood box and two supers on top that is going to get totally mauled by the bear.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, is some you know it's it's wild because as we're talking about this, it just keeps going deeper and deeper. And my head keeps scratching back even thinking about Egyptians.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, if we can dig back to some of the earliest advanced civilizations that had an interconnection with bees, I think of egypt You know, the amount of hieroglyphics, the way that they intricate, like, had honey along with... You know, there had to have been somebody in Egypt was like, hey, like, is there a way I can be a bee whisperer and kind of come in here and steal this honey and then kind of figure out all this stuff along? Because they they've got, like, a pretty well-documented understanding of how bees and honey works.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I think a lot better than we do, which is bananas, because they went, like... They went like ghosts. Their whole civilization collapsed, like I think, 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, somewhere were around there.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's wild.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What's your thoughts on that with Egypt?
::David
got King Tut and you got the: ::David
So they thought it was something like, know, the fruit of the gods. I mean, you had the, you had the sugar refined by nature available and lasting as long as it did right there. Um,
::David
there is a lot to be learned from trying to mimic nature, which is what they were trying to, you know, at least I should say do, but they were they were willing to respect it and find within it lessons to be drawn.
::David
Because you do have this tremendous kingdom there of the Egyptians, and you got this tremendous structure there with the beehives, which appear to have a balance and a strength that... my goodness, you can learn from and be able to take something as a lesson from.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, it's almost where if we look at our past, we can see of how we have had to almost learn and survive off of what is around us. Like, for example, with the bee, like just to understand for a second where you have a ah creature that is able to make a liquid that can last tens of thousands of years. On top of that,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
is better at preserving than formaldehyde.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's like it comes out of the butt of an insect. You know, it's like the they literally like diarrhea, like coming out of them.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's it's insane. it's It goes against everything you could possibly think of as you, because we're always constantly with sophistication and complexity. And this thing comes along and creates like the greatest preserver of all time.
::David
from its stomach, i mean, it's bug puke. I mean, a bee is actually throwing up.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
that That is what the honey, it's putting back in the cell. That's where it came from. And the enzyme that its stomach is, yep, it's doing that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Be throw up.
::David
Now, don't tell people that because you're not going to sell much, you know, but it is. That's the source of it, you know. But you're you're absolutely right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
To be able to see that, to be able to to learn from that, we... You mentioned living in nature, Dave, you know, when you're in there, there's a lesson that comes out from it that you can't get other places.
::David
Now you said 90 minutes outside of New York city where, I mean, like I'm familiar with the area.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, um I grew up in a place called Viola Park, which technically is Suffern, New York, which is in Rockland County.
::David
Oh, okay. Okay. I know Rockland County, you know, there go, no, go ahead.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We, um yeah, sorry.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
There was a beekeeper that was in the Catskills, I remember. She and her husband used to run this, I don't know if they're still around, I haven't been there in like 18 years.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But um that's honestly one of the first experiences I ever had with bees and beekeepers was going out there. And like you said, that that black swarm, you're just standing there and you're just like, as a little kid, you're just like, and there's people walking around and they're interacting and they're moving these boards around. And then they, and I'm just like, whoa, this is, I've never seen anything like this before in my life. Sorry. Sorry.
::David
Yeah. I got to ask ahead Rockland County. Was there a Rockland... so There was a place that I used to help out more as a counselor. There was a Rockland Mental Institution. It was primarily kids, younger, teenage.
::David
um Boy, can't remember what it was called now. You might have to search it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah give me a sec. Got my handy dandy keyboard.
::David
Okay, it was about it was about a year. We would go up there and just... ah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What's it called?
::David
I thought it was the Rockland. it was like that It was a mental institution, but Rockland was part of the title.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Let me see.
::David
me this This was years ago.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, I know you're talking about. Oh, that was that weird building. Hold on, it's an Orangeburg.
::David
Okay.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i think I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's in Orangeburg. Orangeburg is like going um it' a come of towards the end of Rockland County before you hit Orange County, which is kind of like where Monroe, Woodbury is.
::David
okay okay okay i brought it up because that was one of the things i remember it was like a big brother
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That area.
::David
ah program and they would, I was in my early twenties and you'd go down there and you spend the day with some young man who was struggling with, you know, grasping what life was all about and just needed someone to play ping pong with or walk with him and spend a little time. Then he, you know, he'd come up and spend time as well.
::David
ah ah at And this is when I was a cadet and we had a chance to kind of reach out in that regard. It was a nice way to get to know those individuals.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it ah What you're touching on is really interesting because that's something that I do remember in New York, especially like when you start getting um towards like the Catskills kind of further up in Rockland.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, when you start to deal with especially people that are dealing with like mental health disorders, you know, maybe kids that have like are on the autism spectrum or, you know, you got people that got like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They have a lot of farms out there you know where there are people they have. They own horses, and they do like horseback riding, or they have animal stock, you know and kids can kind of come along and kind of pet the animals and things.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's so wild as somebody – when you see somebody that's mentally not well and them connecting with animals –
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, in nature around them, they become completely different people. Like they don't need to adapt and learn be with other people, even somebody that's schizophrenic, you know, them just being able to pet a horse and take care of that animal.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It almost allows their mind to like, I like to call it the Zen mode.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, your mind is able to be in that. And that does change your perspective of how you look at things because you realize how much of we as humans, we force ourselves to be something that we're not.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it takes people that are mentally ill to see that.
::David
Right. it
::David
And their perceptions are, you know, not retarded. They're, they're different and sometimes make time stronger.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, more connection.
::David
i remember watching one one of them point out yeah there was a horse uh in one situation and it had its ears pointed in two different directions which i didn't see any difference in there but someone who was mentally challenged was saying yeah they're they're keeping ah their focus on two different areas and the horse actually had turned its ears to do so and this person who i thought wasn't quite with it was able to grasp that and know that before i i was like, wow, I didn't see that, you know, and, and they were able to bring that strength to bear in the animal kingdom and what was going on that I, at least in my situation, I didn't understand.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it's a It's such a hard it's such a hard way to get yourself out of because So many of us live in a very industrial environment.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, we live in a world where we no longer see the night skies because of light pollution. We no longer are able to interact and see the deers, you know, running.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like obviously, like places like where you're living or, you know like places where I grew up in and Rockland County, that's way more common. But a lot of people live in major cities. you know we
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I love when the they have those people that post online of actually where most people in the United States live. You know youre think like, oh, 300 million people. And then you actually look and it's like Atlanta, Miami, New York City, LA, Chicago, and then maybe be like Las Vegas if you're lucky. And that's it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like Everywhere else is like little like almost like the little bees. Little little dot tiny specks all over.
::David
Yeah. Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
that That changes people tremendously.
::David
Yeah. It does. It really does. Dave, you've lived in well, you you said you were out in the country. Now you're more in a vicinity environment. Do you chance to go out in the country very often?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
the States, which was around: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'm really thinking of like maybe moving out to like Denver, Colorado, because it's I'll tell you something.
::David
okay
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
As somebody that grew up, even though I was like 90 minutes away from New York City, being in nature. There are times where. You miss it.
::David
yeah you really do i had kids that were in 4-h for a while and i remember one part of the 4-h program when we were raising raising sheep. He had a small lamb and my son was sitting there raising and spending time with it. and And the requirement was to sit in the barn with the sheep for four hours and observe everything it does.
::David
Drove my son wild. He was having the most difficult time just to sit there in the corner of the barn while the sheep kind of sat in the opposite corner of the barn staring at him, you know, and to say, there are things happening here. It takes time just to just to observe.
::David
And it was a good program. I mean, and I really didn't think my son gained something from doing that, but Most people don't have an opportunity to sit in one spot for four hours and observe, in this case, just a single animal, a small lamb, and learn about it.
::David
to And then just sit to watch eat, to watch it its curiosity kind of come to the surface of what it's looking at and what it's doing. It was interesting and important, I think, that we could give that to other kids if we could.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i i think that's honestly why we have such a almost twisted understanding of animals and species around us. I mean, think about all of the anapomorphic designs of cartoons and characters. I mean, we make bears into Yogi Bear.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, we make bees into these fluffy little bumblebees with these cute little eyes, you know. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong. Like obviously let kids be kids, you know, let people be people.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But there's always a double edge to the sword, right? Where if you constantly put that information out there, what happens? People have no fear of wolves. So then you have repopulation that's done poorly.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
People have no fear of bears. So then they overpopulate and then they start murdering babies and then people start freaking out, you know? this lackluster of it's basically being able, and I think this is kind of like the work that you're doing, which is really important.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's not being like, hey, you can't think like this anymore. Like this is wrong. You can't watch this stuff. You can't do this no more. No, it's more of the attitude of here's an awareness. Here's something deeper that we've lost that is still very much ingrained into our biology and our evolution as a species.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right?
::David
and Yeah, and something for long, long time, I don't know, your centuries, thousands of years, we have been respectful of. And not just pushing it aside, but saying, you know, there is something to be gained, some strength to be learned that we now believe we've all learned. you know that's That places us as at a disadvantage going forward.
::David
And that's the whole reason for the book. You know man, search for sustainability. I'm saying, hey, maybe it's not just a bunch of raw material we can turn into whatever want we want to next 20, 50, 100 years.
::David
Maybe it's looking back at some successful systems, especially societies that we can learn from. And there are spectrums. i mean, that's why this this book has two ends. It's got the insect society we love, the honeybee, and the insect society we hate, the desert locust.
::David
And it's let's took it look at both of them. One which we say is, well, this is obviously good. This one's sustainable because it provides honey. and It's an example for societies. And we put it on the front of flags and it's become the state bee.
::David
the state insect, and this other one, oh, that's horrible because, my goodness, it's the eighth plague of the Bible in the book of Exodus. Come on, that's that's got to be an example that we can't to stay away from. No, we can learn something from both if we would spend the time to do so.
::David
And that's what i' trying to do.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i think that's I think that's incredible. And i I was talking about something about this with somebody other day where she mentioned on how, you know, rainbows are bad because in the Bible, the way that God represented to Noah that no flood shall ever pass like this ever again was by showing him and depicting him a rainbow.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But I think that is my personal view is the wrong way of looking at it. I think it's a way of God saying, know, Here's a rainbow, here's a representation of the beauty of what the world can give you.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, we're just like we look at locusts from a such a negative perspective, we can look at it as where you have grasshoppers that literally go mad.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That's what causes them to become locusts.
::David
Right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And understanding that even in the insect world, there are lessons to be learned for human beings.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We're Madness leads to locus and destruction. You know, the second you have that shift of stability, i think that's i think that is the lesson of when it comes to the plague. It's not about punishment.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's about teaching humanity of the lesson of you try to play God. You try to dictate and manipulate the world. Guess what? I'm coming after you and I'm coming after you hard.
::David
Yeah, in most people's minds I tell. Did you read my book? Did you read about the...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, i read I read a little bit of your caption on your website, um and I did check it out on Amazon.
::David
but
::David
Okay.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like that has the What do you call that on Amazon? like It gives you like a little like preview where you can kind of read like a few of the first like pages and stuff, so I kind of went through those first few pages to get an idea.
::David
t locust, it wasn't until the: ::David
It isn't just, you know, that's... Most of the time in the past, people would say they this is an insect or a grasshopper that went mad. But how does it become mad? You know it goes from a color of green to gold.
::David
It goes from being, you know, solitary to gregarious. What is the this input that makes that occur? And actually when it comes out, it is so different.
::David
a different species up until: ::David
We don't want it to, you know, and it decides to take over the steeps of Russia. It desires like the desert locust to deal with the northern portion of Africa and then put most of those countries you know back into the Stone Ages because everything's been consumed.
::David
That was not known until: ::David
And then as that greenery, because of some change in the environment, you know, it became more arid, started to collect and it started to, you know, almost like a city, find these particular grasshoppers,
::David
rubbing up against each other, starting to procreate at a faster rate, starting to get into a particular phase that would change their color, they they also change their their nature.
::David
And that becoming gregarious, that becoming wanting to be together, flying during the daytime, eating poisonous plants, becoming a collection of what appeared to be grasshoppers now intent on destruction,
::David
would be was unknown until: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, it's, you know, on the the flip side, like we were talking earlier about one of the negative downsides of having these major cities is we've allowed probably on the top of the list, like with mosquitoes, some of the most dangerous insects, which is cockroaches, to run rampant because we've built these environments, especially like New York City, where they can...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
thrive And they thrive like no telling of tomorrow. And like you said, it's almost where it's a symbiotic rhythm of where as nature is changing, as like, for example, with the grasshoppers, as there's more vegetation that's um developing and there's more food and they start shifting.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
their dynamic and start moving to being more daytime and then eventually like we we've seen there's plenty of videos of this where locust swarms which if you've never seen a person which I've never have I think any person would literally shit their pants
::David
Yeah. Yeah. Well, they think this is the end, you know, because they come at you eating their body weight.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah everything everything
::David
Yeah. And there's millions and billions of them.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And, it the you know, what what's crazy is because um I remember living overseas, they they get sandstorms. And when you look at sandstorms, you know, like all of a sudden like it starts to get a little bit gray and then the sand starts to pour in. But in this case, it's just straight up insects.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
um I think that's really interesting that almost we're even insects now are almost manipulating our environment so that they can gain benefit from it.
::David
ot be controlled up until the: ::David
d that area. Then after about: ::David
And now with, you know, aerial photographs and certain imagery that can show the hotspots of where these insects are most likely gonna grow, ah we have some control over what they what they're doing.
::David
But that's our part of looking at an insect who by its very nature is extremely sustainable, you know, within itself. Uh, it, if we were taken out of the equation, it continues to search and then maneuver and then, and then procreate and move forward.
::David
Now you can say sustainable. it doesn't sound very sustainable. It's sustainable in its own societal context.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
And that's what I'm trying to kind of bring out.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, and that's that's the reason why I brought up examples like even cockroaches and mosquitoes, because it's sustainable in those specific type of environments. You create places that have tunnels and channels and major sewage systems.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You get roaches. You create, you have places in Florida, which let's be honest, Florida swampland. You really are not supposed to build anything here. And then you get massive amounts of mosquitoes, especially when humid levels start rising because it's freaking swampland.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
This is their sustainable environment. This is where their habitat is and this is where they thrive.
::David
yeah
::David
Yeah, yeah. You know, you get the word sustainable, and if you try and get sustainable cities and you connect it together, you have a real, at least from the human perspective, a real misbalance because to allow a city to sustain, it requires an input from x external to that city.
::David
And
::David
anyway, in trying to search for sustainability and putting the word sustainable city together here I don't want to say it's a misnomer, but it's a stretching of of terms that sometimes just don't look like they go together very well.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, they don't.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
know that it be Because, you know what, when you think of a major city, right, i mean, it's a concrete jungle. I mean, okay I mean, pigeons can survive. They've learned to adapt.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Rodents have learned to be able to adapt. Like, many intros insects have been able to adapt, but there's there's we there really is no vegetation. There really is no habitat.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like, yeah, there's trees.
::David
right
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Nice.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Good Like their central park is a great example, but that's not like you said, like that's not a sustainable city.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, you can't just slab a giant like two or three football worth of land and call that a sustainable part of this. It just doesn't it that for me. And I'm honestly hearing you talking about this and breaking this down.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's starting to make less and less more sense what these cities are doing with this whole quote unquote becoming more, you know, environmental friendly. Like, what does that even mean?
::David
Yeah. What does it mean? Sustainability is a word that we have stretched to mean probably way more than it was supposed to in the beginning. ah I talk about in the book about, you know, it's ah and better understood as a normative term.
::David
yeah if If I can, let me back up with that. a normative term is something...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, please. I'd look love for you to break this down. Yeah.
::David
Okay, well, Dave, when I say a normative term, it has to deal with that it's got it's got an ability to be an adjective, to describe something as better than what it's being compared against.
::David
ah Sustainable would be like more beautiful.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay.
::David
You could say this is going to last longer and have less impact upon the next generation than that is. But when we try and quantify it many times and say that's a sustainable X, we we we come up with a sustainability indicators.
::David
Many times we turn what should be a normative term into a quantitative indicator. ah term. We've we've lost the qualitative aspect of where it all started from and with our, you know, our desire turned it into a number.
::David
ah In that frustration, we say, well, then, you know, it's it's just a bunch of material. ah We'll simplify all the inputs. We'll get a number to it and say, ah, We're at 6.4, whatever units you want to come up with.
::David
That's a sustainable number and 7.5 is not. Okay, what's for lunch? You know, and we just kind of march off, not not understanding the fact that we've really kind of obliterated a pretty important aspect of our very existence because we...
::David
we've quantified something out of usefulness to us. And that's where the the natural aspect kind of comes to the forefront. this The title of the is one of the reasons why I thought, well, I chose that title is because I thought it might bring to most people's minds the the frustration that needs to be explained when you say the word sustainable as a normative term as opposed to a, let's say a quantitative term, you know, a number.
::David
And so, so bear with me if I can give you a story about, ah about that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, sure.
::David
Have you heard of Viktor Frankl? Have you heard his that name?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Hold on. I am dyslexic, so if I don't know what the person... Hold on, give me second. Let me see. If I see a picture, I'll tell you. give me one sec.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes. Yes. I know who this is. Yes.
::David
Okay, good, good. um Then what I'll just do, are are you recording right now?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
Okay, so I'll...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We've been recording for... but you We've been recording this whole time.
::David
The whole time, all right. Well, let me... Okay, Victor's ah and he's an Australian... Australian, I'm sorry, neurologist. and psychologists too, who founded what's called Logotherapy.
::David
And what it's it's dubbed as the third V&E school of psychology behind Freud, who bases his idea that everything that motivates humanity and all of what we do is upon sex, and Adler who says, no, it's upon power.
::David
So those two ah kind of schools of Viennese thought are out there. He, though, came in and said, no, it's a search for for purpose, for meaning. oh and And what he did is he derived his concept after they did, during the...
::David
um nazi concentration camp period he was in the thernstadt nazi concentration camp for a number of years actually he was a three um he was for three years he was at four different camps he was in thernstadt auschwitz kalfarin and and uh he'll oh yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, he has a very sad story. Like there's a dog there's a documentary of his. I think it was on Discovery or History Channel, which I remember watching with my dad.
::David
it
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And they like broke down every and it's. It's amazing that still a man like him was able to come to that synopsis, even with all the trauma and terror that he went through, which I think is incredible.
::David
Yeah.
::David
Did they go in that documentary into the the book's not long. It's called Man's Search for Meaning. But did they go through his experience in some of those camps?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mm hmm.
::David
I mean, trying to move toward the middle of the the box of men that are marching out to work on a street or or a ditch or something. They would beat to dickens and of the outside of the group.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i were i I think, if I'm not mistaken, because I remember that the documentary was mostly focused on his experience at like during the war, and then shortly afterwards.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah Let me see if I can find it. e I'm almost positive it was on History Channel.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Um...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, I think was on history.
::David
Okay.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But yeah, it more it it mostly, like I said, it mostly focused on his story during the war, not very much about his work afterwards.
::David
Well, there wasn't much, at least in his writing that book that occurred afterwards because he was in those concentration camps in the infirmary. ah He was identified as a doctor.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, okay. Yeah.
::David
Yeah, so they put him he they put him at the the very end of these individuals' lives. They were dying of disease or they were dying of malnutrition or just exhaustion.
::David
Anyway, in there, he saw three reasons why people were justified. Why? To see another day. Because the entire environment they were in were saying, you know, don't sustain yourself one more day. Don't sustain your life. and and Just die. I mean, everybody here wants you to die.
::David
They've got... you know boxes if even that on the outside of this building right here where they want to collect your body and just bury it or burn you as the situation was but he found three reasons the first reason he found why people wanted to see the next day is because there was some person a wife a child a parent someone they thought if i can get through this horrible experience
::David
That'll be worth it. and the And they would want to see the next day. The second group, they would say, you know, there's something inside of me. I'm a scientist. i'm ah i'm a I'm a musician. I'm a composer. I'm a poet. Whatever it is, they've got something inside of them that needed to be written, that needed to be exchanged, that needed to be put out.
::David
And they would want to see the next day. And the third one, which is logotherapy, this is where it came from, and this is where his book came from. There was a group trying to figure out, what is this all about? You know, my my life has got to have a larger purpose in the entire scheme of things.
::David
And those were the ones he spent his time pretty much in that book saying that search for meaning was many times the most successful at being able to allow their bodies to push through to the next day.
::David
They were trying to sustain bodies. their life one more day for a purpose bigger than themselves. And that's why in using of the word sustainability, we're doing the same thing.
::David
I don't know what my kids or my grandkids or my great grandkids are going to be doing, but it's it's not for me really to do so. It's me to say, there's something that they're going to be doing. Let's continue to move forward and not just say it's all about me and my little, you know, 60, 70 years of life that I have on this planet.
::David
ah Anyway, that's why a man's search for sustainability has to be a larger picture than just um you know you know the water we drink, the air we breathe, and at the land we live on.
::David
It's got to be much bigger than that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. I was touching on this earlier. yeah We take something where thousands of years ago, before we had light pollution, you know, why were these scholars, these philosophers being so ingrained in our lands, you know, whether it be psychedelics or among other things, where they had this deeper understanding of astrology, far more advanced than we we claim to have now.
::David
Hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
imagine being somebody around: ::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We've lost that, you know, and, you know, you want to, people like to throw that level level of like, like you said, like, that you know, throw the sustainability on that. But, know,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That changes the way we see and interact with the world. i I genuinely believe that if we were able to see the night sky, a lot of us were able to see the night sky, that might help a lot of people.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, it might sound wild, but it could be an underlying issue as to why so many people suffer is because we don't have that ability anymore to see that with our own eyes.
::David
Yeah.
::David
Yeah.
::David
yeah Yeah, and to wonder about what's out there and and and to marvel about it too.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right.
::David
that That, yeah, you're here, but you're just, you know, it's not just about you. You're not the center of the whole thing. There's something much bigger.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No.
::David
ah Anyway, that that was one of the things that I thought, well, let's just go back. Let's look at these two examples, these two communities, and just like and I pale with the idea that I'm trying to compare myself to, to, to what Viktor Frankl was doing, but let's look at this. Like he was looking at the infirmary and why were these people wanting to see one more day on humanity scale?
::David
look Let's look at these and find out why they would want to continue for another day and how they would kind of, as a society move through themselves through it. You know, bees are very orderly, but, um,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
There is.
::David
and That gives them strength, but there's a lot of growth in the disorder that you see from desert locusts. So there's, yeah, well both of these can teach us something as they handle what's going forward.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
there is
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it's interesting It's interesting you bring up with Viktor Frankl because, you know, from my own personal ah like personal observation, when I've been able to sit down with somebody, obviously they're much older, you know, that went through World War II, you know, especially even those veterans that even like went through Normandy or went through those towards the end of the years, compared to somebody that went through Vietnam, you know,
::David
But they have.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'm going to be honest, a lot of those veterans from World War II, they're some of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet. They're very bubbly. They have great grandkids. They crack jokes. Sometimes they're little bit too inappropriate around the kids. You're like, hey calm down.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But what's so sad is when you see these Vietnam veterans, they are some of the most mentally unstable individuals alive now, some of the most uncared people, some of them that are so alone that they just sit in you know nursing homes for years with nobody caring for them.
::David
Yeah.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And like you said, it's being able to see through that ideology of like when you put people through trauma and extreme anxiety and constant stress on a day to day basis, how different people will see life and how they'll view of, you know, what will be like, what am I what am I going towards?
::David
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And, you know, like you said, you can learn from literally an insect from that. You know, the understanding of being constantly orderly and working together in this concept and hold on sorry this constant connection of like everything has a purpose from the start to finish. Like we started from the very beginning. You have the queen bee, you have the drones, you have the wasps, you have the worker bees, the bumblebees.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They're all playing their roles. But the thing about it is, they can't go out of that role. Otherwise, it leads to utter chaos.
::David
Right. Yeah, it does. Now, let me let me be the devil's advocate, though, in the fact that the utter chaos that most people see within the desert locust on the other end of the spectrum.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::David
has a certain strength that if we see it as a strength might benefit us as well. Those times that we've been in military conflict have also been times that have forced at least our human development to see technology in different ways and use it in different different extremes. Now, the most dynamic or the most frustrating of that, of course, is the nuclear bomb that we are now confronting as as something that had to contend with but there is something though upon that that pressure of saying what can be done and so for example if i take the desert locust there is a certain social networking which is occurring inside that swarm of locusts as they move forward into the into the desert to do
::David
in our minds, you know, rape, pillage, and pump plunder the next area that they come across. But as a society, they're searching for something that will stabilize that particular group, that swarm, into the next generation and into the next step.
::David
That social networking for the locust is because when they've got to this level, their brains are actually larger. They're 30% larger in size than when they were just a grasshopper.
::David
It's partially because of the stress that they've gone through, but also partially because they now have to interact with a lot more locus in close proximity to their own location.
::David
giving them the ability to um see and also to smell in areas that they didn't have in the past now how is that beneficial it that strength that chaos that difficulty given to that one community gives it a strength that overpowers many other societies that are coming at it from a from a distance you know a locust a desert locust is extremely edible they have a high protein content they're very close to what a shrimp would be so you've got a bird population you've got lizard populations saying bring them on we'll eat whatever you send our way but they change their color they change their dynamic and those insects that use are those those predators that used to eat them don't
::David
giving them almost an additional strength that we don't see in the past. So what I'm just saying is that you can learn from that. You can you can see strengths in that particular thing that sometimes we are frustrated our own society because we're saying nothing's coming out of it. Well, maybe there is something.
::David
Now, you might say, David, you just jumped the fence and you're saying that maybe we ought to look at it from the other point of view than nature.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
Well, I don't want to, we are looking at nature, but we're looking at a strength that nature has in what they've been able to use in this situation.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is. you know And ah thinking about that, i i go to the – we're dealing with the Tasmanian tiger, right, which went extinct in the early 20th century.
::David
Hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And how much the Tasmanian devil has suffered because of that species going extinct. They get face cancer. They get extremely ill and suffer tremendous pain because they no longer have any more predator.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They used to attack them. They used to control their population. That's what like I was saying earlier like with wolf populations, too. It's like we need those that balance of predator to prey ratio in order for the ecosystem to function naturally.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, even though we as humans are like, well, we don't like that. Well, too bad. They came your way before us. This is how they're able to survive. um You know, and believe it or not, like that's kind of the reason why there's been work and effort to try and bring back the Tasmanian tiger, literally so that it can control the Tasmanian devil population.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And, you know, to your point also with locusts, it's the same idea. Like, yeah, they can be very devastating to agriculture. But they do help thrive in ecosystem, especially where locusts are found, like in deserts where these other animals don't really have any other food supplies. so
::David
right And their protein is so high as a part of their their mass. you know it's It's amazing what it properly handled. You could turn into an edible diet for most humans as well.
::David
you know there were some times when it would move into a community, eat everything in sight. People say, well, that's the end of them. you know, they no longer have the wheat. that Well, no, they've got the locusts because the locusts are going to die. And in that desert environment, they dry and they can be swept up and eaten as well.
::David
So it didn't completely wipe out civilization. There was something still edible. It happened to be an insect, but it was still edible.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. ah You know, I feel that being able to see dig deep into not only understanding of what is going on, but how is it working?
::David
you
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We have spent a lot of the 19th and 20th century literally destroying populations of animals and species to the point that we've caused you know a lot of animals and species to go completely and extinct.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And you know we think about it now like, oh, well nature will fix itself.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'm not an expert, and I feel like you have a better understanding of this than I do. I feel like we've done a lot of damage, and maybe some of it's not repairable. Probably not, like especially when you're dealing with whale population.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, we we really be really screwed up badly.
::David
Well, that's probably learning from it as opposed to running over it with a lawnmower, you know, and destroying it in every way, shape and form. you're You're trying to learn from it. And if you can go at it in that light, I think the the lessons can be actually gained from it that were're we are losing.
::David
I'm talking about two insects, you know, for which most people think of all the things I'm not going to worry about. Insects ought to be on the top of the list because they're they're insects, not mammals, not like you just mentioned and in the Tasmanian tiger and the whales.
::David
But these insects teach us lessons and and to have ignored this one, which seems to me at the very... and of what most people would pay attention to, we've learned a lot. And we can't just give up on that. We can't just ignore them.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No.
::David
You know.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you And you're right, though. like Even from the lens of within insects, you know like i kind of was talking about even with dealing with the ocean.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you know You have microorganisms and phytoplankton and among other things, you have coral reef and you know you have like oysters and mussels which basically clean and filter out the air.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And ah lot of the times we can't even see what they're doing. We can't even see what these species are doing.
::David
right
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like It's not population control. it's It's where everything is working together, even the smallest thing like a bee or even an ant or even in the case where you get even larger, like, for example, with the locusts.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
All of these things are cogs in the gears and wheels of motion that allows this, literally, this ball of rock, which is basically ah like you know a spaceship. It's ah an organic spaceship flying through space.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And all of these things are you know like on on Star Trek.
::David
Right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you know like One is like a you know the in the board or one of the engineers making sure that the few the fuse propulsion, everything is working correctly. This is what all these things are doing.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's allowing our planet to stay alive and being able to thrive and continue.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You take one of those things out, and that's what I was saying earlier, is like the second we start destroying species, our planet changes.
::David
Yeah, it does.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Now the ecosome has to figure out, okay, what are we going to do now we're missing this cog?
::David
Right, right. And hopefully part of that will be to understand we have narrowed the amount of food that we believe is acceptable for a human diet to such a point that we become pretty fragile.
::David
i mean, I had just mentioned about eating insects. Well, a lot of populations, lot of nations around our world don't see that as such a horrible a choice like we do in America.
::David
And
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
no
::David
It's actually something that given the situation that we have this structure and we're trying to do our very best on this spaceship as we move through you know through the galaxies, we need to be a little more respectful for it and also understanding of it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, and it's not it's not about forcing a totalitarian perspective where you know we need to become eco-friendly.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We need to make sure that we watch every single way we're stepping so we don't kill any of this – I don't think that's what you're trying to touch on, and I don't think that's the type of message that we're trying to throw out here. I think what you're trying to get at is having a deeper understanding of our planet.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Because in the end of the day, even though we get this one life, we are sharing this along with everything else with us, including the bees.
::David
yeah
::David
That's right.
::David
You know, one of the things that I bring together on the bring out of the book is Albert Childs and Albert swarm, which is the largest locust swarm ever recorded in human history.
::David
over the state of Nebraska in: ::David
And most of most Americans in particular have no idea this occurred. ah The volume of locusts, as this guy has estimated, was about 3.5 trillion.
::David
That's trillion. That many locusts at one time flying across the United States, descending on a particular part of the country, eating everything in sight. Pretty much, in our in our estimation, you know that that would be the end of those states.
::David
And ah and pretty much, yeah if you're looking it up right now, it was a pretty horrific time frame.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
God.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh my God.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I, yeah, this is you know, like you, you think biblical. Nah, this is, this is real life. I like, I'm looking at this number over here and I'm like, did it just say trillion with the T?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like do they by accident, on they by accident and put that by mistake? That is crazy.
::David
But I mean, here's the idea. People say, well, it was it wasn't at the Buffalo that kept the Indians alive. Wasn't it this? No, these these trillions of insects coming across at this particular time wasn't the first. They had occurred hundreds of years in the past and the collection of a protein that was necessary for the Indian population to grow was right there.
::David
Yeah, these insects did come over. They ate the grass that was part of the great grasslands area of those states and were collected after they died by the Indians that were in that area and consumed.
::David
There was a cycle in there that was a lot less energy intensive than the buffalo and trying to strip off. I mean, of course they did. They killed the buffalo. They were able to strip off its skin and create different things.
::David
But the locust was a key part of their diet. A key part that's now calling
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
the No, it is. no it is and you know what's crazy even talking about native americans is the fact that they not only use every single piece of that buffalo when you start being able to kind of dig into the other tribes especially ones that lived more coastal regions on how not only did they make sure to utilize every single seafood that they had available to them, they figured out ways of even using the bones as fertilization for their own plants.
::David
Yeah.
::David
Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I mean, it I can't think of a better word for sustainable than that. That is being able to not only live on the land, but like use it as a way to continue and thrive efficiently.
::David
Yeah.
::David
yeah Yeah. Yeah. Once again, learning from how this insect did it, but also the gaining of what we were able to get from it. I bring that to out in this book as well because it's forgotten.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's amazing. It is.
::David
I mean, this is 150 years ago. That's not that long ago. But for the most part, people have forgotten. No idea that this occurred. If you read more in that article that you probably are looking up online, it talks about that some states made, well, they were conscripting everybody in the state to work on the cleanup because we had changed at that time these states into agricultural
::David
beds. You know, we we were looking at farms and and at that time there was just a mess of
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
you know, a larger population, an insect collection that was starting to rot and create disease to the water that that was in place. Anyway, uh, we're on the other side of that right now, but the very event, uh, the catastrophic environmental ah event that was taking place is something to learn from, you know,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, it is You know, one thing I've started to appreciate, like ah we were saying earlier, like especially with farmers, is the ones that are doing regenerative farming, which I think is absolutely incredible.
::David
mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Because it's not it's not an idea that that is new. It's a very old idea that's kind of where agriculture kind of stemmed where. Okay, you got an insect problem.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
why Why you spraying herbicides and pesticides all over the place? Like... There has to be a way of figuring out, okay, if you're getting these certain types of insects, right, maybe these insects, they have a prey that is sustainable and can and survive in that environment to feed off of those insects but it's not killing your plants.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, instead of forcing your cattle to be muddled and crushed together, allowing them to graze and actually feed off the vegetation and feed and be able to fertilize the land that they're walking on,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You see where I'm going with this? It's like where you're you're doing a farm, but basically you're basically doing nature in farming, which is crazy.
::David
Oh yeah.
::David
Yeah. Polyface is a farm that's in Virginia. You've probably heard about that. They're perhaps near the top of doing just that very example. I've been up there a few times to see how and what ideas they've come up with and they're just great.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's amazing.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But you know that what people don't realize, like we were talking about even going back um even 150 years in history, a lot of these things take tremendous amount of work and effort, not only to understand on how they work, but how to make it work.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You could say, well, I'm going to do regenerative farm. But Where are you living? Do you live in an environment that's very high in altitude? Are you closer to sea level?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
a fit effectively affected in: ::David
Yeah, that's the time frame.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
somewhere around there you know That area has immense amount of vegetation, but you've got plains. You've got areas where it goes higher and areas where it goes lower. like Understanding the land that you're breathing and working on is also so important.
::David
yeah
::David
And that's where I guess a lot of this comes to light with looking at these communities because these communities, bees and locusts live in, usually bees are in a much more lush environment. Deserts seem to be the the the domain of the locust, but to understand what they've done both of those two.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
in those environments equally.
::David
Yes. Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
Dave, there's one thing I don't know if this would be something of interest to to your readers, but the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which sometimes are somewhat frustrating because they've gone to the nth degree and coming up with sustainability indicators that could be quantitated.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
And that's i to a certain degree when you got politicians and you've got that that group together, there's got to be a number assigned so they can somehow measure and put forward successes. But They have a diagram on the UN Sustainable Development Goals section, which shows 17 different elements. The basis of this, it looks like a big Christmas, not a Christmas tree, a wedding cake.
::David
And anyway, the very center of this diagram shows number 17 of the different sustainability development goals. And it's it's pretty much cooperation, get along with people so that you can talk through these things.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What's it um...
::David
These are the UNSDG.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I wanna see this.
::David
Look at that. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And when you get there, they'll have diagrams that show all 17 of these different elements. Some have to deal with feeding. Some have to deal with, of course, the bottom will deal with water, greenhouse gases.
::David
It'll deal with water. poverty, ah income, disparities between a number of different areas. But in those diagrams, they'll be number 17. And they put it as a very center section of their illustration of what these are.
::David
And number 17 has to deal with cooperation. And Part of the cooperation, i think, is is to do what we're doing right now. to Look more holistically at what has happened successfully through time in the past to the present.
::David
A part which most of us ah have ignored because we want just a number. We want just ah a scientific answer or ah a new gee whiz, whiz bang type of device that will just make it all go away.
::David
That number 17, they put in the very center for the very purpose of saying, we've got to get together. We have to talk about these things because there is some real frustration in the whole effort of the whole thing. Now, if you look and you read about any of those, not a single one of the 17 are doing very well.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No.
::David
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know what? you You know, for me, what it is, and it's not even being a le libertarian. It's the simple of understanding where when you take people such as yourself, right, that have invested time, effort and energy into not only writing a book, but actually like caring for bees and understanding that ecosystem and environment.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Do you think that these people would, God honest, us give you a platform to talk? Hell no. Hell no! They're not interested to talk to you. They're interested in talking into some greedy-ass politician in the state of Montana that probably has never even stepped foot in a mud pile, if their life depended on it, to represent this.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's so disheartening because... We've, I'm starting to get a little bit like a negative Nancy right now, but we've basically destroyed our farm farming culture here in the United States.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We have destroyed this idea of being able to be sustainable within our own communities. Okay. This is where we have to get out of our heads. We live in a country of 50 states. And we've said this before.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
There are higher elevations, Rocky Mountains, Swamplands, drier climates. I mean, the list just goes on depending on where you are in this country. People locally that have lived there for a very long time or have spent time in, you know, developing or being a part of nature in this instance has a better understanding of that community and that environment than anybody else, including the United Nations, the USDA, FDA, CDC.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
The list just goes through. So it then comes down to, well, you can't solve this plan this problem globally.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You have to solve this problem at home, in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Florida, in New York, Colorado, Texas.
::David
Yeah, you have to have participants. And if that group of participants say, this is what we're going to have, then you got some grasp of what's expectations because you're trying to manage expectations. You know, sustainability for someone 100 years ago was was water that wouldn't kill you.
::David
You know, in the probably: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It had lead in it. Yeah.
::David
Yeah, had lead in.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
Now we're at water, it's got to be, it better go through an RO unit and be bottled by, i don't know, some bottling company. Sustainability has expectations that have to be handled by the states that you're in, Georgia, Florida, or you know or wherever it might be on the planet. You've got to keep the participation pool small enough to say, yeah, this is sustainable for me, my community, to go forward.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's the only way that we can push forward. You know, when people look, we live on a greener planet than we did 100 years ago. There's more trees on this planet now than we've ever had before.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And what i what I think you are pointing at, which is so true, is we need to get out of this mindset of we got to save the world. No, save your community. Where do you live?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, even though, like, for example, I have an artist podcast here.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
The message I constantly try to push out is what can you do for your community? What can you do for the environment that you're living in? Because.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
If we want a future, like you were saying, and and I know that you're you've got grandkids and you've got kids and stuff, we're not trying to build a future for them globally. We're trying to build a future for them here. you know If it's at home, like where you live, or possibly somewhere else that they want to move towards,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Getting out of that headspace of the world, the global, you know, what's going on in India. You know, I had somebody really sweet that came on the podcast. And being somebody that's in the automotive industry, I have a better understanding of this where they were talking about how much cars are polluters.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Cars are less polluters today than they were 20 years ago. Actually, cars barely pollute than they used to.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You see where I'm going with this? And, you know, you could start talking about pollution.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's like, well, it doesn't really matter if we pollute here because China and India are doing a way worse job than we are. And if we try to build our cities where we live in and out of trees and say hello to the birds and make sure that we don't touch them, we're still not doing anything.
::David
Yeah, it you know, you're getting to the very heart of what do you where do you achieve sustainability? Over what space is sustainability to be achieved? And over what time is sustainability to be achieved?
::David
Because you've got this window of changing expectations that you're never going to be able to get your arms wrapped around it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Bye.
::David
People are going to expect different things 50 years from now than they do now.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::David
And if you think that you're going to get it, you're wrong. You're wrong. you you You're just confused. You've got to know this space and at this time.
::David
Dave, one of the books I'm working on right now after this is the fact that I i have relatives that go back to the gold mining efforts in Colorado, the Breckenridge area. And so I've got these things from my grandparents, my grandfather and his brother who are gold miners.
::David
Well, you don't mine in a little town in Colorado for the purpose of staying there long-term. You get the gold out of the ground and you move out of the way back to a lot more hospitable environment than 9,000 feet.
::David
but they wanted, and they actually did, want to stay there long term. So there were certain expectations of what that town eventually was going to become. It almost turned into a ghost town before you know skiing came in and kind of totally morphed it into a different type of environment. But during that time, what was sustainability that they wanted?
::David
What was sustainability as an income generated from gold mines that were throughout the area of Summit County? Those type of things were, they could care less what was happening in Europe. They wanted this section of Colorado, the mountains to be theirs and for them to be able to live on it in such a way that their kids and their grandkids could do the same.
::David
That was their sustainability. Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And i I think that this attitude and mindset of we are Americans, so you know, and I don't think there's anything wrong of having a kind heart towards other people that come from other places and other nations.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
e, we're talking about in the: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We have the advancement of the internet and technology, and we're constantly pouring all of our energy and outsources to everywhere else except our country. Like you said, we've had...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
we've had Our grandparents, our great-grandparents that have either been in coal mining, they've been a part of the working class in this country, they've been a part of the farming culture here in the United States.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
y father immigrated here from: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Why are we so focused on everywhere else except our own home? it's It's wild that we've even gotten to this place.
::David
And your expectation and my expectation has got to be within parameters that we can do something about.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::David
If we don't, you know, our our participation for what's happening in Bangladesh will be minimal great because we can't really affect them. though we're Their participation, our participation will be stretched too far.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Getting out of that global mindset and focusing things at home, that is the real 17 goals target. You know, if we can start... getting big ag the hell away from our farmers.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
okay And I'm talking about companies like Monsanto, Purdue. They're not benefiting farmers. okay They're causing people to suffer. And I'm not a hater of corporations. I think it's great, especially when you have larger corporations.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But the second you start affecting we're You look at the middle of the United States, it's a barren wasteland. There's no automotive industry anymore. mean, it's starting to build up kind of. I know in Carolina, there's been some, in the Carolinas, there's been some structure and stuff like that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We've destroyed so much of what that ecosystem used to be. where There was a time in the United States where people just moved in the middle of nowhere and like, all right. we could you know We're here to do something, like you said, with gold. and How can we make this inhabitable?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And they figured out, let's make a town, and then we can take our product or what our goods and our wares and then sell them back and forth so we can all live in harmony in this you know rural area, as you would put it.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But maps don't lie. you know You can go right now on satellite images and see it for yourself.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you know And I think for myself, I don't know about you, that is the future. If I do have a family and I do raise kids, that's the future I want to leave them because then in a hundred years, they can figure out what else they want to do. Maybe, you know, the community can kind of stretch outwards in something else or another direction.
::David
Right. Right. You know, one thing, Dave, I'm, I'm going to kind of go away from honeybees and locusts into what I've been looking at recently. And that's, you know, the next book I'm putting together.
::David
There's a part of sustainability that has to do with pride in the area that you participate in. You know, there and and what I'm doing is I was reading through all the stuff concerning the Rocky Mountains and these little mining towns.
::David
There was this overarching emphasis on baseball teams of these little tiny towns a population of 400 to 500 who then would go over and play another little mining town with about the same population.
::David
And the entire town almost in mass would go over with both of them. And the and the the the the participation part of it and the desire to have a winning team in these little towns was a part of wanting them to stick around, to to convince these miners and their families, which I'll tell you it was about 80% guys in these towns. you know There weren't a lot of families around.
::David
But to stick around for a you know through another hard winner had to deal a lot with the pride of the town that they were part of.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No.
::David
l team. And we're talking the: ::David
but the but But the aspect of wanting to have and expecting to have some pride in the community itself so that it would see the next generation and they'd want their children to see it was very, very much local.
::David
And it showed, as I see from this thing, more of that qualitative aspect of what sustainability is missing. If we lose that that locality, that that looking at what we have here as wanting to sustain it, we're not going to sustain anything.
::David
you know we've We've got to be proud, if you would, of the community in order to want to give it to our children.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We've got to be able to look forward instead of looking backwards. you know
::David
That's right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
we we spent We can spend so much time pointing the fingers and blaming everything for our problems. But to your point, even in the most harshest of conditions, being able to come together and being able to do something as simple as sport.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ates, going back to the early: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That came from people that wanted to collaborate with other artists. Like, oh, you figured this out with your camera? Let me see. Ooh.
::David
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You were able to, like, you know, erase that out of the film and do it by, you know, layer by layer. Interesting. That collaboration, even in those hostile environments, even those harsh predicaments of where we don't know if this is going to work. We don't know how well this is going to thrive. But, hey, we want to be able to have that future together.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That to me is the greatest example of what community is. It's not about a flag. It's not about politics. It's not about whose side you're on. It's about what can we give to each other to better our chances and give ourselves that future we so boldly hope to have.
::David
good.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes. David, I have to say, honestly, man, it's been an absolute pleasure. i I love having like love having these conversations, not just because of where the direction it goes and the stuff that we discuss, but how it opens up our minds of how we can see things differently. you know We're not trying to shove opinions or tell people what to do. We're showing real life, God honest to the truth, even going down to the bees and the freaking locusts.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's just amazing.
::David
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
um
::David
Right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So I know you've got a website. You mentioned you have another book that's coming out. ah Where can these people find you, like ah your social media, your website and all of that?
::David
The website's davidogetbooks.com. And my last name, though, French is spelled A-U-G-E. So if you have family from Austria, you know that's more of a German word than it is a French word, but it's pronounced A-U-G-E. So D-A-B-I-D-A-U-G-E books.com.
::David
And that's probably the easiest way. I do have this book out there, Man's Search for Sustainability. You can search either by my name or the title of the book on Amazon and pick up a copy.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'm sure – mean, hey, anybody that's listening out here, if you want a better understanding of Man's Search to Sustainability, be sure to grab a copy because, hey, I think if we learned anything in this hour and 30 minutes of talking, there's a lot to learn that we haven't been putting enough focus on for a really, really long time.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
thank you. Thank you for that. i appreciate it.
::David
Thanks, Dave.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
My pleasure. Well, to anybody out there, if you do want to check out more of the podcast, you can find us um everywhere and anywhere where it's available at Lost in the Groove Pod. We are now on Substack and Rumble if you want to check out more.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So with that, we will catch you on the next one. Peace out. All right.
