Stuart Carlton 0:00
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a precisely twice monthly. How many episodes in a row? I've been making a wry comment about the fact that we don't release episodes twice monthly, or even monthly at this phase in our life, at

Megan Gunn 0:17
least a year and a half now, yeah, but that's life. That is life. Life

Stuart Carlton 0:21
is happening. Hey, that's the voice of Megan the lake. Lover, gun, what's up? Megan,

Megan Gunn 0:25
things are good. Stuart, how are you doing? I'm

Stuart Carlton 0:28
doing fine. And that reminds me I'm Stuart Carlton, host of teaching about the Great Lakes, and we're so glad to be here. And I know a lot about watching salmon pummel their head on rocks getting released in the city of Hobart, Indiana, but I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, and then they float off upside down. Oh

Megan Gunn 0:46
my gosh. That was hard to watch. That

Stuart Carlton 0:48
was hard to watch a lot of blood, though. Yeah. Anyway, that's the point of the show, yeah, to learn about the Great Lakes. We're right now the there's a lot going on at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, which is why we've been a little bit behind on episodes, because this is something that, to be frank, like we each have jobs and we do for funsies, and it hasn't been a time of funsies lately. We've been doing good work, and the work is enjoyable, but it's just been a lot going on. So I reached out to my friend Sandy's fabota, and she said she would help us get the episodes together for the rest very kind of her extremely kind, but we're recording some interviews, and some of them coming out, and the first one is coming up right now.

Megan had to step out real quick. She, had to go to a lake. She was so excited about the late conversations we're going to have today that she went to go swimming very quickly. And that's exactly what happened. Our guest today is Dave Spratt. He's the chief executive officer of the Institute for journalism and natural resources. You can check out their website at i j n r.org and Dave, how are things going?

Dave Spratt 2:01
Things are going well, I appreciate you having me here.

Stuart Carlton 2:04
So the ijnr, what exactly is it you do? So it's got a cool name. It's an institute. I love a good Institute. And what is it that you all do exactly?

Dave Spratt 2:11
Well, we take journalists who cover the environment and we get them out into the field on these week long learning excursions to explore all different facets of environmental topics, from cultural, economic, scientific, you know, any way an environment issue shakes out is what we want to explore. So what we do in the months between these programs is we curate them by finding all the right experts to talk about whatever at issue, whatever issue we're exploring, and then we get the journalists out onto the landscape to see those things happen where they are. So that's

Stuart Carlton 2:52
really cool. Where did the idea for this come from, to get the journalists out there? Is that to try to help spur stewardship and knowledge, or is it just something that there was a market need for, how did y'all come about that

Dave Spratt 3:02
kind of all of the above? So our founder was, was a an environment editor at The Wall Street Journal, and he saw this need, that that there were too many journalists trying to write environment stories from their desks, over the phone, you know, without actually seeing the places that they were writing about. So back in 1995 His name is Frank Allen, by the way, back in 95 Franklin organized a two week trip out into the Montana wilderness that's still warmly referred to as Frank's Death March. The people who were there are the proudest of all the i, j and our alumni, which number over 1000 now actually probably closer to 1200 so from there, we did a couple in the mountain region, but, but over time, it expanded. We have been doing things in the Great Lakes since 2000 we've been to all four corners of the lower 48 in Alaska a couple times we go into Canada and Mexico. Yeah, it was a little bit of both the sort of a market need and also just, you know, the the need for journalists to really understand topics, these complicated, long running topics in depth. Yeah, that makes

Stuart Carlton 4:21
sense, and that's near and dear to our heart at sea. Grant, of course, which is where I work, because we're always trying to help people understand complicated science stuff. And we actually do something similar. We do with teachers. We take them out on the research vessel, the lake guardian, every year, and put them on I'm not allowed to call it a booze cruise, because it's not. It's a science cruise, which is why they don't take me on it. But so you also, so you do make sure, though, that there's at least one or two of these are great lakes each year, right? Yes. So where are some cool places you've taken people? And we'll get to this later in the last two questions. What are some cool places you'd like to take journalists in the Great Lakes?

Dave Spratt 4:52
Well, I love anytime I can take somebody who's never seen a great lake, or who has lived on a COVID. Coast, one of the coasts to see Lake Michigan, with the beautiful sand dunes and the beaches, and there are actual waves out there, but it's fresh water. You don't have to rinse yourself off when you're done. Lake Superior has some really amazing sites along both shores. I mean, really, you know, this is an incredible system, and anytime we can show any piece of it to folks, we're really happy about that.

Stuart Carlton 5:32
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, so the people who come, they're from, they're from everywhere, then they aren't necessarily. So you don't take Great Lakes. People to the Great Lakes, Gulf South. People to the Gulf South or whatever you kind of, how do you assign people to places? Is that something you do thoughtfully? Yeah, people just apply. Yeah,

Dave Spratt 5:49
no. So, so the people who come on our programs apply their expenses paid fellowships. So, you know, we do get applicants from all over the country and even all over the world, but the cohorts that we select tend to skew regionally. So you know, if somebody from Washington, DC or the southeast or the west coast or whatever wants to come on a Great Lakes program, they need to make the case for why it will enhance their coverage wherever they are. And we certainly get national reporters from national publications and national broadcast outlets that you know do that kind of work. So so yeah, they come from all over, but they tend to, we do tend to get more Great Lakes focused people in the Great Lakes, but thinking

Stuart Carlton 6:40
about it, when you like to take them to take them to the lakes just to see it, it's, it's striking to me. And I'm from New Orleans and spent most of my life in the Gulf, south until I came up here a decade or more ago at this point. And like, people don't realize about the Great Lakes, right? I mean, it's this huge resources there. People don't think. They don't realize it when you get there and you open your eyes and you can't see the other side, right? I mean, it's no different from being in the in the Gulf or whatever,

Dave Spratt 7:05
absolutely right? And the fact that it's fresh water. I mean, look at a globe anytime there is nothing like this system anywhere else on the planet. And you know, just the volume of water is mind boggling. But then the way that it has served humans over millennia is just crazy, you know. I mean, we've got all these, these big, bustling cities that that grew around the Great Lakes. And, you know, people refer to them as rust belt cities, but, I mean, you know, go into any of them and tell me that that's what you see, because they're all They're all thriving. The lakes are incorporated into the culture in all these cities in different ways, of course. I mean, Chicago is not Cleveland is not Detroit is not buffalo, but, but that's just right now. I mean, these lakes have been a resource for humans for millennia. I mean, people have been taking food and using the other resources of these lakes for 1000s of years. And, you know, it even just, if you just look at the topic of, say, human migration, you know, global human migration, the fact that the great lakes were here, you can think what you want about, you know, the westward expansion of Europeans, but the Great Lakes had a huge hand in that. You know, if they weren't here, that would have been an entirely different story. So, I mean, it's significant in just so many ways. And I love the system, and I'm really, I'm really proud to be from this part of

Stuart Carlton 8:39
the world. Yeah, it's interesting. I am, well, I'm from, well, I'm from the world, but I got my PhD at the University of Florida and lived down in Florida for about 10 years. And there, everybody likes to focus on the Everglades. And there's the famous saying that the Everglades are a test, and if we pass it, we just might to get to keep the earth. And I think that same thing applies to the Great Lakes. I think it's just as keynote of an ecosystem. But but outside of the region, it doesn't seem the story doesn't seem to spread quite as much for whatever reason.

Dave Spratt 9:06
Yeah, I mean, we scratch our heads about that all the time. I mean, we we put together these programs where we're like, oh, you know climate change, like, here's what's happening in the Great Lakes, and here how, here's how this may come into play in the next century. As you know, resources and other places dry up, and we've got this amazing water resource here, and, like, we care a ton about it. And then we hear folks, I mean, we see by their actions that they're just like, man, you know, there's some lakes, but, you know, but then there's part of me that's like, you know what? Fine, stay where you are, we'll have this. And y'all, do you? Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 9:44
that's funny. I went for the first time this summer, vacationing on on a great lake. We went to South Haven, Michigan, and, you know, we did the beach thing and whatever. And now you grow up going to the pan ever in New Orleans, they go to the panhandle of Florida, where the beaches are beautiful, as good as any. Where, you know, and it's just super fun down there. But I was in South Haven, and the sand was nice. It wasn't as nice, but, like, the weather was kind of cool. I did not get stung by a jellyfish or a stingray. I mean, I chased off the one shark I saw. And I was like, you know, going down to Florida is kind of for the birds. Man, like, it's fun, but, but, you know, it's like it's under, I think it's undersold. What a nice vacation spot it is, at least in the national sense,

Dave Spratt 10:26
yeah, well, and that might be the season, the seasonality of it too, right? I mean, the Great Lakes are amazing, June, July, August, September. And then the amazingness sort of tails off a little bit for

Stuart Carlton 10:38
Yeah, in fairness, the time I would go to Florida the panhandle, the panhandle, the most was during Mardi Gras. You know, after you've done about 10 Mardi Gras, you're good. And so then you go to Disney or to the panhandle, and it's not as Okay, fair enough. Yeah, it's a limited window, all right, so you're going on these cool trips and teaching the journalists all about the resources, helping them to do better journalism. I assume that's journalism is kind of journalists broadly defined, right? It's not just ink stained wretches. Not that anybody is that anymore, but it's also, is it, you know, multimedia producers, what types of people

Dave Spratt 11:07
are absolutely, absolutely we get, we get, you know, and that's that's changed a lot when, when I actually used to be an editor at the Detroit News, and I was first introduced to ijnr as a fellow I participated in a circumnavigation of Lake Erie back in 2008 and on that trip, I would say probably three quarters of us worked for daily newspapers. You know, we had folks from from Buffalo and Toledo and Cleveland and Milwaukee and Detroit and others, some smaller ones around the basin. And now, you know, and there were maybe a couple of freelancers. And now it's, it's just, it's flipped, you know, the number of radio folks has stayed pretty stable. The number of daily newspaper people has gone way down. The number of freelancers has gone way up, which, of course, is a reflection of the industry, but, but a lot of the Freelancers now, you know, as you pointed out, they're not just banging away at a keyboard. They're they're doing everything. They're taking pictures, they're taking video, they're taking audio, they're doing all the things and and you know, I would say the folks that do all of it are they may be our most, our best represented group.

Stuart Carlton 12:27
Yeah, that's interesting here. To do a lot more now to make a living in that industry. I think since you're talking to journalists and storytellers and things like that, a lot of our audience are, you know, other scientists and graduate students and what have you. And there's increasing pressure to get engagement around our work, right? I mean, at Purdue, we talk about engagement all the time. At Sea Grant, you know it's very important. So based on your experience as a Great Lakes journalist and working with storytellers and as a storyteller yourself, I don't know if you consider yourself that, but that's kind of what journalists do, right? Do you have recommendations based on these workshops that you think really help people to get engagement around their science?

Dave Spratt 13:03
Yeah, that's something that we talk about quite a bit from both ends, because and part of the part of the issue with journalists and scientists trying to communicate with each other, which is a key part of this sort of relationship, we speak totally different languages. Scientists, I'm not a scientist, so if I get this wrong, this is my perception of it. But scientists are all about precision and and journalists want to generalize everything, because what we're trying to do is take complicated issues and explain them to a general audience. And so, you know, what we've all been taught is that we're aiming for, you know, roughly an eighth or ninth grade person where you know, if some science, if you're if you're getting into things like the science of PFAs and these long chemical chains and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that's lost on most people, right? So the thing I would really, that I really would strongly recommend any scientist do, is think about two things. One, how would you explain the work you do to like your nine year old nephew. I mean, that's not to say anybody who's listening is a nine year old, but it sort of, I think it helps you, sort of, or as smart as a nine year old, but it helps you, sort of, some of us are at least that smart, yeah, well, right, I know. I mean, on a good day, I'm that on a good day, but it sort of helps reframe, sort of how you think about it, and how you how you convey it. And then the other thing I would suggest is metaphors are a great tool. What is this like? You know, tell me about your science, some similar thing in like the regular. Old World that is similar to what you've been learning from your science.

Stuart Carlton 15:03
It makes sense. That makes sense. So think about your nine year old nephew or niece, of course. And oh, yeah, sorry. Metaphors are a tool. I spent the whole time you're talking trying to think of a metaphor for a metaphor, and I failed, but that's okay, excellent. All right, now, so it sounds like really great work you do. First of all, we do have some journalists too. If they're interested in they want to be part of this party. They want to go out on one of these excursions and everything. Where is there an application there is where can they go to find out more info? Is that?

Dave Spratt 15:32
Yeah. So our website, ijnr.org, has all kinds of information on it about how to apply. You know, we'll put out a call for applications. We actually have one out right now for a virtual workshop we're going to do on the land back movement, the indigenous land back movement, and that will be in December, and then that's the only one we have open right now. But yeah, we'll, we'll put out a call through our networks and our partner organization networks like the Society of environmental journalists, the indigenous Journalists Association, folks like that. You usually keep the application period open for about a month. We're funded by foundations. We need to show our funders that that what we do makes a difference. And so, you know, what we ask the journalists to do when they apply is to tell us what you will do with the information you expect to learn. And you know, for somebody who works at the Detroit News or the Chicago Tribune, you know, that's pretty easy. That's their beat. They're just learning more, and they're probably going to go write stories. But you know, if you're if you're a freelancer, you know you need to tell us more about, maybe your relationships with publications. And you know what editors trust you, and just sort of what, why you want to be here. So that's

Stuart Carlton 16:58
open now, more to come in a year, and you can go check that out@ijnr.org and you can also, while you're there, click on, support ijnr, do a donation. Just click on, thank

Dave Spratt 17:07
you, Stuart, this is the right time of year to do that too, and is it is we will love you. If you do, there

Stuart Carlton 17:14
you go. So you can buy yourself a little bit of love, buy yourself more love with a bigger donation probably, but that's me speaking, aren't they? We love them all Yeah. All right, cool. And so in the next Oh, I've written down, so we have our crack team coming up with some questions. Since this is the last one I've written down, which is this what is in the future for ijnr, tell us your secret plans for next year. So Okay,

Dave Spratt 17:38
gotta we've got a bunch of good stuff coming up next year. The first one we'll do is, actually, we'll be in Southern California talking about wildfire and sort of how Southern California, a lot's been said about sort of the forests, and certainly with good reason, because some of those events the most catastrophic, but, you know, Southern California has a different fire regime. That's mostly chaparral, but it's also hugely populated, which sort of creates other infrastructure and sort of social and municipal concerns. We will also we're going to do a Great Lakes workshop. I think we're going to do it over in Windsor, actually, and that will be for members of the uproot project. This is an area that I Jnr has really worked hard on to sort of diversify the candidate pool and get get more journalists of color and people who come from marginalized communities to come on our programs and get back out in the world and tell those stories that have been under told or overlooked over the years. So that will be more of a sort of the science of water quality, and then Pair that with, you know, what that means to the communities who are, you know, sort of front line on water quality issues. So I think we'll probably straddle the Detroit River for that one, part of it in Windsor and part of it in Detroit. We'll do probably a virtual on the Chesapeake Bay in the spring. We'll do something attached to the sCJ, the Society of environmental journalists conference also in the spring, that'll be in Phoenix. I mean, take your pick, water mining, extreme heat. We haven't decided yet. So, yeah, it'll there's plenty to talk about. There also 4.5 million people living in like the desert, which also we should be talking about in the Great Lakes a whole lot, because that's probably not sustainable.

Stuart Carlton 19:47
The oh yeah, oh the water issues, yes, an interesting conversation around that. Look at this. I'm going to plug my own work. Check out our conversation with Peter Annan, author of my favorite Great Lakes book, The Great Lakes Water roars, which. Recently, a couple years ago, revised and check it out. And also a great

Dave Spratt 20:04
friend of mine, Peter is is awesome. And he actually has a new book too, called purified, yeah? So

Stuart Carlton 20:10
we talked about that a little bit, but I like the water war so much. We ended up doing that. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Spratt 20:14
Water Wars is just an amazing work. And then we're going to finish up next year in Montana so and then there will also be some other great lakes stuff coming in 25 and 26 we just check it out. What yet? Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 20:29
well, Dave, this is really interesting work, and it sounds like just, I not heard this organization before until, until your name came up on our radar. And so super glad to talk to you. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on teaching me about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. The first one is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Dave Spratt 20:53
Being an older guy, I have to think about what I eat for breakfast. And my kids, when they hear this, they're going to call me out as being an untruthful person, because I have a long and very checkered history with donuts, but I'm going to go with the sandwich because I am a more healthful person, and there are more things on there that I can eat and not feel bad about. There you go. But I do love me a donut. I wouldn't call it I'm not sure I would call it breakfast. Alright, so

Stuart Carlton 21:22
I'm going to go to Ann Arbor, and I don't want to hear anything about zingerman. I'm going to go to Ann Arbor, and I'm going to want to get a great sandwich from not from Zingerman's, because I don't want to wait in line for four hours. Where, where should I go to get this sandwich?

Dave Spratt 21:37
Well, go to Zingerman's website in order, and then you can walk right in and grab it. That would be my first answer, but you said you didn't want to hear about

Stuart Carlton 21:45
that. We've got a lot of Zingerman's on the show, not gonna lie. Yeah, yeah, I'm

Dave Spratt 21:49
sure. Oh man. But see now that's a tough question

Stuart Carlton 21:53
with pro tip, though, so I like that. I'll give you a Mac if you ever have to fly out of O'Hare. First of all, schedule your flight for somewhere else. But second of all, everybody likes to go to whatever root mainly this restaurant is in there. But the tortoise, they have an app too, and you can avoid that line by ordering on the app and picking it up. So that is a little hair tip for you.

Dave Spratt 22:12
Yeah, there you go. Oh man, a great sandwich in Ann Arbor. That's not Zingerman's, dude.

Stuart Carlton 22:20
Zingerman's, it is, I did not mean to put you on the spot. You're supposed to be the one asking the question. I'm sorry. No, no, it's all good. I feel like I've let you down. You've not let me down. Now let me know you give me the Zingerman's too, because anyway, we can talk about that another time. Yeah. Second question, what is the special place in the Great Lakes? We like to think about. One thing you talked about is, like, the Great Lakes, people don't appreciate it necessarily, right, as the amazing sociocultural, environmental resource that it is. And so one thing we'd like to do to address that is talk about, you know, really special places within the Great Lakes. And so is there one that you'd like to share with our audiences? So what makes it special? You know, I've

Dave Spratt 23:00
been thinking about this for a few days, and there are, there are quite a few, but, but if you've really made me, nailed me down to one, I would say it is the shore of Lake Superior between the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan and the border with Wisconsin, that whole stretch there, it's really just incredible. There are a series of rivers that all have gorgeous waterfalls that drop into the lake. The terrain is Rocky. The Porcupine Mountains are up there. I mean, it is. It is truly a wilderness. And you know, those are hard to come by east of the Mississippi River. But you know, when you've got wolves and bears and cougars and, you know, otters and all these other critters roaming around, and you're out there and you're in their home, that's an amazing spot. And so, you know, and just the beauty of Lake Superior. And I'm not going to guarantee you can get a great sandwich there, but it's a hell of a place to be outside.

Stuart Carlton 24:09
Dave Spratt, CEO of the institutes for journalism and natural resources, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dave Spratt 24:17
Thanks for having me, Stuart, I appreciate you if you're

Stuart Carlton 24:20
a journalist who wants to apply for a workshop, or maybe a scientist or researcher wants to help out, we'll put a link in our show notes. Otherwise, you can just go directly to the website at i j n r.org That's i j n r.org foreign,

Lester Graham's a familiar voice on the Michigan airwaves and podcast for all of you who've moved away from radio, maybe those of you listening to this show, Lester is a lifelong journalist. He reports for the environment report at Michigan public, which you may have known as Michigan Radio. His credentials are many. The List of awards he's won is numerous. I know this is true because on his little video thing, we, you know, do video cat or conferences record this, his back wall looks like, like a production studio, like the guy Christopher Walken character in the more cowbells. You know, every day he gets up and puts on his pants one leg at a time. But when he does it, he wins a wall full of awards.

Lester Graham 25:47
The goal is to get enough of them that I don't have to have drywall. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 25:50
no, that's a solid point. You're getting there. I will, you know this, this could be the the next one coming up momentarily. Anyway, numerous awards. He covers the Great Lakes and water quality, the impacts of climate change, all kind of change, all kind of Great Lakes stuff. He's also an avid wildlife photographer. You can check out his visual work at Lester Graham on Instagram. We'll put a little link in these show notes. Fantastic. Teach me about the Great lakes.com/ 101. Is this? This episode? Yeah, yeah, Lester, welcome to teach me about the Great Lakes. Thanks. Good to you. Yeah, we're super happy to have you. So this is probably a silly question for our audience of Great Lakes lover. In fact, we have the lake lover right here, and environmental stewards, graduate students, people who we pay to listen that sort of thing. But for you, for those who are less familiar, what is it about covering the environment and the freshwater system that motivates you in your reporting. You know,

Lester Graham 26:41
I've always been prone to cover environmental stories, even before I was an environment reporter. But when I got the opportunity to work for something called the Great Lakes radio consortium and cover the entire Great Lakes region for about 140 public radio stations, I thought, this is really cool. You know, I can be in glamorous places like Duluth one week and buffalo the next week, and it was a lot of fun. And after a while, they bumped me up to editor and manager, along with my colleagues, Rebecca and mark. And you know, I don't get to go around as much as I used to, but I still every chance I get I'm on the road. I really, really love covering it. Most of my time is spent in Michigan and Ohio these days. So while

Megan Gunn 27:29
you're while you're in Michigan and Ohio, what are you working on? Do you get to pick the stories that you are reporting on or the issues that you're reporting on, and are there any cool places in Michigan and Ohio that we should know about, that you get to go to,

Stuart Carlton 27:42
well, I, you know, I get to,

Lester Graham 27:44
I'm really fortunate in that I don't have somebody assigning these stories. I decide what I cover, which is not the norm, but because it takes a certain amount of expertise to cover this beat, they kind of trust me and my editor I mentioned just a second ago was Rebecca. She was my intern to begin with. Now she's my editor. It's a 26 year relationship, so she has a little trust for me there. So and I, you know, it's, it really is different from day to day about what story I might want to pick up on. I, you know, as we know, climate change is the story of the century, and there's always a climate change story that we need to pay attention to, but there are smaller things that that add up to very be very problematic for us and for wildlife. And I want to jump in on those as well. There's more to cover than I can get to and I wish there were more environment reporters in this state. In Michigan, there used to be in excess of 20, and I think there's seven or eight of us left in the state now. Environment is there be?

Stuart Carlton 28:53
Why is that? Is that just because our, I don't know anything about radio and TV economics?

Lester Graham 28:57
Yeah, well, we're talking about, we're talking about primarily newspaper because, you know, they've been shrinking. They've been bought out by conglomerates, and same way with radio. So there are a lot fewer environment reporters at the newspapers and and, frankly, a lot fewer on the radio stations as well. So I'm glad to be still doing this. Hope to do it until I retire and and then I'll still keep my toe in the water,

Stuart Carlton 29:26
so to speak. So then think about wildlife. What are you working on right now? So Ohio wildlife? My wife is from Ohio, and most of the wildlife I know, she's from Troy, Ohio, which is not near the lake. Most of wildlife I know are in very polluted lakes. There's more fish stuff, which is my background. But so what wildlife stories are you working on right now? Well,

Lester Graham 29:45
I'm actually working on something. I was in Ohio yesterday. I was in Lorraine, Ohio, looking at a wetlands monitoring program. And you know, they want to talk about filtering out nutrients that are going into Lake Erie, because it's causing a lot of problems for Si. Ianobacteria, and that causes toxic chemicals or organisms to be released. But the one thing I keep reminding everybody, it's great that we're filtering out all these agricultural nutrients before they get to Lake Erie, but it's really great that there's this huge investment in wetlands, which is great for all kinds of wildlife. And that's been a thing that I think a lot of people miss. Yes, yes, we gain and that we don't have to worry about our drinking water in Toledo like we used to. But we also gain in that we see a lot more wildlife because of it. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 30:39
that's what people miss, I think, with all that, with all that, with that, with climate change stuff, too, right? It's like a rising tide or an improving environment helps everybody. And of course, they're trade offs, right? Nothing is free, and we understand that, but, but it took me a long time. I think a good example of that, actually, is the Endangered Species Act, which I didn't get for a while. I'll be honest, why it was such a big deal. Because an easy thing to say is that, you know any one species well. Species go extinct all the time, right? But what the Endangered Species Act enables is, when you go to preserve a species, the way to do it is to preserve the habitat in which it lives. That's the best way, the most sustainable way, the longest way, long term way to do it as well, to say, stocking a bunch of them or whatever, animal husbandry, flying them back and trying to bring them in zoos or something, yeah. And so it enables all of this other it enables all of this other conservation. And so the extent to which the Endangered Species Act is effective and valuable, it's as much because of that as it is because of the snail darter or whatever, right? You

Lester Graham 31:42
know, I did a story last year that was really interesting. I was doing a thing about ephemeral wetlands, because with the with the new Supreme Court ruling of two years ago, yes, now a lot of wetlands are endangered that weren't before, and ephemeral wetlands have always been at risk because states have varying kinds of protections for them. So an ephemeral wetland, for those of you who aren't aware of it, is something is wet in the spring, and things like amphibians and fairy shrimp and some other critters like that creepy crawler ones. They live there. And in the summer it dries up. Usually, the reason that the amphibians can really grow in that area is because there are no fish, and the fish won't eat the eggs. So once the fish, you know, if the fish don't come to this ephemeral wetland, you'll see all these other critters grow and prosper. We were doing that basically because we thought it's really cool to talk about amphibians and their lifestyle. Because they're they have a thing called site fidelity. They always go back to the same ephemeral wetland every year. And I ran into a listener who said, Hey, your story about ephemeral wetlands, I want to tell you something. We own 11 acres, and we had this wet spot that we just saw as a big negative for our property, and we were trying to, can we fill it in? Well, it's just, it's just not a good thing. I heard that story, and I went down there to look, and sure enough, I found some of these little critters you were talking about. So now that piece of land, that little bit of our 11 acres that used to be the most negative part of our property, is now the gem of our property, because we actually understand what it is. And you know, that's the kind of thing I'd really love to hear that people who don't necessarily follow environmental issues or follow the science of it. They hear something like that, and they realize it just, it's, it's an epiphanous moment for them. It's something different. You know, it really has benefit to them, even if they don't, you know, care one way or the other about that Salamander. It's about preserving life, and they thought it was bad thing.

Megan Gunn 33:57
Yeah, that makes me so happy just hearing stories like that. Do you have any favorite projects that you've worked on, or any other stories that you have encountered over your years as a reporter that just really made an impact like that did?

Lester Graham 34:12
I'll tell you about one. It's because it's kind of funny. I was telling my news director I really want to go do this this year and go out and visit the piping plovers, who are an endangered bird. Great Lakes piping plovers are endangered. Their recovery has been slow and staggered and not very good. And he's like, who cares about one little shore bird? And I said, Well, look, I got a vacation coming up. I'm gonna go do this story anyway, and we'll see. And it's one of those moments when the story went on. People are crazy about these little fluffy birds. You know, the little piping plover chicks are like a ball of fluff on two toothpicks. It's, you know, they're just crazy little animals, and people adore them, and they want them to live in Chicago for. Example, they used to follow a pair who came back year after year after year, mating in the same place, same couple of birds, piping plovers that do that. And that's that's not atypical, that happens. And so once that story aired, it brought a lot of hope, because it was a good year for that. For the piping clover, more had mating pairs than they'd seen in quite a while. And so it made everybody very, very happy. And my news director heard from those people, you know, saying, why don't you do stories like this more often? And we try to, we really want to do some of these hopeful stories, because it's such so much of the time covering the environment is about bad things are happening and it could get worse.

Stuart Carlton 35:44
And if you listeners, if you're interested in hearing more, we actually had two episodes. We had a two episode arc. It was amazing on Monte and Rose. That's teaching me about the Great Lakes episodes 39 and 40 from several years ago. You go check those out at the website or in your pod thingy right now. And for those who are really hip. You can go to the secret teach me about the Great Lakes merch store and get the Montrose is for plovers Limited Edition Montrose is for plovers t shirt. But I can't tell you how to get there, okay, because I'm not sure that it's legal. Search the internet on your own. No, no profit is made off of these T shirts. But I don't, I don't feel like figuring out the paperwork anyway. My point especially, because we haven't sold any, my point is this, that is, it's such a great story. And the way that I think that, that's why, part of why reporters are so important, is the way you're able to, we get a story sense right, and, and, and the ones who are skilled, like the 78 different award winning Lester Graham, are able to have a good sense for what that is, and they can take something that's important and make it something that's interesting beyond just nerds like us, specifically you. So that's good. And so other, another thing you write, though, is maybe little less well and awesome. It's amazing, but it's not cool. Is the climate change right? And you do a lot of work on climate change right now, you have a recent piece at Michigan public.org which we'll link to in the show notes about business and how business as usual in greenhouse gasses and climate change might affect bird species negatively, right? It's changing. It might make them either have to migrate away or extirpate or even go extinct, right?

Lester Graham 37:20
It was a new study that just came out. One Jeff Braun from the University of Illinois and guy named Luther out of the George Mason Youth Center University. They started compiling all this data about what climate change might do in the Neotropics, which is basically from Central Mexico to the southern tip of southern America, and what kind of impact it would have on birds. Because we know more about because of Audubon and because of, you know, some of the other bird groups, we have a better idea about the numbers and things habitat of birds in that region than any other kind of animals. So they use those as the proxy for all wildlife. And what they found is that if we continue to go along like we are business as usual, we will see a huge decline, further decline, in bird life, and if we do some fairly common sense policy changes to deal with, to mitigate climate change as best we can at this point, it would mean that it'd be a far less impact to birds in the Neotropics. And I should remind you, a lot of those birds in the Neotropics are our birds in the summer. You know, they come up here, so there. It's not something that's all that distant from us. Those Those are people. Those are birds that visit your bird feeder when in the summertime, or the migration on the way up to farther places, farther north. So it is. It is another aspect of climate change. You know, one of the things I find just fascinating is how many different ways climate change will have an effect, and we don't fully understand all of it yet, but we see it happening. Now, ask a Master Gardener, has there? Is there climate change happening? And they'll tell you all about it. It's pretty amazing, because a lot of a lot of regular folks see it in their lives now,

Stuart Carlton 39:23
yep, no, that's totally true. Sorry. We were passing notes, looking at each other like with that, though, something I worry about is fatigue, right? Yeah?

Lester Graham 39:30
News fatigue, yeah. I mean, that happens in politics too. I know it's hard to believe, but

Stuart Carlton 39:37
we're recording this on October 30. Listeners one week, or just under a week, and out from the upcoming presidential election by now, the election, by time you hear this,

Megan Gunn 39:49
the election will be over and it's 81 degrees at the end of October. It's 81 degrees at the end of

Stuart Carlton 39:53
October. But my question is this, it's nice to get a good healthy glow though, which I appreciate. This lady, I didn't anticipate doing it. Um. Do you? How do you prevent reporter fatigue, like, how do you, how do you keep at this you've won multiple awards. You could be resting on your you could take that stack of plaques and just rest on it as if they were,

Lester Graham 40:11
well, it's not, it's not about the awards, is it? Though? It's about, it's about, you know, keeping people informed. Look, I'm a boomer, and I'm a baby boomer, okay? And I look at the younger generation, two younger generations who have not have grown up knowing nothing but the world's going to burn because of climate change. It causes a level of anxiety for those two generations, at least two generations, that that I can't actually fully understand, but when you're told the world is in desperate climate trouble all of your life, you're wondering, should I have kids? That probably isn't a good idea. If a lot of people are thinking, Should I you know, what should I do? How am I this little person going to do something to stop something so massive that seems like nobody is doing anything. The older generations are ignoring it. They're not doing the things that we need to do to make sure that we don't have a devastating life for me and for my friends and possibly for their children. And when you think of it that way, I don't have any choice except to do everything I can to make those politicians understand how how concerned everyone is about their future while they're, you know, still kicking it out with the fossil fuel companies and stuff like that.

Megan Gunn 41:36
Yeah, let's see you're describing me exactly in my sophomore year ecology class, which is, yeah, it was, it was listening, I won't even mention the professor's name, but he was showing a graph about climate change and how hot it was going to be very soon. And I was like, What is the point in all of this? What are we doing? And I like working in the environmental space. And I was like, Okay, no, we are individuals. We can make an impact. But then it was like, Oh my gosh. And then also in elementary school, that's all they taught us, was kids, because no doom and gloom, and there's nothing that we can do to really, there

Stuart Carlton 42:12
is something,

Lester Graham 42:13
there is something that people can do. That's the lie, The Big Lie, you know, we we know, but it has to be all of us working together on this. So I have hope for the generations following me. Me

Megan Gunn 42:25
too, me too. And that is a very amazing segue into the question that I have for you is, what can researchers and others who work on these issues do to make the environment better and your work better?

Lester Graham 42:38
So I was sitting on a panel with a whole bunch of scientists trying to work out, you know, what can we do to make you more comfortable talking with the media? And about half of them, I'll guess, were of the opinion of, we don't want to talk to you guys, because we've been burned by reporters in the past and and I understand that, because if you take a brand new kid out of college who's been thrown at a small market TV station, and the editor says, go cover this and bring back a sensational story, and they come back and they try to make it sensational for their editor, and it does a great disservice to the scientist. They don't trust reporters, you know, but there are some of us who have spent a long time trying to learn what they do and how the scientific process works to make sure that we can tell their story and tell it clearly and tell it without exaggerating, tell it without sensationalism, but the importance of it will speak for itself, and that's tough to convince a lot of scientists when they've been the researchers who have been burned by people in my profession in the past. It's tough, but I want to tell them, You got to find out who's trustworthy and who's not, and you can only do that by looking at their work. Yeah,

Megan Gunn 44:01
absolutely. Yeah. That's hard. That's

Stuart Carlton 44:03
one thing we like about this show, not to shoot our own horn, not with that to toot our own horn. Is we like to let people go longer for just that reason, because I think it establishes, you know, sometimes it gets a little shaggy or whatever, but that's okay. I'm comfortable with that because A, things are complicated. Let's not pretend they aren't complicated sometimes. And B, you know, it, people don't get that chance to talk about it in a less mediated way.

Lester Graham 44:24
And really, a journalist job is to take that really complicated stuff and not dumb it down, but make it understandable for the general public. That is our job. Yeah, that I

Stuart Carlton 44:33
think that's harder in like, the modern newspaper environment. I was thinking about this in a different context. I was reading some coverage of the New Orleans Saints football team and the writers at the newspaper website I were reading like, it's, you know, it's a bunch of one sentence paragraphs, right? And then I read somebody else who used to a different sports writer, who writes in full paragraphs with multiple sentences, but he does it on his own sub stack that you. People, and he may people subscribe to that and pay eight or $10 a month for and so I think the economics also make that hard, and it's hard to it's just really challenging. The media environment, super duper hard right now.

Lester Graham 45:11
You know that's, that's what you know nonprofits like, there's so many nonprofit news organizations coming around. I work with a couple of them, plus there's the old standards, like public TV and Public Radio, who've been nonprofit for a long time, but you know, it used to be we really didn't have the audience that we do now. But when most of the other media are shrinking, people are going someplace else to find out where the news is, and it's turned out to be the nonprofit folks who are still plugging away at it with the same staff levels or greater, because they're getting a larger audience. And they're saying, You know what, it's worth $10 a month to me to support that public TV station or public radio station so or subscribe to like in my state, an organization called Bridge, Michigan, who, uh, they're doing dynamic work, and they're a non profit. Yeah, yeah. It's

Stuart Carlton 46:06
interesting how the economics of that have changed so that smaller organizations can do it.

Lester Graham 46:10
Can I tell you one little story that has nothing to do with science at all. Oh, yeah. So I was working in a little town called Sterling, Illinois. Grew up in down around the big rivers, Mississippi River, the Illinois River, the Missouri River, and I'm up in Northern Illinois now, and I'm going to the tribune building to talk to some folks there. And it's my first trip into Chicago, and I'm driving down Jackson Avenue, and I go over that little kind of bridge that spans the railroad tracks there, and suddenly there's Lake Michigan, the first time I'd ever seen it. And I was astonished. That is not a lake, you know, that is a sea and and that was so shocking to me. And I think that, you know, one of the things that might have had a lot of influence on me is that moment of seeing that, being in awe of it, and wishing, wow, I wish I could be around that.

Stuart Carlton 47:10
Yes, yes. That brings us actually thinking about that. And that's a common story. That's a common story scientists, we talked as well, right? A lot of people's origin story. We used to ask people for their origin story, sometimes using that exact phrase, and that comes out all the time, that early experience. And I think that media can help people have that experience indirectly, but I think that's still super important. But Lester, it's really interesting to hear you talk about this, and your perspective is super valuable and fascinating. We could probably talk about that all day, hours, hours. But the thing is, that's not actually why we invited you on teaching me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invited you to teach me about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. And the first one is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Lester Graham 47:56
This is a this is a hard, scientific question. No, it's really easy for me to answer. I've been trying to stave off diabetes, too, for about 30 years now, been successful so far. So I'll take the great sandwich. You can have the donut. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 48:12
There it is. All right, so Michigan, are you in Detroit? Where are you in Michigan? I'm

Lester Graham 48:15
actually all around but I have a home studio in a little town called Tecumseh. It's not Tecumseh here. It's Tecumseh.

Stuart Carlton 48:24
Tecumseh. Okay, it's not Cairo, Illinois hero, all right, so I'm gonna go to Tecumseh one day. It's actually highly unlikely, but for the sake of the bid, let's assume that I go to Tecumseh, Michigan, and I need to, you know, I'm gonna get a sandwich for for lunch. Where should I go in Tecumseh?

Lester Graham 48:41
Tecumseh Brewing Company, they're great they have great food, great sandwiches. Tecumseh Brewing Company is a micro brew on the main drag Chicago Avenue, and they make great sandwiches there.

Stuart Carlton 48:53
Fantastic. We'll put a link to that also in our show notes.

Megan Gunn 48:56
We also would like to know what special place in the Great Lakes. Do you have and what makes it special? Well,

Lester Graham 49:04
I visited Isle Royale once, and it's my It's on my bucket list to go back there and spend more time there. But where I go pretty regularly, like once a year or once every other year at least, is a little place called Craig Lake State Park in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's the most remote state park there is. I just got back from there a week ago. I spent 10 days there in tent camping on a spot there, and I didn't see anyone else there, except for maybe a couple of anglers who were going to the lake because the roads are so rough, it's so hard to get there, and that's right smack dab in the middle of moose country in the up and so I go up there to shoot wildlife. I've yet to get a good picture of a moose, but I did get a fine picture of a pine Martin this time. I was very thrilled about that.

Stuart Carlton 49:53
Be honest when you said I go up there to shoot wildlife, something else under my head.

Lester Graham 49:59
And. Photograph. Well, there are people who go up there to shoot wildlife in that in that definition as well,

Stuart Carlton 50:04
yep, yep. I mean, I do it with a camera, multiple ways to shoot, I guess. Anyway, lesser Graham, a reporter at large, working with Michigan public, doing fantastic work, Instagrammer and generally, kind person. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about

Lester Graham 50:22
it was fun. Thanks for having

Unknown Speaker 50:23
me. Yeah, all right, great. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai