June 16, 2021 • 60 mins
In this podcast, we're going to get a PHD in acorns, or as 20% of the country says, "akerns." We're going to do a biology deep dive with the nation's leading expert in oaks and acorns, Dr. Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee, but the main thing we're trying to understand is how we use language to define cultural identity--we all do it everyday. We talk with anthropologist Dr. Daniel Rupp about language, dialects, and how important they are in forming social groups. This is a winding road between biology and social science where we'll debunk the American myth of rugged individualism and learn how to make your oak trees produce more acorns. It's going to be a wild ride!
YouTube clips heard in this podcast:
Ross Sauce. (2010, April 28). Pronouncing Appalachia [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGCqWrsAZ_o
Rob M. (2012, November 3). A Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqY6ftqGq0
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M what is that an acorn and acorn? What do
you what do you think when you hear someone say acorn? Like? Where? What?
I Probably I don't know if I know what that was.
On this episode of the bar Grease Podcast, we're going
(00:21):
to get a PhD in acrons, or some of you
might say a corns. We'll deep dive into acron biology
with renowned wildlife biologist Dr Craig Harper, learning some fascinating
stuff that every woodsman should know, and we'll explore how
we use language every day to define cultural identity with
(00:44):
Dr Daniel Rupe, will debunk the American myth of rugged
individualism as we discuss the value and the preservation of
regional culture. Put on your seatbelts, boys, this is a
wine the road of biology and social science. As we
(01:04):
search for the significance of acorns. One of the things
I'm most pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the
acorn fruit. Music to my ears, rr Harper. My name
(01:28):
is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast
where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Before
(01:52):
you get too indoctrinated, I want you to take a
second and note the way that you pronounced the word
spelled a c O r in. Say it out loud
and remember it. It means something. I've always been interested
(02:13):
in acrens. I've looked for them relentlessly since I was
a boy. It wasn't until I was an adult that
I realized there was national tension about the way the
word was pronounced. I've been in the arena, so to speak,
on this debate for some time. I imagine it's kind
of like being born into a war. You didn't know
you were fighting, and maybe you were even the one
(02:33):
instigating it, but you didn't know why acorns are important.
I've always felt this. But we're gonna discuss the puzzle
piece they play in acquiring wild meat, specifically for white
tailed deer, but I think we'll find other reasons why
they're important. In I cooked bear cracklins for Andrew Zimmer
(02:56):
on his show Bizarre Foods on the Travel chat All.
The episode was titled the Ozarks. Somehow the pronunciation of
acorns came up. Heart bears are acorn fed, so when
you see a bear fat. Can you see an acorn?
Same stuff that is sweet and clean? Oh my gosh,
(03:17):
that's those acorns or acorns as you would say. I
was trying to fit in and be one of the guys.
As I listened to this audio, I have to ask myself,
why why do I care how someone pronounces a word?
Almost a decade later, I'd find myself in the heat
of incoming fire from none other than my own dear pal,
(03:41):
Stephen Ranella of meat Eater. In this clip put on
Instagram by Steve, he's got his back to the camera
with his children by his side, and they're watching a
video that I made about oaks and acorns. He's pounding
the table and emphatically telling his kids how to pronounce
the word acorn correctly. I could only watch and gasp,
(04:08):
as I'm certain many of you did as well. Favorite
but which means highly valued life? What a hill billy?
(04:38):
Come on, bro, I'm trying to understand what all this means.
I did a little experiment at a get together the
other day. I pulled aside three couples from different states,
handed them an acorn, and asked them how they pronounced
the word. I was pretty surprised at a few of
their answers. Okay, I'm gonna take something out of my pocket.
(05:02):
I'm gonna show it to you and you just tell
me what you would call it. Okay, So what is that?
An acorn? An acren? Okay? What is this? An acorn?
And acorn? Yeah? Where are you from? South Dakota? South Dakota?
Is that normal in South Dakota to say acorn? Have
you been indoctrinated by Southerners? I have? Now, where are
(05:25):
you from South Dakota? So you were born raised in
South Dakota? Like, without a doubt, acorn? What do you
What do you think when you hear someone say acorn?
Like where? I probably I don't know if i'd know
what that was. Yeah, it's not gonna hurt you. Acorn
definitely an acorn, acorn, not an acren. I'm not a
(05:48):
clay because I've heard you correct people and I deliberately
try to say acorn. Now, do you really what would
you have said before? Though? Yeah? I think I would
have said acorn acorn? Really, I think it would have
being like a blend of one of the other. So
tell us where you're from. Casey, Oh, I grew up
in Louisiana, Deep South, So you would say a corn
though from New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, sir, because it is
(06:11):
a seat. Oh are incorrect? Acre, because that's what we
called that. Yeah, where are you from? Southwest? It's an
acorn and acorn? Would say acorn? Really, you'd say acorn?
Where are you from? Where? Where we're trying? That would
be New York? Where did you grow up? Florida? But St. Petersburg,
(06:32):
which was a lot of Ohio and Michigan. What do
you think when you hear somebody say acorn? I think
they're from the south. Absolutely. Do you think this is
like a hillbilly? No, I just think they're from the
south South, as they said in North Carolina, they'd say acre.
(06:55):
I'm still trying to understand what all this means. Sharon
McCrumb is a New York Times bestselling author from Southern Appalachia.
She has a knack for celebrating the history and folklore
of the Southern Highlands in her writing. Like me, she's
particular about the pronunciation of words, specifically the word Appalachian,
(07:19):
and she considers it a non negotiable. In this clip,
she gives the reason why semantics are important and how
they tell a bigger story. But first take note of
the way that you pronounced the word spelled A P
P A L A c H I A N. The
(07:43):
safest way to say it is Appalachia. And I have
to explain this to people because when I go off
on book tours, I find myself being appointed as cultural ambassador,
and I will get somewhere west of the Mississippi and
people will say Appalachia. I will correct them and they
will say, well, that's how we say around here. So
I finally had to come up with a story to
explain to them why it's not um optional. If you're
(08:09):
in If you're in Ireland, in the north of Ireland,
and you start out in Donegal, that city on the
west coast, and you're headed for Belfast, it will take
you most of a day to get all the way
across Ireland, and you'll be driving on the coast road
where if it's a clear day, you look off to
your left you'll see Scotland in the distance. Well about
halfway between Donegal and Belfast, there's a walled city which
(08:33):
is hundreds of years old, was built by the Irish
and they named it the Irish word for oak tree,
which is dairy. But a few hundred years ago the
British conquered Ireland and they changed the name of that
town to London Dairy. So it is one town with
two names. And so if you stop at a little
(08:55):
store along the way and ask directions on how to
get to the walled city, you can walk in and
tell the man behind the counter that you want to
go to dairy or you want to go to London Dairy,
and either way he will tell you how to get there.
But you need to know that when you choose what
you're going to call that city, you have told that
man whether or not he can trust you. You have
(09:17):
told him your politics, your religion, which side you're on,
and how open he can be with you. In one word,
because dairy is what the Irish call it, and London
Dairy means you sympathize with the British rule. Appalachia and
Appalachia work exactly the same way. Appalachia is the pronunciation
(09:41):
of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the pronunciation of
people who do not want to be associated with the place,
and Appalachia means that you are on the side that
we trust. In Sharon's exam comple we see the transfer
(10:01):
of information in an accent, and in many cases in
history that personal info is carried with high stakes. Jeff
Shreeve is a podcaster, biblical scholar, author, and longtime friend
of mine. In the Book of Judges, in the Bible,
accents were used to determine the region of the country
(10:23):
that soldiers were from during a regional war, and life
and death were in the balance. For context. The word
we're gonna use shibbyth was the name of a river crossing,
or maybe it's sibyl ef Jeff Shreeve, I am trying
(10:43):
to understand how language is used. It has been used
in the past two define people, groups and culture, specifically
for my word that um dissecting here acorn. But I
know in the Bible there is the story that very
clearly shows that this has been going on for a
(11:03):
long time, using pronunciation of words and accents to identify people.
Tell me that story and Judges, Yeah, so there's I
think it's Judges chapter twelve, and there's this It was
really kind of like a warlord type of guy. His
name is Jeptha and he was kind of an outcast
in the land. He had his own band of Ruffians
that he roamed the land with. The tribes were being
(11:24):
oppressed by this this other nation, which is what we
would call him today, the Ammonites, and so the tribe
they reached out to Jeptha and his band of merry men,
I guess, and asked for his assistance. He went out,
conquered the Ammonites and everything was good. Well that a
neighboring tribe, they were known as the Fremonts, they were
(11:44):
upset with Jepthah. They were upset that this battle had
taken place without them, and the Afremats just wanted to
be a part. Well. They go to Jeptha and they said, hey,
you should have called us, and he said, hey, I did.
You never showed up. We had to go and take
care of business. And so there's this battle that breaks out.
They said, well, you need to leave the land, and
He's like, I'm not leaving the land. I'm staying right here.
(12:05):
I deserve to be here now. And so this battle
breaks out between the Afremots and Jeptha's people. Jeptha and
his people take the river river, They take control of
the river that separates the Afremots land from the Gileadites land,
and so the Afremots can't get back, and he starts
really whipping the Fremots like they want to get back,
they want to get back home, and so they start fleeing.
(12:26):
And they would come to the places where you could
cross the river, and Jephtha's people would go, are you
an efremote, are you a Gileadite one of our people?
Are one of their people? And they would say, oh,
I'm Agiliadote, And assumably they look the same. Yeah, they
all look at the same nation of people. They're all
Hebrew people, so they would dress the same. They just
(12:46):
have different ancestors within, except for they have a little
bit of a dialectical difference in the way that they speak.
And so they would come to the river and they realize, hey,
some of these guys are escaping because they're just lying
and saying that they're they're not freem Mites. And so
they said, here's what we'll do. We're just gonna set
up a test when we ask if they say, yeah,
I'm a gillia Dite, let me cross the river. Say okay,
(13:08):
say shiboleth. Now the area mites. They didn't say that. Evidently,
they didn't say that shut sound right at the word
sib They said sibilet instead of hivlet. And so when
they would say it, it's kind of always imagine like
Daffy Duck trying to say It's like they couldn't quite
get it out right, and so they wouldn't say it
like the frem Mites did, and that's how they would know,
(13:30):
and they'd kill them right there. There was just this
distinct exactly, and that's that's going on throughout history, like
there's always these chivalts, is what it's been called ever
since then in World War Two, So this has been
used throughout history as a metaphor. It's used right now.
It's used in towns, you know, it's used in warfare,
it's used in culture, it's used everywhere. In World War Two,
(13:52):
the Allies when they would capture German spies, frequently the
Germans had been trained how to speak English, and they
would know how to the about the culture and the
customs of the Allies, about the American Allies. They would
know about baseball, they would know I think there's even
a Twilight Zone episode about one of these captures of
the Nazi people are Nazi spies, but they were trained
(14:12):
in British English instead of American English, and so there
were little words that they would say that would give
them away. And so frequently they would catch a Nazi spy.
He would be speaking real clear English. He would talk
about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would he would say all
of the right words, and they would say, Okay, let's
hop in that vehicle over there, and they said, okay,
(14:32):
I'm hopping in the lor well. The lory is what
the British would call a truck. And so there's the
giveaway right there, there's the ship leth and they know
this is a Nazi spy. What does the pronunciation difference mean.
It's not a hard word to say, a c O
r in. I found myself deeply planted on the non
(14:53):
traditional or at least phonetically speaking pronunciation of the word.
I've learned that the southeast astern United States, roughly twenty
of the country geographically pronounces the word the way I do.
The other pronounces it phonetically. There is certainly something bigger
at work here, and it might have broader implications. After
(15:19):
some research, here's what I learned. Basically, the acorn pronunciation
is a throwback to Old English. It's a combination of
Low German, whose word for acorn is ecker spelled e
c k e r, and the Dutch word. It's a
combination of these and the Dutch word for acorn, which
(15:40):
is acker spelled a k e r. By the fifteen hundreds,
that English still had an urn on the end, and
that arn still holds strong in much of the southern
United States. This is the audio from a YouTube video
titled a Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics. It's on a
(16:01):
channel simply called rob M. It's a very interesting clip
about accents in the Southern United States. Most people don't
realize that the American Southern accent is not a sign
of ignorance, but actually the fact that, according to linguists,
we're the only people left in the United States who
(16:23):
generally still sounded like our ancestors, because if you listen
to native born Southern speakers, the average Southern attends to
sound more like this. What we call this moonlight Magnolias draw,
because if you speed up that Southern draw over time,
it rapidly becomes a British accent. Most people don't realize
that people that came here from Europe were largely from
the United Kingdom, so when they got here this was
(16:45):
more along the lines of their speaking tones. But that's
the first and the second generations coming off from boats,
not their children, but that the unfull generations. The kids
didn't quite something like mom and dad anymore, because they're
starting to develop a society elongation of the way they
talk what's today called the in your tide water accent.
It's not a complete Southern drawl because that support area,
but as you go farther into the southern interior and
(17:07):
the year's progress, the accent tends to get thicker, deeper,
richer by Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia peg. Yeah, you gotta full
blow to Southern drawl. But people don't realize that in
most cases in Louisiana, many of the native speakers don't
sound like that. They didn't design like these are guarante
spend a round the Bay youth, because you speed up
that South Louisiana Cleo accent or time, it becomes Enfans French,
(17:32):
with of course certain exceptions in New Orleans, which talent
tend to sound like more like New Yorker's because of
the Irish and the Sicilian Italian influence, so they didn't
sound a bit more like this, and people didn't get
a little confused because they think, what, you're from New York. No,
I'm from New Orleans, White. So you have to realize
that at the end of the day, Southern speakers, like
(17:52):
I said, we're not ignorant, as it's often been assumed,
but we simply sound like the ancestors that came here
so many years ago. This is my mother, Judy. We
call her Juju. She has a master's degree in teaching
and retired last year after being involved in public schools
for over forty years. She has a professional connection with
(18:16):
the words spelled A C O r N. Maybe this
gives some insight into why I'm so worked up about
it all. Juju, where are you up here? I've got
something here, I'm getting mud on your floor. I'm sorry. Okay,
(18:40):
what is that an acre? It's an acren? Where do
you work or where did you work? Your Acorn schools
for thirty two years? Thirty two years? It's a consolidated school.
Have you ever in your life heard anybody call it
acorn school? On anybody associated with the school with a
(19:03):
close knit association. Though no, no, No Acre Acren. We
go to Acron Elementary. We are the Acron Tigers and
it's the best school in Arkansas. People who are connected
(19:25):
to the land can become obsessed with natural cycles. For me,
a time of celebration is when the acorns start to fall. Typically,
I'll commemorate the first white dook I find on the
ground by putting it in my pocket. I just like
to stare at it when nobody's around. Sometimes I keep
them in my drawer here in my office. That might
(19:46):
seem strange for many reasons because I don't eat acorns,
but they're highly symbolic. My dad was like an obsessed
drill sergeant when it came to finding them. Mean he
still is. I spent the formative years of my life
searching for acrons, and I still searched for them relentlessly.
(20:10):
Here's my old dad, Gary Newcomb, the Black panther Man himself.
We're sitting on the front porch in a rainstorm. So
when I was a kid, we didn't hunt deer. We
hunted acrons. We weren't looking for deer, we were looking
for acrons first. And then dear sign, tell me what
(20:31):
acrons mean to Gary Nucomb, Well, no one tell you can, Yeah,
you can tell us a little backstory about you know,
no one in my family deer hunted. I didn't know
anything about deer hunting. And two really intelligent guys, principle
of a school and the guy that just had like
a hundred sixty I Q had a coffee shop and
the deer hunt it. And I'd go to their coffee
shop and they talked about deer hunting, and I got
(20:53):
caught up in it, and they would take me hunting.
They showed me and showed me how to shoot a
recurve boat, but they couldn't kill deer. And I related
it to play in chess. There's gotta be a way
to get on these deer. And one day we were
down in South Arkansas and a guy was at our
camp and he said, deer's favorite food is white oak acorns,
(21:14):
and if you have it was weird. Turkey hunt was
real hard for me to learn. A lot of stuff
is real hard for me to learn. But when I
heard that, I thought, if I'm hunting humans, I'm gonna
hunt at McDonald's. And I'm not gonna hunt at McDonald's
unless it's got a lot of trash on the ground,
a bunch of cars. I mean, there's gonna be some activity,
(21:35):
you know. I don't want to go to McDonald's where
there's not very many people. I'm going this has to
be how to kill him. And keep in mind, I
don't even hardly know what a deer track looks like.
So as soon as he tells me, I come back
to my hunting turf, and I said, I'm not leaving
here until I find white oak acres dropping. And I
had enough insight into it to where he didn't tell
(21:56):
me this, but I thought, there's gotta be deer droppings there.
I'm not gonna hunt unless there's deer droppings. And so
I found two big white oak trees and I killed
more deer, knowing nothing about deer hunting, and all of
my buddies who were raised them with a boat. Yeah,
and I mean it's like at a time when very
few people were doing it consistently. Yeah, And I mean
(22:17):
I missed a couple of pretty good bucks too. But
the first morning I set up, I remember going home
and telling my mother this, and I was a grown man.
I didn't live at home, but I went to her
house for breakfast or something, and I said, mother, you
won't believe what happened. I found this white oakcacren tree
with droppings under I put my ladder up the day
ahead of time, and I sit in it this morning,
(22:40):
and I had eleven deer coming in no more than
groups of two. It was just like a movement. They
were coming from my left to my right and it stopped.
It was just it was like the most exciting thing
you've ever found. Ticket Do you have any kind of
like emotional high when you find a big, old, green,
white of acron on the ground in October? I love it, man,
(23:02):
I mean I love it. It's the first. It's just
tells me the time is right, it's killing time. It
seems honorable to me that if anybody's going to be
particular about the pronunciation of any word, that same fella
(23:25):
ought to have some deep knowledge of it, or he
might as well be indifferent. Here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna get a PhD in acrons. We're gonna nerd
out on acron biology with one of the country's foremost
wildlife habitat experts, Dr Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee.
(23:46):
He's about as tall as an average to a high
school point guard, and he's built like a bobcat. He's
got a warm smile and overflows with hospitality. His ability
to functionalize and communicate about the natural world is unusually adept,
and by the looks of the turkey beards and big
racked white tails that adorn the walls of his house,
(24:08):
he is a veteran hunter. This is a deep dive
into some of the most interesting stuff about acrens that
I've ever learned. If you get lost in this nerd out,
please stick around for the last section of the podcast
with anthropologist Dr Daniel Roupe. It's fascinating, but I'll warn
you this talk about acres with Dr Harper will likely
(24:30):
change your life. To meet Dr Craig Harper, pretend like
I don't know anything and walk me through the life
cycle of an oak tree in the different species. Uh
they flower in the spring. There are two different groups,
(24:51):
of course, of oak species. You have the the red
oak group and the white oak group. There's a couple
of real distinguishing character sticks between those. The one of
the easiest and most recognizes that the lobes of the
leaves of red oaks have bristle tips, and those of
the white oak group do not. They have pointed So
(25:13):
a red oak has a pointed lobe, you know, a
tree in the white oaks family, and not just a
point not just a pointed lobe, but it actually has
a bristle tip. Of more important points of those two
groups is that, of course, of the species within the
red oak group, their acrons require two years to develop,
(25:33):
So they will flower in the spring and what will
become the acorn begins to form and it grows through
the summertime, but then it doesn't mature until the following
summer and then drops the second fall. Red oak species
thus then can have two acorn crops only at any
(25:54):
one time. You know, the tree doesn't produce one year,
oh and then two years later it might produce again.
It can produce each year because it will have uh
flowers and the acorn set and then mature two years.
To an individual. In general terms, the species within the
red oak group, those acrens have higher tanning contents, which
(26:17):
is a phenomic compound that causes in a stringic or
bitter taste they will not germinate until springtime. The acrons
of red oak species are important into the following spring
and even uh sometimes into the summer. So what you're
saying is that red oak acren is gonna fall in
(26:38):
the fall and late let's just say it falls in
late October and lay there all winter long. It's gonna
lay there all winter long, and it's not gonna sprout,
and it's not gonna rot. Most of them will not rot,
and wildlife will eat those acrens at that time through
the fall and winter. But if white oak acorns and
acrons of different species have different tanning content, those that
(27:00):
are less astringent are available, you certainly may see various
wildlife species select those, and thus those that were more
astringent may lay longer. But the point is those acrons
are available for a longer period than the white okay
and and the white oak acrens. They fall in the fall.
Most of the acron fall of the white oak species
(27:23):
Quercus alba is in October, but nonetheless all of those
of the white oak group, they will germinate in the
fall and winter, and immediately very few, if any of
them are available into the following spring, they fall, and
it's not that long until they begin to germinate and
and try to start, you know, sending down a little route.
(27:47):
I want to tell you a story. Last week I
killed a raccoon over my hounds. I cut his stomach
open full of acrons. I mean they're still in red
oaka acrens. Yeah, I mean he they're ill eating very
good red oak acorns in March. And they are extremely digestible. Acrons,
(28:08):
regardless whether they're eating in the fall, winter, or spring,
are highly digestible and with a very high fat content,
which actually increases the digestible energy that is available from
acorns as opposed to many other foods. Another characteristic that
distinguishes the red oak acorns from the white Oaka acrenes,
(28:29):
or another factor is that the red oak acorns typically
have much higher fat content than the white oak acres.
So as hunters, at least me and my dad are
always trying to figure out what the mass crop is
gonna look like before it actually happens. So and I've
been anecdotally studying this for twenty years, you know, just
(28:49):
kind of keeping track of the last frost and when
I saw oak tassel so I'll be driving down the
road and yesterday I noticed oak tassels hanging off trees.
Is there a way to make a even a reasonable
guess about mass crop based upon all the weather variations
of the spring. Essentially we're talking about pollination of flowers
(29:12):
that ultimately turned into acrons. And if there's not successful pollination,
or if that flower dies before it's pollinated, there's no acron.
So there's got to be this successful thing that happens
that's got to be impacted by rain, temperature, wind. It's
very complicated, and to my knowledge, it is not highly predictable.
(29:33):
There's another number of studies that have looked at all
of the different environmental conditions that might influence acron production
and successful flowering and acron setting. But I remember reading
in in one paper and where it was somewhat predictable
based on the number of frost in April, But there's
(29:55):
no hard number. Oh, if we have three or you know,
whatever the case, we need to come up with some
kind of olklore anecdotor with some burglaries. And another influential
factor might have been rainfall the previous summer. So there's
lots of things going on that we we really don't
understand fully because what we see is a pretty dramatic
(30:16):
like you would if if you didn't know anything about
natural systems or oaks, you just think that's an oak tree.
It's gonna produce every year, which we know is not
the case at all. And on a landscape level, there's
these vast differences from year to year. You know, some
years there's very few of a certain species or there's
no acrons at all, and then other years it's a
(30:38):
bumper cross and it'll vary along a certain slope gradient.
You know, up higher there may be acrons, but once
you get down low or vice versa. You know, you
just don't know how the weather variables affected the oak
trees on a given slope, on on a mountain. Yeah.
I remember when I was doing Turkey research in the
mountains in North Carolina. At the the top of the mountains,
(31:01):
they were about fifty feet the oaks up there. Every
year they would be flower in the first week of June,
you know, obviously much much later than down down slow.
So you're gonna have years where there's only gonna be
acrens that made on the top of the mountains, years
where there's only acrons that made lower on the mountains,
(31:21):
and usually it's not quite that distinct. But you know,
as hunters were looking for trends inside of natural systems.
One thing we found in the research we did looking
at UH mass production here in East Tennessee, and others
have found this too, is that among white oaks, you're
looking at about two good mass crops two years out
(31:44):
of five. About two years out of five you expect
good mass crops. And of most of the red oaks species,
you're looking at a good mass crop one year out
of three or or three or four years or so.
It's a it's a little less frequent than with the
the white oak group. I love it when we find
(32:04):
places where still in we don't really have all the answers.
I mean, it's such a complex system. And I'm talking
about like, yeah, I love it when when when somebody
like you says that Dr Harvard, because you get this
sense inside of one with everything that we see and
with the kind of the frequency that's admitted that just
(32:26):
like the world is discovered, but it's really not. I mean,
there's so much that we don't know, we don't understand,
and I mean the natural systems are so complex it
just blows your mind. And just the fact that we
could pick something that seems so insignificant and acorn, and
we could dive just a few steps past the surface
(32:47):
and realize that there's things that we don't even know
about them. You used the word that I believe is
accurate when you're talking about nature and natural systems, and
that's amazing. I find that that is a way overused
word these days, that people just, oh, that's amazing. Well,
I no, it's not that. Most of the time, it's
not even hardly interesting, but it's certainly not amazing amazing,
(33:09):
But when when you start talking about nature and natural
systems and how all of nature fits together, that he
is amazing. Yeah. Dr Harper did a research project where
he and his students collected acorns under the same trees
for ten years and tried various methods to increase acron production.
(33:29):
To study was in depth and enlightened. Acorns is one
of those foods that certainly can influence the nutritional status
of individual animals, as well as influence the populations of
some species on a year to year basis and even
(33:54):
groups of years. You know, it trends over you know,
like the course of three to five years or so.
Something it we work to try and help people understand
is that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
And you know, for example, with regard to deer or
with bears, immediately people think, oh gosh, you know, we
we need we got to protect those, uh, those those oaks.
(34:16):
You know, we don't want to be cutting down our
acron trees. You know, that's that's what the deer, you know,
they got to have. Well, it's interesting when you discover that,
you know, for example, among the white oaks, only thirty
percent of the trees produced seventy five of the acrons.
If you do the math, and this is in my opinion,
(34:37):
this is just math, you literally could cut down, in
a in a solid oak stand half of the oak
trees and increase the acron production by releasing the crowns
of those individual trees that are the good producers. We
(34:57):
looked at ways to potentially increase the acron production. One
was by releasing the crowns of the oak trees by
cutting down or killing the surrounding trees that were uh
inhibiting additional sunlight to come into the crown of that
oak tree. And and another was fertilization because you know
you're reading you know, all the hunting magazines, of course
(35:18):
you knows. And not only do you increase the acron production,
you know it makes them sweeter too, do you know that?
But anyway, we did. We did this for another which
is not that's where you're going. It didn't, It didn't happen.
But allowing additional sunlight to the crown did and in
two ways, and it was really really interesting. Number One,
(35:38):
once the crown is released, we found that on average
that crown would increase in size by about twenty five
in one year. That that's significant right there. But also
after releasing those trees on a per square meter basis,
those trees increase their acron production by sixty seven percent.
(36:00):
While the other thing with regard to deer or bears,
as I mentioned as well as many other species, is
if you're killing those competitors, what you're also allowing to
come into the stand of course as sunlight, and then
you have the increase in the understory. But where I'm
going with with this is that if you manage your
woods in that way, you're not gonna see those differences
(36:24):
in health of individuals or fluctuations and populations, because dear
don't have to have acrons. It's nice when they're there,
but the goal should be to manage your wood, your
property such that they don't have to have acrens in
order to have enough digestible energy during the fall winner
(36:46):
to make it through in good health. And what you're
saying is is that oaks aren't nearly as important for
wildlife as we've once maybe maybe as much as we
gave them cultural value. And I and and I think
it's because we most deer hunters, well even most people
that are hunting any kind of wildlife, whether you're a
squirrel hunter or a bear hunter, you're interacting with that
(37:08):
animal for the most part during one small sector that
animals a year. So I mean, like, I'm trying to
kill a white tail deer in October and November, and
you're looking at what they're eating in mid October as
opposed to what they're eating. First Gary Nucom said, go
find white oak acrens and you'll kill a deer. But
what you're saying, there's a lot of truth. They'll eat them.
(37:32):
I've been under the assumption that acrons were the super
food of the Eastern deciduous forest. I asked Dr Harper
how important they actually are for wildlife. Dr Harper, I
have for a long time said that the white oak
acre and is the chicken nugget of the Eastern deciduous forest. Okay,
(37:52):
my kids, if you if if they walked into a
room and there was like a variety of food on
the table and one of these was chicken nuggets, three
out of four of the kids would go to the
chicken nuggets before just about anything. So white oak acorns
when they're on the ground are this highly selected food
source for lots of games, from turkeys and deer, squirrels
(38:15):
and everything. I've never heard anybody talk about the actual
caloric content and nutrient value of it. Doesn't have to
be white oaka acre necessarily, but just an acron in
general in general, on average, the killer calories there's about
three point five to three point six killer calories per gram,
and and that that's very high. And and the total
(38:38):
digestible nutrients in acorns is very high. That is higher
than corn, that's higher than soybeans, that's higher than herbaceous forage,
that's higher than the woody brows so it is a
it is a nugget. I don't know if I called
it a chicken nugging other chicken there, but yeah, yeah,
(39:01):
exactly right. It's it's a highly prized it's highly palatable
with regard to its taste, especially the white oaks. It's
highly digestible. And and again the very important thing is
the fat content, and that's what really helps increase the
digestible energy in in in the acrons. Okay, three point
six calories per gram. How can you just guess how
(39:25):
many grams would be in a in an average sized
white okaycrene as big as the end of your thumb
if you did the uh the math about eight calories
is that all? I believe it. It's just and that's
a that's of a white oaka acern, So like media
eight calories per acre, that's correct. An interesting thing is
(39:47):
that the pounds produced is not that much. And I
did a little calculation on this. I thought you might
ask some of that. What we found in a good
year is that there would be you know, around eighty
acrons per square meter that that have fallen in a
good year. Well, we wait all of these acrons and
(40:09):
of white oak acorns, About two hundred acrens are required
to reach a pound, and if you only count the
acron meat, then it would be just over three hundred
acrens required to realize a pound. When you look at
the average crown size of white oaks, in a good year,
(40:30):
a white oak tree on average produced about forty seven
pounds of acrons or twenty nine pounds of acron meat.
Would an acron be considered a nut? Well, technically it
is an acron, but we colloquially call it a nut.
Is a nut a biologically descriptive term of a fruit, Yes,
(40:52):
but so acren is technically not a nut. That's correct,
It's not an acorn. One of the things I'm most
pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the acren fruit.
Music to my ears, dr Mar, Music to my ear.
You don't know how many places I go, especially when
I'm up in Wisconsin and Michigan, and you know I
(41:15):
love those folks up here. We poked fun at each other,
of course, but you know every time I'm up here
and we're talking about deer and have that management here acre?
And what an acre? Y'all come on down here and
we'll show you what an acre here, and we'll show
you how to kill a deer too. I want to
get down to brass tacks about the pronunciation of words,
(41:38):
or at least bigger tax than we've already established. Why
do people say things the way they do? We need
an expert. Dr Daniel Rupe has a pH d in
intercultural studies and teaches cultural anthropology to undergrad and graduate students.
Just for a bit of street cred. The man speaks
fluent Mandarin, Chinese and as overseas for twelve years, and
(42:03):
he's a bow hunter. Dr Roupe. I love calling you,
Dr Rupe because me and you are longtime buddies, and
so I've never called you Dr Rupe in my life.
Finally I'm getting the respect that I deserve. But you
have I know for sure that you have some insight
into this question that I do not have. And what
(42:24):
I'm trying to understand is why are we so particular
about the way that we say certain words. There's this
thing that's pretty deep inside of me about certain pronunciation
of words. No one told me to be particular about those,
So what does what does that tell me about myself
(42:47):
well or about our society? Sure? Sure, so I think
it's a really normal part of the human experience. Everyone essentially,
at like a primal level, is insecure. And so we're told,
you know, as certainly as like Western Americans postmodern people,
that you're an individual and you exist apart from everybody else.
But really, in some ways your individual, but none of
(43:10):
us exists apart from a social group. And the stronger
and more solidly defined that social group is deep down,
the more you can take a deep breath. And so
we do all sorts of things, all sorts of behaviors,
material culture, things we wear, think about like if you
want to establish a really clear group boundary when you're
(43:32):
in high school, you want to have the right brand
tennis shoes or paints or whatever it was. And that's
the whole reason why our culture has fats. Every you know,
five or ten years, we recycle another fat. It's because
everybody wants to fit in, not necessarily with like the
popular crowd or whatever crowd it is, but as a
certainly as adults, we want a clearly defined social identity,
(43:58):
and identity doesn't is apart from a group. So acorn acorn.
This kind of topic is one more tool that people
use too so we use we use language in a
really strong way to define what social group we're a
part of. Constantly we invent language and culture continually changes,
and we invent new words and languages all the time.
(44:22):
And one of the main reasons we do so is
we're trying to create, maintain, and establish a secure identity. Yeah, so,
what does it tell you when somebody is really particular
about something, they're highly insecure? Well, I wasn't gonna bring
this up, but I do think you're very insecure. No, No,
I think I think a lot of times. I remember. So,
(44:44):
my wife, you know, is from Michigan, and so twenty
years ago we got married, I went up there to
visit her family. One of the first things her, my
father in law, did was literally take me next door
and introduced me to their neighbors and say, say something, Daniel,
because he just wanted them to hear my acts. The
way you spoke was a novelty too. Yeah. So, and
I think, in of course, it can be very negative,
(45:06):
but it can also just be very fun and very
innocent and really a fun way of doing an establishing
culture and language. But as we are establishing this cultural
identity and establishing the groups that were part of there's
got to be some advantage to that. I mean, like
(45:26):
going back deep into human history. If me and you
were the same and you knew I was the same
as you, and by same, I mean we just had
this background or some connection point, like there's a higher
probability that you would help me survive. I mean, that's
the whole point of social groups, is that? Is that about? Right?
So if you think about like people, and you know thousands, thousands, thousands,
(45:51):
thounds of years of people, they're pastoralists, they're semi nomadic,
they're agrarian, they're farming, and you have a close knit,
extended can ship groups of people who are doing the
same practical activities every day, day in and out, all
year long. But they are using literally the same lingo
to make sure they survive. So we're all talking the
(46:13):
same talk means safety and security provisions because you might
say a corn and I don't understand what you're saying.
And essentially, so this is where kind of the switch
flips when you start talking about fundamental needs and somebody
is different and uses different lingo. They look different, they
(46:36):
act different, they smell different, you know, whatever it is
the switch starts to flip and the question becomes, cannot
trust this person at a deep level. So the the
gentleman who really kind of is a seminal author on
on this topic of of group held identity of Polish
sociologists of the twentieth century, taj f Henry taj So.
(47:00):
He was a Jew in Poland obviously at a time
when he was in a group that was despised. So
he really looked at this and wrote about it. And
almost every author, anthropologist, sociologists who interacts with it is
going to talk about him. And so he certainly sees
it from a negative view, and a lot of times
humans really use it in a very broken, destructive way.
(47:24):
Um So, acorn acre not necessarily that loaded of a topic,
but it's still the same in distrust totally. It's totally
about trust. Do you recognize this inside of your life?
Do you do? You see? Because I deeply identify with
that now. I mean, if somebody says acorn like I
don't acorn, I can't. I can hardly even say it.
(47:45):
I don't inherently distrust, sir. But when I do hear
someone say acorn, it's it's really strange. Like if I
take a step back for myself and try to have
this unbiased look, it's like I feel a connection to
that person. Sure, Like yeah, when you say that it's
an issue of trust, Like I kind of get that.
(48:06):
Do you do you see any Do you recognize that
in your life? I think maybe not. I'm not as
insecure as you are, so I think maybe no. Definitely, definitely,
I think everybody does. Because socially, every day we are
operating on on what is called scripts, and so you
kind of have a script of expected ways for conversations
to go. And when you bump into somebody and they
(48:28):
follow in general your social script expectations, you take a
deep breath when they step out of bounds. But it
causes you to a little bit of a pause. And
no matter how small you you don't realize it, but
cognitively you're constantly checking social scripts. Do people fit my expectations?
Do they not? And almost all the time, difference is
(48:51):
not seen as a neutral thing, or maybe even an
interesting thing to be explored, but it's seen as a
negative thing. The other thing that I'm trying to under
stand is where is this healthy and where is it unhealthy?
Because you know, like in this playful in this playful
word that we're talking about here, acorn and a corn
(49:11):
describe to me in like to concrete blocks, when is
it positive and when is it negative? So we've already
described when it's positive. So we're using creative aspects of culture.
Things we wear, ways that we talk, behaviors that we
have that we do um and and as a group
with these certain people, I do these things together and
(49:32):
we form a healthy social identity so I don't feel
alone in the world. You know, that's that's healthy. That's good,
it's normal, it's natural, and creatures were social creatures. Inherently,
it becomes negative when in order for me to establish
and maintain salient or solid social identity with others, I
need to tear down or oppress the social identity of another.
(49:57):
If I make identity by saying acorn, great, and I
can say that all day long, and kind of the
behaviors and other linguistic patterns that go along with that, fantastic.
But if I need to like dually construct identity by
saying acorn and then saying that people that say a
corn are idiots, and you extrapolate that over behaviors nationalities,
(50:19):
you know, whatever it is places you're from, any number.
I mean, humans do this all the time. We make
identity in a in a healthy way, but also in
a broken way. So what is tribalism and how does
it fit into language? So tribalism would be groups of
people in a sense, they're bounded. There's a clear boundary
(50:42):
around this certain social group. And so every individual exists
in the center of concentric circles, and you keep going out.
It's like me and there's my immediately immediate kind of
nuclear family. There's maybe the people at my workplace, the
people in my hometown, my nation. It just kind of
keeps on out. A tribe or tribalism is somewhere I
(51:04):
decided to draw a hard boundary. One of those concentric
circles becomes my tribe, and we are out for us,
and everyone else is out for themselves or or or
potentially against us. And so tribalism becomes problematic because essential
it is tribalism always negative. No, no, no, no, no,
it's not. It is certainly not always negative, because it's
(51:26):
in today's society it's often used as a negative term.
It certainly has in the contemporary use of the word
tribalism or the idea of tribalism essentially is weaponized identity.
So some other group outside of me is going to
try to force their identity on me, or they're gonna
demean my our tribe's identity, or I'm going to do
the same to them. That would be like the contemporary
(51:48):
idea of the kind of the concept of tribalism would
be like very native to human nature. That's how we exist.
We all need a tribe. We can't exist by ourselves,
which we just can't do it. So COVID nineteen happens,
everybody's in lockdown, and like mental health plummets, suicide rates
quadruple because we're isolated from our tribes. Yeah, so I
(52:10):
guess I'm trying to understand where the boundaries are for
being positive and negative, because, for instance, then like excuse me,
Dr Roupe, thank thank you. You know, I enjoy living
in the Southern United States, like it's my home, it's
all I know. I like it. I feel like that's healthy.
(52:31):
But at the same time, I see examples from anywhere
anywhere where that becomes so much a part of someone's
identity that it becomes almost weaponized and that's not cool.
And I feel like I can be a Southerner, I
could be a Northerner, I could be from wherever, and
(52:52):
like have this love of the culture where you live,
and that be healthy because you and I feel like
it's dems in like respect for your own culture means
to me that you respect someone else's culture, because like
your wife from Michigan, like very different culture from Arkansas.
She loves it up there. Family loves it, they've been
(53:12):
there forever. They understand that they're really strange. They talk
through their noses, you know, they know. I think so
like you, there's a there's a place in a posture,
in a way of living in which I'm certainly comfortable
celebrating my own social identity, my tribe. But I don't
need to denigrate another group in order to make that happen.
(53:35):
If you, if you look at society and human history,
really only in the last century, which is a whisper
of time and the whole scope of humanity, have people
been readily exposed to other groups, other tribes, so to
speak constantly. I mean, we're just kid, we're more inner technology, technology, globalization.
(53:57):
But I mean even you don't even have to go
global aization technology. Think about the interstate system in the US.
I mean things that really just in a fraction of
a second human history have connected people unlike ever before.
Whereas for centuries before that, of years thousands of years
before that, sure you've had I'm thinking English in terms
(54:19):
of the English language, You've got centuries of the English
language and people existing in certain topographical regions and they
would almost never encounter somebody else unless they were tradesmen
or their at war, and that was really the only
other time. And in those times there was expected differences.
(54:39):
Of course, we're going to be different, but otherwise we
are in our own little world, in our own little tribe,
and every day we play with and create our language.
Like you've got it. Let's say you've got a real
good buddy and you hang out with this person a
whole lot, or even like in your marriage, you and
your wife, your your marriage starts to have its kind
of own culture and your own way of talking, and
(55:00):
your family has inside jokes. We do this all the time. Well,
then you do that on a social level for centuries
with the English language, and people are isolated from other groups,
and it becomes even more becomes more defined, and then
within like a few decades, you build interstates, trains, planes,
the Internet, and all of a sudden, we're talking to
(55:22):
people from all over all the time, and we're exposed
to differences on a level that we've never been before.
So we were the world is being mixed up way
more than it's ever been sure, and what happens to
insecure tribes is that makes them really uncomfortable, and so
we tend to shut that down in one of two ways.
(55:42):
We intrench ourselves or again we leave and kind of
deny our own familial, identificational group. How how can we
be balanced inside of this? That is one of the
many human problems. Yeah, I think it takes a whole
to self awareness, and I think it takes a whole
lot of being comfortable with your own insecurities and just
(56:06):
realizing that that mechanism is at work. So I guess
what you're saying is you're just kind of throwing in
the towel with saying acorn. You're just kind of okay
with that. Well, I mean it's not spelled a C.
There's an O in there. To me, this whole acorn,
acorn kind of debate is proof that we're not rugged individualists.
(56:29):
And that really is kind of an American myth that
we love, and there's lots of great things about it.
But we kind of like that we are self made man.
You know, I'm kind of pulled myself up by my bootstraps,
did it myself kind of a thing. But uh, the
fact that we would argue about things like this or
or use language different aspects of culture to find and
(56:51):
make a social identity a home proves that we're not
rugged individualists. Were really affected by we need community, we
need people, we need relationships, and and we need them
to be healthy. And the more unhealthy our social relationships are,
the more upset we're gonna get about things like acorns
(57:13):
and acorns. Even this idea of rugged individualism, which would
have the idea that it's like the solo person that
is a cultural group. I mean, like there's a whole
bunch of rugged individualists. When we say we are individualists
or we are self made men, I mean, you're always
locating yourself in a group. So there's just as many
(57:36):
self made men as there are the group that values
that overtly and purposefully values connection and community. So it's
kind of a It's kind of a semantics deal is
because the rugged mountain man needed the mountain man rendezvous.
He needed he needed more mountain men. And Dr Roupe,
(58:01):
the first white tail buck you ever killed? What was
he doing on that flat in the Ozark Mountains? He
walked up? He's about what was he eating? One of
these right here? Small acorn? The biggest mistake he ever made.
(58:24):
I'm being serious when I say that the exploration of
this topic was a genuine learning experience for me, and
I gained new insight into myself. That's a good thing
about being a hillbilly. I'm okay with not knowing, and
perhaps that's the key to really knowing anything at all.
I continue to be amazed at the things that drive us,
that are unperceived and not understood. I think what I
(58:48):
want to say is that culture is amazing. It's fun,
and it adds context to our lives, and we really
can't exist without the structure of culture around us in
some way. But it shouldn't be the most important definer
of our lives. I love being from the place that
I am. I have an unusually strong sense of place.
(59:11):
But if I say acorns or a corn that doesn't
fully define me. Human life is bigger and more profound
than the elementary definers of this planet. Perhaps there is
another podcast being built as we speak, exploring the culture
behind pronouncing the word as a corn. My goodness of
(59:34):
the country says it that way. Here's my take home.
An appreciation of our own culture allows us to appreciate
and value other cultures. And I think that's significant. But
I also believe there is great value in the preservation
of individual culture. I would imagine, as long as there
is spring and fall, and the oak's flower and acorns
(59:58):
grow and come to ma surety and fall to the ground,
and as long as we can hunt white tailed deer
with bows and arrows and guns, me and mine will
be searching for acorns. We're putting everything we've got into
these Burglaries podcast episodes. If you've enjoyed them, I ask
(01:00:22):
you to leave us a review and share this podcast
with a friend. I really appreciate the sport
M what is that an acorn and acorn? What do
you what do you think when you hear someone say acorn? Like? Where? What?
I Probably I don't know if I know what that was.
On this episode of the bar Grease Podcast, we're going
(00:21):
to get a PhD in acrons, or some of you
might say a corns. We'll deep dive into acron biology
with renowned wildlife biologist Dr Craig Harper, learning some fascinating
stuff that every woodsman should know, and we'll explore how
we use language every day to define cultural identity with
(00:44):
Dr Daniel Rupe, will debunk the American myth of rugged
individualism as we discuss the value and the preservation of
regional culture. Put on your seatbelts, boys, this is a
wine the road of biology and social science. As we
(01:04):
search for the significance of acorns. One of the things
I'm most pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the
acorn fruit. Music to my ears, rr Harper. My name
(01:28):
is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast
where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Before
(01:52):
you get too indoctrinated, I want you to take a
second and note the way that you pronounced the word
spelled a c O r in. Say it out loud
and remember it. It means something. I've always been interested
(02:13):
in acrens. I've looked for them relentlessly since I was
a boy. It wasn't until I was an adult that
I realized there was national tension about the way the
word was pronounced. I've been in the arena, so to speak,
on this debate for some time. I imagine it's kind
of like being born into a war. You didn't know
you were fighting, and maybe you were even the one
(02:33):
instigating it, but you didn't know why acorns are important.
I've always felt this. But we're gonna discuss the puzzle
piece they play in acquiring wild meat, specifically for white
tailed deer, but I think we'll find other reasons why
they're important. In I cooked bear cracklins for Andrew Zimmer
(02:56):
on his show Bizarre Foods on the Travel chat All.
The episode was titled the Ozarks. Somehow the pronunciation of
acorns came up. Heart bears are acorn fed, so when
you see a bear fat. Can you see an acorn?
Same stuff that is sweet and clean? Oh my gosh,
(03:17):
that's those acorns or acorns as you would say. I
was trying to fit in and be one of the guys.
As I listened to this audio, I have to ask myself,
why why do I care how someone pronounces a word?
Almost a decade later, I'd find myself in the heat
of incoming fire from none other than my own dear pal,
(03:41):
Stephen Ranella of meat Eater. In this clip put on
Instagram by Steve, he's got his back to the camera
with his children by his side, and they're watching a
video that I made about oaks and acorns. He's pounding
the table and emphatically telling his kids how to pronounce
the word acorn correctly. I could only watch and gasp,
(04:08):
as I'm certain many of you did as well. Favorite
but which means highly valued life? What a hill billy?
(04:38):
Come on, bro, I'm trying to understand what all this means.
I did a little experiment at a get together the
other day. I pulled aside three couples from different states,
handed them an acorn, and asked them how they pronounced
the word. I was pretty surprised at a few of
their answers. Okay, I'm gonna take something out of my pocket.
(05:02):
I'm gonna show it to you and you just tell
me what you would call it. Okay, So what is that?
An acorn? An acren? Okay? What is this? An acorn?
And acorn? Yeah? Where are you from? South Dakota? South Dakota?
Is that normal in South Dakota to say acorn? Have
you been indoctrinated by Southerners? I have? Now, where are
(05:25):
you from South Dakota? So you were born raised in
South Dakota? Like, without a doubt, acorn? What do you
What do you think when you hear someone say acorn?
Like where? I probably I don't know if i'd know
what that was. Yeah, it's not gonna hurt you. Acorn
definitely an acorn, acorn, not an acren. I'm not a
(05:48):
clay because I've heard you correct people and I deliberately
try to say acorn. Now, do you really what would
you have said before? Though? Yeah? I think I would
have said acorn acorn? Really, I think it would have
being like a blend of one of the other. So
tell us where you're from. Casey, Oh, I grew up
in Louisiana, Deep South, So you would say a corn
though from New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, sir, because it is
(06:11):
a seat. Oh are incorrect? Acre, because that's what we
called that. Yeah, where are you from? Southwest? It's an
acorn and acorn? Would say acorn? Really, you'd say acorn?
Where are you from? Where? Where we're trying? That would
be New York? Where did you grow up? Florida? But St. Petersburg,
(06:32):
which was a lot of Ohio and Michigan. What do
you think when you hear somebody say acorn? I think
they're from the south. Absolutely. Do you think this is
like a hillbilly? No, I just think they're from the
south South, as they said in North Carolina, they'd say acre.
(06:55):
I'm still trying to understand what all this means. Sharon
McCrumb is a New York Times bestselling author from Southern Appalachia.
She has a knack for celebrating the history and folklore
of the Southern Highlands in her writing. Like me, she's
particular about the pronunciation of words, specifically the word Appalachian,
(07:19):
and she considers it a non negotiable. In this clip,
she gives the reason why semantics are important and how
they tell a bigger story. But first take note of
the way that you pronounced the word spelled A P
P A L A c H I A N. The
(07:43):
safest way to say it is Appalachia. And I have
to explain this to people because when I go off
on book tours, I find myself being appointed as cultural ambassador,
and I will get somewhere west of the Mississippi and
people will say Appalachia. I will correct them and they
will say, well, that's how we say around here. So
I finally had to come up with a story to
explain to them why it's not um optional. If you're
(08:09):
in If you're in Ireland, in the north of Ireland,
and you start out in Donegal, that city on the
west coast, and you're headed for Belfast, it will take
you most of a day to get all the way
across Ireland, and you'll be driving on the coast road
where if it's a clear day, you look off to
your left you'll see Scotland in the distance. Well about
halfway between Donegal and Belfast, there's a walled city which
(08:33):
is hundreds of years old, was built by the Irish
and they named it the Irish word for oak tree,
which is dairy. But a few hundred years ago the
British conquered Ireland and they changed the name of that
town to London Dairy. So it is one town with
two names. And so if you stop at a little
(08:55):
store along the way and ask directions on how to
get to the walled city, you can walk in and
tell the man behind the counter that you want to
go to dairy or you want to go to London Dairy,
and either way he will tell you how to get there.
But you need to know that when you choose what
you're going to call that city, you have told that
man whether or not he can trust you. You have
(09:17):
told him your politics, your religion, which side you're on,
and how open he can be with you. In one word,
because dairy is what the Irish call it, and London
Dairy means you sympathize with the British rule. Appalachia and
Appalachia work exactly the same way. Appalachia is the pronunciation
(09:41):
of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the pronunciation of
people who do not want to be associated with the place,
and Appalachia means that you are on the side that
we trust. In Sharon's exam comple we see the transfer
(10:01):
of information in an accent, and in many cases in
history that personal info is carried with high stakes. Jeff
Shreeve is a podcaster, biblical scholar, author, and longtime friend
of mine. In the Book of Judges, in the Bible,
accents were used to determine the region of the country
(10:23):
that soldiers were from during a regional war, and life
and death were in the balance. For context. The word
we're gonna use shibbyth was the name of a river crossing,
or maybe it's sibyl ef Jeff Shreeve, I am trying
(10:43):
to understand how language is used. It has been used
in the past two define people, groups and culture, specifically
for my word that um dissecting here acorn. But I
know in the Bible there is the story that very
clearly shows that this has been going on for a
(11:03):
long time, using pronunciation of words and accents to identify people.
Tell me that story and Judges, Yeah, so there's I
think it's Judges chapter twelve, and there's this It was
really kind of like a warlord type of guy. His
name is Jeptha and he was kind of an outcast
in the land. He had his own band of Ruffians
that he roamed the land with. The tribes were being
(11:24):
oppressed by this this other nation, which is what we
would call him today, the Ammonites, and so the tribe
they reached out to Jeptha and his band of merry men,
I guess, and asked for his assistance. He went out,
conquered the Ammonites and everything was good. Well that a
neighboring tribe, they were known as the Fremonts, they were
(11:44):
upset with Jepthah. They were upset that this battle had
taken place without them, and the Afremats just wanted to
be a part. Well. They go to Jeptha and they said, hey,
you should have called us, and he said, hey, I did.
You never showed up. We had to go and take
care of business. And so there's this battle that breaks out.
They said, well, you need to leave the land, and
He's like, I'm not leaving the land. I'm staying right here.
(12:05):
I deserve to be here now. And so this battle
breaks out between the Afremots and Jeptha's people. Jeptha and
his people take the river river, They take control of
the river that separates the Afremots land from the Gileadites land,
and so the Afremots can't get back, and he starts
really whipping the Fremots like they want to get back,
they want to get back home, and so they start fleeing.
(12:26):
And they would come to the places where you could
cross the river, and Jephtha's people would go, are you
an efremote, are you a Gileadite one of our people?
Are one of their people? And they would say, oh,
I'm Agiliadote, And assumably they look the same. Yeah, they
all look at the same nation of people. They're all
Hebrew people, so they would dress the same. They just
(12:46):
have different ancestors within, except for they have a little
bit of a dialectical difference in the way that they speak.
And so they would come to the river and they realize, hey,
some of these guys are escaping because they're just lying
and saying that they're they're not freem Mites. And so
they said, here's what we'll do. We're just gonna set
up a test when we ask if they say, yeah,
I'm a gillia Dite, let me cross the river. Say okay,
(13:08):
say shiboleth. Now the area mites. They didn't say that. Evidently,
they didn't say that shut sound right at the word
sib They said sibilet instead of hivlet. And so when
they would say it, it's kind of always imagine like
Daffy Duck trying to say It's like they couldn't quite
get it out right, and so they wouldn't say it
like the frem Mites did, and that's how they would know,
(13:30):
and they'd kill them right there. There was just this
distinct exactly, and that's that's going on throughout history, like
there's always these chivalts, is what it's been called ever
since then in World War Two, So this has been
used throughout history as a metaphor. It's used right now.
It's used in towns, you know, it's used in warfare,
it's used in culture, it's used everywhere. In World War Two,
(13:52):
the Allies when they would capture German spies, frequently the
Germans had been trained how to speak English, and they
would know how to the about the culture and the
customs of the Allies, about the American Allies. They would
know about baseball, they would know I think there's even
a Twilight Zone episode about one of these captures of
the Nazi people are Nazi spies, but they were trained
(14:12):
in British English instead of American English, and so there
were little words that they would say that would give
them away. And so frequently they would catch a Nazi spy.
He would be speaking real clear English. He would talk
about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would he would say all
of the right words, and they would say, Okay, let's
hop in that vehicle over there, and they said, okay,
(14:32):
I'm hopping in the lor well. The lory is what
the British would call a truck. And so there's the
giveaway right there, there's the ship leth and they know
this is a Nazi spy. What does the pronunciation difference mean.
It's not a hard word to say, a c O
r in. I found myself deeply planted on the non
(14:53):
traditional or at least phonetically speaking pronunciation of the word.
I've learned that the southeast astern United States, roughly twenty
of the country geographically pronounces the word the way I do.
The other pronounces it phonetically. There is certainly something bigger
at work here, and it might have broader implications. After
(15:19):
some research, here's what I learned. Basically, the acorn pronunciation
is a throwback to Old English. It's a combination of
Low German, whose word for acorn is ecker spelled e
c k e r, and the Dutch word. It's a
combination of these and the Dutch word for acorn, which
(15:40):
is acker spelled a k e r. By the fifteen hundreds,
that English still had an urn on the end, and
that arn still holds strong in much of the southern
United States. This is the audio from a YouTube video
titled a Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics. It's on a
(16:01):
channel simply called rob M. It's a very interesting clip
about accents in the Southern United States. Most people don't
realize that the American Southern accent is not a sign
of ignorance, but actually the fact that, according to linguists,
we're the only people left in the United States who
(16:23):
generally still sounded like our ancestors, because if you listen
to native born Southern speakers, the average Southern attends to
sound more like this. What we call this moonlight Magnolias draw,
because if you speed up that Southern draw over time,
it rapidly becomes a British accent. Most people don't realize
that people that came here from Europe were largely from
the United Kingdom, so when they got here this was
(16:45):
more along the lines of their speaking tones. But that's
the first and the second generations coming off from boats,
not their children, but that the unfull generations. The kids
didn't quite something like mom and dad anymore, because they're
starting to develop a society elongation of the way they
talk what's today called the in your tide water accent.
It's not a complete Southern drawl because that support area,
but as you go farther into the southern interior and
(17:07):
the year's progress, the accent tends to get thicker, deeper,
richer by Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia peg. Yeah, you gotta full
blow to Southern drawl. But people don't realize that in
most cases in Louisiana, many of the native speakers don't
sound like that. They didn't design like these are guarante
spend a round the Bay youth, because you speed up
that South Louisiana Cleo accent or time, it becomes Enfans French,
(17:32):
with of course certain exceptions in New Orleans, which talent
tend to sound like more like New Yorker's because of
the Irish and the Sicilian Italian influence, so they didn't
sound a bit more like this, and people didn't get
a little confused because they think, what, you're from New York. No,
I'm from New Orleans, White. So you have to realize
that at the end of the day, Southern speakers, like
(17:52):
I said, we're not ignorant, as it's often been assumed,
but we simply sound like the ancestors that came here
so many years ago. This is my mother, Judy. We
call her Juju. She has a master's degree in teaching
and retired last year after being involved in public schools
for over forty years. She has a professional connection with
(18:16):
the words spelled A C O r N. Maybe this
gives some insight into why I'm so worked up about
it all. Juju, where are you up here? I've got
something here, I'm getting mud on your floor. I'm sorry. Okay,
(18:40):
what is that an acre? It's an acren? Where do
you work or where did you work? Your Acorn schools
for thirty two years? Thirty two years? It's a consolidated school.
Have you ever in your life heard anybody call it
acorn school? On anybody associated with the school with a
(19:03):
close knit association. Though no, no, No Acre Acren. We
go to Acron Elementary. We are the Acron Tigers and
it's the best school in Arkansas. People who are connected
(19:25):
to the land can become obsessed with natural cycles. For me,
a time of celebration is when the acorns start to fall. Typically,
I'll commemorate the first white dook I find on the
ground by putting it in my pocket. I just like
to stare at it when nobody's around. Sometimes I keep
them in my drawer here in my office. That might
(19:46):
seem strange for many reasons because I don't eat acorns,
but they're highly symbolic. My dad was like an obsessed
drill sergeant when it came to finding them. Mean he
still is. I spent the formative years of my life
searching for acrons, and I still searched for them relentlessly.
(20:10):
Here's my old dad, Gary Newcomb, the Black panther Man himself.
We're sitting on the front porch in a rainstorm. So
when I was a kid, we didn't hunt deer. We
hunted acrons. We weren't looking for deer, we were looking
for acrons first. And then dear sign, tell me what
(20:31):
acrons mean to Gary Nucomb, Well, no one tell you can, Yeah,
you can tell us a little backstory about you know,
no one in my family deer hunted. I didn't know
anything about deer hunting. And two really intelligent guys, principle
of a school and the guy that just had like
a hundred sixty I Q had a coffee shop and
the deer hunt it. And I'd go to their coffee
shop and they talked about deer hunting, and I got
(20:53):
caught up in it, and they would take me hunting.
They showed me and showed me how to shoot a
recurve boat, but they couldn't kill deer. And I related
it to play in chess. There's gotta be a way
to get on these deer. And one day we were
down in South Arkansas and a guy was at our
camp and he said, deer's favorite food is white oak acorns,
(21:14):
and if you have it was weird. Turkey hunt was
real hard for me to learn. A lot of stuff
is real hard for me to learn. But when I
heard that, I thought, if I'm hunting humans, I'm gonna
hunt at McDonald's. And I'm not gonna hunt at McDonald's
unless it's got a lot of trash on the ground,
a bunch of cars. I mean, there's gonna be some activity,
(21:35):
you know. I don't want to go to McDonald's where
there's not very many people. I'm going this has to
be how to kill him. And keep in mind, I
don't even hardly know what a deer track looks like.
So as soon as he tells me, I come back
to my hunting turf, and I said, I'm not leaving
here until I find white oak acres dropping. And I
had enough insight into it to where he didn't tell
(21:56):
me this, but I thought, there's gotta be deer droppings there.
I'm not gonna hunt unless there's deer droppings. And so
I found two big white oak trees and I killed
more deer, knowing nothing about deer hunting, and all of
my buddies who were raised them with a boat. Yeah,
and I mean it's like at a time when very
few people were doing it consistently. Yeah, And I mean
(22:17):
I missed a couple of pretty good bucks too. But
the first morning I set up, I remember going home
and telling my mother this, and I was a grown man.
I didn't live at home, but I went to her
house for breakfast or something, and I said, mother, you
won't believe what happened. I found this white oakcacren tree
with droppings under I put my ladder up the day
ahead of time, and I sit in it this morning,
(22:40):
and I had eleven deer coming in no more than
groups of two. It was just like a movement. They
were coming from my left to my right and it stopped.
It was just it was like the most exciting thing
you've ever found. Ticket Do you have any kind of
like emotional high when you find a big, old, green,
white of acron on the ground in October? I love it, man,
(23:02):
I mean I love it. It's the first. It's just
tells me the time is right, it's killing time. It
seems honorable to me that if anybody's going to be
particular about the pronunciation of any word, that same fella
(23:25):
ought to have some deep knowledge of it, or he
might as well be indifferent. Here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna get a PhD in acrons. We're gonna nerd
out on acron biology with one of the country's foremost
wildlife habitat experts, Dr Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee.
(23:46):
He's about as tall as an average to a high
school point guard, and he's built like a bobcat. He's
got a warm smile and overflows with hospitality. His ability
to functionalize and communicate about the natural world is unusually adept,
and by the looks of the turkey beards and big
racked white tails that adorn the walls of his house,
(24:08):
he is a veteran hunter. This is a deep dive
into some of the most interesting stuff about acrens that
I've ever learned. If you get lost in this nerd out,
please stick around for the last section of the podcast
with anthropologist Dr Daniel Roupe. It's fascinating, but I'll warn
you this talk about acres with Dr Harper will likely
(24:30):
change your life. To meet Dr Craig Harper, pretend like
I don't know anything and walk me through the life
cycle of an oak tree in the different species. Uh
they flower in the spring. There are two different groups,
(24:51):
of course, of oak species. You have the the red
oak group and the white oak group. There's a couple
of real distinguishing character sticks between those. The one of
the easiest and most recognizes that the lobes of the
leaves of red oaks have bristle tips, and those of
the white oak group do not. They have pointed So
(25:13):
a red oak has a pointed lobe, you know, a
tree in the white oaks family, and not just a
point not just a pointed lobe, but it actually has
a bristle tip. Of more important points of those two
groups is that, of course, of the species within the
red oak group, their acrons require two years to develop,
(25:33):
So they will flower in the spring and what will
become the acorn begins to form and it grows through
the summertime, but then it doesn't mature until the following
summer and then drops the second fall. Red oak species
thus then can have two acorn crops only at any
(25:54):
one time. You know, the tree doesn't produce one year,
oh and then two years later it might produce again.
It can produce each year because it will have uh
flowers and the acorn set and then mature two years.
To an individual. In general terms, the species within the
red oak group, those acrens have higher tanning contents, which
(26:17):
is a phenomic compound that causes in a stringic or
bitter taste they will not germinate until springtime. The acrons
of red oak species are important into the following spring
and even uh sometimes into the summer. So what you're
saying is that red oak acren is gonna fall in
(26:38):
the fall and late let's just say it falls in
late October and lay there all winter long. It's gonna
lay there all winter long, and it's not gonna sprout,
and it's not gonna rot. Most of them will not rot,
and wildlife will eat those acrens at that time through
the fall and winter. But if white oak acorns and
acrons of different species have different tanning content, those that
(27:00):
are less astringent are available, you certainly may see various
wildlife species select those, and thus those that were more
astringent may lay longer. But the point is those acrons
are available for a longer period than the white okay
and and the white oak acrens. They fall in the fall.
Most of the acron fall of the white oak species
(27:23):
Quercus alba is in October, but nonetheless all of those
of the white oak group, they will germinate in the
fall and winter, and immediately very few, if any of
them are available into the following spring, they fall, and
it's not that long until they begin to germinate and
and try to start, you know, sending down a little route.
(27:47):
I want to tell you a story. Last week I
killed a raccoon over my hounds. I cut his stomach
open full of acrons. I mean they're still in red
oaka acrens. Yeah, I mean he they're ill eating very
good red oak acorns in March. And they are extremely digestible. Acrons,
(28:08):
regardless whether they're eating in the fall, winter, or spring,
are highly digestible and with a very high fat content,
which actually increases the digestible energy that is available from
acorns as opposed to many other foods. Another characteristic that
distinguishes the red oak acorns from the white Oaka acrenes,
(28:29):
or another factor is that the red oak acorns typically
have much higher fat content than the white oak acres.
So as hunters, at least me and my dad are
always trying to figure out what the mass crop is
gonna look like before it actually happens. So and I've
been anecdotally studying this for twenty years, you know, just
(28:49):
kind of keeping track of the last frost and when
I saw oak tassel so I'll be driving down the
road and yesterday I noticed oak tassels hanging off trees.
Is there a way to make a even a reasonable
guess about mass crop based upon all the weather variations
of the spring. Essentially we're talking about pollination of flowers
(29:12):
that ultimately turned into acrons. And if there's not successful pollination,
or if that flower dies before it's pollinated, there's no acron.
So there's got to be this successful thing that happens
that's got to be impacted by rain, temperature, wind. It's
very complicated, and to my knowledge, it is not highly predictable.
(29:33):
There's another number of studies that have looked at all
of the different environmental conditions that might influence acron production
and successful flowering and acron setting. But I remember reading
in in one paper and where it was somewhat predictable
based on the number of frost in April, But there's
(29:55):
no hard number. Oh, if we have three or you know,
whatever the case, we need to come up with some
kind of olklore anecdotor with some burglaries. And another influential
factor might have been rainfall the previous summer. So there's
lots of things going on that we we really don't
understand fully because what we see is a pretty dramatic
(30:16):
like you would if if you didn't know anything about
natural systems or oaks, you just think that's an oak tree.
It's gonna produce every year, which we know is not
the case at all. And on a landscape level, there's
these vast differences from year to year. You know, some
years there's very few of a certain species or there's
no acrons at all, and then other years it's a
(30:38):
bumper cross and it'll vary along a certain slope gradient.
You know, up higher there may be acrons, but once
you get down low or vice versa. You know, you
just don't know how the weather variables affected the oak
trees on a given slope, on on a mountain. Yeah.
I remember when I was doing Turkey research in the
mountains in North Carolina. At the the top of the mountains,
(31:01):
they were about fifty feet the oaks up there. Every
year they would be flower in the first week of June,
you know, obviously much much later than down down slow.
So you're gonna have years where there's only gonna be
acrens that made on the top of the mountains, years
where there's only acrons that made lower on the mountains,
(31:21):
and usually it's not quite that distinct. But you know,
as hunters were looking for trends inside of natural systems.
One thing we found in the research we did looking
at UH mass production here in East Tennessee, and others
have found this too, is that among white oaks, you're
looking at about two good mass crops two years out
(31:44):
of five. About two years out of five you expect
good mass crops. And of most of the red oaks species,
you're looking at a good mass crop one year out
of three or or three or four years or so.
It's a it's a little less frequent than with the
the white oak group. I love it when we find
(32:04):
places where still in we don't really have all the answers.
I mean, it's such a complex system. And I'm talking
about like, yeah, I love it when when when somebody
like you says that Dr Harvard, because you get this
sense inside of one with everything that we see and
with the kind of the frequency that's admitted that just
(32:26):
like the world is discovered, but it's really not. I mean,
there's so much that we don't know, we don't understand,
and I mean the natural systems are so complex it
just blows your mind. And just the fact that we
could pick something that seems so insignificant and acorn, and
we could dive just a few steps past the surface
(32:47):
and realize that there's things that we don't even know
about them. You used the word that I believe is
accurate when you're talking about nature and natural systems, and
that's amazing. I find that that is a way overused
word these days, that people just, oh, that's amazing. Well,
I no, it's not that. Most of the time, it's
not even hardly interesting, but it's certainly not amazing amazing,
(33:09):
But when when you start talking about nature and natural
systems and how all of nature fits together, that he
is amazing. Yeah. Dr Harper did a research project where
he and his students collected acorns under the same trees
for ten years and tried various methods to increase acron production.
(33:29):
To study was in depth and enlightened. Acorns is one
of those foods that certainly can influence the nutritional status
of individual animals, as well as influence the populations of
some species on a year to year basis and even
(33:54):
groups of years. You know, it trends over you know,
like the course of three to five years or so.
Something it we work to try and help people understand
is that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
And you know, for example, with regard to deer or
with bears, immediately people think, oh gosh, you know, we
we need we got to protect those, uh, those those oaks.
(34:16):
You know, we don't want to be cutting down our
acron trees. You know, that's that's what the deer, you know,
they got to have. Well, it's interesting when you discover that,
you know, for example, among the white oaks, only thirty
percent of the trees produced seventy five of the acrons.
If you do the math, and this is in my opinion,
(34:37):
this is just math, you literally could cut down, in
a in a solid oak stand half of the oak
trees and increase the acron production by releasing the crowns
of those individual trees that are the good producers. We
(34:57):
looked at ways to potentially increase the acron production. One
was by releasing the crowns of the oak trees by
cutting down or killing the surrounding trees that were uh
inhibiting additional sunlight to come into the crown of that
oak tree. And and another was fertilization because you know
you're reading you know, all the hunting magazines, of course
(35:18):
you knows. And not only do you increase the acron production,
you know it makes them sweeter too, do you know that?
But anyway, we did. We did this for another which
is not that's where you're going. It didn't, It didn't happen.
But allowing additional sunlight to the crown did and in
two ways, and it was really really interesting. Number One,
(35:38):
once the crown is released, we found that on average
that crown would increase in size by about twenty five
in one year. That that's significant right there. But also
after releasing those trees on a per square meter basis,
those trees increase their acron production by sixty seven percent.
(36:00):
While the other thing with regard to deer or bears,
as I mentioned as well as many other species, is
if you're killing those competitors, what you're also allowing to
come into the stand of course as sunlight, and then
you have the increase in the understory. But where I'm
going with with this is that if you manage your
woods in that way, you're not gonna see those differences
(36:24):
in health of individuals or fluctuations and populations, because dear
don't have to have acrons. It's nice when they're there,
but the goal should be to manage your wood, your
property such that they don't have to have acrens in
order to have enough digestible energy during the fall winner
(36:46):
to make it through in good health. And what you're
saying is is that oaks aren't nearly as important for
wildlife as we've once maybe maybe as much as we
gave them cultural value. And I and and I think
it's because we most deer hunters, well even most people
that are hunting any kind of wildlife, whether you're a
squirrel hunter or a bear hunter, you're interacting with that
(37:08):
animal for the most part during one small sector that
animals a year. So I mean, like, I'm trying to
kill a white tail deer in October and November, and
you're looking at what they're eating in mid October as
opposed to what they're eating. First Gary Nucom said, go
find white oak acrens and you'll kill a deer. But
what you're saying, there's a lot of truth. They'll eat them.
(37:32):
I've been under the assumption that acrons were the super
food of the Eastern deciduous forest. I asked Dr Harper
how important they actually are for wildlife. Dr Harper, I
have for a long time said that the white oak
acre and is the chicken nugget of the Eastern deciduous forest. Okay,
(37:52):
my kids, if you if if they walked into a
room and there was like a variety of food on
the table and one of these was chicken nuggets, three
out of four of the kids would go to the
chicken nuggets before just about anything. So white oak acorns
when they're on the ground are this highly selected food
source for lots of games, from turkeys and deer, squirrels
(38:15):
and everything. I've never heard anybody talk about the actual
caloric content and nutrient value of it. Doesn't have to
be white oaka acre necessarily, but just an acron in
general in general, on average, the killer calories there's about
three point five to three point six killer calories per gram,
and and that that's very high. And and the total
(38:38):
digestible nutrients in acorns is very high. That is higher
than corn, that's higher than soybeans, that's higher than herbaceous forage,
that's higher than the woody brows so it is a
it is a nugget. I don't know if I called
it a chicken nugging other chicken there, but yeah, yeah,
(39:01):
exactly right. It's it's a highly prized it's highly palatable
with regard to its taste, especially the white oaks. It's
highly digestible. And and again the very important thing is
the fat content, and that's what really helps increase the
digestible energy in in in the acrons. Okay, three point
six calories per gram. How can you just guess how
(39:25):
many grams would be in a in an average sized
white okaycrene as big as the end of your thumb
if you did the uh the math about eight calories
is that all? I believe it. It's just and that's
a that's of a white oaka acern, So like media
eight calories per acre, that's correct. An interesting thing is
(39:47):
that the pounds produced is not that much. And I
did a little calculation on this. I thought you might
ask some of that. What we found in a good
year is that there would be you know, around eighty
acrons per square meter that that have fallen in a
good year. Well, we wait all of these acrons and
(40:09):
of white oak acorns, About two hundred acrens are required
to reach a pound, and if you only count the
acron meat, then it would be just over three hundred
acrens required to realize a pound. When you look at
the average crown size of white oaks, in a good year,
(40:30):
a white oak tree on average produced about forty seven
pounds of acrons or twenty nine pounds of acron meat.
Would an acron be considered a nut? Well, technically it
is an acron, but we colloquially call it a nut.
Is a nut a biologically descriptive term of a fruit, Yes,
(40:52):
but so acren is technically not a nut. That's correct,
It's not an acorn. One of the things I'm most
pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the acren fruit.
Music to my ears, dr Mar, Music to my ear.
You don't know how many places I go, especially when
I'm up in Wisconsin and Michigan, and you know I
(41:15):
love those folks up here. We poked fun at each other,
of course, but you know every time I'm up here
and we're talking about deer and have that management here acre?
And what an acre? Y'all come on down here and
we'll show you what an acre here, and we'll show
you how to kill a deer too. I want to
get down to brass tacks about the pronunciation of words,
(41:38):
or at least bigger tax than we've already established. Why
do people say things the way they do? We need
an expert. Dr Daniel Rupe has a pH d in
intercultural studies and teaches cultural anthropology to undergrad and graduate students.
Just for a bit of street cred. The man speaks
fluent Mandarin, Chinese and as overseas for twelve years, and
(42:03):
he's a bow hunter. Dr Roupe. I love calling you,
Dr Rupe because me and you are longtime buddies, and
so I've never called you Dr Rupe in my life.
Finally I'm getting the respect that I deserve. But you
have I know for sure that you have some insight
into this question that I do not have. And what
(42:24):
I'm trying to understand is why are we so particular
about the way that we say certain words. There's this
thing that's pretty deep inside of me about certain pronunciation
of words. No one told me to be particular about those,
So what does what does that tell me about myself
(42:47):
well or about our society? Sure? Sure, so I think
it's a really normal part of the human experience. Everyone essentially,
at like a primal level, is insecure. And so we're told,
you know, as certainly as like Western Americans postmodern people,
that you're an individual and you exist apart from everybody else.
But really, in some ways your individual, but none of
(43:10):
us exists apart from a social group. And the stronger
and more solidly defined that social group is deep down,
the more you can take a deep breath. And so
we do all sorts of things, all sorts of behaviors,
material culture, things we wear, think about like if you
want to establish a really clear group boundary when you're
(43:32):
in high school, you want to have the right brand
tennis shoes or paints or whatever it was. And that's
the whole reason why our culture has fats. Every you know,
five or ten years, we recycle another fat. It's because
everybody wants to fit in, not necessarily with like the
popular crowd or whatever crowd it is, but as a
certainly as adults, we want a clearly defined social identity,
(43:58):
and identity doesn't is apart from a group. So acorn acorn.
This kind of topic is one more tool that people
use too so we use we use language in a
really strong way to define what social group we're a
part of. Constantly we invent language and culture continually changes,
and we invent new words and languages all the time.
(44:22):
And one of the main reasons we do so is
we're trying to create, maintain, and establish a secure identity. Yeah, so,
what does it tell you when somebody is really particular
about something, they're highly insecure? Well, I wasn't gonna bring
this up, but I do think you're very insecure. No, No,
I think I think a lot of times. I remember. So,
(44:44):
my wife, you know, is from Michigan, and so twenty
years ago we got married, I went up there to
visit her family. One of the first things her, my
father in law, did was literally take me next door
and introduced me to their neighbors and say, say something, Daniel,
because he just wanted them to hear my acts. The
way you spoke was a novelty too. Yeah. So, and
I think, in of course, it can be very negative,
(45:06):
but it can also just be very fun and very
innocent and really a fun way of doing an establishing
culture and language. But as we are establishing this cultural
identity and establishing the groups that were part of there's
got to be some advantage to that. I mean, like
(45:26):
going back deep into human history. If me and you
were the same and you knew I was the same
as you, and by same, I mean we just had
this background or some connection point, like there's a higher
probability that you would help me survive. I mean, that's
the whole point of social groups, is that? Is that about? Right?
So if you think about like people, and you know thousands, thousands, thousands,
(45:51):
thounds of years of people, they're pastoralists, they're semi nomadic,
they're agrarian, they're farming, and you have a close knit,
extended can ship groups of people who are doing the
same practical activities every day, day in and out, all
year long. But they are using literally the same lingo
to make sure they survive. So we're all talking the
(46:13):
same talk means safety and security provisions because you might
say a corn and I don't understand what you're saying.
And essentially, so this is where kind of the switch
flips when you start talking about fundamental needs and somebody
is different and uses different lingo. They look different, they
(46:36):
act different, they smell different, you know, whatever it is
the switch starts to flip and the question becomes, cannot
trust this person at a deep level. So the the
gentleman who really kind of is a seminal author on
on this topic of of group held identity of Polish
sociologists of the twentieth century, taj f Henry taj So.
(47:00):
He was a Jew in Poland obviously at a time
when he was in a group that was despised. So
he really looked at this and wrote about it. And
almost every author, anthropologist, sociologists who interacts with it is
going to talk about him. And so he certainly sees
it from a negative view, and a lot of times
humans really use it in a very broken, destructive way.
(47:24):
Um So, acorn acre not necessarily that loaded of a topic,
but it's still the same in distrust totally. It's totally
about trust. Do you recognize this inside of your life?
Do you do? You see? Because I deeply identify with
that now. I mean, if somebody says acorn like I
don't acorn, I can't. I can hardly even say it.
(47:45):
I don't inherently distrust, sir. But when I do hear
someone say acorn, it's it's really strange. Like if I
take a step back for myself and try to have
this unbiased look, it's like I feel a connection to
that person. Sure, Like yeah, when you say that it's
an issue of trust, Like I kind of get that.
(48:06):
Do you do you see any Do you recognize that
in your life? I think maybe not. I'm not as
insecure as you are, so I think maybe no. Definitely, definitely,
I think everybody does. Because socially, every day we are
operating on on what is called scripts, and so you
kind of have a script of expected ways for conversations
to go. And when you bump into somebody and they
(48:28):
follow in general your social script expectations, you take a
deep breath when they step out of bounds. But it
causes you to a little bit of a pause. And
no matter how small you you don't realize it, but
cognitively you're constantly checking social scripts. Do people fit my expectations?
Do they not? And almost all the time, difference is
(48:51):
not seen as a neutral thing, or maybe even an
interesting thing to be explored, but it's seen as a
negative thing. The other thing that I'm trying to under
stand is where is this healthy and where is it unhealthy?
Because you know, like in this playful in this playful
word that we're talking about here, acorn and a corn
(49:11):
describe to me in like to concrete blocks, when is
it positive and when is it negative? So we've already
described when it's positive. So we're using creative aspects of culture.
Things we wear, ways that we talk, behaviors that we
have that we do um and and as a group
with these certain people, I do these things together and
(49:32):
we form a healthy social identity so I don't feel
alone in the world. You know, that's that's healthy. That's good,
it's normal, it's natural, and creatures were social creatures. Inherently,
it becomes negative when in order for me to establish
and maintain salient or solid social identity with others, I
need to tear down or oppress the social identity of another.
(49:57):
If I make identity by saying acorn, great, and I
can say that all day long, and kind of the
behaviors and other linguistic patterns that go along with that, fantastic.
But if I need to like dually construct identity by
saying acorn and then saying that people that say a
corn are idiots, and you extrapolate that over behaviors nationalities,
(50:19):
you know, whatever it is places you're from, any number.
I mean, humans do this all the time. We make
identity in a in a healthy way, but also in
a broken way. So what is tribalism and how does
it fit into language? So tribalism would be groups of
people in a sense, they're bounded. There's a clear boundary
(50:42):
around this certain social group. And so every individual exists
in the center of concentric circles, and you keep going out.
It's like me and there's my immediately immediate kind of
nuclear family. There's maybe the people at my workplace, the
people in my hometown, my nation. It just kind of
keeps on out. A tribe or tribalism is somewhere I
(51:04):
decided to draw a hard boundary. One of those concentric
circles becomes my tribe, and we are out for us,
and everyone else is out for themselves or or or
potentially against us. And so tribalism becomes problematic because essential
it is tribalism always negative. No, no, no, no, no,
it's not. It is certainly not always negative, because it's
(51:26):
in today's society it's often used as a negative term.
It certainly has in the contemporary use of the word
tribalism or the idea of tribalism essentially is weaponized identity.
So some other group outside of me is going to
try to force their identity on me, or they're gonna
demean my our tribe's identity, or I'm going to do
the same to them. That would be like the contemporary
(51:48):
idea of the kind of the concept of tribalism would
be like very native to human nature. That's how we exist.
We all need a tribe. We can't exist by ourselves,
which we just can't do it. So COVID nineteen happens,
everybody's in lockdown, and like mental health plummets, suicide rates
quadruple because we're isolated from our tribes. Yeah, so I
(52:10):
guess I'm trying to understand where the boundaries are for
being positive and negative, because, for instance, then like excuse me,
Dr Roupe, thank thank you. You know, I enjoy living
in the Southern United States, like it's my home, it's
all I know. I like it. I feel like that's healthy.
(52:31):
But at the same time, I see examples from anywhere
anywhere where that becomes so much a part of someone's
identity that it becomes almost weaponized and that's not cool.
And I feel like I can be a Southerner, I
could be a Northerner, I could be from wherever, and
(52:52):
like have this love of the culture where you live,
and that be healthy because you and I feel like
it's dems in like respect for your own culture means
to me that you respect someone else's culture, because like
your wife from Michigan, like very different culture from Arkansas.
She loves it up there. Family loves it, they've been
(53:12):
there forever. They understand that they're really strange. They talk
through their noses, you know, they know. I think so
like you, there's a there's a place in a posture,
in a way of living in which I'm certainly comfortable
celebrating my own social identity, my tribe. But I don't
need to denigrate another group in order to make that happen.
(53:35):
If you, if you look at society and human history,
really only in the last century, which is a whisper
of time and the whole scope of humanity, have people
been readily exposed to other groups, other tribes, so to
speak constantly. I mean, we're just kid, we're more inner technology, technology, globalization.
(53:57):
But I mean even you don't even have to go
global aization technology. Think about the interstate system in the US.
I mean things that really just in a fraction of
a second human history have connected people unlike ever before.
Whereas for centuries before that, of years thousands of years
before that, sure you've had I'm thinking English in terms
(54:19):
of the English language, You've got centuries of the English
language and people existing in certain topographical regions and they
would almost never encounter somebody else unless they were tradesmen
or their at war, and that was really the only
other time. And in those times there was expected differences.
(54:39):
Of course, we're going to be different, but otherwise we
are in our own little world, in our own little tribe,
and every day we play with and create our language.
Like you've got it. Let's say you've got a real
good buddy and you hang out with this person a
whole lot, or even like in your marriage, you and
your wife, your your marriage starts to have its kind
of own culture and your own way of talking, and
(55:00):
your family has inside jokes. We do this all the time. Well,
then you do that on a social level for centuries
with the English language, and people are isolated from other groups,
and it becomes even more becomes more defined, and then
within like a few decades, you build interstates, trains, planes,
the Internet, and all of a sudden, we're talking to
(55:22):
people from all over all the time, and we're exposed
to differences on a level that we've never been before.
So we were the world is being mixed up way
more than it's ever been sure, and what happens to
insecure tribes is that makes them really uncomfortable, and so
we tend to shut that down in one of two ways.
(55:42):
We intrench ourselves or again we leave and kind of
deny our own familial, identificational group. How how can we
be balanced inside of this? That is one of the
many human problems. Yeah, I think it takes a whole
to self awareness, and I think it takes a whole
lot of being comfortable with your own insecurities and just
(56:06):
realizing that that mechanism is at work. So I guess
what you're saying is you're just kind of throwing in
the towel with saying acorn. You're just kind of okay
with that. Well, I mean it's not spelled a C.
There's an O in there. To me, this whole acorn,
acorn kind of debate is proof that we're not rugged individualists.
(56:29):
And that really is kind of an American myth that
we love, and there's lots of great things about it.
But we kind of like that we are self made man.
You know, I'm kind of pulled myself up by my bootstraps,
did it myself kind of a thing. But uh, the
fact that we would argue about things like this or
or use language different aspects of culture to find and
(56:51):
make a social identity a home proves that we're not
rugged individualists. Were really affected by we need community, we
need people, we need relationships, and and we need them
to be healthy. And the more unhealthy our social relationships are,
the more upset we're gonna get about things like acorns
(57:13):
and acorns. Even this idea of rugged individualism, which would
have the idea that it's like the solo person that
is a cultural group. I mean, like there's a whole
bunch of rugged individualists. When we say we are individualists
or we are self made men, I mean, you're always
locating yourself in a group. So there's just as many
(57:36):
self made men as there are the group that values
that overtly and purposefully values connection and community. So it's
kind of a It's kind of a semantics deal is
because the rugged mountain man needed the mountain man rendezvous.
He needed he needed more mountain men. And Dr Roupe,
(58:01):
the first white tail buck you ever killed? What was
he doing on that flat in the Ozark Mountains? He
walked up? He's about what was he eating? One of
these right here? Small acorn? The biggest mistake he ever made.
(58:24):
I'm being serious when I say that the exploration of
this topic was a genuine learning experience for me, and
I gained new insight into myself. That's a good thing
about being a hillbilly. I'm okay with not knowing, and
perhaps that's the key to really knowing anything at all.
I continue to be amazed at the things that drive us,
that are unperceived and not understood. I think what I
(58:48):
want to say is that culture is amazing. It's fun,
and it adds context to our lives, and we really
can't exist without the structure of culture around us in
some way. But it shouldn't be the most important definer
of our lives. I love being from the place that
I am. I have an unusually strong sense of place.
(59:11):
But if I say acorns or a corn that doesn't
fully define me. Human life is bigger and more profound
than the elementary definers of this planet. Perhaps there is
another podcast being built as we speak, exploring the culture
behind pronouncing the word as a corn. My goodness of
(59:34):
the country says it that way. Here's my take home.
An appreciation of our own culture allows us to appreciate
and value other cultures. And I think that's significant. But
I also believe there is great value in the preservation
of individual culture. I would imagine, as long as there
is spring and fall, and the oak's flower and acorns
(59:58):
grow and come to ma surety and fall to the ground,
and as long as we can hunt white tailed deer
with bows and arrows and guns, me and mine will
be searching for acorns. We're putting everything we've got into
these Burglaries podcast episodes. If you've enjoyed them, I ask
(01:00:22):
you to leave us a review and share this podcast
with a friend. I really appreciate the sport
Host
Clay Newcomb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.