10.1.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Marcia for RADIOI, and today I will
be reading National Geographic magazine dated September twenty twenty five,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of

(00:22):
the article I began last time, entitled will Mexico's Train
of the Future Leave its past behind? By Michael Finkel.
This train is a wonderful gift, says Anna Danielli, who
traveled across Mexico from her home in Guadalajara to experience trend. Maya,

(00:43):
I feel like I'm royalty, like Lady Diana. I'm bursting
with pride to be Mexican, says Norma villa Real, who
drove more than a thousand miles from Monterey in the
north with her ninety year old mother Concepcion, to ride
the train. High school teacher, and I can't wait to
tell my students about this. As for environmental concerns, Etienne

(01:05):
ads many trees were indeed removed to make the train.
The protesters were right, but a federal work program for
rural laborers called Semburano Nida or Sowing Life, is in
the process of planting five hundred million trees in the region,
far surpassing the number that were cut. It's one of
the world's largest reforestation endeavors. As part of the scope

(01:28):
of trend Maya's construction, according to the Mexican government, the
biosphere reserve of Calakmul, where the tracks passed by, expanded
its protected area by over a million acres, making it
the second largest natural sanctuary in the Americas, surpassed only
by the Amazon. The intervention of the military, in Etien's opinion,

(01:50):
was necessary. Mexico is littered with half finished projects, and
if it weren't for military control, activists may have tied
up trend Maya forever. There were previous passenger trains in
the region privately run, but they disappeared decades ago for
lack of profit. With the military in charge, Tranmya doesn't
need to make money. It's a public good, and the

(02:12):
train won't financially burden Mexican citizens as it holds no
debt and is chiefly funded by a tax on tourists.
Whether or not Tranmaya is an insult to the Maya
also seems part of the hyperbolic vitriol flung from both sides.
Ketzelt Saab, a well known activist who has consulted for
the United Nations on Native rights, insists that ninety five

(02:35):
percent of the indigenous people he knows favor the train.
The tiny minority opposed, he concedes, is masterful at making
itself heard. Condemnation of the archaeological rigor and the wilful
wrecking of relics is addressed by Manuel Perez Rivas, head
of the National Institute of Anthropology and Histories two thousand

(02:56):
person team. Yes. Perez Rives said the project wasn't perfect.
Some items didn't survive, but his team did register precisely
eight hundred seventy one thousand, two hundred sixty seven pieces
of archaeological significance, the most extensive rescue of Maya history
ever collected, and possibly the largest dig of all time.

(03:19):
The Yucatan is an evalving thing, not a museum, says
Perez Rivas. You need to balance the living with the historic.
If we preserved every artifact, we'd never build anything. The
pieces found by the team in obsidian jade seashell clay
and wood were notable because many weren't extraordinary, says Perez Rivas.

(03:41):
They were everyday objects like knives, plates, and pipes. When
fully studied decades, Hence, they will offer a more complete
understanding of how common people lived in ancient times. He adds,
the focus of the archaeology, like the train itself, will
be on lives that are often overlooked. It's the early
days of tran Maya, and no one knows where it's heading.

(04:02):
Triumph for disaster in or between. Ridership did start slowly,
but at t end projects a massive hit. The train
may Feel could serve as a many feel could serve
as a global template for juggling environmental concern and economic expansion,
and for how to transform a local population that's minimized

(04:23):
by tourism into one that reaps benefits. Detractors claim the opposite,
that the only thing tran Maya will achieve is to
show the world what not to do. The anti train
faction tends to view the project as a new kind
of threat, though this idea seems subverted at the renowned
archaeological site Cheats the Niza, a couple of train stops

(04:44):
west of Kankun. The ancient Maya constructed roads called sakboeb
all over the peninsula, which were wide and slightly elevated,
and often ran through the jungle plum strait. They look
a lot like train tracks. There's one in chi Zanita,
starting near the main pyramid, and something else is there too.

(05:05):
In the center of the site is an area of
giant pillars, lined up in rows of four, light colored
at least above ground and extending toward the forest. Their
similarity to the pillars that Rojo recorded is startling, except
that these are a thousand years old. A train connecting
Mexico and dividing it. When Tranmaya began running late last year,

(05:27):
it established a nine hundred sixty six mile loop across
five states in the Yucatan Peninsula. While the railway system
promises to bring jobs and boost tourism by taking people
to historic Maya sites in different cities, critics allege it
destroyed forests, disrupts animal habitats, and potentially pollutes critical underground
water stores called senotes, forcing a closer look at what

(05:50):
has been gained and what has been lost. Formation of
senotes around sixty five million years ago, a six mile
wide meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula. Rings of fractured bedrock
have effected where eroded chambers called Senote's form, many of
which are interconnected and influence underground water flow to day

(06:12):
vast reservoir below Senotes are conduits to an aquifer covering
roughly sixty four thousand square miles, a key source of
drinking water impacted by pollution from sewage and infrastructure projects.
Tren Maya links many modern cities and makes ancient Maya
sites more accessible. The addition of freight service in the

(06:33):
coming year could also mean major economic expansion cutting through
protected lands. A rail line linking the southern Yucatan also
bisects UNESCO designated caloc Mule Biosphere Reservoir Reserve, a bio deserve,
a biodiverse rainforest where deforestation has raised concerns over environmental impacts. Next,

(06:57):
The Mystery of weed Sickness by Stacy Colino and Brian Kevin.
Strong new strains and forms of cannabis are linked to
a set of symptoms that of doctors puzzled, and diagnoses
of the strange syndrome are on the rise. Sierra Calaham
was twenty three When she had her first month long

(07:18):
bout of daily abdominal pain, nausea, and cyclical vomiting, she
was bewildered, but chalked it up to stress. Work had
been rough and she was on the outs with her family.
Anti nausea and anti anxiety meds got her through most
days and in the evenings when she wasn't actively vomiting,
she kept up her usual routine of smoking a little

(07:39):
pot she wanted so badly, she says, to relax and
not be as present in my body. Callahan lives in
Washington State, where recreational cannabis has been legal since twenty twelve,
and she had long been a daily, if moderate user
a bit each night as a sleep aid. Before her
first gastroetestrial ordeal in late twenty twenty, she was vaping

(08:02):
concentrated cannabis oil from a battery powered pen. After her
symptoms seemed to pass, she switched to smoking pre rolled
joints for a few years before returning to vapes. Then,
in early twenty twenty four came another weeks long attack
debilitating stomach cramps and daily, uncontrollable vomiting that sent her

(08:22):
choice to an emergency room on a visit to urgent care,
a doctor asked if she used cannabis every night. Callahan
said she was shocked when the doctor gave her a
provisional diagnosis, Cannobioid hyperamasis syndrome c HS, sometimes simply called
weed sickness. Recurring episodes of nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain

(08:46):
are the classic symptoms of this puzzling gastro intestinal condition,
which is associated with long term, frequent use of marijuana,
particularly high potency products. Doctors in Australia first described cannabinoid
hypermesis syndrome in two thousand and four. Cannabinoids are compound

(09:07):
compounds like THHC or CBD found in marijuana. Emesis is
the clinical term for vomiting. Just how many suffer from
CHS is unknown, but one twenty eighteen study extrapolating from
a survey administered to er patients put the number as
high as two point seventy five million people in the
United States each year. A recent research summary from the

(09:31):
Journal of the American Medical Association suggests it is increasingly diagnosed.
Er visits for CCHS doubled in the US and Canada
between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty one. What's behind the rise.
One factor, says Deepak Cyril Dusuza, a professor of psychiatry
and director of the Yale Center for the Science of

(09:53):
Cannabis and Cannabinoids, is the increasing potency of cannabis products.
Three years ago, samples seized by the US Drug Enforcement
Administration averaged four per cent THHC content by weight. As
of twenty twenty two, that average is about sixteen per cent.
The oil in vape cartridges like what calahamos using, can

(10:17):
reach as high as eighty five percent. Research also points
to the broadening legalization of recreational weed. In one characteristic
study published in twenty twenty two in the journal American
Journal of Gastroentrilology, researchers compared admissions for HS at a
large Massachusetts hospital between twenty twelve and twenty twenty, noting

(10:40):
a significant uptick after cannabis was legalised in the state
in late twenty sixteen. All the same, HS is a
frustratingly spotty affliction. Why some people seem to be vulnerable
to this and not others really seems to be a mystery,
Desuza says, most people who smoke cannabis dans don't get this,

(11:01):
acknowledges Christopher N. Andrews, a gestro entrologist and clinical professor
at the University of Calgary in Canada. Among those who do,
the symptoms aren't constant. It comes and goes, and it
happens in cycles, says Desuza. Andrews believes that if CHS
symptoms were more consistent, it might motivate more patients to

(11:21):
stop using cannabis. One theory about the cause of CHS
involves the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal HPS axis, which regulates the
body's stress responses by adjusting hormone balances. Chronic cannabis use
makes that pendulum swing further one way than the other,

(11:42):
Andrews says, perhaps triggering symptoms by abnormally stimulating the HPA axis.
There may also be a genetic susceptibility at work, and
depression and anxiety are common in people with the syndrome.
The paradox is, we don't understand what's triggering this in
particular moment, says David Leventhal, director of the neuro gastro

(12:05):
Enterology and Motility Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Among the leading suspects, he says, our lack of sleep
and intense stress. Another strange aspect of HS sufferers tend
to spend a lot of time in the shower. People
with HS often report temporary relief of symptoms from bathing

(12:25):
in hot water, which may lead to compulsive bathing, says
Maria Isabel Angulo, an assistant professor of internal medicine and
pediatrics at the University of Illinois in Chicago. This suggests
that the area of the brain that helps regulate body temperature,
the hypothalamus, might be involved in the syndrome. Whatever the causes,

(12:45):
the long term consequences of CHS can far exceed the
lengthy stretches of intense discomfort. Complications can include severe dehydration
and electrolyte imbalances, which can lead to kindy inner injury,
heart rhythm abnormalities, and seizures. In rare cases, such complications
can have can even prove fatal. As hard as its

(13:09):
symptoms are to ignore, Accurately diagnosing CHS can be tricky,
physicians say, partly because those symptoms mimic other gastro intestinal
conditions and because patients aren't always straightforward about their habits.
The way to make the diagnosis, Andrews explains, is to
have the patient come off cannabis, proving retroactively that it's

(13:30):
the cannabis causing the symptoms. Giving up pot is also
the only known lasting CHS solution, and while the myth
of non addictive cannabis persists, Quitting cold turkey from regular
use can cause symptoms like anxiety, irritability, sleep disturbances, and
loss of appetite. Relief moreover, can take weeks or months.

(13:51):
Since it can take such a long time to get
better once cannabis has stopped, Andrews says, many people often
think that the cannabis has nothing to do with their symptom.
Even the prospect of abstinence may make some chronic users
reluctant to calm to terms with the condition. Not Calaham.
When her urgent care doctor first handed her literature about CHS,

(14:12):
she was skeptical. I was like, there's no way, I'm
so intentional about how I consume, she says, But as
soon as I read the materials, I thought, oh no,
and that was the day that I quit. She's been
weed sober ever since. It hasn't been easy. She's fought
cravings and hadgy retrain herself to recognize what relaxation feels

(14:32):
like when she isn't high, But it's easier when Callaham
remembers what the depths of hyper hypermesis felt like. I
was so desperate, she says, I was so desperate to
feel better. Modern cannabis explained what else her. Scientists learning
about the potential health impacts of high potency pot particularly

(14:53):
among teens using marijuana in any form, comes with risks,
but researchers i've raised particular concerns about how cannabis products
with high THHC content might affect mental health in adults.
Evidence suggests that users of high potency cannabis, particularly frequent users,
have an increased risk of both psychosis and cannabis use

(15:15):
disorder and inability to quit, even when the drug is
causing health or social problems. Some studies have linked high
potency cannabis to depression and anxiety, Although the evidence for
increased risk is spottier. Health professionals sound even greater alarm
when it comes to teenagers, early and frequent users of
high potency cannabis products, such as those consumed by vaporing

(15:39):
and dabbing are at risk of experiencing anxiety, depression, and
suicidal ideation, along with impacts to memory, cognitive function, and motivation.
Adolescents who use cannabis concentrates are at higher risk for
substance use problems than those who use non concentrate forms

(16:00):
of cannabis, and because teenager's brains are still developing, there's
a real risk of life's lifelong damage. A relatively new phenomenon,
concentrates have caught some parents, caregivers, and teachers off guard.
Because vaping produces a fainter smell and is as simple
as pressing a button, it's easy for teens to hide.

(16:21):
A twenty twenty four National Institutes of Health report found
that experimentation started early, with nearly six percent of eighth
graders having vaped cannabis within a twelve month period. That
number jumped to twelve percent among tenth graders and eighteen
percent for twelfth graders. Fewer adolescents are dabbing, but the

(16:41):
most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported
nearly a fifth of twelve to seventeen year olds who
used cannabis had dabbed concentrates in the past year. Perhaps counterintuitively,
concerns about high potency pot have prompted calls for the
federal government to remove cannabis from its most restrictive class

(17:02):
of illicit drugs. Legal limits on THHC content vari at
state levels and moving cannabis from the Drug Enforcement Administration's
Schedule one to Schedule three would allow for federal regulations
on potency. This reclassification was initiated in twenty twenty four
during the previous presidential administration, but it's now in limbo.

(17:26):
A reminder that cannabis prohibition is not yet repealed. Next
article How do you save the Evergrades from tens of
thousands of rogue snakes? By Rebecca Renner. In Florida, non
native pythons pose a huge habitat threat. Shrewd fashion designers
are offering a novel solution. Just after midnight, l Barbieto

(17:49):
drove her Dodge pick up deep into the shadows of
the Florida Everglades after hours, navigating narrow marsh roads, past
towering bald cypresses and racous shoots of romiliads. She suddenly
pulled onto the shoulder and aimed a flashlight at a
writhing patch of prehistoric looking ferns. Python, Barbietto shouted, pointing

(18:11):
to a me talic sheen of scales glistening like silken
chain mail in the moonlight. The next part would require
her gun. No one can say for certain how Burmese
pythons arrived in the Everglades in the first place, or
how many there are today, though conservative estimates put their
population in the tens of thousands. What we do know

(18:32):
is that the voracious snakes are destroying one of the
country's most important ecosystems by reproducing rapidly and feasting on
just about anything they can fit their jaws around, from
endangered wood rats to threatened wood storks. The snakes have
few regional predators except alligators, so the only way to
stop them is by culling them. Over the past twenty

(18:54):
five years, more than twenty five twenty three thousand, five
hundred pythons have been removed from Learned Florida's wetlands through
organized annual hunts, eradication agents hired by the state, and
volunteers like Barbietto, who help capture and kill them. While
most snake hunters dump them or leave the carcasses to rot.

(19:14):
Barbieto does things differently. After euthanizing the python, she carefully
loaded its serpentine body into the back of her truck
and took it home. The twenty nine year old, who
comes from the world of New York fashion, hunts these
enormous creatures and then repurposes their remains, transforming each one
into a highly sought after python's skin accessory. I get

(19:37):
to have this connection with my material that most artists don't,
Barbieto says she's developed a cult following for her limited
edition line of carefully sourced products, including bags and belts,
which appeal to clients who want to wear reptile skin
without some of the ethical complications. For years, animal welfare
advocates have encouraged shoppers to steer clear of animal beas

(20:00):
raised leathers, prompting fashion companies to explore synthetic or vegan
alternatives derived from things like mushrooms and apples. Now, an
increasing number of designers are recognizing how useful the leather
of Burmese python skin from the Everglades can be. As
brands raced to scale their ambition, Barbieta plays a unique

(20:21):
role as someone involved in every step of the sourcing
and sales process. Here is a beautiful material that's sustainable,
and nobody was really doing anything with it, she says.
It became this solution to a problem. For as long
as she can remember, Barbietto wanted to make clothes. At
age eighteen, she moved to New York City for fashion school,

(20:42):
enrolling in classes like pattern making and interning for big
time designers. She also helped stitch pieces for a collection
shown at Paris Fashion Week, but each experience only made
her more aware of the industry's environmental trade offs, like
pollution from industrial manufacturing and tile textile waste. This is

(21:02):
what I wanted to do with my life, she remembers, thinking,
how can I pursue it without becoming part of the problem.
During a trip home to Florida eight years ago, Barbeto
joined her father, Mark Yon, a python removal agent for
the state, on a job in the Everglades. Recognizing how
beautiful the intricate tan and brown puzzled piece skin patterns were,

(21:23):
she was shocked to see other hunters tossing their snakes
into the garbage. Such a waste to have to remove
these invasive species and then just throw them in the trash.
She says, the material felt like an answer to the
question I had been asking myself. Fashion school hadn't exactly
prepared her to hunt pythons, so Barbietta moved back home

(21:44):
and studied tracking and capturing techniques alongside her father. Since
releasing her first collection on Instagram in twenty nineteen, she
has continued to join him on countless midnight hunts while
developing a deep appreciation for their urgent conservation work. This
isn't something he does because he loves hunting and killing snakes,

(22:05):
she says, he just loves the Everglades. If you have
to destroy something harming the land, she reasons, why not
find a way to recycle it and create something useful.
It's a way to honor them, she explains, and I
see that as a privilege. Rabietto repeats that mantra to
herself in the back yard of her family's house in
Cutler Bay, a half hour drive south of Miami, where

(22:28):
in the second life of these animals begins. There, she
soaks the hides in six gallon glass jars of water, glycerine,
and alcohol for two weeks to preserve them before stretching
them out on plywood boards to dry and tan. She
then hand sows each accessory from her own customized patterns.

(22:49):
Praises range from four hundred twenty five dollars for Cowboy
boot straps two upwards of twelve hundred dollars for many handbags,
and items often sell out within twenty four hours of
being listed on social media. While Barty Barbietto will schedule
more hunts for custom orders, she isn't interested in creating
a backlog. I'm not Amazon Prime, she says. There's a

(23:12):
reason why I don't have an inventory of stuff. I
try hard to not be wasteful and to be as
intentional as possible with every single thing I'm making. Requests
now come in from all over the country and for
customers in places like New York or Los Angeles. Barbietto
says her designs sometimes double as conversation starters about Everglade's

(23:32):
wildlife conservation. When I first started, I just saw it
as this material I was able to utilize, she says,
But it's also a form of being able to educate people.
A recent small batch release was inspired by a visit
to Florida's largest working cattle ranch, also located in the
Everglades and includes Python's spur straps and a headstall for horses.

(23:57):
As more people seek her out, she has saying how
to scale up production and whether to collaborate with celebrities.
I would love to see doitchi e in my pieces,
she muses about the stylish singer. For a lot of
fashion designers, that kind of high profile exposure is carefully
orchestrated and primarily about building brand awareness. In Barbieto's case,

(24:22):
she argues, the ecological impact is poised to blend the
lines of what fashion and art can be. Barbieto isn't
the only one who has noticed how sourcing Python's skin
from the Everglades skirts many of the major dilemmas around
using animal based products in clothing. Since late twenty twenty,
a Miami based startup called Inversa has operated as a

(24:44):
broker between independent Florida hunters or invasive removals specialists, as
in Versa ceo A rav Chabda calls them, and high
high end designers interested in using materials made of species
Burmese pythons or lionfish, a similarly damaging animal threatening native

(25:05):
fish populations and coral reefs along Florida's coasts. Barbieto runs
a small, often bespoke operation. In Versa has a more
industrial outlook. If we're going to tackle something as big
as invasive species, we have to be thinking in terms
of scale. Choptas says, we have to be removing tens
of thousands, hundreds of thousands, eventually millions in order to

(25:28):
really make a difference. So far, there's more than enough
supply to satisfy the growing demand. In Versa recently partnered
with acclaimed sustainable fashion designer Gabriella Hurst on a line
inspired by the snake Goddess of Neolithic Europe, which included
Burmese python pumps and bags. Like Barbietto, Hurst has never

(25:49):
had never seen a textile that could have such an
immediate impact on conservation. I was never a full subscriber
to the Mushroom Leather because I knew that it wasn't
going to have the impact that this leather could. Hers
says it was exciting to work with something that is
beautiful and also helping restore the environment. Katherine Holstein, founder

(26:11):
and creative director of the New York based brand Kate,
has also worked with Versa on a collection of made
to order python skin handbags. In the meantime, Chabda's company
has expanded to offer other materials made from environmentally devastating species.
Beachwear designer Joanna Orties recently debuted belts made with scales

(26:35):
of Asian karp, a ravenous fish threatening to destroy the
delicate ecosystem of the Great Lakes after being introduced to
help control algae blooms in aquaculture facilities, and Chava hints
that several major fashion houses may be poised to debuted
lines that include in versus materials at upcoming fashion weeks

(26:56):
in Paris, London and Milan Beckon, Florida. Barbetta still feels
satisfaction in staying connected to every part of production, even
as her mission reaches larger brands that increase awareness of
the problem she initially set out to solve. I don't
want people to look at it as only closed, she says.

(27:18):
One of the most important things to be is making
something with purpose. This includes readings from National Geographic Magazine
for to day your reader has been Marsha. Thank you
for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.