8.6.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated July 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

(00:21):
the article I began last time, entitled What New York
City Loses when Languages Vanish by Ross Perlin. Just as
exceptional are the artistic, musical, and culinary possibilities as worldwide
from around the globe come together and share a space.
Irwin Sanchez, a chef and poet in Queen's who speaks

(00:44):
Nahuatl once the language of the Aztec, makes tacos, moles
and tamalays with the words original meeting in mind. Whos
Nika Kuja Maryova, a speaker of Waki from Tajikistan, creates
some of the very first children's books for speakers of
six Pamiri languages, all now represented along Brooklyn's own Silk Road.

(01:07):
Ibrahama Tararor, who made it from Guinea to the Lower
East Side, teaches NiCoT, a pioneering West African writing system
and pushes for its use in every new technology. For
a Sandler, a Yiddish speaking writer born in Moldova, contributes
in his own way, novel after novel to the miraculous

(01:28):
rebirth of Yiddish in New York. Lenape, the original language
of the land the city is built on, is also
being revived, against all the odds, from its last stronghold
in rural Ontario, where there is just a single native speaker.
A new generation of activists is bringing the language to
a wider audience. One of them was Kiaren Moscow, who,

(01:49):
before she passed away, would come down once a month
to teach the language in Manhattan, the place where we
get bows in Lenape. And then there's rasmena Ung, the
young Secis speaker. For seven years, she has been documenting
the language in both Nepal and New York, with dozens
of hours of recordings, many transcribed and translated, as well

(02:11):
as a growing dictionary. But now elders are passing away
and taking the language with them. Questions about immigration and
asylum hang over the community's future. Housing is increasingly challenging,
and their village like cohesion may not last. Over the
past decades. By chance, Boring's Brooklyn neighborhood has become a
place where people from around the world establish hometown associations,

(02:36):
religious institutions, restaurants, and a range of other businesses and spaces,
forming radically different worlds that now dwell side by side.
Just minutes from the second vertical village, you can hear
Ghanaian churchgoers speaking twee Azerbaijani barber's speaking Jehuri, and uber
drivers gathering over kabab's and whisky and chatting in Uzbek

(02:59):
otto by shops in formal commuter or dollar vans, mosques
and bars ring with the sounds of African, Asian, European, Caribbean,
and Latin American languages. For all the unrealized potential babble,
not the biblical myth, but the contemporary reality, has been
working in cities like New York to an extraordinary degree.

(03:20):
Now is the moment to understand, appreciate, and defend it
the global origins of New York's at risk languages, some
of the world's most endangered languages are spoken in the
city where a subway ride can take you around the world.
Hoarding New York City's subway system, one of the world's
oldest and most extensive, is like embarking on a journey

(03:44):
across the globe for the price of a single fear.
It connects writers to roughly one thousand places where myriad
languages have taken root. Each destination is its own linguistic universe.
Next to the hidden talents of nature's unloved animals. By A. J. Jacobs,

(04:04):
whether it's their bold appearance, their unsavory hygiene habits, or
their unexpected behavior, certain animals suffer from an image problem.
Of course, their standout attribute can also be their superpowers.
The vulture has to be one of the most reviled
creatures on Earth. The very word vulture is an insult,

(04:26):
a synonym for a greedy exploiter. In a way, vulture's
bad reputation is understandable for starters. They are neither cute
nor cuddly, what with their stooped posture, bare heads, and
beady eyes. They spend their days eating dead animals, and
they do it in a stomach churning way by entering
the corpse at its soft parts, such as the mouth, nose,

(04:47):
or anus. Vultures definitely have an image problems, as national
geographic explorer Darcy Ogata, Africa program director at the conservation
nonprofit Peregrine Fund, who point out that a bald bird
sticking its beak up the rear end of a wildebeest
wouldn't make for the most appealing magazine cover. The bird's

(05:08):
pr problem has real world consequences. It causes us to
overlook the vulture's fascinating behavior and vital role in our ecosystem.
Without vultures, bad things happen. These birds act as nature's cleaners, hovering,
hoovering up rotting carcasses, and preventing the spread of disease.
Consider the drastic situation in India. Starting three decades ago,

(05:32):
vultures nearly disappeared after millions of them were accidentally poisoned
by medicine used on cows, which turned out to be
toxic to vultures. As a result, the countryside became littered
with rotting, germ filled animal corpses that infected the rivers
in drinking water and also boosted the population of rabies

(05:53):
carrying theiral dogs. According to a recent study in the
American Economic Review, the decline in vultures correlated with more
than half a million excess human deaths in a population
sample in India between two thousand and two thousand and five.
In an ideal world, the disappearing vulture population would be
a conservation priority, but it isn't. The vast majority of

(06:16):
global conservation money goes to a few top species, usually
large animals such as rhinos, elephants, and gorillas. The rest
of conservation gets the scraps. O Goddess says. The animals
fighting over those crumbs are what you might call the
d list species. The outcasts. We're talking about the vultures,
the naked mole rats, and the probiscous monkeys with their

(06:40):
pendulous blobby schnazes. They're not pretty, they're not colorful. They
often do gross things, such as eating feces, a habit
of the naked mole rat. They are the popular opposite,
polar opposites of the conservation icons, the lions, pandas, penguins

(07:00):
and giraffes that star in nature documentaries, appear on our
cereal boxes, and get the lead rolls in animated movies.
Conservationists call the a Lister's charismatic megafauna or flagship species.
Several studies show that they get a lopsided share of donations.
As one study puts it, animal charisma trumps endangered status.

(07:23):
Just one example, amphibians account for about twenty five percent
of threatened vertebrate species, but only about two point five
percent of funding. No one wants to kiss or donate
to a slimy frog. What does it take to be
a very important animal? It helps if you're cute, furry,
jumbo size, and or adorned with attention grabbing outer wear.

(07:46):
Think the interesting patterns of leopards and zebras. Cuteness is
an especially powerful draw thanks to our brains programming, what
we find is cute in animals is often the same
thing we find cute in human babies, such as big,
forward facing eyes, says Gabby Salazar, an environmental social scientists
and National Geographic Explorer. We are genetically designed to love

(08:10):
and nurture babies and bibyish animals such as the panda,
which appears on the WWF logo reap. The benefits being
on the A list comes with yet another benefit, what
psychologists call the halo effect. This means that we mistakenly
imbue attractive people and animals with additional positive characteristics, such

(08:30):
as moral goodness. It's why so many movie heroes are
equipped with gleaming teeth and chiseled jaws, and so many
villains have scars. But in reality, both with humans and animals,
prettiness doesn't equal benevolence or courage, and neither does ugliness
equal nastiness or cowardice. Just look at the two can

(08:51):
I love tuocans. But they don't just use that beak
to eat fruit, says Salazar. They also use that beak
to scoop up baby birds from other birds. Now us
not something you'd see too, can sam from fruit loops
doing so, how do we fix this pr problem? How
do we get the animal kingdom's outcasts more attention than
the conservation dollars they deserve, Salazar says. One key is

(09:14):
to tell better stories. For starters. We can highlight the
benefits some of these animals provide, such as the vulture's
role in garbage disposal. This is actually a century's old strategy.
In a tongue in cheek letter to his daughter, Ben
Franklin questioned the candidacy of the bald eagle as a
national emblem. He argued that dumpy turkey was respectable and

(09:36):
a bird of courage that defended its home turf just
as the American colonists defended theirs. He contrasted this with
the bald eagle, which Franklin called a bird of bad
moral character and accused of stealing fish from other birds,
which it does. Another strategy is to reframe these animals
supposedly bad characteristics. For instance, the vultures unpleasant looking bald

(10:01):
head is in fact a clever way to help keep
the bird from collecting germs in its feathers when it's
eating carcasses. The sloth's alleged laziness is really a brilliant
evolutionary adaptation. Its slowness is a super efficient way to
survive on a low energy leaf filled diet. The naked

(10:21):
mole rat may look like a wrinkly bucktoothed hot dog,
but this quirky creature has evolved to survive without oxygen
for eighteen minutes. One other idea is to lean into
these animals freakiness. Salazar says there's some new research on
what are being called ugly cute animals. Ugly cute animals

(10:42):
are animals that are so weird or not stereotypically cute
that they actually end up being fun and make us
smile and laugh. She says, some species are wacky enough
that they can benefit from this ugly cute phenomenon. Exhibit
A is the blob fish, an Internet star with its
ugly mug featured next to captions such as how I

(11:03):
Feel on Mondays, sell is our sites. A recent study
on probiscous monkeys and how internet memes correlated with an
increase in donations to protect these Southeast Asian primates. In
this attention economy, there's some novelty and humor we could
capitalize on, she says, So let's get the revolution started.

(11:23):
It's time to embrace the outcasts here as to hoping
that one day we see cartoon naked mole rats on
cereal boxes, college football teams named the Vultures, and a
blobfish getting its own Pixar movie. For now, across these pages,
we celebrate the bizarrely brilliant traits and behaviors of these
d list creatures. Three toed sloth. Early depictions of sloths

(11:49):
show why the slow moving animals native to Central and
South America got a bad rap from the get go.
One nineteenth century account labeled them imperfect monsters of creation,
adding equally remarkable for their disgusting appearance and helpless condition.
Sloths can't help that several species of algae grow in
the grooves of their coarse, matted fur, giving it a

(12:11):
strange green sheen, But this adaptation is a secret weapon.
The algae help camouflage the canopy dwelling dwelling creatures. All
sloth species, which mostly eat leaves, have long claws that
help them grasp tree branches in the canopy. The claws

(12:31):
are made from bone encased in keratin, the same protein
that forms human hair and nails. Sloth fur supports robust
communities of insects such as beetles, cockroaches, and moths. Several
moth species spend almost their entire lives nestled in sloth's coats.
They lay eggs in the sloth's dung and provide nutrients

(12:52):
thought to nourish the algae that grow in sloths fur.
Sloths have the slowest metabolic raate of any non hibernating animal,
allowing them to conserve the energy they get from their
restricted diet. These sedate creatures descend to the forest floor
to defecate as rarely as once a week prubiscus monkey.

(13:15):
Male probiscus monkeys are adorned with an oversized, fleshy snout
that drapes across their face. The protusion may seem comical
and impractical to humans, but it has an important purpose.
These caramel colored primates, native to the lush jungles of
Borneo in Southeast Asia, live in large communities broken down

(13:36):
into smaller robing groups of males and then harems, or
groups of females and their offspring that are dominated by
a single male. Competition for female attention, which earns one
a larger harem can be fierce among males. Female probiscous
monkeys gravitate toward males with the largest sniffer. African bullfrog,

(14:00):
often overlooked slimy amphibians like frogs and salamanders, are the
focus of meager conservation funding considering how many species are
threatened or endangered. The bulbous African bullfrog is the world's
second largest frog species. Males can be ten inches long
and weigh as much as four pounds, and they can
look even bigger. When the frogs feel threatened, they puff

(14:22):
up their lumpy bodies to intimidate predators. Frog sliva changes
consistency when force is applies to it. While bullfrogs rest,
their spit is thick, sticky, and gloopy, but when the
tongue shoots out and latches onto prey, the spit transforms
into a watery substance that coats the target. During the

(14:44):
dry season, African bullfrogs can go dormant and grow a
paper like shell made of layers of dead skin that
helps to trap moisture. When the rain comes, the cocoon
washes away. Honey badger found throughout sub Sahari in Africa,
as well as in the Middle East and Western Asia.
These scrappy predators have a fearsome reputation thanks to a

(15:06):
set of impressive adaptations. For one, honey badgers have developed
a resistance to venomous snakes, neurotoxins, and approximately a quarter
of their diet consists of snakes. But a love of
honey also compels these aptly named animals to raid beehives. Fortunately,
their thick skin safeguards them against the hundreds of ensuing stings.

(15:31):
The honey badger's hunting prowess pays off even for other
species jackals and gashocks. In search of a tasty morsel
may follow a honey badger as it looks for a meal.
Adaptations in the honey badger's nervous system block the effects
of neural toxins delivered by snakes like the cape cobra

(15:53):
and black mamba that the animals snack on. Honey badger's
claws more than an inch long, can rip open beehives,
dead animals, and prey such as lizards. The creatures also
use their keratin talons to dig dens and carve out
space in abandoned burrows. The formidable mammals release a mustard

(16:15):
like substance from their anal glands, which can be used
in self defense and to mark their home range beneath
their fur. Honey badger's skin is thick and loose, able
to withstand snake bites and beastings, and difficult for predators
like African wild dogs and hyenas to hang on to.

(16:39):
Tongan scrub fowl. The gargantuan feet of birds in the
megapode family, like the Tongan scrub fowl may look clumsy,
but they are actually a superpower. These stocky, chicken sized
birds found throughout Australia. Australasia typically roost in forests, unsun
drenched beaches, or near geothermal areas, and they use their

(17:03):
feet to build sandy burrows or mound nests from rotting
vegetation after they hatch. Tonguan scrub fowl chicks use their
feet to claw themselves from their burrows, which can reach
depths of five and a half feet megapode literally translate
to large foot. The birds have evolved sharp claws to

(17:24):
help them dig through mud and vegetation. III Madagascar has
its share of charismatic primates like the rambunctious ring tailed lever,
but the island's most captivating characters may be the eerie
I E Eyes. The scraggly animals, including this sixteen year

(17:46):
old baby, have piercing eyes, a long tail, and coarse fur.
Iis Earth's largest nocturnal primates. Are so visually off putting
that some people consider them bad luck and kill them
on site, which is put the animal's population in jeopardy. Fortunately,
efforts to rehabilitate their image are underway, with conservationists and

(18:07):
farmers helping local communities recognize that iiyes are effective predators
of leaf minor larvae that are ravaging clove trees along
the East coast. Iiys slender middle fingers are equipped with
a unique ball and socket joint for increased range of motion.

(18:28):
They tap these fingers on tree trunks to locate insect
tunnels and scoop out beetle larvae, a method called percussive foraging.
Unlike other nocturnal primates, iies are genetically adapted to see
a wider spectrum of the color blue, which helps them
spot appetizing blue flowers in twilight conditions. Hairy ironfish the

(18:53):
witching lure, an appendage on the head, twitches and twirls
like a worm or small fish in the water to
draw in unsuspecting prey, a behavior known as aggressive mimicry.
Frogfish are clumsy swimmers and often clamor over rocks and
coral using their bulky fins, which consist of specialized muscle arrangements.

(19:14):
This behavior caused some early naturalists to misclassify the animals
as amphibians. Since the late sixteen hundreds, when a Dutch
sea captain and his crew discovered a frogfish among a
shipwrecked debris, the vaguely toad like creatures have earned their
place among the ocean's oddities when nineteenth century naturalists described

(19:36):
them as the most grotesque of all fishes. Found in
tropical and subtropical waters around the world, most frogfish are
covered in a web of stink, stringy spinules that help
them blend in among algae coated rocks and coral while
hunting prey. What may seem like a quick bite to
the frogfish can be a wind for the ecosystem. In

(19:58):
the Caribbean, they eat lions fish introduced to species whose
ravenous appetites threaten the health of economically important ecosystems like
coral reefs. Indian flying fox bats can thank author Bram
Stoker and various tales of vampire folklore for their reputation
as blood sucking monsters. The Indian flying foxes intimidating size.

(20:22):
They're one of the biggest bat species. Dark eyes, sharp teeth,
and propensity to congregate in large numbers don't help their image.
Found in forests and marshes throughout South Asia extending into Mayanmar,
these bats roost in huge colonies, some exceeding a thousand individuals,
with a diet of mostly fruits and nectar. They're also

(20:43):
one of the world's largest natural pollinators. Fully spread, the
wings of Indian flying foxes can stretch over five feet.
By comparison, common vampire bats in Central and South America
have a wingspand that can reach fifteen inches. As fruit eaters,
these bats rely on sight and smell sharpened over years

(21:04):
of evolution, rather than echo location, which tends to be
used by insectivors. The next article from National Geographic History magazine.
Temple of hat Shepsut rock of ages Nestled in an
alcove of rock. Pharaoh hot Shepsut's temple had many functions.

(21:25):
It has survived the ravages of time and hot Shepsut's
successor's attempts to erase her name from history. By David
Rahul Ribaut. Chepsut ruled Egypt, first as co regent and
then as pharaoh for a total of twenty one years.
She was one of the few women in Egyptian history
to retain power for so long. She reigned during one

(21:47):
of Egypt's ancient Egypt's Golden Ages, when Egypt was awash
with wealth. Hapshetsud built monumental works all over the nation,
a myriad of temples and shrines for giant obelism at
the Temple of Amun at Karnak, and countless artworks celebrating
her accomplishments and immortalizing her prayers, but many of these

(22:08):
works were defaced and destroyed after her death. In fourteen
fifty eight BC, Hodschepsitt's successor, Tutmost the Third, one of
Egypt's greatest pharaohs, led the charge to erase her name
from history. Her likeness was chiseled away from monuments, and
her statues and works destroyed noneth Nevertheless, following a major

(22:28):
twentieth century reconstruction, Hodschepsit's massive temple at Diirel dir el
Bahari Arabic for Northern Monastery still stands today, sheltered beneath
the red rocks of a cliff face. This architectural wonder
captivated the ancient world with its beauty and is a
testament to Hutchepsut's glory and her devotion to the gods.

(22:54):
Hotchepsitt was born around fifteen o seven b C to
Tutmost the First and his great royal worfy wife, Queen
ah Fosa. A. Chepsuit would marry her half brother and
heir to the throne Tutmos the second, becoming his great
royal wife. Tutmos the Second died young, leaving behind a
two year old son born to a secondary wife as

(23:15):
his heir. The child was too young to rule, so
hot Sheepsit, the boy's aunt and stepmother, ruled for him.
Hutchepsut gradually transformed her role from queen regent to outright pharoh.
When Tutmos the third was older, he became her second
in command, but he would not rule outright as pharaoh
until after her death around fourteen fifty eight p c.

(23:38):
His reign would be glorious, filled with triumphs all his own,
but while he ruled, a systematic campaign attempted to erase
Pharaoh hut Shepsu. Millennia later, archaeologists would put the pieces
back together to restore hut Shepsut's place in history. In
the New Kingdom period, hut Shepsuit was one of the
first pharaohs who built the so called Tep of millions

(24:00):
of years on the western bank of the Nile, opposite
the city of Thebes modern day Luxor. Five centuries earlier
in Middle Kingdom times, Pharaoh Menuhotep the second had erected
the first mortuary temple here. Perhaps inspired by men to Hotep,
hot Chepsut installed her massive complex at the foot of

(24:21):
a cliff, a site now known as Deir el Bahri.
This sacred location had been consecrated to the goddess hathor
protector of the dead, and an important funerary deity in Thebes.
In these temples, pharaohs would be worshiped after the deaths,
their mummies meanwhile rested elsewhere, entombed in private underground chambers

(24:43):
in the Valley of the Kings. As well as being
used for royal funerals, the temples of millions of years
were the focus for other rituals, some related to royalty,
others to deities, including the Theban god Amun and the sun
god Ray. Of all the mortuary temples, Hut Shepsits would
become the main cult structure of the Theban complex. Construction

(25:06):
lasted some fifteen years and was carried out under the
supervision of Sinenmut, a high official and favorite of the pharaoh.
The imposing building incorporated ramps and courtyards like the nearby
Mantuhotep temple, but Senenmut introduced a number of innovations to
create a building of unequaled magnificence. It came to be

(25:30):
known as zaser Zasuro Holy of Holies. Most New Kingdom
commemorative temples featured chambers separated by monumental gateways pylons, like
those that could be seen at Luxor and Karnak. Hotchepsit's temple,
on the other hand, was a ranged around a central
ramp or causeway, spread along this causeway at different heights

(25:53):
or three large courtyards. Today, the walls and courtyards of
Hotchepsits Temple might look somewhat plain. In her time, they
would have been filled with vibrant color, surrounded by lush
gardens and pools, and richly decorated with sculpture and reliefs.
Each decorative element conveyed a religious or political message in
keeping with the ceremonial use of the building. The layout

(26:17):
of Hutshepsut's temple was carefully designed. Most obviously, it was
positioned to align perfectly with the temple of amun At
Karnak on the opposite bank of the Nile. In addition,
the precise east west alignment of its central causeway mirrored
the daily paiath of the Sun or according to the
beliefs of the day, the path of the god ray.

(26:38):
The temple was also aligned with the Valley of the Kings,
which lies to the west. This royal necropolis had been
inaugurated by Hutshepsut's father, Tutmost, the first in fact toomb
k V twenty, the burial place of Hutshepsut and Tutmost.
The first lies in a straight line from the Sanctuary
of Amun, the innermost chamber of huts Sheepsu's temple. Some

(27:02):
experts have suggested that the original plan was to connect
kV twenty with the Sanctuary of Amun via a tunnel
through the interposing cliff, but the poor quality of the
rock prevented it. Stone balustrades flanked the central ramp, guarded
by imposing stone lions. A colonnade separates the first and
second courtyards to highlight Hutschepsut's piety and devotion, reliefs depict

(27:27):
two massive obelisks on their way to the temple of
almun Et Karnak. Around the second courtyard are famous reliefs
showing a trading expedition that Htshepsut sent to the land
of Punt believed to be located on the Horn of Africa.
Mr trees were brought back from this expedition and planted
in the temple complex. Their resin would later be used

(27:50):
in temple rituals. Other reliefs represent the divine birth of
huts Sheepsu, who, according tradition, had been begotten by the
god amun Rey. This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine
for to Day. Your reader, husband Marsha, thank you for listening.
Keep on listening and have a great day.