Podcast
On Being with Krista Tippett
Katy Payne's memoir, Silent Thunder, detailed her experiences studying elephant communication and the moral dilemmas she faced regarding conservation and human-animal conflict. It included reflections on the culling of elephants and the emotional bonds she formed with individual animals.
In my dream, I was surrounded by African elephants on a flat piece of savannah. They were reaching out to me with their trunk, sniffing me the way elephants do. And then the matriarch of the group spo...
— Episode: Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephant...
Episode: Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephants and Whal...
Katy Payne's memoir, Silent Thunder, detailed her experiences studying elephant communication and the moral dilemmas she faced regarding conservation and human-animal conflict. It included reflections on the culling of elephants and the emotional bonds she formed with individual animals.
In my dream, I was surrounded by African elephants on a flat piece of savannah. They were reaching out to me with their trunk, sniffing me the way elephants do. And then the matriarch of the group spoke. You know, I didn't hear her voice, but I heard the words and they were in English because that's what I understand. And she said, we did not reveal this to you so that you would tell other people.
You tell in your book, Silent Thunder, you tell a story about how when you were young, you read the Jungle Book and you were riveted by this password that Mowgli had that allowed him to communicate with the animals.
In her memoir, Silent Thunder, Katie Payne grieved over the selective extermination of several elephants she'd studied intimately in a policy called culling, systematically killing elephant groups in order to control overpopulation.
You know you write in your book, which is part memoir, Silent Thunder, about going home and the conflicting feelings you had.
Episode: [Unedited] Katy Payne with Krista Tippett
Katy Payne discusses her book, "Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants," which details her discovery of elephants' infrasonic communication and her experiences studying them. The book also reflects on her personal journey and spiritual growth through this research.
You tell in your book, Silent Thunder, you tell a story about how when you were young, you read the Jungle Book and you were riveted by this password that Mowgli had that allowed him to communicate with the animals.
In your book, Silent Thunder, in the Presence of Elephants. The situation has only grown a great deal more extreme since that time because elephants have been confined in Southern African savanna areas to spaces not occupied by people and have multiplied their numbers in those areas.
You write in your book, which is part memoir, Silent Thunder, about going home and the conflicting feelings you had.
One of the things that I found when I looked at the park's records on these animals was that they were valued for the weight of their tusks. The animals who'd been called.
So I woke knowing that the elephants had revealed it to me, not that I had discovered something.