The MeatEater Podcast

Also the author of 1968, The Big Oyster, A World Without Fish.

Also the author of 1968, The Big Oyster, A World Without Fish.

We're here today to talk about Mark's new book, Salmon. And about Salmon in general.

Your book on Salmon... I don't want to say this. I hope people listen to the whole interview. Because I don't want to start out on a sour note. But your book on Salmon winds up...

You provide a pretty dim view on what the future of these creatures is. And you catalog this centuries-long collapse that's ongoing today. This collapse of Salmon stocks and Salmon fisheries around the world where Salmon can be found.

But I find that right away, as I'm starting to go through your book, I notice that you would now and then speak fondly or empathetically of commercial fishermen. And you even give some recipes and talk about cooking Salmon and eating Salmon.

And I got to wondering, if you were writing a book about the collapse of the elephant, how it seems that you would not put elephant recipes in that book.

We're here today to talk about Mark's new book, Salmon. And about Salmon in general.

Your book on Salmon... your book on Salmon winds up... You provide a pretty dim view on what the future of these creatures is.

But I find that right away, as I'm starting to go through your book, I notice that you would now and then speak fondly or empathetically of commercial fishermen. And you even give some recipes and talk about cooking Salmon and eating Salmon.

And the intro at the end of the book has a prologue that starts out with a couple biographies or more like character portraits of a couple different commercial Salmon fishermen. And then you end the prologue by remarking how it's remarkable that we still have a commercial fishery for Salmon. And you say that this isn't a book about overfishing.

It was March of this year so yeah it just came out so you finished it probably a year ago maybe more, I don't remember when you got it done did you I'm sure you were happy to have finished a book just because it's like as a writer making a book regardless of the subject and how you might impact that subject it feels good to finish them right to get them out yeah it's actually my 33rd book and my response to finishing it was to start working on my 34th book

we're here today to talk about Mark's new book, Salmon, and about Salmon in general.

Your book on Salmon, I hate to say, I don't want to say this. I hope people listen to the whole interview because I don't want to start out on a sour note, but your book on Salmon winds up, you provide a pretty dim view on what the future of these creatures is. And you catalog this centuries long collapse that's ongoing today.

It was March of this year.

It's actually my 33rd book and my response to finishing it was to start working on my 34th book.

I think it's early in slouching towards Bethlehem. Um, she talks about a way in which people, and this is, she's writing pre internet.

You know, in Joan Didion's book, she wrote two books about the 60s. One was called The White Album and one was called Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

This is writer Joan Didion and she has a book called slouching toward Bethlehem or maybe it was she has another book called the white album.

I mean he says that no one could conceive of the numbers of animals of many different varieties that they were seeing day after day after day from the prow of this steam vessel, the Omega, that was pushing up to Fort Union.

David Grann was here promoting, he wasn't promoting Killers of the Flower Moon, he was promoting The Wager.

David Graham's latest book The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder.

You know, we've talked a lot about, you know, how No Cunch for Old Men feels like, you know, it's like, feels like a hunting book for only one reason. When he finds that massacre site, he's blood trailing the animal. He completely forgets about the blood trail. Yep.

Cormac McCarthy in no crunch for old men does even say like someone had a nine millimeter Parabellum or whatever.

This is in the good book. The Book of John I believe

This is in the good book. The Book of John I believe um and in now it gets like lumped into scientific term it's called um Lazarus taxon when something disappears from the archaeological record.

Anyone who's, uh, who's had the pleasure, the joy of reading, uh, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, uh, and then all Mark Twain's beautifully written accounts, nonfiction accounts of working on the river boats on the Missouri and Mississippi.

Anyone who's, uh, who's had the pleasure, the joy of reading, uh, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, uh, and then all Mark Twain's beautifully written accounts, nonfiction accounts of working on the river boats on the Missouri and Mississippi.

In Ernest Hemingway's, The Old Man and the Sea, what fish does Santiago battle with before losing it to sharks?

In Ernest Hemingway's, The Old Man and the Sea, what fish does Santiago battle with before losing it to sharks?

Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea in 1952 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for it the following year.

My dad read that book aloud to me as a kid. And I really liked it read aloud to me as a kid.

And like with fishing books, like you look at Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, right? It's about fishing, but it's not. It's about growing old and tenacity and perseverance and how... and the futility of it all.

A friend, a friend of ours, Kurt Meini wrote a phenomenal biography of Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold, his life and work.

there's a writer by the name of Kurt Meini who did like the indisputed ultimate Leopold biography.

I believe it's Aldo Leopold, His Life and Work, something along those lines.

don't read that until you read Sand County Almanac.

In my Buffalo book I talk about a guy, a very pinnacle, like a major player, kind of a major player in Buffalo restoration, the animal recovery of the species.

That's why I went there when I was working on my Buffalo book. I went out there.

our gift chapter at the end of the episode from MeatEater's American History: The Long Hunters

Pre-order MeatEater's American History: The Long Hunters (1761-1775)

His international best-selling book, The Wim Hof Method, has been reprinted in 21 languages.

Have you ever read, did you ever read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera, Milan Kundera?

It has a lot to do with, it's kind of this condemnation of communism. But in The Unbearable Lightness of Being there's a guy and his girlfriend and the writer gets into when a parade goes by.

Like she grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, I think. I think she grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. When she sees a parade, it means something very different. Very different. Very different than when the other person sees a parade.

There's a really good book. Have you guys read Milan Kundera's book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being? It's a good book.

What Doesn't Kill Us. How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength

How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength, which was largely about a feller named Wim Hof.

His international bestselling book, The Wim Hof Method has been reprinted in 21 languages.

But yeah, so I was investigating these charlatan gurus around the world and I was looking in particular about Tibetan Buddhism and like Americans who go to India and Tibet and come back in red robes and the sort of insanity of themselves as enlightened.

I'll tell you one I stole from Charles Portis who wrote True Grit.

Do you know what Charles Portis' novel, True Grit? A guy says... Someone has an injury. I can't remember if he gets bit by a snake. And he says it's swelled up tighter than Dick's hat band.

Coyote America is a biography of the animal, in effect is what it is.

It's an attempt to write a biography of the coyote from its evolution in North America, which goes back to the beginnings of the canid family 5.3 million years ago, through its long roller coaster-like history in America, including about 10,000 years of time when it was revered as a principal deity by the native people of the American West, everywhere that coyotes were found.

And I do a chapter called Old Man America in the book, which takes on that story and relates, in my own prose, four different, what I think are sort of representative old man coyote stories, which are, if one stops to think about it, this is the oldest literature in North America.

So the story, the coyote's biography continues from that through its first encounters with Europeans in the 19th century, people like Lewis and Clark, Mark Twain, John Charles.

And the other book is called Coyote America, a Natural and Supernatural History. And that book comes out about the middle of May.

The book's Coyote America, a Natural and Supernatural History. But I lay out the story in two different places in that book. Why you say coyote and I say coyote.

One of the fascinating consequences of that today is one of the things we've got going on in the Eastern United States is the emergence of an animal called the coy wolf. And it's an intermixture, an interbreeding between coyotes that under persecution by the federal government and state governments over the last 70 or so years have expanded their range out of the West all over North America.