CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 1:11
Coyotes as neighbors: why they stopped howling and how they raid backyards
Joe and Dan begin with coyotes’ urban savvy—especially the idea that coyotes learn to avoid drawing attention by howling less in populated areas. Joe recounts living with coyotes in Ventura County and the constant tension of admiring them while also losing chickens to them.
- 1:11 – 6:37
The “honey-pot” coyote: tricking a mastiff into breaking the coop
Joe tells a detailed story about his mastiff, Johnny Cash, and how a coyote seemingly manipulated the dog into destroying a smaller pen so the coyote could grab a chicken. The story becomes a springboard into discussing just how strategic and opportunistic coyotes can be.
- 6:37 – 9:34
Animal culture and canid intelligence: wolves, dogs, and coyotes as strategists
Dan frames Joe’s story as an example of “animal culture”—behaviors learned and transmitted between animals. They broaden into canid social intelligence, why wolves were domesticated, and why coyotes may be especially shrewd due to surviving alongside bigger competitors.
- 9:34 – 15:37
How coyotes conquered America: wolf removal, government campaigns, and fission–fusion survival
Dan explains coyotes’ 20th-century expansion as a product of two forces: the removal of wolves (creating an open niche) and government predator-control campaigns. Coyotes respond to pressure by breaking into singles/pairs (“fission mode”), scattering and colonizing new territory.
- 15:37 – 21:36
Urban ecology: coyotes in Los Angeles, rat control, and prey–predator blind spots
Joe and Dan discuss how coyotes persisted in Southern California and how urban predators shape city ecosystems (especially rodents). Joe shares vivid rat stories—from tool use to cannibalism—highlighting how intense “wild” dynamics exist alongside modern human life.
- 21:36 – 30:05
Owls vs. cats: great horned owl predation and the myth of the “wise old owl”
Dan argues that many “missing pet” cases blamed on coyotes are often great horned owls that carry prey away. They explore owl predation footage, stories of cats snatched in public, and how cultural anthropomorphizing (wise owls with glasses) clashes with their real predatory role.
- 30:05 – 50:42
Ravens, dolphins, and consciousness: what “animal minds” can do
Dan tells the story of a raven that learned to trust him and now follows him on walks, ‘conversing’ in vocalizations. This leads into broader reflections on animal communication, dialects (dolphins/orcas), and research suggesting consciousness and culture exist across many species.
- 50:42 – 59:38
Why Dan wrote *Wild New World*: a “big history” from Chicxulub to humans in the Americas
Dan explains the ambition behind the book: a sweeping history of animals and people in North America, inspired in part by big-history approaches like Harari’s. He starts with the post-dinosaur mammal world and builds toward human arrival and the ecological drama that follows.
- 59:38 – 1:03:59
Clovis big-game hunters: fluted points, mammoth kills, and rapid migration
They dig into early American archaeology: Clovis technology and the scale of big-game hunting. Dan describes a striking Arizona mammoth-hunt site and explains how specialized hunting traditions and new point design shaped the earliest pan-continental culture.
- 1:03:59 – 1:21:00
Folsom discovery and America’s deep antiquity (plus the pee break)
After a short break, Dan recounts the 1908 Folsom-site discovery and why it transformed perceptions of American history. The story centers on Charles McJunkin’s find, Jesse Figgins’ excavation, and the decisive evidence: a point embedded in extinct bison bone.
- 1:21:00 – 1:27:35
Weapons, isolation, and the Great Dying: bows arrive late and diseases arrive catastrophically
Joe asks about when archery reached North America, and Dan explains diffusion relatively late compared to the Old World—highlighting long continental isolation. That isolation also meant Native Americans lacked exposure to Eurasian livestock diseases, setting the stage for catastrophic depopulation after European arrival.
- 1:27:35 – 1:36:13
Chaco Canyon: North American “Vatican,” drought collapse, and inequality as an ancient pattern
Dan describes Chaco as a large, organized Southwestern civilization with roads, ceremonies, and a priestly elite—then explores its collapse under drought, resource pressure, and social disparity. Joe connects the dynamics to recurring human behavior around power, privilege, and blame.
- 1:36:13 – 1:53:39
Worldviews collide: kinship ecology vs. herder religion, capitalism, and commodifying wildlife
Dan contrasts Indigenous kinship-based relationships with predators and ecosystems against European traditions shaped by herding, predator eradication, and human exceptionalism. He shares a formative childhood story (his pet chick) to illustrate how the Western worldview teaches animals as expendable, then traces how that worldview fuels the fur trade and market hunting.
- 1:53:39 – 2:04:04
Market hunting disasters and modern correction: passenger pigeons, predator wars, and conservation
They examine how industrial-scale harvest wiped out seemingly inexhaustible wildlife—especially passenger pigeons—and how cultural indifference followed extinction. Dan then pivots to the 20th-century rise of game laws, predator eradication, ecological blowback (ungulate eruptions), and the long road to modern protections like the Endangered Species Act.
- 2:04:04 – 2:14:15
Pronghorns and bison booms: Pleistocene legacies, coyote predation, and Little Ice Age effects
Dan explains pronghorn speed as a relic adaptation to extinct American cheetahs and why fawns remain vulnerable mainly to coyotes. They also explore bison history—modern bison as a smaller form shaped by pressures, and how disease-driven depopulation and climate shifts may have helped fuel bison expansions beyond the Great Plains.
- 2:14:15 – 2:31:21
Audiobook rights, bad reviews, and the Younger Dryas impact debate (Randall Carlson matchup teased)
In the closing stretch, Joe and Dan talk about audiobook production choices and the pitfalls of reviews. They end on the contested Younger Dryas impact theory: Dan emphasizes peer-reviewed consensus and selectivity issues in extinction patterns, while Joe argues multiple factors may have worked together and proposes a future conversation with Randall Carlson.
