This episode is brought to you by Slack. With Slack, you can bring all your people and

tools together in one place. It's your digital HQ where you can increase productivity,

enable flexibility and automate workflows. Plus, Slack is full of game-changing features

like huddles for quick check-ins or Slack Connect, which helps you connect with partners

inside and outside of your company. Slack, where the future works. Get started at

Slack.com slash DHQ.

I'm John Batchewith, Professor Dan Flores, whose notebook Wild New World tells the epic

story of animals and people in America. First contact from European diary keepers and chronologies

that are important here, 16th, 17th century. And what I learned is that the Europeans were

amazed, flabbergasted, at the range of animals they had no comparable name for or had never

experienced. This was the Eurasian people who came 13,000 years ago, but in those 13,000

year differences, there had been major changes in Europe and in North America for the biosphere

that they're now entering. And at first, Dan, there are quotes, one young man named

Wood. He's amazed. He's overwhelmed. He sees this as awe with awe. Does that go away

quickly or does that remain into the 18th century, that awe of the scale of wildlife?

It remains through a great deal of American history. In part because Europeans bring with

them a knowledge of the old world that goes back to the Greeks and Romans, and in some

cases even farther, they have what's called a great chain of being that enumerates and

illustrates all the creatures that you know as a European. But they have no conception

that there are other grand continents across the oceans. And when they arrive in the

Americas and begin confronting thousands of new birds, new mammals, new reptiles, new

plants that they have no idea about, they are frankly flabbergasted. And they're flabbergasted

...