If a Badger Dreams
Out There
Willow Belden
4.6 • 608 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2017
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charles Foster has been fascinated with animals for as long as he can remember. He wants to know what makes them tick, how they experience the world, what they dream about.
This curiosity has been all-consuming for Charles since childhood. It's a curiosity that began with a blackbird in a Yorkshire garden, and eventually resulted in a radical experiment -- an attempt to "become" a badger.
On this episode, Brooklyn-based reporter Kaitlyn Schwalje brings us Charles' story. It's a story about obsessive curiosity, and about the surprising things that can happen when you never stop asking questions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors. |
| 0:14.0 | Support for this episode comes from Fjallraven, serving nature for over 50 years, and from Kind, makers of healthy and delicious snacks. If you'd |
| 0:22.8 | like to try some Kind snacks, there's a special offer for out there listeners. You can get a sample |
| 0:27.2 | box with 10 different bars for just $10 with free shipping. That's a $20 value. For details, |
| 0:33.1 | go to kindsnacks.com slash out. |
| 0:39.4 | Have you ever had a question that you had to find the answer to? |
| 0:43.4 | The kind of question that left you so curious you lost sleep over it? |
| 0:47.6 | Like where you stay up late into the night scouring the internet for information? |
| 0:52.2 | Today's episode is about that kind of curiosity, obsessive and all-consuming curiosity. |
| 0:58.6 | It's also about a man who tried to become a wild animal. The man's name is Charles Foster, |
| 1:05.3 | and his story gives us an inside look at what happens when the traditional methods of understanding the world fall short. |
| 1:13.6 | Caitlin Chevalia brings us the story. |
| 1:16.5 | I first saw Charles Foster in a photograph. He was dressed from neck to ankle and corduroy, |
| 1:22.0 | looking very much the part of a university professor. But something in the photograph was out of place. He was curled up |
| 1:30.3 | on the forest floor, lying there, eyes closed, with his head propped up in a pile of green |
| 1:36.3 | moss. Sensing there was a good story behind all this, I started investigating. Who was this Charles Foster? |
| 1:46.0 | And why was he dressed like he was going to dinner, but lying on the ground? |
| 1:50.0 | A quick search led me to more hard to explain images. |
| 1:55.0 | Charles on his hands and knees crouching behind a tree, |
| 1:58.0 | and Charles wading, up to his neck, in a forest stream. |
| 2:05.6 | Finally, a caption started to explain things. |
| 2:08.6 | Charles was in the woods of Devon, England, where he was trying to understand animals |
... |
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