Hi everyone, it's Anne.

There's an experience that I think a lot of us have these days, although I'm not sure we talk about it all that much.

You're outside somewhere with green things growing.

Flowers, maybe. You notice a butterfly or a bee on one of them, and you feel that quick burst of pleasure,

followed by a stab of anxiety. Shouldn't there be more bees? How's the monarch population doing this year?

And where are all the other butterflies?

Thoughts like these are unavoidable today. Climate change is hard on all of us,

but especially on the world's smallest species. And so the challenge is to live with that

anxiety about the future of the natural world, but still find ways to take joy and even refuge in it.

Today, unto the best of our knowledge,

love in the time of extinction.

From WPR.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne's Train Champs, and it's the season for insects.

Mosquitoes and deerflies, wasps and bees and hornets and everything else we love to... SWAT.

I'm actually not crazy about killing bugs, and I try not to.

But that doesn't mean I want to live with them in my house or on my porch.

Maybe though, I'm too quick to judge. If we just get exposed to things sometimes, we can discover that they're not actually scary at all,

that they're actually these strange but so elegant, delicate, and absolutely beautiful creatures that are living all around us.

This is Heather Swan, author, poet, and longtime friend of the show, also a beekeeper.

And she's here in my backyard hoping to reintroduce us to some mutual acquaintances.

I'll tell you a story. It was one of those summer afternoons where a thunderstorm comes and drops a bunch of rain and then moves on really quickly.

...