Science Friday - Elephantquakes and Margaret Atwood. August 13, 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

A Stomp, A Roar, An Elephantquake? An adult African elephant, the largest land animal on Earth, can weigh as much as two tons. Their activities—walking, playing, even bellowing—might shake the ground beneath them. But research in the journal Current Biology finds that the signals from an elephant’s walk are capable of traveling as far as three kilometers, while a roaring bull, or male elephant, might be detectable a full six kilometers away with just seismological monitoring tools. Biologist Beth Mortimer and seismologist Tarje Nissen-Meyer, both at the University of Oxford and co-authors of the new research, describe the signals they captured in the ground and explain how a network of seismological sensors might help us study elephants from a distance, and even protect endangered elephants from poaching.      Margaret Atwood On The Science Behind ‘Oryx And Crake’ Author Margaret Atwood’s book, Oryx and Crake is set in a post-pandemic world and a genetically engineered dystopian future. In this archival interview, recorded in April 2004, Atwood says science is “a tool for expressing and perfecting human desires—and sometimes it’s a tool for counteracting human fears.” She talks about how she pulls inspiration for her ‘speculative fiction’ from news headlines, and discusses how her entomologist father influenced her writing.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Seismologists listen to the rumblings of the ground to understand what's happening deep within the earth. But some scientists are using these seismological tools to observe ground shakes created by elephants. Yeah. In this next conversation from 2018, I spoke with two scientists to find out what these elephant quakes could tell us about these animals. I want you to listen to a sound and guess what it is. Yeah, it does sound like a heartbeat, but it is not. It is the seismic sound of an elephant walking, the vibrations in the earth. Let me play it again.

Really cool, huh? That African elephant is the largest land animal still alive today, and more importantly for this story, they are the heaviest. They weigh up to two tons. So it might not surprise you to learn that we can listen to them in the shaking of the ground. Research in the journal Current Biology reports that earthquake monitor. tools are capable not just of detecting elephants from distances up to six kilometers away, but also distinguishing what kind of behavior is being heard, whether the elephant is walking quickly or even just roaring. And the researchers speculate perhaps this information could help us

monitor elephants at risk of poaching, among other conservation efforts. Here to talk with me about that is a Beth Mortimer, Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology and University of Oxford and UK. Welcome, Beth. Hi, thank you for having me on the show. And Taryei Nissomeyer, Associate Professor of Geophysics, also at the University of Oxford. Welcome, Taryei. Thanks very much. You're welcome. Beth, what sent you looking for elephant's seismology in the first place? So I'm interested in animals that use vibrations through materials for information. So some of my previous research has looked at spiders and how they use vibration through the spider web. So I have obviously looked at the other end of the size spectrum, but for the elephant, their

spider web is basically the savannah terrain. So it was interested in what the role that their physical environment plays on how they can use these vibrations for information. Tariya, have you ever tried to measure the seismological signal of an animal before? No, certainly not consciously. So this is certainly something that we did deliberately now. Seismic instruments essentially measure anything, you can imagine. But in this study, what we really tried to do is focus on this mammal behavior. How difficult is it to do this?

How difficult. Describe the equipment you're using, how you set it up and how it works. So the recording of vibrations works very much like what we're doing right now, talking to a microphone. So we just sort of put the ear to the ground and then listen through the waves as they proper get through the substrate. So wherever the source comes from, could be an earthquake, could be a volcano, an impact, a nuclear bomb, or in this case, an animal, is the art and science of seismology to disentangle

this vibration in terms of where it comes from. All right. I want to play the sound one more time, and then I want to ask both of you to sort of dissect it for me. Let's take one more longer listen. Wow. It sounds to me either like a heartbeat or a motorboat underwater. It does, yes.

So what we did to generate this audio track was using this geophone, which measures the vibration through the ground, basically generates exactly the same as a kind of audio track. But what I had to do for this vibration so that we could hear it is I had to increase the frequency. So the actual pitch is actually a lot lower. So think like really low base, you can feel rather than hear.

And then I also had to amplify this recording as well. So it's modified from its original form, but you can imagine it's the same techniques that you would use to record, say, our voices right now. And that was one single elephant we were listening to?

That was one elephant walking past, which was recorded in the field in Kenya. Now, you found that these signals can travel three or even six kilometers, those that up to five miles away from the elephant itself? Is this something a human could feel just standing there? So humans do have a sense of vibration.

We're not very good at using it, though. So it's a lot better to use these types of geophones than to use our senses itself. But it doesn't mean that humans couldn't be taught to use these types of vibrations. In terms of the long-distance scale that you're talking about there, what we were able to do with these recordings, is basically get an idea for how much force the elephant was generating,

and we put these into then computer models. So that quote of kind of six kilometers was using computer models, so under favorable conditions. So by that, I mean kind of low noise, and on a sandy terrain, these high-force behaviors, such as walking around, could be able to detect and be able to discriminate up to that kind of range. Now, Tari, it's something I've found really,

interesting and surprising is that vocalizations like that, you know, really loud male elephant roar we always hear, they could travel further than the mass of animals walking, do? Why is that? So this is something

that is not entirely explained, but I guess the main answer is that these sort of very low frequency rumbles coupled really well to the ground. And additionally, the frequency range just propagates quite well into far distances through the substrate that they were looking at.

I would say in general, this is not entirely surprising. Any sort of vibration that happens in any body, such as a large mammal, could in principle couple to the ground and therefore transmit energy. It's just something that we end up disentangling now. Matthew, say in your research that the same kind of signaling might be able to help us detect when, let's say, a bunch of elephants are stampeding, say if they're being harassed by poachers?

Yes, so one of the main aims with this study was to basically use these seismological techniques that are used very widely to investigate some of the earth processes, Tario has talked about, and be able to detect and discriminate different types of vibrations that are generated by wildlife. So you mentioned the stampeding there. So elephants are obviously very well-scentred. suited to this type of monitoring because of their large size. But they're also likely to generate the largest amount of force when they're running.

So really, this technique is going to be best suited for measuring these panic runs that elephants do not do unless they have to. It takes a lot of energy to have a full out run for an elephant. So the idea is we could be able to use this technique to monitor these behaviors, which could be a sign of distress. And perhaps we could use that to help interpret. intervene when there might be some poaching threat. So you just hear them sort of massing and running.

Tari, you know, I have an Apple watch and I put it on my night table at night, and it can detect when I'm walking across the room, just by my tiny, but could we not crowdsource this with, you know, electronic devices, our phones or watches or whatever to make sort of crowdsource all this detection? I think it's a very good point, and it's certainly one that we have thought about and talked about as well. And something like that has been tried in terms of earthquake detection as well. So in terms of wildlife monitoring and sort of a pragmatic approach to deploying to deploying instrumentation in the savannah, I mean, it's a potential avenue,

but I would think, realistically speaking, having hundreds of phones lying around in the savannas might not be sustainable in a long sense. I mean, there are lots of different types. of wildlife walking around and animals are curious too. So I think having instrumentation safely deployed is really crucial. Beth, if you and Tarié and others can hear the elephants' footprints and also them bellowing, could they, the elephants themselves, be signaling to each other? Yes, indeed. So we think that, well, starting with their vocalizations, you mentioned the bellowing there.

and we've talked about these rumbles. These are certainly kind of signals that the elephants are sending out in specific social situations. So they will have a specific type of vocalization for a greeting, for example, or for an alarm signal. So they're certainly communicating with each other using these vocalizations. And obviously part of that will go through the air and part of it goes through the ground. And obviously we're interested in that part that goes through the ground really. understanding how their physical environment plays a role in that. But yes, they're certainly communicating. Could you test that? Could you actually, you know, do your own little footprints

and see if they respond? Absolutely. There have been some excellent studies before that have used seismic recordings, so use these ground-based recordings, and played them back to the elephants. And we know that the elephants respond to these vibrations, and they can even discriminate in terms of who has sent that particular vocalization, so whether it was a known elephant or an elephant that they didn't know. And obviously this is something that needs a lot more study in terms of understanding the sensitivity of the elephants and really starting to look at how that might change

under different noise conditions, for example. You have to prevent myself from humming. I talk to the elephants song from, remember that one? What about other animal besides the elephants? Can we use seismic, you know, to detect and talk to them possibly? So this technique is going to be best suited for animals that generate a large amount of force. So large land mammals, it's possible that we can pick them up. The research that needs to be done is obviously looking at how, not only whether we can detect them,

but whether we can discriminate between, say, antelope versus zebra or looking at different behaviors. So that's certainly the next research project that needs a lot more data to look at that. Tarié, do you ever think, as a geophysicist, you'd be involved in tracking elephants? No, I mean, I've certainly had an interest in animals of all sorts of sizes ever since being a child, like many others. But I guess growing into the field of seismology, you sort of realize that vibrations just happen everywhere in the planet. And of course, it shouldn't prevent us from studying any sort of. vibration rather than just earthquakes. So it's a natural trajectory, I think, that we're taking. That's interesting. Beth Mortimer Research Fellow in Zoology and Taryee Nissenmeier,

Associate Professor of Geophysics, both at the University of Oxford and the UK. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thank you. That earth-shaking news from a conversation in 2018. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. For the rest of the hour, we're revisiting an interview from 2004 with the author Margaret Atwood, known of course for her classic The Handmaid's Tale way before the hit TV show. But for this conversation, we'll talk about her book,

Oryx and Crake, a very different post-apocalyptic story. Let me set the background for this conversation for you that was recorded 17 years ago. You may recall 2004 fell at the tail end of a past pandemic, the SARS outbreak that infected over 8,000 people across 29 countries. In other news that year, in Europe, 10 new countries joined the European Union, making it the largest free trade zone in the world at that time. At April, the beginning of the

baseball season, saw the year the Red Sox won the World Series, breaking their curse after an 86-year drought. Atwood's book, Arix and Craig, was first published in 2003 and was the first book in her Mad Adam trilogy. And in 2016, we'd revisit it as part of our sci-fri book club. And now, my interview with Margaret Atwood. For the rest of the hour, I'm joined by poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, author of over 25 volumes of fiction, non-fiction poetry, including The Handmaid's Tale and Blind Assassin. We turned to her the Booker Prize.

Her latest book, Oryx and Craig, is just out in paperback and is on a short list of nominees for the Orange Prize for Fiction. and if you don't know what the orange prize for fiction is, you put that into a search engine, and they'll tell you it's either awarded for the best short story about citrus fruit growers or to a woman who has written the best full-length novel in English. Margaret Atwood, which one does it? I suspect the latter.

Well, it would be kind of nice if it were the former, isn't it? Give you a ready-made subject. Well, I don't think I need a ready-made subject with you. You certainly have lots of subjects to talk about. What do you? Citrus fruit. would be a challenge. Well, if you picked up the Toronto paper today, a thing I'm sure you're in the habit of doing, you would have seen that we have a science story right on the front page. And what

is it? Remember SARS? Remember that? That was last year at this time. They've now found a marker for it to allow you to tell it apart from ordinary flu very quickly. They just announced that today. It's an immune molecule that turns up in SARS and not so in the flu. And they were able to do that because they whipped around and got samples from all of the SARS patients that were in hospital last year at this time. You speak like you're a science reporter. Well, I'm just giving you a few tips here. Oh, I like that. And your books are certainly, certainly the Handmaid's Tale and now Orcs and Craig are certainly loaded with science in them. I mean, how much research do you have to do for Yeah, not so much the handmaid's tale, I would say that's more the costume design and, you know, design a nation, design and political system.

Right. But this particular one, we accumulated clippings for every little factoid in the book in our big brown research box in the cellar. And we got so many than we actually had to go to two big brown research boxes. So all of the things in the book that people may think are very weird and they may think that I just made them up some of them already existed when I was writing the book

for instance the luminous green rabbit that was made for a magician who wanted to pull a rabbit out of a hat but he wanted the rabbit to glow in the dark so now it does and the spider goat has been up and running in Montreal for some years it makes silk in its milk

very good for bulletproof vests. And a number of the other things have either been made already or people are working very hard to make them. For instance, the pigs that can grow transplantable organs. That would fit in with your previous item. They're working on that. They're still having the rejection problem. But I think the kangaroo lamb might be a hit

because it would make it would make sheep that would burp less and this would reduce don't laugh now this would reduce you're a science reporter you're not supposed to laugh at those things

I'm taking notes go ahead it would reduce the methane being released into the atmosphere and that is a major problem I know that well it is actually and they've got a substance

that you feed to cows orally it's sort of like beano and that has the same effect on cows, but if you could make cows that don't even need this pill, think how good that would be. And there might even be a human application. You know, the poorer condition the cow is in, the more methane releases into the atmosphere. I didn't know that. So maybe we just need to have healthy romping cows. Well, there is something there. And that's why you you say you don't consider yourself to be a science fiction writer because all these things you write about are quite possible and happening.

Well, no, let's just go back a few steps. It's just a question of terminology. And some people call everything that isn't say a Jane Austen-like social novel. They call all those kinds of weird tales, science fiction. and some of people make a division between science fiction, which is the Flash Gordon, other planet, Star Trek, Star Wars, kind of thing, and speculative fiction, which is Moriard, 1984, could happen here type of fiction. And I write the latter kind could happen, probably part of it has happened and might well happen.

Were you influenced by 1984? I read Animal Farm as a child, and I thought it was going to be a fun book, sort of like Wind and the Willows, about happy animals. And I had no idea that it was a political satire. I knew nothing about Stalin and Lenin and all of those goings on. And I just was very upset by it because the horse dies. not only that the horse is horribly betrayed he's going to get made into dog food

and the bad guys win namely the pigs who take over everybody and turn into tyrants so I was quite disturbed by it and then I read 1984 probably a couple years after it came out so it was written in 1948 I think it must have been published in

So just in time for me as a young teenager to read it in high school and be very upset by it, too. Now, you were surrounded by science as a teenager, weren't you? Well, from the moment I was born, really, because my father was an entomologist, and at that time he was a research entomologist with the Canadian government, and he had a little insect research station in northern Quebec, and that's where I spent a lot of time as a child. And my brother, who was an older brother, turned into a scientist. He started as a marine biologist and then became a neurophysiologist

specializing in the synapse. So I strayed off the path. I was always a disappointment. Where did I go wrong, your father? Yeah, he's to shake his head and say, you know, botany really, botany lost a fine botanist in you. But on the other hand, it did not make you afraid of science. You were sensitized in an early age. No, I'm not afraid of science. So you can write about it.

Yeah. Well, yes, and scientists, of course, there's no more skeptical person than a scientist about claims of other scientists. So I also learned to view these miracle cures and astonishing new things. You ask immediately, how did they do the study? Mm-hmm. You know, exactly what were they counting? will this work, does it really work, and what are the side effects of it going to be?

On the other hand, Orix and Craig is really, it deals with dystopia, you know, which is technology goes nutty, dehumanizing everybody. Well, technology never goes nutty by itself. You know, it doesn't sit in a room going nutty yet. Not yet. It's people who...

Yeah. maybe we shouldn't use that term go nutty maybe we should say people who don't always color inside the lines with the science that they have made but any kind of science

is really just a tool for expressing and perfecting human desires and sometimes it's a tool for counteracting human fears for instance we work very hard at ultimate weapons because we're afraid the other side might

might also get ultimate weapons and use them on us. So that's the fear side. And the hope, wish, and desire side is things like fixing your heart with stem cells. Right. You know, we wouldn't be doing those experiments unless we wanted to fix our hearts. Okay. So that's part of the human dream to live a long time. Along with that goes, be young and beautiful all the time as well.

And a whole other wish list. and a lot of the science that is done is aimed towards perfecting that list. Now, the residue is aimed towards satisfying our curiosity, which is also a very human thing. So is the bleak future in Oryx and Craig? Is that a warning, or is that a prediction? Well, let us just say that this is a fun-filled joke-packed adventure novel about the possible downfall of the human race. There's lots of jokes.

Yeah, it is. And you have quite a sense of humor. I remember from the Kentucky Authors Forum when we talked last time, I learned what a great sense of humor you have. And it's in the book. It's there in the book. There you go.

So we can say bleak times, but lots of times have been bleak. And one of the things we can do as human beings is we make jokes and we laugh. I suspect that parrots and occasionally even cats and dogs do the same thing secretly, but we certainly do it. And while you're laughing, you're still alive,

let's just put it that way. Back to your question, yes. Dystopia, possible future. Well, as I said, all of the factoids have their backup in the research box, but on the other hand, nobody can predict the future, because there are too many variables. I think for the first time in human history, we see where we might go.

We can say far enough ahead into the future to know that we can't go on the way we've been going forever without inventing possibly a lot of new and different things. And the other question is, will we have the political will to do that? And you've never been shy about expressing politics? Well, in the larger sense, that's true. It doesn't usually come down to who you should vote for.

But like everybody else, I'm very fond of making up speeches that I wish some leader would give. I know. I wish some leader would say, I know that we should not be snarled up in oil in the Middle East, and therefore I'm going to devote a lot of time in energy to alternate sources of energy right here in North America. Is that a topic for a book? I think it should be a topic for, well, I'm sure people are writing them. I can name too right now. You can look them up on your search engine.

Type in waste into oil. And if you don't get it that way, type in waste into oil butterball turkey. Because one of these plants is up and running near the butterball turkey farm, and it's recycling the parts of the butterball turkeys. You don't want to eat into oil. It's cooking them into oil. Yeah, we've talked about that. Well, not that one, particularly.

That's a good one. We have to look into that. We've talked about the oil that comes out of the McDonald's deep fat fryer is being recycled. Oh, that's last year. I'm going to have you on more often so you can point this in the right direction. Yeah, on this one, you can put in not only parts of butterball turkeys that you don't want, but you can put in any carbon-based form. So, you know, the mob,

can recycle people it wants to anything except metal shirt buttons they come out a little separate drawer at the end.

But at the end you get water and oil and it's a nice light grade oil very usable. Think of how good that would be. And the other thing

you should look into is gas hydrates because there's enough gas hydrates frozen on the earth today to run the economy

as it now stands for 170. 17,000 years. What do you think about hydrogen? I don't know much about hydrogen. I'd say that it's not there yet by any means. But should

we not get there in, say, in 30 years, we would be well advised to have developed these other things first. This is Science Friday from WNYC studios. In case you're just joining us, you're listening to a 2004 conversation with author

Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale and Orix and Craig. Lots of people would like to talk to you. Susan and Oswego, New York. Hi, Susan. Hi, how you doing? Hi. Go ahead.

Okay, well, first of all, I'm just thrilled to be able to speak with you because your books have had a profound effect on me as well as a bunch of people that I know. Now, my question is, is obviously you've been a highly steeped in science family whatnot, but trying to look at your books as a whole. Do you think that this is a progression, your latest novel, and also your characters from previous novels? I mean, like Cordelia and Katzai, for example, she could have a book all to herself. What do you think about maybe reinventing some old characters and bringing them back? Well, you know what they is to say?

Art is long, life is short. Yeah. If I had, you know, have some of these guys get to work on my heart with their stem cells. Maybe I'll live another hundred years and be able to do all of those things. They all don't think they haven't occurred to me. I don't know about this book being a progressionist. It's the first one that's had a male narrator who got the whole story all to himself. So whether you think of that as a progression or not, I'm not sure.

It's certainly the most disastrous novel I've written. Would that be a progression? I'll spend when I look at it, I guess. You put men and disaster together in two sentences. Oh, would I make such a link? Oh, come now. There's a gambling going on in here. Absolutely. Thanks for calling.

Thank you. So we can't expect another science-related book coming out next? We don't know what to expect next because, as I said, nobody can predict the future. Yeah, okay. I read between those lines. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. In case you're just joining us, you're listening to a 2004 conversation with author Margaret Atwood about her post-apocalyptic book, Oryx and Craig, and the science and technology in her writing. And we jump back in, talking more with a prolific author about her writing process. Let me ask you why you came so late to the table. Let me put it a different way with having a science-based book like this. Why I came so late to the table?

Well, I've had some mini-fictions before that time, which you can find sprinkled. For instance, there's a little book called Good Bones and Simple Murders. And some of those are, they're very, very small. They're a couple of pages long, but one of them is narrated by intelligent insects from another planet. And one of them called Hardball is a mini-average. disaster story. So I haven't been slacking off. I've just been painting on a small canvas in this area. So did you just think this was the right time to do this? Or just do something that was bubbling in your mind? You write the books you can't avoid writing, especially if you're a congenitally lazy person

such as myself. Oh, think how much fun it would be actually not to write a book. I can't think like that. You're thinking. I can't remember the newspaper columnist who said who retired recently from the Times. I can't think of his name. I'm having a senior moment. He said, I love the act of having written, but not the act of writing. Yes, well, then it was time for him to retire. But I've been like that all my life. So is this not your swan song, then?

Oh, no, no, by any means. No, but I think my point about the novel is that if you absolutely can't avoid it and you know that you're going to be thinking about it all the time unless you do it. Then you have to do it. So you just then sit down and do it. Then you do it, and sometimes you then throw it out. That is one good thing about writing books. You get a second chance.

It's not like sort of messing up the grand aria of the opera where everybody's watching you. You can write in secret and then say, this is truly bad. And now I shall put it in the waste paper basket. Let's go to the phones. Bobby in Tallahassee. Hi, welcome to Science Friday, Bobby. Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me. Fine. Go ahead.

Besides your parents and your brother, were there anything else that influenced you into writing? Well, they didn't really influence the writing. I came to that on my own, although the family always read books. So they were the science end. My dad was a scientist. My brother was one. And everybody else in the family except my aunt, maybe here's the influence. my aunt wrote Sunday school stories

so she was the writer and I think she was an early encourager of mine when I was in high school and I should mention also my high school English teacher his name was Bessie B. Billings and Bessie Billings

when I was 16 was encouraging to me whereas Florence P. Smedley the one from the year before, when asked by a documentary maker whether I had shown any promise, she actually told the truth. And she said, not in my class.

Refreshing honesty. So I don't know how it happened. It was the 50s. It was Canada. You wouldn't expect such a thing to happen, becoming a writer then, but I just started doing it. Do you only write fiction?

I write poetry, and I write non-fiction. I do quite a lot of writing for sometimes newspapers and sometimes magazines. And I write film scripts from time to time. I've never written a play. Okay, Bobby? Yes. Okay, thank you for calling.

You're welcome. Have a good day. You too. You too. Let's see if we can get a few more phone calls in. Let's go to Chris in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Hi, Chris. Hi, thanks for taking my call.

When I worked in a car factory, I read Hand. maid's tail and now I'm having trouble hearing the exact title of Margaret's current book on my car radio. It sounds like it works in something as in Tolkien, you know, so what's the same title? Let me spell it for you. Orix, O-R-Y-X and Craig, C-R-A-K-E. Does that help, Chris? And this is a paperback original?

It's a paperback. The hardback came out last year. Margaret, can you tell us the genesis of how you came up with that name for the book. With the title. There are two characters in the book. Orix is a female character and Craig is a male character. And when the book opens, it opens in the middle of events. You're not seeing either of them.

You're seeing the guy who's telling us the story. And he started life as Jimmy. and Craig was his best friend and Orix is a girl they both met on the internet. And when the book opens, which is, as I said, in the middle of events, oryx and Craig are both dead. But they're continuing to occupy Jimmy's mind. Jimmy's living in a tree. And you'll be happy to know that in the future there will be duct tape.

and with the duct tape he's made himself a platform in the tree and there are no other human beings like himself in view but there are some other people like people who have earlier been designed by craik and they have a lot of improvements they're genetically engineered they're genetically engineered to be better than we For instance, they've got built-in sunblock, that would be a plus.

They've got built-in mosquito repellent, another plus. They're completely vegetarian, and they can eat grass and leaves, unlike us. So they've been modified in the direction of the rabbit as to their digestive systems. But best of all, they will never have any sexual jealousy because, unlike us, we're serially monogamous. they are seasonal, like lots of other animals and fish and birds. And to make things even more clear, when they're in season, parts of them turn blue. Think how useful that would be. There will never be any more, no means yes.

There will never be any more I'm washing my hair, and I'll be washing it again next Friday. but mind you these people will never write Othello they'll never write Shakespeare's sonnets they'll never write Wuthering Heights because they can't write think of what an improvement that would be

what an improvement and another and another thing they'll never do is live very long you've given them a definite lifespan they'll never get old they'll never get old think of it as a plus they just topple over at the age of 35 but they haven't found that out yet because none of them are 35.

Why such limited people, or they're called Crakers in the book? They're not really people in this. Well, they're limited in Crake designed them to avoid the problems that we have as a species. So they're not unhappy over all of the things that we ourselves get unhappy about. We get unhappy over limited resources. well they don't need a lot of resources. We get unhappy about falling in love with people who don't fall in love with us.

That will never happen to them. So Craig has taken all the ambiguity, all the choices that we have to make, all the things that drive us nuts out of these people. All of the things that drive us nuts, he's tried to deal with them. Now, we're not sure that he has succeeded, but he did his best.

He was unable to get rid of dreams. They seem very hardwired. You've probably seen your dog dreaming. That's the part where it kicks its legs and howls when it's asleep. He could not get rid of music. That seems to be very deep in us. And he may have been unable to get rid of ultimately theology of some kind because we are a species that asks questions

and he couldn't get rid of the desire to ask questions. And sooner or later, we're going to ask, where did we come from? Did he get rid of love and beauty? He got, oh no, he made the beauty more beautiful. These people are very beautiful people and they're very loving and kind and affectionate. So, no, those qualities are still there.

They even like Jimmy, who is not like them at all and is actually having quite a few challenges because he's falling apart. Yeah. But they're very kind to him. Yeah. David in San Jose. Hi, David.

Hi, it's my first time on your show, and always enjoyed your show, and missed out what? I enjoyed your book. And I just wanted to quickly know, is it going to be made into a movie like The Handmaids Tale, which was also a great book and a great movie. Well, thank you. We've been doing movie talk. You know movie talk. Movie talk goes on before movies actually happen. And in order to make this a movie of any interest whatsoever, you would have to make a movie. it quite well. And you would have to, because otherwise it would be a strange-looking person hopping around in the shrubs.

Well, maybe you talk to Peter Jackson then. Well, that's a possibility. But you would have to do it. You would really have to put a lot of thought into it, I do believe. Would you allow Hollywood to take this on or a smaller filmmaker? Hollywood isn't always bad. You know, and people say Hollywood, and you go, Shaw, Corp. throw up your hands, roll your eyes.

But, you know, Hollywood isn't always bad. In fact, Hollywood has done some great movies. And with any movie, you have to keep in mind that you can have the best director, the best script writer, the best actors, the best everything, and it can still be a horrible movie. Well, can I follow up there. Sorry.

Yeah, you can have a completely unknown person who makes a terrific movie. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, You're listening to a 2004 conversation with author Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale and Orix and Craig. Talking with Margaret Atwood, go ahead, David. Well, were you happy with that way Handmaid's Tale was made? Handmaid's Tale was a movie.

Right. And any movie is going to be more literal than a book. I see. Movies can't handle metaphor. I think considering the fact that it was a movie, it was really pretty good. they did change the ending. And they couldn't do the ending that's in the book because it would have meant a whole new cast of characters

and it would have been very puzzling. But I think on the whole, and if you see it now, it actually seems a bit closer to something that might happen than when it came out. It came out in 89, just when the Cold War was ending, and the wall was coming down and everybody thought we were entering

a brave new future in which there would be no further conflict and everything would be wonderful forever. And that hasn't happened. All right, David, thanks for calling. Thank you very much. So who would you have starring in your new movie? Who would I have starring? Oh, you've entered a category of questions I can't answer.

I knew there was something going on in the negotiations. I usually turn to my people who work with me in the office, both of whom are under 30, and they're really up on these things. They've got a lot of opinions. So I say to them, who would you have a story? And they would reel off about 10 names. But I'm not, I don't read movie magazines the way they do. Let's go to, is it Orrin in Ann Arbor?

Yes, it is. Hi, go ahead. Hello, I'd just like to start. This is a great honor, Margaret. I think you're an amazing author. I'm an English teacher, matter of fact, in Michigan here, and I'm teaching a creative writing class, and I'm thinking about having them read orcs and Craig.

I'm wondering what you might be able to say to this crew who is, you know, just starting off and very interested in writing and all that. What kind of thing could you tell them to kind of, I don't know, get them started along the... How old are they? They're, you know, junior, 1718. So they're 1718? Yeah. One page at a time, one foot at a time. don't look down.

Why don't look down? Because you're on a tightrope. Don't look down. Just keep going one page at a time. Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you for that. I'll pass it on.

Thanks for calling. Okay. Of course, goodbye. Bye-bye. You know, in an article in a new scientist magazine, they asked you about, you taught Kafka to engineers in British Columbia. I did.

Why? Hi. Well, I was supposed to be teaching them grammar, right, at 8.30 in the morning. And I thought, how can I teach grammar to engineers in any way that's going to keep them awake at that hour? Plus myself, keep awake. And so I gave them Kafka's parables, which are quite short, and also have puzzles embedded in them. And engineers are problem solvers. So, of course, this idea, this idea. of having a puzzle and a piece of writing appeal to them, and I asked them to write little parables like that that had puzzles in them. So it was a way of getting them to write English sentences,

you know, sentences made of words in the English language on a subject that would appeal to them because if I'd ask them to write my summer vacation or why I love flowers, it was not going to work. I know what I meant, you know. So it actually worked quite well. Yeah, it was something for them to solve, and they could make up puzzles of their own to baffle the other engineers

and they could examine the idea of paradox. Okay. So are you working on something now? I'm always working on something. I knew that was the wrong question to ask you. I knew that. I'm always working on something and I will never tell you what it is. Well, I didn't ask you.

Yes, but I'm just forestalling, even if you did ask me, I'm not going to tell you, because it's a purpose. puzzle. It's a paradox. It's a conundrum. But you always say that what motivates you the right is something in there that has to come out. So something has to come out now? Yes. Yeah. Okay. It does. This is called stonewalling. Well, I know I know from talking with before that you're not the kind of person going to write something once and it comes right out. It takes a while for you to write and rewrite it, correct? I do. Yes. I pour over it.

It's true. Yeah. Well, join the rest of us who have. That's the only thing I think, I mean, my ability to write and your ability to write are on opposite ends of spectrums, but that's the only thing that we share is it takes me forever to write something also. We poor, yes. Thank you very much, Margaret, for taking time to be with us, and good luck to you.

Always, always a pleasure. That conversation with Margaret Atwood was recorded 17 years ago in April of 2004. And you know, you can dive into the dystopia. world of Orocks and Crake by revisiting our sci-fi book club from 2016 and listen to more interviews with Margaret Atwood. It's all up there on our website at sciencefriday.com slash atwood. And if you like traveling back in science history, check out our newsletter series Science Friday Rewind, in which we look back on the decades of discovery, recorded in Science Friday's 30 years of archives. Some wonderful interviews there.

You'll find them at sciencefriday.com slash rewind. And if you missed any part of this program or you would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And of course, you can always say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us the classic way. The address is SciFri at ScienceFriday.com.