Casey Miner

There's an inside joke around KALW News: that when you can’t come up with a conclusion, you should just end your story with, "the future is uncertain." And in a way, that's the theme of Jon Mooallem’s new book. It’s called Wild Ones: A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America. The book looks at three different endangered species – polar bears, Lange's metalmark butterflies, and whooping cranes. But it's less about the animals than the people trying to save them.

Mooallem is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Pop-Up magazine here in San Francisco; he's also appeared on This American Life and the Colbert Report. He spoke with KALW's Casey Miner about how he got started looking at animals – and people. 

JON MOOALLEM: I think it's sort of miraculous that we're doing anything, you know I don't see grizzly bears trying to preserve other species. 

Since 2001, about 2.5 million people have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, at least a third of them more than once. When they return, many veterans need long term physical and mental care. But they often don't get it.

For many of us, ten years can seem like a long time. Things that happened a decade ago feel far away. But for veterans of the Iraq war, and their families, ten years can feel like very little – because the damage wrought by that war is still right there with them.

Andrew Roth is a sound designer who re-creates soundscapes that no longer exist. You can hear his most recent work at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco. The exhibit is called BoomTown, and it’s what San Francisco sounded like in the early 1850s, when the city was known as the Barbary Coast.

Click the audio player above to listen to the story. 

If someone told you they wanted to open a commercial business in a national park, your answer might be obvious—Who wants a McDonalds when you’re out in nature? But it can be more complicated than that.