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Good morning. Jane Pauley is off this weekend. I'm Steve Hartman, and this is Sunday morning. Summer is supposed to be about relaxation and fun. For many of us, that means travel or visiting familiar places, getting away from work and school.
and of course, getting back to nature. But as David Pogue will tell us, something's lurking in the great outdoors.
something that might make you think twice about that walk in the woods. Or even. Your own backyard. I'm six foot five, I'm covered in tattoos, and here I am. terrified.
of this little thing that you can literally put on the end of a pin. Don't look now, but there's a new tick-borne disease in the headlines that makes people allergic to meat. Even going to a barbecue, even smelling No more Cooking bacon in the morning for us in the house. Ahead on Sunday morning, coming to terms with Alpha Gal syndrome. With hit songs and sold-out tours, few country stars can match Kenny Chesney's success.
Just last year, he added another milestone to his remarkable career. with his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. For our summer song, Kenny Chesney talks with Lee Cowan. Yeah. Here and now, nowhere else in this world and now.
He's the first to say he's no Jimmy Buffett. Yeah. Kenny Chesney can turn anything into a beach party. with nothing but a guitar and his voice. I feel more comfortable in my skin up there in front of 60,000 people than I do.
In my everyday life, Sun Tanto. We're chasing the sun with country's kiddie chest. Late on Sunday morning. Martha Teischner this morning spends some time outdoors with Robin Wall Kimmerer. botanist, professor, and best selling author.
With Chris Livesay, we'll pay a house call. Ticasa Verdi. a home for retired musicians in Italy. Tracy Smith visits with origami master Robert Lang. busy refolding his artworks and rebuilding a legacy lost in last year's LA fires.
And I'll visit yet another of the empty rooms left behind by children killed in school shootings. All that and more. on this Sunday morning for the 23rd of August 2026. We'll be back after this. Yeah.
To begin this morning, David Pogue. On the trail of some tiny pests that can cause big problems for us humans. Really big problems. Yeah. In 1975, a movie filmed in Martha's Vineyard made people afraid to go into the water.
Today, a real animal in Martha's Vineyard is making people afraid to go outside. We stay in the apartment. You just don't know. These things are out there. It's gotten to the point now that grandparents are not allowing their grandchildren to come visit them.
It's gone from a 20-foot great white shark. to uh apex predator that can fit on the tip of a needle. We're talking about ticks. They've been giving us diseases for centuries, including Lyme disease, babesiosis, ehlichiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. But this year is remarkable.
The number of tick bites is soaring this year. Emergency room visits for bites are the highest in nearly a decade as ticks spread into new parts of the country. And to top it off, a new horror has hit the headlines: Alpha Gal Syndrome. One tick bite can make you violently allergic to meat. beef, pork, veal, lamb, venison, rabbit?
everything but seafood and poultry. About five hours after having a hamburger on the beach at Midnight, I wake up and I have a rash, I have some swelling in my hands, and I'm in gastric distress. Adriana Stemola lives on Martha's Vineyard, where AlphaGal is an epidemic. Her children got it too, and her husband. He had a burger and at midnight woke up and shot out of bed.
And pretty quickly, he was like, My mouth feels weird, my lips are swelling. And I just said, get in the Yeah. Alpha-Gal reactions can include anaphylactic shock, where your airways close up.
Some people become allergic to dairy products too. or even to the aroma of meat.
Some react to things that contain animal products, like marshmallows, Doritos, and medicine capsules. How does it affect going to To a friend's house for dinner. I feel that really deeply. It kind of hurts to say, oh, I can't eat that, because I miss that kind of connection where I'm eating food that other people. Love.
You know, I grew up here in the woods, in the water, in the fields. All of that. And I don't go there anymore. I stay. On asphalt and concrete.
Ben DeForest is the owner of the Red Cat Kitchen. where he's accommodated the Martha's Vineyard epidemic by creating a special menu. When you go out to eat, you don't necessarily feel like explaining your entire medical history to a stranger who's taking your order. And what is this dish? It's halibut.
Parsley, bull's blood, which is. It's not actually blood from a bull. No, it's beets.
Okay. Um. And it's just very simple. And very good. Man.
Alpha Gal syndrome was discovered in the mid to late 2000s. Sam Telford is a professor of infectious disease and global health at Tufts University. From my understanding, it's hitting the Northeast, but this is not brand new to the country. Not at all. And in fact, it's very interesting that it has risen to national prominence because of places like the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard, when in fact people in the South and Midwest have been suffering this all along.
You know, the Southerners are like, well, you know, If you don't have a dog with ticks on it, what kind of dog is that?
So, what is new then?
Well, you know, it's awareness now. Alpha Gal syndrome, do you guys all know what this is? Alpha Gal syndrome. The Alpha Gal syndrome. Alpha Gal may sound like a sorority president.
but it's short for Galactose Alpha One Three Galactose. a sugar molecule carried by the lone star tick. and Lone Star ticks are surging, especially in the Northeast. All ticks come in small, medium, and large sizes. The small size is called a larva, medium size is called a nymph, and then there's the adult male and female.
Tom Mather, aka the tick guy, is a professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island. He gave me socks that had been treated with a chemical called permethrin. Yeah. Kill them or just repel them? Do I still Tuck my pants into my socks?
I would. Yeah. Where are the ticks? They're going to be on the underside of those leaves. It's larva season in Rhode Island.
Yeah, do you see how it looks fuzzy brown? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a bomb. That's a larval bomb. A tick bomb is a teeming cluster of larvae ready to explode onto any passing disturbance, like these flags.
Dude, you were dragging for about eight seconds. Yeah. Oh my god. There's so many. And these are which type do we think?
These are lone star nymphs. These are the alpha gal ones? Yeah. So literally, I am potentially one inch away. from never being able to eat meat again.
Possibly. It's a potential. To me, there's a secondary meaning of a white flag. Yeah. Any discussion of tick diseases eventually brings up deer.
We have a tick problem because we have a deer problem. The white-tailed deer are the primary breeding ground. four Lone Star Ticks as well as Deer Tick. And we have a very large, sort of out-of-control deer population here. Aubrey Stamola Ryan treats tickbite patients at Martha's Vineyard Hospital and in her own clinic.
One deer can feed. 1500 ticks per season. And one tick can lay 2,000 eggs, one female tick.
So that's 3 million ticks that are coming off of one deer. We don't want to eradicate deer. We just want to bring them down to a level that is something that the colonists had. According to Sam Telford, the public's aversion to killing deer may be changing. I've worked on trying to get communities to reduce their deer for 40 years now.
and Lyme disease wasn't enough. But now this new syndrome, AlphaGal syndrome, is stimulating communities to say enough is enough. Reducing deer will reduce ticks and so let's go there.
Now, not every tick bite gives you a disease, and not everyone with AlphaGal develops the meat allergy. And even if you do, it may not be a life sentence. Over time, it seems like it can get better. You can slowly introduce meat products back in. To your diet over time, if you don't get bitten by ticks again?
Aubrey Stamola Ryan has advice along those lines. Spraying your skin, spraying your clothes. When you come inside, take your clothes off and throw them in the dryer for 10 minutes on high, and check yourself for ticks twice a day. In particular, Tom Mather suggests checking wherever tight clothing might stop a moving tick. Your waistband is a good spot.
Certain cracks and crevices of your groin. Women, their bra straps will stop ticks as well. As for Adriana Stamola, life goes on. Without meat, And with a philosophical outlook. We've done a lot of damage raising, especially cattle for our consumption.
So I think maybe it will make us talk about the way we eat meat, how much we eat meat, the way that we raise it. Where do we fit in the greater sort of food chain? and reminding us that we are part of a larger system. Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car?
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Some gifts are simply loved. The right one becomes part of who someone is. Schiffman's Jewelers. Extraordinary jewelry and timepieces. in Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
A master of origami needs creativity. steady hands and extraordinary patience. Robert Lang has all three and then some. as Tracy Smith discovered. Robert Lang folds life out of paper.
He started when he was six.
Now, at 65, Lang is responsible for more than 800 designs. Let's fold and pull the top down. He's recognized worldwide as one of today's masters of origami. Are you comfortable being an origami rock star? Yeah, I guess I've been that long enough that I've gotten used to it.
Yeah, who knows? Any one of those might be the person who eclipses Robert Lang in the origami world. Origami originated in Japan more than three centuries ago.
So this is where you do all of your work. This is the place. But Lang led its renaissance in the 1990s. This is still one uncut square. He showed off some of his proudest patterns to Sunday morning's Serena Altshule back in 2007 at his California home.
It's the first prototype of a series. By then, a physicist who once designed lasers for NASA designed a full-time origami career, combining math and art to create magic. Is it still magical? Absolutely. Creating something that seems impossible than making it possible.
Yeah. Tonight's Southern California going up in flames. But the unthinkable became possible at the start of 2025. When the Eaton fires hit Altadena, Both the home he shared with his wife Diane and the studio that Paper built were destroyed. As you were videotaping your studio going up in flames, what was going through your mind?
One was.
Okay, this is real. It's not storybook. My life is going to be completely different. This is the hacienda, Diane, there. Here's the living room.
There used to be shelves on either side with all sorts of origami artwork. Here's a view of the remains of the studio. Not much there. Gone. Hundreds of pieces that took hundreds of hours.
It's weird to say I lost all my bugs, but all my insects and arthropods, which are some of my favorites, some of the most complex, and are very hard to fold. This cuckoo clock from 1987 was the only finished figure of his that he saved. Everything I had envisioned for the next. stage of my life is going to be a completely different plan. If I'd had more time or if I'd given myself more time, there's a lot more.
I wish. I'd shoved, you know, crammed into the back of the car somehow. including his prized koi, which exhibited through 15 museums over five years, before they met their end. It had just come back. from a show in Denmark.
koi made from handmade paper. Um Pull up some pot. Hand made by Richard Alexander and Michael Lafosse of Origami Doe Studios in Haverhill, Massachusetts. To have them make paper is like having Antonio Stradivari make a violin.
So, when they'd heard the Langs lost everything, they were one of the first to pitch in. It is a family.
So we were very glad to help. It was almost embarrassing. That there was such an outpouring of support. Do you need paper? Do you need books?
Which practically brought me to tears. Because you know, we're going to people are not rich, and that people were willing to. help in all these different ways was was really moving. With Lange's help, they made new paper. Using ashes collected from his studio, from exactly the spot where the COI exhibit was stored.
And at his temporary home in Altadena, Lang began folding a new wall of Koi.
So it's your work and your studio. embedded in the paper. Indeed, the ash in here is all that's left of the old studio. Vertical Pond 3 made its first splash earlier this year at Descanzo Gardens near Altadena. What's it like to see them as they're meant to be?
It's great. You know, I love to see them swimming around. And is the culmination of this vision of bringing origami. bringing a little bit of my studio back to life. The fish are swimming again in San Diego's Mingay International Museum until November.
I probably won't keep this. And in his makeshift workspace and temporary home, he and his wife Diane are finding beauty among the ruins of their lives. After all, origami teaches patience, and Robert Lang, who made fish rise from the ashes, will continue to rebuild, one crease at a time. At the end of the day, What does origami do for Robert Lang? Origami keeps my mind going.
and it tickles a lot of the pleasure centers. There's just something really satisfying about solving a really hard problem. And that the solution results in something beautiful. I long to have that experience again. What happens to musicians after the applause ends?
Chris Livesay shows us how, in one remarkable community, They keep making music. In the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, his singers are always pining for a way home. Here in Milan, they finally found it. These are the residents of Casa Verdi, musicians who have spent their lives chasing harmony.
Now, in their final movement, they've reached it again. together. Verdi, one of history's most successful composers, used his fortune to create this rest home more than a century ago. By the end of his life, his operas had made him one of the richest musicians in the world. He created it for artists not favored by fortune, who gave the world music and asked only to keep hearing it.
The only requirement for living here is that you must have been a professional musician. Residents pay what they can, some pay nothing at all. This place is so unique. The idea of Casa Verde was absolutely I mean, absolutely the best. Mary Jo Lindsay, an American soprano from Arkansas, carried that spirit to Europe's grandest stages.
She trained at a time when many doors were closed to opera singers from the deep south. But in Europe, talent opened them. Her voice filled Italy's most storied theaters, and now. It fills these halls again. The suffering that he went through, he lost his wife and two children in just the span of two years.
So many of his operas have this theme of death and overcoming tragedy. And now, here we are in this rest home that he made for his fellow musicians who weren't as fortunate. As he was in it. Absolutely. I was very, very touched and I still am.
I feel a sort of a mission. to make sure that what Verdi dreamed of remains what he dreamed of. that we remind, that remember that we have something to give back. I can't free alone. Bye-bye, and ya, she's living that mission one student at a time.
I'm not sure if I can do it. But not everyone who lives here is at the end of their careers. Yeah. Casa Verde offers free room and board to some young musicians to help pass along the wisdom of the residents in both music and life. Yeah.
Okay, so most people in their twenties They're not thinking about retirement. They're not thinking about dying. Instead, you're here in a rest home surrounded by What could be your future? I mean, do you ever reflect on that? Actually, no, because I always forget this is a.
house for no a rest uh resting house for musicians. I think this name needs to not even correct because no one is resting on this house on this. For the young, it's a masterclass in what music really means. For the old proof that the show must go on. If you remember that we have something to give back.
not just to take. One of the most beautiful things about Casa Verdi is that down every hallway, everywhere you turn, you constantly hear people practicing music. When Verdi built it, he wanted it to outlive both him and his operas. That was more than 120 years ago. He designed every detail himself, and in a way, he never left.
His final resting place is this courtyard. It's a luxury to live here, one that Roberto Rozzi, the president of Casa Verdi himself, can't ever enjoy as a resident. Only musicians need apply. When you look around and you see just the flourishing of life that exists here, does that ever make you jealous? Would you want to live here if you could?
Yes. Very was an exceptional person. out of any imagination. An example For everybody. It was fantastic.
The generosity on his part, he was very clear about what he wanted. It wasn't just like throwing some money in there and hope you do okay. He was very precise about what he wanted. It's very important for us to keep up. For me, it's been like realizing a dream.
Verdi's final composition, not an opera. but a home where the last note never fades and every ending is a duet. Back to school is busy enough. The last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder. Whether you're moving into a dorm, your first apartment, or just getting organized for the semester, Wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place.
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As you may have seen last year here on Sunday morning, Photographer Lou Bope and I spent years documenting the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. This week marks one year since the shooting at the Annunciation School in Minneapolis. Another reminder that our project is far from over. In South Minneapolis, a second-floor bedroom remains much as it was. A Boy's Life.
Frozen in time. He's not with us the way we want him to be. But this is the best we have. Yeah. The room they save.
belonged to Fletcher Merkel. Jesse and Molly's eight-year-old son. Why not pack up the room? Why keep it like it is? It's one of the most personal monuments to who he was as a person.
If the room's not his I feel like that. memory like I won't feel it the same way. Fletcher Markle was one of two Annunciation students killed. when a gunman fired randomly into the parish church. Fletcher's room, now another silent echo of this uniquely American nightmare.
Uh Over the years, I have been in many of these bedrooms. Still photographer Lou Bope and I visited eight of them for the Netflix short documentary All the Empty Rooms. The film won an Academy Award last March. But that night was not a culmination. Lou and I have decided to continue documenting these bedrooms.
For any parents who are interested, for as long as America's school shooting epidemic persists. We know these rooms are sacred spaces.
so parents can keep the pictures for themselves if they want. Or Share them with the world. I want people to Maybe have a tiny glimpse of like what if that was me. And it's really important to me that people learn about him and know who he was. Bird.
Like in the beginning it was bugs and animals. Constant energy. His hair was like the definition of who who he was. out Lou found evidence of that whirlwind just inside the bedroom door. Fletcher got those shoes three weeks before he died.
and they were already worn through. Yeah. Same with his blanket. The corner where he found comfort. Loved to threads.
His room also reveals what he liked most. Legos and buffaloes. Plants and Packers. Friends, of course. and for some strange reason this old bowling trophy he found in the neighbor's trash.
Fletcher also kept a journal. The page on the left details his plan to steal cookies from the jar downstairs. complete with a boast at the bottom. This plan was successful. Oh, so he pulled that off.
Apparently. And the Merkels say that's how Fletcher lives on. through the fun memories and the poignant reminders. What do you think if all of America can stand in his room? Would that change anything?
Yeah. How so? They have to feel it. As a human you have to say this can't happen to anybody else. Yeah.
To that end. Let me show you one last set of pictures. Fletcher was a Cub Scout, which means at meetings he pledged aloud. On my honor I will do my duty to God and my country. The question is.
When will his country Reciprocate. She's the only one. Oh, who is? understands what gets me She thinks My tractor's sexy Kenny Chesney shot to country music stardom singing about kicking back. having fun, and living life to the fullest.
But as Lee Cowan discovered, there's a lot more to Kenny Chesney than that. Just as the sun was going down in the heart of old Key West, Florida. A self-described pirate. rode his rust-ravage bike to this restaurant to meet a friend. There's your buddy.
A friend, we just happened to be in the middle of interviewing. She said, come in. That's the thing about country music's Kenny Chesney. You want to come in? Down here.
He's not really a superstar. He's just another laid-back local. We know a lot of the same people. Yeah. He collects characters like seashells.
He met David Wegman at Ivan's Stress-Free Bar down in the British Virgin Islands. Above the bar was written in shells: no shirt, no shoes, no problem. That's right. And they'll shoot. No shirt.
And no problem. That song helped make Chesney one of the biggest touring acts around.
Nowhere else in this world and now Almost every summer. You turn your stadiums. into beach parties. And the entertainer of the year is Kenny Chesney. the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year Award.
Kenny Chesney! You want it? four years in a row. And in October of last year, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Sun tenth.
Tickling sails. A career-topping accomplishment that he credits to taking that tropical turn in his career. You know what's crazy is I had an 18-song Greatest Hits album. And nobody knew who I was. What do you mean?
They knew the songs. But I wasn't comfortable with my skin yet. I didn't know who I was supposed to be as an artist yet. I would go do shows and they would go, oh yeah, that's the guy that sings that song. She thinks my tractor's sexy.
And then that's the guy that sings that song. She got it all. When I started being my true authentic self, that's when everything changed. I love it here. He could have taken us to some tiki bar down in the Keys to keep up his tropical brand.
But instead, well, I love the history of it. Hemingway is my favorite rider. He wanted to show us this. The room where Hemingway worked on to have and have not and Green Hills of Africa. The space, it's almost like a sacred place.
Yeah, do you feel it? Yeah, I feel it. I spent so much almost two weeks straight on the bow of my boat in the Virgin Islands reading those books. Which might explain why he came down here to work on his first book. Released this past November.
This book forced me the pause. For all his love of the islands, he writes it was his own mom who first realized that. he may have drifted too far from his East Tennessee roots. She wanted her 12-year-old boy back in ways and he was gone. Gone, gone, gone.
She had a hard time. finding you kind of hard had a hard time reaching you. And it It hit me. a little bit, but I was so already so addicted to Seeking and adventure, and all of it, and all these new things happening in my life, that I dismissed it. Uh He kept going, kept touring, kept writing.
Move all luck. Let go. until a concert in Indianapolis back in 2009. Never stare within a king. We talk about kind of hitting a wall.
And you started a big one. crying on stage and he didn't know what was going on. In that moment, I was so exhausted and numb to all of it. That it wasn't making me happy, I wasn't creating the same way, I wasn't connecting to the audience, and I went. It just it just hit me and yeah.
It took sports. to get me out of that funk. I feel that chill, smell that fresh cut grass. He grew up playing baseball and football, loving every inning, every down.
So when a song called The Boys of Fall crossed his path, He didn't only record it. He began interviewing coaches and players about sports and life and turned it into a documentary. For ESPN. This thing about football being a team game, life is a team game, buddy. It's the big game.
I needed Joe Namath. I needed Bill Parcells. And I sat in Bobby Bowden's living room and he talked to me like a deacon at a Baptist church. Oh, I woke up one day and I went, I'm back. No one waste No, he's the one doing pregame pep talks back today.
Yeah. Hold it. Like here at Sphere in Las Vegas. Many on his team have been with him for decades. There's confidence and familiarity.
I had to sit on the bus and think about what I'm getting ready to go do. Yeah. It went. It would be yeah, I I don't do well with that. Truck stops fading little maps.
That's New York to LA He put on the kind of show his fans expected. A kaleidoscope of sand, sunsets, and songs. And we met him the next morning. He was still buzzing. I can see there and I can see there.
In the first couple of nights, I caught myself singing a song. I was like, Wow, this is so cool. And then I've forgotten the words to a song that I actually wrote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to kill or make me crazy.
There it is. On stage with him this night was Grace Pott. A singer-songwriter he recruited for a duet, even though country really wasn't her thing. The two are now? Lifelong friends.
You know, there's people who have always seen him as just the iconic, you know, statue of David of country music. I'm gonna go to Florence. I stand beside her. There's just so much more underneath it that's more interesting than the sculpture itself, you know? I've read a lot of books.
Wrote a few songs, looked at my life where it's going, where it's going. Indeed, the off-stage Kenny Chesney is a more complicated guy, more thoughtful guy, even a little shy, if you can believe it. That's the East Tennessee part that will always remain. Evil as he's chasing sunsets. To the way that I see it when I sit in that old blue chair.
It takes a certain amount of ego to be up there on stage and to do what I do. Yeah. but I try really hard to leave that person up there. I can't live with that person every day. And I don't want that person in my life every day.
But I'm really glad to meet him when I go back up there. At California Closets, we design for the little things. Take this moment of a woman getting dressed for an early meeting while her husband's still asleep. Yeah. Ah, sorry.
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but Robin Wall Kimmerer approaches the subject with a perspective and a style. all her own. She's in conversation with Martha Teischner. A sweetgrass braid. is meant As an emblem, a marker, a metaphor, if you will, of we are committed.
to braiding Mother Earth's hair, i.e. we are committed. to helping her be at her best. Robin Wald Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass, was published in 2013. Through word of mouth, seven years later, in 2020, it made the New York Times bestsellers list, and except for one week, has been there ever since.
It has sold more than 2 million copies. What I have tried to do is give voice to plants, to give voice to the land, and I found that people were listening. That felt for me like this deep obligation to continue to raise my voice, to advocate on their behalf. Look at that color combination. I love how the golden rod matches the center of the New England asters.
I have used these for a long time as Plant. teachers to really think about complementary colors and for me complementary knowledge systems of Western scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge. Mother Grandmother, PhD botanist. This seasonal pattern of knowledge deployment around the landscape created this abundance of university professor, member of the citizen Potawatomi Nation. Kimmerer's worldview is the sum of all those pieces of who she is.
On her own land outside Syracuse, New York. She takes me. Oh, they're delicious. On an ecological show and tell. We call her Grandmother Maple or Nokmus Inonotech.
She's launched a campaign she calls Plant, Baby, Plant. her effort to get people to plant trees. She's probably Two two hundred and fifty. years old and She's of course not going to be here forever, and so I planted her a companion. This is a a basswood or a linden tree.
Why not another maple? Maples are probably going to be Leaving us. as climate chaos ensues. And so I wanted the replacement tree to be someone who could withstand the rigors of climate change. Notice she refers to Grandmother Maple.
and to the replacement tree as some one Not some thing. To me, they're persons, they're photosynthetic beings. They're my relatives. This wigwasamic is the biggest tree here and so that means that this is perhaps one of the oldest trees here, right? And you know the Elders we know are good storytellers, right?
She passes on the story of this old paper birch to a group of indigenous kids in northern Michigan. What was it like when this elder was young like you are? Um What? Hot. Hot, it was hot.
And it was bright sun because that's what this needed in order to grow. And so that tells us that the forest's always changing, right? Because today it's cool and shady. Kimmerer wants to start them young, showing respect for nature. Take one of these nice little leaves.
and gratitude for the earth's gifts. Here, along the shore of Lake Michigan last August. She greets the water. Joy of connection, the joy of being alive. Kimmerer tries to pair events involving Native communities with her book events, like this one A Day Later in Traverse City, Michigan.
She sells out theatres. The way that I like to talk about economic thinking grounded in indigenous Principles, as I understand them, and natural law, is this notion of the gift. Let's take water. I'm gonna sell water. How can you sell what you don't own?
Well, hello capitalism. To me that that that is um that is corruption corruption. Um these are these are our gifts. This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. Which is what her recent book, The Service Berry, is about.
It's sold more than 400,000 copies since it came out at the end of 2024. I have not earned. paid for nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness That reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet Here they are.
They go by many names, among them Saskatoons, Juneberries. service berries They look like fat blueberries, but taste more like apples. It's got the perfect name. Surface fairy. Many traditional societies have Have operated with gift economies where you say, Well, what do I have in abundance?
It's too much for me. I'm going to share it. With my neighbors. There you go, sir. The currency of a gift economy isn't money.
It isn't a commodity. It's gratitude. It's respect and reciprocity. The more you give it, the more it multiplies, the more lives it it it supports. Her message may sound like a religion, and her writing like poetry.
But what Robin Walkimmerer really wants is that her readers don't miss her point. I wanted to be sure that what that they understood the radical proposition which is baked into these stories, which is to model ourselves after the way that nature works. You look like a nice, sweet, grey haired grandmother, Um not dangerous to anybody. But w what you've written in just conventional Western thought. is incredibly subversive.
Well I mean it to be so because what is Dangerous. to life on the planet, to our well-being at this moment, is the status quo, is business as usual of taking, taking, taking from the earth without ever giving back. Last month. David Martin reported on Stars and Stripes, the venerable newspaper for America's military community. The paper is part of the Department of Defense, which has charged it with publishing, quote, Woke distractions.
Where did you take that to me? I really don't know what they were referring to because they didn't explain it. On Friday, Editor-in-Chief Eric Slavin and reporter Lara Cordy. were fired. They said the Pentagon gave insubordination as the cause, citing their interviews with Sunday Morning.
Are you worried that talking to me could... threaten your job. I hope not. But, you know, clearly it's a risk that I'm willing to take. In a statement Friday, Cordy said.
These firings are a shame for the institution and service members who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free an independent press. I'm Steve Hartman. Thanks for listening. And please join us once again.
next Sunday morning. This episode was brought to you by Aliam's Travel Insurance. Making travel memories is better with peace of mind. Protect as many scrapbook-worthy trips as you want to take this year with an all-trips annual plan. Learn more at AliamstravelInsurance.com.
The critically acclaimed series Colin from Accounts returns for a brand new season. You proposed to me drunk out of nowhere at my best friend's wedding. I was being spontaneous. You didn't have a ring. It was just, it was embarrassing.
All episodes streaming September 10th. Still, will they? Won't they? Who cares? But what is it?
We're together. We are together, Lee. We're friends, Lee together. With a dog. Colin from Accounts, new season, streaming September 10th, only on Paramount Plus.
Yeah.
