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  • Hey, Henry, what should I make my video about tomorrow?

  • Red Eyed tree frogs?

  • All right, good morning Hank. It's Tuesday.

  • So I've been listening a lot to this podcast "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text",

  • in which two scholars of religion read Harry Potter as a sacred text.

  • Regardless of how you feel about religion or Harry Potter, this podcast is just brilliant.

  • Actually, I guess it does help to be interested in Harry Potter.

  • I've always thought those books lend themselves to critical reading,

  • but until listening to this podcast I had no idea how deep they could be.

  • So I really believe, as I wrote in Turtles All The Way Down,

  • that beauty is mostly a matter of attention. Like, what you love matters,

  • but how you love it matters so much more.

  • And listening to "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text" has reminded me that paying

  • sustained careful attention to almost anything can be tremendously rewarding.

  • So, OK. Let's try it with the red-eyed tree frog, which is a tree-dwelling 2 inch long frog with about a five year lifespan

  • that's native to Central America and Southern Mexico.

  • They eat mostly insects and are eaten by a wide variety of animals including snakes, owls, bats, and sometimes alligators.

  • So there are two things I find really fascinating about red-eyed tree frogs.

  • First, they close their eyes when eating because the retraction of their eyes helps them to push food down their throats.

  • Basically, they use their eyes to help them eat.

  • Which is a nice reminder of just how cobbled together life is.

  • We're all working within the confines of our physiology to muddle through,

  • whether that means briefly rendering ourselves blind in order to aid in digestion

  • or using exposure therapy to retrain an overly active fight-or-flight response.

  • The other thing I find fascinating about red-eyed tree frogs is of course the fact that they are super

  • weird-looking and have huge red eyes. Like, their scientific name comes from Greek words meaning beautiful tree nymph.

  • But I would describe them more as bug-eyed frog demons. Experts disagree about the point of their unusual coloration.

  • But we know that during the day red-eyed tree frogs mostly sit on leaves with their eyes closed and their blue striped legs tucked underneath them.

  • Fairly close to perfect camouflage.

  • And then if they sense a predator their red eyes flash open and they stare at the predator before trying to jump away.

  • Now it may be that this response is designed to startle predators,

  • God knows it would scare me.

  • But the red eyes might also be about something else.

  • Like, if the last thing a predator sees before eating you or failing to eat you because you jumped away are red eyes and blue stripes,

  • the next time it's looking for you or for a frog like you, it's gonna look for that bright contrast

  • of red eyes and blue stripes, not for a well camouflaged green lump.

  • So what makes the red-eyed tree frog stand out is also what makes it hard to find.

  • And that seems to me resonant with so much of human life.

  • Like for instance, I am attracted to information that is novel and suprising,

  • even though that kind of information is often not the most useful or accurate.

  • Or when looking for inspiration I often expect

  • thunderclaps or epiphanies or blinding light awakenings,

  • when in truth the insight or comfort I need is often subtler and comes from looking closely and quietly.

  • Like any predator, I listen to what is loud and look at what is bright.

  • And that can make it easy to distract me or mislead me.

  • In short if you're only looking for red eyes, you'll usually miss the red-eyed tree frog.

  • Hank. I'll see you on Friday.

  • PS. If you're interested in this kind of thing, it's how I'm trying to look at the world in my new podcast "The Anthropocene Reviewed".

  • There's a new episode out on Thursday.

  • You can find out more in the doobly-doo below where you can also find out more about "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text",

  • which is so so good!

Hey, Henry, what should I make my video about tomorrow?

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B1 中級

本視頻是關於紅眼樹蛙? (This Video is about Red Eyed Tree Frogs?)

  • 8 0
    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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