Weird Little Guys

Natural Causes is a podcast about the politics and practicalities of going outside in a world on fire, hosted by Dr. James Stout. It approaches the outdoors, conservation, agriculture, food sovereignty, and Indigenous land rights as interconnected issues. We want to combine unflinching journalism with unabashed advocacy for the land we all share, and welcome everyone into the outdoors and the fight for our public lands. Our shared wild spaces are under threat like never before, from climate change, the Trump administration, and extractive capitalism. Now, more than ever, we need serious journalism and serious solidarity that engages people with the struggle to protect these spaces for generations to come. New episodes weekly.

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In 1904, men who believed in 'race science' put hundreds of people in a human zoo at the St. Louis world's fair. Today, those same racist, pseudoscientific views persist, and the men who hold them demand to be taken seriously in the name of academic freedom.

Sources & Further Reading:

Newkirk, Pamela (2015). Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. Amistad.

Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press.

McCray, Carrie Allen (2012). Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof. University of South Carolina Press.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of a Man. Penguin Books.

Nathan Cofnas’ Doctoral Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bd78170f-1131-47ef-af8d-7a3bb2ef41d0

https://jannalangholz.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/17-worlds-fair-deaths/

https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/specimen-days-human-zoos-at-the-1904-worlds-fair/

https://web.archive.org/web/20070610034510/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Bontoc.html

https://ashp.cuny.edu/documentaries-list/savage-acts-wars-fairs-and-empire-1898-1904/#

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/how-i-became-the-scapegoat-in-the-jason-arday-affair-dc134088

https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc/

https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/2007046/ghent-university-under-fire-for-appointing-us-philosopher-with-ties-to-scientific-racism

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/reptiles-with-a-conscience-the-coevolution-of-religious-and-moral-doctrine-by-nathan-cofnas-pp-523-ulster-institute-for-social-research-press-london-2012-3000-isbn-9780956881151-paperback/4005A8AD3C5B21AC0A82A38D5D97BBF8

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/the-man-who-was-caged-in-a-zoo

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/the-scandal-at-the-zoo.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevmrjd9lj1o

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/largest-human-zoo-world-history
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In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was finally convicted of murder for killing Medgar Evers in 1963. He died in prison, his story is over. But history repeats itself.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.

Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.

Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.

Snipe, Tracy (2021). The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story. Africa World Press.

Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.

Nossiter, Adam (1994). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/719/1345/1438234/

https://shadowproof.com/2018/03/07/documents-reveal-police-targeting-anti-racists-charlottesville/
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/4404359-DHS-Bulletin-Aug-9/

https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2007/may/30/dredging-up-the-past-why-mississippians-must-tell/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/politics/dhs-inquiry-immigration-protests-minnesota.html

https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-minneapolis-news-agents-claim-alberto-castaeda-mondragn-hit-wall-shattered-skull-triggers-tension-hospital/18514566/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72504545/ge-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/
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James talks with Molly Conger about the javelina and their installable appetite for golf courses.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65x0RvhJNa8
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/nov/05/conservation.sciencenews
https://zoologicalbulletin.de/BzB_Volumes/Volume_56_1_2/049_054_BzB56_1_2_Moraves_Jiri_and_B%C3%B6hme_Wolfgang.pdf
https://www.azgfd.com/wildlife-conservation/living-with-wildlife/living-with-javelina/
https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/8e8abbf4-6775-4575-9a10-fedacb7cb2c1
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In 1964, crosses burned all over Mississippi, signaling a return of the Ku Klux Klan. Their big debut was perfectly timed as a show of support for Byron de la Beckwith.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Sims, Patsy (1978). Stein & Day.

Nelson, Stanley (2016). Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s. Louisiana State University Press.

Dirks, Annelieke. “Between Threat and Reality: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Emergence of Armed Self-Defense in Clarksdale and Natchez, Mississippi, 1960-1965.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 71–98.

Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.

Hamm, Mark (2017). The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Columbia University Press

Biondi, K., and J. Curtis. 2018. “From Structural to Stochastic Violence.” Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.

Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.

Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.

Payne, Charles (1995). I’ve Got The Light of Freedom. University of California Press.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/accused-in-1964-mississippi-race-slayings-wrote-hate-letter-1.668898
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