Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group
Compelling interviews and incredible tales from Colorado's Western Slope, from the mountains to the desert. Christi Reece and her team hear from the movers, shakers and characters of the Grand Valley and surrounding mountain towns that make the Western Slope the place we all love. You'll learn, you'll laugh, you'll love with the Full Circle!
Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group
Dr. Timothy Winegard - Author - Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group
Christi sits down with Dr. Timothy Winegard, author of The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity. They discuss Tim's books, growing up in Canada, his move to Grand Junction, teaching at Colorado Mesa University, his love of history, and, of course, hockey.
You can find his books at local booksellers as well as online.
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Speaker 2:The Full Circle podcast, compelling interviews and incredible tales from Colorado's Western Slope, from the mountains to the desert. Christy Reese and her team here from the Movers Shakers, and characters of the Grand Valley and surrounding mountain towns that make the Western slope the place we all love. You'll learn, you'll laugh, you'll love with the full circle. Hi everyone, this is Kristy Reese. Welcome to the Full Circle Podcast. I'm delighted to have as our guest today, Timothy Weininger , associate Professor of History at CMU. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Also, bestselling author. Uh, this is your latest book, the Horse, which I have been reading. It is absolutely fantastic. I love it so much. And I was taking all these notes and ready to, you know, some hard hitting questions, <laugh> , uh, about the horse, but , uh, we have a lot to talk about, so we will get to that. Um , but I kind of wanna start with , uh, your background. Uh , you're Canadian. You grew up in a small town. I did . In Ontario. We were just talking about that. Tell us a little bit about your, your , uh, childhood up there.
Speaker 3:Um, so I was, I'm from a little town outside of Sarnia , Ontario called Brights Grove Ontario. And if you're familiar with golf , um, Mike Weir , the Canadian who won the Masters is from my little town. He's our, he's our claim to fame of Nice , of Brights Grove , Ontario. He's
Speaker 2:A hero there.
Speaker 3:<laugh> , he certainly looked at the local park is , it's Mike Weir Park, obviously. Um, so I grew up just hockey was my life. Yeah. Growing up, I learned how to skate roughly the same time I learned how to walk. So kind of one, one and a half . There's, my dad made a , we had a big backyard and he made a rink every year in the backyard. And , um, I learned to skate and walk basically at the same time. There's pictures of me literally just in diapers. In diapers and skatess. I love that. Uh , with a stick bombing around the backyard rink, probably about, you know, two and a half years old when that picture was taken
Speaker 2:In the middle of winter. Oh,
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. <laugh> . Um, so, I mean, I'm so thankful for my, my parents and they're my heroes. Um, I had a great childhood and I was surrounded by love and curiosity and music and , um, stories, and I'm, you know, I got to meet all my grandparents and even my great-grandparents. Wow. Um, and my great-grandpa fought in the first and second World wars for Canada and my grandpa in the Second World War. So I got to listen to their stories of kid . So I also served nine years in the , the Canadian Army. It was something I wanted to do since I was very little. Um , but I wanted to be a hockey player. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 2:Was your dad a hockey player?
Speaker 3:No, my, my dad was a basketball player and a football, a football player. He played university football back home, and my sisters were both, they played university basketball back in Canada, but I mean, I , I don't know what it was like every other Canadian boy. I just wanted to be Wayne Gretzky and play hockey. Yeah . Um , and I did play a very high level hockey , junior hockey back home in the OHL and , uh, suffered a shoulder injury that kind of ended my career when I was 18. Um, and then obviously went to school and got my undergrad and my master's from the Royal Military College of Canada, which is essentially the equivalent of the US Army War College. And then was in the military for the Army for nine years and did my PhD at the University of Oxford in , in England. While I was still in the Army, I was attached to Oh , wow . Attached to the British Army, actually, like NATO countries attached officers to various forces. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . So I did my doctorate, my PhD at, at Oxford while I was attached to the British Army. And then , um, after that I was teaching in the indigenous studies department at a university back home in Canada, London, Ontario. And how I got here is actually very <laugh> . Interesting.
Speaker 2:It is a great story. Yeah . Yeah. You followed a , a Grand Junction gal?
Speaker 3:I did continue . The Horse is my sixth book. And , uh, the mosquito before this, my fifth, so I was actually actually researching for my fourth book at the US Archives in Washington dc and I left the archives and I was walking past what was then the Verizon Center , uh, with the Washington Capitals play. And , uh, it was about 10 minutes into the first period, I think. So I offered some dude five bucks for a ticket.
Speaker 2:Right . Might as well go watch some hockey course
Speaker 3:Haggled with him and sat down and I was two seats in from the stairs. And the , the end of the row was occupied by a beautiful girl from Grand Junction, Colorado, who was there for a , a work conference. And we studied,
Speaker 2:Was she attending the hockey game by herself? Yes. Okay . And she's
Speaker 3:A big hockey fan,
Speaker 2:So you already were like, okay, this is my kind of gal .
Speaker 3:Yep . She was by herself. She's a big hockey fan. Uh , she paid full price for Hi her , her ticket though, which is a rookie miss , a rookie move. Um, so we started chatting, and I think we both knew right then that this was, I don't know, fate or Yoda intervened. And the force , um, worked in our favor and we had a long distance relationship for a year. Um, and she had a son from a previous marriage, so she couldn't move out of Grand Jun or Mesa County because of the custody. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> and the , the , the , the dad getting every other weekend. So she said, if you wanted to be with me, I have to move to Grand Junction, Colorado. And I had been to Colorado twice before, and I said, where the hell is Grand Junction? Never heard of Colorado. So I, I , uh, I moved here and I guess the rest is history. And Ben Affleck will play me in the movie. But , um, so ironically, I'm not a , he's ,
Speaker 2:He's too old,
Speaker 3:You know , I'm 47. He's probably only a little bit older than I am. Uh , okay. Tom Hardy. Uh , yeah, there you go. I have a man crush on Tom Hardy, so we will get him. Um, the ironic part is I'm not a big Alexander Kin fan. Um, I think he's a one trick pony, and he is a top of the circle one time around a power play, and he scores tons of gold . Sure. But , uh, so ironically, because we met at a Washington Capitals game on our Christmas tree where people put stars or whatever else , uh, up there, we have Alexandra Ovechkin on the top of our Christmas tree
Speaker 2:On the top of your Christmas tree to commemorate your meeting.
Speaker 3:Yes. But I make sure that I put Yoda right beside him, so he can't be outdone, but yeah . So kin occupies the top place <laugh>.
Speaker 2:So you moved to Grand Junction and , uh, and then you look into CMU and what possible jobs are here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was, it was kind of a bold move because I, I had a , a job back home as a professor teaching, as I said, in the indigenous studies or in American Native Studies Department , um, back home at the university I actually did my undergrad at, which is about 45 minutes from, from my hometown . Um, and I, I essentially quit my job and moved here, and I did not have a job at CMU lined up. I walked in and , and handed the, the history program coordinator my CV and says, this is my story. This is who I am. And thankfully, I got a job out of the gates, which is very lucky. Um, but in the meantime, waiting for school to start, I was actually a wildland wildland firefighter. Oh , wow . Um, if you remember the summer 2012, the whole state was on fire pretty much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they needed firefighters. So I was kind of an emergency hire and with my military background that did a quick crash course. And, and I worked as a kind of fires up near rifle silt area all summer. Wow. Um, until school started and then started teaching , uh, at CMU , um, but not hockey yet. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What was the first course that you taught at CMU?
Speaker 3:Um, I think it was just basic, the , the 100 levels , like American, American history and , um, Western siv . And I joked, 'cause the students were kind of like, why is a Canadian teaching me American History <laugh> ? I'm like, well, my 12 years of university and a PhD from Oxford aside from that. So you get the truth. That's why <laugh>
Speaker 2:<laugh> . Perfect. Um, all right . I wanna go back a little bit to your childhood and, and your folks. And obviously they instilled in you a love of sport and , um, your dad was in medicine, right? Yeah,
Speaker 3:My dad still works, actually. He's , uh, how old would he be now? 74. But he's the chief of staff for our county hospital. Um, and he's Emergen an emergency physician. Um, and my mom was , uh, what we would call a Crown attorney. So worked for the, I guess DA essentially would be a DA here. Um, so they just, I mean, I was survived two older sisters, and my parents are both extremely well-rounded and obviously educated, and I was just surrounded by you name it, whether it was, they took us to Europe when we were little. They took us all over, over the us , all over Canada. So exposed to different cultures. Um, we read the classics. We listened to classical music as kids , uh, obviously along with Gordon Lightfoot and the Beatles and Nice. Um, so they just exposed me to so much as a kid, and were just such loving parents who supported whatever it was I wanted to do. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> .
Speaker 2:Um , when you , uh, how did you get interested in history? And I, I know that with your , um, your , uh, dis your , not your descendants, your antecedents Yeah. Uh, in the military, that may have had something to do with it, but when did you really start to develop a , an interest in history classes?
Speaker 3:Uh, as long as I can remember. I remember being in kindergarten and my school didn't have a library because of how small our town was. They had a bookmobile and once a week, like a big trailer would come, that was the library and book mobile would come in the parking lot. And you got, your class got to go for half an hour. So the librarian, and there's so many people when you look back on your life that, you know, are kind of nameless in a way, but inspire you to, to be you and whatever that means for individual people. But the librarian and I, I , her name escapes me now, but she used to put aside kids history books for me and always bring them for me when I was in kindergarten in grade one and two . And a lot of them were war books. They were picture books on Alexander the Grade or the First World War, second World War . So I used to read these books as a kid from, since I could read, and certainly my grandpa and great-grandpa, listening to them as a kid, talk about their stories from the first and second World Wars. That was kind of the catalyst for me, falling in love with history and just being mesmerized by their, you know, they told me very, in a way , stories very stoic how the delivery, especially my great-grandfather, he died when I was, when I was 10. So I got to know him actually really well. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And so he was in the trenches of the First World War at 15 years old and then enlisted again in the second. And then his son, my , my grandpa Weingart enlisted in the Second World War. And he died, I don't know, three years ago when he was 96. My great grandmama lived to be 101. She died when I was 21. So I got to know my ancestors on a real personal level as almost as an adult. Not vivid, faded memory. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> not faded memories when I was three. And I, no, I got to like meet, meet them. And ,
Speaker 2:But you had that inquisitiveness and a love of history that I'm sure you , you really drew those conversations out of them. You wanted to hear the stories. Oh,
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah . The stories of my great grandpapa getting shot in the first World War at 15 and being shipped home. 'cause they found out how old he was and he didn't get home. He got off the boat in Montreal and immediately joined the Canadian Navy and served the rest of the war on awe . Brought the coast of West Africa and got malaria and typhoid and all that . I mean, he had a rough go. And then he enlisted a gate , and then he opened a Ford dealership actually when he got home. And then it's still there. Wineguard Motors in Caledonia, Ontario. Um, and the other thing, again, little things, and I was fascinated by music lyrics as a kid. My , my parents are both very musical, so I grew up playing the piano and playing the guitar and singing alongside my parents and extended family. And I was fascinated by Bob Dylan lyrics, Lennon and McCartney lyrics , um, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, and the way they played with words. It was fascinating to me. And so, it's kind of a funny story, but my writing career actually started because I was a, I was a bit of a turd when I was a kid and would get in trouble a lot. So as a punishment, when I was a little kid, kind of beginning around four or five years old. And, and I did get in trouble enough, <laugh> <laugh> , my parents would make me write stories of what I did, why it's wrong, and what I could do instead of doing that behavior, whether it be hitting my sister in the head with a hockey stick or, you know, <laugh> wrestling with a cat too hard, or, you know, hitting my sister in the head with a golf club or whatever it was. Um, so I would write these stories as a little kid , uh, you know, I shouldn't do this. And this is when some of them are pretty funny about swearing and not swearing. Um, but they saved them all so wonderful. We have a binder full of my original writing, I guess, from kind of four to eight years old of these stories about every time I got in trouble, which was quite frequent. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 2:<affirmative>. Did you ever argue that what you did wasn't wrong?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's one about calling my sister a bad name. And I , and I was adamant that it was, it was totally deserved and that I shouldn't have to write this story. Yeah . So the story was about why I shouldn't have to write the story <laugh> Perfect . Because calling my sister this, this bad word was totally acceptable. Right .
Speaker 2:Was the right thing to do at the time. Well, I , one of the things I love about your book, and I haven't read the Mosquito or your or your other, your , your other books, but I've been reading this one , um, is I love Your etymology. Um, I love that you are talking about the history of the words and how many phrases come from the horse. And I find that fascinating. So you, you have a a I mean, I guess most writers have a good command of the English language, but I I it's so much more than a history book. I really loved the English part of it too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I mean, I , I play the guitar and sing. I can't paint, I can't draw. I have many talents . Tim Art is ask my students, when I draw maps on the , on the whiteboard, I can clear like, what is modern art? That's what that is. Um, but I like to think, I like the way words can paint a picture. And I like how you can play with words in a , in an artistic form. And as a teenager and into my twenties , um, I wrote a lot of poetry and I would write my own songs and sing them and play at the pubs when I was in undergrad and whatever else. So I've always kind had a fascination with words, whether that be, you know, older poets like William Blake or Arthur Mbo or Jim Morrison of the Doors. And as I mentioned, Gordon Lightfoot , Bob Dylan, some of these amazing songwriters in the imagery is, is so powerful. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And I , I , I like to almost write kind of like that. I know there are academic , you know, history books, but there's, I , I'd like to think kind of an artistic quality to the way I write. But the ironic part is 48% of the world speaks in Indo-European language currently. And English is one of those Indo-European languages along with past two and Indian languages, and you name it. And that's because the first people to domesticate horses were Indo Europeans. And they spread their language in DNA across Eurasia. And then with colonization that continued. So we owe this conversation, or the book in itself written in English to horses who helped spread the Indo Indo-European language far and wide, because they were , uh, the first domesticated horses were domesticated by Indo-European peoples on the Caspian step above the Black Sea. So that's why we're speaking English right now, <laugh>.
Speaker 2:So I wanna relate , um, a little bit of your history with the history of the horse. You , um, studied and taught about indigenous peoples in the Americas. Um, which an amazing subject that I have to say that in the times that I've visited Canada, I've been really impressed with the way the Canadians honor the indigenous history there. Uh , I know there's always gonna be arguments about, you know, how things came about and the way they are now. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . But in any case, I really loved , um, what I saw there. Um, I think a lot of people think that the , uh, indigenous peoples in the horse were always here together, but that's not the case.
Speaker 3:No. Well, thank you for that. About Canada. My grandma actually is from the Sixth Nations Reserve in Canada. Um, she's Mohawk. So it's part of my culture and my heritage as well. And I've spent lots of time on, we call 'em reserves in Canada, not reservations, but same concept , um, as a kid and played hockey with lots of indigenous kids and friends. And so it's part of kind of my upbringing and culture as well. And also just being respectful of all human beings. Yes. With a capital A, all human beings , uh, rule number one of Jediism Jedi's place other people before themselves. I think that's all I need to know is rule number one. I don't need rule number two. Um, so yeah, it's interesting. The horse actually, it evolves in North America. It's a North American animal. So 60 million years ago, kind of, we have this 10 pound animal, roughly the size of a fox with multiple toes. And it bounds more like a deer. It's the earliest ancestor of the horse we have.
Speaker 2:It had a little bit of a horse shaped head,
Speaker 3:A little bit of a horse shaped head. Um, and it's called a hico Ethereum or a dawn horse. And over 60 million years, this creature evolves to become the magnificent animal we have today. But the epicenter of equine evolution is actually kind of Colorado, Wyoming , um, Montana, this area. And so this area really, in a sense, gave birth to the modern world order through the living machine of the horse. Um, so it , it is a fascinating story of evolution, but the horse goes extinct in the Americas roughly 9,000 years ago. So when the first peoples arrive to the Americas or indigenous, the ancestors of indigenous peoples, there are horses here. But climate change, kind of starting at the end of the last ice age, 30,000 years ago-ish to about 10,000 years ago, 85% of the large megafauna go extinct in the Americas 'cause of survival pressure. So we had 4,000 pound short face bears here, those massive ground slots , 500 pound beavers, camels, saber tooth cats, mastodon, wooly mammoths, they all go extinct. The horse actually hangs on a little bit later than most of these large animals.
Speaker 2:Can I ask, were , were there any horse fossils found in the Snowmass , uh, and where they're found mastodons and everything Yep . Horses that , because they were camels ,
Speaker 3:The MAs has
Speaker 2:Sloth , I
Speaker 3:Think has those old rack Ethereums . That's where they're finding some of the earliest horse ancestors, that 10 pound fox light creature. Um, so it , it , it's, it's interesting. And actually by about 4,000 BCE, so 6,000 years ago, the horse has largely gone extinct across the entire planet. Yeah. And there's only a , a small pocket or herds left on the Eurasian step is the largest contiguous grasslands that run from Hungary all the way to Mongolian China. So part of that is the Pontic Caspian step above the blacks in Caspian Sea in modern day Ukraine, Southern Russia, and the Kazakhstan. This is the last vestige of the horse, and this is where it's domesticated roughly 3,500 BCE. Um, and it's, there's a theory out there, and it's quite probable actually, that humanity by domesticating the horse actually reigned it in from extinction. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And that it probably would've gone extinct along with large mammals across the world because of climate change, if humanity hadn't essentially lend a helping hand to reign it in from extinction. Um, and then it's domesticated by these Indo Europeans, as I mentioned in that area. And it's a lightning strike for humanity. This equine revolution fundamentally changes the rules to the game of life across every aspect of human social society and culture.
Speaker 2:And I found it fascinating reading about the , uh, how grass had a role in, in this area, being able to support the horses because it didn't support a lot of other animals. A lot of other animals were just moving through because the grass is not nutrient rich , but the horse developed in a way to be able to take advantage of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah . So, I mean, evolution works in mysterious ways. And again, most animals go extinct. They just can't survive. The environmental pressures, whether it's climate change or resource changes , uh, that are, are , are placed on them, and they , they just can't adapt. And again, evolution is not a straight line, and it's luck. It , it's not preordained and it's not one animal gives evolves into a better animal. But that's not how evolution works. It's it's chance. And most evolutionary lines end up a dead end and in extinction. So the horse is able to evolve over time from having multiple toes and bounding and eating shrubbery and fruits and berries and pulpy, you know, plants. As this climate shifts and forests give way to grasslands in North America, it evolves in the toes disappear or emerge into a hard hoof, which is a lot better on harder ground. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , um, like the, the , the prairies and grass changes the shape of its face and its teeth, and the eyes move back on the head. The muzzle gets longer, it develops a different digestive system system than ruminants do. Like cows, it's a hind guy digester, it digests in something called a secum knot . Its stomach. Now we have a secum and ours is about this big. And a horses is a massive tank, but it doesn't digest very well, which is why it has to eat almost constantly. Yeah . Eating like a horse. Back to your point about our, our kind of colloquial terms in our, our language. So it just has to shove tons of grass through, which is also why they donate a lot of manure. Mm-Hmm . <laugh>. And you think about these cities in the, you know, 1890s , uh, New York City alone had 250 to 300,000 horses. Can you imagine donating tons of manure, I mean, thousands of , tons of manure every day. And so the, the Brownstone row houses we see in New York City, like in Seinfeld and all those shows where there's the steps up to the first floor, those are designed on purpose to rise above the sea of manure and urban muck that just coated the sidewalks. So I , I mean, that's a little kind of tidbit, but it , it's, it's inspired and built Yeah . As a pragmatic reaction to, I mean, just, they just shoveled it over to the side of the road kind of, and parks and vague alleyways were 60 feet tall piles of manure, and they're escorting disease
Speaker 2:<laugh>. So when did the horse come back to North America?
Speaker 3:The horse comes back on Columbus's second voyage. His first voyage is three terrible ships , uh, very underfunded with like 90 guys. And then he somehow gets lost, 8,000 miles lost, hits the island of his granola , um, introduces European disease and goes back to Spain. And they're amazed. He came back. Ferdinand and Isabella, queen , king and queen of Spain are, they're , I would love to have been in that room when he walks back into the court and they're like, this what? This dude came back. And , uh, then they pile a bunch of money into his second voyage, which contains all the Barnard animals, including horses. So they make their way from Espanola to Cuba , uh, from Cuba to Mexico with Cortez, and then from Mexico, they make their way up into the southwest. Really. Santa Fe is, is the northern limit line of Spanish penetration, or, you know, occupation, if you will. And from Santa Fe, they, the horses are punched out across America and southern Canada. The , the Great Plains run from northern Mexico all the way into Canada. So in indigenous, people quickly grab onto the horse, whether they're raiding the Spanish and stealing them, whether they're stealing them from rival tribes, or they're grabbing them feral horse herds that, you know, have escaped. And two cultures specifically on the plains in the nor first in the southern plains. It starts with the Comanche, who are a splinter band of Shoshone who come down into Oklahoma, Texas from what is Wyoming, Idaho, where the Shoshone are still. And they become horse lords of the southern plains. And in the north it's the Lakota Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> or known as the Sioux. But Lakota's preferred. Um, and this is later in the northern plains, but we, like , it's kind of contrary to what people think is people think that within the Colombian exchange, after, you know, part of colonization that indigenous peoples don't get anything good from Europeans except for the horse. Right. I mean, the disease rates are terrible, and 95% of indigenous people are dead within the first 200 years of European contact That equals estimates. 95 million people. I mean , it , it , it's just such a saddening tale of different ecosystems and non-immune peoples. They don't have disease here. So then the dying of small smallpox is , is the big killer measles. Yeah . Um, tuberculosis, malaria. So we think, well, but they got the horse. That's actually not true. The horse was just as bad as smallpox. Um, it's an invasive species like smallpox, tumbleweed, and Europeans. And it ultimately bites the hand that feeds, because when they adopt the horse, they're able to enter the American capitalist fur trade system, which undermines their traditional gender roles in egalitarian societies. So the Comanche, for example, are harvesting 575,000 bison a year to supply the American capitalist fur trade. So by entering the capitalist system system ,
Speaker 2:How , before the arrival of the horse here, what's the estimate on how many they were harvesting
Speaker 3:A year? I , I mean, their populations, they would've been sus sustaina sustainable hunting because you're on foot Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , you don't have the ability to hunt bison at an industrial level until the horse arrives. So they would sometimes run them off cliffs, like head smashed in buffalo, jump in Alberta, that famous world heritage site, or they would use hunters to corral them into , uh, dead ends in slot canyons or whatever else. But there was no need to harvest more than you could eat because there's no capitalism. So surplus is irrelevant. So when they , you
Speaker 2:Might, you might have a little extra to dry or smoke Well,
Speaker 3:For the winter. For the winter, but they would know how many that was based on their population. Yeah . And so it's a sustainable resource. And there's , there's no surplus needed because capitalism doesn't exist in the form that it exists in , in Europe. So when the fur trade comes, they enter this capitalism. 'cause they have the ability to harvest bison at an industrial level, which there were 60 million bison roaming the great plains when Europeans arrive . And their lowest population is around 1900, and there's 2,600 left in total, mostly in Canada. So it's not just Europeans who , or Americans who slaughter the bison like buffalo bill to starve out indigenous peoples to go onto the reservation. Specifically the Lakota indigenous people are doing a , a damage to their own resource by entering this fur trading capitalist system. What that does is create a hierarchy of power, and it creates wealth in the form of horses to attain more bison. Then these men can , uh, they have more bride wealth to get multiple brides upwards of 20 wives. And the fathers are all too happy to unload their daughters, because by this point, a lot of these plains nations are upwards of 65 to 75% women because of these horse wars and constant warfare introduced by the horse, essentially. So in these, these wives are treated terribly, essentially, they're used to process bison for this continual cycle of attaining, and it undermines their societies. The American administration then uses though that hierarchy as a , as a tactic of divide and conquer. It means sitting bull's killed by its own people. So
Speaker 2:It's this tragic story. We , this we have this romantic vision of a Native American on his horse. Right. And the , and the role that the horses plays, I think is very romantic, but it did wreak havoc
Speaker 3:Yeah . Ultimately on the
Speaker 2:Indigenous peoples.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It , it came back to bite the hand that feeds, and it , it leads in a sense to their own subjugation. And it's very contrary to the popular opinion of, or this romantic view and certainly , um, this misplaced frontier spirit , uh, with headdress and horse. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And that's not actually true. It's actually a , a , a sad story and a destructive story. The horse ends up being just as destructive as some of the other European imports, whether that's capitalism tied to the horse, smallpox, you know, malaria or the rest of it. So it's, it's , um, no, it ultimately is a , is a weapon of subjugation against indigenous peoples.
Speaker 2:So you, you had , um, a a love of history and a love of , uh, warfare history, and the , the horse fit into warfare in a big way, and not just in the, with the native populations, but wow. What a machine it turned warfare into when you could really travel long distances, attack , uh, be swift. I mean, it changed everything.
Speaker 3:Uh , I mean, changes all facets of humanity from agricultural production to trade, to travel to warfare to traction. It makes the world immeasurably smaller because before that, you had your own two feet and your world wouldn't really extend too far outside of what your feet could, could carry you. And all of a sudden, this living machine, you know, is domesticated. And again , again, it's an organic animal, but we have to think of the horse as a machine because that's what it was used for. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , it's utilitarian purposes. We're the same as the internal combustion today, which we've only had for a hundred years. The horse we had for 5,500 years doing all the same purposes. So whether it's warfare, trade, traction, travel, migration , um, it , it's all this living machine that made the world smaller. And the exchange of ideas, the exchange of pathogens, the exchange of inventions of DNA of language, it was just kicked into hyper drive by this amazing creature , um, that we helped it evolve in a way as the pinnacle of biotechnology. So just almost immediately when we domesticate the horse on that , the Indo Europeans on the Ponte Caspian step, they start selectively breeding horses. Yes. To make them more, better
Speaker 2:Behavior
Speaker 3:And a flatter back to make them more rideable. So we see this living laboratory immediately upon domestication. And then like anything else, we upgrade the capabilities of the horse with amendments, whether that be bits or saddles or stirrups or the horse color for agriculture and traction. Um , and then rains. And we attach this to plows and chariots eventually, and wagons. And so this, this pinnacle of biotechnology or this living machine becomes a very sophisticated invention, if not humanity's greatest invention. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> .
Speaker 2:As a historian, do you get emotional about the plight of the horse? Or do , are you able to just look at it from a historical, because I, I'm such an animal lover, and I, I think a horse is such a beautiful animal. I found myself getting really emotional about what we've done to this animal.
Speaker 3:I mean, I suppose look what we've done to ourselves too, though. Yeah. Um, and you can say, well, horses didn't have a choice. They were conscripted into our wars, whether the cause was noble or nefarious, which is certainly true, but human beings a lot of the time are conscripted into our wars. Whether the cause is noble or nefarious as well. So I , I mean, It , it's, it's, you have to, as a historian, kind of take the bias out of it and take the emotion out of it , um, to ride it properly or to view it properly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And I think, and , and certainly horses were treated terribly, whether they were urban horses delivering Budweiser beer or pulling cabs and omni buses in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, London, or Paris. Um, and they were treated perhaps better on farms. But at the end of the day, I mean, they didn't have a choice, but they produced profit. And since the dawn of the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago, every single decision that human humanity makes is based on profit. So they were a profit spinning engine that was used a across every facet of, of humanity and certainly hauled into place all the foundational building blocks of our modern world order. And the internal combustion engine just kind of rode the tails of the horse. It had already laid all that, those modern attributes. And , and the car just kind of accelerated those, it didn't invent them, the horse invented them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Speaker 2:I read just this week about some cities that are eliminating their horse drawn carriages finally.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was interviewed actually. Were you? Yeah, San Antonio was one of them that's thinking about getting rid of them. And I , I , I'm torn those horses. There's a lot. There's, so the ones in New York City and Central Park, there is very, very strict laws surrounding those horses and how long they can work, how many days a week they can work there . There's government agencies that come and test them and make sure they're being taken care of, and that they're getting their vaccines and they're healthy. So, in my opinion, in the horses being taken care of, horses like to work is what they do. They're okay with it so long as they're not being abused. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> similar to brutal Bob's Elephant Bizarre , where you see these elephants in captivity or Yeah . I , I can't watch, I don't, what's that guy's name? Tiger King or Tiger King shows like this. No, I can't, my wife watch . And she's like, you , you don't wanna watch that. I , I can't like you. I just, I can't even watch those commercials where the dog , like for the Save the Dogs uhhuh , where they're all the change
Speaker 2:That initiated . And yeah ,
Speaker 3:I have to change the channel because, you know, I'm, I'm a rough, tough Canadian hockey player, <laugh> , but I have a pretty tender heart <laugh> .
Speaker 2:So , um, your book previous to the horse was called The Mosquito. How did you get on that topic? Well, and how did you get on either topic? How do you decide what to write next?
Speaker 3:Um, so my first four books were more kind of specialized, I guess, in nature. They all revolved in some form around indigenous peoples , um, and military history. Um, so after I, and then my fourth book was on How Oil during the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference , uh, led to basically everywhere since . Um, so connecting the dots between nine 11 or even what's going on in the Ukraine right now. Yeah . To the end of the First World War. So it's called the First World Oil Oil War. And it looks at kind of this pattern after the first World War War about how petroleum became to, you know , dominate global economies back to the internal combustion engine, <laugh> , but also plastics and rubbers and nylon and rayon and poly. It's all made from petroleum. I mean, everything in this room is made from petroleum. So it is the mainstay of the global economy, whether we like it or not. Um, so after I finished my fourth book, which is the one I met my wife when I was at the Archives, US Archives , um, I sat down with my dad and he loves history too. And, and he reads, you know, all tons of books. And I said, dad, I want to write an airport book. And he said, what , what the hell do you mean by that <laugh> ? I said, well, I want write a book like Guns , germs and Steel, or Great Book or Salt by Mark Kurlansky . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> or his cod book or, but a , a book that's not, that's aimed for the general reader that's not, it's still highly researched, but it's written in a way that appeals to a broad audience like Guns , germs, and Steel and Salt and Cod or The Fifth Extinction by Elizabeth Colbert. All these books or , uh, what's The Stiff By Mary Roach? Like these type of,
Speaker 2:I've not read that one.
Speaker 3:These type of books. I call 'em Maryport books 'cause it's the only ones that the bookstore in the airport Oh,
Speaker 2:I see, okay . Kind of books . I got it. Yeah .
Speaker 3:So he , and he got it and he's like, yeah, yeah, I get it. He's like, you gotta do something big. You gotta do something global. And we were brainstorming. He's like, you know what, malaria's making a comeback. You should write a book on malaria. And I'm like kind of half joking and giving him a little bit of the gears. I was like, yeah, dad, sure. I'll just write a book on how the mosquito transformed and shaped the world. And he's like, that's a great idea. You
Speaker 2:Both probably went
Speaker 3:<laugh> . And I'm like, so I started doing the research and down the rabbit hole. And the more I researched and realized that no one had written a book about this, about how the mosquito, but essentially the mosquito itself is harmless. The pathogens that hit a free ride via the mosquito have shaped and transformed humanity. The mosquito is by far the biggest killer of humanity ever. It's not even a contest. It far , uh, outpaces number two, which is our fellow human beings, or I mean, it's , it's not even remotely in the same league. Um, that this tiny little thing, the size and weight of a grape seed has had this enormous punching power through the transmission of malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and thousands of other pathogens. Um, whether that's on the different development of economies in the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere, or, you know, tropical ecologies to the more wealthy northern nations with malaria to warfare. And cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown was because of malaria. So the annoys mosquito, 'cause only females bite, is a founding mother of the United States. Um, because the, the, the mosquito forces to surrender Corn Wallace . It was just fascinating to see in these primary sources. And looking back at history through the lens compound lens, if you will, of the eyes of the mosquito <laugh> , um, how prevalent this, this tiny little animal was in shaping such profound events in human history. So after them , which received, was very well received. And it was a New York Times bestseller, New York
Speaker 2:Times bestseller. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:And it printed in 15 languages all over the world.
Speaker 2:I loved when I looked on Amazon and saw all the different languages it was in . That must feel really incredible.
Speaker 3:It's surreal to be honest. Yeah . Like, it's humbling. But at the same time , um, I'll give my wife a shout here, because when the mosquito became so popular and all the bestseller lists and all the publicity that came with it, and all the talk shows and radio and TV and everything else, my wife was on one of these, I don't know if it was CBS or NBC's. Good. It doesn't matter. And they said, well, what do you think about, you know, your husband having all this fame and success and, and being such a , like, you know, and she's like, look to me. He's still the same guy who farts in the dog's face and laughs his off <laugh> . And I'm like, and that is why I love my , that answer is perfect. Uh ,
Speaker 2:She said that on national television. Yeah,
Speaker 3:I think so. It doesn't change who I am at all. I'm still a small town Canadian boy want to be a hockey player . Um, and I'm still the same person and the kind person and tries my my best every day to put others before myself. Yeah . Um, as Yoda teaches, so the
Speaker 2:Jedi
Speaker 3:Way. Yep . And so I guess after the mosquito book , um, and that one, my other books were published with university presses and the mosquito was published by Penguin Random House. So it's like, again, an airport book, like Big Step Up. Yeah. And so they had the right of first refusal to my next book, which turned out to be the horse. So after the mosquito sat down with my dad again and thought about kind of other just big influences in, in humanity that we don't think of or kind of often go under the radar. And I just thought about, well, there was a series of events that happened actually because the mosquito came out in 2019. And then obviously in March, 2020 the world shut down 'cause of Covid . And so we finished our semester online at CMU and I had been thinking of other books to write and nothing kind of, I had lots of ideas, but the editors didn't like any of that . Penguin didn't like any of them. My agent didn't like them. And so I was kind of frustrated and, and obviously I was also frustrated that I couldn't watch my beloved NHL hockey Games. Uhhuh <affirmative> . So I turned tuned into ESPN eight , the ocho , uh, live from Leadville, Colorado. And they were broadcasting 'cause it was outside, they were broadcasting ski joing , which is essentially a person on skis being pulled with a person riding a horse. Yeah . And I'm watching it .
Speaker 2:And , and it's a big deal in Leadville. Like they've had this competition for a long time.
Speaker 3:Yes. So it was live from, and I'm , I'd never seen this before. And my wife looked at me and I'm like, that's one of the oddest things I've ever seen. But it's kind of, it's entertaining and it's sports and I'm enthralled. And then a little bit later on, getting into the spring , uh, I took my dog Steve O , who's a 25 pound cockapoo named Steve. Um, I took him for a walk and he started smelling. We , our neighbors have horses and here , so a bunch of them, actually various neighbors have horses. So I actually saw them on Saturday. They were just clopping down our street, and it was like nine in the morning and they were drinking a Corona as they were riding the horses down the street at nine in the morning. Nice . And I'm like, I was gonna hockey practice. And I wrote down , I'm like, nice guys, nice all cowboy hat every , you know, cheers with a Corona. Um, so I, I saw them horseback riding and actually they overtook some kids who were walking to school or somewhere. And then I overtook the horseback riders in my car and I thought, wow, think about this shift from transportation to our feet, to our horses to cars. Which was kind of a another signal of like, oh , okay. The horse. And then Steve was sniffing some manure, my, my, my cockapoo and I thought about urban centers at the pinnacle of horsepower and how much manure would, and it kind of was like, wow. 'cause that's just one pile of horse manure. And then I started researching the horse and then it kind of came that way and I pitched it to my editors and agent at Penguin. And , and they're like, that's it, that's it. Write this book. Yeah. Um, so the next one though, won't be on an animal because there's really no other animal that's impacted human history, like those two. Well,
Speaker 2:How long did it take you to write the book? About
Speaker 3:Four years from start to finish.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Um, back to hockey. So you're , you're professor, associate professor at CMU. How many classes do you teach?
Speaker 3:Our full load is four and four Uhhuh <affirmative> . So I teach like every other professor. I teach four classes a semester.
Speaker 2:And , um, and you are coaching the CMU hockey team,
Speaker 3:Which takes way more time. <laugh>
Speaker 2:<laugh> . So that's your full-time job? Yeah,
Speaker 3:I have two full-time and then on top of writing and a family. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . It's , uh, I don't sleep very, I thank the military for not having to sleep very much. Um, so I started teaching at CMU in 2012. And there , I remember when I moved here, because as I mentioned, the town of the city of Sarnia, where I come from is about 20 minutes from my little town. And there's, you know, eight rinks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . It's about 70,000 people and there's eight rinks and there's about , there's the rinks everywhere. So Junction is a little bit bigger. And I thought of Colorado as, at least in American terms as being a hockey state.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Winter zone
Speaker 3:<laugh> . Yeah. Like Minnesota's a hockey state. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> Michigan's a hockey state. Massachusetts is a hockey state. And I, I thought about Colorado being a hockey state, and when I moved here, I was like, well, where's the rinks? And my wife says, there is none. There isn't one. I'm like, what? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . You don't have a rink injunction. She's like, we used to. And then it closed. And I was like, all right . So it wasn't open. It had shut down. And then I had players, students who were hockey players come to my office. 'cause they found out , you know, who I was and said, Dr. Weingart , if the rink reopens, will you restart the hockey team? Because there was a hockey team at Mesa State way back when. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . But when the rink closed, it kind of went by the wayside. And, and, and so I said, well, sure. And so it was kind of this, and then the rink reopened and I said, okay, I'll kind of revamp or restart the hockey team that had existed prior with Mesa State. And so that was 2014. Um, and I've been the to coach ever since.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for doing that. <laugh> . There's a , there's a pretty good , um, hockey community here now, and I'm excited about young men like Nori getting into , uh, hockey and my , my boyfriend's son plays, and I love going to the ice rink and watching, and I see that they're expanding the , the seats. We ,
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming been to a CMU game. It's packed in there and it was like five rows deep of standing room only. Yeah . So yeah, the bleachers will hold. I , I can't remember what John , um, and Lisa, the managers of the ring told me. But I , I , I'm around 900 and I think the , the , the bottom a hundred will actually be stadium seats and then bleachers from there up. And I hope I'm right, or John and Lisa will be upset with me <laugh> . But , but they're , they , they're being built and they, they go all the way up to the top and certainly see , I think around 900, which is a huge , uh, at least more than double what the , the old bleachers sat . So for CMU games and I guess the , the Cap Rock high school team and Yeah. And River Hawks, it'll be, it'll be , uh, it'll be awesome. So I , I'm thrilled with that. Um, and , and I'm glad that hockey is, you know, with the new management of the rink in Jackson Wilson with the River Hawks, and there's just such excitement around hockey here. Yeah .
Speaker 2:There
Speaker 3:Really is . And it's so exciting to see the little kids out there and the Learn to Skate programs and the high school team now, which is new as of last year,
Speaker 2:And a lot of women playing too.
Speaker 3:And the women, yeah . Girls hockey and women's adult leagues. And like, it's just so nice. As someone who, I mean, hockey's just in my DNA as part of who I am , uh, I'm thrilled just to see the sport. And I think the avalanche making that run to the Stanley Cup definitely helped, you know, I guess expose people to hockey. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And I've met a lot of people who that was their first exposure to hockey , uh, whether it was students or CMU professors, and now they're hooked and they come to all the CMU games and they absolutely love it. That's , and as they should, it's the best sport. It's the best sport in the world. So I'm not surprised when you watch it go , it's wonderful. You go,
Speaker 2:Wow, you do go. Wow. I mean, when you watch those players skate forward and backward as fast as they do with as much precision, and then still trying to move this little thing around the ice and it's mind , mind
Speaker 3:While someone's trying to take your head off. Yeah. I mean, there's that part of it too, so , yeah . Right . So , I mean, I love football, don't get me wrong. I'm a , I'm a passionate Detroit Lions fan and have been my whole life , uh, which hasn't been a good thing until the last, until last year really. It was painful to be a Lions fan until last year and I guess LA or , uh, Sunday they looked, they looked okay. They good , but good .
Speaker 2:Well, it , it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. Um, as we close, I just, you've, you've done so many things in your life already that you've, you're so , uh, accomplished, but you, you , you have a lot of fullness in your life. What would you say you're most proud of?
Speaker 3:Uh , I mean, it comes down to just being a , a kind person. Respect and accountability are the two words I try to live by. And , um, again, this is instilled in me by my parents and grandparents and, you know, even great-grandparents. Um, I just, again, we, we all fail miserably at it, but to try sometimes my best to , to , to put others before myself, and because it , it makes you, it makes me feel better when I'm nice to other people. And , uh, just to live with humility and, and respect and accountability. And at the same time, just try to enjoy life. We don't get a dress rehearsal and you only get one. So I, I think whether it's having fun with the boys at hockey and, you know, it's not, none of us are gonna make a living out of hockey at the CMU hockey team, but to be part of the team and to , to be part of their lives, like, it's just such a reward for me and I'm so thankful for them, not the other way around. Um, so just try to have fun and en enjoy the ride, pardon the pun with the horse, but <laugh>
Speaker 2:<laugh> . Well, Timothy c Wineguard , I wanna encourage everybody to , uh, get the book , uh, the Mosquito as well and your four other books. Um, I'm really excited to read more , um, sign up, go to class at CMU. Right. <laugh> , if you're not a student, you can, you can audit, you can Yeah . Sign up as an adult learner and go to some history classes. I would love to,
Speaker 3:Or any class . I mean, there is such, the amount of academia, the things that profess not , not just me and I exclude myself, actually, there is so much amazing stuff that goes on at CMU that the public just is not aware of, of what research and inventions and the amazing things that professors are doing at CMU. It really is incredible. And I wish, you know, there was some avenue where this could be shown off, I think more to the public , um, because some people, oh , these, these university students and, you know, some people have a negative opinion of, you know, the university or perhaps the students, which I think is unwarranted. But it is amazing what professors are doing at CMU. And , um, I'm, I'm proud to be a small part of it. We're
Speaker 2:Truly fortunate to have such a wonderful university here in our town.
Speaker 3:I fully agree. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for your time. I know you're busy. Appreciate you coming over <laugh> . Of course. Um , uh, excited about your NPR Turn the page , uh, looking forward to that. And , uh, I, I look forward to , uh, hopefully having another conversation. I could just talk to you for hours about the horse and the mosquito and everything else. So I hope we get to run into each other again in the future .
Speaker 3:Sounds good. Me too. Thank you for having
Speaker 2:Me. Thank you very much. This is Kristy Reese signing off from the Full Circle Podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks. Thanks for listening. This is Christy Reese signing out from the Full Circle Podcast.