Rosette Royale

I’ve got a question for you: Did you know that virtually every ant you see is a female? And that even though male ants do exist, they’re pretty much useless? Chances are, you didn’t know this and that’s all right. But one person who knows a lot about ants is Mark Moffett.

A trained entomologist, Mark Moffett, sometimes called Dr. Bugs, knows a thing or two about ants, spiders, beetles and frogs. He loves the creepy-crawly things of our world. His passion for life’s little critters has taken him down into the deepest caves and high atop rainforest canopies. He usually travels with a camera, to document the small world most of us never get to see. The photos he brings back from his journeys can turn ants into giants. More than 500 of these images have appeared in National Geographic Magazine, and dozens more are featured in his book “Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions,” released in the spring of 2010.

But along with being a scientist, a photojournalist and an ecologist, Mark Moffett is a master storyteller. His way of spinning a tale allows people to feel emotionally connected to the creature with six legs that lives under a decaying log. This ability was in full effect when I interviewed Mark in February 2009. He was in Seattle then as part of a “National Geographic Live!” tour, to give two slideshow lectures. We met one afternoon in the swank Fairmont Olympic Hotel, where we were joined by a photographer and Mark’s media representative. But shortly after we sat all down, my chair broke. That broken chair started a lively and, at times, emotional conversation with Mark that touched upon termites, ants, coyotes and one of the world’s deadliest snakes. And now you get to hear what we talked about. In the background you may hear a woman laugh: that’s Mark’s media representative and you may hear the shutter of a camera. But, after a while, both the media rep and the camera go silent as Mark tells his story.

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Hi, this is Rosette Royale and sometimes, when you interview someone, you learn something you didn’t know beforehand. So right now, I’m gonna share a little bit of knowledge with you: Everybody wants a piece of Tavis Smiley. I’m serious. Everybody. From his days on the air in the 90s with “The Smiley Report,” to “The Tavis Smiley Show,” which aired on NPR until late 2004, to his current PBS talk show “Tavis Smiley,” the brother is in serious demand.

Tavis came to Seattle in March 2009, as part of a book tour for “Accountable: Making America as Good as its Promise.” He was scheduled for an event at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library at 6:30 p.m. By 5:50 p.m., the 200-seat auditorium was practically full. I was supposed to interview Tavis at 6, but he was late. 6:05, 6:10, 6:12, 6:17: and still no Tavis. He arrived at 6:20, 10 minutes before he was to meet the crowd that awaited. But before I could interview him, there were other people in the room who wanted a second of his time. Tavis shook everyone’s hand, saying to everybody he met: “Hi. I’m Tavis. What’s your name? … Nice to meet you,” before moving on. Then he posed for a group picture with about 10 people. Then some of those people have questions they want to ask him. And by the time he sat down to talk to me, it was 6:24.

So, with his tour manager nearby, who had a clipboard under an arm, trying to keep him on schedule, and a personal assistant answering a barrage of calls on a cell phone, Tavis was good to go.

Here, in a little more than seven minutes, Tavis holds forth on civic engagement, the difference between the people in the yacht and those in a dinghy and knowing what something is when you see it.

Oh. And one more thing. Listen closely, because Brother Smiley likes to talk fast.

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Hi there, this is Rosette Royale and you’re about to hear an interview with Max Blumenthal. An unapologetic, liberal journalist, Max can be seen on The Rachel Maddow Show, heard on NPR or read in The Nation, salon.com and The Huffington Post. In the fall of 2009, he published “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,” a narrative recounting of how the Religious Right’s emphasis on creating a theocracy based on a Christian G-O-D did a number on the G.O.P.

During a book tour in September 2009, I had brunch with Max in a Seattle diner, where we talked about Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriages in California, the hottest bit of lesbian erotica ever written by a former Second Lady and, of course, the flower of Wasila, Alaska, herself, Sarah Palin. Oh. And excuse the clattering plates and background chatter. But the diner we were in was a little loud…

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Hi, this is Rosette Royale and you’re listening to a podcast of an interview I conducted with a man named Jesse Hagopian. Jesse lives in Seattle, but on Jan. 12, 2010, Jesse, his wife, Sarah, and their one-year old son, Miles, were all in Haiti. That’s the day a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the tiny, impoverished country, killing at 200,000 people. Jesse and his family escaped with their lives, but the trauma of what Jesse saw still haunts him. You can hear it in the subdued, almost flat tone of his voice.

Here talks about the quake, how he became involved with emergency relief efforts and the victims he tried to help.

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