Missing Witches - April 23, 2026


We Are Rat Kin： Worthy Of Every Poem

Topics
rats rats and witches rats and their use in science squirrel Rat Riddles
We Are Seedling Kin - Infinite And Inevitable We Are Cockroach Kin： Slipping Through The Cracks Of Control

Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

109.1

Word count

4,937

Sentence count

266

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

70

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.040 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00
00:00:06.620 You must be a witch. 1.00
00:00:10.380 Looking for your kin? 0.99
00:00:12.700 Join the Missing Witches coven.
00:00:14.700 Find everything you need to know at missingwitches.com
00:00:17.540 Have you ever stopped to think about what rats do for fun?
00:00:21.960 Sure, they crawl around and scurry, yeah, they're always on the run.
00:00:25.400 But a rat sure loves a good time, just like you and me.
00:00:28.460 Throughout this process of writing meditations on kinship with the non-human world over the
00:00:35.380 past few years, I've tended to focus on love. My favorite plant ally, chamomile, the freedom
00:00:43.820 of plankton, the deep rest of a bear, the staggeringly beautiful deer that I can see
00:00:51.260 grazing out my kitchen window. But in 2026, the mood seems characterized by a fresh,
00:01:02.780 very 21st century kind of fear. Fear of the other, a polarized us versus them that has
00:01:10.400 seeped via rapid stream of constant exposure and manipulation into even the thinnest cracks
00:01:18.520 of humanity. The kindest people I know have started cheering for the dropping of bombs,
00:01:25.580 calling for violence to end violence. Peace movements slowly disappear, replaced by seething
00:01:33.820 angry mobs on both sides of every debate. Replaced by seething angry mobs on both sides of every
00:01:41.840 debate. So for the next couple weeks, I turn my focus to those fears. War, illness, pestilence,
00:01:51.940 poverty, and my own personal phobia, rats. To retrain my mind and body out of hatred
00:02:04.380 and into understanding.
00:02:08.260 Come back next week for the hissing of cockroaches,
00:02:11.760 but for now, let's gnaw away at our fears with teeth that never stop growing. 0.80
00:02:19.500 Rat teeth.
00:02:20.920 I have such a strong visceral reaction to even the sight of this animal on a screen
00:02:26.560 that in my childhood my sister decided I must have died of bubonic plague in a past life.
00:02:34.380 I'm not afraid of much. Heights, spiders, public speaking, none of these things bother me in the
00:02:40.960 slightest, but a slight glimpse of that skinny tail, then I freeze in abject terror. And much
00:02:51.260 how we humans have been socialized to think, my fear manifests as hatred and disgust. I see it
00:03:00.660 everywhere, on my timeline, in the streets, how fear turns to anger, how fear turns to
00:03:09.060 revulsion.
00:03:11.760 So, today, I turn to the vast tales and skinny tales of rats to discover how we are the same,
00:03:21.780 what makes us kin, what I can learn from them, and why I should be grateful they exist.
00:03:28.580 I am human, and the best I can do is to examine my fears, locate them in space, time, and in my body.
00:03:40.620 Question their validity before scared turns to angry, before scared turns to disgusted, before fear turns to destruction.
00:03:51.800 i'm gonna work through this rat kin with you not against you though even in the writing of these
00:04:06.700 introductory paragraphs i can feel my stomach starting to turn my skin starting to crawl 0.83
00:04:13.020 i promise not to turn away i'll go with you into the dark recesses of your life
00:04:20.260 and hopefully leave my phobia there, underground.
00:04:26.200 Consider this a training ground, witches,
00:04:28.760 to take what we learn and use it as an antidote to hate.
00:04:33.760 As I skulk and scuttle through the sewers of my own mind
00:04:38.180 to find amid the filth and muck 0.93
00:04:41.120 a warm place in my heart to love a rat. 0.90
00:04:46.440 Today, I am rat kin.
00:04:50.260 when i'm looking for love i often start my search in the realm of poetry
00:05:00.980 who better than a poet to reframe the way we think about the mundane
00:05:05.280 rendering the quotidian in the fact of the extraordinary
00:05:09.400 the poem i found and share here now made me weep with shame this is the power of poetry
00:05:18.820 Three hundred words was all it took to push me out of fear and hatred
00:05:23.440 And into a place of empathy and kinship with rats
00:05:28.100 For the poet who told me rats aren't noble enough creatures for a poem
00:05:33.980 By Elizabeth Acevedo
00:05:36.820 Quote
00:05:38.120 Because you are not the admired nightingale 0.81
00:05:42.320 Because you are not the noble doe 0.97
00:05:45.420 Because you are not the picturesque ermine, armadillo, or bat 0.97
00:05:51.020 They have been written, and I don't know their song the way I know you're scuttling between walls
00:05:59.020 The scent of your collapsed corpse rotting beneath floorboards
00:06:05.000 Your frantic squeals as you pull at your own fur from glue traps
00:06:10.280 Ripping flesh from skin in an attempt to survive 0.98
00:06:15.100 Because even though you are inelegant, simple, mammal-bottom-feeder, always frickin' famished, little ugly thing who feasts on what crumbs fall from the corner of our mouths, but you live uncuddled, uncoddled. 0.99
00:06:32.460 Can't be bought at Petco and fed to fat snakes because you are not the maze rat of labs. 0.99
00:06:40.180 Pale, pretty-eyed, trained. 0.98
00:06:43.700 You raise yourself sharp-fanged, clawed, scarred, patched dark
00:06:50.620 Because of this, he should love you
00:06:54.980 Because in July of 97 you birthed a legion on 109th
00:06:59.800 Swarmed from behind the dumpsters
00:07:01.980 Made our streets infamous for something other than crack
00:07:04.980 We named you Cat Killer
00:07:06.300 Raced with you through open hydrants 1.00
00:07:09.360 squeaked like you and Siete blasted aluminum bat into your brethren's skull. 0.97
00:07:15.200 The sound slapped down dominoes. 1.00
00:07:19.920 You reigned that summer rat.
00:07:22.360 And even when they sent exterminators half dead and on fire, you pushed on.
00:07:30.500 But look at the beast, the poet tells me.
00:07:34.740 The table is already full and rat. 0.96
00:07:37.260 you are not a right worthy thing every time they say that take your gutter your dirt coat 1.00
00:07:45.900 filth this page rat scrape your underbelly against street concrete you better squeak 0.99
00:07:54.460 and raise the whole world rat let loose a plague of words rat and remind them in that you 0.98
00:08:02.640 That I, we are worthy of every poem
00:08:09.120 Here
00:08:11.320 End quote
00:08:14.680 I'm sorry, my rat kin, truly 0.70
00:08:19.620 For most of my life, my mind and body have reacted to you
00:08:24.960 Like a certain president tweeted just a few weeks ago
00:08:27.660 A whole civilization will die tonight
00:08:30.620 never to be brought back again.
00:08:34.380 And Ratkin, if you had looked at me with your beady eyes
00:08:38.220 and pleaded, why?
00:08:40.560 I would have answered, 0.99
00:08:42.320 because I don't fucking like you. 0.99
00:08:45.360 And that would have been enough for me. 1.00
00:08:48.080 Destroy every last one of your species, 1.00
00:08:51.400 every last breath of your civilization, 1.00
00:08:55.420 because I think you're gross. 0.98
00:08:58.500 I'm sorry. 0.99
00:09:00.620 you are a right worthy thing rat you and i are worthy of every poem for many reasons but first because we are witches you and me rat 0.60
00:09:16.460 and even when they sent exterminators half dead and on fire we pushed on rats and witches end up twinned less by biology than by the stories told about us we occupy the same charged territory in the human imagination 0.74
00:09:33.820 The edge of the village, the underside of order, the place where control is chewed and frayed.
00:09:42.880 We are both occupiers of the in-between.
00:09:45.900 Rats live in walls, sewers, thresholds, spaces that are neither fully inside nor outside.
00:09:54.040 Witches do something similar, both literally and figuratively. 0.54
00:09:58.420 We move between categories, between healer and heretic. 0.75
00:10:02.540 Neighbor and outsider 0.99
00:10:05.100 Knowledge and taboo 1.00
00:10:08.280 We unsettle the neat and tidy boundaries of humanity
00:10:13.620 Chew holes in the stories that get told
00:10:17.220 And then there's the dark
00:10:19.340 Rats navigate darkness with uncanny precision
00:10:23.000 Mapping environments we can't see 0.97
00:10:26.000 They hear things we can't hear
00:10:29.120 Likewise, we witches were imagined to possess secret understandings of herbs, bodies, cycles, forces that operated just beyond official explanation
00:10:42.220 Just beyond
00:10:43.640 Just different enough
00:10:47.380 In both cases, rats, witches, what is not easily controlled or understood, becomes reframed, reviewed as threatening.
00:11:02.600 And we both carry the same burden of our society's projections.
00:11:07.280 Rats have been cast as carriers of disease and decay, particularly during events like the Black Death, where fear needed a visible body to land on.
00:11:17.380 Witches were similarly made into vessels to hold social anxiety.
00:11:24.120 Easy answers to difficult questions.
00:11:26.980 During continuing global witch hunts, witches are blamed for misfortune, illness, unexplained change.
00:11:35.880 So we rats and we witches, we marginalized, we scapegoats, share an overlapping experience.
00:11:44.620 Different targets facing the same terrifying impulse pointed our way.
00:11:51.440 Locate danger.
00:11:53.300 Find a scapegoat.
00:11:55.020 Try to control not the danger, but the goat.
00:11:58.720 If it can't be controlled, a whole civilization dies tonight.
00:12:04.760 And yet we are also both figures of resilience.
00:12:07.820 We adapt, persist, consistently, outmaneuver, eradication, witches, weirdos, and rats.
00:12:16.780 We represent survival through marginalization.
00:12:21.240 Knowledge that endures despite suppression.
00:12:25.580 And they hate us for it.
00:12:29.260 Rats and witches carry the weight of the human tendency to fear what slips through categories. 0.99
00:12:37.820 to perceive a threat, and exterminate it. 0.99
00:12:41.640 But you, my ratkin, are like us outside of the stories we tell.
00:12:46.980 Our commonalities aren't just metaphorical, they are also biological, neurological, and social.
00:12:53.980 We have so much in common.
00:12:58.360 And again, I'm sorry, but we use you for testing precisely because you are so much like us.
00:13:04.460 or enough like us to be useful for our studies
00:13:08.440 but different enough that we feel we can use you
00:13:11.840 and use you up without remorse. 0.89
00:13:14.340 We turn to rats because they sit uncomfortably close to us
00:13:18.720 on the biological genetic map
00:13:20.840 close enough that their bodies echo ours in ways that matter.
00:13:26.400 Beneath the fur there is a shared architecture
00:13:29.520 organs arranged with familiar patterns
00:13:33.080 nervous systems that process pain, stress, reward.
00:13:39.840 The same molecular language, but spoken with a squeakier voice.
00:13:46.940 The Rattus norvegicus, in particular, has been bred to become a kind of living instrument in science.
00:13:55.080 It breeds quickly, matures fast, and its genome has been mapped in detail.
00:14:00.800 Researchers can observe entire life cycles in compressed time
00:14:05.880 Tracing how disease begins, unfolds, and sometimes resolves
00:14:11.400 What would take decades in humans can be glimpsed in rats in months
00:14:17.460 There is also control
00:14:18.920 An uncomfortable but crucial factor
00:14:22.920 In laboratory settings, variables can be narrowed
00:14:25.920 environments stabilized, diet, light, stress, exposure, all tuned with precision.
00:14:34.300 In this controlled operational theater, rats become translators,
00:14:39.880 helping us understand conditions like cancer, addiction, neurological disorders,
00:14:45.460 fields rooted in biomedical research and genetics.
00:14:49.440 But the closeness cuts both ways.
00:14:53.400 The reason rats are useful is the same reason their use raises ethical concern.
00:14:59.880 They are not abstract models.
00:15:03.860 They are responsive, social, capable of learning, capable of distress.
00:15:09.920 Their similarity is precisely what makes them legible to us
00:15:14.260 and what makes their role in research something more than just neutral.
00:15:19.120 So, we study rats because they mirror us just enough to reveal what we cannot easily test in ourselves.
00:15:29.960 Science tells us that we are rat kin.
00:15:38.040 Quote,
00:15:38.840 University of Chicago neuroscientist Peggy Mason and psychologists Inbal Ben-Ami-Bartal and Jean DeSetti placed pairs of rats in pens.
00:15:50.480 One rat was caged in the middle of the pen, whereas the other was free to run around.
00:15:54.940 In this experiment, 23 of 30 rats liberated their peers by headbutting the cage door or leaning against the door until it tipped over.
00:16:06.500 To actually test the rodents' selflessness,
00:16:10.680 Mason placed rats in pens with two cages.
00:16:14.300 In one was another rat.
00:16:16.500 In the other was a pile of chocolate chips.
00:16:20.340 The unhindered rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves.
00:16:23.620 Instead, most of the rodents opened both cages and shared the sweets.
00:16:30.120 In rat land, that is big, Mason says.
00:16:33.740 This is the first study to show altruistic behavior in rodents.
00:16:40.440 The bottom line, Mason says,
00:16:43.840 is that helping an individual in distress is part of our biology.
00:16:50.980 End quote.
00:16:51.880 Part of rat biology.
00:16:54.360 Part of human biology.
00:16:56.660 Helping an individual in distress is part of our biology.
00:17:02.760 Rats belong to the genus Rattus, a branch of the rodent family Muridae that diversified relatively recently in evolutionary terms.
00:17:13.760 Their deeper ancestry traces back to the early placental mammals that survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event,
00:17:23.540 after which rodents rapidly radiated into new ecological niches.
00:17:27.980 With this expansion, myriad rodents evolved in Asia, where the earliest recognizable rat-like forms appeared millions of years ago.
00:17:40.000 Modern rats, including the Rattus norvigicus and Rattus ratus, emerged through processes of natural selection, acting on traits that favor adaptability.
00:17:53.420 Omnivorous diets, high reproductive rates, and flexible social behavior.
00:17:58.540 Their continuously growing incisors, rat teeth, a defining rodent feature,
00:18:05.400 allow them to exploit a wide range of food sources and environments.
00:18:10.440 Genetically, rats exhibit remarkable plasticity,
00:18:14.340 enabling them to adjust quickly to changing conditions,
00:18:17.340 from forests and grasslands to dense urban ecosystems.
00:18:22.580 just like us.
00:18:27.600 Biogeographically, rats spread globally alongside human migration and trade,
00:18:35.320 particularly during periods of expanding maritime networks.
00:18:38.660 Ships provided both transport and habitat,
00:18:42.920 allowing rats to colonize new continents, just like us.
00:18:47.380 This close association with humans is an example of commensalism
00:18:54.680 Remember that word, commensalism 0.97
00:18:58.920 Rats benefit from human environments without necessarily providing benefit in return
00:19:07.820 So, while rats have been the subject of much propaganda, often focused on the poor or unseemly
00:19:15.080 It seems like in this way, they might have more in common with colonial wealthy, expanding territory and abject commensalism.
00:19:27.160 Take and do not give back.
00:19:30.460 Profit from the benefits of our earth without ever providing benefit in return.
00:19:37.500 Emily Dickinson wrote, quote,
00:19:39.520 A rat surrendered here
00:19:41.920 A brief career of cheer and fraud and fear
00:19:46.700 Of ignominies do
00:19:49.000 Let all addicted to beware
00:19:52.660 The most obliging trap
00:19:56.080 Its tendency to snap
00:19:59.240 Cannot resist
00:20:01.280 Temptation is the friend
00:20:03.960 Repugnantly resigned at last
00:20:07.800 End quote 0.97
00:20:08.960 Emily's rat surrendered to temptation, to greed, and got its neck snapped.
00:20:16.840 But when people call other humans rats, it's rarely about animals at all, is it?
00:20:22.940 It's a linguistic trap, and once someone tries to snatch the bait, snap! 0.77
00:20:29.540 Someone gets recast as vermin, unclean, invasive, expendable. 0.90
00:20:37.520 That rat trap has shown up again and again and again in human propaganda 0.83
00:20:44.580 One of the most infamous examples comes from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime 0.95
00:20:50.160 In films like Der Wege Judah, Jewish people were explicitly compared to rats
00:20:56.440 Shown in parallel footage with swarming rodents to suggest infestation and disease
00:21:03.180 This imagery helped normalize exclusion, violence, and ultimately genocide during the Holocaust.
00:21:12.440 More recently, a pro-genocide song calling Palestinians rats topped the music charts in Israel for several weeks.
00:21:23.660 A similar pattern appeared in the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide. 0.89
00:21:27.740 Extremist military outlets, especially Radio Television Libre de Mille Collines, referred to Tutsis and Inienzi, often translated as cockroaches, but functioning in the same dehumanizing register as rats.
00:21:45.820 The message framed the group of people as pests to be eliminated.
00:21:51.920 it. Come back next week when we'll shudder our way through our kinship with roaches, but in the
00:21:58.280 meantime, in war propaganda more broadly, including the United States and Britain during World War II,
00:22:05.220 enemy populations were frequently depicted as rodents or vermin. Posters and cartoons portrayed
00:22:12.740 opposing nations as swarming, gnawing threats.
00:22:17.840 Less than human. 0.96
00:22:20.100 Easy to hate. 1.00
00:22:22.360 Easy to want to kill.
00:22:25.100 Even outside large-scale conflicts, the metaphor shows up in political rhetoric. 0.94
00:22:31.300 Opponents are called rats to imply betrayal or moral, ethical filth.
00:22:37.980 The pattern is consistent.
00:22:40.560 Reduce a person to a creature associated with fear or disgust,
00:22:45.220 and you lower the psychological barrier to mistreating them.
00:22:51.060 B.F. Skinner famously used rats to map how behavior is shaped by consequences.
00:22:57.780 That behavior isn't just reflex, but sculpted over time through reward schedules.
00:23:04.080 John B. Calhoun's Rat Utopia studied the effects of overcrowding.
00:23:09.560 The experiment that sticks out today, though, Ratkin, for me, is the one that proved you have the capacity to hope.
00:23:24.360 Kurt Richter drowned you, then rescued you, then drowned you again.
00:23:30.840 You rats who were rescued once were able to keep swimming for an additional 60 hours.
00:23:39.560 Kurt Richter drowned you to prove that hope is key to survival.
00:23:44.540 A brutal experiment to give us scientific backing for what we knew all along.
00:23:52.760 Hope is key to survival.
00:23:58.840 You, my rat kin, have taught us humans so much about ourselves,
00:24:04.960 including, but not limited to, neuroscience, mapping brain structure, memory, learning,
00:24:11.220 and neuroplasticity, behavioral psychology, especially through operant conditioning and
00:24:16.620 habit formation, pharmacology, testing how substances affect the brain and body, toxicology,
00:24:22.960 understanding chemical safety and exposure risks, genetics, exploring inheritance, mutation and
00:24:29.520 gene expression, oncology, modeling tumor growth and testing treatments, endocrinology, examining
00:24:36.300 stress, reproduction, and metabolic systems, immunology, investigating disease response and
00:24:43.560 immunity, cardiovascular research, modeling hypertension and heart disease, addiction
00:24:49.440 science, understanding reward pathways and dependency, developmental biology, observing
00:24:55.400 how organisms change over a lifespan, nutrition science linking food intake to physiology
00:25:02.120 and disease, biomedical research integrating many of these areas into models of human health
00:25:11.640 and disease.
00:25:15.920 But instead of lauding you, praising you, instead of being grateful for every bit of
00:25:24.140 knowledge and healing that you have provided us albeit unknowingly and
00:25:28.760 without consent instead of cradling you in our arms and whispering thank you we
00:25:38.120 hate you take the worst things about ourselves and name them wrapped I smell 1.00
00:25:49.500 a rat, you rat bastard. Pack rat in a rat's nest. I'll be the first to rat you out. 1.00
00:25:57.580 My rat kin, I'm sorry. We use you, steal you from one continent to the next, then scorn 0.99
00:26:09.000 you for being there. You have given us so much knowledge about ourselves and we repay
00:26:17.000 you, by making you a stand-in for everything we hate about ourselves. The ultimate vermin. 0.84
00:26:26.540 Magic requires shadow work, to face the deep and scary bits of ourselves, and for me, 0.97
00:26:33.200 rat, kin, you lurk in these basements. Not because of you, because of me.
00:26:40.920 i fear you so i'm disgusted by you so i hate you and the mere sight of you sounds an alarm 1.00
00:26:51.740 inside my body that screams exterminate just like xenophobes and fascist billionaires i looked at 1.00
00:27:01.160 you and said if i let you flourish you'll take over this land that i own and ruin it for me 0.98
00:27:08.720 indeed many dream analysts suggest that to dream about rats tells us there's something we're
00:27:16.600 repressing something that we don't want to acknowledge and for me it's this that i am
00:27:25.160 no better than rats and more disappointingly no better than the people i call rats if 0.71
00:27:35.400 I allow my fear and entitlement to dictate whether or not they are worthy of a poem. 0.52
00:27:45.260 Beneath that, another shadow. 0.97
00:27:47.860 You aren't just kin, dear rats. 0.98
00:27:50.300 You are us. 0.99
00:27:52.460 You are mirrors of us.
00:27:55.320 Traveled to the places we traveled to, populated our urban centers right along with us.
00:28:00.520 Your biology, physiology, and psychology is our reflection.
00:28:06.920 Almost all human genes known to be associated with disease have counterparts in the rat genome.
00:28:13.860 You feel fear, loneliness, and hope.
00:28:19.260 From a biological perspective, you are a success story of evolutionary generalism.
00:28:26.360 Rats thrive by remaining flexible. 0.94
00:28:30.520 Just like witches. 0.93
00:28:33.500 Just like us. 0.99
00:28:37.000 New York City is famous for rats,
00:28:40.280 so let's turn for help to my friend, poet, librarian, New Yorker,
00:28:45.600 Kin Harmony Birch, for her perspective.
00:28:49.960 We are Rat Kin.
00:28:52.960 I'm struggling, chasing dreams and self-actualization. 0.95
00:28:57.920 why am i always hungry yearning tired rushing flip-flop to foolish and bold 0.99
00:29:09.020 pigeon toed i jog one job one rent one chance to not fuck it up flip-flop flip-flop screech 0.99
00:29:19.840 jump fly feel the weight lurch rise above suspended rejoice in the weightlessness just you 0.96
00:29:34.220 just you and this a brain scattered across black tarred road a leg twitching proof of warm blood
00:29:44.880 Tongue lulled, resting along a sharp jaw.
00:29:49.400 It's too much.
00:29:51.560 I won't bear witness. 0.99
00:29:54.280 Instead, my eyes dart toward my surroundings and lock onto those of a woman.
00:30:01.620 For a moment, I wonder if I've been seen, and I want to laugh, to wave,
00:30:07.800 to cling to shared understanding
00:30:11.020 to a community I'm half convinced
00:30:15.280 is myth. She shrugs at my foolishness 0.79
00:30:19.300 and turns away, keeps walking
00:30:22.340 the weight, previously suspended, crashes down
00:30:27.240 as a wave. I'm tumbling, gulping
00:30:30.540 burning, shame, disgust
00:30:35.100 A creature twitches, and I turn away and run. I am Ratkin.
00:30:44.400 It's early November, and the sun is warming the chill we've grown accustomed to.
00:30:50.180 I'm bundled up on my balcony. It's about 8.30 a.m., and I'm searching for wildlife in the lush, still-green forest of city yards.
00:31:00.300 Something large and round with a long tail scurries toward the house two yards down.
00:31:06.480 I'm surprised by its belonging.
00:31:09.400 Here, in my sanctuary, it belongs just as well as a squirrel.
00:31:15.560 Then I spot another in the yard across from me, and unease awakens.
00:31:20.360 Rats? In the day?
00:31:22.920 I've yet to see them in the yards, even at night.
00:31:25.640 Do we have an infestation?
00:31:28.320 Will they make it into my home? Onto my balcony?
00:31:34.140 During early fall, my partner and I went acorn foraging and fastened a squirrel feeder to our railing.
00:31:42.240 Sometimes I talk to a squirrel as he perches at the edge of the rail, looking for food.
00:31:48.660 Recently, I saw a bushy tail scurry when I opened the door to my balcony, and I slowly went back inside.
00:31:57.160 The squirrel, recognizing my invitation, gathered the courage to dive into the feeder, eat some nuts,
00:32:05.540 then dig into each of my four flower pots before he leapt back into the trees.
00:32:11.320 I watched in awe. A rat would have never been treated with such hospitality.
00:32:18.360 On my way to work, the same day as the yard rat sightings, a third rat stood.
00:32:23.920 His fur raised.
00:32:25.600 He swayed back and forth and staggered in the middle of the sidewalk, obviously sick.
00:32:32.400 Google tells me that rat sightings could be a sign of a growing family,
00:32:37.040 and though my womb remains blissfully empty, the extension of kin resonates.
00:32:44.000 There's a surprising amount of wildlife in New York City, but nothing so prevalent or infamous as the rat.
00:32:50.460 rats have a loathsome persona in the cultural zeitgeist as cruel vicious disgusting creatures
00:32:58.460 and when i see them scurrying in front of me mangy brown hair bloated bellies long scaly tails 1.00
00:33:08.200 i feel the entire semiotic ick they live below us taking our scraps our garbage creating networks 0.95
00:33:18.640 packed together, breeding and breeding and sprouting out of walls and subway grates. 0.99
00:33:25.260 They say there are five times the amount of rats for every New Yorker,
00:33:29.900 though that number isn't substantiated by recent studies.
00:33:34.240 It's not uncommon for borough folk to compare ourselves to these desperate pests
00:33:38.580 that spread diseases and plague, parasitically consuming our waste.
00:33:44.860 We know that, like rats, we live in a rigid hierarchy where only the fiercest rise to the top.
00:33:52.800 And so, when our resources get slim, and we're forced to crowd into impossibly tight spaces
00:33:59.240 where there isn't enough room to be our whole selves and to breathe, we turn on one another. 0.74
00:34:07.240 Until enough of our rat brethren have died to once again go about our short rat lives.
00:34:13.980 For though rats can live to be three years, most die after only a year.
00:34:19.960 We call it the rat race for a reason.
00:34:23.220 My first year in the city, I felt like I had to lose my humanity.
00:34:27.940 Otherwise, I'd lose my spot in the packed subway cars.
00:34:32.080 I'd lose more precious moments of time.
00:34:35.240 I'd lose my job, which gave me barely enough money to afford my box of a room
00:34:40.040 overflowing with all my life's belongings, clutter, and garbage? Do we not live in the
00:34:46.620 subterranean? All of us New Yorkers clawing toward humanity, toward the American dream?
00:34:54.320 In 2023, the estimate of unhoused people who live in subway stations in New York City was over 2,000,
00:35:01.400 but the number could be much larger. In 2022, dozens of encampments were found in subway tunnels.
00:35:10.040 i think about those encampments and the people living within them when i spot coffee cups
00:35:16.140 perched on the edge of subway tunnels i wonder what their relationships to the rats are
00:35:22.020 do they share my ick is that the least of their concerns rats are resourceful creatures full
00:35:30.340 of surprise they hunt use tools and show affection one study found that rats have a version of
00:35:38.820 laughter. There's something about being in the heart of capitalism, something about seeing the
00:35:44.800 greatest heights of American achievement, even though it's often obtained by violent, oppressive
00:35:50.300 means, but awakens possibility. Even the rat knows it's okay to laugh. Despite their short lifespan, 0.53
00:36:00.700 despite their crowded conditions, even rats know how to innovate to ensure that they survive and
00:36:06.640 thrive in numbers. We humans may be related to our other mammal kit by a rat-like rodent,
00:36:15.640 and we evolve just like our rat brethren. At the southern end of Prospect Park is a neighborhood
00:36:22.800 that gentrification has yet to fully sink its claws into. Every year, it participates in a
00:36:29.240 contest to see who can produce the greenest blocks. Walking in this crowded, sometimes dirty
00:36:35.240 part of Brooklyn, you might wander into a jungle. Vines
00:36:39.300 burst from windowsill planters. Each tree bed is lush
00:36:43.300 and leafy. Vegetables can be plucked and harvested from the street.
00:36:48.500 What if all of the city looked like this?
00:36:51.760 Like the High Line, magical for its melding of architecture
00:36:55.580 and nature. What if we could eat
00:36:59.620 for free from tree plots and window boxes?
00:37:05.240 My neighborhood has started the practice of guerrilla gardening.
00:37:09.360 Summer squash, grapes, tomatillos, all ready to harvest in late summer.
00:37:15.100 It isn't as stunning yet as that Brooklyn neighborhood,
00:37:18.700 and whenever I stop to examine the fruit,
00:37:21.280 a neighbor pops up to deter me from harvesting it.
00:37:25.320 We haven't learned to embrace the principles of abundance yet,
00:37:29.740 but like rats, we are innovating in our tiny spaces,
00:37:33.220 learning how to breed kin how to live and survive
00:37:37.960 lately i've been examining my disgust there are so many parts of me bogged down by shame
00:37:46.360 shame for my messiness my lack of boundaries my love of winning my desire for power there's so
00:37:55.220 much of me that doesn't fit the standards of what i must be in order to succeed in this world
00:38:01.580 But what if those parts are needed?
00:38:05.440 What if all the qualities of capitalism, greed, competition, and gluttony aren't sinful?
00:38:12.020 They're just qualities of life.
00:38:14.520 Qualities that can be balanced by care, humility, and rest.
00:38:20.360 Maybe there's a means of evolving that allows us to laugh,
00:38:24.180 to live the whole length of our rat lives,
00:38:27.200 to evolve in ways that allow us to coexist with other species.
00:38:31.580 we are rat kin and new ecosystems are possible
00:38:38.240 we are rat kin and new ecosystems are possible thank you harmony and thank you sydney who turned
00:38:55.200 me on to ruth crawford seager which led me to her recording of rat riddles an entirely
00:39:00.660 bonkers songification of a poem which led me to that poem rat riddles by carl sandberg quote
00:39:07.740 there was a gray rat looked at me with green eyes out of a rat hole hello rat i said is there any
00:39:14.440 chance for me to get in on the language of the rats and the green eyes blinked at me blinked from
00:39:22.780 a gray rat's rat hole come again i said slip me a couple of riddles there must be riddles among
00:39:30.520 rats and the green eyes blinked at me and whisper came from the gray rat hole who do you think you 0.82
00:39:39.540 are and why is a rat where did you sleep last night and why do you sneeze on tuesdays and why 0.99
00:39:47.060 is the grave of a rat no deeper than the grave of a man and the tail of a green-eyed rat whipped 0.75
00:39:55.680 and was gone at a grey rat hole.
00:40:00.240 End quote. 0.98
00:40:00.620 I said, is there any chance for me to get out of my language?
00:40:24.380 Thank you.
00:40:54.380 There must be a couple of wittles. There must be wittles among the rags.
00:41:06.380 ¶¶
00:41:35.380 Who do you think you are?
00:41:41.380 And why is a rat?
00:41:45.380 Where did you sleep last night?
00:41:47.380 And why do you sneeze?
00:41:50.380 I'm jealous!
00:41:55.380 And why is the dream of a rat?
00:42:03.380 the deeper
00:42:07.160 and the deeper
00:42:12.140 and the deeper
00:42:12.600 and the deeper
00:42:22.500 and the deeper
00:42:23.420 and the deeper
00:42:25.880 and the deeper
00:42:29.940 and the deeper
00:42:33.140 Here, in Rat Riddles, lies a haunting kinship question.
00:42:43.460 Why is a rat's grave no deeper than a man's?
00:42:47.900 The grey rat suggests that all living things are equal in death.
00:42:53.760 The grey rat says, at the end, you are no better than me, because you are me.
00:42:59.320 In your honor, Ratkin, I pledge to feed and nurture a radical compassion that interrogates
00:43:09.400 hate until it admits to being fear in disguise, to interrogate hate until it turns into some
00:43:19.360 form of love, until it becomes a poem. There must be more riddles among rats, among you,
00:43:29.920 our rat kin, and maybe, just maybe, if we pay attention, we'll find in our answers to those
00:43:37.780 rat riddles a place where fear and disgust clear a path not for hatred, but for curiosity,
00:43:45.680 To seek understanding
00:43:48.360 A place where we can hear rat laughter and join in
00:43:54.660 Tell me your tales of rat laughter, dear coven
00:43:58.860 Those rats you've held as pets, as friends
00:44:03.080 To help me in this continuing work
00:44:06.340 To love a rat
00:44:08.560 If there is any chance for me to get in on the language of rats
00:44:13.880 Let loose a plague of words, Rat, and remind them and me that you, that I, we are worthy of every poem.
00:44:27.040 But, Rat, I think you already know that.
00:44:32.140 As Emily Dickinson wrote in another poem about you, quote,
00:44:35.640 The rat is the concisest tenant
00:44:38.840 He pays no rent
00:44:40.780 Repudiates the obligation
00:44:43.180 On schemes intent
00:44:45.320 Balking our wit
00:44:47.120 To sound or circumvent
00:44:49.420 Hate cannot harm
00:44:51.540 A foe so reticent
00:44:53.340 Neither decree
00:44:55.300 Prohibit him
00:44:56.600 Lawful
00:44:58.700 As equilibrium 0.99
00:45:05.640 You must be a witch. 0.96
00:45:08.160 Looking for your kin? 0.98
00:45:10.320 Join the Missing Witches Coven.
00:45:12.300 Find everything you need to know at missingwitches.com.