Daniel Blumstein

But I mean, there's a New Yorker essay about this years ago about, you know, oh, well,

blah, blah, blah, all major religions see something in Groundhog Day about self-discovery and improvement and being better to others.

And so Groundhog Day is more of a metaphorical thing in the movie.

I used to get paid to bicycle around the world.

I didn't get paid a lot.

I mean, I had sponsors, you know, and this is before cell phones and influencers and things like that.

So I just sort of wrote stuff and took pictures and got sponsors to help pay for my trips bicycling around the world.

And I got into Davis for grad school.

I didn't know what I was going to study.

I knew I wanted to speak international, maybe conservation-y, but I also was really into behavior.

And I'm bicycling with an old girlfriend around.

We tried to bicycle around India, Nepal, Pakistan.

We tried to bicycle around the Himalayan Karakoram.

China blocked our attempts at two places.

We got into, you know, Nepal and couldn't get over.

They wouldn't let us in.

So we bicycled around the northern areas of Pakistan, the Karakoram.

And so I get up to northern Pakistan and it's gorgeous.

And I find myself on the border of China.

camping in a place called Clint Robb National Park and there are marmots everywhere and they're super social and there are foxes everywhere there's snow leopards we didn't see them and it's like the marmots were fighting the foxes off and away from them and I'm like this is pretty cool and I said I wonder if I could you know study these guys here so I ended up looking at antipredator behavior and