Randall

So, Dan, in this episode, you're talking about badlands and badlands.

you brought up um an aspect of this sort of regional feature that i hadn't really considered in depth and that is that the badlands are sort of a landscape that we think of as unique to the american west and it's this regional distinctiveness and then you point out it's a global

And there's a whole lot of aspects of the West that have parallels around the globe on different continents.

But in this, you touch on Badlands as a global geological phenomenon.

And if you'd asked me where they find dinosaurs, I would have told you Montana, the Hell Creek Formation.

Yeah, yeah.

then i would have said mongolia yeah and i could have described to you the landscape that they're found in mongolia but i wouldn't have

labeled that image in my mind as Badlands, but that's exactly what it is.

You mentioned art and in this piece you highlight how women artists have really been leading figures in depicting these landscapes.

Is there a connection there between them being overlooked and underappreciated and then leaving space for someone like Georgia O'Keeffe to bring them to a new audience?

I think in this piece, you highlight the very unique aesthetic qualities of Western Badlands.

There's layers of color, there's strata of geology, and then there's these shapes that don't quite seem to make sense.

I think of being out

eastern montana and you see these washes that sort of go down in waves and and uh can you sort of speak to how i mean i know that you're a big fan of this being in this country but it does elicit a very different sort of emotional and intellectual response than you know a big granite peak

And there's sort of a timelessness that we associate with like a mountain peak.

Yeah.

Obviously, there is a history there.

But when you're in Badlands country, you can see time and history right in front of your face.

And it's almost like you could go back there and visit the next year and see what's exposed now in terms of just, you know, artifacts and bones and fossils and things like that.

Yeah.