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Hello and welcome to The Anthropocene Reviewed, a podcast where we review facets of the human-centered planet on a 5-star scale. My name is John Green and here in our first episode, I'll be reviewing Canadian geese and Diet Dr Pepper.

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Okay let's begin with the Canadian goose, also known as the Canada goose if you're one of those pedantic people who likes to point out that geese have no nationality. You probably know the bird in question: the brown-bodied, black-necked, honking waterfowl ubiquitous in suburban North America and now also in Europe and New Zealand. With a song like a dying balloon and a penchant for attacking humans, the Canada goose is hard to love. But then again so are most of us. These days, the world contains between 4 and 5 million Canada geese although, from where I'm sitting in Indianapolis, that estimate seems low as there appear to be 4 or 5 million just in my backyard. Regardless, their numbers are growing, but they were once exceptionally rare. In fact, the subspecies you're most likely to see in parks and by retention ponds, the giant Canada goose, was believed to be extinct early in the 20th century due to year-round unrestricted hunting. Canada geese were particularly susceptible to so-called "live decoys".

Hunters would capture geese and render them flightless, and then the call of these captured geese would attract flocks of wild ones which could then be shot. But in 1935, live decoys were made illegal and geese populations began to recover, very slowly at first and then spectacularly. In 1955, only 20 Canada geese spent part of their year in Ohio. Today there are over 130,000 geese in Ohio. Non-native populations of geese from New Zealand to Scandinavia have also exploded. In Britain, the goose population has risen by a factor of at least 20 in the last 60 years. This success is partly down to those laws protecting the birds, but mostly because in the past several decades, humans have rendered lots of land perfect for geese. Heavily landscaped suburbs, riverside parks, and golf courses with water features are all absolutely ideal living conditions for them. Geese also enjoy rural fields near rivers and lakes, but the ratio of city geese to country geese in the United States is actually quite similar to the human ratio. At any given time, about 80% of American humans are in or near urban areas. For Canada geese, it's about 75%. And the Anthropocene is also changing the way geese live. Between their idyllic suburban lives and climate change, less and less of the population is even bothering to migrate these days. Flocks of geese in their famous V-formations can travel up to 1500 miles per day with a tailwind. They've been known to fly from North America to Europe. But every year, more geese either shorten their migrations or don't migrate at all. And in this respect, they also reflect humans in the United States. 20% of Americans moved between 1955 and 1956. Between 2015 and 2016, just over 11% did. Like geese, Americans are becoming more likely to die near where they were born with each passing year. In fact, the more you look at it, the more connections you find.

Like us, they usually mate for life, although sometimes unhappily. Like us, the success of their species has affected their habitats. A single Canada goose can produce up to 100 pounds of excrement per year, which has led to unsafe E. coli levels in lakes and ponds. And like us, they have few natural predators. If they die by violence, it is almost always human violence, just like us. But even though Canada geese are perfectly adapted to the human-dominated planet, they seem to feel nothing but distain for actual humans. Geese honk and strut and bite to keep people away, even though they're thriving because of our artificial lakes and manicured lawns. And in turn, many of us have come to resent geese as a pest animal--I know I do. But they also allow me to feel like there's still some proper nature in my highly-sanitized, biologically-monotonous suburban life. Even if geese have become mundane, there's still something awe-inspiring about seeing them fly overhead in perfect formation. More than pigeons or mice or rats, geese still feel wild to me. So for me at least, it's a kind of symbiotic relationship in which neither party really much likes the other. Speaking of which, just before graduating from college, I fell in love with a girl and one day we were driving in her ancient blue hatchback to pick up some groceries and she asked me what my biggest fear was, and I said abandonment. I was worried this girl would eventually break up with me and I wanted her to comfort me, to tell me that I need not fear being alone because she would always be there and etc. But she wasn't the sort of person to make false promises and, while I don't wish to generalize, most promises featuring the word "always" are unkeepable. I mean, everything ends. Or at least, everything humans have thus far observed ends. Anyway, after I said abandonment, she just nodded, and then I filled the awkward silence by asking her what her biggest fear was. "Geese", she said. And who can blame her? I mean, it was a flock of Canada geese...

...that flew a suicide mission into the engines of US Airways flight 1549 in 2009, forcing Captain Sully Sullenberger to splash-land the aircraft in New York's Hudson River. In 2014, a Canadian cyclist spent a week in the hospital after being attacked by a Canada goose. You can do something about abandonment. You can construct a stronger independent self, for instance, or build a broader network of meaningful relationship so your psychological well-being isn't wholly reliant upon one person. But you as an individual can't do much about the Canada goose. And that seems to me one of the great weirdnesses of the Anthropocene. Collectively, we have unprecedented power. For better or worse, land has become ours. It is ours to cultivate, to shape, even ours to protect. We are so much the dominant creature on this planet that we essentially decide which species live and which die; which grow like the Canada goose, and which decline like its cousin the spoon-billed sandpiper. Since the Columbian Exchange began in 1492, we've changed the temperature of the planet and reshaped its biosphere on a scale not seen in millions of years. Our species is shaping every aspect of life on Earth, but as an individual, I don't feel that power. I can't decide whether a species lives or dies, I can't even get my kids to eat breakfast. In the daily grind of a human life, there's a lawn to mow, soccer practices to drive to, a mortgage to pay. And so I go on living the way I feel like people always have, the way that feels like the right way, and feels at times like the only way. I mow the lawn, as if lawns are natural when in fact, we didn't invent the suburban American lawn until 160 years ago. And I drive to soccer practice, even though that was also impossible 160 years ago, not only because there were no cars but also because soccer hadn't been invented. And I pay the mortgage, even though mortgages as we understand them today...

...weren't widely available until the 1930s. All of this and so much more happened in the last one-thousandth of human history. So much of what feels inevitably, inescapably human to me is, in fact, very, very new, including the everywhereness of the Canada goose. So yeah, as both a species and a symbol, I feel deeply unsettled about the Canada goose. In a way it's become my biggest fear. The goose isn't to blame, of course, but still, I can only give it 3/5 stars.

After the break we'll discuss the strange and beautiful story of Diet Dr Pepper...

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The story of Dr. Pepper begins in 1885 in Waco, Texas. A pharmacist named Charles Alderton combined 23 flavors to create a new kind of carbonated drink. This was one year, by the way, before the first appearance of Coca-Cola. Notably, Alderton sold the recipe for Dr. Pepper after a few years because he wanted to pursue his passion: pharmaceutical chemistry. He worked at the drug company Eli Lilly before going back to his hometown to head up the laboratory at the Waco drug company. Alderton soda probably would've remained a Texas-only phenomenon, disappearing like so many other soda flavors--the opera bouquet, the swizzle fizz, the almond sponge...