♪♪ - Welcome once again to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

We're coming to you tonight from the Powerhouse Art Center in Oxford, Mississippi.

♪♪ ♪When you're feeling way down low.♪ ♪You've got no place to go♪ ♪Can't find a lover♪ ♪Can't find no friend can't call your so and so.♪ ♪Just put your hand on the radio.♪ ♪Can you feel it down to your toes?♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪That's how it goes.♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪Lord only knows.♪ ♪Lord only knows.♪ ♪Put your hand on the radio♪ ♪♪ ♪Oh, I'm down on my knees♪ ♪I'm begging you please♪ ♪Here comes Jim Dees♪ ♪♪ ♪No, no, no, no, no♪ ♪Here comes Jim Dees.♪ Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Welcome to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

As I mentioned, we're at the Powerhouse Arts Center, a mere stone's throw from the Oxford Square.

We've got a fine show for y'all tonight.

We've got real deal blues, y'all.

Peggy "Lady Trucker" Hemphill-LaSueur is here.

Tommy Womack is here, veteran songwriter.

His new album is called "Live a Little."

It's acoustic guitar with some guts to it.

That's our guy.

Tommy Womack is here.

And our man Jonathan Miles is here with his new novel "Eradication."

"Eradication of Fable."

And it is about a man who answers an ad to save the world and he ends up being dropped on a remote island with a high-powered rifle with the assignment to kill 4,000 goats.

Y'all ready for this?

We've got a big band.

Y'all've come on a great night, please.

It is the Yalobushwhacker Big Band.

[applause] [APPLAUSE] ♪♪ It's not your situation, I just need contemplation over you.

I'm not so symptomatic, it's just that I'm an addict for your love.

I'm not the only one that holds you, I never ever should have told you, you're my only girl.

I'm not the only one that holds you I never ever should have told you You're my only world Just think how long I've known you It's wrong for me to own you Lock and key It's really not confusing I'm just a young illusion Can't you see?

I'm not the only one that holds you.

I never ever should have told you.

You're my only girl.

I'm not the only one that holds you.

I never ever should have told you.

You're my only world.

Georgie Porgie pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

♪♪ It's not your situation, I just need contemplation over you.

I'm not so symptomatic, it's just that I'm an addict for your love.

I'm not the only one that holds you, I never ever should have told you, you're my only girl.

I'm not the only one that holds you, I never ever should have told you, you're my only one.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

kissed the girls and made them cry.

kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, pudding pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.

kissed the girls and made them cry.

kissed the girls and made them cry.

Georgie Porgie, yeah.

Kiss the girls and make them cry.

Kiss the girls and make them cry.

Georgie, Georgie, Georgie.

Kiss the girls, kiss the girls and make them cry.

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

[applause] Yalobushwhackers, y'all.

Let 'em hear you, please.

Great, great, great.

They'll be back later in the show.

All right, Tommy Womack, get out here, man.

I look forward to meeting him just for the names of his albums alone.

Hey, we just met.

So good to have you here.

Two of my favorites that you released back to back.

The first one is "There, I Said It."

And the next album is called "Now What?"

And we all know that feeling, Tommy, but I believe your latest one is called "Live A Little."

- That's right.

- Delighted to have him here.

Y'all please welcome Tommy Womack.

[cheers and applause] ♪♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪There'll be another one next week.♪ ♪It's no big deal.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪There'll be another one next week.♪ ♪And another, and another, and another, and another,♪ ♪and you can pry my cold dead fingers off my gun.♪ ♪It's my right to lock and load and have my fun.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪There'll be another one next week.♪ ♪And another, and another, and another, and another.♪ ♪And if the teacher had been packing,♪ ♪She could have blown that dude away.♪ ♪If the teacher had been packing, it could have been♪ ♪just another day.♪ ♪And all the kids would come back to life,♪ ♪like actors on a cop show on Channel 5.♪ ♪And if the secretary was packing,♪ ♪she wouldn't hide in a closet and cry.♪ ♪If everybody was packing,♪ ♪nobody would ever die.♪ ♪But hey,♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪It's just another shooting.♪ ♪There'll be another one next week.♪ ♪And another, and another.♪ ♪And another, and another.♪ ♪And another, and another.♪ ♪And another, and another.♪ ♪and another♪ ♪And another, and another.♪ ♪And another, and another, and another, it's no big deal.♪ [applause] Thank you.

[applause] - Tommy Womack, y'all, one more time for him, please.

How about that?

Tommy Womack, "Live A Little" is the name of that new album.

Thank you, Tommy.

Great stuff.

Our next guest is Mr.

Jonathan Miles.

He's the author of the novel "Eradication, A Fable."

It is from Doubleday.

"Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician "turned school teacher named Adi answers a job "listing advertising a chance to save the world.

"The assignment, spend five weeks alone on a tiny isolated "Pacific island of Santa Flora with a high powered "rifle to kill, eradicate thousands of goats who have "been there for hundreds of years and have eaten all the "bird and wildlife habitat and created a dangerous ecological imbalance."

"Excellent," says the New York Times, one of the best reviews ever from the Washington Post from Mr.

Ron Charles.

You may have read the Post got rid of their book review section.

And Ron Charles wrote, "It's an instant classic.

"The moment I finished, I was reminded "of Emily Dickinson's description of true poetry.

Quote, "I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off."

Y'all please welcome Jonathan Myles.

[applause] [Applause] Thank you, man.

- Thank you.

- This idea of dropping a person down onto a remote island with this idea that you're doing a good thing for the world, for the planet, in killing these goats, An incredible concept, but it's actually based on a real incident, correct?

- Yeah, continuing incidents.

The seeds for this book were planted about 20 years ago when I was in the Galapagos Islands.

I was doing some reporting down there.

I was embedded with the Ecuadoran Navy in their battle against illegal shark poaching.

And while I was there, I happened to hear of these eradication efforts.

Feral goats had decimated tortoise habitat on the islands and they were -- the government was bringing in sharpshooters to kill all these goats.

And I was immediately struck by the moral friction of this, right?

I mean, this idea of this noble ecological purpose chafing against mass slaughter, taking lives to save lives.

And it just kept haunting me, you know, these questions.

When is killing righteous?

Who gets to decide?

And the great painter and musician Terry Allen once said, "The shortest distance between two questions is art."

And so after a while, I began writing.

- You know, the old saw about you write what you know and everything.

I'm just curious, did you go off by yourself and not shoot goats?

Did you?

- No, I didn't.

- But did you kind of go off by yourself and sort of feel that extreme solitude to kind of get the vibe of it?

- Yeah, although I think anyone who spends their days, you know, locked up in a room by themselves has a pretty good sense of solitude.

But I did, I did, I traveled down to the island of Dominica just to kind of get, you know, that island vibe.

Um, and you know, at least for tax purposes, that's what I'm saying.

[laughter] - Because I noticed, uh, we all think of deserted island and an island in the Pacific, it might be, you know, semi-romantic or whatever.

But, uh, when you get there, it's like, you can't walk.

The footing is terrible, it's like really rough terrain, and that's the way this island is in the book.

- It's really interesting the way that the desert island as a notion has been really embedded in the popular imagination for centuries, right?

Because I think all of us are terrified of the concept, but also weirdly attracted to it.

You hear about the desert island list, you know, what albums would you take for your desert island, what books would you take?

So there's some sort of strange attraction at the same time there's this terror.

- All right, y'all, this is a wonderful, wonderful read.

We're gonna hear some from it now.

Again, the novel is called "Eradication, a Fable," my buddy, Jonathan Miles.

[APPLAUSE] >> So as Jim mentioned, the novel opens with my main character, Adi, arriving on this remote Pacific island with a rifle and 4,000 rounds of ammunition.

And here's where we learn why.

The job listing hadn't mentioned killing.

What it had mentioned, rather, was saving the world.

And Adi liked the sound of that.

What had attracted him even more was five weeks of solo work in a remote, uninhabited location.

Just imagining it felt restorative, medicinal, antidotal.

He called the number and set up an interview.

The foundation's offices were on a high floor in a glassy, rhomboid building in the capital.

The foundation funded programs in medicine, education, civil society, and conservation, Adi's interviewer told him, with offices all over the world.

Sao Paulo, Berlin, Lagos, Washington, Sydney.

She led him to a chrome desk where she shuffled some papers until with a soft, pleased grunt, she plucked the one she'd been seeking.

So, she said, right, right, skimming.

You hear about the eradication op, the Santa Flora post.

Adi hoped his expression wasn't as blank as it felt.

The "saving the world" ad, the five-week, right, right, right, that's the one.

That's our labor engagement coordinator.

Jasper loves using the "come save the world" line.

He's not wrong, though, is he?

Does snatch the eyeballs.

Adi squirmed.

This side note of hers felt prematurely collegial and weirdly cynical.

Who wouldn't want to save the world?

"Though in this case," she went on, "it happens to be true in an unusually literal way.

Not the whole world, but for sure a worthy knob of it."

She flattened her palms on the desktop and leaning forward asked him, "How much do you know about Santa Flora?"

He bit his lip.

Every year he made his fourth graders memorize the country's islands.

So, not untruthfully, he answered, "A little bit."

Then you know about the goats.

He raised an index finger, a lifelong reflex when bewildered.

The goats.

Oh, dropping the finger.

Sure, he lied.

It's so much worse than what you might have read in the government reports.

She shook her head almost to shiver.

Frankly, at this point, the island's close to a bare rock.

I mean, this was a landscape Melville wrote about.

William Dampere.

Dampere called it a chunk of Eden that must have floated off before the fall.

200 years ago, it was covered in cloud forest and home to absolutely immense seal and seabird colonies.

So many birds that one explorer claimed you heard Santa Flora before you ever saw it.

And now, now it's just, it's barren.

Again, Adi's finger went up.

Because of, because of the goats, right?

Because they, because they've eaten everything.

Ravished every bloody stem of it.

And of course we've got the whalers to thank for them, she said.

In response to his fuddled look, she went on, they drop off breeding pairs on their way to the hunting grounds as a way to insure themselves some fresh meat.

You dump some goats on an island, you sail off to kill your whales, the goats did as goats do, and on your way back, you stopped off to slaughter some for the trip back.

Like a drive-thru.

Whaling, Adi echoed.

The word evoked blacksmithing, telegraphing, wainwriting, terms crusted with obsolescence.

That was a long time ago.

Well, we can't get much past you, can we?

But you're not wrong.

That's 19th century history, it is.

The problem is that history leaves a slime trail, like a snail.

Whaling eventually ended, more or less, but the goats didn't.

No one thought about them except a few sealers and fishermen stopping off at Santa Flora.

The goats ate, they made more of each other.

The new ones ate alongside the old.

The airplane was invented.

The goats looked up, chewing.

The atomic bomb got dropped.

The goats glanced over, chewing.

Humans walked on the moon.

The goats kept chewing.

Birds stopped landing on Santa Flora because there were no more trees for them, but without any other islands in range, entire species fell from the sky and disappeared.

Birdsong was no longer the predominant sound on Santa Flora.

The grinding of teeth was.

How many goats are there?

At one point there may have been 40,000 of them, but after most of the vegetation was denuded, the population crashed.

Our best estimate is that there are 2,000 to 4,000 goats on Santa Flora, just enough to keep the vegetation in a perpetual state of buzz cut.

And none of this was aligning in Adi's head with what the job listing had delineated.

Five weeks of solo work, it had said.

Two to 4,000 goats and one person doing what?

So how do you save it, he asked.

Save?

Santa Flora, he said.

And gesturing vaguely toward their paperwork, he added, the world.

Oh, right.

Well, the good news is that it's actually quite easy.

You remove the goats.

Remove them how?

By eradicating them.

Eradicating them how?

You shoot them.

Her mouth a straight line.

All of them.

Who does?

Well, you, she said, if you turn out to be a fit for the operation.

That's the job?

His mouth a circle.

Shooting goats?

No, she said, that's not the job.

The job is saving one of the Pacific Ocean's most unique and vibrant ecosystems from very certain destruction.

The job is removing a malignant growth that's been steadily erasing some of the most vulnerable and least studied flora and fauna on the bloody planet.

The job is rescuing one of the most devastated seabird habitats in the Pacific.

That's the job.

That's what it is.

She fell back into her chair with an aggravated windedness, as though explaining this point to him had been unnecessary labor, a gratuitous emotional sap.

At some point, however, she must have noticed Adi's mouth still flopped open.

It's not easy work, but it's noble work.

She angled toward him, her tone gentler now.

Poisoning isn't an option for the obvious downstream reasons.

Mass sterilization is remotely possible.

Same as capture.

But here's the thing.

Hardly anything else we do here yields results this this tangible.

We can buy a quarter million hectares of rainforest and arm 500 monitors to protect it, but ultimately that's just holding a line.

It stops more losses, right, but nothing's gained.

This is different.

With this, you'll be able to take your children or grandchildren to Santa Flora and say, "Listen to those birds.

Look at those trees.

I did this.

Me.

I brought this back from the dead."

She let Adi sit with this for a while.

Then she dipped her head forward, smiling as though peeking at him from under a wide hat brim.

Is that something you might like?

Thank you.

[applause] - Jonathan Miles, y'all, my buddy.

Let him hear you.

The man.

Y'all please welcome Peggy "Lady Trucker" Hemphill Lasur.

- How y'all doing?

♪♪ ♪I don't want no skinny man♪ ♪I don't want no skinny man♪ ♪His meat don't shake, his meat don't shake♪ ♪His meat don't shake, his meat don't shake♪ ♪I said meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat,♪ ♪meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, I'm going to say it again.♪ ♪Yeah, I don't want no skinny man.♪ ♪I don't want no skinny man.♪ ♪His meat don't shake.♪ ♪His meat don't shake.♪ ♪His meat don't shake.♪ ♪His meat don't shake.♪ ♪And he don't wash my clothes.♪ ♪And he don't cook me no food.♪ ♪All he do is walk up and down.♪ ♪Walk up and down.♪ ♪Walk up and down.♪ ♪I tell him like this.♪ ♪Walk, walk, walk, walk.♪ ♪Walk, walk, walk, walk.♪ ♪Up and down.♪ Now my favorite part is this one.

And I tell them like this.

'Cause you know, ladies, we tell a man like this, we have to tell him every day.

I say, ♪Lord knows I, I love that man.♪ ♪Lord knows I, I love that man.♪ ♪I love him to the bone♪ ♪I love him to the bone♪ ♪I love him to the bone♪ ♪I love him to the bone♪ I tell 'em like this.

♪Bone, bone, bone, bone♪ ♪Bone, bone, bone, bone♪ ♪Bone, bone, bone, bone♪ ♪Love that man.♪ ♪Love that man.♪ ♪Love that man.♪ ♪♪ [applause] I want to thank y'all so much.

Thank y'all so much.

[applause] - Peggy "Lady Trucker" Hemphill Lasur, y'all, and her band.

How 'bout 'em?

Hey, great, great.

We've got a big old band here.

We love them.

We're going to get one more tune from them and we'll see y'all on the radio and the television.

[applause] ♪♪ ♪It's like a diamond ring It's a precious thing♪ ♪And we never want to lose it.♪ ♪It's like a favorite song that we love to sing.♪ ♪Every time we hear the music♪ ♪And we're in this love together We got the kind♪ ♪that lasts forever.♪ ♪We're in this love together, And like berries on the vine,♪ ♪It gets sweeter all the time.♪ ♪♪