Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal

Today on the show, we’re bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature, a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United States to meet people, make music and better understand how culture binds us to nature. The series features a few familiar voices, including Ana González (host) and Alan Goffinski (producer), from our kids podcast, Terrestrials. About the episode: West Virginia is defined by its beauty and its coal, two things that can work against each other. Yo-Yo Ma felt this as soon as stepped foot in its hills. This episode explores how music and poetry help process the emotions of a community besieged with disaster and held together by pride and duty. We travel down the Coal River with third-generation coal miner Chris Saunders, who tells us how coal has saved and threatened his life. Poet Crystal Good shares her poetry, which channels her rage and love. And musician and granddaughter of West Virginia coal miners, Kathy Mattea, explains the beauty of belting out your home state in a chorus. The end of the episode finds host Ana floating down the New River with help from a group of high schoolers and Yo-Yo Ma. Listen to the full series Our Common Nature. Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Dom Flemons, and Kathy Mattea and poetry by Crystal Good. EPISODE CREDITS: Radiolab Bits Produced - Anisa Vietze (Radiolab bits) Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Wait, you're listening.

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  Okay.

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  All right.

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  Okay.

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  All right.

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  You're listening to Radiolab.

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  Radiolab.

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  From...

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  WNYC.

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  See?

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  Yep.

• 0:20Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. A little while back, Lulu and I had... We were basically starstruck because we got to sit down with a living musical icon.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  Oh!

• 0:33Speaker 03

  Hi, Lulu.

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  My goodness!

• 0:35Speaker 03

  Hi, Latif.

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  It's so great to meet you!

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. I can't believe it. Yo-Yo Ma.

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Yo-Yo, of course, is a famous cellist, kind of the famous cellist. He's won 19 Grammy Awards, produced more than 90 musical albums. But the reason we were sitting down to talk to him was... I'm a newbie at podcasting.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  We got together with our friend, producer, and host, Ana Gonzalez, and they made a whole podcast series called "Our Common Nature." And we loved the podcast so much that we wanted to sit down and talk to the two of them about why they made it.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the idea for the podcast started with Yo-Yo, right? Like, he'd been doing these outdoor performances for about a year. And he was basically trying to reconnect to nature himself

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Hmm.

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  and bring music outside of the concert hall, playing in locations that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find a classical music concert, like on a riverbed, or by a coal mine, in a cave, in the woods. And they were these really intimate performances, kind of to whoever was around. And at a certain point, Yo-Yo wanted to get this to more people. He decided he should have somebody on the ground with him with a microphone, making recordings, making stories. And at some point, he and his team came to me and they asked, "Do you want to be that person? Do you want to be on the ground with a microphone, making recordings with me?" And I was like, "Yes, please. That sounds amazing."

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  Well, I was so happy to meet Anna because she also works with children.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  You may recognize Anna's voice because she's also a producer on our sister show for families, Terrestrials.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  She has this wonderful podcast with children and, and actually, I never grew up.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  So I started from a child's point of view. You know, we've all pestered adults with the question, why at a certain age? It's usually around two or three years old. Why, why daddy, why mommy? But I think I never stopped. And then, of course, in the natural world, which I came to later, although I think the fascination was there always. I think who hasn't looked out in the night sky and wondered, what's out there?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I mean, just all of that, that Yo-Yo just said, made it so fun to go with him because he is this great combination of childlike wonder, you know, just having fun playing, such a people person, and then would like prank me by like saying like, oh, I want to say something important and then like make duck sounds into my microphone. And the way that people opened up with Yo-Yo there, him having his cello, playing music as an offering, it opened up these worlds that otherwise would take years, honestly, of relationship building that we could do in a day.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  What I do as a musician is not unlike what a reporter does. I just have to report it through sound. And you reported through words. Although Anna comes pretty close to reporting it through sound because in, in, in West Virginia, we had a lovely dinner for all the participants that were going to come in, and they had a cider press. And guess what? Anna was there with her big fuzzy microphone, recording the sound.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  I think that was the first thing I recorded was Yo-Yo pressing apples on an apple. Like I recorded people eating food and, and fire crackling and the, the crickets chirping. And so, yeah, I, I also thought the same thing in that moment, Yo-Yo. I was like, oh, we're doing the same thing. You have a cello and I have a microphone, but we're like relaying energy and sound and feeling in our own mediums.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  What Anna did and does.

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  Is she's able to do not reporting on facts or even on knowledge, but reporting on experience.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  The series they ended up making together, I mean, it's basically Anna and Yo-Yo going around to different locations across the country, climbing mountains, rafting rivers, chanting to whales, bringing music to people in these places and then telling stories about those places and their connection to the natural world.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  And that hopefully this, these podcasts are there to give a sense of, through sounds and words, what it feels like to be there and to be part of every special community that we've visited. That gives us the best possible way of sharing a deep experience of a place with a radio audience.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  I think I said this to Anna when I first heard it, like it's sort of spiritually refreshing. It's kind of so at odds with all the news or other media that I feel like is out there right now. It feels like slower and richer and, and more human somehow.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Thank you, Latif. I mean, yeah, I felt that way the whole time making it. It made it all worth it because everyone deserves that kind of four dimensional view of their lives and where they live.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  So we decided to pluck one episode out for you to hear. It takes place in West Virginia and covers, among other things, a huge recent tragedy I had never even heard of. One of the oldest rivers in the world that is improbably called New River. And a famous song that you may have even sung at karaoke that's based on a lie. Take a listen.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  As a little girl, I would go with my granddad to the company store. And all the coal miners would be around. And they would say, "Sing me that song," and they would pay me. So I would get a few pennies for penny candy, and it was 16 tons. So I would sing. 16 tons, and what do you get? "Another day older and a deeper in debt." "Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go." "I owe my soul to the company store."

• 7:17Speaker 01

  That's Diane Williams. She's sitting with me and Yo-Yo and a group of coal miners in New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. It's the first weekend of fall. And we're outside of a historical mine called Nudelberg. The Appalachian hills around us are tight and thick with summer leaves. The river behind us is a constant flow. We just had a picnic of pepperoni rolls and Mr. Pibb from real-life coal miner lunch buckets. And then Yo-Yo stood up.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  As a stranger, I'm so overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation and gratitude for what you have done. It's important to unite all of us because you've united us once before in what you've done. So what would you like us to take away?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Coal has formed the lives of so many West Virginians. It's formed this country, really. But there's a dark irony to coal.

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  "Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go."

• 8:24Speaker 01

  You hear it in that song, "16 Tons."

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And that irony makes it hard to get to know coal if you're an outsider, especially today, as coal faces another challenge. The industry, especially in West Virginia, is shrinking. Coal is changing, but the culture of it is still there in these Appalachian towns. So in this episode, we dig into the music and the stories of West Virginians whose lives are defined by coal, to see what keeps people holding on to this place and the black fossil falling out of its hills.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Ana Gonzalez, and this is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. We climb mountains, play music, drive dirt roads, recite poetry, traverse rivers and oceans, and even our own brains, all to figure out how to better live on our planet together. Can I get you to do the classic intro? Who are you and what do you do?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  I'm Yo-Yo Ma, and I play the cello. Always great to see you.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Always great to see you.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks for coming all this way.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Isn't it weird that we have a podcast together?

• 9:57Speaker 04

  I know, it's fantastic.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yo-Yo and I traveled deep into the heart of West Virginia because it's a place we both don't know very well. And this trip, winding through Appalachian mountain towns, was a way to learn more about this place that holds so much of our country's history and identity.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  I was struck by the immense beauty of the landscape and the rivers, the mountains, and how extraordinarily kind the people we met were.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Back on that riverbank in New River Gorge by the old mine, we're here with a bunch of people whose lives have been touched by coal. Miners, of course, but also a poet and some musicians. We want to get to know this place, so we start on some common ground.

• 10:52Speaker 06

  You know, coal miners just got some music, cut the music.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Oh, lovely.

• 10:56Speaker 06

  Kathy Mattel.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Kathy Mattea, he said. She's a West Virginian singer-songwriter, and she's here too.

• 11:06Speaker 07

  Well, they're my people. I mean, they just are.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Both of Kathy's grandfathers worked in West Virginia mines.

• 11:13Speaker 07

  My grandfather mined a 30-inch seam of coal. He did it with a pick and would pick sideways into the coal and work his way in. And my grandmother would sew leather patches onto the backs of the top of his shirt so that when he wedged himself in against the ceiling, it wouldn't wear through his shirts.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Kathy grew up hearing stories like this from everyone in her family. They'd all gather in one of her grandparents' homes and tell stories and play music. That's where Kathy started playing guitar. Her parents would get her to perform, and this was around the 1970s, when a new song was taking over West Virginia radio. How many times would you estimate you've played "Country Roads" in your lifetime?

• 11:58Speaker 07

  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

• 12:12Speaker 07

  Y'all have to sing with me, though, because that's the whole point, you know?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is quintessential Americana music. People all over the world know it. And in West Virginia, this song is the song. West Virginia University football games, high school graduations, weddings. It is so nostalgic for this version of West Virginia that feels good, and it's absolutely beautiful, but it's not really true.

• 12:47Speaker 07

  Because all the specific locations they mention are in Virginia.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River, those are Virginia landmarks. And while the mountains and the river both technically travel into West Virginia, it's the most eastern side, and the song is just clearly not written for West Virginia. Kathy said that the songwriters had never even been to West Virginia when they wrote the lyrics. They were singer-songwriters in Washington DC who started naming pretty landmarks in that general area. One of them was even thinking about his home in Massachusetts, but they decided to use "West Virginia" because it sounded really nice.

• 13:26Speaker 07

  The people who wrote it didn't know. But, you know, where else are you gonna find a song that's coming out of all the dashboards of all the radios and all the cars in the country that screams, "West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home."

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Start the tag. Take me home. Downtown.

• 13:51Speaker 07

  It's like a place where people feel invisible. And so to have that celebratory song that's proclaiming our existence and that yearning to be there is profound for people who are from there. And we might be on completely different sides of the political spectrum and the social spectrum and all those things, but we can sing "Country Roads" together.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  So the song that the whole world thinks of as representing West Virginia actually doesn't, at least not like literally. And as we sit along the riverbank, a coal miner named Dorcel brings up another musician that he thinks represents West Virginia.

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  Bill Withers, they from here.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Bill Withers, like, "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, just the two of us, Bill Withers." He grew up in a coal mining town in West Virginia.

• 14:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

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  Slap four.

• 14:44Speaker 07

  Slap four.

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  Slap four.

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  He told me, Dorcel, that he wrote "Lean on Me" about living in the coal camp.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  You just call a lonely brother when you need a hand.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Kathy met Bill one time and he told her that this song about people leaning on each other, supporting each other, was written about coal miners.

• 15:06Speaker 07

  And nobody cared what color anybody was. That's right. Yeah, he said that's it. Nobody cared. It just wasn't a thing. In the, in the community, everybody just helped each other. That's right.

• 15:17Speaker 08

  So you always look out for each other. As long as you're on that same crew, everybody's the same crew. Always look out.

• 15:24Speaker 09

  I worked with a lot of black men and they worked just as hard as the white men. And so as long as everybody did their job, everybody got along really good.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  So they're saying that "Lean on Me" is about the ways miners supported each other, no matter their race. And I'd love to believe that life actually played out like that. But in the crowd, there are two black women, Diane, who spoke at the top of the show and sang "16 Tons," and her mom, Zora.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  I'm Zora. Yeah. I've worked underground 20 years.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  It's hard to hear Zora because she spent decades in the mines and now her lungs are damaged. So her daughter, Diane, who's sitting right next to her and holding her hand, she speaks up.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  This is my mother, Zora. She worked in the coal mines down at Maple Meadows for 20-plus years until it closed. She told us, as we were growing up, about the young men that she worked with. But she always had a story to tell about how the men would pick at her and would make her do their work. If she, if she cleaned her belts, they would always leave some more for her to do. And how she used to threaten to beat their you-know-whats when she got them outside.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Okay, that's a little different from Kathy Matei's read on "Lean on Me." And it turns out that Zora and Diane come from a big mining family.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  Talk about history. So my granddad was a coal miner, my uncle was a coal miner, my mom. I still have a brother, Christopher Saunders, that's still working in the coal mines.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  If I want to get to know this place a little bit more, I have to meet Chris.

• 17:08Speaker 10

  I mean, in coal mining, we always say, everybody gonna be black at the end of the day.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Chris Saunders, after the break.

• 17:20Speaker 11

  After some actual fake polls came to light, pollsters are in the hot seat. But they say, don't be too quick to dismiss the entire industry.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  People want to raise taxes on the rich. I can tell you that definitively because we know it from polling. And if we lose trust in polls, we have no way to understand what Americans want to be done.

• 17:42Speaker 11

  On this week's On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Our common nature is back. We're in West Virginia, meeting up with present day coal miner Chris Saunders, who also happens to be black.

• 18:03Speaker 10

  And when you underground, you put all that aside. If you have any prejudice in you, all that, because you got to work together, you got to work safe. Now, when they come back up, it might be a different story.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  We met up at a local history museum in West Virginia. It focuses on coal mining. And there was an exhibit dedicated to his mom, Zora.

• 18:23Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Oh, Chris, yes.

• 18:24Speaker 10

  And this is one of the pictures. This was the crew that she worked with at the end on the bell.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And that's her. Whoa.

• 18:32Speaker 10

  And that's her.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  There's this great photo of Zora in a hard hat and aviator sunglasses, leaning up against a chain link fence. And she has the face of a woman who's put up with a lot of shit.

• 18:43Speaker 10

  And it's so true because there's still a stigma about women being in the coal mines. So plus, she was a black woman. So that stigma was there.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Chris told me his mom came to coal mining as a single mom of four. She had moved down from New York City to take care of her aging parents. And her dad actually was a coal miner. For Zora, working in the mines was a livable wage. It would pay for the house, the kids, the parents. But the other miners let her know that a woman, and a black woman at that, wasn't part of the boys' club.

• 19:17Speaker 10

  My mom's a hard worker. She said, I'm going to prove to you I can outwork you. I can outthink you. I'm going to treat you with love and kindness regardless of what you say or do to me. She said, sometimes you just got to let it roll off your back and keep on doing what you got to do. She had a guy that was always wanting to tell her the N-word jokes. She said, "Oh, baby, I ain't got time for that. I tell you what you do. Write them out for me and let me read them." So every day, he writing these big, long jokes. And she would just fold them up, fold them up. And then he come to her one day, he say, "I'm the one dumb enough to be writing these jokes out, and you ain't doing nothing but throwing them away." She said, "No, I got them all. I'm making you a book." Like, "Yeah." And buddy, he just laughed.

• 20:01Speaker 10

  He said, "Mom, I'm sorry." You know? And that's just the way she was. She said, "Now, he gonna set up and waste his time writing these jokes out every day, and I let him do it." That's my mom, y'all. I mean, that's just her.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  And this was just one of the stories Chris had about his mom warding off bullies. They'd steal her lunch.

• 20:22Speaker 10

  She'd bake brownies and put X-acts in them. And so she knew exactly who was getting in her lunch bucket. Or her bucket, that's what they call it.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Some days, she didn't have a good comeback or the energy to bake brownies. Some days, she was tired.

• 20:40Speaker 10

  She would always say, "I done the best I could for y'all." I said, "I know that, Mom," you know? And she would apologize

• 20:49Speaker 10

  for not being there a lot.

• 20:53Speaker 10

  So, but I had a great mom.

• 20:57Speaker 10

  Still do. And I'm a big softie.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 21:00Speaker 10

  Yes, but, yeah, she's a... And she taught us how to love people.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  The sentiment behind "Lean on Me" is probably not true for Zora. But it is for Chris. He's committed to the job and his coworkers through thick and thin.

• 21:18Speaker 10

  You know, the money was good to be in Appalachian, to go to high school and get out and can make a hundred grand right out the gate. Eighteen years old. Huh? I'm just telling you, that's the type of money they paying you and give you health insurance for everybody in the family. And I look at it like this. I chose to do this. But if I gotta be on oxygen getting it, I don't want it.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you think about that with your mom?

• 21:43Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Zora's condition has worsened since I saw her along the banks of the river. And now she can't speak without oxygen. Chris is worried about her. But that's not the only thing he's worried about.

• 21:58Speaker 10

  We have what I call, I'm gonna keep it right, kiss my butt curves. Like you're gonna go around and then you go. So we, and we get ready, go through a few of them down this way.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  If you look at a map of Route 3 heading west from Beckley, West Virginia, it looks like a squiggle. It follows every twist and turn of the Coal River. Through Eccles, Glendaniel, Rock Creek, and Dry Creek, my producer, Alan, is swerving in the rental car with Chris Saunders as a passenger. And I'm in the backseat, trying not to get carsick. I see a lot of Trump.

• 22:33Speaker 10

  Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of us. Love Trump.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 10

  Everybody.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Is that because of coal?

• 22:39Speaker 10

  That, and now he's an outlaw, so.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:42Speaker 10

  Yeah, it's either, it's either got one.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  That guy. Like, how much of the population is related to coal?

• 22:48Speaker 10

  Probably 90%.

• 22:53Speaker 10

  It's either railroad, coal, or timber.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the railroad is how you move the coal.

• 22:59Speaker 10

  Mm-hmm, right, right, right.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Is this weird for you to be in a car with people asking you all these questions?

• 23:05Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah, but it's all right. I like to talk.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Chris, like a lot of miners, isn't quick to trust people with microphones. We couldn't get permission to even enter the parking lots of any of the coal mines that were driving by. People are even suspicious of the North Carolina plates on the rental car.

• 23:24Speaker 10

  Oh, yo, that's lined up. He know he can't drive down here. What he doing up here? Yeah. But this one here, little, this is the kiss your butt one, I call it.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  West Virginia is an isolated place. It's not only the geography, but the culture. People not from here don't always get it. And the truth is that coal formed these towns. Coal built these houses and set these families up for generations. Coal formed unions and made billion-dollar deals. But coal kills. And coal releases massive amounts of pollution into the world. People today don't usually understand why anyone in the 21st century would work in this industry.

• 24:07Speaker 10

  Yeah. Yes.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 10

  And that's why I was kind of leery about talking to you at first.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 10

  I'm just being truthful.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 10

  You know, because I said, now, I don't want to say, you know, be nothing negative to what I do. And it's negative to every job. It really is, but it has been great to my family financially and and stuff like that.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 10

  So.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. But for Chris, mining is about more than just making money. It's about survival.

• 24:35Speaker 10

  In the eighties and stuff, I got into the drug trade and got on some stuff I had no business doing, you know? And then I started going to church in 93. It's the year I went into mines. That was just a prayer. I was like, well, God, here I am now. I need to provide for my family. The street life ain't gonna get it, you know? And God opened doors.

• 25:00Speaker 10

  I wanted to follow in my mom's footsteps. And it's been a great way to provide for my family.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I think that's what we're trying to get at.

• 25:09Speaker 10

  Right. And, and. It's complicated. Yeah, it is.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  The history and culture of coal is complicated.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Human beings have actually used coal for fuel for thousands of years. People would just pick it out of the hills and burn it because coal itself is just fossilized plant material that's millions of years old. But it's only in the past century or so that coal mining in the United States has grown to be king coal. So much of our world is made with coal, and specifically West Virginia coal. Because this is a special type of coal. They call it high metallurgical coal, meaning it's higher in carbon and lower in moisture than thermal coal, which we use for fuel and heat. High met coal is some of the best in the world to turn into iron and steel.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  That's the pride that I think that people in West Virginia must feel for having actually been the power source behind the development of iron and steel in this country, which meant westward movement, building railroads, cities. That connection was completely lost on me until I went there.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's still going today. So there is still that pride. The people who mined coal for generations, they still love it.

• 26:37Speaker 10

  The company I work for, I know they export to China, South Korea. You have a lot of big steel mills in India. And then you have Ukraine right now, shut up, Ukraine was a big steel producer for Europe.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 26:51Speaker 10

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  And they're buying US coal?

• 26:53Speaker 10

  Yes, yeah, because again, you have the best coal in the world to make steel.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  The culture of coal mining is baked into West Virginia, but it's from another time, when more people can get coal jobs. The mines themselves have become more automated and mechanized. The work is different, and they need fewer workers. Even though coal is still being used to make everything from electric cars to solar panels and housing, as we drive deeper down Route 3, the towns get smaller. We see abandoned company stores and downtown ghostlands.

• 27:34Speaker 10

  This was the old grade school. I, during the explosion, they were lined up from there on both sides of the road.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  He's talking about TV reporters from CNN and other outlets.

• 27:44Speaker 10

  Yep, all the way down.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  All the way down there.

• 27:46Speaker 10

  Yeah, that's where I had to drive through them every day. They would start right there.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  What those news outlets were covering after the break.

• 28:04Speaker 12

  This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, will House Democrats try once again for impeachment?

• 28:08Speaker 13

  Let's not make a fetish out of impeachment. Let's not make a taboo out of impeachment. We understand it's not a panacea, but it is an essential tool in the constitutional toolbox that's always there.

• 28:20Speaker 12

  Congressman Jamie Raskin joins us next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  This is Our Common Nature. I'm Anna. Before the break, coal miner Chris Saunders was taking us on a road trip all along Route 3 in West Virginia. And now we've reached our destination.

• 28:46Speaker 10

  Now look on top of the hill right here. And you see where the tube went in? That's the coal seam right there.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  We pull off the road and park on the gravel beneath a long metal tube connecting one mountain to another. It's the conveyor belt that transported coal between mining operations.

• 29:07Speaker 10

  I don't know if you can see the black on top of the hill. Then you usually have other seams below it. But that's the eagle seam that we mined.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Seams are layers in the earth where the coal is. It's where the mines are set up to extract the coal. And until I saw this, I didn't really understand how modern coal mining worked. I thought it was still like Kathy's grandfather's described, 30 inches tall and picked out with hand tools. But this mine, the Upper Big Branch Mine, is a colossal compound in the hills. Upper Big Branch used to be one of West Virginia's largest coal producers. It was owned by Massey Energy, a huge name in coal for decades. And even as there were more safety regulations placed on mining, Massey was consistently cited and fined for not following them.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  The heavy machinery used today to dig into coal seams brings up more and more coal dust, which suspended in air is explosive.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  In a perfect world, coal dust is blown out of the mines with giant ventilation systems. But nothing is perfect.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  On April 5, 2010, a little after 3:00 PM, one of the teams at Upper Big Branch burrowed into a pocket of methane gas that exploded and ignited the unventilated coal dust.

• 30:33Speaker 10

  I was underground. I was a section boss that evening. And it was just a crazy evening outside. You could see this storm coming in. And we was doing our safety meeting about the time the explosion hit. I heard Everett telling Leon, "It's bad." I said, "Leon, what's going on?" He said, "Been explosion." He said, "Thirty-two people could be dead or trapped." He said, "Don't say nothing yet. I don't want to cause panic."

• 31:06Speaker 01

  But the news got out.

• 31:10Speaker 10

  And see, they actually suffocated. Everything pulls out of the air. And they was all like packed in there. You know, like instantly, you done dropped down to fifteen, sixteen percent oxygen.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  These are friends of yours?

• 31:22Speaker 10

  Yeah. Yeah, lost a lot of friends. Yeah. Knew every one of them.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  I'm sorry about that.

• 31:28Speaker 10

  Yeah. Yeah, twenty-nine people that day.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Chris has led us to a makeshift monument. Twenty-nine hard hats sit on twenty-nine crosses. Family and friends have placed Christmas trees and lunch pails, necklaces, bottles of liquor, next to the names of their loved ones killed in the explosion.

• 31:53Speaker 10

  I actually worked with Joel, Robert Clark, Steve Hura. We called him Head. Maynard, Willingham, Persinger. And Spanky. Me and Spanky was close. Only two people lived. Mousy, but he's... His mind went, I guess, the lack of oxygen. Then another boy named Bennett. He... He doing fine. He was younger.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Like, losing this many people, was that fear ever there when you went into it?

• 32:24Speaker 10

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, after this, yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. But before this, did you ever think this is possible?

• 32:29Speaker 10

  No. You don't... I don't know. Like I say, you get in places, you never think about no disasters like this.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  The Upper Big Branch explosion was the worst mine disaster in the United States in 40 years. In its aftermath, the families of the miners who died were thrust into the headlines of national news cycles. Meanwhile, they had 29 funerals to plan and attend, and 29 families had to face a new reality and begin rebuilding their lives. The surviving miners, like Chris, had to show up for work the very next day.

• 33:06Speaker 10

  Why didn't we just take at least a day? Yeah. For respect. At that time, you know, far as, I guess, in the corporate mind, well, we don't want to admit that we done nothing wrong. Yeah. Buddy, you already in this now. You might as well just shut down, regroup. Yeah. You know, 29 people dead, regardless. Who wrong? Let's show some type of respect. And that always bothered me. It still bothers me. Because if I was a CEO of a company, that's what we'd have done. Regardless, who wrong, who right, what happened, you know, we gonna hash that out later. These people, the lost friends, family, regardless, let's show some kind of compassion.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Chris never speaks too harshly about his employer. He's careful to toe the line. His life, his livelihood, his identity as a coal miner would all be at risk. But Crystal Good can speak up.

• 34:08Speaker 14

  The poem came, but it came... What you know about black diamonds, black diamonds, black diamonds? Hey, hey, hey, hey. For like two years. What you know about black diamonds? So I'd just walk around the house singing just that, right?

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Crystal is a writer, an activist, and a West Virginian who watched the news of Upper Big Branch as it played out on TV.

• 34:33Speaker 14

  Black Diamonds formed on days like April 5th, 2010. The day that started just like all the other days. The other days, just like all the days. The hundreds of days that the earth fell in on miners.

• 34:50Speaker 14

  Trapping them underground with nothing but their prayers. This time on April 5th, 2010, 29 men died in what they call a mine disaster. Others.

• 34:59Speaker 15

  So much of the Upper Bridge Branch was like national news organizations seeing black people on the news and being like, wait a minute, black coal miners? Like, this country doesn't even know about the history. You know, the labor of black men in West Virginia and the families, you know?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  The injustice of it all stuck with her. West Virginia, a place where people feel invisible on a national platform for a disaster. She watched some massy executives pay fines and go to jail. And she talked to the widows of miners who never got a chance to tell their side of the story.

• 35:39Speaker 14

  When every coal miner's wife sheds a tear, there comes the pressure. Compacted, compacted, compacted.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  This is her performing the poem next to "The New River."

• 35:49Speaker 14

  Industrial homicide, homicide, homicide. Dead 29 miners. Black diamonds, black diamonds. In pages where black ink fades until somebody digs. And some brave heart will always hear the call and dig deep inside the earth so that millions and millions of years from now, they will hold up and marvel at our diamonds and wonder at their priceless, priceless love. Formed by the pressure, the pressure, the pressure and the salt of her tears.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Crystal has performed this poem on the steps of the West Virginia Capitol. She's performed it onstage and among people. And whenever she performs it, people cry.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  The biggest thing I've learned about West Virginia is just how much coal seeped out of these hills and into people's lives. Everyone has a story about how coal has either enriched their lives or taken from them. And a lot of the time, it's a mixture of both. Crystal knows that as a writer and a poet, she has almost the responsibility to articulate those complex emotions that people aren't always able to express themselves. And part of that responsibility comes from, yes, identifying as an artist. But the other part comes from identifying as Black in Appalachia.

• 37:22Speaker 15

  West Virginia is 3% Black. It's survival. Tell me how you're gonna survive in a coal mine talking about, you know, Black power and, you know, fuck the police. And, you know, so I think people have to survive here, right?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Like Zora and like Chris, there are days where it's harder for Crystal to find the energy to survive here. Like the day that she woke up to find that a coal company had poisoned her water supply.

• 37:51Speaker 15

  And it stunk, the whole air. Everything smelled like licorice. Ugh, I can't even eat licorice to this day. It makes me sick just even thinking about it.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  After weeks of buying water to drink and shower and cook, Crystal found the dinner to sue the company. And she won.

• 38:08Speaker 15

  And then folks got their checks, which weren't much. I think people might have got 500. It just kinda made me think, what really is a win?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Like it wasn't worth it?

• 38:20Speaker 15

  I lost all of my friends. They all left.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  A lot of Crystal's friends who could leave West Virginia did. Because of the fear that this could happen again, Crystal stayed. But now it's been over 10 years, and she's tired of fighting.

• 38:38Speaker 15

  I only have so much energy and I only have so much time on this planet. And living in West Virginia, the statistics, you die earlier. Like, if the statistics suck.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  West Virginia's life expectancy is the second lowest in the nation. Its population is declining faster than any other US state. That's because of new epidemics like drugs, but also old ones like poverty and the pollution from coal. If Chris Saunders and Crystal Good met, they probably would disagree on some core things, but they're also both part of that 3% of Black West Virginians who have chosen to stay in this place despite the statistics, the disasters, and the daily grind of finding a way through. Because outside of all of that, West Virginia is more than coal.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  And that's where Crystal finds her strength.

• 39:37Speaker 15

  You know, the coal barons are gonna coal baron. But maybe the coal barons couldn't coal baron so hard if we actually kind of built our everyday lives and our school systems and our nursing homes and everything, you know, with nature in mind. And I have no idea how to do this or what I'm talking about. But what I can do is take another group of kids down the new river next year, and the next year, and the next year.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I mean, the natural world is all energy. It's the transfer of energy and life takes place. That's the miracle.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  I asked Yo-Yo about how he finds the energy to keep going in his life when the days feel long. Where does he go in the world or in his mind to get through and still perform and be Yo-Yo Ma for the world? And it turns out, he also goes to a place in the mountains.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  There is a stream, the sound of a rustling brook is maybe one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. And you could see the stars. I saw birds, some blue jays. There was a cardinal. I was listening to the chirping, the tweeting, and it was the most beautiful music in the world.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  So I carry this memory. It stays there. That will help me get through what I need to get through. I think about, really, the whole cycle of living. It's inseparable that we are part of this world. We are part of nature. We are part of the stars. We are part of the earth.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  And I used to not think that, but I now do think that more and more.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Hey, let's go forward five strokes again.

• 41:57Speaker 16

  Greetings, recordings friends. I'm wearing the newest fur fashion. I got the new blanket. What did we just do? Water rafting, and I'm cold.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  It's early fall on the New River. There are three big, blue, whitewater rafts filled with kids from a middle school program called Step by Step. So who am I talking to?

• 42:15Speaker 00

  You're talking to Josiah.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And who else?

• 42:19Speaker 00

  My name is Brandon Lee.

• 42:19Speaker 16

  Is there a angel?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Have you ever been whitewater rafting before?

• 42:23Speaker 00

  No, this is my first time.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I'm in one raft. Crystal Good, the poet, is on another. And we're all paddling down the New River to meet up with Yo-Yo.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Are you on a first-name basis? Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yo-Yo is waiting on the banks of the river with his cello, and he begins to play Bach Chello Suite Number One, Prelude in G Major, obviously.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  I told you there was a cellist everywhere.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  After he finished playing, Yo-Yo hopped on one of the rafts and challenged everybody to a race. Well, of course. You were yelling at, you were like Coach Yo-Yo, like, "Come on, everybody!"

• 42:57Speaker 04

  I think we lost, but that's okay. We had such a good time. We had such a good time. There's nothing like being in nature and doing something participatory. And that breaks the ice. And the kids were so different from before and after.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, big time. At the end, a couple of them performed a song that they wrote from scratch. Mm-hmm, a beat in that time. Mm-hmm, they got all that.

• 43:28Speaker 17

  I've been making that money. I've been making it since I was ten. Hey.

• 43:36Speaker 17

  That's, that's the main part of the chorus.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  It's great. It's fantastic. And that's how it comes out, right?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  You're relaxed enough, you're safe enough, and it's, it's fantastic. It's goofy, it's fun. And guess what? It was memorable. You still remember it.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  The sun set, and we made it off the river to get a good West Virginia dinner of barbecue and mac and cheese under the string lights of a riverside pavilion. There's a mix of river guides and kids of all ages fixing plates and chit-chatting. It's our last night in West Virginia, so a lot of familiar faces have come out to join in on the food and get a little song going.

• 44:12Speaker 18

  You ready, Maestro?

• 44:14Speaker 04

  I know, Maestro. I'm not sure I'm ready.

• 44:18Speaker 18

  All right. Well, let's see if we can get it. One, two, one, two, three.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Banjo player Dom Flemons is here, playing this tune that he wrote with Yo-Yo.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  And pretty soon, he switches to an old line dancing song.

• 44:37Speaker 18

  And this is a piece called "Great Big Eight" here.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  And starts calling dances.

• 44:41Speaker 18

  Yeah, when I used to play this one with Joe, he would kick his head back and he'd do a couple of the square dance calls. And he'd go like this. "Great Big Eight."

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Boy, we need one another in order to function and survive and thrive. We need one another, and we need to do things together in order to break the ice and to break the cycle of fear, of mistrust, and territoriality.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  We build up these walls when we're kind of scared. And when we're on the water together, we're doing something. Afterwards, it's, it's different.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  There was time for one more song.

• 45:28Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, get a harmonica, doll.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Any guesses?

• 45:31Speaker 07

  So this would be like the national anthem for West Virginia. Except that all the geographical references are wrong. People were requesting it this afternoon and it's just always like a great, uh, it's a great opportunity for everyone to sing along, so.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  If I wanted to get to know West Virginia, I think this is a good start. It's singing the words to "Take Me Home Country Roads", even though I know they're not technically right. Because it feels good to sing by a river with people who love this state and will continue to love it even through disaster and heartbreak, and who all share a future in this place if they keep fighting for it.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  A notable absence, though, was Chris and his mom, Zora.

• 46:44Speaker 19

  Hello?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Hey, Chris, it's Anna from the podcast. Yeah. I'm just calling because I was just so sad to hear about your mom and I just wanted to see how you're doing.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  A few weeks after recording with Chris, he texted me and said his mom, Zora, had died.

• 47:05Speaker 19

  You do, Mama. She done everything her way. And so she told us all she was ready to go. She said, "Jesus, got my house ready." That's what she told us. We read her lips. My sister sung to her. She patted us and just smiled. And she looked at me and said, "Ain't you gotta go to work?"

• 47:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:25Speaker 19

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, I mean.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  What did your sister sing to her?

• 47:34Speaker 19

  She liked this one song, "Jesus on the Main Line." "Tell Him what you want. If you need a healing, tell Him what you want. If you need a miracle, tell Him what you want." Well, it was one of her favorite songs. Yeah, "Jesus on the Main Line." "Call Him up, call Him up, tell Him what you want." Yeah, that was one of her songs.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Are you having services for her?

• 48:03Speaker 19

  Yes, yes. And I'm gonna work up until Monday anyway. I know you probably think I'm crazy.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  You can't get time off?

• 48:13Speaker 19

  Yeah, but I'm... They only gonna give me three days, so I'm gonna work up tonight, tomorrow, and then Monday morning, I won't go back. My boss is like, "I never seen nobody like you." He said, "You all right." You know, because they worry about me getting hurt or something, too.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 19

  And I said, "No, I'm fine." I said, "I talked to my mom." I said, "My mom loved me and I loved her." I said, "And, uh, we just coal miners, you know."

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Chris told me that when the funeral parlor found out his mom was a coal miner, they gave him a discount, and they're talking about building a monument to her in the cemetery.

• 49:11Speaker 08

  And now for this one here, there's gonna be one line that comes up a whole bunch. "We are almost down to the shore." And I'm just gonna run it one time so you can hear it. We are almost down to the shore. Let's try it one time. We are almost down to the shore.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  I want to end with this song that Dom Fleming sang on the banks of the New River by that old coal mine where we ate pepperoni rolls. He sang it to me and Yo-Yo and Kathy Mattea, to Crystal and to Zora. He found this song in the Library of Congress, recorded by John Lomax. It was written and performed by a black musician named Jimmy Struthers.

• 50:04Speaker 08

  He worked in a coal mine outside of Baltimore. He was caught in an accident. He was blinded by it. And he met John Lomax about a year after he had gone blind. And that was the one recording they had made of that song, "We Are Almost Down to the Shore."

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Despite it all, coal led us here, to this sweet moment along the New River. And maybe the lyrics of this song aren't quite true either, not literally. But the feeling I get every time I hear it transcends that. I go back to the hills and the river. I see Zora holding her daughter's hand. I see Chris and Crystal and the kids on that raft racing Yo-Yo down the river.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  I see a place where the river flows clean, under cloudless skies. And the country roads take everybody home.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  That's Dom Fleming singing us out.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and SoundPostings. Hosted by me, Anna Gonzalez, produced by Alan Goffinski with editing from Pearl Marvel. Sound design and episode music by Alan Goffinski. Mixed by Joe Plord, fact checking by Anna Alvarado. Our executive producers are Emily Botin, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays. Our advisors are Mira, Burt Wintonic, Kamaka Diaz, Kelly Libby, and Chris Newell. Music in this episode by Kathy Mattea and Dom Flemons. If you want to hear a beautiful studio recording of We Are Almost Down to the Shore, check out Dom's album, Traveling Wildfire. Special thanks to Matt Icke for letting me use his phone to record on a river raft,

• 52:35Speaker 01

  to Leslie Baker at the Beckley Coal Mine and Exhibition Museum, and to New River Gorge National Park. And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can check out the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo, playing with Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg, and an Icelandic choir, now available on all streaming platforms. This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and SoundPostings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world. Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.

• 53:20Speaker 20

  Hi, I'm Cordelia, and I'm from New York City. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Butierrez, Sindhu Jan Nasan Bandhan, Matt Keelte, Mona Magavkar, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Anisa Vietze, Ariane Whack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young.

• 54:01Speaker 20

  With help from Rebecca Rand, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol Mazini, and Natalie Middleton.

• 54:15Speaker 21

  Hi, I'm Edina. I'm calling from Greensburg. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.