Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, you may have heard that WNYC has a new podcast from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, co-host Ana Gonzalez and WNYC Studios. It's called Our Common Nature, and it follows Yo-Yo Ma on the quest he began during the pandemic to explore the links between our shared space, the land, and our shared culture through stories and music. It's pretty amazing, as you can hear just in this 30-second montage from its introduction.

Yo-Yo Ma: This country is built off the shoulders of all of us. It's very American.

Speaker 3: I owe my soul to the company soul.

Speaker 4: Greetings, recording friends.

Yo-Yo Ma: I feel the emotion and the power. You can transfer that energy onto people. You really can, through music.

Speaker 5: I could feel it in my body. It vibrated my soul. The world needs that.

Brian Lehrer: It comes with an assignment from Yo-Yo Ma for you. Perfect for this week of Thanksgiving. The podcast host, Ana Gonzalez joins us now. Ana is also, as some of you know, the senior producer of Terrestrials, the kids' podcast from Radiolab. Hey, Ana.

Ana: Hey, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Now, before we reveal how listeners can participate, you want to talk a little bit about how all this came about? It originated during COVID lockdown?

Ana: Exactly. Yo-Yo Ma, as you know, is a cellist, and he's very famous in the world. The pandemic hit him in this way where he could no longer travel and go and do his thing, where he's playing with symphonies and going to concert halls and gathering thousands and thousands of people indoors because that wasn't safe anymore.

He decided to take his cello outside, which is something that he had never really done before because even though he's traveled the world over many times, he had rarely spent time out in the woods outside of cities and playing with nature and for people. This idea really came out of playing outdoors with musicians and congregating people in a safe way.

Then this thing started happening where he felt more connected to nature in this way that really refreshed him and energized him. He decided to bring more and more people together outside with also people who were used to doing that. It's not just Yo-Yo being like, "Let's go on a hike." It's working with people who are, a lot of times, keepers of indigenous knowledge and culture throughout the country.

Along the way, he decided more people needed to be in on these conversations and performances, so he decided to make a podcast. Somehow, luckily, fortunately, I was able to join him on a lot of these trips and make a podcast.

Brian Lehrer: It does connect to his long-standing interest, which we know from his body of recordings, in connecting different cultures through his music. As you put it, in introducing the series, he can make the leap from Bach to infinity.

Ana: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a 25-second clip of Yo-Yo Ma. This is from the Smoky Mountains episode of Our Common Nature.

Yo-Yo Ma: Each history is part of the truth, and it's not like your truth is better than mine. It's like we have to live with each other's truths, and if we put them in side by side together, we will find truth. We can do that in music because that's what we do in music. We could put everybody on the same stage to say, "Tell your truth."

Brian Lehrer: In the context of nature, the series starts in a way at the beginning with Daybreak. Tell us that story. Where does dawn find you? What are the music and the people we encounter there as listeners?

Ana: Well, the first place to experience a sunrise, at least in the continental United States, is the coast of Maine. The people who have lived on the coast of what we now consider Maine on English maps are the Wabanaki people. Yo-Yo went to the coast of Maine in 2021. This is still peak pandemic. Everyone was kind of sanitizing microphones between speaking kind of pandemic.

He played with Wabanaki musicians, including Chris Newell, Lauren Stevens, those are the main two voices in the episode. They taught him the ways that they were taught, how to welcome the sun. It's not even just welcoming the sun, but the Wabanaki people believe that their music brings the sun, literally pulls the beams of light onto the continent for the rest of the land.

Yo-Yo was able to learn some of this music in a vulnerable way. This world-famous cellist who's famous for being the very best, virtuosic and knowing how to play single note perfectly. He was learning a completely new musical style. All of those voices and stories is what we try to include in the episode.

Brian Lehrer: Acadia National Park in Maine. We mentioned the Smoky Mountains. I see Kentucky was a stop. West Virginia, Hawaii, North Carolina, Alaska. You were there for all of this. Do you have a couple of favorite moments, even ones that maybe didn't make the podcast?

Ana: Oh, absolutely. I mean, so much was left on the cutting room floor. We could make 10 series out of all the tape that I have. There was this moment in West Virginia after we had gone whitewater rafting with a bunch of middle schoolers, which is in the podcast, which you'll hear. It was after I stopped rolling. We had this amazing day of going to a coal mine and meeting all these kids and eating all this great food.

At the end it was like 9:00 PM, everyone's tired and Yo-Yo's walking out of this riverside pavilion and this 10-year-old goes up to him, and he's like, "Hey, Yo-Yo, how do you become such a good cellist?" He's so kindly just-- he must have been so tired, too, but he leaned down, he walked out with this kid. He was like, "Anyone can get good at anything if you just keep practicing whatever you want to do and stick with it." He just gave such a genuine, beautiful answer to this 10-year-old who was very comfortable with him.

That energy was really what kept me hooked on going on these trips and going all the way around the world, including camping on the banks of the Yukon River with the Gwich'in people in 50 miles from the Arctic Circle where the sun never sets. It's 3:00 AM and you're trying to sleep in a tent and you can't because it's light out. It was just an amazing opportunity for me and for everyone involved.

Brian Lehrer: You just made me nervous, though, with the image of taking a cello, probably a very expensive, really high-quality piece of wood, the cello, and bringing it whitewater rafting.

Ana: Well, okay, so you make a good point. This is a secret, insider knowledge only. Yo-Yo borrowed a lot of cellos for the series, which we don't get into. In Hawaii, we went out on Hōkūleʻa, which is a traditional Polynesian double-hulled canoe, a waʻa. You can't bring a 200, 300-year-old cello out on salt water. It's just really, you shouldn't be doing that, so he borrowed a carbon-fiber cello to go out on the ocean.

There were a couple of borrowed carbon-fiber cellos, but that one in Hawaii especially was from the principal cellist of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. That was very clutch and very appreciated on our part.

Brian Lehrer: I actually keyed on something real there.

Ana: You did.

Brian Lehrer: To your line that he can play- Wait, let me find it again. -from Bach to infinity, listener writes, "There is no gap between Bach and infinity, friends." That's a nice point about Bach. From what I've read about this project, in some places like North Carolina, hikers and others, unsuspecting passersby would stumble onto these open air, spur of the moment, Yo-Yo Ma performances.

The thought that Yo-Yo Ma is just traveling to national parks to play some music, and people happen to run into him, was part of the point to get more people interested in getting out in nature once you told those stories?

Ana: Oh, absolutely. I think Yo-Yo wanted to surprise people who are already going out there and give them the gift of music, and then also inspire people to think, you never know what could happen if you just decide to go for a hike on a random Tuesday afternoon or go with your family out on the river, go fishing with your buddies. A lot of people didn't know who Yo-Yo was, too. That was also, I think, a thrill for him to be like, "Oh, you don't have to know who I am. That's okay."

Brian Lehrer: Somebody who didn't pay a ticket to see him at Lincoln Center or something like that.

Ana: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: People say, "Yes, he's not a bad fiddle player there." I get the sense that his approach to participating in the music with local folks is surprisingly humbling for him. This is 20 seconds from the episode in West Virginia with miners whose coal fueled so much of our history.

Yo-Yo Ma: 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. What would you like us take away?

Brian Lehrer: Beautiful. Now, to the assignment that I mentioned that Yo-Yo Ma is inviting everybody to participate in, here he states it himself, 45-second clip.

Yo-Yo Ma: Will you take photos of your favorite places on earth, in nature, outside, and send them to me? #OurCommonNature. I went all across America and talked to people who love their land and want to protect it, and I learned so much. I became so grateful for what we have, that is, our common nature. If you could send me your precious photographs, we will post them and celebrate and be grateful for the home that we all share. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: In our last 20 seconds, Ana, tell people how they can do that.

Ana: Everyone who's listening can go out and take photos of the places that they feel closest to nature and post them on social media and put that hashtag, #OurCommonNature. We will see them. There have been hundreds of submissions so far, so if you could put that hashtag, #OurCommonNature on your pictures on social media, Yo-Yo and I would love to see them and see where everybody is connecting to nature all over the world.

Brian Lehrer: Seven episodes of Our Common Nature are available now wherever you get your podcast. Congratulations. It's wonderful. Thank you, Ana Gonzalez,-

Ana: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: -host, with Yo-Yo Ma, for sharing it with us. Thank you. Brian Lehrer at WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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