(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, meet a lifelong musician known as the Bass Whisperer.

(Ed) It's the instrument that I'm drawn to naturally.

It's a universal instrument that is needed in virtually every type of music.

(Tom) Learn how to keep your dog safe from a psychedelic toad.

(Ana) So even if you're not seeing them, you never know when you could, right?

You live in the desert, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

(Tom) The first installment of our Invasive Desert Plant series (Tony) These non-native plants, they don't have the desirable resources on them to provide that nesting sanctuary that our native plants do.

(Tom) And discovering the truth in fiction with Hannah Kim.

(Hannah) So when I found philosophy, that was miraculous, honestly.

I think it helped me, I think it saved me, and that's how I got into philosophy.

(Tom) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Ed Friedland has been playing the bass for over four decades now, started out performing jazz in small clubs, eventually toured the world playing all genres of music in venues from Broadway to the Grammys.

Well, now he's back to his original love of jazz and perfecting the art of being no one.

♪ JAZZ [Ed] You could watch a bass player playing it and he's just going boom, boom, boom, right?

Boom, boom, boom is the story of my life.

People see you walking down the street, they go, hey, bass, boom, boom, boom, right?

Yeah, boom, boom, boom.

♪ JAZZ I wanted to originally play violin because I used to be into this hippie band called It's a Beautiful Day ♪ WHITE BIRD - IT'S BEAUTIFUL DAY ♪ From the 60s, this San Francisco band and they had a lead violinist and I was totally into it I wanted to play violin, but my mother said "I don't want to listen to you learn how to play violin, play bass.

It's quieter" The double bass is the largest instrument in the violin family.

You know, violin, ♪ VIOLIN Viola, ♪ VIOLA Cello, ♪ CELLO Double bass.

♪ DOUBLE BASS ♪ They're giant violins.

You have to approach it a little differently because it's bigger than you, and if you try to fight it, it will always win.

When I went to college, I went to Berkeley College of Music in Boston, and started getting into local gigs right away.

From that point on, this is all I've ever done.

Started out playing, freelancing, and doing jazz gigs.

I've played rock, country, blues, R&B, funk, classical, done theater work, Broadway shows.

So I love all this music.

I could have the greatest jazz gig in the world, and then a few weeks in, I'm going to like, man, I wish I could play some Hank Williams.

♪ JAZZ I supplement that teaching bass.

I've written instructional books about bass.

Different frequencies affect the body in different ways.

The root chakra, which is down here, is affected by low frequencies.

And that's part of the primal thing of when low bass...

It makes people want to dance, it makes people want to move.

You have to train yourself to listen for the bass.

It's sort of almost developing the ability to screen out everything on top and just focus down there, where the bass is functioning to really get a sense of what they're doing.

♪ DOUBLE BASS ♪ If you've ever laid tile, you spread the adhesive down on the floor, and, then, you put the tiles on top.

And the thinset holds the tiles together and that's what my job is.

Everyone else in the band is a tile, and I'm the glue underneath them keeping it together.

You know, without it, the tiles just slip all over the place.

There was a period of time where I was on the road with one band for eight years.

I toured with the Mavericks and they were known as a country group.

♪ POR TI (YO QUIERO SER) - THE MAVERICKS ♪ The gig with the Mavericks was a situation where, you know, as a musician, you're not really exerting any kind of musical influence or personality.

There's a job to do.

It's set.

This is what you do.

This is the gig.

And you do that.

And so the challenge was finding a way to make that creative.

It forced me to find other layers of what's happening because I don't get to go, "Woooo!"

Play it solo.

Play lots of notes.

I get to do one thing.

And that is, again, going deeper and finding the energetic levels of music because beyond the notes, is the energy that you create.

The band itself, in a live situation, creates tremendous energy.

Engery coming from the audience, going back to the audience.

You can actually...feel that.

And interestingly, now I'm kind of back full circle.

Jazz has always been my love.

This trio thing started out, Kevin Ravelette, the sax player, had a night at the Century Room.

We just showed up, and we played, three of us, Kenji Lancaster on drums.

It felt really good.

These guys are super talented.

They're very young, and with that comes sort of a less jaded, maybe, attitude towards music, and man, this horn player is really amazing, and you don't need a piano player.

You hear it all.

It's one of the things I love about playing without a piano player or without a guitar player, because between just the bass and the saxophone, you have two people that understand harmony, they're going to naturally create that by themselves.

With that and the melody, you really have all you need.

One of the first records I can think of is Sonny Rollins' "Way Out West", and it was just Sonny Rollins', Bass, and Drums.

And at the time, that was kind of like, what?

Because, what, there's no piano player?

And of course Coltrane and lots of players, Jerry Mulligan, Chet Baker Quartet, the freedom of that environment is really nice.

The Oscar Pettiford piece is called "Tricrotism."

It's like one of his landmark tunes.

If you're going to be a serious jazz upright player, this is one of the tunes you've got to deal with.

♪ TRICOTISM - OSCAR PETIFORD Pettiford, who was like one of the earliest examples of like really an expansive approach to the bass, he was like one of the early killer soloists on the instrument and very important player.

It's associated with him, and if you're a bass player, you've got to know it.

The catch is it's in D flat, which is, probably, one of the worst keys on upright bass.

When I say worst, I mean it's not an easy key to play.

You don't have open strings.

Every note has to be played.

There may be a passing tone here or there.

But when you play in a key where there are open strings, if you get-- you always go, [ BING, BING, BING, BING ].

You can use the open strings to give your hand a break.

This is just constant like, ehh, on the fingerboard.

So it's a tough key, but hey, no one said it was going to be easy, right?

The Wayne Shorter piece is called "Fee-Fie-Foe-Fum."

It's got a haunting sort of melody.

It's got a bluesy element to it, even though it's very expansive.

Wayne Shorter is known for revolutionizing modern jazz harmony with his compositions.

♪ DOUBLE BASS SOLO ♪ Every instrument in jazz has an opportunity to solo.

The interesting thing from the bass player's standpoint is that we have a primary objective, and that is like to accompany the rest of the band.

But as a soloist, you know, now you have to step out and find a way to develop a language for yourself and a voice.

When I go out to a musical situation, like a jazz situation, I know I'm going to be soloing.

There's a level of excitement because I know, oh, I'm going to get my opportunity.

But also there's a little trepidation like, you know, am I going to like- how's this going to come out?

Is it going to work?

Is it not going to work?

♪ DOUBLE BASS SOLO You know, it's not always just up to me.

I myself have what I do, but it's always in context.

And so the context has to support me while I'm trying to do my thing the same way I support everyone else when they're doing their thing.

♪ JAZZ It's the instrument that I'm drawn to naturally.

It's the instrument I feel that suits my nature.

It's a universal instrument that is needed in virtually every type of music.

♪ JAZZ The Sonoran Desert Toad has seen more interest lately due to the psychedelic DMT contained within its poison.

But these toads pose a grave threat to dogs.

Enter the Humane Society of Southern Arizona and Animal Experts, Inc. with a new program to help the dogs, their owners, and ultimately the toads too.

♪ CURIOUS MUSIC (Chelsea) The easiest ways to identify the Sonoran Toads is by being a dark olive green color.

They can sometimes have orange spots on their back.

They also have a small white dimple on each corner of their cheek.

The poison actually comes out of their glands, which are located on the back of their neck and the back of their legs.

But the training is best done before the dog ever gets a toad in the first place, because the dogs tend to get addicted to the drug high of the toads.

So once they get them for the first time, they tend to go back at them harder even again afterwards.

Some dogs may even dig up the toads intentionally to get to them.

♪ CURIOUS MUSIC All right, so right over here, we're gonna have a little container.

It's got a couple of toads in it and some nasty water So we're gonna get that scent.

So walk Luca up to that, let him go up and look at it, smell it, and then we'll see how he reacts to the collar.

Typically, it's a scent station first, dogs go up and smell that.

That's where I can gauge what level the shock needs to be at.

Good boy, praise him, praise him, praise him.

Good boy, Luca, good boy.

Some dogs is higher, some dogs is lower.

Always start low, and if it works, they're moving away.

We'll go back to it.

Usually by then, the dogs are saying I don't wanna go, and then we'll bring out a couple toads, let them hop around, see if any dogs really show interest.

Sometimes they do, as you guys saw.

We'll do that a couple times, and at the very end, we're usually offering a toad to the dog, and they're usually trying to run away.

(Lee) Good boy, good boy, Kaiser.

(Ana) You some come in pretty confident and then come out a little bit, learning their lesson from interacting with the animals.

Yeah, you either get your confident dogs, your really scared dogs who come in.

I give them a pup cup, or just whipped cream afterwards, to try to give them one positive experience.

Yeah, some will eat it, some have to eat it in the car, because they're so nervous in that space.

(Jeff) It is a very attractive thing for a dog to focus on.

It bounces around erratically, which attracts the dog's attention.

They run over, they grab hold of it, and at that point, that's what causes the toad to secrete the toxin.

It's not on them all the time.

They secrete that when they are stressed out.

And of course, there's nothing quite as stressful to a toad as being inside a dog's mouth.

The dog just sees, that's a toy, I want it.

If the dog spits it out, then that's one thing.

It's a minimal exposure, which you can treat.

You rinse the dog's mouth out from side to side, wipe it out, because it will continue to just get this gooey saliva slime in there.

It's kinda nasty.

If you've got a dog, whether he's been trained or not, you really should focus on checking your yard, making sure that everything is good.

I had a guy today, said he came home from a week away and had 50 toads in his swimming pool.

I've never seen 50 toads in one spot, but he swore that he counted them.

There were 50 toads in his swimming pool.

It saves lives.

So even if you're not seeing them, you never know when you could, right?

You live in the desert, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

(Lee) If you're in an area where it is a potential harmful thing for your dog, definitely look into the training.

You never know if they're gonna be there or not.

(Tom) The Sonoran Desert is home to thousands of native plants of all shapes and sizes, making this a unique bio region.

And we've been showcasing them as part of our desert plant series.

Now we're working on a new series about non-native plants that do very well in this region, but become invasive.

[ BIRDS CHIRPING ] (Tony) I'm Tony Figueroa.

I'm the Invasive Plant Program Manager with the Tucson Audubon.

And today we're standing here in front of African Sumac, Searsia lancea It's a common ornamental plant that was planted throughout Tucson really heavily in HOAs throughout the 70s.

It is now listed as a noxious weed in the state of Arizona because it has a tremendous ability to invade riparian areas and any spots that have a little bit of extra moisture.

It drops thousands and thousands of seeds onto the landscape which then generate whips and seedlings, smaller trees and create these giant brush canopies that are just slowly invading a lot of our riparian areas.

Some people think it's a pretty tree and I can understand where you'll use it as a shade structure, but proper maintenance and being mindful of the spread of this plant is critical because it can create that fire ladder.

you have a bunch of buffelgrass and invasive grasses below.

Uh, it has the potential to burn and they're planted so close to homes, fence line.

It can act as that ladder fuel that gets up into your roof.

[ DOG BARKING ] Clear out this understory.

Uh, one of the things we call is lollipopping a tree that creates that open understory so that you don't have that ladder fuel potential.

African Sumac, luckily it doesn't have any poisonous qualities to it like many of the Sumacs One of the key ways to identify this plant is it has kind of a piney type of smell when you break up the leaves.

The leaves are trifoliated, which means it's divided into three separate leaflets.

So it's pretty easily distinguished from a lot of our native plants and it has a glossy shine to it.

African Sumac was brought here in the mid-to-early 1900s as the US government and U of A were looking for drought-adapted plants.

that could be brought to the Southwest and live in an arid environment.

So uh, unfortunately we succeeded and we brought in the most drought-adapted plants that also have a lot of invasive qualities to them.

People will ask, "Tucson Audubon, "aren't you protecting birds?

Don't all birds use trees?"

But birds use the native trees.

That's where the insects that they wanna eat are living because those insects recognize those trees and they have evolved with those specific native trees to get the resources they need to survive.

And they produce seeds that are desirable to our wildlife.

These non-native plants, they don't have the desirable resources on them or to provide that-that nesting sanctuary that our native plants do.

Replace it with something native, you're gonna enjoy it.

It's gonna create the same sort of shade, but it's also gonna welcome in a whole new suite of songbirds to your neighborhood that you might not have had before.

(Tom) We live in a world today that is inundated with information, and all that complexity makes it harder to sift out the misinformation.

Hannah Kim, a philosopher here at the U of A, examines questions in a burgeoning field called the philosophy of fiction and believes there may be wisdom to be had there to help us separate fact from fiction in the real world.

♪ SOFT SYNTH MUSIC (Hannah) I remember my very first philosophy class, and I remember blowing my mind.

I felt like somebody was slicing the top of my head off.

It was a high I've never felt before.

It was an intellectual high, and I think I pursued that feeling.

What I wanted to know was what's really true, behind the bustle of change and things that come and go, like what's at the foundation of it all?

And that's what first got me to major and eventually go to grad school to do more of it.

So note that they really focused on moral development.

Either human nature is good, in which case we can just lean into that fact and try to develop our already good moral nature.

I'm Hannah Kim.

I'm an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Arizona.

But either way, Confucianism is really focused on developing yourself- (O.S.)

I teach and research philosophy of art or aesthetics as well as metaphysics and Asian philosophy.

But I also think a lot about philosophy of fiction, which is the thing I ended up focusing on.

-and they're almost doing this like, whistle blowing, double speak kind of thing, where they are telling this fictional story, but really, wink, wink, what they're saying is something about reality.

(O.S.)

So the really tricky thing with philosophy of fiction is I work with this concept called fictional truth.

You might think fiction is just what's made up.

What's imaginary?

Nonfiction is what's real, what's happened.

But some of my favorite writers, (unintelligible) and John Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, they're getting at these angsty human truths about psychology and the human condition.

So they get me to believe what's true, I think, but not because Raskolnikov is real or true, and not because Kathy Ames is a real person.

[ AUDIO FROM MOVIE CLIP ] Another thing that makes this fiction nonfiction distinction hard is that a lot of things are constructed, even history.

And some people even go as far as to say, "Look, everything is fiction for that reason, because everything is constructed."

So like, when are those situations where we make this choice not to go along with the author?

(O.S.)

This is one reason why I think philosophy fiction is really important.

Now, at a time when misinformation and disinformation is everywhere, and it's getting harder and harder to know what's real and what's not, and in the midst of that, we have this human practice of fiction-making.

And so if we can get clear on what that is, we might be able to draw a clear line of what is real, what's fiction, and what is just not real, what's a lie, what's deception.

(News Anchor) Social media platforms- (Anderson Cooper) Chat GPT- (News Anchor 2) Conspiracy theories- (News Anchor) Spread misinformation.

♪ SOFT SYNTH MUSIC (Hannah) I think I tend to resonate with early angsty literature.

Arcs were protagonists are just unsatisfied or they're searching and so they are just trying all these things to get answers.

One kind of strand of classics in this vein is like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, right?

These women who feel like they don't quite have it all, they are searching for answers, they're searching for good life.

So any literature that asks these questions, I think that's what really speaks to me.

♪ SOFT SYNTH MUSIC So I grew up between two cultures.

I was born in Nevada, but I also spent my childhood in Korea But I also grew up in settings where asking questions was a form of rebellion And I was chastised a lot.

For being a bad child, for rebelling all the time, for debating all the time, for just fighting all the time.

And so when I found philosophy, that was miraculous, honestly.

I think it helped me, I think it saved me.

And that's how I got into philosophy.

♪ SOFT SYNTH MUSIC (News Reporter) Concerns about spreading misinformation- (News Reporter 2) From robocalls to deepfakes- (News Reporter 3) artificial intelligence and deep learning... (Hannah) So we live in a world where we are inundated with information... (News Reporter) trained on a massive amount of data- (Anderson Cooper) ...has the ability to respond to prompts in a human-like manner.

(Hannah) But apparently that makes it harder to know what's really real and what's really true.

And I think this is where we get into dangerous territory now (V.O.)

Already playing a role in the 2024 election.

(Hannah) It's been interesting to see people react to AI as if it's a phenomenon we've never seen before.

Like we've seen movies like Pinocchio, we've seen fictional people who we know are not real sound as if they're real.

And so just like fictional people, they sound like real people, but AI is fiction.

(Pinocchio) I can talk!

I can walk!

(Hannah) We're going to have more and more augmented reality and more virtual reality becoming a part of just our daily practices.

Humans have come up with this phenomenal ability to keep reality and not reality distinct when it comes to fiction.

And I think that's because we've learned how to use this fiction as a piece of technology.

As a communicative technology, as an artistic technology.

And so I think we can get there with AR and VR too, right?

Once we get a grip on how to use it and what we want to use it for, then we can keep separate what's real, what's not.

And enjoy its benefits without getting delusional.

And so philosophy, has this process of carefully making distinctions, thinking through all the different categories and seeing the ramifications, doing this in this iterative process helps us clarify what really is going on when people are tempted to say things like, "Ah, it's all fiction."

Or say, "Actually, it's not."

And here's why.

♪ SYNTH MUSIC So I think philosophy matters more than ever now because of its two major guiding questions.

So one is what is real or what is true.

And second, how do you live a good life?

One of my favorite movies is Bergman's "Seventh Seal."

And this is the movie with the famous scene where a knight plays chess with death on a beach.

And the movie is about this knight who's come back from the Crusades, very disillusioned, about life, about faith, about what's good and what's bad and what's right and wrong.

And the movie doesn't give any answers.

The movie just continues to show someone's trying out different ways of thinking.

I think philosophy helps me feel more comfortable with not knowing.

I might be wrong and that's okay.

This is an ongoing process.

There's no destination I'm getting to.

It's really the- the continual search that I'm really interested in, and I think the search tells us a lot about who we are and what we value.

And I can't help but think this might be a good reflection of what life is.

This is a good life.

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Thanks for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you again next week.