stephen pyne joins me tonight from the u.s. state of arizona stephen welcome back it's good to have you back on the program you and i spoke about a year ago when just like tonight parts of california were burning you told me then that one of the biggest problems is our lack of an understanding or our misunderstanding of fire and its role on this planet have things changed at all since we last spoke well yes and no. i think people most people in industrial in the industrial world and that includes most to california don't have any personal connection with fire anymore that's that's gone out of their lives wave substituted fossil fuel combustion basically for all the things fire used to do so the only way they understand fires as a disaster they don't really understand how it how it functions in the world and why it is inevitable in many parts of the world like california which is frankly built to burn on the other hand i think this sense of fire is a disaster not only fire and living landscapes but what i think of as the burning