Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this Podcast Will
Speaker 1: Kill You. I am so excited to welcome you all
Speaker 1: to another episode in our tp w K Y book
Speaker 1: Club series this season, where we interview authors about their
Speaker 1: wonderful books in science and medicine. The effects these books
Speaker 1: have on us or the inspiration we draw from them,
Speaker 1: can be as varied as the topics of the books themselves.
Speaker 1: With the books just this season, I've been on the
Speaker 1: edge of my seat, reading as fast as I can
Speaker 1: to find out what happens next in a book about
Speaker 1: an element essential to all of life. I've been absolutely
Speaker 1: raging over a story of misogyny in academia. My jaw
Speaker 1: fully dropped. I've been delighted to learn about the regenerative
Speaker 1: power of the endometrium. And I've been moved in so
Speaker 1: many other ways by the incredible things I've learned from
Speaker 1: these authors. If you'd like to check out the books
Speaker 1: that we've covered so far in this book Club, head
Speaker 1: to our website This Podcast Will Kill You dot Com,
Speaker 1: where you can find pages for each of our released
Speaker 1: book club episodes. And if you, like me, were one
Speaker 1: of those nerds always going past your assigned reading in
Speaker 1: middle school and you want to sneak peek at the
Speaker 1: rest of the books for this season. You can also
Speaker 1: find that through our website under the Extras tab by
Speaker 1: clicking on a link to our bookshop dot org affiliate account,
Speaker 1: which will take you to a list of lists, including
Speaker 1: a book club list which features all of the books
Speaker 1: from this season and the one before. But now let's
Speaker 1: turn back to the present and the book will be
Speaker 1: chatting about today Blight Fungi and the Coming Pandemic by
Speaker 1: author and environmental toxicologist doctor Emily Monison. Here at TPWKY,
Speaker 1: we love talking about fungi, even if we don't do
Speaker 1: it maybe as often as we should. We've covered kittrid fungus,
Speaker 1: which affects amphibians, white nose syndrome, which has devastated some
Speaker 1: bat populations, as well as a couple of fungal diseases
Speaker 1: of public health relevance, cocidioidomycosis and blastomycosis, which was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite topics to research last season because I
Speaker 1: got to talk about dinosaurs. Go check it out if
Speaker 1: you haven't already. This handful of fungal pathogens represents only
Speaker 1: a teeny tiny proportion of fungi that can be pathogenic
Speaker 1: to humans or animals, and that group itself is minuscule
Speaker 1: compared to the mind boggling beautiful diversity of fungal species
Speaker 1: that play so many crucial roles in ecosystems and make
Speaker 1: life possible. Fungi truly are amazing, and all fungal species
Speaker 1: are certainly worthy of appreciation and attention. But today we're
Speaker 1: setting our sites on the select few that have the
Speaker 1: power to do us and plants and other animals harm,
Speaker 1: especially harm on what is an almost incomprehensible scale. Allow
Speaker 1: me to take a quick trip down memory lane to
Speaker 1: explain in part why I love this book Blight so
Speaker 1: very much. When I was an undergrad at the University
Speaker 1: of Kentucky, I spent many weekends escaping the end traffic
Speaker 1: on Nicholasville Road on football game days, my teeny apartment
Speaker 1: with the bright orange walls, and of course the homework
Speaker 1: and studying that I probably should have been doing, and
Speaker 1: I would head down to Red River Gorge.
Speaker 2: For some hiking and camping.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing place, and you should absolutely go if
Speaker 1: you get the chance. But sometimes while I was driving
Speaker 1: through the park to get to a trailhead, I would
Speaker 1: stop at the visitor center, initially for the opportunity to
Speaker 1: use a nice, clean bathroom rather than the pit toilet
Speaker 1: at camp. Once I had luxuriated and washing my hands
Speaker 1: with soap and warm water, I would wander around the
Speaker 1: displays at the center, peeping at the photos showcasing its history,
Speaker 1: the respectably done taxidermy of local fauna, and what quickly
Speaker 1: became my favorite attraction and my reason for future pit stops.
Speaker 1: At the center a massive cross section of a tree
Speaker 1: whose label read something to the effect of This cross
Speaker 1: section is of an American chestnut tree. The tree was
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty something years old when it was killed,
Speaker 1: along with millions of other chestnut trees, by the chestnut
Speaker 1: blight fungus in the early twentieth century. Next to this
Speaker 1: cross section was a grainy black and white photo showing
Speaker 1: a forest of living chestnut trees, whose colossal size was
Speaker 1: made very clear by the tiny humans standing in their shade.
Speaker 1: My mind was blown. I could not fathom, even with
Speaker 1: the help of more old photographs, the sheer size of
Speaker 1: these forests. How the forests that I walked in today
Speaker 1: were so dramatically different than those of one hundred years before.
Speaker 1: How it all changed so quickly and all due to
Speaker 1: a fungus. That chestnut tree cross section has never left
Speaker 1: my mind, and I admit to every month or two
Speaker 1: googling historical chestnut forests out of this morbid fascination. The
Speaker 1: story of the chestnut blight is only one of many
Speaker 1: told in Emily Monisson's captivating book Blight, which delves into
Speaker 1: the history of fungal epidemics and pandemics and asks what
Speaker 1: these fungal pathogens may have in store for us in
Speaker 1: the future, as our climate changes, as global movement and
Speaker 1: travel increases, and as these notoriously hard to eliminate species
Speaker 1: see the chestnut blight fungus establish strongholds in our hospitals
Speaker 1: and across the world. So let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then get into it. Doctor Monison, thank you so
Speaker 1: very much for joining me today. Your book, Blight Fungui
Speaker 1: in the Coming Pandemic was such a fascinating read, and
Speaker 1: I loved learning more about this world of infectious disease
Speaker 1: that we you know we on the podcast, but also
Speaker 1: we as a general public, don't really give enough attention to.
Speaker 1: And I'm super excited to dig into some of these
Speaker 1: fungal pathogens and the patterns that we've been seeing lately.
Speaker 1: But first, can you tell me where the idea for
Speaker 1: this book first came about?
Speaker 3: Sure, And first I just want to say thank you
Speaker 3: for having me, and I love your show, so I'm
Speaker 3: excited to be So this is something that kind of
Speaker 3: was running in the back of my mind for a
Speaker 3: long time. So many years ago. My first kind of
Speaker 3: experience with a fungus like pathogen was a thing called
Speaker 3: late light in tomatoes. So people grow tomatoes, I think
Speaker 3: they probably know about late light, especially if they're on
Speaker 3: the East Coast, and that is an organism that I
Speaker 3: think there was sort of an outbreak of it in
Speaker 3: around two thousand and six or seven or something like that,
Speaker 3: and it was a disease where you're growing tomatoes. They
Speaker 3: look beautiful end of the summer, and all of a
Speaker 3: sudden something just came and hit them and within a day,
Speaker 3: the tomatoes and their leaves just were dead, hanging on
Speaker 3: the stock, looking really pretty ugly. And what it turned
Speaker 3: out was that that was a disease called pause by
Speaker 3: an organism called phytophra infestins, and it was new to
Speaker 3: the East Coast for tomatoes. And it turns out that
Speaker 3: that disease was probably distributed by a big box distributor
Speaker 3: who was growing tomatoes starts down in I think Florida
Speaker 3: and then shipping them up the East Coast and infected
Speaker 3: the Holy East Coast. And we are we have had
Speaker 3: phytopha infestins infections pretty much every year or maybe every
Speaker 3: other year ever since then, because once it you know,
Speaker 3: So what I learned from that, that was just that
Speaker 3: I was writing and I was trying to understand the disease,
Speaker 3: and what I learned was that it's caused by phytopher infestins,
Speaker 3: same organism that caused or contributed to the Great famine
Speaker 3: in Ireland, the potato blight, same organism, that it could
Speaker 3: be spread so easily through buying plants and being distributed
Speaker 3: up the coast, and that once it got established, it's
Speaker 3: very hard to get rid of, if not impossible. So
Speaker 3: that was sort of an introduction to a sort of
Speaker 3: new disease that just kind of came and you know,
Speaker 3: caused havoc. And like I said, it's not a fungus,
Speaker 3: but it behaves like a fungus. I think when it
Speaker 3: was first discovered. They probably thought it was a fungus.
Speaker 3: It's really something called a water mold. Then around that time,
Speaker 3: there was a paper that came out in a scientific
Speaker 3: publication a group of scientists who were across different disciplines
Speaker 3: about the emerging fungal threats across species. And so what
Speaker 3: they were saying was, hey, hey, people, you need to
Speaker 3: take you know, be aware. And they actually included phytopher
Speaker 3: infestins because it's fungus like in this paper. But they
Speaker 3: were talking about frogs and bats and humans and crops
Speaker 3: and that you know, there are fungal pathogens across all
Speaker 3: of these species, and they weren't getting a whole lot
Speaker 3: of attention. So together that seemed like a really good
Speaker 3: topic for a book. I had just finished a book
Speaker 3: about how all sorts of things were getting resistant to
Speaker 3: all the chemicals we used to kill them, which was
Speaker 3: a pretty depressing book, and then this would have been
Speaker 3: a pretty depressing book. And I was talking with the
Speaker 3: editor and I was like, this is kind of depressing,
Speaker 3: and she agreed, and so I wrote a different book
Speaker 3: that was kind of hopefully more hopeful. So I put
Speaker 3: this off and I didn't really think about it, and
Speaker 3: then in what was it whenever a fairly recently Canada orius.
Speaker 3: So the yeast fungus that's been infecting people started infecting
Speaker 3: people and it became a problem, and the CDC started
Speaker 3: putting out alerts. I think that was twenty sixteen maybe,
Speaker 3: So when that came about, that was sort of seemed like, Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe it's time to revisit and write a book about
Speaker 3: emergent fungal pathogens.
Speaker 1: Of which there are many, and not just in sort
Speaker 1: of these big devastating epidemics that we have come across
Speaker 1: the news, like in amphibians or in frogs, or in bats,
Speaker 1: but also, as you mentioned, in humans. And so, what
Speaker 1: are some of the unusual patterns that we've been seeing
Speaker 1: lately in this rise in these human fungal infections that
Speaker 1: have been observed over the past few decades.
Speaker 3: So I think the biggest one. I remember speaking to
Speaker 3: an infectious disease doctor who specialized in fungal pathogens, and
Speaker 3: he said he got his degree in the eighties, and
Speaker 3: he said, and if somebody were to come to Rounds
Speaker 3: with a heart to treat fungal problem, that would have
Speaker 3: been news like that would have been a big deal,
Speaker 3: and then came HIV human immune deficiency virus, and people
Speaker 3: started becoming immunocompromised because of it, and fungal diseases started
Speaker 3: to rise. So that was one of the things because
Speaker 3: a lot of fungal pathogens. So I should say first
Speaker 3: of all that there are a lot of fungi in
Speaker 3: the world. Most of them are beneficial, some of them
Speaker 3: don't do anything, and only a very small proportion of
Speaker 3: them cause problems. So that's you know, important to keep
Speaker 3: in mind that we really most we rarely rely on
Speaker 3: fungus for a lot of things. So in most fungi,
Speaker 3: you know, we're not really the target for a lot
Speaker 3: of fungal pathogens, so there are very few compared to
Speaker 3: viruses and bacteria. They're a small proportion of those kind
Speaker 3: of pathogenic problems. But so it would would have been unusual.
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons is we have a pretty
Speaker 3: robust immune system, and when we do have a robust
Speaker 3: immune system, we can you know, we're breathing in fungal
Speaker 3: spores all the time, and most of us it's not
Speaker 3: you know, for most of us, it's not a problem.
Speaker 3: So when people are compromised, then fungi are ouptimistic and
Speaker 3: they take advantage and they can start to infect you.
Speaker 3: So back in the eighties they were rise. There was
Speaker 3: a rise. There's also been there was some commentary that
Speaker 3: I came across that in the fifties when we started
Speaker 3: using antibiotics on a large scale, so that there was
Speaker 3: had a quote somewhere where, you know, they fungal pathogens
Speaker 3: were kind of a disease of the antibiotic age. And
Speaker 3: the thinking there is in part because of our microbiome,
Speaker 3: although back then they didn't really talk about that in
Speaker 3: those terms because I don't think we you know, nobody
Speaker 3: really realized how much of a part of us our
Speaker 3: microbiome is. But so we have, you know, fungi and
Speaker 3: bacteria that keep other fungi in bacteria in check. So
Speaker 3: once we start using antibiotics, you wipe out the bacteria
Speaker 3: they're not keeping the fungi in check.
Speaker 1: And we've been seeing some unusual cases in terms of
Speaker 1: like person to person spread or outside of hospitals or
Speaker 1: outside of people who are have immunal compromise of some kind.
Speaker 1: Is it sort of a mix of all of these
Speaker 1: things where we have overuse or potential overuse of antibiotics,
Speaker 1: we have higher rates or higher detection of immunal compromise.
Speaker 1: And is it just that we're better at finding and
Speaker 1: isolating and treating, well maybe not treating, but finding an
Speaker 1: isolating or detecting fungal infections period.
Speaker 3: You know, And it's not just you know, the other
Speaker 3: thing is there's antibiotics, is immune compromise, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot more tissue transplants, so just a lot of good
Speaker 3: you know, medical advances have also contributed to this because
Speaker 3: if you get you know, tissue t plant or an
Speaker 3: organ transplant, I mean, you know, then you can be
Speaker 3: on you know, suppressence to prevent rejection, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So we have a large population people that are also
Speaker 3: you know, transplant recipients and things like that. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons why people can be imm compromised.
Speaker 3: The part about are we detecting you know, what changed
Speaker 3: and are we detecting it? So one difference in almost
Speaker 3: all most fungal pathogens is that when we think about
Speaker 3: bacteria viruses, we think about spreading it from one to another,
Speaker 3: you know, where you sneeze on somebody and you spread
Speaker 3: the virus. We all know that so fun I don't
Speaker 3: spread like that. Usually it's there isn't that sort of
Speaker 3: person to person contact. So that's one thing that was
Speaker 3: raised sort of red flags with Canada Orus. So when
Speaker 3: this was the yeast that you know, emerged somewhere around
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, at least came to recognition in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: as a problem. I think it was twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 3: can't remember the year that the CDC issued their warning.
Speaker 3: And part of it was because here we had a yeast,
Speaker 3: and yeast is you know, it's the fungus we have
Speaker 3: Canada albacans. That's very common use that a lot of us,
Speaker 3: you know, we all have it on us and some
Speaker 3: of us problems, some of it's not. Canada Orus is
Speaker 3: another kind of yeast, and this one was one that
Speaker 3: had a high mortality rate when it infected people in
Speaker 3: the hospitals, and it seemed to spread person to person,
Speaker 3: so it could spread around the hospital room and it
Speaker 3: could spread, you know, they thought maybe health workers were
Speaker 3: spreading Canada ors. It was very hard to clear from
Speaker 3: the room. So there were a lot of problems with
Speaker 3: Canada ors. And the other odd thing about Canada ors
Speaker 3: was that it emerged here in the US and in
Speaker 3: many other places around the world kind of at the
Speaker 3: same time. So in twenty sixteen, there were these outbreaks
Speaker 3: in you know, far flung places of this kind of
Speaker 3: new pathogen, which was kind of frightening. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that the scientists that I spoke to at
Speaker 3: CDC had said was, we wondered, was it something we
Speaker 3: just couldn't detect before and now we detected it, So
Speaker 3: was it something that was just misdiagnosed and now we
Speaker 3: know that it's something different? And so they could go
Speaker 3: back into the archive. They'd had some programs running where
Speaker 3: you know, physicians were taking samples of fungi from patients,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't that case. It wasn't that they were
Speaker 3: detecting it now and not before. They found a few
Speaker 3: cases that had been misdiagnosed, but most of them were
Speaker 3: really new cases, so it really was an emergent fungus
Speaker 3: in that case. So it's a very rare thing to
Speaker 3: have a new disease like that just sort of emerge.
Speaker 3: And this one was so deadly, and it was resistant
Speaker 3: to a lot of the anti fungal medications, and it
Speaker 3: was hard to clear from a room, although they now
Speaker 3: you know, have learned better how to you know, sterilize
Speaker 3: a hospital room.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, let's take a quick break and when we get back,
Speaker 1: there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've
Speaker 1: been chatting with doctor Emily Monison about her book Blight
Speaker 1: Fungui and the coming pandemic. Let's get back into things.
Speaker 1: I do want to take a moment because I feel
Speaker 1: like I have to ask, even though I'm sure you
Speaker 1: get this question a lot since writing this book, to
Speaker 1: go into the fictional.
Speaker 2: World a bit.
Speaker 1: Have you ever played The Last of Us or have
Speaker 1: you watched the show? And if so, any thoughts.
Speaker 3: I have not played the game, but I did watch
Speaker 3: the show. So because it came out right before the
Speaker 3: book came out. So one thing was so it came
Speaker 3: out in the in January twenty twenty three. So one
Speaker 3: striking thing was right after that came out, there was
Speaker 3: so much about fungal pathogens in the news, and in
Speaker 3: the end of twenty twenty two, the World Health Organization
Speaker 3: had just made this big announcement of these nineteen you know,
Speaker 3: priority fungal pathogens, and so they were trying to get
Speaker 3: it out there in the news. You know, here are
Speaker 3: some fung guy that we want you all to be
Speaker 3: aware of. And that didn't really make such a splash.
Speaker 3: There was maybe a couple of weeks of the news
Speaker 3: that you know, World Health Organization has these priority fungal pathogens.
Speaker 3: Then Last of Us comes out, and you know, fungal
Speaker 3: pathogens are everywhere. So it was sort of like that
Speaker 3: show did an amazing thing for awareness of fungal pathogens.
Speaker 3: The one thing that I just cringed from in the
Speaker 3: show is only mostly that you know, they had no
Speaker 3: concern about spores, you know, so they'd be going in
Speaker 3: where they're dead zombies and you could see the you know,
Speaker 3: my cilia or whatever all over the place, and you know,
Speaker 3: nobody's worrying about breathing in the stuff. But you know so,
Speaker 3: But I since read you know that they didn't want
Speaker 3: to put masks on all the stars. Would you can
Speaker 3: imagine why?
Speaker 2: But yep, yep, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And speaking of masks, I read that you worked on
Speaker 1: this book a lot, or at least wrote a lot
Speaker 1: of this book and researched for this book during the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic. What was that experience like compared to previous
Speaker 1: books that you've worked on, and another two parter, how
Speaker 1: did writing about pathogenic fungui during a pandemic shape this book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for this book, I had this, Like the
Speaker 3: other books, I've just sat at home and read a
Speaker 3: lot of papers, called up some scientists, and so for
Speaker 3: this one, I'm like, I'm going to do a better book.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go visit laboratories and I'm going to
Speaker 3: go see bats and bat caves and frogs and the
Speaker 3: you know. So I had this I was going to
Speaker 3: travel and be right there with the scientists, and so
Speaker 3: that's what didn't happen. I did get to Costa Rica
Speaker 3: and we went to a banana plantation, which was really
Speaker 3: cool and I'm glad I had that experience. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the rest of it was sitting at home talking to
Speaker 3: science except over zoom, so that was different. I also
Speaker 3: felt that a lot of them were kind of more
Speaker 3: relaxed because they're sitting in their living rooms talk to me.
Speaker 3: And I think the other thing was once I realized
Speaker 3: that we were really in a pandemic, I had this
Speaker 3: book called Blake in the kind of pandemic, I asked
Speaker 3: my editor, I'm like, do you really think people are
Speaker 3: going to read this? Maybe I should stop writing it
Speaker 3: because you know, And the last thing is that it
Speaker 3: also since it's come out talking about the title, you know,
Speaker 3: when I was before, when I proposed it and was
Speaker 3: writing it, there hadn't been a pandemic like this, and
Speaker 3: so the time, you know, pandemic wasn't such a hot
Speaker 3: button word. I don't think, you know, And I chose
Speaker 3: it because I was trying to say that, you know,
Speaker 3: some of these funky are like, they're big outbreaks there,
Speaker 3: not just an epidemic here. You know, small outbreaks here
Speaker 3: and you're an epidemia. So you might have thoughts on
Speaker 3: using the name a word like pandemic. But I wanted
Speaker 3: people to think about it in a large way. But
Speaker 3: then we had this global viral pandemic and I'm like,
Speaker 3: but not like that.
Speaker 1: So right, right, right, no, And I think I think
Speaker 1: it's a completely apt term. I think that we tend to,
Speaker 1: maybe in part because of COVID, think about pandemics as
Speaker 1: in happening to humans, especially very human centric ideas of
Speaker 1: what a pandemic is.
Speaker 2: And that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so all that is to say, is that
Speaker 1: I love the title, and I think that it is
Speaker 1: something that we are a little bit in part, have
Speaker 1: this human bias where we don't think about fungi as
Speaker 1: much as we do, you know, bacteria and viruses, things
Speaker 1: that we're more familiar with, and humans represent of course,
Speaker 1: only a small proportion of organisms impacted by fungal pathogens.
Speaker 1: You know, some frog populations around the world have been
Speaker 1: absolutely devastated by b D a cattrid fungus that we
Speaker 1: did an episode on like years back. At this point,
Speaker 1: can you talk about why frogs are so susceptible to
Speaker 1: this pathogen and what the latest is on this fungal
Speaker 1: pandemic and are there any glimmers of hope out there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so I only know what I've learned from
Speaker 3: the scientists, and I spoke to Karen Lips, who is
Speaker 3: one of the lead scientists, and you know, she sort
Speaker 3: of experienced this decline. It's a good question about why
Speaker 3: frogs are so susceptible. So part of it is is
Speaker 3: that their skin they you know, carotin and their skin
Speaker 3: just like we do, and it's food for the Kittrids
Speaker 3: are aquatic. So that's one thing is that they'll spread
Speaker 3: their spores into the aquatic ecosystem and then that can
Speaker 3: spread easily move her on. Frogs breathe, they're basically breathing
Speaker 3: through their skin, and so this is a skin pathogen
Speaker 3: and so once it infects the skin, it you know,
Speaker 3: it will poke through and send out its spores and
Speaker 3: when it does that, it's completely ripping apart the frog skin.
Speaker 3: So you've got this skin that's very important for managing
Speaker 3: electrolytes coming in and out, and then you've got all
Speaker 3: these it's just being shredded by this fungus that's eating
Speaker 3: the skin and then growing and sending out its spores
Speaker 3: through the skin. And so that is what kills the frogs.
Speaker 3: They're not I mean they are. So there's this obviously,
Speaker 3: it's it's impacted a lot of different species. So that's
Speaker 3: another thing is that it's not species specific. It's impact
Speaker 3: a lot of different frog species. There's a very similar
Speaker 3: fungus and I do think that VD I might misspeak,
Speaker 3: but I think BD can also impact salamanders who have
Speaker 3: a similar part of their lifestyle, but it's not as
Speaker 3: problematic in salamanders. But there is another caterried fungus that
Speaker 3: has become called B cell that does impact salamanders, and
Speaker 3: that outbreak for that was in Europe, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of concern. We have some really biodiversity hotspots here
Speaker 3: for salamanders, and there's a lot of concern that if
Speaker 3: that B cell enters the US. You know, what happened
Speaker 3: to frogs around the world could happen to the salamanders here.
Speaker 1: It's alarming, especially because there is so much global exchange,
Speaker 1: global movement, global trade of thousands of species of plants
Speaker 1: and animals. And in your book you use this great
Speaker 1: term conveyor belt of disease. So what role has this
Speaker 1: conveyor belt of disease played in fungal outbreaks?
Speaker 3: So just about every fungal pathogen that I wrote about
Speaker 3: was an emergent disease, and it was emergent in large
Speaker 3: part because of trade and travel. So every fungus you
Speaker 3: know that became emergent pathogen is because it was brought
Speaker 3: to a new place and it found something to infect
Speaker 3: that had never seen it before. And that's how why
Speaker 3: it became so devastating. Those organisms had no defense. So
Speaker 3: the movement of plants and animals and us too, I
Speaker 3: mean there are some outbreaks that you know, what happened
Speaker 3: to the bats, which the white nose disease is thought
Speaker 3: to have been kicked off by cavers bats living caves.
Speaker 3: That's a pathogen that has killed bats across in the
Speaker 3: East and is moving across the country. And it was
Speaker 3: discovered also that that pathogen does infect bats in Europe,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't kill them, and it's in the caves
Speaker 3: in Europe, and so it's believed that you know, people
Speaker 3: tramping around those caves then came here, tramped around in
Speaker 3: caves here, left some spores disease.
Speaker 1: So yeah, movement, movement, I mean, it's a real driver
Speaker 1: of the spread of pathogens and fun guy, especially because,
Speaker 1: like you've talked about, the vast majority of the fungi
Speaker 1: we encounter our or the pathogenic fungui that we encounter,
Speaker 1: are stable in the environment, and so they're or long
Speaker 1: lived in the environment, and they're there, they stay somewhere
Speaker 1: for a very long time. They're they're very sticky in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, not being able to get rid
Speaker 1: of them, and that's I think one thing that makes
Speaker 1: them so I don't want to say scary, but like
Speaker 1: kind of alarming in that sense of like, once it's here,
Speaker 1: it's here. But the other thing that I find really
Speaker 1: both you know, fascinating and terrifying about some fungal pathogens
Speaker 1: of humans, especially going back to the humans, is that
Speaker 1: some of them can be incredibly deadly even with treatment.
Speaker 1: And I know that our treatments are somewhat limited in
Speaker 1: in you know, what they can do. But why are
Speaker 1: some of these fungal pathogens so very deadly?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question, and I'm not a physician,
Speaker 3: and I don't really have a good answer for that,
Speaker 3: except that when we're thinking about some of the people
Speaker 3: who are infected, that they're immunocompromised, so that gives the
Speaker 3: fungus some advantage. I think some fungi are also good
Speaker 3: at evading the immune response, so there's that, And I
Speaker 3: do think part of it is just that some of
Speaker 3: them are hard to treat because there aren't that many
Speaker 3: antifungal medications. There are very few classes of antifungal medications,
Speaker 3: and so once of fungus can overcome all of them,
Speaker 3: there aren't that many options after that for treatment. So
Speaker 3: resistance to antifungal medications is a real problem.
Speaker 1: Most if not all countries have regulations or laws that
Speaker 1: limit the importation of plants or animals into the countries
Speaker 1: in part to try to prevent pathogens from coming in
Speaker 1: and affecting these immunologically naive populations.
Speaker 2: But these laws aren't perfect.
Speaker 1: And you pointed out one gap with like humans just
Speaker 1: not knowing that we're transporting the fungus responsible for white
Speaker 1: nose syndrome on our boots. If we're cavers and we're
Speaker 1: going from one airport to the next, and what a
Speaker 1: cool cave. Let's pop in that one and then go
Speaker 1: back home, pop in that one. So there are some
Speaker 1: of these gaps that we see, but there's also seems
Speaker 1: to be sometimes resistance to stricter laws or longer quarantine periods.
Speaker 1: Why is there some resistance And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: both a big and simplistic question at the same time.
Speaker 3: But yeah, to why there's resistance, I mean, I think
Speaker 3: sometimes it's just such a big ask in many ways,
Speaker 3: and then some people would say it's not a very
Speaker 3: big ask, and I think what I wrote about was
Speaker 3: sort of. So there were two things, and I have
Speaker 3: to say right up front, regulation not my strong point.
Speaker 3: I find them very complicated to even you know, to
Speaker 3: try to dig into the history to understand the current regulations.
Speaker 3: The biggest gap that I came across, and I think
Speaker 3: that people would point out, is that for play plants
Speaker 3: since the nineteen hundreds, because there were a lot of
Speaker 3: outbreaks in plant diseases. The USDA, I think it was,
Speaker 3: you know, there was a lot there was a big
Speaker 3: fight between a couple of different factions of people who
Speaker 3: want to bring in plants from all over the world
Speaker 3: and people who said no, no, no, those are bringing
Speaker 3: in pests and pathogens, and so there was a big fight.
Speaker 3: But in the early part of the nineteen hundred they
Speaker 3: actually did eventually come up with some regulations about quarantines
Speaker 3: and you couldn't bring soil in and you couldn't do this
Speaker 3: to protect plants. So plants there is, you know, there
Speaker 3: is some healthy regulations. And we actually have a national mycologist,
Speaker 3: we have two, so that's a position and their role
Speaker 3: is to identify odd things that come in in plants
Speaker 3: that can't be identified and that might be pathogenic. And
Speaker 3: so they're sitting there in their labs constantly looking and
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff comes in. They look at a
Speaker 3: lot of different kinds of mostly fungal spores, because that's
Speaker 3: how they can identify them. So we have these people
Speaker 3: looking at for plants pretty much, and still we get
Speaker 3: plant pathogens slipping in. Okay, we don't have the same
Speaker 3: thing for animals that are pet trade animals, and you know,
Speaker 3: so for food animals we do because we're worried about
Speaker 3: humans and disease and her food. But for other kinds
Speaker 3: of animals that are in trade, there is not. For
Speaker 3: a lot of them, there is no you can't come
Speaker 3: in with this disease. You know, they're not checked for disease.
Speaker 3: Part of it is a capacity thing, and part of
Speaker 3: it is you know, I can't tell you why not.
Speaker 3: So now we're talking about millions of animals coming over
Speaker 3: and crates of animals and things like that. How difficult
Speaker 3: that is. So that's a big gap, and it was
Speaker 3: almost shocking. I had to ask a lot of times.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you mean, there's no national mycologists equivalent for
Speaker 3: animals because this seems so important and there isn't. So
Speaker 3: I will say one more thing, just about when I
Speaker 3: mentioned the BD and the salamander, So this is something
Speaker 3: that's kind of good that came out. I mean the
Speaker 3: b seal in the salamander. So I mentioned that there's
Speaker 3: concern that this cattrid fungus that's in Europe will come
Speaker 3: across to the US. And so those scientists that were
Speaker 3: working with frogs and knew how devastating the disease could
Speaker 3: be of the kittred BD could be in frogs got
Speaker 3: together and they first tried to have some new regulations
Speaker 3: there's some enforcement about bringing disease frogs into the country,
Speaker 3: and that really didn't go anywhere because the response was,
Speaker 3: we already have the disease here, so how are we
Speaker 3: going to stop it? But when the B sal came
Speaker 3: along in the salamanders, they got together again and they said, hey,
Speaker 3: it's not here, maybe we can stop it. And what
Speaker 3: happened and they worked with it was you know, nonprofits
Speaker 3: and federal agencies and you know, academics all working together
Speaker 3: to do this. And what they did come up with
Speaker 3: was in the end a list of I think two
Speaker 3: hundred and maybe nine or something salamanders that cannot come
Speaker 3: into the country because they are known carriers of B cell.
Speaker 3: So it's not exactly what they wanted, which would have been,
Speaker 3: you know, you just can't bring you have to be
Speaker 3: tested for diseased or get a health certificate that says
Speaker 3: you have no disease. But it's a it's a step
Speaker 3: and so and so far we haven't had b cell here.
Speaker 3: There is monitoring for it, but so that's kind of worked.
Speaker 3: But that's really you know, when you ask about regulations,
Speaker 3: how you do things, and you know that took a
Speaker 3: lot of effort.
Speaker 1: On this podcast, we're mostly talking about animal diseases and
Speaker 1: animal immune systems, but as you discuss in blight, plants
Speaker 1: especially trees are incredibly impacted by fungal infections. How do
Speaker 1: tree immune systems work? And like why are they so
Speaker 1: susceptible to some fungi?
Speaker 3: So trees have they do multiple things. So they grow,
Speaker 3: they have you know when you look at bark, that's
Speaker 3: like our skin first line. But they also do this
Speaker 3: thing where they grow, you know, in layers, right, so
Speaker 3: when you sometimes see the inside a tree that looks
Speaker 3: kind of there's nothing there, it's it's dead. And so
Speaker 3: they grow and they can wall off pathogens. It's just
Speaker 3: the way they grow. And so that's one defense is
Speaker 3: that if you know, something gets infected, they can kind
Speaker 3: of just grow around it wallet off and don't need
Speaker 3: that part. They don't need a branch or like we
Speaker 3: need our arm. So that's one thing. But the other
Speaker 3: thing they do produce a lot of chemicals. I mean,
Speaker 3: we know this in plants, right because we either use
Speaker 3: a lot of plant chemicals for drugs or whatever, and
Speaker 3: a lot of these sort of secondary chemicals that they're producing,
Speaker 3: including things like alkaloids that might make foods bitter, are
Speaker 3: defenses against pathogens. So that's another thing that they'll do
Speaker 3: is they can produce, you know, different kinds of chemical
Speaker 3: products to fend off disease and in pests too, insecte pests.
Speaker 1: When that doesn't go according to plan, it can be
Speaker 1: incredibly dramatic and awful. So one of the most tragic
Speaker 1: stories of a fungal epidemic is chestnut light And it's
Speaker 1: just so hard to wrap my head around how different
Speaker 1: some North American forests looked like before this epidemic struck.
Speaker 1: So can you take us through this tragedy, you know,
Speaker 1: how it was first recognized and then what led to
Speaker 1: this dramatic and rapid change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so chestnut trees the American Because a lot of
Speaker 3: people around me are like, wow, but I just got
Speaker 3: some chestnuts. I'm like, yeah, but they're not American chestnuts.
Speaker 3: If you got them from you know, the farmer down
Speaker 3: the road, they're probably some hybrid. So American chestnuts were
Speaker 3: huge trees, beautiful trees, very productive. They ranged along sort
Speaker 3: of the Appalachian Range and up along the East Coast.
Speaker 3: There were really important trees in many ways, both to
Speaker 3: humans and ecosystems. And so the story of the demise
Speaker 3: of the American chestnut kind of begins at the Bronx Zoo.
Speaker 3: So when they were first developing the zoo, the society
Speaker 3: that wanted to bring these, you know, have these exotic
Speaker 3: animals on show and everything, they were also very interested
Speaker 3: in the trees on their property. So they had a
Speaker 3: lot of acreage and they had a lot of old trees,
Speaker 3: and so they thought that those trees were just as
Speaker 3: important almost as the animals that they were going to
Speaker 3: bring in, and so they hired a forester. He was
Speaker 3: in charge of the trees and it was his job
Speaker 3: to make sure that all the trees in the park
Speaker 3: were good, healthy, whatever, and plant other stuff in the park.
Speaker 3: And so he knew all the trees in that park,
Speaker 3: and there were something like over a thousand chestnut trees,
Speaker 3: and they were some of them were, you know, the big, old,
Speaker 3: beautiful chestnuts. And so I think it was in nineteen
Speaker 3: oh four that Merkel noticed on a couple of chestnut
Speaker 3: trees some of the leaves were kind of curling and
Speaker 3: looked like they kind of looked like it was fall.
Speaker 3: They were sort of dying at a time when they
Speaker 3: shouldn't have been. So thought, well, this seems like some
Speaker 3: kind of disease. And he could see some little spots
Speaker 3: on the trees, and he thought, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 3: a fungal disease, but just a few trees, maybe won't
Speaker 3: come back next year, so you didn't worry about it.
Speaker 3: Nineteen oh five, almost every tree in the park was
Speaker 3: infected with this fungus and their leaves were curling up
Speaker 3: and dying, and so he at that point, you know,
Speaker 3: got worried, called the USDA asked what to do. One
Speaker 3: of the things that they did at the time what
Speaker 3: to treat fungal pathogens, which I thought was interesting because
Speaker 3: we still use this to treat them with copper. So
Speaker 3: copper is an organic fungicide and it is effective against fungus,
Speaker 3: but it's topical. And so the response to him was, well,
Speaker 3: cut off the dead branches and you know, treat the
Speaker 3: trees with copper. Well, you had a thousand you know,
Speaker 3: big old trees that wasn't really in you know, in
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundred that he tried to do that, but
Speaker 3: that was not that effective and it was just overwhelming.
Speaker 3: He brought in a colleague from down to the botanical
Speaker 3: gardens and he identified as something different, and he identified
Speaker 3: as what would become known as chestnut light. By the
Speaker 3: time he figured out what it was, you know, within
Speaker 3: that year and identified that it was in fact the
Speaker 3: organism that's infecting and killing the chestnut trees, he predicted
Speaker 3: that all the trees would probably be infected and dead
Speaker 3: within a few years, and he was right. And what
Speaker 3: happened from there is that the blight spread from New
Speaker 3: York all the way down through the Appellachians, killing chestnuts
Speaker 3: just about every single chestnut tree, millions of trees, maybe billions.
Speaker 3: Within decades, there were no more American chestnut trees growing. Now.
Speaker 3: People also cut down the trees in part to maybe
Speaker 3: make a fire break of infection, you know, to stop
Speaker 3: the infection, and also because chestnut wood was so valued,
Speaker 3: and you know they were going to try to stop this,
Speaker 3: and nothing stopped it. One thing we haven't talked about
Speaker 3: is spores. So you know fungi makes except for Last
Speaker 3: of Us, which didn't have spores, but it could have,
Speaker 3: and I think maybe in the game it does. I'm
Speaker 3: told that they actually wear masks in the game. So anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, fungi spread by spores. They can put out
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands or millions of spores, and in the
Speaker 3: case of the chestnut light, you know, these trees would
Speaker 3: be infected the funguses putting out spores. The wind can
Speaker 3: carry spores, and these spores can be carried by birds
Speaker 3: and insects that you know go to the trees and
Speaker 3: then go to the next tree, and so you know it,
Speaker 3: it just it spread rapidly and it was unstoppable. As
Speaker 3: that was happening, as they were realizing that they're losing
Speaker 3: these valuable trees, they wanted to understand something about the
Speaker 3: fungus and so there were these people called agricultural explorers
Speaker 3: around nineteen hundreds, which was part of that fight. Remember
Speaker 3: when I said there was the argument about you know,
Speaker 3: collecting and bringing in stuff from all over the world,
Speaker 3: but so wrong with that. So they had these and
Speaker 3: there were you know, dedicated explorers who would do that.
Speaker 3: They'd go all over the world looking for plants and
Speaker 3: fruits and you know, crop plants and trees and bring
Speaker 3: them back. And so they're happened to have an explorer
Speaker 3: that was going to China or he was in China
Speaker 3: at the time. They got in touch with him and said, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, there's this fungus on the chestnut tree. We
Speaker 3: know there's chestnuts in China. Can you see if this
Speaker 3: fungus is there, you know, identify this fungus on those trees.
Speaker 3: And he did, and what he also noticed is that
Speaker 3: those trees weren't really impacted by the fungus. He got
Speaker 3: word back and so you know, in the end, what
Speaker 3: people figured is that some of those trees that had
Speaker 3: been imported from either China or Japan people, you know,
Speaker 3: they're very popular. There's still we have neighbors with Chinese
Speaker 3: chestnut trees. Still that fungus probably came in on some
Speaker 3: of those imports and then spread throughout the country. But
Speaker 3: that understanding that now they know that the Chinese chestnut
Speaker 3: trees have some kind of resistance against the fungus because
Speaker 3: it co evolved with it, right, the two of all
Speaker 3: over how many hundreds of thousands of years together, that
Speaker 3: maybe there might be some way to use the resistance
Speaker 3: of Chinese chestnutrees and breed it into the American chestnut trees.
Speaker 3: So that started a whole new program to try to
Speaker 3: bring back American chestnutrees. One thing that I haven't mentioned,
Speaker 3: because we are so human centric, is that each time
Speaker 3: you do this, you're changing the whole ecosystem. And so
Speaker 3: you remove a key species like that, you remove a
Speaker 3: frog or a bat, and it changes things and it's
Speaker 3: not you know, it doesn't always have to. Sometimes it
Speaker 3: is still relevant to us that the ecosystem has changed.
Speaker 3: But you know, you can just imagine the changes that
Speaker 3: happen when this occurs and you take a whole species
Speaker 3: out of a.
Speaker 1: System, instant, huge transformation with unforseeable consequences. And there are
Speaker 1: some consequences I think that are a bit more easily
Speaker 1: seen when it comes to agriculture, and especially a lack
Speaker 1: of biodiversity in agricultural practice, so monoculture basically, So, could
Speaker 1: you take us through the story of bananas, This fruit
Speaker 1: that we eat so much of all the time around
Speaker 1: the world, and maybe we don't ever give a second
Speaker 1: thought to the banana that we hold in our hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the banana story which we did, you know,
Speaker 3: like I mentioned before, it got to go to Costa Rica,
Speaker 3: went to this place called Earth University, which is a
Speaker 3: really cool place. They're growing bananas sustainably because it's difficult
Speaker 3: to grow banana sustainably for a couple of reasons. One
Speaker 3: of them is fungus no matter where you grow. But
Speaker 3: the story that I focus on there is the story
Speaker 3: of a fungus called tr ie. It's an oxysporum, some
Speaker 3: kind of fungus. And so back in the thirties, forties
Speaker 3: and fifties, banana's big business. They were grown on these
Speaker 3: huge monocrop plantations in Costa Rica and Swear Honduras, and
Speaker 3: they at that time there was this fungus that emerged
Speaker 3: and it started killing those bananas. And the bananas that
Speaker 3: we ate were called the gross Michelle banana, and so
Speaker 3: they call them dessert banas, the bananas that we were
Speaker 3: all eating. So I should also clarify that there are
Speaker 3: many there are different kinds of bananas. We happened to
Speaker 3: eat one, as you mentioned, that's grown in a big monocrop.
Speaker 3: Basically clones, they're just clones of each other. They're not
Speaker 3: even because banas don't have seeds, so they're really really clones.
Speaker 3: A lot of people eat other kinds of bananas, So
Speaker 3: this particular fungus impacted the banana that we were all eating,
Speaker 3: the banana that was grown, the growmy shell that was imported,
Speaker 3: and it was devastating to those crops. And interesting I
Speaker 3: didn't bother the other kinds of bananas, but it was
Speaker 3: the industry that got worried. And so basically at that time,
Speaker 3: back in the fifties and sixties, there were concerns that
Speaker 3: they might not have any more bananas because that's a
Speaker 3: fungus that when you talk about scary spores, that's the
Speaker 3: one that makes spores and it can make this kind
Speaker 3: of spore that some scientists say has been detected in soil.
Speaker 3: So it's a soil born fungus. Means that it's in
Speaker 3: the soil, then it gets up through the banana from
Speaker 3: the soil, makes spores. It can last in the soil
Speaker 3: for ten years or more so decades. So this is
Speaker 3: a kind of thing that once it impacted plantation, got
Speaker 3: in the soil, you just can't grow bananas there anymore.
Speaker 3: And so what the industry would do back then, because
Speaker 3: it was not a great industry, would just be to
Speaker 3: move to another place and grow their bananas there, leave
Speaker 3: behind the other land that they you know, so they
Speaker 3: just kept moving. But it became clear that they were
Speaker 3: going to be out of bananas, and so around that time,
Speaker 3: there was a you know, discovery that there was another
Speaker 3: kind of banana called the cavendish that was not susceptible
Speaker 3: to that fungus. So that was a very you know,
Speaker 3: that fungus was very specific for the gro michell banana,
Speaker 3: and so they replaced the gross michelle with cavendish, which
Speaker 3: is what we eat. But they basically did the same thing.
Speaker 3: So they just planted huge monocrops of banana, same kinds
Speaker 3: and cloned banana everywhere wherever banas are grown for export.
Speaker 3: I think it was in the seventies, maybe slowly, a
Speaker 3: new kind of fungus emerged called TR four. So the
Speaker 3: first one was called tier one. The second round, Tier four,
Speaker 3: similar kind of fungus, causing the same kind of problem,
Speaker 3: and it is frightening growers. It was believed to be
Speaker 3: transported in soil, so that would have been in boots
Speaker 3: of people or farm machinery that was transported from one
Speaker 3: place to another. But one of the scientists I spoke
Speaker 3: to said, you know, even though we know that, I
Speaker 3: don't think that that's the only way it spreads, and
Speaker 3: that that would really stuck, you know that, even if
Speaker 3: we were totally hygienic about this, But there are you know,
Speaker 3: you used to be able to go in Costa Rica.
Speaker 3: I think if you went several years ago before TR
Speaker 3: four became a problem, you could go take a tour
Speaker 3: of banana plantation, which is just really it's fascinating to
Speaker 3: see how much care the bananas that we eat. We
Speaker 3: don't pay enough for our bananas. Let's just say that
Speaker 3: they require a lot of care. And so used to
Speaker 3: be able to go there and see how they do that,
Speaker 3: and that you're not allowed to do that anymore because
Speaker 3: there's too much concern about TR four. So we're kind
Speaker 3: of fortunate to be able to get a tour of
Speaker 3: this smaller plantation. But yeah, so there's TR fours out
Speaker 3: there and there are concerns about you know what will
Speaker 3: be next. And so some of the banana breeders and
Speaker 3: people who work with bananas have said, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: we might lose this banana, but there are a lot
Speaker 3: of other kind of bananas. And so one thing to
Speaker 3: think about is that when we you know, when I
Speaker 3: was growing up, there are a few different kinds of
Speaker 3: apples and that was it. And now it's I'm boggling.
Speaker 3: I think just in the last two years, how many
Speaker 3: different kinds of apples there are out there. So there's
Speaker 3: you know, that that different kinds. If we are open
Speaker 3: to having some diversity in our banana, that would be great.
Speaker 3: And another thing is is that growing these huge monocrops
Speaker 3: with you know, so there are other ways. That was
Speaker 3: one of the things that the scientists that I had
Speaker 3: visited was doing was experimenting with how to grow large crops,
Speaker 3: but not in these big monocrops, to have them in
Speaker 3: blocks and have other stuff planted, you know, agro ecology
Speaker 3: or grow forestry whatever, have other stuff growing in between,
Speaker 3: other crops growing in between, so that the you know,
Speaker 3: a disease can't spread so easily. So there are ways
Speaker 3: of doing, you know, dealing with this, and it's just
Speaker 3: that we you know, we we need to either change
Speaker 3: what we want and what we accept and also how
Speaker 3: we grow things diversity. You had mentioned diversity, So I'm
Speaker 3: glad you said that biodiversity before because it reminded me
Speaker 3: that that's one of the most important things for all
Speaker 3: of this is the and that we need to understand
Speaker 3: and do whatever we can to preserve biodiversity across species,
Speaker 3: no matter what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing to me that we are provided, you know,
Speaker 1: learning opportunities all of the time, from fungal pathogens, from
Speaker 1: other types of pathogens, from don't you know maybe giant
Speaker 1: monoculture is not a great idea, and that we have
Speaker 1: to keep relearning those lessons over and over again.
Speaker 3: That's that's a problem. It Meanswediam won't to learn them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because if we're not, if we're learning them
Speaker 1: over and over again, we never learned them in the
Speaker 1: first place. But so for my last question, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to the title of your book, blighte
Speaker 1: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, and I want to ask
Speaker 1: you not about like why we should be wary of
Speaker 1: fungal pathogens, because I feel like we did a pretty
Speaker 1: good job covering that so far. But I want to
Speaker 1: ask about what should give us hope in our ability
Speaker 1: to detect or control or treat a possible fungal epidemic
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 3: So one start is awareness. So just being aware when
Speaker 3: we talk about you know, you go to the airport
Speaker 3: and they ask you to not take any plants or
Speaker 3: plant bits or whatever, pay attention. There's a reason for that.
Speaker 3: There's hope in new developments, like we talked about better analysis,
Speaker 3: faster analysis. You know, if you can you know diagnosis,
Speaker 3: if you can have rapid diagnosis that sorts of thing,
Speaker 3: there is some hope there. You know, I would hope
Speaker 3: that with trade and travel, but trade, that we can
Speaker 3: be more aware of sort of what we want. There
Speaker 3: are some people that say, well, why do we need
Speaker 3: to plant, you know, plant plants from other countries. Why
Speaker 3: don't we just you know, grow what's native. So that's
Speaker 3: why not, you know, really and similarly, I think there
Speaker 3: are people who would like to see less animal trade
Speaker 3: or and you know, the flip side of that is
Speaker 3: that some people say, but then when you do get
Speaker 3: to have a salamander or some kind of odd lizard,
Speaker 3: you develop an awareness for that animal and you know
Speaker 3: some kind of you want to save that animal. So
Speaker 3: there is you know, it goes both ways to this
Speaker 3: kind of thing. I think that just having some greater
Speaker 3: awareness grow things in different ways. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: people in agriculture are beginning to understand and think about
Speaker 3: how to grow crops differently so that they're not so
Speaker 3: disease prone. Just diversity in what we eat and what
Speaker 3: we want. You know, why do we just want one
Speaker 3: type of wheat? Maybe we could be eating all sorts
Speaker 3: of different grains, which we're just starting to do. But
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's one way. So there are those
Speaker 3: kinds of things. Is that we just have to be
Speaker 3: open to more diversity in what we want. We also
Speaker 3: have to be aware of protecting a diversity that's out there,
Speaker 3: and just more cognizant of how we all live in
Speaker 3: this one world. You know, plants, animals, humans, we're all
Speaker 3: together in this one world and we all impact each other.
Speaker 3: We're not in our little human bubble. Everything interacts with
Speaker 3: each other and we really need to take that seriously.
Speaker 3: And I think and if COVID didn't get that us
Speaker 3: thinking that way, I don't know what will which is
Speaker 3: kind of a sad note to end it on, because
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, you know. I do think there's more
Speaker 3: awareness of ecosystem health, how important that is for diseases
Speaker 3: and things like that. So we just have such short memories.
Speaker 3: That's the problem, you know.
Speaker 1: This conversation just rein forced how amazing and fascinating fungi are.
Speaker 1: Doctor Monison, thank you so very much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to chat with me. We covered so much ground
Speaker 1: in this convo, but there is still so much more
Speaker 1: to the world of fungal pathogens that I'm sure you
Speaker 1: all want to learn about. If you find yourself craving
Speaker 1: more fungi facts, check out our website this podcast will
Speaker 1: kill You dot com. We're all post a link to
Speaker 1: where you can find blighte Fungi and the Coming Pandemic,
Speaker 1: as well as a link to doctor Monison's website. And
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