Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with
Speaker 2: Patricia Kashian about her upcoming book, Forest Euphoria, The Abounding
Speaker 2: Queerness of Nature, publishing next month and available for pre
Speaker 2: order right now in all formats. You'll find a pre
Speaker 2: order link in the episode description for this podcast episode,
Speaker 2: or you can look it up at speakleanngrou dot com
Speaker 2: slash forest hyphen Euphoria. So it's a fun shat. We
Speaker 2: discuss queer ecology, some amazing examples from nature, and even
Speaker 2: brief discussion of the TV show The Last Office. So
Speaker 2: without further ado, let's jump right in. Hi, Patti, welcome
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So, the new book is forrest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
Speaker 2: of Nature, a captivating text that meld scientific consideration of
Speaker 2: ecology and biodiversity with personal experience and insight. Tell us
Speaker 2: how did this project come together?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I.
Speaker 4: Started writing this book a few years ago. I have
Speaker 4: a degree in mycology. I have a PhD in mycology
Speaker 4: the study of fungi, and I had recently finished my doctorate,
Speaker 4: and I throughout the later stage of my PhD, though,
Speaker 4: I started getting really interested in the philosophy of science
Speaker 4: and queer theory, and so I sort of started to
Speaker 4: explore those things adjacent to my more formal academic training
Speaker 4: in science, and I got really interested in sort of
Speaker 4: how science functions, how we produce knowledge, how we make
Speaker 4: sense of knowledge within the scientific system, and how where
Speaker 4: the power of science lies, but also what its shortcomings
Speaker 4: might be. And so I'm someone who would say I'm
Speaker 4: very like science positive. I think science is an amazing
Speaker 4: tool and a really powerful way of knowing, but it also,
Speaker 4: you know, is a human endeavor and as such pen
Speaker 4: be flawed. And so I was sort of interested in
Speaker 4: understanding what were the sort of limits of science and
Speaker 4: how does science and culture interact. And as a mycologist,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm studying a group of organisms that has
Speaker 4: historically been extremely maligned and neglected by science and by
Speaker 4: popular culture and perception. And I was really interested in
Speaker 4: the fact that, even though scientists obviously strive for objectivity,
Speaker 4: I could find all throughout the science record around mycology
Speaker 4: sort of a unwillingness or reluctance to see their biology
Speaker 4: as fully as one should, meaning we were sort of
Speaker 4: the history of science is to sort of pigeonhole fungi
Speaker 4: as being organisms that are just like dangerous or deadly
Speaker 4: or disgusting. And there was actually a lack of objectivity
Speaker 4: in approaching this whole group of organisms, and as it
Speaker 4: kind of created a vacuum of knowledge. So I started
Speaker 4: to sort of be interested in, well, how did that
Speaker 4: come to be? How is it that a group of
Speaker 4: organisms could be treated so subjectively by scientists and what
Speaker 4: does that mean for sort of our understanding of them now?
Speaker 4: And so as I dug into that, I got really
Speaker 4: interested in sort of the history of mycology, you know,
Speaker 4: this feeling of fear and revulsion that a lot of
Speaker 4: people in particularly in North America or Western Europe have
Speaker 4: towards fungi. And that brought me into sort of the
Speaker 4: realm of queer theory as well, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: the understanding of categories usually relating to sex and gender,
Speaker 4: but sort of how we make sense.
Speaker 3: Of what is quote unquote normal, what is quote unquote.
Speaker 4: Dev and queer theory could sort of was used as
Speaker 4: a lens for understanding this construction, these binaries that we
Speaker 4: construct in society about what is good.
Speaker 3: Or bad, or what is normal what's not normal.
Speaker 4: I had started digging into that and was giving some
Speaker 4: talks on the subject, and then an editor reached out
Speaker 4: to me and asked, Hey, do you want to write
Speaker 4: a book about queer theory and biodiversity? And I was like, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 4: so I started doing that in I believe that was
Speaker 4: the spring of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Awesome. So, speaking of queerness in the broader sense, how
Speaker 2: do we currently define queer and queerness at a human level,
Speaker 2: Because I feel like it's easy, it's easy to sort
Speaker 2: of culturally absorb the term without really understanding its history,
Speaker 2: and I guess you might say evolved, meaning sure.
Speaker 4: So I use queerness sort of as an umbrella term
Speaker 4: for life and behavior and ways of being that are
Speaker 4: outside of the heteronormativity, but also as a way of
Speaker 4: invoking kind of a notion of a shared collective struggle
Speaker 4: towards liberation. So queer was, you know, used to be
Speaker 4: an insult or a pejorative term, and then people in
Speaker 4: that community took that back and and sort of proudly
Speaker 4: self identified as queer, particularly around the height of the
Speaker 4: AIDS crisis epidemic in the United States and used that
Speaker 4: sort of queerness as a rallying cry to bring people
Speaker 4: from otherwise sort of disparate LGBTQ groups and like bind
Speaker 4: them together and come together for the shared purpose of of,
Speaker 4: you know, addressing the AIDS crisis and other injustices related
Speaker 4: to homosexuality and so forth. So I actually think that
Speaker 4: queerness is a term that is not just about I
Speaker 4: think you can be gay and not really embody queerness.
Speaker 3: And and by that I mean I think that for me, the.
Speaker 4: Use of queer is is always sort of tied to
Speaker 4: collective liberation and so understanding your role in the collective
Speaker 4: and sort of how you relate to systems of power.
Speaker 4: And I'm you know, I'm sure other people have different definitions,
Speaker 4: and that's one of the beauty of things that's beautiful
Speaker 4: about being queer, is that, you know, sometimes you don't
Speaker 4: have to commit to one singular definition. But for me,
Speaker 4: that's how I sort of understand it. And I apply
Speaker 4: that not just to the human world in terms of liberation,
Speaker 4: but also liberation of non human species and life systems
Speaker 4: on earth, all.
Speaker 2: Right, And that brings us to queer ecology, how do
Speaker 2: we bring this definition of queer and queerness into the
Speaker 2: ecological world and what's the history of queer ecology.
Speaker 4: So queer ecology is sort of a you know, an
Speaker 4: emerging field. I would say it's been there's been some
Speaker 4: writings around it for the past decade or so, but
Speaker 4: it's starting to take more shape. I think it's becoming
Speaker 4: something that people are sinking their teeth into a bit
Speaker 4: more in the last few years. There are many dimensions
Speaker 4: to it. Up front, the most clear and concise like
Speaker 4: element of quer ecology is the fact that many organisms
Speaker 4: are simply not binary or sort of heteronormative, and they're
Speaker 4: reproductive strategies. So throughout the animal kingdom, there's all sorts
Speaker 4: of same sex mating behaviors, partnerships. There are organisms that
Speaker 4: have multiple sexes that sometimes in the same individual or
Speaker 4: over a singular life span. In the fungal world, we
Speaker 4: have all sorts of reproductive strategies that are non binary.
Speaker 4: So there's sometimes sometimes there are you know, quote unquote
Speaker 4: male or female species, but oftentimes there's multiple sexes or
Speaker 4: mating types depending on the group. Your entire lineages of
Speaker 4: fungi that are just asexual for all we know. Quer
Speaker 4: ecology is interested in exploring the biological reproductive strategies of
Speaker 4: different organisms and also the behaviors between organisms and sort
Speaker 4: of like bringing to the fourth research that had been
Speaker 4: either neglected to be you know, conducted or suppressed or
Speaker 4: sort of just overlooked regarding these sort of.
Speaker 3: Non non normal, you know, non heteronormative reproductive strategies.
Speaker 4: So that you know, a lot, a lot of the
Speaker 4: argument to shame queerness or same sex behaviors or it
Speaker 4: has been rooted in the fact that the claim that
Speaker 4: it's not natural right to be gay, it's not natural
Speaker 4: to be transgender, or something like this. But we actually
Speaker 4: know that throughout all throughout the tree of life, there
Speaker 4: are so many examples of these types of ways of being.
Speaker 4: So if the claim is that it's not natural, that's
Speaker 4: just not accurate. So part of it is just sort
Speaker 4: of a corrective against that claim. Now, you know, often
Speaker 4: the goalpost is shifted by those who are you know,
Speaker 4: homophobic or whatnot, but that has been a long standing claim,
Speaker 4: so quer ecology helps sort of make that clear. But
Speaker 4: then going further than that, getting into the little bit
Speaker 4: more of the theories and philosophies. It's also about understanding
Speaker 4: these constructions of categories, So like, how do we, like,
Speaker 4: how do science make sense of the world? Are there
Speaker 4: limitations to that worldview? Are there ways in which we've
Speaker 4: sort of blunted our understanding of nature because we've been
Speaker 4: steeped in a particular cultural lens, so particularly Western European philosophies.
Speaker 4: So one thing I talk about a lot in my
Speaker 4: research and in my book is the kind of notion
Speaker 4: of an individual. Right, So I'm a taxonomist, I'm someone
Speaker 4: who names and describes new species of fungi. So I
Speaker 4: definitely understand the utility of like a species concept or
Speaker 4: you know, drawing the you know, approximate limits of an individual,
Speaker 4: so we can kind of make sense of it and
Speaker 4: communicate about it. But there's also sort of like under
Speaker 4: I also understand that that's like a tool and a
Speaker 4: way of making sense in certain contexts. But sometimes to
Speaker 4: deep more deeply understand a really complex system, we might
Speaker 4: need to let go of certain rigid boxes that we've constructed,
Speaker 4: and so that can be a really challenging thing for
Speaker 4: people deep steeped in Western philosophical thought. And we really
Speaker 4: love the idea of an individual as a unit, as
Speaker 4: a structure. But for example, in fungi, we see oftentimes
Speaker 4: that these organisms are not really adhering to really clear
Speaker 4: lines of like what is this body versus the other?
Speaker 4: Like what is this species versus the other? And often
Speaker 4: fungi or forming really complex webs of interaction living you know,
Speaker 4: basically living in symbiosis, you know, sometimes cells with in
Speaker 4: larger bodies, and then it starts to challenge your ability
Speaker 4: to really draw those lines when the more you sort
Speaker 4: of engage with a biological understanding of these really complex beings.
Speaker 4: So in quer ecology we sort of are like bringing
Speaker 4: that to light, like how does how do we make
Speaker 4: sense of the world if we kind of decompose some
Speaker 4: of the notions that we've long kind of clung onto.
Speaker 4: And my goal with this is always to do better science, right,
Speaker 4: So ultimately I'm not trying to discard the scientific method. Again,
Speaker 4: I'm very positive towards science, but it's about like pushing
Speaker 4: us beyond the limits of current knowledge. Can we better
Speaker 4: understand the ecosystems around us, like how fungi form complex
Speaker 4: partnerships or how you know, desoil function. Can we can
Speaker 4: we push past some of the limitations that we've imposed
Speaker 4: on our own scientific processes by not examining our own biases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found it really interesting to think about because
Speaker 2: I know for some listeners out there, there may be
Speaker 2: this sort of maybe instinctual backlash against the idea of careercology,
Speaker 2: thinking that, well, okay, maybe this is like a human
Speaker 2: cultural matter and it's being used to influence the shape
Speaker 2: of scientific undertaking. But it's really quite the opposite, isn't
Speaker 2: it more of an attempt to undo binary, anthropomorphic interpretations
Speaker 2: of nature?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really good way of a succinct
Speaker 4: way of putting it. You know, so often I hear
Speaker 4: or like kind of detect a resistance to this, yeah,
Speaker 4: like to politicizing science or making like adding this sort
Speaker 4: of like identity politics to science or something like this.
Speaker 4: But really, like, actually, when you examine the scientific record,
Speaker 4: you can see that it's already fraught.
Speaker 3: With those things, there's all.
Speaker 4: And that's why I think the mycological example is really
Speaker 4: powerful because so like even we have examples of like
Speaker 4: Carl Lnaeus, one of the founders of modern taxonomy, describing
Speaker 4: fungi as rastichi Popeimi the poorest peasants of the vegetable class. Like,
Speaker 4: that's an incredibly subjective way of looking at an organism, right,
Speaker 4: calling it poor and a peasant and obviously filled with disdain.
Speaker 3: So that's not objectivity, that's his He.
Speaker 4: Thought they were weird, he called them, you know, he
Speaker 4: categorized them as lower plants. So that obviously this was
Speaker 4: prior to our Darwinian evolution knowledge. So like, I'm not
Speaker 4: holding that against him, but at the same time, that
Speaker 4: is still the fact of the matter is that a
Speaker 4: lot of scientists were Christian Western European men of high class,
Speaker 4: and those world views are present in their writings and
Speaker 4: in the canon of science. So I'm sort of look
Speaker 4: kind of treating this as like a way a corrective
Speaker 4: to that history.
Speaker 3: How do we go through that.
Speaker 4: History and make sense of the what we know now
Speaker 4: understanding that these people were like all of us, you know,
Speaker 4: limited while we're all limited in our capacity, and that's
Speaker 4: that's not a terrible thing, but it is true. And
Speaker 4: so sometimes people think that if you're kind of constantly
Speaker 4: thinking about sociology or your your own identity, that you
Speaker 4: might be clouding your own objectivity. But I think it
Speaker 4: kind of actually can function the opposite way, that it
Speaker 4: actually can make you more conscious of your flaws and
Speaker 4: what biases you might be replicating because we all have them. Right,
Speaker 4: It's not about saying someone's good or bad. It's just
Speaker 4: that we all are people and can and can be limited.
Speaker 4: And so it's also not really I think that much
Speaker 4: about your own identity. I think that it's really about
Speaker 4: understanding how information moves, how do we assign value, how
Speaker 4: do we assign how does power function to create meaning?
Speaker 4: And anyone is capable of sort of like exploring that. Right,
Speaker 4: That's you don't have to have a particular identity to
Speaker 4: be interested in challenging that or like thinking through that critically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I feel like it's one of those worldviews
Speaker 2: where like we're just in it and we don't necessarily
Speaker 2: like see it. We're not necessarily aware of these limitations
Speaker 2: unless we sort of step outside of it momentarily at least, Right, it's.
Speaker 4: A good practice as a scientist, I think to kind
Speaker 4: of reflect on even if you think you're discipline is
Speaker 4: really you know, not touched by human culture, I think
Speaker 4: it can be, and I would say some disciplines are
Speaker 4: much more in touch with that than others, but there's
Speaker 4: still like, I think it's a good reflection as a scientist.
Speaker 4: I think you can make you a more ethical, more grounded,
Speaker 4: and more effective scientist to at least be like considering
Speaker 4: these how this might function in your own work.
Speaker 2: Now, coming back to the book. Very early on in
Speaker 2: the book, you mentioned the nineteen ninety six French documentary Microcosms,
Speaker 2: which I think a lot of our listeners have probably
Speaker 2: seen in spite of perhaps of that sort of infamous
Speaker 2: American poster that featured the praying mantis with the sunglasses
Speaker 2: rather out of keeping with the actual vibe of the film,
Speaker 2: the vibe of which you discussed.
Speaker 4: So I really love that film because it's so immersive
Speaker 4: in this world of insects and other arthropods, and I
Speaker 4: think that those animals are so often treated with contempt. Right,
Speaker 4: So we similar to fungi, there's these perceptions around insects
Speaker 4: and and these you know, invertebrate animals that they're creepy, disgusting,
Speaker 4: they're like unworthy of of our care and love. You know,
Speaker 4: we we don't have any like coordinated system for ethics
Speaker 4: around insects, right, It's all like, actually the ethic is
Speaker 4: really that you can kill them without mercy, and so
Speaker 4: I I just find but I find them to be
Speaker 4: so incredibly well. They are not just I don't not
Speaker 4: just me who finds them this way. They are incredibly diverse.
Speaker 4: There there are you know, millions of species of insects,
Speaker 4: and they are these It's a whole, it's a universe
Speaker 4: unto itself, right, And so what I like about microcosmos
Speaker 4: is that it really submerses you into that world and
Speaker 4: you start to see that these things are animals. Like
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people know technically, and I'm
Speaker 4: sure most listeners to this podcast know that, like insects
Speaker 4: are animals, but you can still like something about making
Speaker 4: the micro sort of macro. You really see like, oh,
Speaker 4: this thing has like all these ornaments, and it has
Speaker 4: a behavior, and it has a family, and it has
Speaker 4: these you know, and it has sex and like all
Speaker 4: it is like an animal world. I think we just
Speaker 4: reduce them to these very flat, kind of negative categories otherwise,
Speaker 4: So I love that it kind of creates this drama
Speaker 4: that you're like with the music and you're sort of
Speaker 4: in and then like these towering plants all around you
Speaker 4: and you're kind of in this metropolis of this other world.
Speaker 4: And I think it makes them feel like dynamic because
Speaker 4: they are dynamic. They're species that have complex lives and
Speaker 4: probably feel all sorts of sensations that we've kind of
Speaker 4: typically denied them, so like pleasure and maybe even pain
Speaker 4: and fear, and we you know, we don't know too
Speaker 4: much about insect neuroscience in terms of what sensations they're
Speaker 4: capable of. But it kind of seems crazy to me
Speaker 4: that we would just assume from the jump that they're
Speaker 4: unfeeling entirely Like that doesn't make that doesn't really make
Speaker 4: scientific sense to me, right, So, and then there's also
Speaker 4: so there's other arthropods and and and then invertebrates. So like,
Speaker 4: I really love the snail sex scene where these two
Speaker 4: uh snails are there is like a gradual operatic situation
Speaker 4: where they are finding they find each other in the
Speaker 4: in the moss, and then they are entwined their bodies
Speaker 4: together and it's just and the opera crescendos as it
Speaker 4: is happening, and it's just like, Wow, these animals are
Speaker 4: really like experiencing pleasure, Like they're really like in this
Speaker 4: thing together and they're and also they're both you're not
Speaker 4: sure what the sex is of either, because they're they
Speaker 4: actually are both hermaphroditic. They both have both you know,
Speaker 4: male and female reproductive organs in their bodies, so there
Speaker 4: is this queer, literal, reproductively queer.
Speaker 3: Element to them as well. So I just it's a
Speaker 3: great film.
Speaker 4: If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend just setting
Speaker 4: aside a couple hours and immersing yourself into this micro world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had seen it years ago, and I noticed
Speaker 2: that it's currently on Criterion Channel, so I pulled it
Speaker 2: up during lunch the other day. Yeah, it's still gorgeous.
Speaker 2: And this is something you touch on in the book
Speaker 2: as well. It has almost no narration. There's like a
Speaker 2: little opening, narrational, little closing, but for the most part,
Speaker 2: like you're just immersed in this visual world of the
Speaker 2: creatures studied here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 2: So in the book, you bring up many examples of
Speaker 2: queerness in nature, again not exceptions to an imagined binary rule,
Speaker 2: but expressions of that abounding queerness that you get to
Speaker 2: in the title. What are some of your favorite additional
Speaker 2: examples to bring up in discussing queer ecology.
Speaker 4: I really am obsessed with eels, and they specifically the
Speaker 4: American eel that I talk about in the book. I
Speaker 4: think that they there's so much to their the they're
Speaker 4: very there.
Speaker 3: So they have a very queer body, right.
Speaker 4: So they are organisms that spend most of their life
Speaker 4: as intersex.
Speaker 3: In zoology, we use the.
Speaker 4: Word hermaphroditic, but I know that humans prefer intersex, so
Speaker 4: I try I actually, I guess I.
Speaker 3: Think that's probably the better term to use.
Speaker 4: So in the snail, sorry, the eel bodies are intersex
Speaker 4: in that they both have both male or they have testes,
Speaker 4: and they have ovaries for most of their life, and
Speaker 4: so you can't you know, there was a lot of
Speaker 4: mystery around them in the early days of natural history,
Speaker 4: trying to understand well, what are they, you know, and
Speaker 4: so a lot of scientists were determined that they must
Speaker 4: be either male or female, and so that sort of
Speaker 4: lens of trying to prove that they were one or
Speaker 4: the other dominated investigations into their bodies in biology. And
Speaker 4: one of those people researching eel sex was Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 4: and I so I write a little bit about his
Speaker 4: early days before he became interested in psychology or before
Speaker 4: he was studying it, was studying natural history, and he
Speaker 4: he was someone who wanted to sort of understand what
Speaker 4: the el sex situation was, and Spoke spent actually a
Speaker 4: lot much of his time dissecting the bodies of eels,
Speaker 4: trying to find roof of like sort of one sex
Speaker 4: or the other. And he kept he wanted to find specifically,
Speaker 4: he didn't understand why, like where were all the males?
Speaker 4: So I think it was easier to find ovarian tissue,
Speaker 4: but it was harder to find testicular type tissues, And
Speaker 4: so he dissected like hundreds of eels before finally finding
Speaker 4: some evidence that.
Speaker 3: There were males or male sex organs.
Speaker 4: And some people think that this may have been this
Speaker 4: sort of pursuit might have given rise to some of
Speaker 4: his later concepts like castration, anxiety.
Speaker 3: And stuff like this, because he was maybe.
Speaker 4: Made anxious by the fact that this was not actually
Speaker 4: something he could easily find. But eels are just, on
Speaker 4: several levels, incredibly fascinating. And one thing that also I
Speaker 4: grew really interested in was the way that they migrate,
Speaker 4: so they are spawned. They are all of the American
Speaker 4: eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, so kind of
Speaker 4: near the Bermuda Triangle, and for up until very recently,
Speaker 4: this exact location was unknown, and their whole sort of
Speaker 4: sexual reproduction was not witnessed or recorded by science.
Speaker 3: And then the eels.
Speaker 4: Migrate from the Bermuda, like from the Sargasso Sea all
Speaker 4: the way up to the along the length of the
Speaker 4: North American Eastern seaboard and enter into freshwater systems through
Speaker 4: rivers that reach the ocean, and they swim upstream and
Speaker 4: they can go pretty far. They can travel hundreds of
Speaker 4: miles within the freshwater systems. And I got to experience
Speaker 4: eels at when I was teaching at Bard College in
Speaker 4: the Hudson Valley, so on the Hudson River, and there
Speaker 4: was an eel monitoring project because eels have their populations
Speaker 4: have collapsed due to overfishing and pollution and habitat destruction.
Speaker 4: So there's a monitoring project with Hudsonia, an environmental org,
Speaker 4: and we would I would take my students and we
Speaker 4: would volunteer to help them trap eels, document them, and
Speaker 4: then release them into the freshwater systems. And so I
Speaker 4: started learning about how eels do this migration. They they
Speaker 4: make this trip from the Sargasso Sea with just basically
Speaker 4: only being about an inch long, and they're totally translucent
Speaker 4: except you can see through their bodies. You can see
Speaker 4: their eyes and then their their spinal cords and but
Speaker 4: they're just this tiny little fish that like swims for
Speaker 4: it can take them over a year to swim from
Speaker 4: where they were born to these freshwater systems that the
Speaker 4: systems that their parents came from. And so I was like,
Speaker 4: you know, started reading about how they are using magnetite,
Speaker 4: which is a oxidized iron material that's in their set
Speaker 4: like in and around their brains.
Speaker 3: And this is something that other animals have as well.
Speaker 4: It's best studied in fish like salmon, which also are
Speaker 4: you know, do these complex migratory routes. But it's magnetite
Speaker 4: is present throughout the tree of life. Even humans have it,
Speaker 4: but we're not sure exactly if its function in our bodies.
Speaker 4: But what's amazing about magnetite is that it is in
Speaker 4: the case of these complex animals, like multicellular animals, it's
Speaker 4: probably it's believed to have been a bacterial origin, so
Speaker 4: it's likely arose from an endosymbiotic event. So endo symbiosis
Speaker 4: is a process by which, you know, one species of
Speaker 4: a smaller size is engulfed by another larger species and eventually,
Speaker 4: over time they become interdependent on one another through you know,
Speaker 4: many generations. And so this is the case. This is
Speaker 4: how many of our organelles came to be. So mitochondria,
Speaker 4: for example, were used to be free living bacteria that
Speaker 4: were absorbed by another cell and then instead of it
Speaker 4: being maybe eaten or just being sort of killed by
Speaker 4: that engulfing, it's stato illlive and then persisted as a
Speaker 4: living cell within a larger cell. And eventually, over many, many,
Speaker 4: many generations, they become you know, like entangled with each
Speaker 4: other in physiologically and energetically. And so this process is
Speaker 4: so I mean, it's just kind of crazy to wrap
Speaker 4: your mind around. It's stranger than fiction in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways, Like what are the odds of these types
Speaker 4: of most you know, cellular events happening, And how is
Speaker 4: it that such sort of randomness could then give rise
Speaker 4: to such complexity. I mean, this is like the study
Speaker 4: of evolution, right, It's just absolutely crazy. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: like it sometimes feels just absolutely absurd. But what I
Speaker 4: kind of am bringing it back a little bit to
Speaker 4: quer ecology in a moment, which is that for most
Speaker 4: of a lot of scientific history, Western science was pretty
Speaker 4: resistant to this idea of symbiosis or to interdependencies or
Speaker 4: sort of that you know, the individual could really be
Speaker 4: made up of many, uh, you know, individuals, and we
Speaker 4: are collectively a being that is not really discernible without
Speaker 4: the presence of all these other micro organisms and such.
Speaker 4: So the science there was a scientist, an evolutionary biologist,
Speaker 4: Lynn Margolis, who was the person who's who brought endosymbiotic
Speaker 4: theory to like the a tension of science, and for
Speaker 4: many years she was dismissed as you know, being kind
Speaker 4: of just like partly on the basis of her gender,
Speaker 4: but just also on the basis of the fact that
Speaker 4: this just seems so crazy, like we are how could
Speaker 4: endosymbiosis really be like the foundation of the human body,
Speaker 4: like the noble amazing, you.
Speaker 3: Know, a complex person.
Speaker 4: Couldn't really could we really be just like a bunch
Speaker 4: of bacteria and fungi in a in a flesh, fleshy form.
Speaker 3: But over time, more and more.
Speaker 4: Evidence accumulated in support of her highypotheses, and now that
Speaker 4: is understood as as a like a you know, a
Speaker 4: fact of evolutionary biology and so that but she was
Speaker 4: willing to sort of challenge the paradigm and push outside
Speaker 4: of like what is normal and what is accepted in
Speaker 4: the scientific discipline and at great personal you know, risk
Speaker 4: and costs professionally. So I think that that part that
Speaker 4: story of like how magnetite Okay, okay, So then going
Speaker 4: back to the magnetite, there were these ancient bacteria that
Speaker 4: probably through just a you know, random mutation, started accumulating
Speaker 4: magnetite in their cells. And the magnetite is receptive to
Speaker 4: the magnetic fields of the Earth, and so over time
Speaker 4: these what was probably just like you know, a mutation
Speaker 4: of accumulation of this of this material became beneficial to
Speaker 4: that organism. They started to be able to sort of
Speaker 4: orient themselves to the magn the magnetic fields of the
Speaker 4: Earth and developed something of a magneto taxis, so being
Speaker 4: able to move by magnetic fields. And so we have
Speaker 4: like chemotaxis or phototaxis, and magomagnetic taxis is another form
Speaker 4: of response, you know, stimulation and response. So the over
Speaker 4: time and we have there there are these basically accumulations
Speaker 4: of these little packets of magnetite in a bacterial cell
Speaker 4: and they formed in a tiny like little chain, and
Speaker 4: that chain became almost like a compass needle that could
Speaker 4: move in response to the magnetic fields of the Earth.
Speaker 4: And that some ancestor of that bacteria was probably what
Speaker 4: was absorbed into another larger cell. That then is you know,
Speaker 4: deep in the tree of life of animals, and just
Speaker 4: a common ancestor of most animals probably had absorbed some
Speaker 4: sort of magnetive tactic bacteria and that's why we can
Speaker 4: find it scattered across all the tree of life. And
Speaker 4: so some animals have you know, evolved these magnetostomes, these
Speaker 4: more complex structures within with in which magnetite is found,
Speaker 4: and they are basically sensory organs that so, like in salmon,
Speaker 4: for example, we know that there's the complex magnetostomes in
Speaker 4: and around their little noses and faces and they use
Speaker 4: that to guide their migratory journeys from from you know,
Speaker 4: c in fresh water. And so we think eels have
Speaker 4: that as well, and that's how sort of how they're
Speaker 4: able to travel through the ocean for weeks and weeks
Speaker 4: and weeks or oriented towards this sort of ancestral water
Speaker 4: that was probably somehow that imprinted into.
Speaker 3: The magnetostomes that they're using.
Speaker 4: So this is that was a very long story, but
Speaker 4: I think both elements of the eel biology are are relevant.
Speaker 4: So there's the queer ecological the queer biological fact of
Speaker 4: their bodies being intersect for most of their life and
Speaker 4: then when they are about to make their journey, so
Speaker 4: they migrate up to freshwater, live there for several decades,
Speaker 4: and then when they are it's time to reproduce, they're
Speaker 4: sort of signaled into preparing for a journey back to
Speaker 4: the Sargasso c And at that point they replace all
Speaker 4: of their digestive organs get sort of cannibalized and cellularly
Speaker 4: repurposed into sexual reproductive organs, and that at that point
Speaker 4: typically they become you know, they develop more fully ovariant
Speaker 4: tissue or more fully testicular tissues, or they can retain both,
Speaker 4: and then they make that journey back to the Sargasso
Speaker 4: c and they have a raucous I guess evening of
Speaker 4: sexual reproduction. So that is super queer in a sort
Speaker 4: of queer like in a direct reproductive sense, but then
Speaker 4: also this sort of you know, the history of endosymbiosis
Speaker 4: as being a kind of a rejected concept in the
Speaker 4: scientific establishment because it showed that these you know, higher
Speaker 4: quote unquote, higher level organisms were the kind of random
Speaker 4: events of these lowly microbes. And that kind of perspective
Speaker 4: is something that challenges like the agency of more complex
Speaker 4: beings and the human Wow.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Uh, there's another organism that you bring up. And
Speaker 2: I have to admit this is an organism that has
Speaker 2: long been one of my favorites, but at a like
Speaker 2: a a zoo tourist level, like I've never researched them
Speaker 2: for the podcast or anything, so I only really knew
Speaker 2: what was out there already, like you know, going to
Speaker 2: zoos and you know up there on the little sign
Speaker 2: and so forth. But the Castawary, Oh yeah. And granted,
Speaker 2: there's a lot about the Castawary to catch your eye
Speaker 2: and to explain to a general audience, like their you know,
Speaker 2: their their coloration, their their flightlessness, their their feet, the
Speaker 2: formation on the top of their head. But I was
Speaker 2: really taken by your discussion of how they they fit
Speaker 2: into queer ecology. Would you would tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about this Yeah.
Speaker 4: So castiwaries they're amazing birds. They're incredibly you know, like
Speaker 4: they just are very much like, Okay, you understand that
Speaker 4: they're related to how closely related they are to dinosaurs,
Speaker 4: and so they're completely fascinating.
Speaker 3: But for in terms of the like they're sort of
Speaker 3: queer structures.
Speaker 4: They for a long time, it was really not discussed
Speaker 4: in any of the literature on their basic biology, like
Speaker 4: how they were reproducing and the fact that like some
Speaker 4: of the females have these fallacies and some of the
Speaker 4: males have like inverted basically like they instead of having
Speaker 4: an extroverted fallus, they have inverted structures.
Speaker 3: So they sort of have this.
Speaker 4: Like in what you know, what we would consider the
Speaker 4: opposite and you know, most people would consider the opposite
Speaker 4: type structure representing you know, on the male or female.
Speaker 4: And so for a long time, people who the people
Speaker 4: like indigenous to this area where castwerries are found, would
Speaker 4: involve cassowaries in a lot of their cosmology and iconographies
Speaker 4: and specifically were aware that they had these you know,
Speaker 4: queer reproductive organs, organs that were not binary organs that
Speaker 4: defied sort of expectations around gender or sex, and they
Speaker 4: incorporated that into some into ritual and so forth. So
Speaker 4: this was known to the people who lived amongst them
Speaker 4: for thousands of years that they actually have really sort
Speaker 4: of these these structures.
Speaker 3: But in the Western scientific descriptions of these birds there
Speaker 3: were there was really no mention of this fact. And
Speaker 3: and so actually I learned about.
Speaker 4: This through reading Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagamial, I believe
Speaker 4: is the pronunciation of his last name, which is a
Speaker 4: wonderful compendium, very textbook like compendium of examples of queerness
Speaker 4: in nature.
Speaker 3: And I found that it's a wonderful resource.
Speaker 4: It's and it does get a little bit into sort
Speaker 4: of the like reasons why certain studies were maybe not
Speaker 4: taken seriously or suppressed or ignored. And so he notes that,
Speaker 4: you know, these birds were known for a while to
Speaker 4: be like this, but you could not find record of
Speaker 4: that in in like publications. And he believes it's because
Speaker 4: there was sort of shame and anxiety around just simply
Speaker 4: reporting evidence of queerness or homosexuality or of you know,
Speaker 4: sort of gender sex nonconformity in the scientific literature.
Speaker 3: So it's it's just an.
Speaker 4: It's an interesting example of the fact that like so
Speaker 4: going back to the earlier part of our conversation where
Speaker 4: we can have or we talk about you know, it's
Speaker 4: not actually we're not actually being political when we pull
Speaker 4: these things out. We're actually exposing the fact that there
Speaker 4: were biases that clouded the objectivity in science, and it's
Speaker 4: important to acknowledge those and sort of pull that subjectivity
Speaker 4: out and actually just look at these things very factually.
Speaker 4: So it's just a good example of like what you
Speaker 4: what happens when you're just afraid to make waves in science,
Speaker 4: or you're or you're just not looking correctly, so you
Speaker 4: might have maybe maybe you you know. He has other
Speaker 4: examples in the book too, where scientists would talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, seeing something and just really not believing them
Speaker 4: their own observations because it was contradictory to heteronormativity. It's
Speaker 4: like or they would come up with very non parsimonious
Speaker 4: explanations as to why they were seeing what they were seeing, like, oh,
Speaker 4: this these two you know, birds are have a same
Speaker 4: sex partnership, but you know, they're probably just confused or
Speaker 4: something like that, right, and so making these sort of
Speaker 4: like reaching for explanations that that are not really evidence
Speaker 4: based but are just sort of like would would kind
Speaker 4: of explain away the fact that you're constantly seeing same
Speaker 4: sex behaviors in that species. So the same with the cassowaries.
Speaker 4: This was the case as well, that they were just
Speaker 4: like not either not report. We can't be sure exactly why,
Speaker 4: but it seems as if they were either not reporting
Speaker 4: what they were seeing or they didn't believe their own
Speaker 4: examination of these birds that were like maybe I'm just
Speaker 4: not getting it, but maybe it was just that they're
Speaker 4: not conforming to our notions of what sexual structures should
Speaker 4: look like in males or females.
Speaker 2: It's such a fascinating way to sort of turn the
Speaker 2: tables on anthromomorphism and sort of see it as I guess.
Speaker 2: You know, On one hand, we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 2: anthromomorphism helps us in some cases care more about animals.
Speaker 2: You know, we see ourselves reflected in them, but then
Speaker 2: it can stand in the way of fully understanding what
Speaker 2: they are and how they operate because even at a
Speaker 2: subliminal level, like we're seeing ourselves in them and seeing
Speaker 2: them as models of humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: I think that is a really important point because I
Speaker 4: think anthropomorphism can be a good tool and it can
Speaker 4: stand in the way, and it kind of is case dependent.
Speaker 4: And it's also so it sort of requires you to
Speaker 4: be constantly reflexive on like, if I like withhold all
Speaker 4: of the complex city that I know is found in
Speaker 4: the human species from another species, am I learning more
Speaker 4: about it? Or am I making it?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Am I actually reducing my understanding of it?
Speaker 4: And so that kind of negotiation is something that I
Speaker 4: try to engage with regularly. It's like, so for example,
Speaker 4: going back to the insects, if I assume nothing like
Speaker 4: no human qualities can be mapped onto insects, then I
Speaker 4: might assume that they're incapable of experiencing pleasure or pain,
Speaker 4: or that they don't have like complex social realities, and
Speaker 4: then I might actually not really understand insects. But you
Speaker 4: can take it then, as you're saying, you can also
Speaker 4: for the castworries.
Speaker 3: If we assume like a male.
Speaker 4: Looks like this and a female looks like this, then
Speaker 4: you know you're because of what we think is normal
Speaker 4: for people, then we are also reducing our understanding of
Speaker 4: these organisms. So it kind of is this constant like
Speaker 4: negotiation and toggle between can anthropomorphism actually enrich our scientific
Speaker 4: understanding or is in this moment is it restricting us?
Speaker 4: And so there isn't like a one answer. It's sort
Speaker 4: of a constant question. But I try time my sort
Speaker 4: of inclination and this is just sort of my style
Speaker 4: not to be prescriptive, is to sort of assume human
Speaker 4: like qualities and then scientifically assess what you know.
Speaker 3: Is that accurate?
Speaker 4: And so I'd rather over project, you know, feeling and
Speaker 4: dynamicism and complexity and then maybe have you with evidence
Speaker 4: take that away or under renegotiate that as opposed to
Speaker 4: assuming being that you're this inert, unfeeling species and you
Speaker 4: have nothing, you know, you're just a you know, like
Speaker 4: a collection of molecules and there's no sort of vitalism there,
Speaker 4: and so that's kind of that's if I had to
Speaker 4: pick one. I actually think anthropomorphism is likely to enrich
Speaker 4: our understanding, but caveats abound.
Speaker 2: Now coming back to the realm of mycology and where
Speaker 2: it intersects with human culture and understanding. I wonder what
Speaker 2: your thoughts are on this. I know that, like in general,
Speaker 2: writers have often touched on different cultures being micophilic or microphobic,
Speaker 2: like on the whole seeing like the realm of mushrooms
Speaker 2: and fun guys being dangerous or beneficial and not being
Speaker 2: like wrapped up in their culture. And this of course
Speaker 2: gets into what you're talking about earlier, about the about
Speaker 2: certain despised species or forms of life within given cultures.
Speaker 2: And I was just wondering, like, do you see an
Speaker 2: overlap between traditional cultures that are more micophilic and ones
Speaker 2: that are traditionally like less defined and by rigid binary
Speaker 2: definitions of sexuality and gender.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, that's a really good question, I think in general, yes,
Speaker 4: I would say that as I'm not you know, and
Speaker 4: I'm not an anthropologist or a sociologist, but from you know,
Speaker 4: so as a mycologist trying to sort of explore this topic,
Speaker 4: I you know, I don't I can't speak super confidently
Speaker 4: in for other cultures, but what I can say is
Speaker 4: that a lot of the history of homophobia and the
Speaker 4: history of sort of the way that the patriarchy functions
Speaker 4: in Western European and euro American culture had you know,
Speaker 4: that's something that has been exported around the world through
Speaker 4: colonialism and other you know, there have been societies all
Speaker 4: over the world that have had you know, have sought
Speaker 4: to have conformity with gender and with you know, and
Speaker 4: have been patriarchal and stuff. But the type, the sort
Speaker 4: of manifestation that we are now all pretty familiar with
Speaker 4: originated in you know, Western European and euro American thought
Speaker 4: and then what has been imposed pretty forcefully.
Speaker 3: Around the world.
Speaker 4: So I would say that in general there's a trend
Speaker 4: that societies that had less rigid notions of gender or
Speaker 4: still do have also had unders like cosmological understandings of
Speaker 4: the earth as being you know, with as they're being,
Speaker 4: like deep interdependence between species, and are generally less hierarchical
Speaker 4: even in their understanding of species, not that are non human,
Speaker 4: you know, so much of the the binary understanding of
Speaker 4: like humans and nature that is also like at Western
Speaker 4: you know, European origin, the exact manifestation of it in
Speaker 4: you know that we're now familiar with.
Speaker 3: You know, there's like there's us and them.
Speaker 4: There are these two categories, there's human and nature, and
Speaker 4: that you know, humans are placed atop this hierarchy. We
Speaker 4: were you know, we were the chosen species. We are divine,
Speaker 4: and we are the most complex and the most intelligent
Speaker 4: and most rational and everything else is just sort of
Speaker 4: beneath us to varying degrees, And in Western European thought
Speaker 4: that the things that were the lowest on this sort
Speaker 4: of pyramid would have been fungi and invertebrates, insects and
Speaker 4: things like this, So that hierarchy is really foundational to
Speaker 4: European and Western European thought. So that and that's so
Speaker 4: it is like some I guess I feel most confident
Speaker 4: speaking about this society because I'm someone who grew up
Speaker 4: in it, and I'm part Irish Irish and part Armenian,
Speaker 4: and i grew up in the United States, so I
Speaker 4: feel like most you know, I'm most able to comment
Speaker 4: on how that functions. Now, there are other societies, you know,
Speaker 4: around the world that including Eastern European, places in Mexico,
Speaker 4: places in West Africa, Japan, where mushrooms are not considered,
Speaker 4: you know, not as strongly associated with anything negative and
Speaker 4: have a long history being celebrated and integrated into culture
Speaker 4: and in historically these places also had less rigid understandings
Speaker 4: of gender. But now, of course it's hard to sort
Speaker 4: of draw that line because of the impact of colonialism.
Speaker 4: So I'd say that there is a relationship and I'm
Speaker 4: always interested in hearing from people who grew up steeped
Speaker 4: in other cultures about this specific topic, because there isn't
Speaker 4: a lot written about it. So this is sort of
Speaker 4: just what I've been able to kind of piece together
Speaker 4: over time, again not being a sociologist, but there is
Speaker 4: a relationship between sort of how does a culture respond
Speaker 4: to the unknown. So in general, there's like a feeling
Speaker 4: that what is unknown induces sort of anxiety and fear
Speaker 4: versus the unknown inducing something sort of a feeling of
Speaker 4: revelation orinity or you know, sort of magic. And I
Speaker 4: think in our culture there's a association with wanting to
Speaker 4: control the unknown, to be unknown as to be a threat,
Speaker 4: and that's subversive. And so Fungi kind of are these organisms,
Speaker 4: and same with insects in particular. They both are groups
Speaker 4: of organisms that really subvert the desire to dominate because
Speaker 4: they're like, you know, difficult to predict. They can they
Speaker 4: move in ways that sort of are unexpected. They can
Speaker 4: be ephemeral, they can amass, they can pop up overnight, right,
Speaker 4: and this all of this sort of transitory, ephemeral, difficult
Speaker 4: to predict biology makes them sort of induces a feeling
Speaker 4: of fear, and I think that that is also there's
Speaker 4: a parallel there to how people respond to people who
Speaker 4: do not conform not just within matters of sex and gender,
Speaker 4: but also in terms of ability, in terms of race. Right,
Speaker 4: So there's also this feeling of like, if you're not
Speaker 4: what I expect, I will fear you because I can't
Speaker 4: I don't quite know how to control you, right, And
Speaker 4: control is often, you know, executed first by putting someone.
Speaker 3: In a box.
Speaker 4: Right, you are either this or that. I need to
Speaker 4: make sense of you, so I know what to expect.
Speaker 4: Instead of Wow, I don't know what to make of you,
Speaker 4: how interesting, how how beautiful, it's it's like, wow, I
Speaker 4: don't know what to make of you.
Speaker 3: I'm now oppositional to you. Right.
Speaker 4: So that sort of response is something also that's very
Speaker 4: like steeped into our culture.
Speaker 2: Now, speaking of fun, guy, can you tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about labouls? This is this is not a
Speaker 2: this is not something I was familiar with before.
Speaker 3: Sure, they're not a well studied group of fungi.
Speaker 4: So I'm one of only like a handful of people
Speaker 4: in the world who study this entire order of fungi.
Speaker 4: The la bulbini Eli's kind of a mouthful. We call
Speaker 4: them labulls for short, so that's a little easier, and
Speaker 4: they are a very diverse lineage of fungi that live
Speaker 4: and grow on insects. People are probably much more familiar
Speaker 4: with another group of fungi that live and grow on insects,
Speaker 4: the cortiseps or the zombie fungi, but these are in
Speaker 4: the same phylum, but completely different orders and classes, so labouls.
Speaker 3: Some of them we believe to be parasitic.
Speaker 4: We believe they take nutrients from the insect host at
Speaker 4: the insects expense, but others seem to be maybe more commensal,
Speaker 4: Like we haven't been able to quantify any sort of
Speaker 4: damage they're doing to the host, and the host seems
Speaker 4: kind of able to just go about its life as normal.
Speaker 4: But in any case, they're really interesting fungi if you
Speaker 4: can believe it.
Speaker 3: There's tens of thousands of species.
Speaker 4: Of this order, which just is you know, the biodiversity
Speaker 4: is just staggering, right, So a group of fung i've
Speaker 4: never heard of living their lives in insects and there's
Speaker 4: just tens of thousands of species of them, and they're
Speaker 4: really small. They sometimes can be sort of detected with
Speaker 4: the naked eye.
Speaker 3: But usually you need at least a hand lens.
Speaker 4: And then the most common way to find them is
Speaker 4: looking at insects under a dissecting microscope, and they grow
Speaker 4: outward from the exterior of the insect. They're multicellular, they're
Speaker 4: really flexible and durable. They're not like ephemeral, so once
Speaker 4: they grow there, they you know, are there until they die. Essentially,
Speaker 4: they're not like coming up and out of the insect body.
Speaker 3: They form.
Speaker 4: The spore basically lands on the exterior of the insect,
Speaker 4: and then some minute penetrative cells germinate from that and
Speaker 4: enter just like shallowly into the insect body and form
Speaker 4: kind of like an anchor. And then from that, you know,
Speaker 4: a few dozen cells will form in a definitive structure,
Speaker 4: so meaning they always they're not amorphous. They have a
Speaker 4: pretty defined cellular growth pattern, and so when we do
Speaker 4: taxonomy on these fungi.
Speaker 3: We are looking at more.
Speaker 4: Our morphological descriptions involve draw you know, understanding the exact
Speaker 4: cell like shape, size, and arrangement, and this is highly variable.
Speaker 3: There are like really.
Speaker 4: Thousands of ways these fungi can present itself, but it's
Speaker 4: pretty fixed within a species, and even within a genus
Speaker 4: there's like very common body plans, and so we also
Speaker 4: would use genetic DNA sequencing to do the taxonomic work
Speaker 4: on these fungi. But they're just really I mean, they're
Speaker 4: What I love about them is that they are so
Speaker 4: quietly existing in this tremendous diversity. They're the most diverse
Speaker 4: lineage of insect associated fungi. So you have, you know,
Speaker 4: the incredible diversity of the insect world, and then on
Speaker 4: that you have this other whole realm of species that
Speaker 4: are you know, have evolved and are living and dying
Speaker 4: and I'm pretty much unbeknownst to you know, any witnesses.
Speaker 4: And to me, that's just a very like That's one
Speaker 4: of the things I love about studying biodiversity, and of
Speaker 4: these fungi in particular. It is just that they they
Speaker 4: are really kind of uninterested to project a little anthropomorphically
Speaker 4: on them. They're just you know, they're here whether or
Speaker 4: not people are and this like and this, and it
Speaker 4: kind of really reminds you of It makes me think
Speaker 4: as a person, like, Wow, the world like is so
Speaker 4: dynamic and it has was.
Speaker 3: Here before me. And will be here after me.
Speaker 4: And there's all these processes going on that really are
Speaker 4: kind of be apart from the the so like my
Speaker 4: social perception, you know, and I just think that can
Speaker 4: be kind of calming and meditative. But I really like
Speaker 4: working with them because I get to also work with insects,
Speaker 4: so it brings me into contact with multiple kingdoms of
Speaker 4: life in this really intimate way. I love doing microscopy.
Speaker 4: I love being like kind of immersed in the micro world.
Speaker 4: So going back to the microcosmos, I get to, you know,
Speaker 4: getting to stare at the the an insect under the
Speaker 4: microscope a dissecting scope is so fun. You really see
Speaker 4: like all of its elaborate evolutionary you know, all the
Speaker 4: appendages and hairs and colors, and and it's it's you
Speaker 4: can it makes you feel like in touch with these
Speaker 4: this whole other realm. And then what's really exciting about
Speaker 4: being a micologist is that there are because we've only
Speaker 4: described you know, around we estimate three to five percent
Speaker 4: of fungal species diversity, there's no shortage of new species
Speaker 4: descriptions that can be just authored. So I get to,
Speaker 4: you know, been able to name and describe about a
Speaker 4: dozen species new species to science, all within this group
Speaker 4: the level of anilies.
Speaker 3: So that's a fun thing too.
Speaker 4: It's like you can say, you can say pretty definitively
Speaker 4: that you know, a person has not looked upon this
Speaker 4: fungus before because a no one is looking for them,
Speaker 4: and also because you need a microscope to see it,
Speaker 4: so it's just not likely that someone would have just
Speaker 4: bumped into it.
Speaker 3: You know. There there.
Speaker 4: You have to be looking for them to find them.
Speaker 4: So it's just a kind of a fun opportunity for
Speaker 4: me to like be contributing taxonomically. And then also one
Speaker 4: thing that I like about being a taxonomist is that
Speaker 4: the practice of naming, and you know, taxonomy does have
Speaker 4: a complicated history in terms of ethics, and you know,
Speaker 4: all of these forces that we've been talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of around colonialism and power and who gets to,
Speaker 4: you know, put a name on something and in what language.
Speaker 3: So one thing I like to think about.
Speaker 4: Is taxonomy as a practice of honoring, so not stamping
Speaker 4: your authority on it as like an act of I
Speaker 4: guess possession, but being like okay, here, this is a
Speaker 4: species that I share the planet with. This is a
Speaker 4: species who's been on this multi billion year journey like
Speaker 4: every other species here, and how can we sort of
Speaker 4: honor its diversity, regardless of its role in doesn't matter
Speaker 4: if this fungus is of utility to me or to
Speaker 4: people like it.
Speaker 3: It's here, it exists.
Speaker 4: It is complex and dynamic and worthy of a name.
Speaker 4: So I like to think of naming as a system
Speaker 4: of like as a practice of honoring other the existence
Speaker 4: of and the sort of what I like to think
Speaker 4: of as sort of like the agency and almost like
Speaker 4: personhood of another being. Right to name is to sort
Speaker 4: of acknowledge that complexity. It's also an opportunity to sort
Speaker 4: of embody some of the practices that I think have
Speaker 4: been missing in the field of taxonomy, which would be
Speaker 4: to name things, you know, perhaps based on using indigenous languages,
Speaker 4: from the location that organism was found, or from you know,
Speaker 4: you know, naming scientists who've been forgotten or were you know,
Speaker 4: sort of like acknowledging like the complexity of the human
Speaker 4: life that might surround the procurement of that species in
Speaker 4: the first place. So, yeah, that that's sort of a
Speaker 4: fun thing that I can do.
Speaker 3: With with libules.
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned the cord of steps and I want
Speaker 2: to highlighted that you you you did appear on Science
Speaker 2: Friday to discuss uh the fund these particular fun guy
Speaker 2: uh and HBO's The Last OBUs, which of course has
Speaker 2: this I guess you'd say, like very sort of you know,
Speaker 2: of course, a fantastic sci fi treatment of Courtyceps. It's
Speaker 2: very uh micophobic in its manifestation. But I do refer
Speaker 2: listeners to that interview if they want to they want
Speaker 2: like the full story.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I sort fungal fact from fiction on that episode.
Speaker 2: As we're I believe we're about to go into the
Speaker 2: second season of the Last of Us, any like quick
Speaker 2: reminders for folks about Courtyceps and sort of disconnecting the
Speaker 2: fantasy from the reality totally.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So I've been asked a number of times like could
Speaker 4: people be turned into zombies by a fungus as they
Speaker 4: are in the show, And the answers know that these
Speaker 4: fungi and the insect hosts that they have on we're
Speaker 4: in a you know, coevolutionary dynamic for millions of years
Speaker 4: and it took That's how the fungus is perfectly adapted,
Speaker 4: not just to like insects broadly or not even just
Speaker 4: to like, you know, a whole group of insects, but
Speaker 4: specific species of insects. So, for example, Cordyceps could be
Speaker 4: found on a number of species of ants, but there
Speaker 4: are ants other ant species that live in and amongst
Speaker 4: you know, those in the areas that Courtyceps grows, and
Speaker 4: they're not affected because they have you know, the subtle
Speaker 4: differences in behavior or or chemical ecology is enough that
Speaker 4: it's incompatible with that very precise coevolutionary dynamic. In order
Speaker 4: for fungi to evolve to be doing that to people,
Speaker 4: we would need probably millions and millions of years of exposures.
Speaker 4: And our our just biologies are so different from our ants,
Speaker 4: so we're not really at risk in that way.
Speaker 3: I do really like the show. I think it's a
Speaker 3: great story.
Speaker 4: It is a little challenging that funjer are demonized, obviously,
Speaker 4: that's kind of kind of you know, stressful for me,
Speaker 4: But from a from a storytelling perspective and from an
Speaker 4: action perspective, is a great show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My my wife is a mushroom enthusiast and and
Speaker 2: does like some mushroom club stuff and forging stuff, and
Speaker 2: so I'll often I would often joke to her after
Speaker 2: we'd watch an episode of the show about, Oh, well,
Speaker 2: mushrooms are bad news. I got to be watch out
Speaker 2: for those mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good way to get under her skin,
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Now coming back to the book again, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of there's a lot about science in there. There's also
Speaker 2: a lot of lately, a personal interpretation of everything, and
Speaker 2: you get into the philosophy of it all. Can you
Speaker 2: take a moment to tell us what a sit spot
Speaker 2: is and how that can potentially help us all in
Speaker 2: our daily lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a sit spot a place you go regularly.
Speaker 4: I mean it could be every day, it could be
Speaker 4: once a month, but it's something that you do with
Speaker 4: some sort of routine and frequency. And it can be
Speaker 4: deep in the forest, it could be in an urban park.
Speaker 4: It could be looking out your window if you're someone
Speaker 4: who can't leave the house or can't do so easily.
Speaker 4: So it's not really about being in you know this
Speaker 4: quote wilderness, It's just about being in community with as
Speaker 4: many species as possible.
Speaker 3: So I have I'm a teacher.
Speaker 4: I've taught college classes and nature classes, and I have
Speaker 4: one thing I tried. I often incorporate into my classes
Speaker 4: is having my students do a sit spot. And the
Speaker 4: instructions I give is to start by going once a week.
Speaker 4: I think once a week is a nice amount of
Speaker 4: time because it's both like kind of reasonable for our
Speaker 4: hectic schedules, but it's also frequent enough that you it
Speaker 4: can kind of become like a personal rich And when
Speaker 4: what I advise you do is that you go to
Speaker 4: your sit spot and you go by yourself.
Speaker 3: I think I do think it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not that you can't go with a buddy,
Speaker 4: but I think it's really nice to go totally to
Speaker 4: be the only human right in that spot. And I
Speaker 4: also recommend that you don't bring anything at first. The
Speaker 4: first couple spot times, I wouldn't even bring a notebook.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't bring anything but just some stuff, maybe some water,
Speaker 4: maybe a snack if you're you know, but just try
Speaker 4: to go with you know, keep your phone away, don't
Speaker 4: try to take pictures, don't try to record anything, and
Speaker 4: just be present. And I would recommend the first time
Speaker 4: doing it for at least thirty minutes. You go, you
Speaker 4: sit for thirty minutes, and you take note as of
Speaker 4: everything around you, what do you smell?
Speaker 3: What do you take touch with your fingertips? What do
Speaker 3: you see? Of course, what do you hear?
Speaker 4: Kind of roll through the senses, you know, go, Okay,
Speaker 4: what am I hearing right now?
Speaker 3: Wait? What am I seeing right now? You know? Look around?
Speaker 3: What am I smelling right now?
Speaker 4: Maybe you're sitting on a bench, or maybe you're sitting
Speaker 4: on the forest floor, like what are your fingertips sensing?
Speaker 3: And kind of go let yourself sort of move through that.
Speaker 4: My students will tell me that the first few times
Speaker 4: they did it, they were incredibly bored.
Speaker 3: The time for them moved very slowly.
Speaker 4: They were actually some of them were even detectively irritated
Speaker 4: with the assignment. But as the weeks progressed, one hundred
Speaker 4: percent of the students began to enjoy their time. And
Speaker 4: then after a few weeks you start maybe you decide,
Speaker 4: maybe you're an artist and you love illustrating. Maybe you
Speaker 4: bring a notebook and you sketch some of the plants
Speaker 4: that are growing. Maybe you're you like your sound person,
Speaker 4: you bring an audio way to record some audio. But
Speaker 4: maybe you decide or maybe you're I wouldn't I wouldn't
Speaker 4: do too much writing while you're there because you do
Speaker 4: want to be mentally loose and receptive, so whatever, and
Speaker 4: that's that does look different for everyone. So, however, you
Speaker 4: can be in a state of looseness and receptivity, to
Speaker 4: be porous, to be receiving this sort of the energy
Speaker 4: and the sort of information that's flowing from these other
Speaker 4: species and from the wind, from the humidity, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever it is. And so I think that over time,
Speaker 4: the point is that you become really immersed and really
Speaker 4: in tune with that spot.
Speaker 3: So I think in the age.
Speaker 4: Of climate change and the age of globalization, it can
Speaker 4: be really really overwhelming to understand where where do you
Speaker 4: put your focus right There's so many crises, there's so
Speaker 4: many stressors, there's so many things drawing and pulling at
Speaker 4: your attention. And so I this is like kind of
Speaker 4: a practice of attention. Where do you give your attention
Speaker 4: in an intentional way and how does that sort of
Speaker 4: make you feel held and attuned with the other organisms
Speaker 4: around you. I also had a number of students actually
Speaker 4: cry at the end of the semester when they had
Speaker 4: to leave their spots. They were graduating, or they had
Speaker 4: to leave for the summer or whatever. It was and
Speaker 4: they were like, I can't believe I have to leave
Speaker 4: this spot, Like this is my spot, this is like
Speaker 4: my place. And that happened just in a few months. Right,
Speaker 4: that's just the duration of a college semester. And so
Speaker 4: for a lot of people, it's an opportunity to become immersed,
Speaker 4: to be but also to be like a steward. Right,
Speaker 4: You suddenly may the more you pay attention to a spot,
Speaker 4: the more you see. So it's not just that you're
Speaker 4: there longer. So it's like, you know, an exponential line
Speaker 4: of like you're there longer, so you're seeing more, but
Speaker 4: you're actually like it's actually that your brain starts to
Speaker 4: rewire a little bit.
Speaker 3: Especially if this practice is really new to you.
Speaker 4: You start to be a you actually are capable of
Speaker 4: noticing more the more you sort of engage with this meditatively.
Speaker 4: And so for some people that can it can help
Speaker 4: you find a role in what is otherwise a very
Speaker 4: crazy world. Right, how do you become a steward of
Speaker 4: your own backyard? Like how can you care for the species?
Speaker 4: Like maybe you're helping monitor the health of the trees
Speaker 4: in that area. Maybe you're realizing that there's a ton
Speaker 4: of there's a you're seeing all these salamanders or amphibians
Speaker 4: and that actually, oh, actually this is like a vernal pool,
Speaker 4: and this could be protected because you know, by local legislation.
Speaker 4: There's all sorts of ways that you can sort of
Speaker 4: tune into the life around you and then actually do
Speaker 4: something to help care for it. So I definitely recommend it.
Speaker 4: I think it's such a nice way of like sort
Speaker 4: of I find it really peaceful and therapeutic and sort
Speaker 4: of a bomb for my nervous system every time I
Speaker 4: go to my sit spot.
Speaker 3: So I recommend it.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try it as well,
Speaker 2: because I go out of nature, we go on walks
Speaker 2: and hikes and all. But this kind of like intentional
Speaker 2: medita native approach, setting aside so many distractions and tasks
Speaker 2: and objectives, you know. Yeah, I think it's truly attractive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it can take a little while to like
Speaker 4: not be a little bored, but that's really normal that
Speaker 4: we're all kind of, you know, overstimulated, So it could
Speaker 4: take a little bit of time, but I can assure
Speaker 4: you that you'll enjoy it as the ritual is established.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, the book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
Speaker 2: of Nature. It's out next month in all formats, but
Speaker 2: available for pre order right now. What is the one
Speaker 2: thing you want readers to get out of Forest Euphoria?
Speaker 4: So I think actually the Sit Spot conversation is kind
Speaker 4: of closest to what I want readers to get out
Speaker 4: of it. I think that I want readers to feel
Speaker 4: closer to nature. I want readers to feel it like
Speaker 4: they're part of nature and nature is part of them,
Speaker 4: and these are things that will strengthen each other, like
Speaker 4: that knowledge I find is strengthening.
Speaker 3: It's something that's comforting.
Speaker 4: It is a a magnetic compass in a time of
Speaker 4: you know, poly crises.
Speaker 3: So I want people to feel that they belong.
Speaker 4: Their differences are what make them a part of this
Speaker 4: ecology that you know, ecology is.
Speaker 3: All about difference.
Speaker 4: It's all about multiple, multiple ways of being in forms,
Speaker 4: and so to not feel shame around that. And I
Speaker 4: want people to, you know, see that nature is really
Speaker 4: all we have.
Speaker 3: There's nothing without it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure a lot of my readers will already be
Speaker 4: environmentalists and people committed to the protection of nature, but
Speaker 4: maybe it'll bring some more people into that fold as well,
Speaker 4: or or strengthen that someone's commitment to that.
Speaker 2: All right, well, Patti, thanks for coming on the show
Speaker 2: and chatting with me.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it's
Speaker 3: fun to talk to you. Rob.
Speaker 2: Thanks again to Patty for coming on the show. The
Speaker 2: book again is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature,
Speaker 2: publishing next month and available for pre order in all
Speaker 2: formats right now. Again, you'll find a pre order link
Speaker 2: in the episode description, or you can look it up
Speaker 2: at Spiegel and Grau dot com slash forest hyphen Euphoria.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. Thanks as always to the excellent Jjpossway for
Speaker 2: producing the show, and if you'd like to get in
Speaker 2: touch with us, you can shoot us an email at
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
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