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Good morning, Joel. How are
you doing today? Good? All good

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here? Thank you. Well,
that's awesome, dude. Hey, speaking

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of awesome, I gotta tell you
you are going to be on the walls

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of so many young adults and children
because everybody loves insects and you have taken

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that road. Is sweet. I
wish everybody loved insects. We're trying to

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get more people to care about them, for sure. Though. Well,

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I appreciate having me on. I
read that you do have that passion to

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save them, and I can relate
with you because when it comes to the

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termin X man, I tell them
keep your hands off my spiders, do

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not touch my spiders whatsoever. That's
right. Well, yeah, I don't

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know how they discern between spiders and
everything else, but it is. It's

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really pretty critical that we start paying
attention to everything, insects especially. You

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know, what was it like to
put this journey together? Because I mean,

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for these insects to be in one
place and you captured that image,

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it's I can't I can't even catch
a firefly, Jewel. Well, I

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mean what we did is we would
look at animals that the insects that would

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fly into my porch lights, catch
them up in a mason jar or an

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empty cleaned out peanut butter jar with
holes in the lid like you would at

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summer camp as a kid, or
set up sheets with powerful lights on them

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to draw them in at night,
Grab them up, put them in a

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little containment tent or a shooting tent, photograph them for a few minutes,

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and then release them back into the
night sky right where they came from.

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And so when they're in this little
containment tent, they can move around all

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they want. The flashes are very
fast and they freeze motion, and the

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insect can't really go anywhere. He's
in a white room and a little white

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room, you know, and we
zoom in with a macro lens and photographs.

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So it's and then we just let
the designer do his thing and put

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together a lovely book out of all
of it. But it's about eighteen months

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worth of work just on native insects
in the brass get around during the pandemic,

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and then some additional insects from from
different places around the world. A

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lot of zoos have very good invertebrate
collections now as well. When you were

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capturing the images of these insects.
Were there any insects that you wanted to

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find, something that you were really
looking for and would be excited to see?

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Oh, you know, I really
like doing butterflies quite a bit.

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Butterflies are fantastic, and obviously everybody
loves butterflies or they should, so I'm

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always game to do those. Beetles
are also pretty easy to photograph andcome an

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amazing variety of colors, shape sizes. So I guess I'm drawn to the

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things that are very pretty or easy
to photograph. Wasps are not. They're

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often very beautiful, more colorful than
I ever imagined, but they're very They're

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a little trickier because they don't stop
moving. Amps are the same way.

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So yeah, I guess I'm drawn
to the big, slow moving, colorful

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things. These images, really,
they're really beautiful. I'm curious, were

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there any things you didn't want to
see? No, we photograph anything that

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we can. Anything that's you know, a grain of rice are bigger sizewise,

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so we we are working on,
you know, anything that we that

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I can. We went to our
family cabin in Minnesota last week and I

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found a beetle that had come hatched
out of a log at our cabin and

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I photographed it too, you know, so, um, you know,

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we we welcome all of them,
whether they're whether they are a little startling

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to look at, or they're very
comforting, beautiful, big, small,

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We love them all. That's what
we have to do for the photomark.

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We're trying to just show what biodiversity
looks like at this point in time on

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planet Earth. I've sat with my
wife several times looking through this book because

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she's a retired school teacher, and
the one thing that we both agree on

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is that we're hoping that this book, you know, kind of inspires people

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to quit wanting to squish or exterminate
these bugs. Yeah, I mean,

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it's it's it's a long way to
go to convince people that insects are very

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beneficial, but they are. They're
tremendously helpful to us in terms of providing

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the fruits and vegetables that we eat
and cleaning up the planet and keeping our

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planet healthy. So it's it's a
generational change though. Big ideas take about

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a generation to get across, so
we'll get there eventually, but it's just

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going to take shows like this,
discussions like this, books like this to

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try to move the needle a little
bit and get people to see insects in

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a whole new light. And we
hope that's what this book accomplishes. In

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your studies over the past eighteen months, did you notice if insects have egos?

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Because I know that a honeybee has
got to have an ego. I

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got a job to do and don't
get in my way. Well, they

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I don't know about egos, but
they certainly are driven. Ants especially are

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so social and communal, and they
sacrifice their lives all the time for the

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good of the hive, for the
good of their their nests. But they

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know bees do the same thing.
A lot of insects that are social,

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they really are. They have one
track mind. They really just they work

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for the benefit of each other.
There's a lot to learn from insects,

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I guess if you look at it
that way, isn't there. Yeah,

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Living down here in the South with
hurricanes and tropical storms, I gotta tell

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you, Joel, I look forward
to that because that means new bugs are

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on the way. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'm glad that you like

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them, and I wish that everybody
would realize that they don't have to love

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them, but they should respect them
because they really do keep life on earth

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going. We cannot live without them, and it's really time that people start

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thinking about, well, maybe I'll
quit using pesticides and herbicides on my lawn.

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Maybe I'll plant more native plants.
Maybe I love birds. Realize finally

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that insects are what feed chicks.
Birds feed feed insects to their babies to

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grow them. Plus, there's lots
of different things we can learn from insects,

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but the first step is in meeting
them. And hopefully this book has

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enough enough varieties to catch everybody's interest
and get them to think, oh,

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you know what, these are pretty
cool. Maybe I should think of them

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as something other than things that I
squish or pois. You bring up the

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subject to birds and insects. A
lot of people don't realize that the robin,

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if they don't ant, then they're
going to have all those little mites

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all over them. They need ants
to be a part of their life.

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Oh is that right? I did
not know that. Yeah, there's a

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lot of symbiotic things. Yeah,
that's the reason why they're always rolling around

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in the dirt is because if they
if they see an ant hill. Those

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are those robins are going down there. They didn't need those ants. Interesting,

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I didn't know that. Yeah,
there's so many relationships too that are

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undiscovered, aren't there. I learned
that there are parasitic wasps that lay their

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eggs in other living insects. Those
insects are then doomed. You know,

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the baby hatches out and eats the
host. But there are parasitic wasps,

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of parasitic wasps. It goes on
and on and on. It's really complicated

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and amazing. As as you've stepped
into this world of insects, does that

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mean that you're now the forever student
when it comes to this, because I

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mean you're on a journey that is
changing everything. Well, I'm always curious.

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I think that's what journalists have to
be curious, and that's a big

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thing that you either are or you're
not, you know, as a personality,

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but I am. So journalism made
sense for me to go into.

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I have a degree in reporting,
and I think that, Yeah, it's

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a journey and you never stop.
I think if you stop, you get

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it's not good. You need to
keep learning and keep experimenting. And the

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world's a wondrous place, you know, I know it's a pretty harsh place

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at times, but it's still a
wondrous place with a lot to learn.

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And we'll never learn even a fraction
of what we should as individuals that don't

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live much past one hundred a lucky
ones. But you know, we keep

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going and and every day is I'm
excited to get up every day and see

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what see what I can get,
see what goes on? Joel, do

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you find yourself easily distracted now when
you're supposed to be doing other projects,

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or you're with your family or friends
and you see bugs in the wild,

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do you find yourself easily distracted to
study what that bug may be and you

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find yourself reaching from the camera.
Yeah, I'm always looking, I'm always

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thinking about it. You know.
I read an interview with a talk show

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host the other day. The thing
was Jimmy Kimmel, and he was staying,

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what people don't realize. There's the
amount of work, Like if you're

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a talk show host, a comedian, you're constantly you can't go to movies

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or to a restaurant or anything without
thinking would this make material? Would this

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make material for my show? Well, for me, that's right. I

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can't go on a fishing trip or
drive down the road or whatever. I

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can't if I'm out and it's warm
and there are insects. I'm always thinking,

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Man, do I have that one
yet? That's really awesome? But

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I catch that one in my little
collection jar in time and get a picture

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of it. It drives my family
crazy, it just really But you know,

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they're they're amazing, and it's the
choices to delay the family a little

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bit it catch something up to photograph
it. Well, lots of times I'll

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do that. What's amazing about your
books, Joel, even with the animal

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arcs, is the fact that it's
almost like you're speaking to the future reader

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in the way. That's sure.
Sure, we're enjoying it right now,

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but ten, fifteen, twenty five
years from now, they're going to be

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picking up these books because they're brand
new to them. They're going to cherish

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them just as much as we are. Well, I hope so that that's

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kind of you. I mean,
I hope so we hope the photo arc

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outlives all of us. It's a
really good record of what life on Earth

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look like at this point in time
across mammals, and birds and reptiles and

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amphibians and fish and verebrates. So
we're really hopeful that it doesn't just just

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become the world's largest obituary, that
people will realize that these other animals were

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critical to our own survival. They
make our world a better place, more

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enriched, and they're all works of
art that needs to be you know,

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be shepherds and stewarted. Yeah.
We hope, well, I mean,

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we hope that's where I'm coming from, and hopefully other people would dream.

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You got to come back to this
show anytime in the future. The door

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is always going to be open for
you. Joel. Thank you so much.

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I really appreciate it. Thanks for
your enthusiasm. Will you be brilliant

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today? Okay, okay,