Speaker 1: Oh Hi, it's me. It's the guy who has like
Speaker 1: one item in the grocery store and you let him
Speaker 1: cut in front of you and he thinks about it
Speaker 1: all day. Ali Ward, We're back with a brand new,
Speaker 1: shiny audiobook Mixtape episode, which you're like, what huh, what
Speaker 1: all right? So there's so many ologists who are authors,
Speaker 1: and they've sweated and fretted and poured themselves onto pages,
Speaker 1: and I thought, in twenty nineteen, why not make like
Speaker 1: an audio catalog of their books? So I did, and
Speaker 1: it's up at aliward dot com slash ologies slash bookworm.
Speaker 1: So maybe you need gift ideas. What's better than a book?
Speaker 1: They're biodegradable, they can be regifted when you're done with them,
Speaker 1: or when someone else is done with them. Or maybe
Speaker 1: you yourself will be on some planes or trains or
Speaker 1: in an automobile this season and you need a good read.
Speaker 1: So I did an updated episode for twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: gathering as many excerpts from ologists who we've had on
Speaker 1: since the last audiobook Mixtape episode, put them all together
Speaker 1: with the help of the Ology staffers Noel Dilworth and
Speaker 1: Susan Hale, who literally made a whole spreadsheet of ologists
Speaker 1: and their books and helped me reach out to get
Speaker 1: the actual author's picks for what part of their books
Speaker 1: they wanted me to read into your face, So I'm
Speaker 1: about to do that. Also, I took a Twitter poll
Speaker 1: to ask if you wanted me to read all of
Speaker 1: these excerpts like a normal person making a normal episode.
Speaker 1: Are kind of like an ASMR bedtime story vibe. Guess
Speaker 1: what you said? No, thanks, just do it normal, so
Speaker 1: I will. Okay. First, thank you patrons for supporting the
Speaker 1: show from before we ever launched. I love you all.
Speaker 1: You can join Patreon for as little as a buck
Speaker 1: a month and submit questions to theologists. And thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone who supports us by telling friends and family
Speaker 1: who tweeted at me about being your number one Spotify
Speaker 1: listen this year. Apparently eighty thousand of you had Ologies
Speaker 1: as your number one podcast on Spotify, which blows my
Speaker 1: butt right off. Thank you to everyone who rates on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts and leaves reviews. Read them all and I
Speaker 1: prove it with a fresh one left this week by
Speaker 1: New Mexico nature teachers who wrote better than a Narwal migration.
Speaker 1: They wrote, There's this guy named Chris, who teaches seventh
Speaker 1: graders to love every creature on this planet. And when
Speaker 1: Chris turned thirty, he hoped to see the Narwal migration,
Speaker 1: but it didn't happen. He's about to turn fifty and
Speaker 1: he's your biggest fanboy. Thanks for a show that continues
Speaker 1: to show me the marvels of the world. Chris, Happy birthday.
Speaker 1: May all Narwaals be with you cosmically, and I hope
Speaker 1: they migrate before your eyes and before the whole world collapses.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. We'll get to that later. Okay, onto books,
Speaker 1: Settle in for a stroll down the stacks, and if
Speaker 1: any of these ologists and episodes are unfamiliar to you,
Speaker 1: go back listen to their episodes. Oh so good. Also,
Speaker 1: I thought this episode would be so easy to do,
Speaker 1: just read like a bunch of excerpts. Guess what turns
Speaker 1: out narrating thirty pages of straight script and making segues
Speaker 1: isn't as brisk as I thought it would be. And
Speaker 1: this episode is already two days late. Now, so let's
Speaker 1: do the music thing, all right, Audio book mixtape number
Speaker 1: two Okay, still me so, y'all. It's winter in the
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere. We're about to pull on some absurdly thick
Speaker 1: socks and cozy up with a dozen or so books
Speaker 1: from your friends. What shall you sip? Perhaps some hot
Speaker 1: mold cider? Does that even exist from an existential aspect?
Speaker 1: So if you listen to the Ciderology episode with Gabe Cook,
Speaker 1: perhaps you know that Americans call anything with apple juice cider.
Speaker 1: Pretty much. We're big oafs about it. We get it wrong.
Speaker 1: But Southern Hemisphere, maybe you're on the beach right now.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're in a Santa hat kicking back cold ones.
Speaker 1: Either way. In Gabe's new book Modern British Cider from
Speaker 1: Camera Books, he tells us what sider looks like in
Speaker 1: this modern age, where has it come from, and what
Speaker 1: is making the trends that are being experienced right now?
Speaker 1: And he picked this excerpt for me to read to you.
Speaker 1: He wrote, people who know me well are aware of
Speaker 1: certain identifiable traits that I possess. My uncanny knack for
Speaker 1: being a jammy git, my insistence of always choosing red
Speaker 1: on the roulette table, and my utilization of utilize over
Speaker 1: my use of use. Another known foible is my ability
Speaker 1: to speak with the aim of eliciting an informed and
Speaker 1: technical response on a topic, and yet instead undertake a torturous,
Speaker 1: seven minute narcissistic monologue that ends in a yes or
Speaker 1: no question, or maybe no question at all. It's a
Speaker 1: particular skill, he writes, Well, true to type. I am
Speaker 1: approaching this book in a similar fashion. I have been
Speaker 1: presented with a clear, bold and totemic title, Modern British Cider.
Speaker 1: The natural conclusion to writing such a book, you might imagine,
Speaker 1: would be to establish, identify, and explore exactly so what
Speaker 1: constitutes a modern British Sider, which is precisely what I
Speaker 1: am not going to do right now. Cider doesn't really
Speaker 1: need me, he writes, a condescendingly mustachioed Englishman to apply
Speaker 1: any form of restrictive definition, just as it is beginning
Speaker 1: to emerge from its chrysalis and turn into the wonderful,
Speaker 1: boozy butterfly that it has the potential to become. Modern
Speaker 1: British Sider isn't a singular thing, he writes. It's not
Speaker 1: a style. It's not a particular process or form of packaging.
Speaker 1: It can't be a tick box exercise because the boxes
Speaker 1: haven't been agreed upon yet. It's more of a free
Speaker 1: jazz ensemble, exploring the routes before joining back up together. Ugh,
Speaker 1: don't you love when someone loves something? So anyway, that
Speaker 1: was his pick from a modern British sider. But maybe
Speaker 1: alcohol isn't something that you have a good relationship with.
Speaker 1: Maybe your drug is oxytocin and it's love. Dig in
Speaker 1: to a brand new book by doctor Robin Dunbar of
Speaker 1: the Philematology episode All about Kissing. So he authored the
Speaker 1: book The Science of Love, which was published by Wiley
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, and in it he covers casual questions
Speaker 1: like what evolutionary benefit could there be to feeling like
Speaker 1: you would die for a mate? And is parental love
Speaker 1: anything like romantic love? If love exists to encourage child bearing,
Speaker 1: why do we love until death do us part? And beyond?
Speaker 1: So Robin Dunbar picked the opening excerpt of the Science
Speaker 1: of Love for me to read to you, and it
Speaker 1: goes like this, It's the weirdest thing that will ever
Speaker 1: happen to you falling in love. I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1: There you are wending your way innocently through childhood, doing
Speaker 1: the things that children do, and then the hormones suddenly
Speaker 1: kick in, and then you fall in love hesitatingly at first,
Speaker 1: in that first all consuming crush, but then with more
Speaker 1: confidence and determination as practice and experience make perfect. And
Speaker 1: although it doesn't happen every day, from time to time
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of your life, it will catch you
Speaker 1: by surprise. It's very weird all at once. You can't
Speaker 1: think of anything else except this seemingly rare person who
Speaker 1: has just stepped, probably equally innocently into your life. Your
Speaker 1: attention is focused almost to exclusion on the object of
Speaker 1: your desire. You just cannot get enough of them. You
Speaker 1: experienced heightened happiness, often associated with glazed eyes, a far
Speaker 1: away look and a dreamy expression, and roused though not
Speaker 1: turbulent emotions. The word besotted often comes to mind, he writes,
Speaker 1: so yes, his book is the Science of Love, and
Speaker 1: it covers everything science has discovered about romance and passion
Speaker 1: and sex and commitment and more. And if you are
Speaker 1: me and have been mainlining the Beatles documentary and wondering
Speaker 1: how close friendships mirror intimate partnerships but with less boning,
Speaker 1: perhaps you'd like to pre order doctor Dunbar's upcoming twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two book, Friends, Understanding the Power of Our most
Speaker 1: important relationships because we get by with a little help
Speaker 1: from each other. So links to those on my website. Friends.
Speaker 1: But if you're like, okay, what get back to internet dad, Well, okay,
Speaker 1: then let's talk dix better. Yet, let's read a whole
Speaker 1: book about boners and schlongs and ding dongs and pickles.
Speaker 1: So author PhD biologist and philology guest doctor Emily Willingham
Speaker 1: wrote the book on him. It's called Fallacy Life Lessons
Speaker 1: from the Animal Penis. It was published by Avery in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and doctor Willingham provided an excerpt from chapter two,
Speaker 1: which gets at most of the book's main themes, and
Speaker 1: she writes, perhaps you've never looked at a human penis
Speaker 1: and wondered where did that come from? In which case,
Speaker 1: congratulations on your escape from the fate of many a
Speaker 1: girl and woman holding a smartphone. But it's a question
Speaker 1: that lots of biologists have asked and then asked again.
Speaker 1: The answer for humans and most mammals is pretty straightforward
Speaker 1: and honestly not enthralling. But the rest of the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: Dear God, by the time you're done with this book,
Speaker 1: she writes, you'll be just fine with the penis you
Speaker 1: have or share or enjoy, I promise. So that is
Speaker 1: her excerpt. She apologized for that penis paragraph, saying if
Speaker 1: it's too short, I can try to find another Doctor Willingham.
Speaker 1: If we've learned anything from your work, it's that the
Speaker 1: size or length or breadth is not what's important. And
Speaker 1: as the blurb of the book says, the fallacy sold
Speaker 1: to many of us is that the penis signals dominance
Speaker 1: in power. But this rye and penetrating book reveals that
Speaker 1: in fact, nature did not shape the penis or the
Speaker 1: human attached to it to have the upper hand. So
Speaker 1: it's intention and how you use it. Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for more of doctor Willingham's work, maybe more upstairs
Speaker 1: than downstairs business. She has a brand new book. It's
Speaker 1: being released December fourteenth, next week by Basic Books, and
Speaker 1: it's called The Tailored Brain From Ketamine Tiketo to Companionship,
Speaker 1: a user's guide to feeling better and thinking smarter. Her
Speaker 1: book has been called a candid and practical guide on
Speaker 1: the new frontier of brain customization. She says that there's
Speaker 1: no one size fits all shortcut to the ideal mind
Speaker 1: and the way to understand, cognitive enhancement is to think
Speaker 1: like a tailor. So measure how you need your brain
Speaker 1: to change and then find a plan that suits it.
Speaker 1: So that new book is The Tailored Brain. So yes,
Speaker 1: if you liked her previous work on Dix, you might
Speaker 1: just love her brain book. Okay. So from Willingham's Willie's
Speaker 1: to worms, that seems like a good segue, right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Doctor one Pagan, beloved guest from the episode Plenariology
Speaker 1: about very Cool Worms, I promise, has written several books.
Speaker 1: There's one, the First Brain, The Neuroscience of Plenarians, through
Speaker 1: Oxford University Press. So many of you loved him and
Speaker 1: got pumped about plenarians from his passion. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read you an excerpt that he sent me from his
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen book about plenarians. Ready, Okay, Before getting into
Speaker 1: what a flatworm actually is, we should explore a more
Speaker 1: general question, what is a worm? A generic worm is
Speaker 1: an invertebrate, which means an animal that does not have
Speaker 1: a vertebrate style spinal cord. Examples of invertebrates include insects, arachnids,
Speaker 1: and well worms, among other things. Worms in particular are
Speaker 1: usually not much more than a tube like shaped critter,
Speaker 1: which generally lacks appendages. But there are variations of the
Speaker 1: theme on this, of course. For example, sometimes we refer
Speaker 1: to caterpillars the very hungry kind, or otherwise as worms,
Speaker 1: And there is a particularly interesting type of worm, the
Speaker 1: velvet worm, also known as parapatis, which is not really
Speaker 1: a worm, but is nonetheless a very interesting little guy
Speaker 1: who I think deserves a book of its own. But
Speaker 1: I digress, he writes. In general, worms tend to be
Speaker 1: slimy little living things. All kids like worms, girls, boys,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The traditional aversion to slimy, rigly living beings
Speaker 1: comes later in a kid's life, depending on his or
Speaker 1: her particular upbringing. Some people outgrow their fascination with critics
Speaker 1: like these, Thankfully, he says, I never did. Of all
Speaker 1: worm species, flatworms are some of the most interesting ones
Speaker 1: on this earth of ours. Oh, I love him. So
Speaker 1: if you've already read this worm tone, maybe you'd like
Speaker 1: his other book, which is Strange Survivors, which is about
Speaker 1: really bizarre offense and defense strategies animals used to survive
Speaker 1: in the cutthroat world of natural selection. Or he has
Speaker 1: a brand new book out twenty twenty one. It's called
Speaker 1: Drunk Flies and Stoned Dolphins. A Trip through the World
Speaker 1: of Animal Intoxication. It's published by BenBella Books. So I'm
Speaker 1: sorry Drunk and Stoned Animals, Yes, and he writes from
Speaker 1: parrots to primates, consuming medicinal chemicals is an instinctive behavior
Speaker 1: that helps countless organisms fight infection and treat disease. But
Speaker 1: what if the similarities don't end there? Like us, many
Speaker 1: creatures also consume substances that have no apparent benefit except
Speaker 1: for intoxication. In fact, animals have been using drugs for
Speaker 1: recreational purposes since prehistoric times. We may even have animals
Speaker 1: to thank for the idea. Legend says that coffee was
Speaker 1: discovered by observing the behavior of goats that had eaten it.
Speaker 1: So that is his latest book. It's called Drunk Flies
Speaker 1: and Stone Dolphins. And if you need more of doctor
Speaker 1: Pegan in your life, which you do since being on ologies,
Speaker 1: he launched his own podcast and it's called The Bald
Speaker 1: Scientist and he talks more about his life and work
Speaker 1: and books there and he's a gem. We love him. Okay,
Speaker 1: from shitammered nats, let's talk about angry wasps are wasps angry?
Speaker 1: Are they the assholes we've made them out to be? So?
Speaker 1: If you listen to the Sexology episode with author and
Speaker 1: entomologist Eric Eaton, you may have learned wasps are just
Speaker 1: trying to wasp and they just want to feed bits
Speaker 1: of your turkey sandwich to their carnivore babies. And Eric
Speaker 1: wrote a breathtaking, the beautiful book called Wasps The Astonishing
Speaker 1: Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect. It was published in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one by Princeton University Press, and like his episode,
Speaker 1: it sings the praises of the insect that we all
Speaker 1: have unfairly decided we hate or maybe have confusing feeling towards.
Speaker 1: And he picked this excerpt for you. Humanity has a
Speaker 1: great ambivalence toward wasps. Our patriarchal culture revers the warrior
Speaker 1: image of social wasps, conveniently ignoring the fact that wasps
Speaker 1: we all want to emulate are all female. Meanwhile, we
Speaker 1: loathe the yellowjackets for exploiting our urban and suburban lifestyles.
Speaker 1: It may come as a surprise to learn that the
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of wasp species leads solitary lives rather than
Speaker 1: dwelling in paper palaces with queens and workers, or that
Speaker 1: not all wasps can sting, he writes, So sit back, y'all,
Speaker 1: relax by the fire, and thumb through some really gorgeous
Speaker 1: photos of wasps. Also, when you're stuck on a holiday
Speaker 1: zoom with your cousin's husband you hate, just change the
Speaker 1: subject by announcing that wasps are agents of pest control
Speaker 1: in agriculture and gardens, and there subjects of study in
Speaker 1: medicine and engineering, and they pollinate flowers, and they engage
Speaker 1: in symbiotic relationships. They create architectural masterpieces in the form
Speaker 1: of their nests. So there you go. There's some dinner
Speaker 1: party convo. And if you're like, I don't know about wasps,
Speaker 1: that's fine. If you're like, do you know of any
Speaker 1: bug books that celebrate small, hard animals who don't have
Speaker 1: tiny shives on their butts, but maybe they have like
Speaker 1: lamps instead, well do I ever? So? Self described sparklematologist
Speaker 1: and firefly expert, doctor Sarah Lewis wrote a book about
Speaker 1: these luminous little beetles lightning bugs, and it's called Silent
Speaker 1: Sparks The Wondrous World of Fireflies. It was published in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen by Princeton University Press, and doctor Lewis picked
Speaker 1: an exerpt for me to read from chapter two. Deep
Speaker 1: in the Heart of the Smokies, she writes, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the forest was completely dark that we saw the
Speaker 1: first flash. Moments later, a dozen male fireflies took flight
Speaker 1: around us, broadcasting their typical mating call. Six rapid bursts
Speaker 1: of light, followed by six seconds of total darkness. Suddenly
Speaker 1: the forest came alive with flying sparks, and thousands of
Speaker 1: male fireflies were flashing together in lockstep synchrony. Together, they
Speaker 1: flared out their six precisely timed flashes, and then they
Speaker 1: all ceased at once. Darkness rushed in, like a shade
Speaker 1: drawn over my eyes. All the scientific descriptions that I'd
Speaker 1: read left me totally unprepared for the transcendental thrill of
Speaker 1: this rhythmic pulsating display mesmerized. I sank down and yielded
Speaker 1: to this immense biological rhythm. Alone in the silence save
Speaker 1: for a synchronous symphony played by a thousand fireflies, I
Speaker 1: felt like I'd fallen out of time. That night, in Elkmont,
Speaker 1: I witnessed a prodigiou effort that was all about procreation.
Speaker 1: The tiny pulsating stars responsible for this brilliant display, we're
Speaker 1: desperately trying to propel their genes into the next firefly generation.
Speaker 1: As for the rest of us, we were just fortunate
Speaker 1: to be spectators at their exhibition. So her book, again,
Speaker 1: Silent Sparks. It's been called a passionate exploration of one
Speaker 1: of the world's most charismatic and admired insects. So it
Speaker 1: might just inspire you to go sit in a forest
Speaker 1: and reconnect with the natural world. And also, aren't we
Speaker 1: all kind of passionate about passion? I feel like we are.
Speaker 1: Cicadas are just ask entomologist doctor Jen Kritsky. He is
Speaker 1: the author of the twenty twenty one Ohio Biological Survey
Speaker 1: book Periodical Cicadas, the Brood ten Edition. And if you're like,
Speaker 1: why do these bugs live under ground for seventeen years?
Speaker 1: I need more info before brood ten emerges again in
Speaker 1: sixteen and a half years. Well, he told me. The
Speaker 1: page seventy two of his book describes the purpose of
Speaker 1: seventeen year cicadas, and he writes, love gives them wings
Speaker 1: and they flaunt themselves in the sun for a brief space,
Speaker 1: like some gay lifario, and like him, they dissipate every energy,
Speaker 1: and then fall to the earth like an empty pouch,
Speaker 1: as Balsak says, and die. When examined after their death,
Speaker 1: they're found to be a mere shell, scarcely more substantial
Speaker 1: than that they cast off when they began their amatory career.
Speaker 1: It's true that the female, before her death, goes to
Speaker 1: some trouble to drill holes in the bark of the
Speaker 1: trees for the purpose of laying her eggs, after which
Speaker 1: she too falls and dies, leaving as empty a carcass
Speaker 1: as that of her mate. For seventeen years have these
Speaker 1: hopeful creatures been waiting in the dark recesses of the
Speaker 1: earth for the time when fate will throw them together.
Speaker 1: And for seventeen years they have been laying in a
Speaker 1: good supply of food, so that when their honeymoon shall arrive,
Speaker 1: they may waste no time in idle, vulgar feeding, but
Speaker 1: may devote themselves entirely to the cultivation of each other's acquaintance,
Speaker 1: And so through affection they starve to death. Ah, how Emo,
Speaker 1: how beautiful horniness It drives us? It drives us to peril.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful tragedy. So that was doctor Jen Kritzky's book,
Speaker 1: Periodical Cicada's. So that was doctor Jean Kritzky's book, Periodical Cirkada's.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful tragedy. They need to love, to connect,
Speaker 1: to leave a genetic legacy, to copulate with the absolute
Speaker 1: loudest screaming partners, you can find. It's not just humans
Speaker 1: or bugs though. Bears are also so vulnerable to the
Speaker 1: magic of affection. You can take it from personology guest
Speaker 1: and bear expert Chris Morgan. So he wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Bears of the Last Frontier, The Adventure of a
Speaker 1: Lifetime among Alaska's Black, Grizzly and Polar Bears. It was
Speaker 1: published in twenty eleven by Stuart Taborian Chang, and it
Speaker 1: details his time traversing Alaska to document and study the
Speaker 1: mating behavior of giant coastal brown bears, and he writes
Speaker 1: in the chapter the Love Zone, a pattern emerges on
Speaker 1: the meadow that has had me transfixed. The bears enter
Speaker 1: the scene over a giant log pile, pausing as if
Speaker 1: walking into a saloon and assessing the competition. Some bears
Speaker 1: scatter while others quit munching momentarily to size up the newcomer.
Speaker 1: The biggest males confidently resume grazing, while the intermediary bears
Speaker 1: leave the scene quietly, gingerly looking over their shoulders in
Speaker 1: the hope that the females weren't watching them, retreat pushing
Speaker 1: through the saloon doors. A giant male entered the scene today,
Speaker 1: and every female looked up. They all seem to be
Speaker 1: trying to catch his attention, coyly turning in circles before
Speaker 1: sitting on their rumps and wandering back and forth toward
Speaker 1: and then away from him in the hope that he
Speaker 1: might follow. The big fellow had an air of supreme
Speaker 1: confidence about him, and he immediately pulled out some of
Speaker 1: his best moves to impress his competitors, starting with a
Speaker 1: bear's typical cowboy swagger. Elvis, eat your heart out, he writes.
Speaker 1: The hip gyrations on this guy caught everyone's attention, including
Speaker 1: another large male who was already copulating with a female.
Speaker 1: What thank you, Chris Morgan. We have just learned that
Speaker 1: nature is one big muddy orgy. It's a little heteronormative,
Speaker 1: but whatever floats these beautiful beloved beast boats, you know.
Speaker 1: And so now that we've covered some birds and the
Speaker 1: bees of bears and bugs, let's talk bird butts. You loved.
Speaker 1: Doctor John Bates Awology episode, and he is the editor
Speaker 1: of the University of Chicago Press's Book of Eggs, a
Speaker 1: life sized guide to the eggs of six hundred of
Speaker 1: the world's bird species. This is the ultimate, thick, illustrated
Speaker 1: love letter to six hundred of the most intriguing eggs.
Speaker 1: Doctor Bates picked this excerpt for me to read to you.
Speaker 1: The diversity of birds that successfully reproduce via the egg
Speaker 1: is astonishing. Birds live on every continent and successfully breed
Speaker 1: in every terrestrial habitat. In the frigid Anarctic, where winter
Speaker 1: temperatures are below seventy degrees fahrenheit and winds may reach
Speaker 1: two hundred miles per hour or three hundred and twenty kilometers,
Speaker 1: the emperor penguin stands in place, carrying its single egg
Speaker 1: on top of its feet for two months to warm
Speaker 1: it before the chicks hatch. In Chile, gray gulls breed
Speaker 1: in the world's driest deserts, where few predators can venture.
Speaker 1: The eggs and chicks are safe, but the parents must
Speaker 1: commute daily to the ocean to obtain food and water
Speaker 1: for themselves in their offspring. We still have much to
Speaker 1: learn about the biology of birds eggs, but there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that reproduction through eggs has been a very
Speaker 1: successful system for birds for millions of years. This book
Speaker 1: is a journey through the strategies that different bird species
Speaker 1: and the tactics that different individuals have evolved and adopted
Speaker 1: to successfully reproduce via the fragile egg. So in the
Speaker 1: witch came first the chicken in the egg debate. The
Speaker 1: order is the egg, then the chicken, then the scientist,
Speaker 1: and then the book. And then you buy the book,
Speaker 1: I don't know, read it for yourself, give it to
Speaker 1: a friend. There you go. And if you're wondering, is
Speaker 1: there a book about history and geologic time, maybe also
Speaker 1: molten Earth? Well there is, and it's called Misadventure. It's
Speaker 1: by the wonderful Just Phoenix, who's your favorite volcanologist and
Speaker 1: also the guest of the very first episode of Ologies
Speaker 1: Ever and her book was published this year in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one by Workman Publishing, and it's part memoir with
Speaker 1: a buwload of adventure and exploration from jungles, to glaciers,
Speaker 1: to TV studios, and of course, the world's largest volcano. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is a story about one time she was
Speaker 1: doing science on a volcano. Page one hundred and four.
Speaker 1: I approached the flow guardedly, was to get close enough
Speaker 1: to stick the pointed pick end of the hammer into
Speaker 1: one of the flow's toes. As I drew closer, the
Speaker 1: heat grew more intense than anything I'd ever felt. The
Speaker 1: flow I was targeting was an excess of eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, which is nearly four times hotter than the
Speaker 1: highest setting on an oven. It seemed as if nature
Speaker 1: had hushed itself unbidden, except for my heartbeat, which was
Speaker 1: jackhammering in my ears. I paused, eyeballing potential targets and
Speaker 1: not wanting to get closer to that outrageous heat until
Speaker 1: I knew for certain where I would strike. I set
Speaker 1: the coffee can down behind me and decided on a nice,
Speaker 1: fat lobe of lava about six feet away that was
Speaker 1: slowly blobbing toward my right foot. Faintly, I heard a
Speaker 1: tinkle that sounded like tiny pieces of glass being crunched
Speaker 1: ever so gently. The lava was making an almost musical
Speaker 1: sound as the new flow rolled over the older ground beneath.
Speaker 1: Between that and the radiating w waves of heat that
Speaker 1: were hitting me full force, it felt like a dream.
Speaker 1: I couldn't take the heat much longer, so I clenched
Speaker 1: my teeth and stepped toward the floe, right arm extended
Speaker 1: with the hammer pick pointing down. Suddenly, my eyes felt
Speaker 1: like they were being sand blasted at Matt's direction. I
Speaker 1: had kept my sunglasses on, so I tried blinking. The
Speaker 1: awful feeling remained, and I recognized my eyes were dehydrating.
Speaker 1: I needed to hurry, or my vision might end up
Speaker 1: more compromise than it already was, and one errant movement
Speaker 1: could result in serious burns. I took one last step,
Speaker 1: shielded my eyes with my gloved left hand enough to
Speaker 1: deflect some of the searing air, planted my right foot
Speaker 1: ten inches from the floe, and stuck the pick into
Speaker 1: the living, silvery glob Feeling no resistance, I pulled up slowly,
Speaker 1: straining against the heat to see what was happening on
Speaker 1: the end of the hammer. The lava followed the hammer's path,
Speaker 1: some of its sticky bulk attached to the pick with
Speaker 1: the rest fighting to stay part of the flow. The
Speaker 1: taffy from Hell stretched, vivid and red, the insubstantial silver
Speaker 1: crust broken by the hammer, the flow's dazzling scarlet insides
Speaker 1: exposed to the world. I kept pulling and free to
Speaker 1: glob the molted rock tendrils oozing back to the bulk
Speaker 1: of the floe. I pivoted, shaking the hammer to make
Speaker 1: the glob release its hold. It fell to the waiting
Speaker 1: coffee can, and the water inside crackled to life, boiling
Speaker 1: instantly thanks to the scorching lava bloob. I had dropped.
Speaker 1: Steam rose from the can as the sample was hyper quenched,
Speaker 1: solidifying it and preserving the information contained inside its primordial makeup.
Speaker 1: As soon as the boiling stopped, I picked up the
Speaker 1: can and rejoined Matt at a safe distance from the
Speaker 1: floe front. Relieved to be in cooler air and a
Speaker 1: static about all things lava, I couldn't stop grinning. We
Speaker 1: packed up the sample and treked off to map the
Speaker 1: lava flow that was currently burning an isolated island of
Speaker 1: green amid the sea of black. So there you go.
Speaker 1: How Planets Are Made In Jess Phoenix's book, misadventures. But
Speaker 1: if we're all here right on this big craggy lump
Speaker 1: of rock, who else is out there? I mean, don't
Speaker 1: ask me, I don't know. Ask astrobiology guest doctor Kevin Hann,
Speaker 1: who is a NASA JPL scientist and author of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty book Alien Oceans, The Search for Life in
Speaker 1: the Depths of Space, published by Princeton University Press, who
Speaker 1: at this point in the episode owes me a fruit basket. Actually,
Speaker 1: one second before we hear what a professional alien hunter
Speaker 1: has to say, let's just throw some money at one
Speaker 1: of my favorite causes. We're going to pick eight two
Speaker 1: six LA, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting
Speaker 1: students age six to eighteen with their creative and expository
Speaker 1: writing skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Speaker 1: And eight two six LA is base here in LA.
Speaker 1: They provide after school tutoring, they have evening in weekend workshops,
Speaker 1: I have in school tutoring help for English language learners,
Speaker 1: and they assist with student publications. So that donation was
Speaker 1: made possible by sponsors of the show, whoms I like
Speaker 1: very much. Okay, Terrestrial o'clock here we go, So doctor
Speaker 1: Hand chose this excerpt for me to read to you.
Speaker 1: Here we go. The discovery of life beyond Earth, or conversely,
Speaker 1: the discovery that it does not exist anywhere else, is
Speaker 1: as profound a shift in our framework of the cosmos
Speaker 1: as is moving the Earth from the center of the
Speaker 1: universe to being just one of many planets orbiting an
Speaker 1: average star in a universe full of stars. So perhaps
Speaker 1: we are the only ones. Perhaps the origin of life
Speaker 1: is hard and life is rare. Or perhaps we live
Speaker 1: in a universe teeming with life, a biological universe of
Speaker 1: incredible diversity across planets, moons, stars, galaxies. Perhaps our tree
Speaker 1: of life, the singular center of biology as we know it,
Speaker 1: is revealed to be but a tiny twig on a
Speaker 1: tiny branch, joined to a vast and grand tree of life,
Speaker 1: connecting the beauty of all life in the known universe.
Speaker 1: Looking up the night sky, he writes, seeing Jupiter as
Speaker 1: a bright point of light above the horizon, I can't
Speaker 1: help but wonder whether our return to that beautiful planet
Speaker 1: and its magnificent moons will once again catalyze as scientific
Speaker 1: revolution and our understanding of our place in the universe.
Speaker 1: Europa and the many alien oceans of our solar system.
Speaker 1: Oh wait ooh goosebumps. So that was doctor Kevin Hand's
Speaker 1: Alien Oceans. And if you're like read more stuff like that,
Speaker 1: please Internet Dad, than fine I will. If you heard
Speaker 1: the ufology or ufhology episode about flying saucers and all
Speaker 1: kinds of sky mysteries, you'll remember that one guest, Sarah Scoles,
Speaker 1: is an author and wrote they are already here UFO
Speaker 1: culture and Why we See Saucers, and that is via
Speaker 1: Pegas's books that came out in twenty twenty. So here
Speaker 1: is the excerpt that Sarah wanted me to beam into
Speaker 1: your consciousness. Here we go. Perhaps knowing is not the
Speaker 1: point of UFOs. For serious researchers in this field, trying
Speaker 1: to know seems to hold the most appeal of all
Speaker 1: unanswered questions. After I'll keep you up at night, they
Speaker 1: animate you, compel you to crack open that laptop just
Speaker 1: one more time, letting it light your face blue. At
Speaker 1: one am. They press you to come up with theories
Speaker 1: and then test them on your friends. Hear me out.
Speaker 1: Your sentences begin to begin when or if you find
Speaker 1: whatever you're seeking. The film of your life slows to
Speaker 1: fewer frames per second. People I've interviewed, she writes, have
Speaker 1: called UFOs various versions of the ultimate problem to solve.
Speaker 1: Many of them don't believe UFOs, a term that denotatively
Speaker 1: just means something in the sky that the seer can understand.
Speaker 1: They don't believe that they were forged in alien furnaces
Speaker 1: far far away, although some do. But they do believe
Speaker 1: these sites are something. Maybe there's something in our heads,
Speaker 1: maybe their secret military craft, misinterpreted planets, blimps, wavering stars,
Speaker 1: atmospheric phenomena, swamp gas are collective ignorance of all of
Speaker 1: the above, organized into skylights. But whatever they are or
Speaker 1: are not, people undoubtedly see things they can't explain, talk
Speaker 1: about them, write about them, wonder about them. Ooh yes,
Speaker 1: So bring on the invasion of in Sarah's words, the
Speaker 1: big wigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people,
Speaker 1: and the unhinged coops of this sprawling UFO community. So
Speaker 1: the truth is out there in a book. You know
Speaker 1: what else is out there? Space garbage, so much of it,
Speaker 1: so over our heads, and in the future it might
Speaker 1: even encircle our planet like a hula hoop made out
Speaker 1: of robots. So. Doctor Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist
Speaker 1: and last year she published a book via MIT Press
Speaker 1: called You Ready Hold on Your Butts. It's the best title,
Speaker 1: Doctor Space Junk versus the Universe. I mean, with that title,
Speaker 1: how am I supposed to pick an excerpt? I'm not
Speaker 1: because we asked doctor Gorman to do it. This is
Speaker 1: the cosmic sample she wants this to read. Here we go.
Speaker 1: We don't think of the space environment in the same
Speaker 1: way as Earth's. One reason is the common perception of
Speaker 1: space as a black, empty vacuum. Unlike Earth, space is
Speaker 1: infinite beyond our Sun. There are billions of others just
Speaker 1: like it, even in our unfashionable end of the western
Speaker 1: spiral arm of the galaxy, as Douglas Adam called it
Speaker 1: in The Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy. She writes, perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, there's nothing living in interplanetary
Speaker 1: space that humans haven't put there. We have managed to
Speaker 1: expand the human biosphere just a little into low Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: where the International Space Station circles with its tiny crew.
Speaker 1: And I hate to tell you this, she writes, but
Speaker 1: some fool sent Matta Gascar hissing cockroaches into space on
Speaker 1: an experimental space station that's still in orbit. There's no
Speaker 1: way that's going to end well. So that is Doctor
Speaker 1: Space Junk versus the Universe by Alice Gorman. So if
Speaker 1: you ever need a new nightmare fuel, you're welcome. There
Speaker 1: you go, and we talk about that in her Space
Speaker 1: Archaeology episode as well. You're wondering is there a disasterrologist
Speaker 1: in the house, because this sounds terrible, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: there is. Her name is doctor Smith Montano, and she
Speaker 1: came on the show in twenty eighteen to talk about
Speaker 1: emergency management and guess what. She put out a book
Speaker 1: this year. It's published by Park Row and it's called
Speaker 1: Disasterrology Dispatches from the front Lines of the Climate Crisis,
Speaker 1: and it's called part memoir, part expert analysis, and a
Speaker 1: passionate account of a country and crisis one unprepared to
Speaker 1: deal with the disasters of today and those looming in
Speaker 1: our future. Her work is so weird and great and cool. Okay,
Speaker 1: So she picked this bit from Disastrology. Frustrated years ago
Speaker 1: when I first began to understand the urgency of the
Speaker 1: climate crisis, I struggled to figure out how I could
Speaker 1: help prevent future climate driven disasters when I was already
Speaker 1: standing in the middle of one. How could I justify
Speaker 1: taking the time to worry over Miami's future when that
Speaker 1: future had already arrived in New Orleans. What I did
Speaker 1: not understand at the time was that we could and
Speaker 1: had to do both if we do not radically change
Speaker 1: our emergency management policy and approach to managing disasters. The
Speaker 1: apocalyptic Hollywood disaster scenes that come to mind when we
Speaker 1: think about climate change could become real life. My hope
Speaker 1: is my sharing with you the long and often indirect
Speaker 1: journey I have taken to understand the true extent of
Speaker 1: the trouble we're in. You will see the problems clearly too,
Speaker 1: and find the courage to take action. Because she writes,
Speaker 1: we have a lot to do, okay, folks, Yes, we
Speaker 1: have a lot to do. I feel like we're on board.
Speaker 1: We know that, But what is to be done? Okay?
Speaker 1: So in her episode of Indigenous Fire Ecology, doctor Amy
Speaker 1: Christensen talked about land stewardship first start, and by start,
Speaker 1: I mean a revisiting, as these methods have been used
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of years, and she wrote a
Speaker 1: guide book called First Nations Wildfire Evacuations, a Guide for
Speaker 1: Communities and External Agencies. It was put out by Purity
Speaker 1: Publishing and doctor Amy Christensen describes increasingly frequent wildfire blazes
Speaker 1: and she's been on the front lines of these. She writes,
Speaker 1: it begins with the smoke. Someone from the nation will
Speaker 1: see a smoke plume, either nearby or far away, and
Speaker 1: almost immediately an image will appear on social media. Did
Speaker 1: you see the smoke? A quiet unease then ripples through
Speaker 1: the community. Wildfires in the summer are nothing new for
Speaker 1: First Nations in the boreal forest, and everyone under stands
Speaker 1: that the risk is real. It often happens on a
Speaker 1: hot day when warm winds gust the smoke plume expands
Speaker 1: and ash spreads through the upper atmosphere, turning the sun
Speaker 1: a disconcerting orange. In need of reinsurance, people call the
Speaker 1: band office for their families. Band staff search for information
Speaker 1: and try to determine the position of the fire and
Speaker 1: whether it's a threat. When the ash starts to fall,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that things are getting serious. When the ash
Speaker 1: starts to fall, everyone knows that things are getting serious.
Speaker 1: What was once beautiful black ash floating like tiny feathers
Speaker 1: in an orange sky now collects like ground, gray chalk
Speaker 1: on car hoods and a platform for curious children to
Speaker 1: write their names. The day begins to darken as the
Speaker 1: smoke blocks out the sun. Day quickly turns to night,
Speaker 1: and visibility becomes limited to a few meters at best.
Speaker 1: Those who have respiratory conditions such as asthma begin to
Speaker 1: experience difficulties breathing, and then ash and embers at ground
Speaker 1: level make it physically difficult for even healthy people to breathe.
Speaker 1: The band reaches out to multiple agencies local, provincial, and
Speaker 1: federal for advice on whether to evacuate. Although the smoke
Speaker 1: seems to be near and poses a threat to community members,
Speaker 1: they have no idea how close the fire is to
Speaker 1: the community. The actual flame front could be many kilometers away,
Speaker 1: but rumors continue to circulate. If the first nation is
Speaker 1: accessible by road, some people might simply get in their
Speaker 1: vehicles and leave before an evacuation is called. For those
Speaker 1: who live in fly in communities, it's not that easy.
Speaker 1: In both cases, residents must depend on leaders and outside
Speaker 1: agencies to ensure their safety. There are often no set
Speaker 1: protocols or guidelines in place, even though First Nations are
Speaker 1: some of the most at risk communities in Canada and
Speaker 1: it's been predicted that they're at risk status will only
Speaker 1: increase with climate change. If you live in a First
Speaker 1: Nation and are responsible for or concerned about wildfire evacuations,
Speaker 1: or if you work for an outside agency and need
Speaker 1: or want to know about the special concerns and needs
Speaker 1: of First Nations, this book is for you, though it
Speaker 1: will also be a valuable resource for other Indigenous and
Speaker 1: non Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond. Indigenous peoples around
Speaker 1: the world have lived with fire for tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of years and have specialized fire knowledge which has been
Speaker 1: passed down through generations. Unfortunately, as a result of colonization,
Speaker 1: many Indigenous communities have been unable to practice their fire
Speaker 1: management techniques to protect their communities from fire. So that
Speaker 1: is from doctor Amy Christensen's book, which will be linked
Speaker 1: in the show notes too. And if you want some
Speaker 1: more background on the whys and the what's and also
Speaker 1: the hows when it comes to climate, Doctor Iana Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Johnson of the Oceanology episode released a twenty twenty Penguin
Speaker 1: Random House book called All We Can Save, Truth, Courage
Speaker 1: and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, and it was co
Speaker 1: edited by Kathleen Wilkinson and doctor Johnson picked the very
Speaker 1: beginning for me to read. So if you like scientists,
Speaker 1: do you had a feeling? Okay, here we go. Unice
Speaker 1: Newtonfoot rarely gets the credit she's due. In eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: Foot theorized that changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: could affect the Earth's temperature. She was the first woman
Speaker 1: in climate science, but history overlooked her until just a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Unice Newton Foot arrived at her breakthrough
Speaker 1: idea through experimentation with an air pump, two glass cylinders,
Speaker 1: and four thermometers. She tested the impact of carbonic acid gas,
Speaker 1: which was the term for carbon dioxide in her day,
Speaker 1: against common air, and when placed in the sun, she
Speaker 1: found the cylinder with carbon dioxide trapped more heat and
Speaker 1: stayed hot longer. From a simple experiment, she drew a
Speaker 1: profound conclusion quote an atmosphere of that gas would give
Speaker 1: to our earth a high temperature, and if, as some suppose,
Speaker 1: at one period of its history, the air had mixed
Speaker 1: with it, a larger proportion than at present, an increased
Speaker 1: temperature must have necessarily resulted, said Eunice Newton Fort. So
Speaker 1: in other words, they right. She connected the dots between
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and planetary warming, and she did it more
Speaker 1: than one hundred and sixty years ago. Foot's paper Circumstances
Speaker 1: Affecting the Heat of the Sun's rays was presented in
Speaker 1: August eighteen fifty six at a meeting of the American
Speaker 1: Association for the Advancement of Science, and then it was published.
Speaker 1: For unknown reasons, it was read aloud by Joseph Henry,
Speaker 1: secretary of the Smithsonian, rather than by Foot herself. That
Speaker 1: was three years before Irish physicist John Tyndall published his
Speaker 1: own more detailed work on heat trapping gases, work typically
Speaker 1: credited as the foundation of climate science. Did Tyndall know
Speaker 1: about Foot's research, It's unclear, though he did have a
Speaker 1: paper on color blindness in the same eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: issue of the American Journal of Science and Arts as hers.
Speaker 1: In any case, we have to wonder if Eunice Newton
Speaker 1: Foot I ever found herself remarking, as so many women have.
Speaker 1: I literally just said that, dude, this book they write
Speaker 1: is about a spectrum of work that needs doing and
Speaker 1: a collective effort to make our best contributions. It's not
Speaker 1: about heroes. So whether you're a veteran of the climate movement,
Speaker 1: a keen onlooker from the sidelines, or someone joining this
Speaker 1: conversation for the first time, we hope you will find
Speaker 1: yourself in these pages. We have peeled away jargon, including
Speaker 1: foundational information, and created simplicity without forfeiting complexity, because this
Speaker 1: book is for everyone concerned about our shared future. So
Speaker 1: that is from All we Can Save, which was edited
Speaker 1: by doctor Diana Elizabeth Johnson and Kathleen Wilkinson, so that
Speaker 1: was from their intrough So if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: book about the whole damn Earth and what to do again,
Speaker 1: All We Can Save writings by dozens of diverse women
Speaker 1: leading on climate science in the United States. They're scientists, journals, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, wonks, innovators,
Speaker 1: and designers. All have essays in there. So awesome book
Speaker 1: All We Can Save. Speaking of ladies doing things, let's
Speaker 1: get a glance at historical power structures, shall we? We
Speaker 1: shall so? Doctor Karacuny of the Egyptology episode put out
Speaker 1: a new book just last month November twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: For one second, I forgot what year and month we
Speaker 1: were in. It's it's been a time people. But doctor
Speaker 1: Kracuni's book was put out by nat Geo and it's
Speaker 1: called The Good King's Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and
Speaker 1: the Modern World. Okay, you're ready for this. She sent
Speaker 1: this excerpt to read to you, and I'm hoping not
Speaker 1: to stumble through it too much. Here we go. Whether
Speaker 1: Kufu's monarchical divination sendwaswritz absolutism, Akintans fanaticism, Ramsey's populism, or
Speaker 1: Tarka's pious orthodoxy, Egyptian Pharonic history was largely a patriarchal
Speaker 1: rinse and repeat with approximately the same result. She writes,
Speaker 1: The modern world has been tossed around in the same cycle,
Speaker 1: albeit with more stark philosophical differences communism or capitalism, socialism
Speaker 1: or democracy, fascism or theocracy, totalitarianism or oligarchy, with all
Speaker 1: the bloodshed in between, and yet it's all still essentially
Speaker 1: the same patriarchal system. And with every new cycle, each
Speaker 1: leader uses the pain of the last fall to cement
Speaker 1: his nascent rule. Rinse and repeat the patriarchy is the
Speaker 1: water in which we all swim unknowable to most normalized.
Speaker 1: For all humans have been thinking these unequal, controlling, spreadsheeting,
Speaker 1: market driven, power obsessed, smash and grab, consumptive, accumulating, domesticating
Speaker 1: competitive ways for so long that we feel we don't
Speaker 1: know any other way. We find ourselves looking up from
Speaker 1: our hard labors, only to see that the landscape has
Speaker 1: been clearcut while we weren't looking, that the toxic smog
Speaker 1: of industry suddenly hides the blue sky, and that a
Speaker 1: few billionaires have carved out pleasure gardens with beautiful furnishings,
Speaker 1: air purreifiers, and high walls. In response, we have cleaved
Speaker 1: into two factions. One group that wants to walk forward
Speaker 1: to find a different way, and another group that just
Speaker 1: wants a king like the one Israel asked for in
Speaker 1: the Book of Samuel. One aid, So if you have
Speaker 1: ever looked at power structures and thought, why are we
Speaker 1: like this? Egyptologist doctor Karacute shed some light utter past
Speaker 1: with her new book and again that was called The
Speaker 1: Good King's Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World,
Speaker 1: and the book on Race that everyone will be reading
Speaker 1: next year. Is edited by Anna gifty Opoku Ajaman, who
Speaker 1: was our fiscal guide through the economic sociology episode, and
Speaker 1: she's edited a book. It's called The Black Agenda, Bold
Speaker 1: Solutions for a Broken System, and it will be released
Speaker 1: via Saint Martin's Press in February of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: but it's available for pre order and here's a preview
Speaker 1: of its contents. Here's the book blurb for it, just
Speaker 1: to kind of get you excited. So, the summer twenty
Speaker 1: twenty marked an important shift in discussing racial equities place
Speaker 1: in America. The Black Agenda honors that shift and discourse
Speaker 1: by being the first book of its kind, a bold
Speaker 1: and urgent move towards social justice through a profound collection
Speaker 1: of essays featuring Black scholars and experts across economics, education, health, climate,
Speaker 1: criminal justice, and technology. And it speaks to the question
Speaker 1: what's next for America on the subjects of policymaking, mental health,
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, climate movement, the future of work, the LGBTQ community,
Speaker 1: the criminal legal system, and much more. Essays include groundbreaking
Speaker 1: ideas ranging from black maternal and infant health to reparations
Speaker 1: to AI bias, to inclusive economic policy. With the potential
Speaker 1: to uplift and heal not only Black America, but the
Speaker 1: entire country. So that is the book blurb for The
Speaker 1: Black Agenda, and one reviewer wrote, this book will challenge
Speaker 1: what you think is possible by igniting law overdue conversations
Speaker 1: around how to enact lasting and meaningful change rooted in
Speaker 1: racial justice. So which reviewer said that you want to know? Oh,
Speaker 1: just Abram X Kendy, the number one New York Times
Speaker 1: bestselling author of How to Be An Anti Racist. So
Speaker 1: that is already getting a lot of buzz and excitement
Speaker 1: around it. That's called The Black Agenda, edited by Anna
Speaker 1: gifty Yo Poco Pajumen, and that'll be out February twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: But there's a link for pre order on my website
Speaker 1: and for more on social and cultural work. You can
Speaker 1: dig into some history with Stephen Hanks, who you may
Speaker 1: remember from the pre Pandemic So Long Ago February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty Genealogy episode. And Stephen wrote the books sixteen nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty Africans and Aki Tree, as well as the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one book Three Brothers sixteen twenty six The Ancestry
Speaker 1: of the World up to sixteen, twenty six and beyond
Speaker 1: to our day, and that's all through ink water Press
Speaker 1: and Stephen picked an excerpt from Three Brothers for me
Speaker 1: to read you right in line with the holidays. It's
Speaker 1: this beautiful passage about history and tracking your past and
Speaker 1: food and the way he writes is very kind of
Speaker 1: poetic and beautiful. And he says in twenty sixteen, a
Speaker 1: retired man living in the Pacific northwestern part of the
Speaker 1: United States took his DNA test. How did the DNA
Speaker 1: of the Yakut tribe of Siberia match an African American
Speaker 1: in the United States. Siberia today part of Russia, but
Speaker 1: prior to them, the region was home to the Huns,
Speaker 1: the Mongol Empire, and to various nomad indigenous One traditional
Speaker 1: culinary dish is Siberian pelmeni, made of various meats such
Speaker 1: as beef, pork, rabbit, or bear, cooked in a pot
Speaker 1: with bone, broth and liver. It can also be served
Speaker 1: as dumplings mixed with milk, onion, and garlic. One's appetite
Speaker 1: may also turn to omal fish, which can be boiled, fried,
Speaker 1: or salted and smoked. An appetizer with vodka venison is
Speaker 1: also served in soups dried or fried in cowberry sauce.
Speaker 1: How could a migration of indigenous Asian peoples of Siberia
Speaker 1: cross into Alaska, divided by the frigid waters, the Athabaskan,
Speaker 1: the Arawakan, the carib the ancestors to the Mexica, the Chickahamany,
Speaker 1: the Tuscarora peoples passed through the trail across the Bering
Speaker 1: Strait to South America, the Caribbean, and North America. So
Speaker 1: that is an excerpt from Stephen Hank's book Three Brothers
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty six. So if your appetite has been wet,
Speaker 1: you can order Three Brothers sixteen twenty six, which covers
Speaker 1: the origin of slavery in New York and Virginia, the
Speaker 1: ancestry of the Indigenous and Haiti and the Americas, and
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of international world powers. So he
Speaker 1: covers a lot in it, and so yes, since we
Speaker 1: did our last Books episode in twenty nineteen, there's been
Speaker 1: so much, obviously wonderful work has been published on history
Speaker 1: and equity and how injustice and ignorance sadly blooms. And
Speaker 1: last summer I got to interview the founder of agnetology,
Speaker 1: which is the study of ignorance. And his name is
Speaker 1: doctor Robert Procter. He's a Stanford professor who for decades
Speaker 1: has been studying why we refuse to face the truth.
Speaker 1: He wrote the book on ignorance. Will co edited it
Speaker 1: with doctor Landa. Scheibinger, and it's called Agnetology, The Making
Speaker 1: and Unmaking of Ignorance, and it was published by Stanford
Speaker 1: University Press in twenty oh eight. So doctor Procter sent
Speaker 1: me a snippet to read to you. Here we go.
Speaker 1: Doubt is our product. The Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company
Speaker 1: internal Memo, nineteen sixty nine. Philosophers love to talk about knowledge.
Speaker 1: A whole field is devoted to reflection on the topic,
Speaker 1: with product tie ins to professorships and weighty conferences. Epistemology
Speaker 1: is serious business taught in academies the world over. There
Speaker 1: is moral and social epistemology, epistemology of the sacred, the closet,
Speaker 1: and the family. There is a computational epistemology laboratory at
Speaker 1: the University of Waterloo and a Center for Epistemology at
Speaker 1: the Free University in Amsterdam. A Google search turns up
Speaker 1: separate websites for constructivist, feminist, and evolutionary epistemology, of course,
Speaker 1: but also libidinal an android Quaker Internet, and my favorite,
Speaker 1: he writes, Erato Metaphysical Epistemology Harvard offers a course in
Speaker 1: the field without the Erato metaphysical part, which, if we
Speaker 1: are to believe its website, explores the epistemic status of
Speaker 1: weighty claims like the standard meter is one meter long,
Speaker 1: and I'm not a brain in a vat. We seem
Speaker 1: to know a lot about knowledge. What is remarkable, though,
Speaker 1: he writes, is how little we know about ignorance. So
Speaker 1: because we know so little, he literally coined agnetology. It
Speaker 1: is the study of ignorance and pretty much the opposite
Speaker 1: of epistemology. And also, there are so many types of epistemology.
Speaker 1: Just think of how many episodes I have in the future,
Speaker 1: you guys, Erato Metaphysical epistemology. M m, yes, perhaps anyway,
Speaker 1: that is doctor Robert Procter's book. But is ignorance bliss?
Speaker 1: I have thought about it, and I think never. I
Speaker 1: think it's never a good thing. But if there was
Speaker 1: a red pill or a blue pill, would you take it? Well?
Speaker 1: Your favorite futurologist Rose Eveleth, who you know and love
Speaker 1: from her podcast flash Forward and also the Futurology episode.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book that's part essays and part incredible
Speaker 1: graphic novel and it's called flash Forward, An Illustrated Guide
Speaker 1: to Possible and Not So Possible Tomorrow's And it was
Speaker 1: published by Abrams in April of this year. And I
Speaker 1: texted her. She said she was impartial about the excerpt,
Speaker 1: and I was like, there's so many good ones, so okay,
Speaker 1: I said, can I pick this part? She said, pick
Speaker 1: whatever part you want, So here we go. Patrick Cowenberg
Speaker 1: embodied the mythological American dream. Born into a wealthy family
Speaker 1: in the Dutch East Indies, Kallenberg's family lost everything in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five when the island nation rested its independence
Speaker 1: from colonial rule to become Indonesia. The Klan moved to
Speaker 1: the Netherlands completely broke, and Kallenberg didn't let that deter him.
Speaker 1: He managed to learn five languages and eventually moved to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, where he scrubbed toilets while getting a degree
Speaker 1: in physics at the California Institute of Technology. After graduation,
Speaker 1: Callenberg spent two years in the military, ultimately earning a
Speaker 1: purple Heart for his service, and due to injuries sustained
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, including shrapnel that stayed forever lodged near his groin,
Speaker 1: he returned to civilian life and he helped the US
Speaker 1: more passively, assisting the CIA in operations in Southeast Asia
Speaker 1: and Africa, and eventually getting a master's degree in psychology,
Speaker 1: before ultimately ully going to law school and working his
Speaker 1: way up to a role as a judge in the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Superior Court. Cowen berg story was, as that
Speaker 1: court's former director of public information wrote, a publicist dream
Speaker 1: come true. The problem was that it was all indeed
Speaker 1: a dream. As people started digging into his resume, they
Speaker 1: found that nearly every piece of his biography was fabricated.
Speaker 1: He had never attended Caltech, there was no shrapnel near
Speaker 1: his groin, he never worked for the CIA, and he
Speaker 1: certainly did not have a purple heart. In August of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, after four years as a Superior
Speaker 1: justice in Los Angeles, cowen Berg was removed from his
Speaker 1: post in perhaps the ultimate act of cowardice. Rose writes
Speaker 1: cowen Berg had the gall to blame his wife for
Speaker 1: his lives, saying that she had typed his CV and
Speaker 1: repeated the tall tales he told her about his background.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine that part of the book.
Speaker 1: I was like, what so much f only to go
Speaker 1: down in history as an absolute dill weed? And that
Speaker 1: is from the chapter don't lie to me? Do you
Speaker 1: really want to know what everybody's lying? And when I
Speaker 1: got to that part of the book, I was like, ooh,
Speaker 1: I feel like I gasped everything on my desk toward
Speaker 1: my face. So that is again Rose Eveli's book. And
Speaker 1: she's about to celebrate the conclusion of her podcast flash
Speaker 1: Forward as we know it, she says, So she might
Speaker 1: be possibly reintroducing or retiring it. We're going to see.
Speaker 1: But if you'd like to celebrate her and the podcast,
Speaker 1: you can join Rose and Julia for an online party
Speaker 1: on December seventeenth at five pm. There's going to be
Speaker 1: some surprise special guests, she says, for an evening of
Speaker 1: fun surprises, meet your fellow listeners a flash forward, say
Speaker 1: hello and goodbye for a while. So I put the
Speaker 1: link to that on my website right below the link
Speaker 1: to buy Rose's book flash Forward. So that's all about
Speaker 1: ellieword dot com, slash ologies, slash bookworm too okay, looking
Speaker 1: toward the future, little segue, how do we do things though?
Speaker 1: How does anyone do anything? Ever? We're thinking about the
Speaker 1: study of knowledge, the study of ignorance. How much things
Speaker 1: have to change? How do we make sure to do
Speaker 1: those things instead of just having those intentions, you know,
Speaker 1: from like matching socks to writing term papers, to taking
Speaker 1: on massive issues to a nightly skincare routine. How does
Speaker 1: shit happen well? In tiny little steps? And in February
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, with the Volitional Psychology episode, I got a
Speaker 1: chance to meet with one of the world's authorities on procrastination,
Speaker 1: a research psychologist named doctor Joseph Ferrari, who wrote Still Procrastinating,
Speaker 1: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. It was
Speaker 1: published by Wiley Press. And I said, Doc, pick me
Speaker 1: a piece to read for anyone who does not yet
Speaker 1: have this book. And he said, sure, thing, you proc
Speaker 1: And if you listen to that episode you know why
Speaker 1: he camm that. So he selected if you've ever driven
Speaker 1: a car, bit a passenger, or had someone come to
Speaker 1: pick you up, you've probably encounter a sidewalk sign with
Speaker 1: the words no standing, no parking, no waiting. It's frustrating
Speaker 1: to see these signs when you try to pick someone up,
Speaker 1: He writes, where do you go? How do you accomplish
Speaker 1: your task? The person you're picking up is waiting for you.
Speaker 1: The parking regulations are obstacles impeding your goal of picking
Speaker 1: up a friend or a relative. It's almost as if
Speaker 1: these signs are talking to the procrastinators of the world.
Speaker 1: What certain procrastinators may not realize is that someone is
Speaker 1: waiting for them, and that person can't park, stand, or wait.
Speaker 1: There are things that have to be done, and they
Speaker 1: need to be done now. Procrastination is like stopping a
Speaker 1: train that left the station. When we procrastinate, we hold
Speaker 1: others up. We're telling the conductor stop here, stop where
Speaker 1: I want you to stop, or even I will get
Speaker 1: on the train what I want to get on that train.
Speaker 1: This book is more than a typical self help approach
Speaker 1: for dealing with chronic procrastination. In fact, you should consider
Speaker 1: it to be of mutual help to you and all
Speaker 1: of the people you interact with. When you learn how
Speaker 1: to prevent the waiting, standing, or parking in your life.
Speaker 1: This will also benefit countless others whose schedules are delayed
Speaker 1: by your procrastination. I will show you how to stop
Speaker 1: waiting for that perfect opportunity or time to act because
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist, how to stop standing still and make
Speaker 1: the positive changes that will help you meet your needs
Speaker 1: and achieve your goals, and how to stop parking and
Speaker 1: missing all that life has to offer, he writes. So
Speaker 1: that is doctor Joseph Ferra's book, Still Procrastinating. It's a
Speaker 1: great book for those of us who think future us
Speaker 1: will be better at doing something than present us. And
Speaker 1: by people, I just mean me, because I'm just a
Speaker 1: constant referee in the battle between past me, who cowered
Speaker 1: at a task and future me, who's just pissed that
Speaker 1: we did that. And here's present me making you this
Speaker 1: episode and putting it out two days late. But hey,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? I'm only humans. Sorry, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot to read, all right, Okay, moving on now?
Speaker 1: What if this year just takes a big ass turn sideways,
Speaker 1: and despite all of our boosters and two years of
Speaker 1: holing up from covid omicron, just crashes your holiday party. Well,
Speaker 1: for a quarantine refresher, perhaps you'd like a copy of
Speaker 1: Quarantinology episode guests Jeff Mayino and Nikola Twilly. They put
Speaker 1: out a twenty twenty one book called Until Proven Safe,
Speaker 1: The History and Future of Quarantine, and it was published
Speaker 1: by mcd and I was like, you, wonderful play historians,
Speaker 1: Why don't you hit me up with an excerpt, give
Speaker 1: me some adventure and not unlike an underpaid frontline worker
Speaker 1: putting a sack of groceries on your doorstep that you'll
Speaker 1: have to wipe off with bleach. They delivered so. On
Speaker 1: page thirty five, they write, over the past six centuries,
Speaker 1: quarantine has shaped the public health response to infectious disease
Speaker 1: around the world. But it has also shaped our streets,
Speaker 1: buildings and cities, our borders, laws, and imaginations. Quarantine has
Speaker 1: inspired the construction of great fortress like facilities built on
Speaker 1: the edges of civilization, as well as high tech medical
Speaker 1: institutions in the very heart of the modern metropolis of
Speaker 1: Reporting this book, we crawled into crumbling hospitals overlooking the sea,
Speaker 1: towards ruins overgrown with weeds, and donned hard hats to
Speaker 1: step inside a brand new federal quarantine facility then under
Speaker 1: construction in the geographic center of the United States, quarantine
Speaker 1: has also transcended its medical origins to become a vital
Speaker 1: tool in protecting our global food supply and even our planet.
Speaker 1: Our travels took us to a greenhouse in suburban London
Speaker 1: charged with safeguarding the world's chocolate supply, to an animal
Speaker 1: disease research center in Manhattan, Kansas, built to survive the
Speaker 1: strongest tornadoes, and to a pristine spacecraft assembly room in Pasadena, California.
Speaker 1: Quarantine is not just the purview of the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization or the centers for disease Control, as we discovered,
Speaker 1: officials at the US Department of Agriculture and NASA also
Speaker 1: depend on it to stave off famine and to safely
Speaker 1: explore the cosmos. And they add quarantine is our most
Speaker 1: powerful response to uncertainty. It means waiting to see if
Speaker 1: something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also
Speaker 1: one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt.
Speaker 1: In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. So again,
Speaker 1: their book is called Until Proven Safe. It was by
Speaker 1: Jeff Maino and Nicola Twilly, and it was released just
Speaker 1: this last year, but they've been working on it for years.
Speaker 1: So good timing, pretty good timing, and you're like, Dad board,
Speaker 1: are you trying to bum my ass out? And no,
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm just saying, the more words we
Speaker 1: put in our brains by people who are passionate enough
Speaker 1: to pitch and write a whole book about it, I mean,
Speaker 1: the better prepared we are to live life and enjoy
Speaker 1: the future perhaps make it better for everyone. So I
Speaker 1: leave you with an excerpt from an expert on awesome
Speaker 1: things and how very simple gratitude can get you to
Speaker 1: appreciate what's in front of you, even in the shittiest
Speaker 1: of times. So Osomology guest and author and speaker Neil
Speaker 1: Pezricia has become a dear pal after meeting him to record,
Speaker 1: and he essentially said dealer's choice when it came to
Speaker 1: an excerpt from his twenty sixteen epic book, The Happiness Equation,
Speaker 1: which was published by Penguin, and his book is packed
Speaker 1: with interviews and research on happiness. But I picked this
Speaker 1: little bit for you about things that you can do
Speaker 1: to boost yourself out of a bumber town. And one
Speaker 1: of the things he lists is you can write. And
Speaker 1: Neil writes writing for twenty minutes about a positive experience
Speaker 1: dramatically improves happiness. Why because you actually relive the experience
Speaker 1: as you're writing it, and then you relive it every
Speaker 1: time you read it. Your brain sends you back. In
Speaker 1: a University of Texas study called how Do I Love
Speaker 1: thee Let me Count the Words, researchers Richard Slatcher and
Speaker 1: James Pennebaker had one member of a couple write about
Speaker 1: their relationship for twenty minutes three times a day. Compared
Speaker 1: to the test group, the couple was more likely to
Speaker 1: engage in intimate dialogue afterward, and the relationship was more
Speaker 1: likely to last. So what does the twenty minute replay do?
Speaker 1: It helps us remember things we like about people and
Speaker 1: experiences in our lives. If you can be happy with
Speaker 1: simple things, then it will be simple to be happy.
Speaker 1: Find a book or a journal or start a website
Speaker 1: and write down three to five things you're grateful for
Speaker 1: from the past week. He says, I wrote five a
Speaker 1: week on one thousand Awesome Things dot com. Some people
Speaker 1: write in a notebook by their bedside. Back In twenty three,
Speaker 1: researchers Robert Emmons and Michael Kulla ask groups of students
Speaker 1: to write down five five gratitudes, five hassles or five
Speaker 1: events that happened over the past week, for ten straight weeks,
Speaker 1: and guess what happened. The students who wrote five gratitudes
Speaker 1: were happier and physically healthier. Charles Dickens put this, well,
Speaker 1: reflect on your present blessings, of which everyone has many,
Speaker 1: not your past misfortunes, of which all have some. Remember,
Speaker 1: he says, just like driving a car, throwing a football,
Speaker 1: or doing a headstand, you can learn to be happier.
Speaker 1: So that is from the happiness equation from Neil Pezricia.
Speaker 1: And so there you are with a giant list of
Speaker 1: great books waiting for you or someone for whom you
Speaker 1: need a gift. And I list them all at alliwar
Speaker 1: dot com slash ologies slash Bookworm two and our previous
Speaker 1: episode from twenty nineteen is at aliwar dot com slash
Speaker 1: ologies slash Bookworm. You can check your local bookstore to
Speaker 1: see if they have any of these books. They probably
Speaker 1: have all of them, or if not, order them online.
Speaker 1: And I included on my website links to each of
Speaker 1: them via bookshop dot org, which is an excellent alternative
Speaker 1: to Amazon if you want to support local bookstores. But
Speaker 1: you can get them however works best for you. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to judge just providing resources, so gift them,
Speaker 1: read them. I hope they open up your world a
Speaker 1: little more. And thank you to every guest who has
Speaker 1: ever been on to share your knowledge and just make
Speaker 1: us all better people. And remember there has never been
Speaker 1: a better time to think. Hey, I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: some brilliant people some real basic bee questions because we're
Speaker 1: all going to die one day. You might as well
Speaker 1: cut some banks. And while you're at it, text or
Speaker 1: crush or you can write a book. What if you
Speaker 1: wrote a book? You know what? Like last time, I'm
Speaker 1: going to let this episode be some sort of cosmic
Speaker 1: sign that you should start it. Maybe it's a collection
Speaker 1: of poems or short stories, or a memoir, or some
Speaker 1: kind of drippy romance maybe or a creepy mystery. Just write.
Speaker 1: I think about doctor Adam Becker of the Quantum Ontology
Speaker 1: episode so often, so I'm going to read his advice again.
Speaker 1: In his episode, we talked about how he had ADHD.
Speaker 1: He's an astrophysicist who's written lauded books such as What
Speaker 1: Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics,
Speaker 1: which came out in twenty eighteen and is a total
Speaker 1: mind bender and amazing. And he said what he does
Speaker 1: is he decided, Okay, the only way that I'm going
Speaker 1: to get through this is if I plan it and
Speaker 1: then just only pay attention to whatever's in front of me.
Speaker 1: Because I can't write ninety thousand words, but I can
Speaker 1: write six hundred words a day, and if I do
Speaker 1: that for a while, eventually I'll have ninety thousand words.
Speaker 1: And he did, and his book is amazing. So if
Speaker 1: you have a story to tell, I hope you tell
Speaker 1: it and maybe one day you can have it bound
Speaker 1: in leather made of your own flesh. Wait where the
Speaker 1: fuck did that come from? Okay, I forgot one more book.
Speaker 1: Anthropodermic biocotocologist. Megan Rosenblum is a librarian. She's an author
Speaker 1: who's one of the world experts in books bound in
Speaker 1: human skin, including some authors who had their books bound
Speaker 1: in their own skin after they died, and in her
Speaker 1: twenty twenty book Dark Archives, a librarian's investigation into this
Speaker 1: science and history of books bound in human skin, which
Speaker 1: was published by McMillan, she covers this as snugly as
Speaker 1: I guess bookbinding. There are a lot of very, very
Speaker 1: creepy stories about this, but she picked an excerpt from
Speaker 1: Dark Archives, and it's a reminder that experts gotta start somewhere,
Speaker 1: and science and writing isn't always smooth as silk or
Speaker 1: as leather. And she wrote, Taber led me to an
Speaker 1: area of the Munger building I had never seen, where
Speaker 1: his colleagues from the Conservation department stood stone faced around
Speaker 1: some dark leather objects on a table. I could tell
Speaker 1: they were just as uncomfortable with this situation as I was.
Speaker 1: Most librarians would feel squeamish about removing pieces of antique books,
Speaker 1: regardless of the purpose. I wish I had worn something
Speaker 1: more clinical than my cheery yellow cardigan, something like a
Speaker 1: white lab coat might have been more reassuring. Little did
Speaker 1: they know that this was my first time wielding the knife.
Speaker 1: So her book goes on to talk about how they
Speaker 1: figure out which ones are human skin, and who would
Speaker 1: want their own work bound in that or I guess
Speaker 1: in other people's skin. Anyway, what's my point? My point
Speaker 1: is write a book, maybe do not have it bound
Speaker 1: in your own skin, but just there's a lot of
Speaker 1: books out there, and you should write one also, so
Speaker 1: buy all these books at the link of the show notes,
Speaker 1: alleyword dot com, slash Ologies Bookworm two. You can get
Speaker 1: on all up in the first one again at alleyward
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Ologies, slash Bookworm. And I want to
Speaker 1: thank sisters Sponny Dutch and tannefl says the podcast you
Speaker 1: are that for handling merch at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Emily White of the Wordery Professional Transporptionists who
Speaker 1: makes these episodes transcribed. They're available for free on our website.
Speaker 1: You can check out alleyword dot com slash Ologies, dash
Speaker 1: Extras for those. There's also bleeped episodes up there. Thank
Speaker 1: you Caleb Patten for those. Smologies episodes come out every
Speaker 1: few weeks and they are truncated episodes that are classroom safe.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Zek Rodriguez Thomas and Stephen Ray Morris
Speaker 1: for working on those huge Thanks to Berthday Girl, Noel
Speaker 1: Dilworth and Susan Hale for helping me for literally months
Speaker 1: to compile all of these clips. This episode would not
Speaker 1: exist without you. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for adminting
Speaker 1: the Ologies podcast Facebook group full of lovely curious folks
Speaker 1: there's also, by the way, an offshoot, the Ologites book Club,
Speaker 1: and they're on Facebook and Instagram. Thank you to lead
Speaker 1: editor and sole husband Jarrett Sleeper of mind gam Media
Speaker 1: for putting this all together for me. Jarrett, You're wonderful.
Speaker 1: I have gratitude for you. I love you. On Christmas,
Speaker 1: I love you. That's really cute. I'm Ali Ward at
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram. We're at Ologies on both and the
Speaker 1: theme music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of
Speaker 1: the band Islands. If you stick around till the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, you know, I tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: This week's secret is this really took so much longer
Speaker 1: than I thought. I was like, oh, this week's gonna
Speaker 1: be so easy to just have a bunch of excerpts
Speaker 1: to read, and it turns out editing a lot of
Speaker 1: excerpts and then also segus and just I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: this coming out on a Thursday. I'm really sorry. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: here's my little here's my tip and my secret. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's the holidays. There are Hana commarties, there's Christmas parties,
Speaker 1: Festivist parties, New Year's parties, and maybe you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to drink much or at all, and may
Speaker 1: I suggest sparkling water and bitters. It's not a good
Speaker 1: fit for anyone totally avoiding alcohol because bitters does have
Speaker 1: alcohol in it, kind of like a vanilla extract wood,
Speaker 1: but you only add two to three drops in a glass.
Speaker 1: There's so many flavors of bitters. There's like woodsy angostura bitters.
Speaker 1: There's past shows kind of like licorice and floral. There's
Speaker 1: all these artisanal bitters and cherry and orange. You can
Speaker 1: make your own. If you add a few shakes of
Speaker 1: angostura bitters and a shake of cherry to sparkling water,
Speaker 1: you pretty much have something that tastes like a doctor pepper,
Speaker 1: both no calories and no weird stuff in it and
Speaker 1: like a trace of alcohol. Just say so, maybe treat
Speaker 1: yourself to bitters and a soda stream And if you
Speaker 1: use a bed Bathroong coupon in the store, they never expire.
Speaker 1: Just saying so you can get twenty percent off of
Speaker 1: soda stream. This is not an ad for them. I
Speaker 1: just love a soda stream and bitters and a discount.
Speaker 1: Sometimes with my bed bathroo On coupons, I give them
Speaker 1: to other people in the checkout line, I'm like, look
Speaker 1: at all these coupons. I gotta save a little on that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I've talked too much. Curl up with whatever beverage you want,
Speaker 1: under whatever blanky you have. Crack into a book or
Speaker 1: right one twenty twenty two goals. Who knows we might
Speaker 1: be in pajamas again all year. Tack Kjack, get your booster. Okay,
Speaker 1: bye bye, but you don't have to take my word
Speaker 1: for it.