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Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's the mesh patio chair that leaves your
Speaker 4: thighs looking like snakeskin ally ward back with a sticky,
Speaker 4: languid episode of ologies I had to make. I tried
Speaker 4: to not make this one many times. They said, Nah,
Speaker 4: it's too much work, will anyone even care? But I
Speaker 4: wanted it. I wanted this episode. I needed a collage
Speaker 4: of aids, kind of like a vision board for the
Speaker 4: summer that's to come. Also, what is summer?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: Years ago I made a minisot about it, called astatology,
Speaker 4: I think. And we learned then that the Earth's axis
Speaker 4: is a little wonky, It's a little tilted. So as
Speaker 4: we cruise around the sun, one hemisphere gets more direct
Speaker 4: sunlight and the other gets less for a bit, and
Speaker 4: the result is three months of us wearing horts. And
Speaker 4: here in the northern hemisphere, where my actual rump is
Speaker 4: wearing jorts, summer just started. Southern Hemisphere, folks, feel free
Speaker 4: to listen if you have some winter blues going on,
Speaker 4: maybe you want to transport yourself to the boiling, roiling
Speaker 4: conditions of America at the moment. But also included are
Speaker 4: some updates from just what's happening in my very small
Speaker 4: corner of the world family wise, which I save for
Speaker 4: the secrets at the end because maybe only some of
Speaker 4: you care. My family's going through some stuff. I'm going
Speaker 4: through some stuff. It's at the end of the episode. Also,
Speaker 4: if you care about the podcast, thank you for telling
Speaker 4: your friends or for joining Patreon for a dollar or
Speaker 4: more a month. Patreon dot com slash ologies and rating
Speaker 4: and leaving reviews. I read all of them, and you
Speaker 4: have left so many sweet ones this week. But I
Speaker 4: did want to address a few that made me laugh
Speaker 4: a little bit at you, and I'm sorry, I just
Speaker 4: want to help. So Annoyed seven twenty eight left a
Speaker 4: one star review that said really annoying that episodes will
Speaker 4: skip back and Annoyed seven twenty eight We have covered
Speaker 4: this before, but apparently it just bears repeating. That is
Speaker 4: not how the episodes are edited. That is not actually
Speaker 4: the episodes. That's your spotty cell service or your bad WiFi.
Speaker 4: Download the whole episode before you listen. Problem solved while
Speaker 4: you're on the good WiFi. Feel free to edit your
Speaker 4: review and say thanks for the hot tip, Internet Dad. Also,
Speaker 4: I'd like to help a reviewer by the name of
Speaker 4: Tired of foul Mounts who objected to our occasional swear
Speaker 4: words and wrote rated E and science base should be
Speaker 4: safe to listen to, even with children and Tired of
Speaker 4: foul Mouths number one. We do have free g Ratedsmologies
Speaker 4: episodes available right in the made podcast feed. They're also
Speaker 4: up at alleywoard dot com slash smologies. We make them
Speaker 4: just for that reason. We also offer full free bleeped
Speaker 4: episodes at alleyward dot com slash Ologies extras. Both are
Speaker 4: linked in the show notes for you and your children.
Speaker 4: But I just want to say, tired of foul mouths.
Speaker 4: That the rated E that you mentioned that means explicit
Speaker 4: The E does not stand for educational or everyone. The
Speaker 4: red E literally means don't listen with children. So not
Speaker 4: knowing this might be why you're so tired of foul mouse.
Speaker 4: Tired of foul mouse. So I hope that helps will
Speaker 4: be good. Okay, Now, the other literal ninety nine percent
Speaker 4: of you who leave wonderful reviews and you understand that
Speaker 4: science is weird and hilarious and that grownups deserve the
Speaker 4: juicy parts. I appreciate every review. It keeps a show
Speaker 4: in the top science podcast. Okay, great talks. Yes, sometimes
Speaker 4: I swear when I feel emotionally moved to. Because this
Speaker 4: is free entertainment. I try to just show up as
Speaker 4: exactly the person I am for you all. On that note, ologies,
Speaker 4: I is at its best when I'm making episodes that
Speaker 4: make me a little nauseated with joy, like this one,
Speaker 4: to just help us get excited about and have context
Speaker 4: for all these summer wonders around us. So kickback for
Speaker 4: a compilation of snorkeling tips. Shark statistics, firefly safaris, constitutional
Speaker 4: law questions, the science of makeouts, appreciation for hornets, horniness
Speaker 4: for foraging cabins, campfires, crevis checking, jellyfish tips, bear safety,
Speaker 4: the importance of handwritten memories, and actual scientific advice on
Speaker 4: how to find joy amid difficult conditions. Your summer vibe
Speaker 4: has arrived. So let's start with an ologist who studies
Speaker 4: the season themselves. A researcher at the Page Museum at
Speaker 4: the Librea Tarpits in Los Angeles, phonologist doctor Libby Elwood. Okay, so,
Speaker 4: first off, summer, why is it.
Speaker 5: During the summer, A lot of things have settled down.
Speaker 5: So once the migratory birds have arrived, for example, they're
Speaker 5: there to breed, and so they do their thing all summer,
Speaker 5: they're hanging out, and then they will start their southern
Speaker 5: migration usually in the fall. So that's another thing too
Speaker 5: that we have a lookout for. Be on the lookout for.
Speaker 5: Also that would be when the leaves start to change
Speaker 5: color and leaves fall, and then you know, it's pretty
Speaker 5: quiet for the winter.
Speaker 4: What is a rundown of the function of each season?
Speaker 4: We did to think of summer as like this feeding
Speaker 4: season and then kind of like a feast and a
Speaker 4: famine through winter is Does that do anything for plants,
Speaker 4: like to reset their cycles or anything for animals? Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, So birds will often have, at least in
Speaker 5: the northern hemis, their breeding season is in the summer.
Speaker 5: So during the winter they're fattening up, they're getting ready
Speaker 5: they come back north, and they're establishing their territories, building
Speaker 5: their nests and then making a family. And so there
Speaker 5: are those kinds of things with certain animals. And then
Speaker 5: for plants to plants have a chilling requirement in the
Speaker 5: northern hemisphere, so they'll need to actually be dormant for
Speaker 5: a certain amount of time to then recognize that it's
Speaker 5: getting warmer again and to know that they could start
Speaker 5: producing flowers and leaves and that spring is here. But
Speaker 5: if they don't get that chilling requirement, if we were
Speaker 5: to have a really warm winter, for example, and doesn't
Speaker 5: get cold enough for them to meet their chilling requirement,
Speaker 5: then their spring phrenology can be thrown off.
Speaker 4: So this time is the time when your under boobs
Speaker 4: weep with sweat and your hormones say maybe at my nest,
Speaker 4: and your brain dreams of bouncing out of town like bye,
Speaker 4: and maybe you are one of the lucky few who
Speaker 4: can dip your bod in some water or nap by
Speaker 4: a splashing sea. And I asked marine biologist policy expert
Speaker 4: in oceanology guest doctor Iana Elizabeth Johnson about how to
Speaker 4: enjoy the ocean. Do you listen to any ocean apps
Speaker 4: on your phone to chill out?
Speaker 6: Like ocean sounds?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I put earplugs in and just like Zone
Speaker 6: all the Way app.
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure if someone who studies the ocean and
Speaker 4: has dedicated their life to essentially saving the ocean would
Speaker 4: be like, I don't I don't want to hear an
Speaker 4: app because it's just a bad simulation.
Speaker 6: Or yeah, I'm a pretty light sleeper, Okay, so I
Speaker 6: like complete silence, and I think, yeah, as someone who
Speaker 6: is like ninety five percent vegan mm hmm and who
Speaker 6: never eats fake meat, is maybe the same thing, right,
Speaker 6: Like I'm not going to go have like a soy
Speaker 6: hot dog and I'm not going to listen to like
Speaker 6: fake ocean sounds.
Speaker 4: Do you do a lot of like diving? You have
Speaker 4: to do a lot of diving.
Speaker 6: I used to, Yeah, for my PHDV search, I did
Speaker 6: three or four hundred dives.
Speaker 4: Do you like being underwater? I know some people are like,
Speaker 4: it's so beautiful, it's like I'm flying, and other people
Speaker 4: like it's so big it's terrifying. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean some people think that if you don't scuba dive,
Speaker 6: you can't experience the ocean fully, and I totally disagree
Speaker 6: with that. I think scuba diving is nice because I
Speaker 6: can't hold my breath for an hour.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I neither can.
Speaker 6: I I only learned to dive when I realized that
Speaker 6: I needed to as a tool for my scientific research,
Speaker 6: and it's pretty neat. I mean, to be able to,
Speaker 6: you know, be underwater long enough to really watch the
Speaker 6: behavior of an octopus or a parrot fish or whatever
Speaker 6: it is is an amazing opportunity. But I think snorkeling
Speaker 6: is underrated.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think more people should get like super into snorkeling
Speaker 6: because you can see so much despite you know, diving
Speaker 6: down and taking a look and being in shallow water.
Speaker 6: So I hate the thought that people think if you're
Speaker 6: not scuba diving and then like why bother because there's
Speaker 6: so much you can learn about the sea and just
Speaker 6: enjoy like the spectacular creatures from the surface or from
Speaker 6: like a little shallow dive down with your mask on.
Speaker 4: You just got to learn that trick where you blow
Speaker 4: the water out when you surface.
Speaker 10: Right, Yeah, okay?
Speaker 4: Is that hard to master?
Speaker 6: Now you can totally do it. Anyone can do okay.
Speaker 6: Or sometimes when I like don't have enough air left
Speaker 6: in my lungs when I come after the surface for
Speaker 6: whatever reason, I just take the mouthpiece out and just
Speaker 6: breathe are normally you could do that too. There are
Speaker 6: definitely ways that anyone can figure this out.
Speaker 4: Can't get to an ocean? Can you just pick up
Speaker 4: a dusty shell from your ant's guest bathroom. Let's ask
Speaker 4: actual shell expert Biominerology episode guest in Human Delight rob Ulrich. Okay,
Speaker 4: A lot of people, a lot of people wanted to know.
Speaker 4: Can you hear the ocean in shells? What makes them
Speaker 4: sound like the ocean? Ras says. I heard that the
Speaker 4: sound is created by blood moving in our own ears
Speaker 4: being echoed by the shell. Do people ask this of
Speaker 4: you when you tell them you study shells.
Speaker 11: I feel like nobody ever asks me anything. I would
Speaker 11: love more questions about shells all the time. And I
Speaker 11: really want to say yes, because it sounds very magical,
Speaker 11: but the answer is no, unfortunately. And it's also not
Speaker 11: necessarily you hearing your own blood either. It's just that
Speaker 11: like shells, and this is the reason why they also
Speaker 11: have been used for instruments in the past, is just
Speaker 11: that shells are so efficient and effective at amplifying sound
Speaker 11: that whenever you put your ear up to the shell,
Speaker 11: it's really just amplifying the sound of the ambient noise
Speaker 11: and like air moving around, so.
Speaker 4: Flim flam busted. The noise that you hear from shells
Speaker 4: has a name. It's called seashell resonance. But that ambient
Speaker 4: amplification would also work with like an empty Starbucks cup.
Speaker 4: So I'm sorry to have just broken your heart. Curious
Speaker 4: Land mermaids including Christa Charter, Rachel Moore, Elizabeth Ross, Kate Rampy,
Speaker 4: Kelly Windsor Teak and Andrews, Megan Y and Slivia Meyer,
Speaker 4: and Dealeno Pelt. Somewhere between the turquoise shimmer of the
Speaker 4: Caribbean and a nautical display at a Michael's craft store,
Speaker 4: there is a place, and it's called Florida. But it
Speaker 4: may hurt you like a real son of a beach.
Speaker 4: Why Vince Alasha asks, why are Florida beaches covered in shells?
Speaker 4: So many cuts in my feet and then there's four
Speaker 4: exclamation points.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's actually the shape of Florida and like the
Speaker 11: surrounding bits of lander islands that causes that to happen.
Speaker 11: A lot of the islands run parallel to Florida, and
Speaker 11: so they're like aligned with the water currents running around
Speaker 11: Florida itself. However, beaches like Santa bell I think that
Speaker 11: it starts with an s. It's actually perpendicular, and so
Speaker 11: it sort of catches all the shells that come out
Speaker 11: of that current, and that's why it has so many
Speaker 11: more shells and a lot of other beaches.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, So do you think if you were to
Speaker 4: find a shell from someplace in Florida and there were
Speaker 4: a lot of them, it would be okay to take home?
Speaker 4: Or is it still like leave them on the beach?
Speaker 11: I think to be safe, leave them on the beach.
Speaker 11: But I'm sure if you take one, it's like fine, definitely,
Speaker 11: not if they're alive or but if they're like fully
Speaker 11: still like formed and like together, you probably should leave them, Okay.
Speaker 4: Not a beach person. I get it if you happen
Speaker 4: to have found a small bucket of money buried in
Speaker 4: your backyard and you can use it for a quick
Speaker 4: summer break. Maybe you want a head straight for the
Speaker 4: hills and get cozy around the smell of some melted
Speaker 4: pine sap. Or you can just stare at some hashtags
Speaker 4: and you can sketch up your own shack. Let's ask
Speaker 4: Minnesota based architect and real life cabinologist guest Dale Mulfinger,
Speaker 4: how do you feel that social media culture or Instagram
Speaker 4: culture has maybe changed the way we appreciate these remote
Speaker 4: buildings or structures.
Speaker 7: Or a tree.
Speaker 2: Well, one big difference is that we now can rent
Speaker 2: structures everywhere, and part of that is made accessible through
Speaker 2: social media. So we can now not just have, say,
Speaker 2: our own cabin, but we can rent anybody and everybody
Speaker 2: else's cabin almost anywhere in the world. And I think
Speaker 2: that's really changed. And then we can immediately share that
Speaker 2: experience with an innumerable number of people. So you know,
Speaker 2: those are probably the big things that have changed through
Speaker 2: the media as we understand it today.
Speaker 4: Are you okay? Are you okay with that with cabin sharing?
Speaker 2: And are sure sure no, absolutely. In fact, I think
Speaker 2: one of the phenomena about cabins is that we feel
Speaker 2: much more comfortable with sharing our cabin with others than
Speaker 2: we say to our home, So we're less likely to
Speaker 2: offer up our home as a place for strangers to
Speaker 2: stay in, whereas cabins traditionally were places where maybe we'd
Speaker 2: a lot. We weren't accommodating strangers, but we were accommodating
Speaker 2: Uncle Harry and cousin Beth and the colleague we work with,
Speaker 2: you know, so we've often shared our cabin with diverse people.
Speaker 4: Do you have any memories of being in a cabin
Speaker 4: that are some of your favorites?
Speaker 2: Well, I think snowfalling and sitting quietly reading a book
Speaker 2: with a fire crackling and my wife's good cooking smells
Speaker 2: in the background is probably one of my best experiences.
Speaker 2: Or looking out the window and seeing the five or
Speaker 2: six deer that are reading the corn just set out there.
Speaker 2: You know, those are some of the best. And I
Speaker 2: think then I've had an opportunity to gather larger family
Speaker 2: groups together, not necessarily in my cabin because mike cabin
Speaker 2: is a bit too small for that, but through the
Speaker 2: borrowing of friends, cabins or renting a friend's cabin. I've
Speaker 2: been able to gather say, sixteen of my wife's family
Speaker 2: members together. That made the very special occasion.
Speaker 4: Okay, quick aside, I made you a list of things
Speaker 4: you can do in a cabin this summer. You can
Speaker 4: play dominoes. You can read a book. You can gossip.
Speaker 4: You can ask older people important questions about their lives.
Speaker 4: You can carve spoons. You can learn to needle point.
Speaker 4: You can roast marshmallows. You can write a list of
Speaker 4: all the things you want to do in your life.
Speaker 4: You can make your friends all tell stories about how
Speaker 4: they met each other. You can enjoy a poem. You
Speaker 4: can bake a pie. You can sip coffee out of
Speaker 4: one of those metal enamel mugs that they sell in
Speaker 4: camping stores. You could write a short story. You can
Speaker 4: learn to fry a fish. You could nap. You can
Speaker 4: throw your phone into the lake. You can quit your job.
Speaker 4: You can disappear from the internet. You can live off
Speaker 4: the land like that Walden throw guy. Hope you don't
Speaker 4: get arrested. You can wish on a shooting star. I
Speaker 4: also like playing Rummy Cube. Okay, now let's say, you
Speaker 4: want a taste of that cabin life, but maybe a
Speaker 4: little closer. You could fashion a garbon, which sounds like
Speaker 4: a port han to for garbage and bin, but it's
Speaker 4: actually a cabin you fashion in the rafters above a
Speaker 4: garage a garbin. Now, what about a straight up cabin
Speaker 4: in your backyard?
Speaker 12: Is that?
Speaker 8: Okay?
Speaker 2: I've certainly recorded cabins that occur in the backyard of
Speaker 2: somebody's home. Now they might think of that cabin as
Speaker 2: a man cave to escape to, or her writing place
Speaker 2: that she can retreat to for writing. We call that
Speaker 2: a scriptorium.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've heard called it, she shed, Yes.
Speaker 2: She said. So, I think that's not uncommon, and I've
Speaker 2: recorded a few of those in books I've done and
Speaker 2: in articles I've written.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess a cabin is kind of like our
Speaker 4: childhood version of a fort, but realized and with plumbing.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, you know, and some not with plumbing or
Speaker 2: the outhouse or whatever nearby. But yeah, it might have
Speaker 2: some modicum of plumbing and in some way to heat up,
Speaker 2: which maybe our little fort when we're kidnaping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so who forwarded? Maybe you perhaps this summer, maybe
Speaker 4: you have a patch of backyard, or you have a
Speaker 4: generous friend with one and can make a tiny respite
Speaker 4: out of some recycled palette wood and just get away
Speaker 4: from the world. Maybe you can listen to podcasts radio. Hey, Now,
Speaker 4: if you're somewhere it's safe to do so, you could
Speaker 4: bring some cabin vibes to your own patio with a little,
Speaker 4: tiny campfire. If you missed the Pyrotechnology episode with Yale
Speaker 4: Pyrotechnology lib researcher and anthropologist doctor Ellery Fram, we cover
Speaker 4: how our species interacts with those flickering, dancing flames. Have
Speaker 4: researchers looked into like oxytocin levels at all? While you're
Speaker 4: looking at a campfire? Is there something that is comforting
Speaker 4: innately to us even though fire is dangerous.
Speaker 13: I don't know about that specifically. That's that's a really
Speaker 13: good question, but yeah, no, I'd agree there is that
Speaker 13: kind of satisfaction of it as well. Is that something
Speaker 13: like inherently biological and controlled by hormones is a really
Speaker 13: good question? Or if it's if it's something we're essentially
Speaker 13: conditioned to do. You know what a baby who hasn't
Speaker 13: been raised, you know, within around campfires find discomforting or
Speaker 13: terrifying it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So if you would like some science to explain
Speaker 4: why you love campfires, I will point you toward the
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen paper Hearth and Campfire Influences on arterial blood
Speaker 4: pressure defraying the costs of the social brain through fireside relaxation,
Speaker 4: which explains quote. Fires involve flickering light, crackling sounds, warmth,
Speaker 4: and a distinctive smell. For early humans, fire likely extended
Speaker 4: the day, provided heat, helped with hunting, warded off predators
Speaker 4: and insects, illuminated dark places, and facilitated cooking. Campfires also
Speaker 4: may have provided social nexus and relaxation effects. They could
Speaker 4: have enhanced pro social behavior end quote. So this study
Speaker 4: took two hundred and twenty six subjects and measured their
Speaker 4: blood pressure, and then they randomly put some people in
Speaker 4: front of a control image while others got video of
Speaker 4: a campfire with the sound down, and other subjects got
Speaker 4: the full pop and crackle treatment too. So what happened.
Speaker 4: Researchers found consistent blood pressure decreases in the fire with
Speaker 4: sound folks, particularly with a longer duration of gazing. At
Speaker 4: the video and on my website, I have linked on
Speaker 4: YouTube that offers twelve hours of free mule log action,
Speaker 4: so you can relax without worrying about a forest fire
Speaker 4: or having your hair smell like beef jerky. What about
Speaker 4: the importance of cooking food and avoiding parasites? At some point,
Speaker 4: did we learn how to boil water or how has
Speaker 4: fire contributed to our actual living longer?
Speaker 13: Yeah, no, that's a great question that there is some
Speaker 13: evidence for boiling as being in kind of like pits
Speaker 13: in the ground, being more of the first instance of
Speaker 13: cooking in like a pot, you know, over a campfire.
Speaker 13: Because again, that's a very recent innovation in terms of
Speaker 13: living longer. I mean in a certain way. Evolution doesn't
Speaker 13: care about it that much.
Speaker 4: They're like, you make babies or not. Okay, get out
Speaker 4: of here, you're done.
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 13: And I mean so for Neanderthal you and I are
Speaker 13: you know, of a good age?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh god, Oh we're fossils. Can you imagine they're like,
Speaker 4: what gray hair?
Speaker 14: What is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 13: I did have to explain this, like just to my
Speaker 13: students a week or two ago when I showed them
Speaker 13: replica Neanderthal bones from an.
Speaker 15: Old man who was probably around you know, forty five, right, Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 15: so on a certain way, it doesn't matter on in
Speaker 15: terms of living longer, but even in terms of like
Speaker 15: you know, pest control or something like that in a cave,
Speaker 15: if you're trying to avoid like getting bit by a bat,
Speaker 15: you could potentially use fire as a way to clear
Speaker 15: out bats and mice or something like that from a
Speaker 15: cave or something like that.
Speaker 13: So there certainly are potential health aspects that deep in
Speaker 13: the past that using fire as a tool could could
Speaker 13: have assisted with. Do I think that humans figured out
Speaker 13: like if you boil water it gets rid of the germs.
Speaker 7: No, I don't.
Speaker 13: I don't think that was at all on anyone's minds.
Speaker 4: Over all of your research. Do people ever ask you
Speaker 4: what is the best way to construct a fire? Is
Speaker 4: it leaning everything together in a triangle shape or is
Speaker 4: it like stacking like a log cabin?
Speaker 16: Yeah?
Speaker 13: See, everyone everyone expects me at the party to be
Speaker 13: like the fire tender, right, Like I keep an eye
Speaker 13: on the fire pit, and naturally I just usually like
Speaker 13: pass it off to my kids, like yeah, just poke
Speaker 13: at it a bit.
Speaker 4: Doctor fire yeah yeah, an apprentice, yeah yeah.
Speaker 13: Or I'll occasionally say, like, you know, I should really
Speaker 13: have you know, some sort of really cool firing pit
Speaker 13: in the backyard or something like that, and my wife
Speaker 13: will be like, why don't you let's get the house
Speaker 13: painted first. Yeah, I finish, finish that job before you
Speaker 13: start building a kiln in the backyard or right?
Speaker 4: Can I fire away with a lot of questions from
Speaker 4: a lightning around yes? Please from listeners. Okay, oh we
Speaker 4: have so many questions. Okay, And just to follow up,
Speaker 4: what kind of fire you make depends on what you're doing.
Speaker 4: For long lasting campfires, the log cabin method might be
Speaker 4: the best, but for cooking on skewers roasting stuff on
Speaker 4: a stick, you might want to lean logs into each other.
Speaker 4: But either way, make sure you're observing forest ranger cautions
Speaker 4: and that you are extinguishing things well before you leave.
Speaker 4: So listen to the fire Ecology episode for more on that.
Speaker 4: You want a fire Ecology episode sample, I thought, so, okay,
Speaker 4: So doctor Gavin Jones studies fire in the landscape, and
Speaker 4: I asked him how many wildfires are because of apes
Speaker 4: like us.
Speaker 17: A lot of the ignitions are human ignitions, you know,
Speaker 17: people accidentally starting fires, machinery getting too hot, people driving
Speaker 17: over dry grass, and things like that.
Speaker 4: So Gavin says that eighty to ninety percent of all
Speaker 4: wildfires are human caused ignitions. Half of California's largest fires
Speaker 4: in the last century happened in the past five years.
Speaker 4: By the way, a complex fire means a cluster of
Speaker 4: related fires in one area. But what's the difference between
Speaker 4: a wildfire and a forest fire?
Speaker 17: We talk about wildfires. Typically when we're talking about wildfires,
Speaker 17: those are unplanned, so fires that we as people don't plan.
Speaker 17: So you can kind of juxtapose that with a prescribed
Speaker 17: fire or a cultural fire. So prescribed fire is often
Speaker 17: fire that is purposely set and then managed by teams
Speaker 17: to achieve some type of objective. Maybe they're trying to
Speaker 17: restore some area, restore fire. You know, you probably hear
Speaker 17: a lot about, you know, people burning prairies and things
Speaker 17: like that. It's the same thing in forests. They go
Speaker 17: in and do prescribed burns. And then there's also a
Speaker 17: really important component of cultural burning. So indigenous communities using
Speaker 17: wildfire for their purposes, which until you know, about one
Speaker 17: hundred two hundred years ago, made up the overwhelming majority
Speaker 17: of the fire activity that was happening in a lot
Speaker 17: of these areas. For you know, the last ten thousand
Speaker 17: years or so, indigenous peoples have been using fire in
Speaker 17: a really important cultural way, and that has really changed
Speaker 17: in the past couple of centuries with colonization. But that
Speaker 17: is an increasingly important part of the solution to sort
Speaker 17: of this modern wildfire problem.
Speaker 4: And obviously indigenous cultures and just the planet at large
Speaker 4: saw the benefit of prescribed burns. So what good do
Speaker 4: fires do, either in prescribed burns or just in nature.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's such a good question.
Speaker 17: I mean, fires are a critical piece of ecosystems around
Speaker 17: the world. Every square inch of land that has vegetation
Speaker 17: has some type of fire regime, It has some sort
Speaker 17: of natural fire cycle, and fire is kind of a
Speaker 17: restorative process. There's many benefits of fire from we can
Speaker 17: think about it from a human perspective, we can think
Speaker 17: about it from a sort of an ecosystem perspective, you know,
Speaker 17: from the human perspective. You know, fires create more resilient
Speaker 17: forest when they burn the right way, When we have
Speaker 17: sort of a natural kind of lower intensity fire in
Speaker 17: some systems, like in the Sierra Nevada where I've spent
Speaker 17: a lot of my time, that reinforces healthy water supplies,
Speaker 17: it reduces, you know, erosion.
Speaker 4: Side note, A fire regime sounds like Satan's cabinet members
Speaker 4: farting flames in a hades boardroom, but it's actually just
Speaker 4: a gentle term. A fire regime describes a pattern of fire,
Speaker 4: how frequent, how intense, what kind of fuel of gobbles?
Speaker 4: And maybe me just calling it Satan's cabinet members farting
Speaker 4: in hades. Maybe that's part of the root of Europeans
Speaker 4: fear of fire and thus this historical fire suppression by colonists.
Speaker 4: Don't you kind of wish I had talked to an
Speaker 4: indigenous fire ecologist too? Oh shit, yes I did. Now,
Speaker 4: if you haven't heard, here's a clip from the Indigenous
Speaker 4: Fire Ecology episode with doctor Amy Christensen, who also co
Speaker 4: hosts a podcast called Good Fire. And can you describe
Speaker 4: a little bit about prescribed fires and indigenous fire stewardship
Speaker 4: versus cultural burns? I think a lot of people maybe
Speaker 4: want to lump them in together, but can you describe
Speaker 4: a little bit about how they work or what they are.
Speaker 18: Yeah, so there's a bit of a danger of that
Speaker 18: this whole thing now or we're seeing prescribed fire and
Speaker 18: just kind of throwing cultural burning into that. So prescribed
Speaker 18: fire is you know generally what agencies do so where
Speaker 18: they're setting fire on the landscape, but in many cases
Speaker 18: they're setting you know, high severity fires.
Speaker 8: It's burning really fast and they.
Speaker 18: Want to burn a lot of land in a little
Speaker 18: bit of time. So we see like lots of aerial
Speaker 18: ignition of fires. We see them using you know, basically
Speaker 18: like helicopter ignition, and in Canada, like lots of times
Speaker 18: people put that together as you know, being a crown
Speaker 18: fire being these big, bad, kind of out of control
Speaker 18: fires that are burning up you know, mountainsides. That's generally
Speaker 18: the media that we see in Canada about prescribed fire,
Speaker 18: But it really differs from cultural burning because cultural burning
Speaker 18: is more about achieving a cultural objective around the forest
Speaker 18: around where you live. So you don't really want to
Speaker 18: have these big, large sets replacing fires that go through
Speaker 18: and can kill everything in a prescribed fire event. That
Speaker 18: sometimes is what happens in Canada. Yeah, so for cultural
Speaker 18: fire too, the thing is that most fires are actually
Speaker 18: pretty low intensity. In Australia, they call them like slow
Speaker 18: burns or cool burns, and they generally move through the
Speaker 18: understory and they're done it certain times of year where
Speaker 18: the potential fire behavior is very low risks, so you
Speaker 18: know where you're not getting, you know, potential of crown fire.
Speaker 18: There's lots of natural fuel breaks around the fire. In Canada,
Speaker 18: that's usually snow still on the ground. For Indigenous people,
Speaker 18: cultural burning too is like a family a community activity,
Speaker 18: So like when I'm doing burns and things like I
Speaker 18: take my daughters. My mom was on the last one
Speaker 18: that we did.
Speaker 4: There's a great photo that's run in a few news
Speaker 4: articles about Amy's work, and she's standing in a golden
Speaker 4: grassy field. It's hazy with smoke as a cultural burn
Speaker 4: grass fire she's overseeing lurches behind her, and there's a
Speaker 4: husky wolfy dog sitting to her right, staring off. And
Speaker 4: Amy's wearing black leggings and a red flannel shirt and
Speaker 4: is pregnant with what would be her second daughter. So
Speaker 4: the mood is very calm, unlike what most people's experience
Speaker 4: of land on fire might be.
Speaker 18: Lots of times, you know, we don't wear personal protective equipment,
Speaker 18: you know, like the kind of nomes that you usually
Speaker 18: see firefighters wearing, because usually the fires are honestly just
Speaker 18: so slow and most people find them I think a
Speaker 18: bit boring too, because it can take a really long
Speaker 18: time to burn a really small piece of land, and
Speaker 18: so for agencies it doesn't really work well, right, because
Speaker 18: that for them means set more staffing dollars and other
Speaker 18: things to achieve, like you know, a smaller area burned.
Speaker 4: At what point did you decide to spread the word
Speaker 4: about good fire? And the term good fire too is
Speaker 4: something that I'm I kind of just learned too. Can
Speaker 4: you talk a little bit about what good fire is?
Speaker 4: Is sure?
Speaker 18: So if good fire I think comes just from the
Speaker 18: idea that you know, it's very obvious that we can
Speaker 18: have good fires on the landscape. You know, that fire
Speaker 18: is something that is helpful to the environment into people,
Speaker 18: And so I think indigenous people lots of times see
Speaker 18: fire almost in a dichotomy, so kind of you know,
Speaker 18: these bad fires and then the good fire that we
Speaker 18: can use as a tools. But before colonization, indigenous people
Speaker 18: would use fire on the landscape in good ways. But
Speaker 18: then also we did have lightning fires obviously back then, right,
Speaker 18: but they would come across the landscape and kind of
Speaker 18: enter into this mosaic landscape that these indigenous ferns and
Speaker 18: other lightning caused fires like and so as they would
Speaker 18: enter them, then the fire behavior would change. So as
Speaker 18: you know, it entered a meadow, the fire intensity might decrease,
Speaker 18: and then it would go back into the forest and
Speaker 18: maybe increase, and then it would hit like a deciduous
Speaker 18: stand of trees and go down again. And so this
Speaker 18: mosaic or patchwork on the landscape was actually really helpful
Speaker 18: for fire to kind of decrease the intensity of these
Speaker 18: fire events. But what we're seeing right now is because
Speaker 18: we've been suppressing those fire events, there's just so much
Speaker 18: fuel in the forest that we're seeing these bad fires.
Speaker 18: So even like I'm thinking like the Dixie fire in
Speaker 18: California right now, or we have like multiple fires in
Speaker 18: Canada at the moment too that are bad fires. Like
Speaker 18: lots of times, you know, we look at and say, oh,
Speaker 18: fire's natural, there's good ecologic benefits. But for me, there's
Speaker 18: nothing good about these current fires happening right now.
Speaker 4: So at this point, our FaceTime call cut out because
Speaker 4: of spotty internet, So Amy recorded a clip answering a
Speaker 4: few more questions because she is the best and knew
Speaker 4: that we only had a few days until this went up.
Speaker 4: And she's once again the best.
Speaker 18: I also just wanted to mention the importance of Indigenous
Speaker 18: people in fire in Canada, but also in other countries.
Speaker 18: You know, we often think about Indigenous people and fire
Speaker 18: management as something that happened in the past, but we
Speaker 18: have a lot of amazing Indigenous firefighters in Canada, Indigenous
Speaker 18: fire managers and other people who are really you know,
Speaker 18: on the front lines trying to bring back good fire
Speaker 18: and indigenous fire stewardship and really out there every summer
Speaker 18: kind of protecting our communities from these bad fires, and
Speaker 18: especially in Canada, lots of times there we don't give
Speaker 18: enough attention, I think to those indigenous firefighters. Lots of
Speaker 18: times they're kept kind of from progressing in their careers
Speaker 18: because they might not have the appropriate Western education levels,
Speaker 18: you know, a degree or a diploma or something, but
Speaker 18: they have, you know, might have twenty thirty forty years
Speaker 18: experience of being on the fire and so knowledgeable and incredible.
Speaker 18: And I think, you know, lots of times we need
Speaker 18: to look at where Western science as well got some
Speaker 18: of its ideas. Like I've spoken into many elders who've
Speaker 18: told me about drip torches and how they would use
Speaker 18: tree limbs and sap to create their own drip torches.
Speaker 18: That's what their ancestors did and how they would spread
Speaker 18: fire across the landscape was in doing that. So now
Speaker 18: you know, it's a metal canister with fuel in it,
Speaker 18: but it's kind of the same idea that indigenous people's
Speaker 18: had about how to use fire properly on the land
Speaker 18: and just this incredible knowledge base and people in the
Speaker 18: communities had roles. In Canada, some nations actually had families
Speaker 18: that were fire keepers. There were many people who knew
Speaker 18: about fire and had knowledge about fire activity.
Speaker 4: So whole episode on that awaits if you haven't heard it,
Speaker 4: And of course all these episodes mentioned will be linked
Speaker 4: on this episode's page at aliwar dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 4: slash summersode. Now what if part of taking care of
Speaker 4: the land is eating the weeds? So this clip from
Speaker 4: the Foraging Ecology episode is for you, and it's also
Speaker 4: for anyone who DMS or emails me asking me to
Speaker 4: have Black Forager Alexis Nelson on ologies who has missed
Speaker 4: that she has been on and it was so good.
Speaker 4: So here's some wisdom from the Foraging Ecology episode with
Speaker 4: her on how to eat your neighbor's bushes. When it
Speaker 4: comes to where you forage, how do you do it
Speaker 4: differently in the city versus if you're out on a hike,
Speaker 4: And what kinds of stuff do you find in each place?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so in the.
Speaker 9: City it's going to be a lot more of the
Speaker 9: kind of classic quintessential weeds, the plants that like taking
Speaker 9: advantage of disturbed ground where they don't have to outcompete
Speaker 9: any of our other native species. So right now in
Speaker 9: the cities, I'm seeing a lot of Queen Anne's lace
Speaker 9: already putting up their new sets of leaves for the year,
Speaker 9: ton of dandelions, a lot of clover, white clover, red clover,
Speaker 9: and now sweet clover is starting to show up to
Speaker 9: hang out.
Speaker 8: A ton of mug art.
Speaker 9: I passed a couple very healthy stands of mug art
Speaker 9: while I was on a walk around the neighborhood today
Speaker 9: that I whibble be visiting this weekend because I'm in
Speaker 9: the mood for mugwort rested potatoes.
Speaker 4: So what does mugwort look like? Okay, I had to
Speaker 4: look it up. It's a member of the daisy family,
Speaker 4: so it's leaves look like daisy leaves, and it has
Speaker 4: clusters of these drooped bell buds at the tip of
Speaker 4: a stock. And mugwort can grow meters and meters high.
Speaker 4: And while scientists call it artemisia vulgaris, close friends call
Speaker 4: it riverside, wormwood, felon herb, old uncle, Henry, and naughty man.
Speaker 4: And I feel like I have to buy mugwart a
Speaker 4: beer to hear how it got those nicknames. But mugwort
Speaker 4: just means marshroot. And it's best to pick the leaves
Speaker 4: and buds between July to September, and you can season
Speaker 4: some meat with it. You can make a mochi dessert
Speaker 4: or look into its medicinal purposes. And indigenous people in
Speaker 4: North America used mugwort for a wide variety of ills
Speaker 4: like pitstank, to colds and lose browsing folks from comas,
Speaker 4: and even inducing labor so ethnop Pharmacology episode anyone, Yes,
Speaker 4: but yes. When this was recorded a few weeks ago,
Speaker 4: Alexis was planning to gather some mugwart and roast potatoes
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 9: Just a lot of the friends who you see enjoying
Speaker 9: spaces that maybe have been modified for something else. We
Speaker 9: have a couple empty lots in our neighborhood in which
Speaker 9: the ground was turned over before the winter, and now
Speaker 9: that ground is just covered in weeds.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 9: Whereas if I'm in the forests right now or out
Speaker 9: in the woods, oh gosh, it's like almost a completely
Speaker 9: different biome. We're still in the middle of spring ephemerals seasons.
Speaker 9: I'm seeing trout lilies, trilliums, ramps, cut leaf two four
Speaker 9: Virginia bluebells. I'm starting to see pheasant back mushrooms, oyster mushrooms,
Speaker 9: morales of course. And then you have a lot of
Speaker 9: the trees whose early leaves are edible starting to leave out,
Speaker 9: like your maples. You have pos spruces and furs putting
Speaker 9: out their new growth, and their needles are very soft
Speaker 9: right now and great to incorporate into meals too. So
Speaker 9: it's a fun game kind of having to change the
Speaker 9: mindset of what you're looking for depending on where you are.
Speaker 9: And I'm lucky that where I live here in Ohio,
Speaker 9: while I very much live in the city Columbus proper,
Speaker 9: I do not have to go very far to not
Speaker 9: feel like I'm in the city anymore.
Speaker 4: Okay, how can you make sure that you don't accidentally
Speaker 4: die though, you know, Hope says, And maybe this is
Speaker 4: some flim flam you could bust, Hope says. I'd been
Speaker 4: told that you can test for berries being poisonous by
Speaker 4: rubbing them on your hand and seeing if it tingles
Speaker 4: or numbs, and then if it doesn't, doing the same
Speaker 4: with your cheek, and if nothing there either, you might
Speaker 4: be able to eat it. Is that true at all?
Speaker 4: Is it flim flam? Is it reliable?
Speaker 9: For a lot of us, especially who grew up being
Speaker 9: very outdoorsy. That was kind of the way that we
Speaker 9: were told to deal with the situation if we like
Speaker 9: found ourselves stranded in the middle of the woods. The
Speaker 9: way that I always heard it was, you know, you'd
Speaker 9: rub it on the inside of your ankle. You pretty
Speaker 9: much just travel to more sensitive pieces of skin and
Speaker 9: wait a few hours to see.
Speaker 8: If it reacts.
Speaker 9: Because I am a cautious bean, and because not every
Speaker 9: hazardous plant behaves the same way or possesses the same toxins,
Speaker 9: I'm just gonna go ahead and say that unless you
Speaker 9: are dying, probably not the best rule of thumb.
Speaker 8: To go by.
Speaker 9: If you are dying, probably not the best rule of
Speaker 9: thumb to go by. Also, if you are looking for berries,
Speaker 9: I can say with confidence if you are in North America,
Speaker 9: we don't have any poisonous compound berries. So if it
Speaker 9: looks like a raspberry, you're good to go.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 19: So compound or aggregate berries include the dewberry, the BlackBerry,
Speaker 19: the raspberry, So that should help. Rebecca racial Sorder, Mandy Smith,
Speaker 19: Donnell O'Neil, and Megan Burnett Toscawitz.
Speaker 4: Just a ps from twenty twenty two. I texted Alexis
Speaker 4: last week to ask if serviceberry season has ended, and
Speaker 4: she told me that in the northern US you could
Speaker 4: still go out and grab them, but now, like right now,
Speaker 4: And just a quick follow up question, I'm sorry, what
Speaker 4: is a service berry?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 4: On that topic, this is a very very good question, Emma.
Speaker 4: Kylie is a first time question asker and their greatest
Speaker 4: love is for service berries. Is a service berry like
Speaker 4: a raspberry?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 8: My god, service berries.
Speaker 9: I'm so glad someone brought service berries up because I
Speaker 9: always want to shoehorn them into the conversation. Huh, But
Speaker 9: I never know if people are going to know what
Speaker 9: I'm talking about. So service berriers, which are the amalanchier genus.
Speaker 9: There are a couple of different species that fall under it,
Speaker 9: but we call them all service berries or juneberries or
Speaker 9: Saskatoon berries. In southern Ohio sometimes they just call them
Speaker 9: service or service berries. They actually look a lot more
Speaker 9: like blueberries. They are crowned berries, so you know, they
Speaker 9: have the little little points sticking out of them, the
Speaker 9: little last signs of their flowers. They they might they
Speaker 9: might be my favorite. I love paw paws, just from
Speaker 9: like a purely ethno botanical history standpoint, but service berries
Speaker 9: might be my favorite thing to forage. They taste like
Speaker 9: apples and blueberries mixed together.
Speaker 4: Oh man, so can you make a cobbler? Can you
Speaker 4: get enough to make like a cobbler out of them?
Speaker 4: Or is it like if you get three of them,
Speaker 4: you've had the best day of your life.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 9: So last year, just from the soul tree closest to
Speaker 9: my house, I gathered enough berries while still leaving all
Speaker 9: the ones that I couldn't reach, which was most of
Speaker 9: them for the birds, I gathered enough to make like
Speaker 9: ten hand pies.
Speaker 20: Ah.
Speaker 9: Last year, for whatever reason, I gathered like one big
Speaker 9: jar of service berries and was like, you know, what
Speaker 9: I'm tired, and by the time I wasn't tired anymore
Speaker 9: service berries.
Speaker 8: So this year I'm gonna stock.
Speaker 9: Up all of my my energy and my strength and
Speaker 9: we're gonna go ham on service berries. My neighborhood loves
Speaker 9: planting them as ornamentals.
Speaker 8: So they are.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that's gonna be in like apartment listings. What
Speaker 4: is around you that you could eat?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I honestly think that people need to start listing
Speaker 9: it because if someone told me that a house that
Speaker 9: I was maybe gonna move into has a service berry
Speaker 9: tree outside, I'd be like, oh.
Speaker 8: I'm done.
Speaker 9: So you know, you don't have a losher or a dryer,
Speaker 9: but you have a service berry tree.
Speaker 8: Who cares.
Speaker 9: I'll wash my clothes in the same That's fine, it's
Speaker 9: better for the environment an.
Speaker 4: Okay, but what if you belly up to the berry
Speaker 4: bar to find that it's berry in other ways? So
Speaker 4: we did back to back Ersnology episodes that are so
Speaker 4: good all about bears, and I asked doctor Lana Cheron Yellow,
Speaker 4: who's a wildlife consultant and conservationists who studies human bear interactions.
Speaker 4: I ask her your questions about.
Speaker 21: This, Okay, So Hannah asks a tax aside, what are
Speaker 21: the best ways to prevent a bear encounter? So, Hannah,
Speaker 21: this is really kind of dependent on whether you're going
Speaker 21: to going camping or whether you're hiking, or whether you're
Speaker 21: asking me about what are the best ways to prevent
Speaker 21: an encounter around your home, like removing your bird feeder.
Speaker 21: So I'm going to answer it like you're going hiking.
Speaker 21: So one of the best ways to prevent a bear
Speaker 21: encounter is first to know where you're going, what time
Speaker 21: of year you're going there, and where you're most likely
Speaker 21: going to encounter that bear. So if you're going to hike,
Speaker 21: for example, in barry season through a barry patch, that
Speaker 21: might not be the best way to go, So you
Speaker 21: want to avoid their critical habitats or avoid places where
Speaker 21: those bears are most likely to be. Another way we
Speaker 21: can prevent encounters is to really be aware of our surroundings.
Speaker 21: So rather then unplugging and plugging in things like earbuds
Speaker 21: and listening to music, you want to have your ears open,
Speaker 21: have your eyes open, have your nose open. So you
Speaker 21: want to make sure there's no really bad smells like
Speaker 21: a dead animal somewhere that might be attracting a bear,
Speaker 21: or you want to make sure that you're looking all
Speaker 21: around you and know what's going on. Is there any
Speaker 21: bear sign? Is there scat? Do you see scat? Is
Speaker 21: bear poop, by the way, that's what we call it.
Speaker 21: Is there scat on the trail? Do you see a
Speaker 21: bunch of birds that could indicate maybe a carcass ahead?
Speaker 4: Those kind of things.
Speaker 21: Then, when we're hiking ourselves, you asked us, singing loudly
Speaker 21: work absolutely. I highly recommend using your voice. Your voice
Speaker 21: identifies you as humans, and the vast majority of bears
Speaker 21: no humans and human beings, so singing loudly definitely works.
Speaker 21: Clapping your hands absolutely works. You've asked here about bear bells.
Speaker 21: I don't recommend bear bells. I don't recommend bear bells
Speaker 21: because they don't identify you as human. They've been shown
Speaker 21: to be in the same decibel range as birds. And
Speaker 21: bears are curious, so we don't want to actually attract them,
Speaker 21: so I actually don't recommend bear bells. Another thing you
Speaker 21: want to do, Hannah, is know your line of sight.
Speaker 21: So if you're coming up to a blond corner, you
Speaker 21: certainly want to be using your voice and clapping your
Speaker 21: hands or singing loudly as you say before you're going
Speaker 21: to come around that corner, warning the bear that you're coming.
Speaker 21: We don't want surprise encounters, so we want a really
Speaker 21: good line.
Speaker 8: Of sight around us.
Speaker 21: We want to keep our eyes open, We want to
Speaker 21: keep our ears open and our nose open in bear country,
Speaker 21: avoid those surprise encounters and let bears know we're coming. Also,
Speaker 21: we never ever ever feed bears or provide food for
Speaker 21: them them, so.
Speaker 4: Bears can find their own food. Do do not provide
Speaker 4: human food for them.
Speaker 21: It really is true that a fed bear becomes a
Speaker 21: dead bear. Another thing that we want to keep in
Speaker 21: mind in preventing a bear encounter is the direction of
Speaker 21: the wind. So is the wind blowing towards you, is
Speaker 21: it carrying or your scent down the trail so that
Speaker 21: the bear can get your scent before it's there. So
Speaker 21: if you're using your voice and then it picks up
Speaker 21: your scent and the wind. Bears have an excellent sense
Speaker 21: of smell, so if they can get that scent, bears
Speaker 21: really do their best to coexist with us, and a
Speaker 21: lot of times they'll just move right off that trail,
Speaker 21: be silent as they can and allow you to pass
Speaker 21: by and you might not even know they're there, So
Speaker 21: wind direction is really important. Wind direction is also important
Speaker 21: because I highly recommend that if you're going into bear
Speaker 21: country you carry bear spray. Bear spray is an excellent,
Speaker 21: excellent tool should.
Speaker 8: You ever need it.
Speaker 21: We'd ever want to negative encounter with the bear, but
Speaker 21: should we have one, we want to be prepared for it.
Speaker 21: You're also really going to want to know your wind
Speaker 21: direction then, because the last thing you want is to
Speaker 21: dispense that spray and get it back all over you,
Speaker 21: because it really does debilitate you, sort of incapacitates you
Speaker 21: for quite a while.
Speaker 4: Wes has studied bears all over the world and has
Speaker 4: not gotten killed one time, so let's hear his advice.
Speaker 16: Okay, Lucy asked, I've heard mixed reviews on tools like
Speaker 16: bear bells and bear bangers, and a first hand scene
Speaker 16: that bear spray does basically nothing. What are the best
Speaker 16: tools for people to have with them when they head
Speaker 16: out into bear country. Well, Lucy, I'm going to have
Speaker 16: to disagree with you on the bear spray thing. I've
Speaker 16: also seen it firsthand a lot of times, and I've
Speaker 16: seen at work almost every time I've seen it deployed,
Speaker 16: whether that's in person or in videos or anything. My
Speaker 16: mentor was kind of the guy that wrote the paper
Speaker 16: on bear spray, and it's been proven to be really,
Speaker 16: really effective, much more effective than firearms. Even so, bears
Speaker 16: is definitely the number one tool I would recommend people
Speaker 16: take with them into bear country, especially if you're going
Speaker 16: to be around brown bears. The bear bells don't really work.
Speaker 16: Sometimes we actually joke around and call those dinner bells
Speaker 16: and there's just nothing. There's no real biological significance to
Speaker 16: that noise for bears. It doesn't really register for them.
Speaker 16: It's not something that they necessarily pay attention to. Bear bangers,
Speaker 16: which are like the little flares or the little pop
Speaker 16: gun kind of blast that you can shoot at them,
Speaker 16: or like cracker shells or anything like that. All that
Speaker 16: stuff works really well. They don't like flares flying at them,
Speaker 16: they don't like loud noises. Those all work for me.
Speaker 16: I carry bear spray and then I have, you know,
Speaker 16: sometimes a firearm as a backup.
Speaker 4: And that was grizz Kid aka Wes Larson, who is
Speaker 4: another great bear expert that you should be following. But
Speaker 4: one bloodthirsty threat that you should not shoot at is
Speaker 4: a tick in your butt crack? So how do you
Speaker 4: make sure that no one is eating and living rent
Speaker 4: free in your crotch? Let's ask acarologist and take expert
Speaker 4: doctor Nita Pardonani. Shall we what's the best way to
Speaker 4: not get bitten by woman? Is it propellant? Is it
Speaker 4: wearing just a wet suit?
Speaker 7: I suit of armor?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 22: So, unfortunately, in you know, the forty years since lime
Speaker 22: disease was first described, you know right here in the
Speaker 22: state of Connecticut, we you know, haven't really done a
Speaker 22: super job at getting people to prevent disease. In fact,
Speaker 22: the number of cases in the nation has been growing
Speaker 22: rather than rather than subsiding. But what we we do
Speaker 22: know from many research studies is that there are some
Speaker 22: things that may be protective against lime disease specifically. So,
Speaker 22: for example, we know that in a couple of studies,
Speaker 22: performing bodily tic checks frequently can be protective against lime disease.
Speaker 22: So that is inspecting your body, and that includes your
Speaker 22: entire body, so particularly the cracks and the crevices and.
Speaker 4: The you know, arm paus.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 22: Well right, so, because a tick will crawl up right,
Speaker 22: so it'll crawl, it'll find its host. It'll be waiting
Speaker 22: on the vegetation for a host to walk by, and
Speaker 22: so it may you may encounter it at your leg,
Speaker 22: but if there's no skin showing there, it will keep
Speaker 22: walking up until it finds some skin. So that might
Speaker 22: mean it will crawl under your shirt and into your
Speaker 22: arm pit or up into your hair behind ears. We
Speaker 22: find a lot of them at places that are you know,
Speaker 22: constricted by say a bra strap or you know, underwear, waistbands,
Speaker 22: those kinds of things. And so performing a tick check
Speaker 22: is a good idea, and actually performing when daily is
Speaker 22: a great idea because the lime causing tick, the black
Speaker 22: legged tick, is unlikely to transmit the bacteria that causes
Speaker 22: lime if it's been attached less than twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, so this is amazing news. There's a magical window,
Speaker 4: an almost biological grace period in which you are less
Speaker 4: likely to have one of these tiny bastards drool a
Speaker 4: disease into your blood. So take a moment to just
Speaker 4: feel yourself all around. Get comfy with a hand mirror. Also,
Speaker 4: you can do this one thing that people on the
Speaker 4: bus might appreciate as well.
Speaker 22: Yeah, so the other thing you can do, and there's
Speaker 22: a couple of studies that support this, is take a
Speaker 22: bath or shower shortly after coming inside from being outside.
Speaker 22: So that could work in a couple of ways. So
Speaker 22: you could be washing off ticks that haven't yet attached.
Speaker 22: If the tick is attached, you know it's not going
Speaker 22: to wash off. Unfortunately, it will stay there. The water
Speaker 22: will not do anything to deter it. But if you
Speaker 22: haven't hasn't attached, you could maybe wash it off. You're
Speaker 22: also removing the clothes that you're wearing, they may have
Speaker 22: ticks crawling upon them. And another thing you can do,
Speaker 22: and this is all this sort of personal protective measures
Speaker 22: you can take. You can take your clothing after you've
Speaker 22: been outside and put it right in the dryer. There
Speaker 22: was a study that showed that if you put the
Speaker 22: clothes directly into the dryer and dry them on high
Speaker 22: heat for ten minutes, that should kill the ticks that
Speaker 22: are crawling upon them.
Speaker 4: So, kiddos, like we always say here on ologies, check
Speaker 4: your crevices. We even have check your crevice's merch at
Speaker 4: ologysmerch dot com if you need it. I'm just saying,
Speaker 4: and for more on all of this you can see
Speaker 4: the acroology episode and the lime disease and tickborn disease
Speaker 4: ecology episode with doctor Andrea Sway, which we'll also link
Speaker 4: on this episode page on my website, because tickborne infection
Speaker 4: not something you want to be writing home about, speaking
Speaker 4: and writing of which. Did you know that delteology is
Speaker 4: the study of collecting postcards? I did because I interviewed
Speaker 4: Donna Braydon, who is a museum curator at the Henry
Speaker 4: Ford Museum of American Innovation, who for a job has
Speaker 4: been a postcard conservator and enthusiast. Do you think that
Speaker 4: postcards back in the day were the equivalent of a
Speaker 4: text message, whereas a letter was an email.
Speaker 10: That's a great I think you could have something there because,
Speaker 10: particularly because the back was divided in half and one
Speaker 10: side you had to put the address on, so you
Speaker 10: were left with one half of a postcard to write
Speaker 10: the message.
Speaker 4: And I have messages on some of them.
Speaker 10: Where you know, people used up the space because they
Speaker 10: wrote too big, and then they're like writing all around
Speaker 10: the edges.
Speaker 4: On the top.
Speaker 10: But I don't think you were supposed to. The post
Speaker 10: office did not like it if you ran over into
Speaker 10: the side with the address right, because that was like
Speaker 10: the rule, the address the stamp, and only the side
Speaker 10: is for the right, so you were that's a great point.
Speaker 10: You were forced to write almost like a post it
Speaker 10: note size message on there. And that's why when we
Speaker 10: studied messages on the back of postcards for an exhibit
Speaker 10: we did called Americans on Vacation, it was fascinating not
Speaker 10: only to see what people wrote, but also there were
Speaker 10: certain formulaic ways that people wrote things.
Speaker 4: I love this, I love this, because you had.
Speaker 10: To write in phrases, and there were certain things people
Speaker 10: come in and on repeatedly, the weather, car breaking down.
Speaker 4: They're like one of the kids poked the other's eye
Speaker 4: out and we're getting a divorce, see one.
Speaker 10: But interestingly, we also found that there was a lot
Speaker 10: of we're not sure how far they stretched it, but
Speaker 10: people tended to want to make their vacations sound really good.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's what they do on Instagram.
Speaker 10: Exactly and Facebook. I mean it's a bragging thing, right,
Speaker 10: so like we are here and you are not. Yes,
Speaker 10: therefore we're going to make it sound as good as possible.
Speaker 10: And there's you know, the classic having a wonderful time
Speaker 10: wish you were here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, showed up repeatedly.
Speaker 10: I mean it's not made up. Yeah, it was always
Speaker 10: that kind of we're having a great time and you're not,
Speaker 10: you know, yeah not kind of a little bit of
Speaker 10: one's one upsmanship.
Speaker 4: A lot of times, no one's ever like, uh, the
Speaker 4: wife got salmonila from the shrimp buffet.
Speaker 10: I I don't hear that a lot on a maybe
Speaker 10: a letter, yeah, you know, maybe a letter, but where
Speaker 10: people have a little more time to play that out.
Speaker 10: Certainly journals that we've read, sort of trip diaries where
Speaker 10: they don't don't expect anyone to ever read them. Oh yeah,
Speaker 10: I have a lot myself on those. But postcards, No,
Speaker 10: it's very short and sweeten. It's mostly highlights m h.
Speaker 10: And don't like social media now it is kind of
Speaker 10: like that, you know, we get a picture and a
Speaker 10: little bit of impression, mostly positive.
Speaker 4: So now the Americans on vacation collection you put together,
Speaker 4: Where did you get those postcards? And what was it
Speaker 4: like reading all those little messages and like seeing the
Speaker 4: handwriting and the post was that just was that mind
Speaker 4: blowing for you?
Speaker 10: We I can't even remember how we came up with
Speaker 10: the idea to do a presentation in the exhibit on
Speaker 10: the messages and postcards. I think as we read about vacations,
Speaker 10: we realized that everybody's familiar with the pictures on the front,
Speaker 10: but not a lot of people are familiar with what
Speaker 10: people say on the back. Nobody's written anything about that.
Speaker 10: It was a new idea. So when we started reading them,
Speaker 10: they went, this is rich and we thought, all right,
Speaker 10: we need to start collecting. We need to start accumulating
Speaker 10: a collection of postcards with interesting messages.
Speaker 4: How do we do that?
Speaker 10: So we went to antique shows and there was a
Speaker 10: one nearby here that was every month, and so my
Speaker 10: colleague I was working with and I went there for
Speaker 10: the specific goal of looking at postcards with messages. And
Speaker 10: there were a few dealers we knew that had postcards,
Speaker 10: and they were all organized by state or topic, and
Speaker 10: they were freaked out by what we were doing.
Speaker 4: They're like, well, what topic are you looking for?
Speaker 10: I can help you, and we're like, no, we're not
Speaker 10: really looking for topic, we're just reading the bags. And
Speaker 10: eventually they just gave up and threw out their hands
Speaker 10: and said, okay, you're on your own, and they let
Speaker 10: us stay for like I don't know, an hour or
Speaker 10: two hours at a time, because they didn't organize anything
Speaker 10: that way. No one ever bought postcards that way. And
Speaker 10: we just had the best time reading all of them,
Speaker 10: and we made a pile of, you know, some of
Speaker 10: the more interesting good and bad messages, and that became
Speaker 10: this media presentation in the exhibit. So this American's on
Speaker 10: Vacation exhibit appropriately toward the country, and it featured these
Speaker 10: chronological looks and types of recreating we did back in
Speaker 10: the day, and it had this audio visual component of
Speaker 10: actors reading the backs of vintage postcards, kind of giving
Speaker 10: life to these.
Speaker 4: Long gone moments and voices to people who would never
Speaker 4: know that their road trip or steamer cruise memories would
Speaker 4: be in the hands of postcard collectors and in the
Speaker 4: ears of future strangers. And I tried so hard to
Speaker 4: find audio of this, but we're just gonna have to imagine.
Speaker 4: I'm imagining and it's super cool, okay, Like maybe someone
Speaker 4: this summer will send a postcard that reads, dear Grandpa,
Speaker 4: I'm having such a good time this summer with my friends,
Speaker 4: even though one of them wouldn't let me pee on them.
Speaker 4: Toxinologist Anna Klompin explains and what happens if you get
Speaker 4: sung by jellyfish. I was in Hawaii. Someone in our
Speaker 4: group got stung by jellyfish. I was like, what's going
Speaker 4: to happen? Who's going to pay on him? What do
Speaker 4: we do?
Speaker 8: What happens?
Speaker 12: Uh? Please don't pee on it? Nobody should pee. Yeah,
Speaker 12: that's a very common slim flam. I guess yes, you
Speaker 12: say that, So let me start from So, when you're
Speaker 12: stung by a jellyfish, what's happening is that you've either
Speaker 12: touched the tentacles or something and hundreds to maybe thousands
Speaker 12: of stinging cells have now kind of punctured and are
Speaker 12: sticking to you and injecting venom into your through your skin.
Speaker 12: I am in no position to give medical advice. I
Speaker 12: want to say that right away, but I can definitely
Speaker 12: tell you things you should not do. So you definitely
Speaker 12: should not pee on it, and in the same same vein,
Speaker 12: you should not put fresh water on it. So I
Speaker 12: actually use fresh water to discharge singing cells in the
Speaker 12: last So, so if you and your urine is basically
Speaker 12: fresh water at the same time actually peeing on some one,
Speaker 12: the pressure from peeing on them will make them fire.
Speaker 4: No, it's like throwing kerosene on a fire, only it's
Speaker 4: pa and it's venom filled cells firing into a skin inferno. Now,
Speaker 4: if you have ever had the insults of pea being
Speaker 4: added to the injury of a sting, I am so
Speaker 4: sorry for the emotions that this is bringing up in you.
Speaker 4: So other than see a therapist later, what should you do?
Speaker 12: So the one of the best things that you can
Speaker 12: do is to try and get if there's any pieces
Speaker 12: of tentacle, which is very possible. You want to get
Speaker 12: that off, and you want to try and get as
Speaker 12: many of the stinging cells off as possible. And one
Speaker 12: of the better ways to do that if you have tweezers.
Speaker 12: You can try and pick them off with tweezers. Tweezers
Speaker 12: aren't always available. So going back into the ocean wherever
Speaker 12: you wearing got stung and using salt water, so salt
Speaker 12: water will not activate the stinging cells anymore, and you
Speaker 12: vary gently as much as you can try and use
Speaker 12: salt water to wash away the pentacle and any of
Speaker 12: the stinging cells in that area.
Speaker 4: Oh smart, Okay, So go back to the scene of
Speaker 4: the crime.
Speaker 12: Yeah, be careful, you're not like there's not more jellyfish
Speaker 12: or whatnot.
Speaker 4: So Anna says that doctor Angel Janagahara of the University
Speaker 4: of Mana does amazing work in venoms as well, and
Speaker 4: she got into the field after sustaining a nearer fatal
Speaker 4: sting during a morning ocean swim decades ago. But her
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen study showed that seawater could worsen the stings
Speaker 4: if the pressure of the rins is too hard, like
Speaker 4: it would be with a robust stream of.
Speaker 12: Pea, then the next best thing. So it now kind
Speaker 12: of varies.
Speaker 9: A lot of.
Speaker 12: Places recommend vinegar. So vinegar will actually prevent more if
Speaker 12: there are singing self less, will prevent them from firing,
Speaker 12: so it kind of deactivates them. But there's some controversy
Speaker 12: that for some species it might make them fire more.
Speaker 12: But for box jellyfish, I should say box jellyfish in
Speaker 12: places where you know there's box jellyfish, vinegar definitely helps. Okay,
Speaker 12: like a good citizen, before you go out into the ocean,
Speaker 12: check if it's jellyfish season and what jellyfish will be there.
Speaker 4: Oh, you can do that is a jellyfish forecast.
Speaker 12: Yeah, my family will go to South Carolina fairly often,
Speaker 12: so they do have reports on when jellyfish season is,
Speaker 12: which is normally the warmer months, but it varies again
Speaker 12: between species, and they will have the most up to
Speaker 12: date for that area kind of precautions.
Speaker 4: So do some googling. Should you worry about sharks though, well,
Speaker 4: you can listen to the Slack of Morphology episode with
Speaker 4: doctor Chris Lowe or the follow up Alasmo Bracology episode
Speaker 4: which includes safety stats and pop culture clips from various
Speaker 4: shark scientists from miss Alasmo and the myths stands for
Speaker 4: minorities in shark science and this is a great time
Speaker 4: to toss some money their way. Thank you to sponsors
Speaker 4: of the show. Mislasma dot org is a nonprofit and
Speaker 4: they provide a community and funding opportunities for gender minorities
Speaker 4: of color who wish to enter the field of shark
Speaker 4: science and they have tons of really great programs. You
Speaker 4: can actually join them shark tagging. You can see miss
Speaker 4: Elasmo dot org to donate to them, which I think
Speaker 4: you should and to learn more. And thank you to
Speaker 4: sponsors of the show for making our donation possible. Drivers
Speaker 4: know what trouble sounds.
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Speaker 4: Okay, where were we?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Alasmo brainchology facts.
Speaker 24: From Jasmine Graham. My pronouns are she, her, and I
Speaker 24: am the President and CEO of Minorities and Shark science
Speaker 24: is also known as miss.
Speaker 4: Any favorite or least favorite pop cultural sharks.
Speaker 24: My favorite shark movie is Deep Blues because it's so ridiculous,
Speaker 24: the science is so ridiculous that it's hilarious, and it
Speaker 24: is genetically modified sharks, which I think is a very
Speaker 24: interesting take on things, So I like that in the
Speaker 24: movie they talk about how you know, the natural order
Speaker 24: of sharks. They're not aggressive, they're not doing all these things.
Speaker 24: And so they set the stage and say, we're going
Speaker 24: to make this movie, but we're going to acknowledge that
Speaker 24: sharks aren't actually like this. This is a very special
Speaker 24: situation where someone has really messed with these sharks and
Speaker 24: that's why they're acting like that. And it's one of
Speaker 24: those movies that really makes you root for the shark
Speaker 24: because they have been done wrong, and I relate. Also,
Speaker 24: the greatest scene ever where Samuel Jackson is giving an
Speaker 24: impassioned speech we're.
Speaker 25: Going to pull together and we're going to find a
Speaker 25: way to get out of here.
Speaker 24: And then gets eaten by a shark is hilarious and
Speaker 24: the greatest moment in cinematic history in my opinion. So yeah,
Speaker 24: that's kind of what I have to say about sharks.
Speaker 4: What about minorities in shark science.
Speaker 24: We are an organization dedicated to supporting women of color
Speaker 24: interested in shark science, and we want everyone to get
Speaker 24: an appreciation for sharks. There is a misconception that sharks
Speaker 24: are these man eating, findless killing machines, and that is
Speaker 24: not true. Sharks are extremely intelligent. They are actually more
Speaker 24: discerning in what they want to eat than we give
Speaker 24: them credit for, and movies and things like that. They're
Speaker 24: not aggressive. They're actually more afraid of us than we
Speaker 24: are of them, which they should be because we killed
Speaker 24: millions of sharks a year and only one or two
Speaker 24: people a year is killed by sharks.
Speaker 4: It's true, the twenty twenty Shark chomp Report. It's a
Speaker 4: real snooze, to be honest. Not a lot going on.
Speaker 4: So these facts are like sleepy at best. Thirty three
Speaker 4: people in the US got bitten by sharks last year,
Speaker 4: three fatally, only ten fatalities worldwide from sharks. What so,
Speaker 4: how many sharks die by human hands each year? Well,
Speaker 4: the Journal Marine Policy estimates one hundred million.
Speaker 24: So in this scenario, definitely, the sharks have a bigger
Speaker 24: reason to be afraid of us. So that's really what
Speaker 24: I want people to take away from all the outreach
Speaker 24: and education that I do is that sharks are just
Speaker 24: like any other animals. They're just out here trying to survive,
Speaker 24: and they need our help because we are killing them
Speaker 24: at an alarming rate. Some of them are endangered, many
Speaker 24: of them are threatened, and it's important that we think
Speaker 24: about what it would mean for the ecosystem if we
Speaker 24: were to take out these apex and meso predators out
Speaker 24: of our systems. So that is why I study sharks.
Speaker 4: And that is why Jasmine and miss is amazing. And
Speaker 4: just as long as we're confronting some of your summer anxieties,
Speaker 4: let's check in with sphexology guest Eric Eaton, who wants
Speaker 4: to make wasps not your summer enemy. They're just trying
Speaker 4: to make a living. First time question asker G Zero
Speaker 4: Pyochoki wants to know how is it that wasps and
Speaker 4: bees are so similar? Look so similar? But wasps have
Speaker 4: evolved to consume me eat while bees are content just
Speaker 4: to rub their butts in flour dust. Why do some
Speaker 4: wasps eat meat? I know when I used to be
Speaker 4: a caterer when there were yellowjackets, it'd be like, just
Speaker 4: throw a piece of ham over there to divert them.
Speaker 4: What's it with that?
Speaker 25: Well, you know again it goes You know, the adult
Speaker 25: wasps are not consuming protein matter, they're taking it back
Speaker 25: for their offspring.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 25: So yeah, so though I've watched a yellowjacket cut a
Speaker 25: piece out of my turkey sandwich and fly off with it.
Speaker 25: It's like, you know, the one by the way. One
Speaker 25: thing I want to caution all your listeners about is
Speaker 25: serving beverages outdoors. Do not serve them in cans or
Speaker 25: opaque bottles or glassware. You can get a yellowjacket crawling
Speaker 25: in there. And if you get stull in your tongue.
Speaker 25: You know, even if you're not allergic, that can be
Speaker 25: a life threatening experience. You know, serve your beverages and
Speaker 25: clear glasses.
Speaker 4: So about a million people go to the er every
Speaker 4: year for insects stings, but most are just fine. But
Speaker 4: about sixty to seventy people die every year from allergic
Speaker 4: reactions to stinging bugs. So just look for symptoms like tingling, sensations, dizziness, hives,
Speaker 4: the skin kind swelling of your lips or tongue, maybe
Speaker 4: having a hard time breathing or wheezing, or if someone
Speaker 4: just straight up passes out no matter why, you should
Speaker 4: probably go to the er for that last one anyway.
Speaker 4: But one of Eric's pals, he says, you may have
Speaker 4: heard of him.
Speaker 25: Justin Schmidt, the King of sting he's called, who created
Speaker 25: the Schmidt Pain Index of insects stings. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 25: He occasionally will self inflict a sting upon himself and
Speaker 25: then describe it and rate it on a scale of
Speaker 25: one to four, four being the worst thing and one,
Speaker 25: you know, being the barely detectable. Basically, a honeybee is
Speaker 25: a number two on his scale. By the way, but
Speaker 25: he found out that tarantula hawks, which they need their
Speaker 25: venom to paralyze their prey. I mean, you got to
Speaker 25: have a pretty wicked sting I would think to paralyze
Speaker 25: a tarantule anyway. Yeah, but it turns out that it's
Speaker 25: absolutely excruciatingly painful if you get stung by one of
Speaker 25: those things. But in about three minutes you're fine and
Speaker 25: it doesn't do any damage. Oh, it's totally tailored to
Speaker 25: the prey item thereafter. And that's for solitary wasps, that's
Speaker 25: the deal. They're telling their venom to a specific host.
Speaker 25: They're not worried about self defense.
Speaker 4: So for solitary wasps, their venom is really pray specific. Now,
Speaker 4: what about the city wasps, the ones who live in
Speaker 4: big papery buildings on the side of your house or
Speaker 4: underground with thousands of other ones, and they just love,
Speaker 4: love the hustle bustle of the nest life.
Speaker 25: But for social wasps, that's another story. I mean there,
Speaker 25: that is the purpose of their sting is, you know,
Speaker 25: get the hell away from our nest. We got babies
Speaker 25: in there. Get out. Yeah, well, you know they can
Speaker 25: route a bear out of their nests.
Speaker 4: So what's the highest on the Schmidt Index you've ever
Speaker 4: been stung?
Speaker 24: Oh?
Speaker 25: Wow, somewhere around a three. Probably a paper wasp got
Speaker 25: me once and that was pretty painful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm mer. Mycologist Terry McGlenn talked to me about
Speaker 4: his bullet ant. Yeah, bite did not feel good a sting.
Speaker 4: Will Eric ever be sticking his face into a nest
Speaker 4: for YouTube clout?
Speaker 25: My feeling about myself is that if it ever becomes
Speaker 25: about me, I need to find another line of work
Speaker 25: because I want it to be about the message. And
Speaker 25: my message is that you know, these things deserve, you know,
Speaker 25: an appreciation and respect that we're not giving them right now.
Speaker 4: So sure they may have knives on their butts, but
Speaker 4: that's just how they evolutioned. Not all of us can
Speaker 4: have an ass that's a disco like fireflies, which are
Speaker 4: out right now in many parts of North America and
Speaker 4: the world. And this next cologist, Doctor Sarah Lewis, is
Speaker 4: one of the world authorities on fireflies, and in a
Speaker 4: surprise twist, instead of the more expected limp periodology title,
Speaker 4: she insisted as a matter of record that she is
Speaker 4: a sparkle buttologist. That is theology she's about to make
Speaker 4: you turn off the TV and go sit on the
Speaker 4: porch just blinking into the grassy abyss on the hunt
Speaker 4: for magic. And what about you? Are you a night person?
Speaker 4: How much of your work involves these really long nights?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's crazy. You know, I don't know what people
Speaker 7: who live in the tropics were firefly seasons all year round.
Speaker 7: I don't know how they survived, because, you know, in
Speaker 7: the temperate zone, you have a kind of a short
Speaker 7: firefly season. It might go from I don't know, like
Speaker 7: May until September, or maybe just June, July, August. And
Speaker 7: during the firefly season, my students and I basically we
Speaker 7: work day and night. We get so strung out it's ridiculous.
Speaker 7: We can't even think great. People hate us, our partners,
Speaker 7: like leave us, our dog, you know, walks out.
Speaker 8: It's really bad.
Speaker 7: You can do it for a few years and then
Speaker 7: you have to take a break, but you know, we're
Speaker 7: usually out in the field at night, and then we
Speaker 7: are often doing lab experiments with fireflies that we've collected
Speaker 7: from the field and then put on a reverse like
Speaker 7: light cycle so that they think it's nighttime when it's
Speaker 7: actually daytime. And so during the day we work in
Speaker 7: a dark room on fireflies that think it's night. So
Speaker 7: you can get kind of strung out on that for
Speaker 7: after a while, but you know, it's it's all worth it. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it's fabulous to be able to bring some of the
Speaker 7: magic of these creatures to light and to let people know,
Speaker 7: you know, that they're real and they're really really kind
Speaker 7: of amazing.
Speaker 22: They're real and they're spectacular.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned the tropics and the temperate zones. Does
Speaker 4: that mean that they don't inhabit like arid climates as much?
Speaker 4: Why don't we have them in California?
Speaker 7: Yeah. So another myth that I am actually really glad
Speaker 7: to well happy to be able to debunk is that
Speaker 7: a lot of people think that there aren't any fireflies
Speaker 7: in the Western United States and that's not true. So
Speaker 7: happy you should be happy.
Speaker 8: They should be happy.
Speaker 7: Because there are. So there's at least three different kinds
Speaker 7: of fireflies. There's the daytime fireflies. They fly during the daytime.
Speaker 7: The adults don't light up, even though the larvae do.
Speaker 7: They're still in the same firefly family. There's lots of
Speaker 7: those in California and in the West. There are also
Speaker 7: glow worm fireflies, where the females typically well, the females glow.
Speaker 7: Typically they are worm like, as in, they don't fly.
Speaker 7: And there's really really cool glow worm fireflies on the
Speaker 7: West Coast, including you gotta google this, the California pink glowworm.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, they're so beautiful. They are really beautiful,
Speaker 7: and they're all over California. And I don't know why
Speaker 7: people don't recognize those as fireflies. The males don't light off,
Speaker 7: but the females do. They glow for hours to attract
Speaker 7: these flying unlit males, and they're really really cool.
Speaker 4: Okay, hold the phone, boy, Howdy hot damn?
Speaker 14: What?
Speaker 4: Okay? So I'm a lifelong Californian, absolute sniveling simp for bugs,
Speaker 4: and yet this is the first I'm hearing ever of
Speaker 4: the pink glow worm alias the firefly beetle, microphotos and gustus.
Speaker 4: Now the ladies stay kind of babylike in a larva
Speaker 4: ish form, and they just cruise the leaf litter kind
Speaker 4: of like salmon colored segmented tiny hot dogs. And then
Speaker 4: their soulmates are dude beetles who fly around, not glowing,
Speaker 4: but just looking out for butts. Now, I have spent
Speaker 4: my life jealous of New Jersey and ignoring all of
Speaker 4: these horny, baby like sparkle butts under my California nose.
Speaker 4: But as long as we're getting regional, I covered this
Speaker 4: ages ago in in minnesot You probably never heard. But
Speaker 4: do you call them you personally? Do you call them
Speaker 4: fireflies or lightning bugs? Take a moment, vote aloud while
Speaker 4: you're layering up a lasagna or welding something or brushing
Speaker 4: a chinchilla. Lightning bugs? Okay, I hope one of you
Speaker 4: said peeni walies because a University of Cambridge linguistics professor
Speaker 4: by the name of Bert Voe also needed to know
Speaker 4: firefly or lightning bug, So he asked ten thousand Americans
Speaker 4: what they call sparkle butts. Forty percent of you go
Speaker 4: either way firefly, lightning bug, You don't care. Thirty percent
Speaker 4: of us are exclusively team firefly. Hello West, coast Hi Massachusetts,
Speaker 4: and about another thirty percent say yeah, no, it's lightning
Speaker 4: bug the South. Greetings to you. But to my delight
Speaker 4: and probably Professor Voe's the funtlement, zero point two percent
Speaker 4: of those people he polled call these glowing summer acuties
Speaker 4: peenie wallies. So that's two people in a study of
Speaker 4: ten thousand. And if they are not already friends, oh,
Speaker 4: I hope they find each other. I want them to
Speaker 4: hold hands and just stare into the summer dusk. So
Speaker 4: my point is we need not be a nation divided
Speaker 4: on the topic of peenie wallies, especially now because.
Speaker 7: And the other exciting news, and this is something that
Speaker 7: we're really just actually this is really really recent that
Speaker 7: we have begun to realize that there are flashing fireflies
Speaker 7: in the Western United States. So there's actually there's a
Speaker 7: Western Firefly Project that's run out of the Natural History
Speaker 7: Museum of Utah and they've been mapping flashing fireflies in Utah,
Speaker 7: Nevada nearby dates for since twenty fourteen. There's a new
Speaker 7: project called the New Mexico Firefly Project. There's flashing fireflies
Speaker 7: in New Mexico.
Speaker 13: In Colorado.
Speaker 7: I heard a rumor there might be flashing fireflies in Oregon.
Speaker 7: So a lot of this is very very recent, and
Speaker 7: a lot of it is based on citizen science, like
Speaker 7: community science observations, just people going out into the night
Speaker 7: looking for fireflies in different places where there are certain
Speaker 7: characteristics like moisture, like darkness and food for the firefly larvae.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's really exciting there are Western fireflies. That's
Speaker 7: a myth that it just gives me great pleasure to
Speaker 7: be able to say now that true. You do have them,
Speaker 7: and they're really really beautiful.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So if you've been asking fireflies, where have
Speaker 4: you been all my life? The answer is perhaps closer
Speaker 4: than you thought. Right here literally with a flashing fight
Speaker 4: you just didn't notice. Okay, super exciting. Twenty twenty two update.
Speaker 4: I saw a peeni wally at last in California. Okay,
Speaker 4: so it was last week. It was a little glow worm.
Speaker 4: It was segmented kind of the color of raw tuna,
Speaker 4: with an led posterior, and I posted some photos on
Speaker 4: my Instagram at ali ward and after the first night
Speaker 4: I saw her and lost my mind. It was here
Speaker 4: in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California.
Speaker 4: I went back to the same spot the next night
Speaker 4: to show my young niece and nephew, and sure enough,
Speaker 4: there she was. And that second night, a moth flew
Speaker 4: up to her and I was like, oh shit, that's
Speaker 4: not a moth, that's a male. They're doing the nasty
Speaker 4: And I had to tell my niece and nephew, like,
Speaker 4: let's get him a little privacy. They only have a
Speaker 4: very small window for this. And hey, well, let's check
Speaker 4: out that rock over there. What a great rock. So
Speaker 4: I hope those two make many sparkly babies this summer.
Speaker 4: And as long as we're on the topic of flashes
Speaker 4: of light in the night, let's address the bombs bursting
Speaker 4: in air here in America. If like me, you have
Speaker 4: a pup that has diarrhea as explosive as your neighbor's fireworks,
Speaker 4: did you know what? You can ask your vet for
Speaker 4: xanax at a time, but the only caveat is that
Speaker 4: it's just for the dog, not for you, no matter
Speaker 4: how much many Americans need a sedative right now. And
Speaker 4: speaking of July fourth, any not feeling very United States
Speaker 4: of America, you can celebrate this ragged democracy by listening
Speaker 4: to the twenty nineteen Nomology episode with doctor Fernita Tolsen,
Speaker 4: who is the vice dean of USC's Law school. She's
Speaker 4: a constitutional scholar who let me ask her an absolute
Speaker 4: barrel full of questions that many of us have, such
Speaker 4: as what is happening and why? Where does she think
Speaker 4: our constitution stacks up globally in terms of other governments?
Speaker 26: It just one of the oldest, I think, right, I
Speaker 26: think I don't know if it's the oldest, but it's
Speaker 26: definitely top five oldest. The interesting thing about the world is,
Speaker 26: especially as I've really learned to appreciate other societies, this
Speaker 26: is not the only way to do this. Our constitution
Speaker 26: is so old, and you know, we kind of hold
Speaker 26: it up as a model. I think that politicians love
Speaker 26: to call America the light on the shining hill, or
Speaker 26: whatever the term is.
Speaker 4: I looked up this term, and it's been said a
Speaker 4: few different ways over the centuries, many times in presidential speeches,
Speaker 4: but remixes include that light on the hill, that shining
Speaker 4: city on the hill, the shining city, and a city
Speaker 4: upon a hill. And it's said to come from Puritan
Speaker 4: colonist John Winthrop's speech as a bunch of folks were
Speaker 4: boarding a ship to set sail to form the Massachusetts
Speaker 4: Bay Colony, and Winthrop said that the new settlement would
Speaker 4: be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of
Speaker 4: all people are upon us, which meant, don't screw this up,
Speaker 4: don't wild out. It's not spring break. Okay, everyone's watching,
Speaker 4: so keep your holy bits and your breeches and like,
Speaker 4: try not to kill too many people paraphrasing.
Speaker 26: But this is not the only way to do this,
Speaker 26: and so comparatively, I don't know how it stacks up,
Speaker 26: because I've never lived in any other system. But I
Speaker 26: also welcome suggestions from other types of government, because from
Speaker 26: other forms of government, because I recognize that this is
Speaker 26: not the only way to do it. It's not perfect,
Speaker 26: and we're still working on it.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 26: It really is a question of how much work are
Speaker 26: we willing to put in in order to build a
Speaker 26: society where everyone can feel included.
Speaker 16: We the people of the United States, and.
Speaker 26: That might require looking at other constitutions and looking at
Speaker 26: other countries and seeing how they do it.
Speaker 4: And how about this, two senators for every state situation
Speaker 4: like can we just go in there with a little
Speaker 4: little racer? Is that going to Do you think that
Speaker 4: that will continue or was that what they had in mind.
Speaker 26: That's what they had in mind. It's part of the compromise.
Speaker 26: The House of Representative is based on population and in
Speaker 26: every stake gets two senators. I don't see that change
Speaker 26: in anytime soon. I know that people have strong feelings
Speaker 26: about it, right, It seems weird that Wyoming in New
Speaker 26: York State and California and North Dakota all have the
Speaker 26: same representation. Yes, and then the Senate rules make them
Speaker 26: make the Senate especially non democratic, right, and yeah, non
Speaker 26: Republican in some sense as well. But I don't see
Speaker 26: that change in anytime So that would actually require a
Speaker 26: constitutional amendment.
Speaker 4: So just side note. After this interview, I realized I
Speaker 4: forgot to ask for Nita about the electoral college. So
Speaker 4: I emailed her, was like, what's the deal with the
Speaker 4: electoral college? Is it fair? Is it unfair? Is going anywhere?
Speaker 4: And she wrote me right back and said, quote, Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: the electoral College is not going anywhere without a constitutional amendment. However,
Speaker 4: some states have taken steps to neutralize its effects by
Speaker 4: joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, where participants pledge
Speaker 4: their electoral votes to the candidate that wins the popular vote,
Speaker 4: and so far, sixteen states have joined the compact. There's
Speaker 4: more information available at National Popular Vote dot Com. It's
Speaker 4: like what, so I went and looked it up. And
Speaker 4: those sixteen states that have pledged their electoral votes to
Speaker 4: the candidate with a popular vote include California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland,
Speaker 4: New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont.
Speaker 5: And Washington.
Speaker 4: If you're like, hmm, my state was not listed. How
Speaker 4: might I get myself some of that legislative action? Go
Speaker 4: to Nationalpopular Vote dot Com. Now, remember, amendments can take
Speaker 4: a little bit longer than state to state legislation.
Speaker 26: And as I pointed out, we haven't amended the Constitution
Speaker 26: since nineteen ninety two, and because we have depended on
Speaker 26: the court so much, I don't even think there are
Speaker 26: people in this generation that understand the political sort of
Speaker 26: capital and the political cost and a political mold ability
Speaker 26: that will be required in order to change the Constitution.
Speaker 26: Like constitutional change comes as a result of movements, right,
Speaker 26: political movements, and so we have political movements now, but
Speaker 26: I don't think they're the same as the political movements
Speaker 26: of the nineteen sixties, for example, Right, what I want
Speaker 26: you to.
Speaker 8: Know tonight we have the people.
Speaker 26: Who are just from a promise, or the political movements
Speaker 26: of the progressive era, which also led to some constitutional changes.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 26: And so I just don't think that people alive today.
Speaker 26: No offense millennials, right, no offense. But I don't think
Speaker 26: if my generation included, have a clear sense of what
Speaker 26: will be required in order for us to actually amend
Speaker 26: the constitution, what would.
Speaker 4: Be required of what kind of revolution or uprising?
Speaker 26: Oh gosh, you know, I don't even know, right, because
Speaker 26: I think that the Progressive era they were really concerned
Speaker 26: about corruption and government.
Speaker 4: Okay, So side note, I did not know when the
Speaker 4: Progressive era was, so I googled it and it was
Speaker 4: in the eighteen nineties to around nineteen twenty. And according
Speaker 4: to a glossary on the George Washington University page, the
Speaker 4: early Progressives rejected social Darwinism. They believed that poverty, violence, greed, racism,
Speaker 4: class warfare could best be addressed by providing things a
Speaker 4: good education and a safe environment and a good workplace,
Speaker 4: and they encouraged Americans to register to vote and to
Speaker 4: fight political corruption. Now, the gress era came to an
Speaker 4: end after World War One, this glossary says, when the
Speaker 4: evils of humankind were exposed. But by the nineteen sixties
Speaker 4: we had the Civil rights movement, and Fernita rightly calls
Speaker 4: that one of the biggest political movements in history. That
Speaker 4: kind of action and engagement and sacrifice is what gets
Speaker 4: amendments made.
Speaker 26: People were really politically active, People were paying attention, they
Speaker 26: were focused. It would have to be like that across
Speaker 26: many states and for a longer period of time. And
Speaker 26: given the fact that we live in the social media Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 26: what's going on today world? Will people pay attention that log?
Speaker 26: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we could always try.
Speaker 26: Right, we could try. I am an advocate of trying.
Speaker 26: I have nothing against using Article five.
Speaker 4: So Article five was on the original Constitution. So this
Speaker 4: is not to be confused with the fifth Amendment on
Speaker 4: the Bill of Rights. So Article five on the original
Speaker 4: parchment Constitution says that to make an amendment you need
Speaker 4: two thirds of the House and Senate or two thirds
Speaker 4: of all the states calling a convention. So who ends
Speaker 4: up in the House and Senate matters.
Speaker 26: And in fact, I think that constitutional amendment is important
Speaker 26: because even if you are able to go to the
Speaker 26: Supreme Court and get them to interpret the Constitution in
Speaker 26: a way that you agree with, it's only good for
Speaker 26: as long as that coalition is on the court. Right now,
Speaker 26: we have justices like Justice Thomas who don't believe in
Speaker 26: b that the Court should really adhere to the precedent.
Speaker 26: Right if others adopt his view and president has no value,
Speaker 26: then there's nothing keeping the next coalition of justices from
Speaker 26: overturning an interpretation of the Constitution. And so I think,
Speaker 26: given the direction at the Court is headed, the end,
Speaker 26: Article five will probably be more important. But in order
Speaker 26: for Article five to really work, people have to pay attention.
Speaker 4: And if you have been meaning to read the Constitution
Speaker 4: in its entirety, I did it for us. Part two
Speaker 4: of nomology is every word of the United States Constitution,
Speaker 4: with a few clarifying asides here and there, just for
Speaker 4: your hammock swing and pleasure. You can nap to it.
Speaker 4: You could take notes, you could change your whole life,
Speaker 4: apply to the law school, or you can just soak
Speaker 4: your lows, maybe with a margarita. Hey, how do you
Speaker 4: make a cocktail that doesn't suck. Glad you asked. I
Speaker 4: asked world renowned cocktail chef and mixology guest Matthew bian Canelo,
Speaker 4: and it's some of the easiest math you're ever going
Speaker 4: to do. Okay, now listen up, because this may be
Speaker 4: the most most useful mixology lesson you can ever learn.
Speaker 4: You can never make a bland or syrupy, gross drink again.
Speaker 4: If you know this, how did you dive in to
Speaker 4: try to understand the craft of cocktails? I mean it
Speaker 4: sounds like you started looking into deckeries and realizing, Okay,
Speaker 4: there's a formula, there's like math here exactly, and it's
Speaker 4: plug and play. Right, Yeah, what what are the basic
Speaker 4: ratios of that? Because I know that you don't really Yes, a.
Speaker 23: Very simple so it was always two ounces of spirit
Speaker 23: and then three quarter lime three quarter of gaviy. If
Speaker 23: you were just doing it on its own, you would
Speaker 23: up the lime to one.
Speaker 4: So an easy way to remember this is the golden
Speaker 4: ratio roughly two to one to one, two part spirit,
Speaker 4: one part sweet like a liqueur or some kind of
Speaker 4: simple syrup, and one part tart like lemon, lime or grapefruit.
Speaker 4: Two to one to one. You can make almost any
Speaker 4: cocktail a good one at home for almost three and
Speaker 4: then when you go to fancy speakeasies like LA's Varnish
Speaker 4: or New York's Death and Company, you'll be to nod
Speaker 4: as a mixologist in a way that says, I know
Speaker 4: your tricks. You're a math nerd.
Speaker 23: Remember one time this guy got me like the specs
Speaker 23: for the Varnish, you know what I mean, like all
Speaker 23: of their classes. And I looked at it and I
Speaker 23: was like, Okay, I can see what they're doing. I
Speaker 23: can see some patterns or I can see what they
Speaker 23: do when they do a straight thing. So it was
Speaker 23: like that just kind of strengthened it. In terms of technique,
Speaker 23: I still feel like I don't really have technique. Yeah,
Speaker 23: I think, yeah, I still think I lacked that, if
Speaker 23: I'm being honest, and I think, like like I said,
Speaker 23: I think, my it's not that I don't have some technique,
Speaker 23: but I think what's interesting about where I'm at right
Speaker 23: now is there's still so much to learn. And I remember,
Speaker 23: just like you would just and I think it was
Speaker 23: also Dale de Groff's book. I think it's called The
Speaker 23: Essential Cocktail. So I ended up getting that book and
Speaker 23: I got to read why he did certain things and
Speaker 23: the stirring and the shaking and all that, so I
Speaker 23: adapted that stuff. But I remember like no one taught me.
Speaker 23: So there I am like strying to stir and I
Speaker 23: couldn't do it with the spoon, so I had to
Speaker 23: bend it into a sea shape. I took this the
Speaker 23: spoon and bent it so much that it was easy
Speaker 23: for me to stir so And it also got to
Speaker 23: the point when I started doing some consulting and I
Speaker 23: tell people like, you know what, you don't need to
Speaker 23: worry about that right now, let's just get a metal
Speaker 23: chopstick and it's the same thing.
Speaker 7: Just do that.
Speaker 23: Just get used to stirring it. So I got into
Speaker 23: I got sympathetic and interested in tecing people that knew nothing.
Speaker 23: It was more more interesting to me than someone who
Speaker 23: had technique already. But I still feel like I don't
Speaker 23: really have a strong technique.
Speaker 4: That's funny that you say that, because I think you're
Speaker 4: you're widely regarded as probably one of the best cocktail
Speaker 4: chefs in the country. Easy hands down is funny. Your
Speaker 4: name is just like you're just at the top of
Speaker 4: the of the pyramid. For sure. How do you feel
Speaker 4: about cocktail culture.
Speaker 7: And the.
Speaker 4: Buttoned vest, sneery faced suspender class.
Speaker 23: Well, I personally feel Listen, I think I understood where
Speaker 23: it started from and all that, and I just I
Speaker 23: don't know, I just I think what I'm not even
Speaker 23: referring to the vest because I think it's nice that,
Speaker 23: you know, people will look nice. I understand all that,
Speaker 23: But I really do think that as time went by,
Speaker 23: I think a lot of the attitudes that people had
Speaker 23: and the kind of feeling what's the superior, it kind
Speaker 23: of killed the culture a lot. And I really feel like,
Speaker 23: you know, when drinks started escalating and people like, oh,
Speaker 23: you know, they're more like that about it, you know
Speaker 23: what I mean? And I feel like some of that
Speaker 23: really kind of destroyed some of the culture of cocktails
Speaker 23: and how they should be regarded. I guess, you know,
Speaker 23: people would tell me stories like they'd go into a
Speaker 23: bar and they'd ask for this drink, and you know,
Speaker 23: they'd make the drink and they didn't really like it,
Speaker 23: and the bartender were like, that drink is perfect, you know.
Speaker 23: And the thing is is how that's the opposite of
Speaker 23: how I operate, Because I operate all I am going
Speaker 23: to make this drink for you until you tell me
Speaker 23: it's great if you don't like it. I would horrify
Speaker 23: people where I'd make a drink and I like, I could
Speaker 23: see it in their face. I would grab out of
Speaker 23: their hand and dump it. They didn't understand that. They
Speaker 23: didn't understand how I would take a drink that's booze.
Speaker 23: I'm like, I don't think of it, that's booze, and
Speaker 23: I would dump it.
Speaker 10: So, yeah, it's uh, you know.
Speaker 23: There's a lot of layers in that, and for me,
Speaker 23: the biggest challenge for me was to just stay true
Speaker 23: to who I was, even though some of it, some
Speaker 23: of the times it was like fuck, you know, difficult,
Speaker 23: you know, And I never wavered from what I did.
Speaker 23: That was always important to me is I never wavered
Speaker 23: from what I was doing.
Speaker 4: If you are drinking, your balance and judgment may waiver
Speaker 4: just a little. PSA here, designated driver. There's just a
Speaker 4: lot wrong in the world right now. The last thing
Speaker 4: we need is an accident. This is why I'm your dad.
Speaker 4: Please be safe. I love you. Also, just in buttoning
Speaker 4: up this episode, I thought maybe we could revisit summer
Speaker 4: makeouts as a person who had a hookup in July
Speaker 4: with a guy nine years younger than me and then married.
Speaker 4: Is asked a decade later, what he's now your pod mon, Jared.
Speaker 4: I'm just a big fan of sweaty night romances, right, babe.
Speaker 9: We're huge fans growth fluids.
Speaker 4: Why do you think humans slobber on each other?
Speaker 27: This is almost the big evolutionary question that remains unanswered.
Speaker 27: Thoughts clear, There are various suggestions one can make.
Speaker 8: One is it's.
Speaker 27: Clearly very kind of erotic if you like, it's very arousing,
Speaker 27: and the lips have a lot of brain tissue devoted
Speaker 27: to them, sensory brain tissues devoted to the lips, you know, disproportionately.
Speaker 27: So put it this way. Monkeys and apes are very tactile.
Speaker 27: They do a lot of cuddling and stroking and if
Speaker 27: you like petting, all those kind of things we do,
Speaker 27: and a lot of this sort of social grooming, and
Speaker 27: social grooming triggers the release of endorphins in the brain,
Speaker 27: which kind of makes you feel very relaxed and.
Speaker 8: Happy.
Speaker 27: It can tented with the world. It's very nineteen sixties
Speaker 27: hippie ish, you.
Speaker 12: Know, endless sun chill, vibes, hot bodies.
Speaker 27: The world is a beautiful place and very trusting as
Speaker 27: a person you're doing this with or who's doing it too.
Speaker 27: And these involve a very special set of neurons which
Speaker 27: only respond to light, slow stroking of the skin. And
Speaker 27: we have those neurons too. They're known as the sea
Speaker 27: tactile neurons. They don't do anything else. They're not involved
Speaker 27: in pain or anything, you know, sensing pain or anything
Speaker 27: like that. We respond exactly the same way. So that's
Speaker 27: why in our closer relationships we're very tactile. You know,
Speaker 27: it's an awful lot of cuddling and petting. And I
Speaker 27: don't mean this in a kind of social context. I
Speaker 27: mean just you know, when you're talking to your good friends,
Speaker 27: you know, there's a tap on the shoulder and the
Speaker 27: arm around the shoulder and all this kind.
Speaker 8: Of thing that goes on.
Speaker 27: You know, we're very tactile in that sense, even though
Speaker 27: we don't really think about it. But on the other hand,
Speaker 27: is because it's a very intimate thing, as it is
Speaker 27: in monkeys' names, you don't do it with everybody. This
Speaker 27: is why, you know, when you're caught in a crowded lift,
Speaker 27: you feel very uncomfortable because there are all these people
Speaker 27: you know, in very close physical contact with you, and
Speaker 27: normally you do only allow your nearest and dearest family
Speaker 27: and friends to be in that close physical contact. So
Speaker 27: we are very ambivalent about it for the very reason
Speaker 27: that touch is very kind of you know, indicative of
Speaker 27: both close relationships and also spilling over from there, you know,
Speaker 27: quickly gets exploited in courtship and sexual relationships between partners, right,
Speaker 27: so that the lips clearly play a major role in that.
Speaker 27: That said, one of the other things that happens during
Speaker 27: kissing in particular is the exchange of huge quantities of.
Speaker 8: Bacteria.
Speaker 27: Right now, a ten minute kiss, I forget the exact amount,
Speaker 27: but it results in the exchange of something like ten
Speaker 27: million bacteria from one body to the next.
Speaker 4: So a twenty fourteen study out of Amsterdam revealed that
Speaker 4: one ten second French kiss can transfer eighty million microbes
Speaker 4: into your partner's mouth. That is, the entire population of
Speaker 4: New York City cramming into your mouth every second of
Speaker 4: a kiss. That's love, baby.
Speaker 5: If he was interested in me one my germs, he
Speaker 5: just crave my germ.
Speaker 27: Now this is quite useful because actually it tells an
Speaker 27: awful lot about the other person. So we've both got bacteria,
Speaker 27: that probiotic sort of elements from the other person being exchanged.
Speaker 27: But also you're getting a lot of there in the
Speaker 27: saliva and stuff, a lot of the enzymes and other
Speaker 27: bits and pieces that the body producing, particularly immune systems.
Speaker 27: So your personal smell, I hate to raise this this
Speaker 27: tricky issue at this junker, but your personal smell and
Speaker 27: taste are directly determined by the same genes, same set
Speaker 27: of genes that determine your immune system.
Speaker 4: Really, so we're using our tongues and our snoops to
Speaker 4: gather intimate intel about a person's immune system. You thought
Speaker 4: Google was sneaky, who the nose is sneakier, so is
Speaker 4: the tongue. So you're just doing research, Okay, let your
Speaker 4: brain suss things out. You're doing great if you're like
Speaker 4: makeout Scarfire's ocean visits, whatever. I just want to be
Speaker 4: happy in a world that feels weird. Let's end this
Speaker 4: summersde with some science on how to stack your mental
Speaker 4: deck on the side of happiness. With you to monology
Speaker 4: guest and happiness researcher legit, doctor Lori Santos Ben de
Speaker 4: Wurst says, I'm just finishing up my MPa and in
Speaker 4: one of my classes they talked about how optimism is
Speaker 4: actually an attribute of emotional intelligence and can be learned
Speaker 4: as an optimist. To myself, I'd always considered it more
Speaker 4: of a part of my personality like extrovert or introverted
Speaker 4: and unteachable. So how would someone go about learning and
Speaker 4: training to be an optimist and what's the relationship there? Also,
Speaker 4: is there a relationship between happiness and emotional or just
Speaker 4: like IQ intelligence, I feel like there's some badge of
Speaker 4: like if you're unhappy, it must mean that you know
Speaker 4: more and therefore you're smarter.
Speaker 16: That's interesting.
Speaker 14: I don't know of any data that have look specifically
Speaker 14: at IQ and happiness. My guess is there's probably not
Speaker 14: the relationship that you're looking at, but there is definitely
Speaker 14: a relationship between happiness and optimism obviously, I think sort
Speaker 14: of optimism is sort of part of our general happy
Speaker 14: life life. And the good news according to based on
Speaker 14: this question, is like you you can in fact learn
Speaker 14: these kinds of things. You know, the fastest thing to
Speaker 14: do is really try to just train your brain to
Speaker 14: pay attention to good things.
Speaker 7: Out there.
Speaker 14: Our minds are naturally tuned to negative things, you know,
Speaker 14: the yucky stuff out there, the griping. But we can
Speaker 14: tune our minds towards positive things. You can focus on
Speaker 14: what you're grateful for. Another practice that I've been into lately,
Speaker 14: which I talk about on the podcast, is focusing on delights.
Speaker 14: Sometimes gratitude can feel sort of cheesy, but you can
Speaker 14: just focus on like things that are delightful out there,
Speaker 14: you know, like you know, the sunshine and like that's delightful.
Speaker 14: The fact that coffee exists, that's delightful. You know, I
Speaker 14: don't know, some funny video on the Internet that's delightful, right,
Speaker 14: Like training your brain towards things that you really enjoy
Speaker 14: that kind of cause delight.
Speaker 4: Okay, So if the term gratitude journaling conjures up visions
Speaker 4: of sickly sweetened camera lt, just opt the term delights,
Speaker 4: which is just like a straightforward good cup of coffee. Actually,
Speaker 4: for years, my husband Jay has cited a short taally
Speaker 4: of favorite things. His are lavender soap, coffee, and sandwiches.
Speaker 4: And he says just thinking of those three things and
Speaker 4: letting his mind wander to more helped him during a
Speaker 4: really deep depression. So gratitude journaling delights whatever you want
Speaker 4: to call it. Jarrett calls his his do Not Kill
Speaker 4: Yourself List, which is kind of like the Miami Cola
Speaker 4: Bang energy drink of a gratitude practice branding. Would you
Speaker 4: agree that's my favorite Bang flavor?
Speaker 23: Is it really Miami Cola that's on the list?
Speaker 14: Again, your brain is going to focus on whatever you
Speaker 14: give it data for. So if you give it data
Speaker 14: about things that you're feeling really grateful about or that
Speaker 14: are really delightful, that's what your brain's going to start noticing.
Speaker 4: I love that you just are. You're constantly filling evidence
Speaker 4: folders for like things are shitty and things are good.
Speaker 4: It's like what are you putting in your evidence folder?
Speaker 4: Pretty much?
Speaker 14: And it's not just like you know what you're picking,
Speaker 14: it's like you're training your brain to look for that stuff.
Speaker 14: In my podcast, I interview this fantastic guest, Ross guy,
Speaker 14: who's a poet and an essays who is this book
Speaker 14: called the Book of Delights And he decided that for
Speaker 14: every day for a year after his birthday, he would
Speaker 14: write an essay about something that delighted him. And he
Speaker 14: talks about how at first he was like really worried,
Speaker 14: like am I really going to find things that really
Speaker 14: delight me? And he said that, you know, even just
Speaker 14: a week in, like he'd kind of tuned his mind
Speaker 14: to find these things. You know, walking down the street
Speaker 14: you be like, oh, that dude's T shirt is delightful,
Speaker 14: Like oh, that like kat on the street is delightful.
Speaker 14: Like he just he just kind of shifted his perception
Speaker 14: and tuned his mind more towards the good things than
Speaker 14: the bad things. Our brains evolutionarily are naturally tuned towards
Speaker 14: the bad things. Make sense, you want to see the
Speaker 14: tiger that's going to jump out at you. But we
Speaker 14: can control that tuning and just by you know, like
Speaker 14: taking some explicit work to pay attention to the things
Speaker 14: we're grateful for, to the things that delight us, to
Speaker 14: the good stuff out there.
Speaker 4: So yes, Ross Gae the Book of Delights and again
Speaker 4: check out Neil has re work and his ostomology episode.
Speaker 4: Another fun project. Start a private Twitter just for yourself
Speaker 4: and chronicle delights of your own, or a private Instagram
Speaker 4: account or something. Also, I should note that in recording
Speaker 4: this episode, the Internet dropped out a few times, so
Speaker 4: I had to email doctor Santos a new link during it,
Speaker 4: and she has an auto reply message explaining that she
Speaker 4: may not write back, and it explains that she gets
Speaker 4: more than one hundred emails a day and it reads
Speaker 4: in part quote keeping up with that many questions slash
Speaker 4: requests meant that I was hurting my own time affluence
Speaker 4: and having less time for the important projects I really
Speaker 4: should be prioritizing. And so I am currently trying my
Speaker 4: own personal wellbeing experiment. I'm going to try to practice
Speaker 4: what I preach and reduce the amount of time I
Speaker 4: usually spend on email. Thanks for your understanding as I
Speaker 4: try not to overcommit and protect myself from burning out. Oh,
Speaker 4: I love her totally solid major props for walking her talk.
Speaker 4: She is the best. So ask smart people, not smart questions,
Speaker 4: and don't be afraid to seek out happiness where you
Speaker 4: can find it. You absolutely deserve it. And without self
Speaker 4: care and managing mental health wellness, we can't help others
Speaker 4: or fight the good fights. So that is a reminder
Speaker 4: to you. Also to me, summer is far from over too.
Speaker 4: It's not too late for me to hustle. I can
Speaker 4: still cover batology, which did you know is a study
Speaker 4: of brambles to learn the intricacies of raspberries and blackberries. Man,
Speaker 4: I love a bramble. We're also really overdue for a
Speaker 4: hydrology episode about water, and you know what, why don't
Speaker 4: I know jack shit about heliology because we've never done
Speaker 4: an episode on the sun and we need it. Which
Speaker 4: also brings us to melanology, which is an actual science
Speaker 4: of skin pigment. I want to hear everything. I want
Speaker 4: to do that one too, So perhaps the summer I
Speaker 4: can deliver a few of those two. We'll see what
Speaker 4: we can do. And thank you for hanging out with
Speaker 4: me on your vacations or just your regular weekday work days.
Speaker 4: Thank you to every patron at patreon dot com slash
Speaker 4: ologies for supporting the show. Thank you to Aaron Talbert,
Speaker 4: who addmins the Ologies podcast Facebook group with This is
Speaker 4: from Bonni Dutch and Shannon and felt Us of that
Speaker 4: comedy podcast you are that. Hello to the Ologies folks
Speaker 4: on Reddit. Thank you to Susan Hale who handles ologies,
Speaker 4: merched dot and so much else. Noel Dilworth does our scheduling.
Speaker 4: Emily White of the Wordery makes professional transcripts. Caleb Patten
Speaker 4: bleeps episode, so if you hate bad words, you can
Speaker 4: listen with them bleeped via alleywar dot com slash ologiestash extras.
Speaker 4: We also have thirteen episodes so far that have been
Speaker 4: trimmed of filth and truncated for little attention spans and
Speaker 4: those are called smologies. Those are in your feed. They're
Speaker 4: also all available at aliwar dot com slash smologies. Thank
Speaker 4: you Zekrodriguez Thomas for heading that up, with assists from
Speaker 4: Mercedes Maitland and Stephen Ray Morris. Kelly R. Dwyer does
Speaker 4: website design. She can do yours too. She's linked in
Speaker 4: the show notes. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and
Speaker 4: huge thanks to Mercedes Maitland andrews Leeber, both of Mindjam
Speaker 4: Media for pulling all these clips for me as I
Speaker 4: had this dream of a Balmy compilation. I am married
Speaker 4: to only one of those two people, but you're both wonderful.
Speaker 4: If you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 4: you know I tell you a secret. Lately, y'all have
Speaker 4: been tuning in to hear how my dad is doing.
Speaker 4: Just to catch you up, he has a blood cancer
Speaker 4: called multiple maloma. You can listen to the twenty eighteen
Speaker 4: hematology episode about it, and that led to more cancers,
Speaker 4: including long tumors, and we found out he had a
Speaker 4: malignant brain tumor in April, and after fighting for nine years,
Speaker 4: his oncologists decided it's time to stop treatment. So we're
Speaker 4: with him now. During his hospice Jarret and I have
Speaker 4: relocated to a mattress in my sister's hallway. The last
Speaker 4: few months, we're by his side with him and my
Speaker 4: mom and my family, just to soak up time and
Speaker 4: help him with what he needs. Yeah, it's been beautiful.
Speaker 4: It's also been the hardest time of our lives. Hospice
Speaker 4: has ups and downs, but we're lucky. Right now, he's
Speaker 4: feeling really present. He's getting up by himself in the
Speaker 4: middle of the night without ringing his bell for help,
Speaker 4: despite our begging him too. We had a really good
Speaker 4: Father's Day. We made him his favorite rhubarb pie, only rhubarb,
Speaker 4: no strawberries allowed in Grandpa's rhubart pie. And we give
Speaker 4: him a pomegranate tree. It's his favorite fruit for some
Speaker 4: sentimental reasons. Story for another episode. But it's been a
Speaker 4: really rough week for me personally and in America for
Speaker 4: any people who do not want religion based minoritarian rule
Speaker 4: in their highest courts. And I speak from my own
Speaker 4: past experience, just when I say it can be a
Speaker 4: lot easier to chant for hours at a protest, then
Speaker 4: it can be to stand up to blood relatives and
Speaker 4: tell them how their votes oppress people that they.
Speaker 17: Will never meet.
Speaker 4: So if you'll shout it at a march, or you'll
Speaker 4: repost it on Instagram, then consider dropping some facts in
Speaker 4: the fam chat. If you have a mixed political family
Speaker 4: like I do, I'm kind of the blue sheep in
Speaker 4: a red family. If I'm being honest, it's pretty fucked
Speaker 4: up time just all around. My voice is hoarse from
Speaker 4: crying and maybe from COVID as my sister just tested
Speaker 4: positive after hanging out with us and my parents. So
Speaker 4: a little stressed, but we're getting through it day by day.
Speaker 4: Another secret, if you want one, is it when it
Speaker 4: comes to mango. I like it crunchy, just I like
Speaker 4: my fruit crisp, and I like it under ripe, even
Speaker 4: a little tannic. And my favorite part of a pineapple,
Speaker 4: if you must know, is the that fibery core that
Speaker 4: everyone throws away and give it to me. Let me
Speaker 4: not on it like a rope dipped in sugar.
Speaker 20: It's weird.
Speaker 4: I don't care those that's all my secrets. You guys.
Speaker 20: Take care, Good day, Bye bye.
Speaker 5: I'm Summer.
Speaker 12: Summer