Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the rock in your pocket. Ali Ward
Speaker 1: back with Part two of Geology. Have you listen to
Speaker 1: part one?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: If you haven't, go back listen to part one. It's
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes. It covers everything from what
Speaker 1: the hell is rock? To what's a boulder? Is sand rocks?
Speaker 1: What's a mineral? How do we read rocks? Why are
Speaker 1: they different colors? And what is the most low stakes
Speaker 1: free hobby in the world involving a gravel driveway? Okay,
Speaker 1: so listen to one and then now let's get to
Speaker 1: part two. So this guest is once again beloved by
Speaker 1: all getting their PhD at Oregon State studying paleoclimate and
Speaker 1: glacial geology, and this follow up episode will answer questions
Speaker 1: from hundreds of listeners who left their queries via patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash ologies, where you can join for a
Speaker 1: dollar a month that gives you the heads up on
Speaker 1: upcoming episodes and it lets you leave questions for theologists.
Speaker 1: So thank you patrons for supporting the show from day one.
Speaker 1: Thank you also to any listener who rates and subscribes
Speaker 1: and especially leaves reviews.
Speaker 3: I read them all.
Speaker 1: This week I picked Clifton's to read and they said,
Speaker 1: Ologies is a magic school bus reboot none of us
Speaker 1: knew we wanted, but better because it includes real scientists,
Speaker 1: social scientists, audio memes, and cursing Clifton Thornton.
Speaker 3: I'll take it.
Speaker 1: Also, if you don't want cursing, you can check out
Speaker 1: the g rated Smologies episodes, which are linked in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Okay, Part two Geology, Pull up a petrified
Speaker 1: stump and get ready for geodes, long hikes, lab grown diamonds.
Speaker 3: Fossilized trees, space rocks, lead poisoning ponds, and their favorite
Speaker 3: ever rock with lifelong lithophile and your new favorite geologist
Speaker 3: Schmidty Thompson. Have some time for me to keep you
Speaker 3: a little bit longer?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely, I've got no word to be god? Yeah,
Speaker 4: can I make it a chief harder?
Speaker 3: We should see, and we did. Thank you for being.
Speaker 5: So patient of my very uninformed questions.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no. It's great.
Speaker 5: If someone comes to me like tell me about rocks,
Speaker 5: like why is that not a great thing? Like that,
Speaker 5: I get to be the person to tell them. Because
Speaker 5: that's why I love talking about geology is just because
Speaker 5: I think it's neat all right.
Speaker 3: I thought This was a great question.
Speaker 1: Amanda McClendon, Ariel Belch and Roda Vacaria wanted to know
Speaker 1: is ice a rock?
Speaker 4: Ice rock?
Speaker 5: That's a good question, and I don't think I have
Speaker 5: a good definitive answer well now, because if you look
Speaker 5: at just the very technical definition of what is a mineral,
Speaker 5: ice fits a lot of those properties.
Speaker 1: So, as we covered in Part one, a mineral is
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring inorganic element or compound that has an
Speaker 1: orderly internal structure. It has a crystal form and physical properties.
Speaker 1: So ice kind of checks out.
Speaker 5: But the thing that's different about ice is about, you know,
Speaker 5: what kind of states that exists in relative to other rocks.
Speaker 5: So for in the most part, you know, when you're
Speaker 5: thinking about when does the rock become a liquid rock,
Speaker 5: that happens at very very high temperatures. When rocks are
Speaker 5: moving through our Earth systems, they're going to be behaving
Speaker 5: very differently than when ice would be moving through the
Speaker 5: same rains of temperatures. If you're a heat up a
Speaker 5: rock until it became lava magma, ice would just be
Speaker 5: vapor by that point. So I think it makes sense
Speaker 5: in some ways. You know, we're looking at the technicality
Speaker 5: and like, yeah, this fits in all of the same categories.
Speaker 5: But then in terms of thinking about you know, how
Speaker 5: does this material interact with in Earth systems? Like how
Speaker 5: does it behave? How does it influence the nature of
Speaker 5: our planet? Ice is kind of in its own category, y'all.
Speaker 1: There is debate about this and I triple checked, and
Speaker 1: if it seems to icy, it's because it is.
Speaker 3: But here's low down.
Speaker 1: So a mineral needs to be composed of solids, and
Speaker 1: water is not a solid, So no, the ice cubes
Speaker 1: in your freezer are not minerals or rocks. However, if
Speaker 1: it is naturally occurring ice like a snowbank that has
Speaker 1: solidified or a glacier, them's a rock.
Speaker 3: A glacier is a rock. How hot does rock have
Speaker 3: to be to melt or does that really depend on
Speaker 3: the rock?
Speaker 5: It really depends on the rock. And it's actually part
Speaker 5: of the reasons we're not just surrounded by one rock
Speaker 5: is that different minerals crystallize different temperatures.
Speaker 4: So when you have.
Speaker 5: A blob of magma moving up through the Earth's crust,
Speaker 5: it's going to be cooling, and as it's cooling, some
Speaker 5: minerals might cool and drop out and sit at the
Speaker 5: bottom and be left behind. And so that means that
Speaker 5: that's one way for our Earth system people to sort like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe a lot of the minerals that are
Speaker 5: like deep in the sound of the Earth are going
Speaker 5: to be really rich in things like iron and magnesium.
Speaker 5: But as different kinds of minerals are crystallizing and cooling
Speaker 5: and being left behind by magma moving, that's the way
Speaker 5: to concentrate different amounts of elements in different kinds of rocks.
Speaker 5: And so that's part of the reason that Earth is
Speaker 5: the way it is is because we have, you know,
Speaker 5: all these tectonic plates moving around, and we have this
Speaker 5: mantle that is moving material around, and as rocks and
Speaker 5: minerals are moving through igneous and sedimentary and metamorphic rocks,
Speaker 5: it's kind of acting like it's sorting out different concentrations
Speaker 5: of elements into different parts of the planet.
Speaker 1: So, yes, rocks and water are acting like colanders and
Speaker 1: sorting heavier elements and minerals, which then link up in
Speaker 1: crystalline structures, sometimes in the cracks and spaces of other rocks,
Speaker 1: which is why there might be, for example, a vein
Speaker 1: of quartz in granite. Now, if there is a lot
Speaker 1: of silica dissolved in water, quartz rocks like amethyst might
Speaker 1: form or agis.
Speaker 3: And if the water has just a boatload of copper.
Speaker 1: In it, years and years down the line, turquoise or
Speaker 1: malachite might form, And gems and rocks can form sixty
Speaker 1: feet to twenty five miles deep in the earth, but some,
Speaker 1: like diamonds and parado.
Speaker 2: Are a little bit more shy.
Speaker 1: They crystallize as deep as one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: miles below the surface of Earth, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five miles deep in volcanic tunnels called kimberlite pipes and
Speaker 1: weird fact, all diamonds are roughly one to three billion
Speaker 1: years old, all of them.
Speaker 3: They're old. They're special.
Speaker 1: But historically diamond mining can come with a true human cost,
Speaker 1: and they've been mined in war zones and some of
Speaker 1: the money is used to fund more wars. Russia is
Speaker 1: a huge diamond exporter, and recent sanctions mean fewer diamonds
Speaker 1: on the market, which means Sillennials and gen z Folks
Speaker 1: are looking to get hitched using other gems or lab
Speaker 1: grown diamonds, which are actual structural diamonds totally legit diamonds,
Speaker 1: but up to seventy three percent cheaper, and they're more
Speaker 1: sustainably made. The resale value is less, but so are
Speaker 1: the ethical bummers. But the lesson here is that the
Speaker 1: only thing we can really rely on, the only constant,
Speaker 1: is change. So yes, your life might feel like it's
Speaker 1: melting under the boiling, hellish pressure of the entire earth,
Speaker 1: but something new and shinier and stronger is on its way.
Speaker 1: Just give it a few billion years.
Speaker 5: And that allows us to get all of the beautiful
Speaker 5: variations of rocks that we have. So like, if you're
Speaker 5: to go to other planets, they're not going to have
Speaker 5: as many different kinds of rocks as we are because
Speaker 5: they don't have the tectonic system that allows the different
Speaker 5: kinds of.
Speaker 4: Rocks to develop.
Speaker 5: Oh So, like the rocks we have today were very
Speaker 5: different from the rocks that first formed four point five
Speaker 5: billion years ago.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that there might be completely different rocks
Speaker 1: that don't exist now in the future.
Speaker 4: That's a really good question.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't know the answer to that, but
Speaker 5: I know who I would ask about that, so I
Speaker 5: might get back to you.
Speaker 1: So Schmidty asked a friend who said that the planet
Speaker 1: will settle at a lower temperature but have the same pressure,
Speaker 1: which will stabilize the kind of rocks produced so same.
Speaker 1: But Schmitty's friend wasn't sure if that would produce any
Speaker 1: minerals we don't already have to be determined by a
Speaker 1: time machine and a pickax. But what about on other planets?
Speaker 1: So this next question was asked by patrons Gig Katie King,
Speaker 1: Will kingen Ron Dagdag, and Gina Woolsey and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people wanted to know. Gina says, space rocks
Speaker 1: are cool. What are some of the coolest things found
Speaker 1: via space rocks, either ones that have landed to the
Speaker 1: Earth or ones that are still in space. And then
Speaker 1: Stephen Woo wants to know, how do we know if
Speaker 1: a rock is from space? And Alice rubens chimed in,
Speaker 1: all rocks are from space. Technically we are also from space.
Speaker 1: Do you have thoughts on space rocks?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, thos on space rocks.
Speaker 5: So space rocks are really cool because depending on where
Speaker 5: it formed, that can tell us a lot about parts
Speaker 5: of the Solar System that are really hurt to reach.
Speaker 5: And so you know, a lot of our space rocks
Speaker 5: are from I'm not expert on meteorites. This is just
Speaker 5: a very broad overview, but a lot of the space
Speaker 5: rocks formed when the rest of the planet's rocky plants
Speaker 5: are forming, so they're just space dust that hasn't been
Speaker 5: through the formation of a planet before. But we can
Speaker 5: also get space rocks from the Moon, from the.
Speaker 4: Planet Moon from the planet the Moon.
Speaker 5: Star, so you have rocks from the Moon and sometimes
Speaker 5: land on our planet. We also have rocks from Mars
Speaker 5: that have made it to the Earth. Love that, so
Speaker 5: we actually have rocks from Mars that we can study
Speaker 5: because at some point Mars got hit by a meteor
Speaker 5: meteorite and some Martian rocks get ejected into space and
Speaker 5: they landed on Earth.
Speaker 1: For more on this, you can listen to the Areology
Speaker 1: episode about Mars with doctor Jennifer Booze, which not just
Speaker 1: Martian rocks, but also the time doctor Booze got to
Speaker 1: handle Moon rocks and it didn't go well and she
Speaker 1: lost her marbles. Also, the Selenology episode with rock hel
Speaker 1: Nuno is all about the Moon and we have it
Speaker 1: as a Smology's episode in case you have small young
Speaker 1: people who want to learn about the Moon. Smology's episodes
Speaker 1: are linked in the show notes. They're friendly for all ages.
Speaker 1: They're free. Speaking of ages, Schmidi says that Iowa borne
Speaker 1: geochemist doctor Claire Patterson had a bright idea to figure
Speaker 1: out how old the planet is? How old is this
Speaker 1: thing we're living on?
Speaker 5: But actually, I think one of the coolest things to
Speaker 5: come out of studying space rocks is not necessarily about
Speaker 5: the space rocks, but that's how we first figured out
Speaker 5: how old a planet was was using space rocks. When
Speaker 5: we were starting to figure out the age of the Earth,
Speaker 5: someone had the idea that a lot of these space
Speaker 5: rocks probably formed at the same time that the Earth did.
Speaker 5: And one of the really cool things that you can
Speaker 5: do if you're doing chemistry on a rock is you
Speaker 5: can use little tiny bits of radioactive elements inside to
Speaker 5: rock to how old it is. And so a lot
Speaker 5: of the rocks will incorporate tiny trace amounts of radioactive
Speaker 5: elements like uranium into them, and when the rock is
Speaker 5: still a blot of magma or it's space material, that
Speaker 5: uranium is decaying and it's producing things like lead, and
Speaker 5: that's just getting mixed up when a rock hardens it
Speaker 5: becomes a rock. That crystal structure is going to trap
Speaker 5: anything the decaying radioactive uranium produces inside it, and so
Speaker 5: it's kind of like a timer. And so if you
Speaker 5: can get a piece of a rock that has litle
Speaker 5: tiny bits of radioactive uranium in it, and you can
Speaker 5: look how much uranium is there and how much lead
Speaker 5: is next to it, you can get an idea of
Speaker 5: how long it's been since that rock formed and that
Speaker 5: timer started, and that would be about how old the
Speaker 5: Earth is. And so a while back, we were able
Speaker 5: to get the age of four point five billion years
Speaker 5: from a meteorite, and that age of the Earth has
Speaker 5: stood the test of time, like, that's a pretty darn
Speaker 5: good estimates. When we are trying to figure out how
Speaker 5: much urine even led there wasn't these meteorites. I think
Speaker 5: this was in the thirties or the forties.
Speaker 4: You had to.
Speaker 5: Measure how much lad there was in the sample. And
Speaker 5: this was back when we still had lead in gasoline.
Speaker 5: And so the scientist who was trying to measure the
Speaker 5: sled was getting weird results, and so he started trying
Speaker 5: to figure out where is the sled coming from and
Speaker 5: so he developed a lot of modern green room procedures
Speaker 5: because lead was in the air, it was in his hair,
Speaker 5: it was in its glows, and so he went on
Speaker 5: to be a really active voice against environmental lead because
Speaker 5: he became so aware of that was in everything, because
Speaker 5: it was contaminating all his samples.
Speaker 3: So get the lead out, that is all.
Speaker 1: So yes, doctor Clara Patterson, well done, High fives. So
Speaker 1: we covered this in the Ludology episode about video games
Speaker 1: with doctor Jane McGonagall. And why were we chatting about
Speaker 1: like atari and lead toxicity in the same episode because
Speaker 1: of something called the lead violence hypothesis. So lead poisoning
Speaker 1: affects developing brains in ways that can lead to aggression
Speaker 1: and impulsivity and impaired executive functions. And what do you know,
Speaker 1: Lead and gasoline post World War two meant a baby
Speaker 1: boom that was maturing into individuals more likely to commit
Speaker 1: violent crimes. And a twenty eighteen Mother Jones article explains, quote,
Speaker 1: every year the population of teenagers with lead poisoning increased,
Speaker 1: and violent crime increased with it. This is why the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties were eras in which crime skyrocketed quote.
Speaker 1: So why is this. Neuroscientists have found that because lead
Speaker 1: is chemically similar to calcium, it displaces the calcium needed
Speaker 1: for normal brain development. And the data is just staggering,
Speaker 1: and bands of leaded gasoline and lead paint correspond to
Speaker 1: these huge drops in violent crime. Again, well done, doctor
Speaker 1: Claire Patterson. You also had to work on I'm the
Speaker 1: atom Bomb too, but thanks for figuring out the lead
Speaker 1: stuff and that Earth is four point five four three
Speaker 1: billion years old, give or take fifty million years. I
Speaker 1: liked Benjamin's question, Benjamin wants to know geology seems like
Speaker 1: a big deal. My question is, how do you think
Speaker 1: chocolate candy rocks look? Did they do a good job?
Speaker 5: I should have a funny story about that. I had
Speaker 5: some really amazing chocolate rocks. They were probably that size,
Speaker 5: like an egg, painted with these beautiful metallic edible pains,
Speaker 5: and I was like, this looks pretty convincing. And it's
Speaker 5: really hard to identify a rock by picture because a
Speaker 5: lot of rock id is like picking it up and
Speaker 5: feeling it and moving it around and looking at the
Speaker 5: crystals and looking at it under a microscope, licking it delicious,
Speaker 5: and so it's really hard, Like a lot of people
Speaker 5: send me pictures of rocks, and I oftentimes can't give
Speaker 5: them a good answer what it is. But I thought,
Speaker 5: let's just try this, so I sent a picture of
Speaker 5: this chocolate rocks and geology friends. It was like, what
Speaker 5: do you think this is? And they all gave rock answers,
Speaker 5: and then I sent the back picture of the rock
Speaker 5: dropped in half, showing.
Speaker 4: It with chocolate. The were all these pos So a
Speaker 4: lot of chocolate rocks for a pretty.
Speaker 1: Good job mischief, good natured fun with just a dash
Speaker 1: of endearing evil schmidty.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Miranda Panda wants to know if you saw the news
Speaker 1: story about the large boulder the size of a small
Speaker 1: boulder on the side of the road, and if you
Speaker 1: had thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: I did see that.
Speaker 5: I didn't ever read the article about it, but that's
Speaker 5: really funny to me because I feel like boulder is
Speaker 5: one of those many funny words that a lot of
Speaker 5: people in science interact with. It has a technical definition,
Speaker 5: like there is a size of rock that above which
Speaker 5: a rock is a boulder, but you know, the boulder
Speaker 5: is a very common colloquial term, So I would I
Speaker 5: would love to track down that article and see like
Speaker 5: exactly who was using the world boulder and should they
Speaker 5: have known better?
Speaker 1: I know, I want, I want to reach out to
Speaker 1: them and see if they meant a large boulder the
Speaker 1: size of a small car or what they were thinking
Speaker 1: if it was just like just a brain fart. But okay,
Speaker 1: side note, if you are just blissfully off of the Internet,
Speaker 1: you may have missed when a Colorado Sheriff's office tweeted
Speaker 1: a photo of a geological road obstruction with the caption
Speaker 1: large boulder the size of a small is completely blocking
Speaker 1: eastbound lane Highway one forty five at silver Pick Road.
Speaker 3: Please use caution.
Speaker 1: This was in January twenty twenty, when pre pandemic Twitter
Speaker 1: was still sometimes used for things like silliness and chuckling
Speaker 1: at typos and yes. In a subsequent interview, I went
Speaker 1: and found this. I dug around the public information officer
Speaker 1: who drafted that tweet, Susan Lily, admitted that she definitely
Speaker 1: meant a large boulder the size of a small car,
Speaker 1: but that large boulder sized small oopsie was just cute
Speaker 1: as hell and anyway, language has a real plasticity to it. Oh,
Speaker 1: speaking of that, Mohammed Farco and also Jules Clement, first
Speaker 1: time question asker. Jules says, we have the bronze age,
Speaker 1: the iron age, are we now in the plastic age?
Speaker 3: And Mohammad wants to know.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've read there's a new type of rock that
Speaker 1: consists of plastics called plastic i glomerates, and my question
Speaker 1: is how does that happen and what does it mean
Speaker 1: in the larger scheme of things? Also, eke, are there
Speaker 1: plastic rocks chocolate rocks? But are their plastic ones?
Speaker 4: There are?
Speaker 5: So there is something that we consider plastic rocks. So
Speaker 5: just like how sand and silt and clay moves through
Speaker 5: sort of a system, you can get a little bit
Speaker 5: of plastic that are really really really really resistant to
Speaker 5: degrading that are going to be moving through our rivers
Speaker 5: and our oceans and they're gonna glomp together the same
Speaker 5: way sand does. And so that's going to become part
Speaker 5: of our geologic record.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about it?
Speaker 4: I don't feel good about it.
Speaker 5: Plastic is if you're thinking geologically about the things humans
Speaker 5: are going to do that are going to leave an
Speaker 5: impact on our planet, Plastic is a big one. Because
Speaker 5: everything in our Earth is constantly cycling and so I
Speaker 5: think there's a lot of real advantages to using products
Speaker 5: that will eventually go back into the cycle of materials
Speaker 5: moving through the earth, and plastic very much is not
Speaker 5: one of them.
Speaker 3: When you're sitting on the beach, you're looking at sand,
Speaker 3: do you see plastics in there?
Speaker 5: I do see plastic, and if if I can reasonably
Speaker 5: assume that it's not something that was gross, I I
Speaker 5: try and pick it up. I'm a habitual trash picker.
Speaker 5: Upper I was up to mpt by pockets before I
Speaker 5: do laundry.
Speaker 1: That happened with me today and I found some garbage
Speaker 1: in the pocket. Then I forget where I even picked.
Speaker 3: It up, but it was in there.
Speaker 4: I always have to do that.
Speaker 1: Let's all aspire to find trash in our pockets on
Speaker 1: laundry day, or even better, throw the trash away and
Speaker 1: wash our disgusting hands as soon as we see a
Speaker 1: garbage can.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Chandler Witherington and Corey Francis Parks want to know first
Speaker 1: time question. Ask for Corey, where do you even start
Speaker 1: as an amateur geology fan. Chandler wants to know are
Speaker 1: there any apps that you recommend to help identify rocks?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess unless the app licks the rock,
Speaker 1: are you just fresh out of luck?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I don't have any good apps to identify rocks. But
Speaker 5: the two things I recommend would be you can go
Speaker 5: to a local bookstore sometimes they'll have local rock guides,
Speaker 5: or you can get like a paper I still have,
Speaker 5: you know, I have two various field guides to rock
Speaker 5: and minerals books that I've been carrying around with me
Speaker 5: for many years. And then there's a website and recommend
Speaker 5: if people are really interested in learning about rocks. There's
Speaker 5: a website called mindat that you can look it up,
Speaker 5: and it's just this really comprehensive database and you can
Speaker 5: spend a lot of time there. Along with having all
Speaker 5: sorts of chemical information about the rock, there's also you
Speaker 5: can look at pictures of them, and there's oftentimes pictures
Speaker 5: of both what this rock looks like in sort of
Speaker 5: everyday situations and then also just these beautiful pictures he's
Speaker 5: been hours staring at.
Speaker 3: So that was mindat dot org.
Speaker 1: M I ndat dot org, and I just accidentally went
Speaker 1: on and looked at citrens for forty five minutes, and
Speaker 1: then I fell down a hole looking at different types
Speaker 1: of corundum, which can be rubies and sapphires. Thanks Mindat,
Speaker 1: I fucked on my deadlines. But rocks are pretty so yeah.
Speaker 5: I recommend going to a local bookstore and just seeing
Speaker 5: what field guides are available there, and then some areas
Speaker 5: also will have sometimes there'll be a rockhounting groups of
Speaker 5: rockhounting is a practice where you go and specifically go
Speaker 5: out and field to collect rocks. Sometimes you'll have a
Speaker 5: logical society trying to find like a local resource for
Speaker 5: what kind of rocks are in your area, and they're
Speaker 5: just going out picking them up and using your field
Speaker 5: guide to trying to identify them. Because really the best
Speaker 5: way to get to know the rocks and figure out
Speaker 5: how to identify them is just to just practice.
Speaker 1: Well, we did have a lot of people who asked
Speaker 1: about rock collecting and rock hounding, and I'll list their names. Delaney,
Speaker 1: Lizzy car Jesse, Dragon, Niki de Marco, Ronya Shy Kly,
Speaker 1: Katherine Griffith, Jodi Pierce, Jesse, b Gen's Girl, Alvarez, Nina,
Speaker 1: Gia Kabe, Kelly Simon, bex Wood, driff Amina, Abby d Artist,
Speaker 1: Kristin Rosenblum, Anastasia Doherty, Jenna Congdon and first time question
Speaker 1: asker Amy Banco and Brianna Armandarz. First time question asker
Speaker 1: wants to know why do you think humans are fascinated
Speaker 1: with rocks? Why when we see a cool rock, are
Speaker 1: we like I got to announce this. Why do you
Speaker 1: think people love them so much?
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: If I'm speaking from my own heart, it's just because
Speaker 5: they're so cool, Like, it's really fun to get to
Speaker 5: just be out in the environment and look down at
Speaker 5: the ground and see something beautiful. So you know, whether
Speaker 5: it's like a really smooth ray river pebble that you
Speaker 5: can like touch and feel, and or it's you know,
Speaker 5: a sort of more quartzy and more sort of gemstony
Speaker 5: crystal or a geo that you can find. It's really
Speaker 5: amazing to just be out in the world wherever you
Speaker 5: go and find something beautiful. And I think once you
Speaker 5: start to learn more about them, it's amazing to be
Speaker 5: able to just go literally anywhere and pick up a
Speaker 5: rock and get to know a little bit more about
Speaker 5: the place they're in.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so glad you mentioned geodes, by the way.
Speaker 1: On that note, Paige McLachlan Megan A, Jody Pierce, Chinett,
Speaker 1: Mass McCurdy, Frederick Raymond Cursel, Harper, Thomas Delaney, Amy cray
Speaker 1: all had geode questions, and they were not the only ones,
Speaker 1: because I got to ask Emily Sanchez wants to know
Speaker 1: what's up with geodes?
Speaker 3: Are they rocks? Are they crystals?
Speaker 2: Both?
Speaker 1: Grace Rubbis Show wants to know. Are the amethyst geos
Speaker 1: sold at museums even real?
Speaker 3: What is a geode?
Speaker 4: Yeah, a geode? I don't know.
Speaker 5: The technical definition knops off my head, but my best
Speaker 5: understanding of geodes is you have an empty cavity or
Speaker 5: some kind of empty space in a rock, and usually
Speaker 5: water is going to be moving through that and that's
Speaker 5: going to allow crystals to grow from the outside in,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 4: They are a rock.
Speaker 5: One way to maybe go looking for them is if
Speaker 5: you can understand the layers of like what rocks in general,
Speaker 5: like what are the rocks in the area. A lot
Speaker 5: of the times, different layers of rocks can really well documented,
Speaker 5: and so you can know if you're going into the field, like, oh,
Speaker 5: the rocks in my environment are going to be this
Speaker 5: kind of rock they formed at this time, and you
Speaker 5: know they have the right conditions performing geodes. But yeahs
Speaker 5: they're so beautiful, getting all those crystals that are grown
Speaker 5: in from the outside.
Speaker 4: I just love them.
Speaker 5: And a lot of the amethyst is a very common
Speaker 5: form of quarts, so a lot of the times if
Speaker 5: you see them being sold, there's a good chance that
Speaker 5: they naturally relate that. But I do know sometimes if
Speaker 5: you go to, for example, gift shop and you see
Speaker 5: brightly neon colored gemstones, I'm pretty sure there are processes
Speaker 5: with which you can dye minerals, so not everything you
Speaker 5: can go buy in a store is going to be
Speaker 5: naturally colored.
Speaker 1: So yes, remember how a lot of citrine points you
Speaker 1: see a really heated amethyst, Well, if you never spot
Speaker 1: a citrine geode in a shop, it's probably an amethyst
Speaker 1: one with a little help from an oven to turn
Speaker 1: it yellow, which is still amazing and beautiful. But natural
Speaker 1: catrins don't usually geode. So geodes are rocks that form
Speaker 1: with a pocket in them, kind of like a peda.
Speaker 1: And maybe it was a bubble in volcanic ash. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was a tree root or a dead prehistoric rat.
Speaker 1: Either way, that thing dissolves over time and water gets
Speaker 1: in in the minerals in that water allow the crystalline
Speaker 1: rocks to form in the empty peda pocket. Deserts are
Speaker 1: a good place to find geodes, and so is Iowa,
Speaker 1: a state at one point known as the geode capital
Speaker 1: of the world. And this led me down a hole
Speaker 1: to learn about some solid rocks that have an agate
Speaker 1: in the center. And they're called rhyolite spheriolites professionally, but
Speaker 1: you can also call them thunder eggs, so named by
Speaker 1: some because Pacific Northwest indigenous tribes considered them to be
Speaker 1: tossed around by the thunder gods. And it's Oregon state rock,
Speaker 1: the thunder egg. Florida's is agatized coral, which is like
Speaker 1: a thunder egg, but it's a little bit more oceanic.
Speaker 1: Utah State rock coal, Okay, but Mississippi has an interesting,
Speaker 1: a good state rock, which was on the minds of
Speaker 1: patrons Cole Robertson, Emily Kreeger, Rachel Kendrick, and Sonya Bird zero,
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about next. But at this
Speaker 1: point I was just petrified of taking up too much
Speaker 1: of Schmidy's time. Sorry, we're just throwing so many quests.
Speaker 4: I'm nowhere to be I love this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Alex Suarez and so many other people want to
Speaker 1: know what's up with petrified wood?
Speaker 3: Is it wood? Is it rock? I need answers.
Speaker 4: That's great. I love petrified wood.
Speaker 5: So petrified what happens when you have wood in an
Speaker 5: environment where it's been separated out from things sort of
Speaker 5: like biological processes that will decay it away. And what
Speaker 5: happens is as water is moving through wood, for example,
Speaker 5: has been buried in sediments that were organic, structure is
Speaker 5: going to be replaced with minerals. And so in the end,
Speaker 5: when petrified wood, when all that are getting material has
Speaker 5: been replaced with rock material, then that's become petrified wood.
Speaker 4: And so that is a.
Speaker 2: Rock, although I'm d I'm a rock.
Speaker 4: To my best understanding.
Speaker 5: And typically once that process is complete, there's no organic
Speaker 5: material left, but it's sort of it's the same process
Speaker 5: by which fossils form, and so all of that original
Speaker 5: material has been replaced.
Speaker 4: With rock and it's preserved the structure. So petrified wood
Speaker 4: is really cool.
Speaker 5: And I think, you know, going back to the question
Speaker 5: of collecting things, I think when it comes to collecting
Speaker 5: petrified wood, probably that's something you really want to be
Speaker 5: careful about, because rocks like petrified what are not the
Speaker 5: most common ever, and oftentimes they can be a really
Speaker 5: important scientific resource. And then there's a national either park
Speaker 5: round monument that's this whole petrified forest, and that's going
Speaker 5: to be somewhere where you really want to make sure
Speaker 5: you're leaving you know, these beautiful rocks like petrified wood behind,
Speaker 5: so that way future generations can enjoy them.
Speaker 1: Can you lick petrified wood? Yeah, the same way you
Speaker 1: can fossil. Will it stick to your tongue?
Speaker 4: I don't believe it will stick to your tongue.
Speaker 3: Oh good to know.
Speaker 4: But I have a.
Speaker 5: Piece of petrifriyed what I could go lick, But I
Speaker 5: don't think it will.
Speaker 4: Stick in my tongue.
Speaker 1: Report back, let me know it will at some point.
Speaker 1: Apparently tongues do not stick to petrified wood. So you
Speaker 1: heard it here. Let's lick petrified wood, but let's not
Speaker 1: steal it. Have a respectful look at it if you like.
Speaker 1: Maybe saunter over to the Petrified Forest National Park in
Speaker 1: northeastern Arizona, which even has a spot called the Rainbow Forest,
Speaker 1: which has what looks like tied eyed fossilized fallen trees.
Speaker 1: But if you're hell bent on owning petrified wood, I
Speaker 1: did find in my Google adventure that for seventy nine
Speaker 1: dollars plus tax, Creighton Barrel will ship you a slab
Speaker 1: of petrified wood that you can use as a cheese board.
Speaker 1: And I read the reviews for this item and they
Speaker 1: were full of disappointment, such as quote I just received
Speaker 1: this and it looks nothing like the picture. Not a
Speaker 1: single grain of wood color, just pure black. I understand
Speaker 1: that there are variations, it continues, but I could have
Speaker 1: spray painted a block black and it would look like
Speaker 1: this end quote. So you know, human beings, we purchase
Speaker 1: a slab of fucking majestic fossilized wood just for the
Speaker 1: purpose of serving cheese. We have it shipped to our doorstep,
Speaker 1: and it's never good enough. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: we're the worst species.
Speaker 3: But and a.
Speaker 1: Reminder that if you own cool stuff that is in
Speaker 1: limited supply on Earth that takes millions of years to form,
Speaker 1: specify in your will who gets it when you die.
Speaker 1: Write it on a post it note somewhere. Avoid it
Speaker 1: going in a landfill.
Speaker 3: You can do it. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1: Oh, speaking of easy Street, A bunch of you wrote
Speaker 1: in with a similar question, looking at you first time
Speaker 1: question asker Corey, Francis Parks, Maria Delgado Gomez, Lori Fishman,
Speaker 1: and Carson. A lot of people mentioned this phrase that
Speaker 1: I had never heard, uh, eric A Storvik, first time
Speaker 1: question asker, So naturally they had a few, but they said,
Speaker 1: why is rocks for jocks a thing? I had never
Speaker 1: heard this term before? Is this what people call like
Speaker 1: intro to geology class?
Speaker 5: What is that that's actually really interesting? I hadn't had
Speaker 5: heard that term until a couple of months ago. And
Speaker 5: my best understanding is in some environments, especially introductory level
Speaker 5: geology classes are seen as just not rigorous or not
Speaker 5: enjoyable or not important.
Speaker 2: Oh dare you?
Speaker 5: And I think that is really It makes me really sad,
Speaker 5: and I think it's kind of dangerous because learning about
Speaker 5: Earth's science is really important for not only being able
Speaker 5: to appreciate the world around us, but a lot of
Speaker 5: what's happening in today's society, whether it's about climate change
Speaker 5: or natural resources, mining, deforestation, understanding a lot of what's
Speaker 5: going on today, it's really important to have the geologic
Speaker 5: context for it. And you know, I don't think it's
Speaker 5: not that everyone needs to go become a geologist, but
Speaker 5: you know, having environments where people can go learn about
Speaker 5: Earth's science in a way that leaves them with an
Speaker 5: appreciation for it, I think is really really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it also seems hard. It seems like a hard field.
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 5: I really don't think geology is any more or less
Speaker 5: rigorous than physics or sociology or psychology. It's you know,
Speaker 5: it's its own science and its own complexities, and it's
Speaker 5: really interdisctionary. It is at the edge of a lot
Speaker 5: of fields, and it's really deeply painful to see geology
Speaker 5: look down. It's what I do for work, and I
Speaker 5: love it dearly, and I think it just it deserves
Speaker 5: as much a place as any other science in the
Speaker 5: public understanding.
Speaker 1: Because context is everything. And after listening to Schmidty's love
Speaker 1: of rocks, will you ever see a rock the same?
Speaker 1: I think you will not. Okay, so on more questions
Speaker 1: of yours. But first, before that, we donate to a
Speaker 1: cause of theologists choosing, and this week will split the
Speaker 1: donation to the first skype a Scientist, which is currently
Speaker 1: celebrating squid timber with some gorgeous squid stickers available at
Speaker 1: the link in the show note, and you can find
Speaker 1: out more about their mission to bring scientists into classrooms
Speaker 1: and other gatherings at skypascientists dot com. We'll also throw
Speaker 1: a donation to mind dot dot org, the world's largest
Speaker 1: open database of minerals, rocks, and meteorites and the localities
Speaker 1: they come from. So mindt dot org is run by
Speaker 1: the not for profit Hudson Institute of Mineralogy. It's linked
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Those donations were made possible by
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show. Thank you very much. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: get back to a very popular question. Ann Barnes, Lizziemarginetta Sword, Geo,
Speaker 1: Sassy Lee t Dave Schuster, Anna Thompson, Nancy K. Clark, Cassafrass,
Speaker 1: Hannah Matussek, Haleeboprix, Claire Irvine, Mocasey Sidney, Gina Woolsey, Michelle Dempsey,
Speaker 1: Matt Thompson, Abby Cox, r Gip seventeen, Jimmy Kishimoto, and
Speaker 1: Kelsey all asked about seeing geological formations, including patron Geochrissy,
Speaker 1: who wrote, from one geologist to another, I tell people
Speaker 1: I have a high visibility vest in my car for
Speaker 1: changing car tires, but is really for stopping at road
Speaker 1: cuttings to take a look. So overall, where should a
Speaker 1: person go to see some cool ass rocks?
Speaker 3: Oh? Wait, gosh, I have so many questions for you.
Speaker 4: Oh this is great.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk rock spotting, because there's so many
Speaker 1: times on the side of the road where you're like,
Speaker 1: why is that side of the road striped?
Speaker 3: What am I not knowing as I pass this?
Speaker 1: When it comes to rock spotting, what are some monuments
Speaker 1: that people might be familiar with or should be familiar with,
Speaker 1: and what are they seeing if you're in Moab or something,
Speaker 1: or you're driving past the Grand Canyon, or are there
Speaker 1: places that we can put geology in our heads just
Speaker 1: by looking out the window.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one basic thing that almost anyone can do is
Speaker 5: when you're passing by road cut and you relate the layers.
Speaker 5: So I think the idea of things forming in layers
Speaker 5: is really fun mental to a lot of science, and
Speaker 5: it's very very very fundamental to a lot of geology.
Speaker 5: One thing anyone can do is if you pass by
Speaker 5: a road cut, you can look at the layers of
Speaker 5: rock and if the layers are flat, you know that
Speaker 5: they're still in the way that they formed, because when
Speaker 5: rocks form, they form in flat layers, and it's always
Speaker 5: that the newest rocks are the ones on top, so
Speaker 5: you're always going younger as you go up and older
Speaker 5: as you go down, and that a lot of the times,
Speaker 5: if you're passing a road cut and so you see
Speaker 5: the layers are tilted or folded some way, you know
Speaker 5: that that whole section of rock has somehow been lifted up,
Speaker 5: either as the techtonic plates are moving around and as
Speaker 5: mountains are being built. Sometimes you can see road cuts
Speaker 5: where rocks have been folded, so that means that they've
Speaker 5: been uplifted and they've been squished around, or a solid
Speaker 5: rock that you can go put your hand on has
Speaker 5: moved around in such a bendy way. So yeah, even
Speaker 5: just by looking at like the way that the rock
Speaker 5: layers are tilted in a road cut, you can tell
Speaker 5: something about the history of that place.
Speaker 1: Okay, for more on this, we need a geomorphology episode,
Speaker 1: and I need to find a geomorphologist. So I'm just
Speaker 1: going to ask anyone pulled over on the side of
Speaker 1: the road staring at a hill. Do geologists do a
Speaker 1: lot of their work in sites that have already been
Speaker 1: excavated for industry or what does a geologist job kind
Speaker 1: of look like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that does happen. There's a lot of jolly that
Speaker 5: goes on. For example, there's a lot that goes on
Speaker 5: the National State parks in which anywhere you get exposed
Speaker 5: rocks you can do geology, and that definitely includes mine areas.
Speaker 5: So I know, for one of the sites that I
Speaker 5: use for my PhD work is the site where we
Speaker 5: had these old corals exposed that formed eighty thousand years ago.
Speaker 5: And when I was sort of updating myself in the literature,
Speaker 5: I found a reference that like, oh, this site was
Speaker 5: mapped ten years ago, but it's flooded now. Can't go
Speaker 5: back there because of industrial stuff.
Speaker 3: Bumma.
Speaker 5: I think any way that rocks get exposed is there's
Speaker 5: going to be someone out there who wants to study them.
Speaker 5: And road cuts again our really unique way because oftentimes
Speaker 5: you can't necessarily study what's going on in a hill
Speaker 5: because it's a hill.
Speaker 4: It's hard to.
Speaker 5: Dig straight down into bed rock. But when you get
Speaker 5: a road cut coming through, that's a really unique opportunity.
Speaker 5: To get to see the interior structure of the crust exposed.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been looking at a road cut and
Speaker 1: saw something that shocked you.
Speaker 5: Actually, one of the rocks I brought with me today
Speaker 5: I can describe it is I've picked it up at
Speaker 5: a road cut. And there's a classification scale of rocks
Speaker 5: and one of igneous rocks, and one of the categories
Speaker 5: is called an ultramafic rock, which means it's really high
Speaker 5: in iron and magnesium. And it means ultramafic rocks are
Speaker 5: typically rocks where the composition is really really close to
Speaker 5: what they were when they're deep in the Earth's mantle,
Speaker 5: so like, you know, hundreds of kilometers beneath the surface
Speaker 5: of the Earth. And one of my favorite rocks is
Speaker 5: called an enstetite pretotite, which just means it's just like
Speaker 5: this really dense, beautiful bronze colored rocks, these huge square
Speaker 5: crystals in it. And this rock again was pretty much
Speaker 5: very similar composition to what's deep and like you can
Speaker 5: look down right now, it's deep below the surface of
Speaker 5: the Earth. And I found this rock at the top
Speaker 5: of a mountain, had no business being there. What how
Speaker 5: this rock? You know, this blob of magma cooled in
Speaker 5: the crust, and eventually, over millions of years, it got
Speaker 5: lifted up and excavated and lifted up on the top
Speaker 5: of the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. And so it's
Speaker 5: really it's just really amazing to me getting to look
Speaker 5: at this rock and say, like, you formed under the
Speaker 5: strip of the earth and I found you, not like
Speaker 5: eight thousand feet above sea level. You'll have no business
Speaker 5: being there, how, It's just it's so fun.
Speaker 4: Love it dearly.
Speaker 1: Is there anyway someone had that in their pocket and
Speaker 1: brought it to the top of the mountain on purpose?
Speaker 4: No, this was part of a like forty foot tall
Speaker 4: cliff of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, then probably no one had that in there.
Speaker 4: Probably not.
Speaker 5: I have heard of people pranking geologists by with somewhere
Speaker 5: on the internet, by bringing a rock from somewhere else
Speaker 5: with them and saying like, hey, I found this, And
Speaker 5: no one's ever done that to me. And I don't
Speaker 5: know if I'd catch it, But put that idea out
Speaker 5: there for anyone who wants to meet some of the
Speaker 5: geologist friends.
Speaker 3: Apparently, it's all it takes us some chocolate pebbles.
Speaker 5: Exactly, some chocolate pebbles exactly. That's a great way to
Speaker 5: prank them because a snack at the end.
Speaker 3: Yes, what about rock names?
Speaker 1: Bexwood Drifts wants to know what are the most ridiculous
Speaker 1: rock names? Katie King also had this question, and patron
Speaker 1: V E. Griffith divulged their favorite was coming tonight, and
Speaker 1: Batman Flight asked if coming tonight was the best name
Speaker 1: of all geological terms. Simon Bona Steele said, I look
Speaker 1: forward to your podcast. I wish it was coming tonight.
Speaker 1: Isn't dropping tonight? But what about names of things? Who
Speaker 1: are rocks named after? How do they get these names?
Speaker 1: What ends in an eight versus a night?
Speaker 5: Yes, so a lot of rocks, the recent ones, has
Speaker 5: been named by scientists who discovered them. A lot of
Speaker 5: names have been what's called grandfather dame, which means they're
Speaker 5: just sort of names and popular use. And when jeologists
Speaker 5: sat down to like make forcial guidelines on what these
Speaker 5: rocks are called, they're like, well, this is what everyone
Speaker 5: calls it, so call But my personal favorite rock name
Speaker 5: is a classic. It's nice, So it's spelled g N
Speaker 5: E I S S and it's pronounced nice. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of really great geology puns. Geology is rife with puns,
Speaker 5: and my personal I used to do the same.
Speaker 4: People hated it.
Speaker 5: Where I carried this piece of nice around with me
Speaker 5: and anytime I say we say lots something nice, I
Speaker 5: would whip it out of my pocket and say that's
Speaker 5: pretty nice. The other one is there's a metamorphic rock
Speaker 5: called schist s C H I S T, and that's
Speaker 5: also rife for puns, and I deeply appreciate anytime someone
Speaker 5: makes a geology.
Speaker 4: Pun around me.
Speaker 1: Many patrons, including Paul Smith, Amy and Ramatsu, Lee Anderson,
Speaker 1: specs Al, Robin Stumbo, Jacqueline Iwanitia, Laura Springer, Amy, Jane Joyed,
Speaker 1: Gwen Kelly, and Diana Teeter wanted to know if Schmidty
Speaker 1: enjoys geology puns.
Speaker 3: Great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, your questions keep getting bolder and it really
Speaker 1: helps me cobble together.
Speaker 3: In interview, you're all gems.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things at end, and I let's talk about
Speaker 1: one type of rock your favorite.
Speaker 4: My favorite?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: Yes, what is your favorite? So many people I'm going
Speaker 1: to say their name is so fast and and aside,
Speaker 1: Amanda Spinosa, Hannah Riley Shelby, Smith, Rebecca fitch At, Jody Pierce, Truman,
Speaker 1: Szil Bubbery, Kaylee Dyer, Delaney Becks, Myrus Mantov, Kendall Hargas,
Speaker 1: Ariel Beck, Julia Fisher, Simon Bonisteel, Meghan Weidell. Need to
Speaker 1: know Schmidty, you're a geologist. We love you. You love rocks.
Speaker 1: What rocks do you love the most?
Speaker 4: Awesome?
Speaker 5: Okay, there's a few ways to answer that question. So
Speaker 5: probably my favorite individual rock that I own that I
Speaker 5: have with me is a piece of nice Nice. So
Speaker 5: it's just like this beautiful smooth rock with layered white
Speaker 5: crystals and sort of like white iron and nineties imrige
Speaker 5: crystals and then lighter quartz rich crystals on it. And
Speaker 5: this rock it's really fun because this specific rock is
Speaker 5: a long history, so it forms is a diary deep
Speaker 5: beneath the surface of the Earth. So this magma moved
Speaker 5: up through the crust and crystal spell out of it
Speaker 5: eventually cooled, and then that diarye got put under intense
Speaker 5: heat and pressure and all these crystals rearranged themselves into
Speaker 5: stripy layers and became a nice and then eventually this
Speaker 5: rock somewhere in the northern part of North America was
Speaker 5: at the surface of the Earth and a glacier. So
Speaker 5: one of the ice sheets that used to cover North
Speaker 5: America picked it up and brought it to northern Wisconsin,
Speaker 5: where I found it. Because where I picked this rock
Speaker 5: in northern Responsin it could not have come from around here,
Speaker 5: So the only way it got there is if it
Speaker 5: has been brought there by a glacier. So it's very
Speaker 5: personally near and dear to me because it tells a
Speaker 5: long history not only about the planet, but also about
Speaker 5: the amazing ice sheets that have shaped so much of
Speaker 5: the North American landscape.
Speaker 1: SCHMIDI was holding up a round, flatish rock about palm
Speaker 1: sized that had a dark top and bottom with what
Speaker 1: looks like a crystallized white wafer smashed between and nice
Speaker 1: can have nice banded texture. I can see why this
Speaker 1: one is pocketworthy.
Speaker 4: So I think that's my personal favorite.
Speaker 3: That's your personal favorite. Do you name rocks or no?
Speaker 4: I don't name rocks. I think they already have names.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's already got such a nice name.
Speaker 4: Also exactly it does have a nice name.
Speaker 3: Good. But it also one looks like a whoope pie.
Speaker 3: It definitely looks.
Speaker 5: Edible and it's also it's I have a few rocks
Speaker 5: all carry around with me just as sort of like
Speaker 5: something to you know, something to fidget with. Like rocks
Speaker 5: can be really great sort of things to carry with
Speaker 5: you because they're really dense, so they have a nice
Speaker 5: weight to them. And this one has just like a
Speaker 5: perfect little indent that I can rep my thumb against.
Speaker 1: When you go to different parts of the world where
Speaker 1: they have dry stacked walls rock walls, do you always
Speaker 1: have to stop and look at those two?
Speaker 4: Always?
Speaker 5: Anytime I see a rock in a wall or on
Speaker 5: the ground, I'm a terror walking through you neighborhood because
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, that's a cool rock and someone's rock
Speaker 5: wall and person house is probably like, why are you
Speaker 5: paying attention to my garden wall?
Speaker 3: What about something that sucks?
Speaker 1: Something must suck about rocks, some's gotta suck s made
Speaker 1: come on?
Speaker 3: Or about being a geologist.
Speaker 5: Slightly left turn. But something that I think has very
Speaker 5: much plagues me in my science journey is something that
Speaker 5: I know a lot of people deal with in science,
Speaker 5: which is imposter syndrome. So especially when you're sort of
Speaker 5: a younger scientist in training, I feel like a lot
Speaker 5: of people struggle with a feeling that like, I don't
Speaker 5: belong here, they're going to find out any data. I
Speaker 5: don't belong here, They're going to kick me out. And
Speaker 5: I think, you know, a lot of people experience it
Speaker 5: and a lot of people talk about it, and so
Speaker 5: I definitely struggle with it myself of feeling like, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not smart enough, I don't know enough about this
Speaker 5: material to be talking to you today. I don't belong here,
Speaker 5: and it's that can be really hard and painful to
Speaker 5: deal with, and having an amazing community of other scientists
Speaker 5: and friends around you can really help with it. But
Speaker 5: I think that's something that we need to acknowledge because
Speaker 5: it's a really deeply painful thing to deal with, because
Speaker 5: that's the worst thing I can think of.
Speaker 4: I can't really think of anything bad about rocks.
Speaker 3: Just a serious side note.
Speaker 1: Geosciences haven't always been the most inclusive of field and
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty study published in Nature Barriers to field
Speaker 1: work in undergraduate geoscience degrees, stated that these barriers are
Speaker 1: especially felt by disabled students and those from racial and
Speaker 1: ethnic minorities, all of whom are critically underrepresented in the discipline.
Speaker 1: And other historically excluded minorities in geosciences have pointed to
Speaker 1: concerns about being targeted doing field work, a safety issue
Speaker 1: that was highlighted in twenty twenty when Christian Cooper, a blackbirder,
Speaker 1: was targeted and threatened in Central Park. There are also
Speaker 1: physical barriers for some sexual harassment at field sites have
Speaker 1: been reported and locations that are less than friendly to
Speaker 1: LGBTQ folks. So Schmidty says that finding community is especially
Speaker 1: important and pointed to organizations like Urge on Learning Racism
Speaker 1: in Geoscience, which is working to help geoscientists on learn
Speaker 1: racism and improve accessibility, justice, equity, and inclusion in the discipline,
Speaker 1: which is so needed. And if you're part of a
Speaker 1: historically excluded group, finding a mentor can also be key.
Speaker 1: It seems like all the wrong people have imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: Like if you have imposter syndrome, chances.
Speaker 3: Are you belong there more than anyone. Thank you.
Speaker 4: More to think about it.
Speaker 3: What about your favorite thing about geology or about rocks?
Speaker 5: I think my favorite thing is is what we're doing
Speaker 5: today is talking to people about geology in the world
Speaker 5: around us, because you know, I can spend all my
Speaker 5: time as a graduate student, time as an undergraduate learning
Speaker 5: all these amazing things about the earth and being excited
Speaker 5: about it on my own, but getting to share that
Speaker 5: with other people and see other people from all walks
Speaker 5: of life get excited about geology is the most fun thing.
Speaker 5: So it's really fun going out and telling people I'm
Speaker 5: a geologist because a lot of people, you know, whether
Speaker 5: they're a little kid, they're a grandparent, a lot of
Speaker 5: people are like, oh my gosh, that's so exciting, and
Speaker 5: they'll ask me questions. Or for example, getting to volunteer
Speaker 5: with organizations like skype a scientists. You know, a lot
Speaker 5: of people are really interested in this stuff, but they
Speaker 5: may never have had an opportunity to get to talk
Speaker 5: with geologists or getting to take a geology class, and
Speaker 5: just yeah, getting to share all this, all these amazing
Speaker 5: stories about how the world around us works. Getting to
Speaker 5: share that with people is just the most fun thing
Speaker 5: I can think of.
Speaker 1: Do you have any advice for someone who thinks they
Speaker 1: want to be a geologist or a type of geology
Speaker 1: field where they need more people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think if you want to be a geologist,
Speaker 5: if you're going to college, there's a lot of like
Speaker 5: connect with their geology department. I think the best advice
Speaker 5: I could give is talk to people. If there's other
Speaker 5: students studying geology, talk to them, see what classes they're taking,
Speaker 5: you know, see if there's any field experience as clubs
Speaker 5: you can join, if there's faculty members that are available,
Speaker 5: reach out to them and let them know that you're
Speaker 5: passionate about this and you want to learn more. I
Speaker 5: think making personal connections in the field is something that
Speaker 5: is really helpful for both getting advice, getting mentorship, figuring out,
Speaker 5: you know, where's the right way for me to go. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think just talking with people in the field, because
Speaker 5: a lot of us are really you know, we love
Speaker 5: what we do and we're really excited to talk about
Speaker 5: that and get to share that with people.
Speaker 3: This has been a joy.
Speaker 2: Everyone loves you and I understand why.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I admit I I was kind of nervous, but I'm
Speaker 5: a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: You rocked.
Speaker 4: Let's see you're picking up already.
Speaker 3: So as per usual, ask smart people, not smart questions
Speaker 3: such as what the fuck is of rock? Because they
Speaker 3: love it and they will love telling you. And Schmidty
Speaker 3: is not on social media because they are smarter than us.
Speaker 3: But we're at Aliward On Instagram and Twitter, We're at
Speaker 3: ologies on both. There are links write in the show
Speaker 3: notes to the charities we supported this week, mindt dot
Speaker 3: org and Skype as scientists. There are tons of links
Speaker 3: up on my website at aliward dot com slash ologies,
Speaker 3: slash Geology, as well as links to other episodes. You
Speaker 3: might like that we mentioned smologies, our kid friendly shorter
Speaker 3: versions of classics. You can find those in our feed
Speaker 3: or up at aliward dot com slash Smologies. Ze Grodriguez
Speaker 3: Thomas and Mercedes Matland of MINDGM Media edit those merch
Speaker 3: is available for your body and soul at ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 3: Thank you Susan Hale for handling that so much more.
Speaker 3: Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook
Speaker 3: group with a syst from Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 3: of the comedy podcast You Are That. Thank you Noel
Speaker 3: Dilworth for all the scheduling. Emily White of the Wordery
Speaker 3: makes our professional transcripts. Caleb Patten Bleeps episodes and those
Speaker 3: are available at aliworn dot com slash Ologies, dash Extras.
Speaker 3: Kelly R.
Speaker 1: Dwyer does the website. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the
Speaker 1: theme music, and the lead editor who puts all the
Speaker 1: pieces together each week and has a sparkly heart like
Speaker 1: a Geod Jarrett Slaper of mind gam Media. And if
Speaker 1: you stick around to the end of the episode, I
Speaker 1: tell you a secret. And this week's secret is that
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, I divulged that I had given
Speaker 1: my dad a haircut while he was in hospice before
Speaker 1: he passed away, and I saved a lock of hair.
Speaker 1: And I happened to go to Disneyland and I decided
Speaker 1: to drop a few strands off at the lawn in
Speaker 1: the front entrance. I don't know why. It just it
Speaker 1: seemed like a cosmically fun place to people watch and
Speaker 1: it was just sweet. No, it was there and was
Speaker 1: going to turn into a worm and a bird or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was in mid August. I went back to Disneyland
Speaker 1: two days ago, and y'all, the lawn changed. That lawn
Speaker 1: is different for the first time in fifty years. They
Speaker 1: changed the lawn at the gates of Disneyland, and it's
Speaker 1: astro turf now to save water. For the first time
Speaker 1: in fifty years. So I'm considering that some sort of
Speaker 1: practical joke from an astral plane from my dad, because
Speaker 1: I feel like he would laugh at that truly, of
Speaker 1: all the places. Two weeks later, anyway, hilarious, Dad could win. Okay,
Speaker 1: go have fun today.
Speaker 2: All right, you deserve it. I say so bye, bye, Up.
Speaker 3: I'm You're rock.
Speaker 5: You're my rock.