Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the leg that's asleep and waking it
Speaker 1: up is only going to feel worse. Ali ward, and
Speaker 1: we're deep into autumn. A few weeks ago we talked trash,
Speaker 1: and today we're dishing dirt. We got a soil episode.
Speaker 1: So what is soil made of? Why it's different colors,
Speaker 1: what it smells like, if you should rub it on yourself?
Speaker 1: What happens after you mind stuff out of soil? Do
Speaker 1: you need a PhD to be a dirt expert? What
Speaker 1: is dirt versus soil? Is mud? Soil is clay? And
Speaker 1: how long does it take a soil scientist to go
Speaker 1: for a chalk So this indigenous pianologist is someone I've
Speaker 1: wanted to shout with for years and is so deeply
Speaker 1: revered and respected in her field. In her actual field
Speaker 1: doing field work, they have an associate's degree in biology,
Speaker 1: an undergrad degree in Environmental science, Technology and Policy in
Speaker 1: a minor in chemistry from California State University, Monterey Bay,
Speaker 1: and just got a PhD from the University of Arizona
Speaker 1: in soil microbiology with a minor in American Indian policy.
Speaker 1: So this ologist is now to doing a postdoc in
Speaker 1: community environment and policy, the University of Arizona and Tucson.
Speaker 1: And the most gruntable coincidence is that, after all these
Speaker 1: years waiting and waiting and finally just recording remotely, I'll
Speaker 1: be in Tucson this week visiting Jared's grandma. SOO so two.
Speaker 1: Some people get at me. Also, thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who's submitted questions for this via patreon dot com slash ologies.
Speaker 1: A dollar a month gets you in that club. Thank
Speaker 1: you also to everyone who tells friends and subscribes and
Speaker 1: rates and leaves reviews that has helped Ology stay at
Speaker 1: the top of the science charts. And I appreciate it
Speaker 1: so much that I read all the reviews and then
Speaker 1: I pick one to whisper at you, like this fresh
Speaker 1: one from the Zebra Emoji reviewer, who wrote, I feel
Speaker 1: like if I randomly ran into Ali at a sketchy
Speaker 1: gas station, I would recognize her immediately and she would
Speaker 1: probably give me some of her cheetohs she just bought.
Speaker 1: And those are facts I would so thank you for those.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the episode. Indigenous comes from the Latin
Speaker 1: meaning sprung from the land our native and peedology comes
Speaker 1: from the Greek word for ground or earth, and this
Speaker 1: particular ologist is a perfect fit for this episode, which
Speaker 1: coincidentally it is coming out during November, which is Native
Speaker 1: American Heritage Month. So yes, let's listen, let's learn, celebrate,
Speaker 1: and let's get dirty with soil microbiologist, researcher, data scientist, runner, filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and indigenous pedologist Lydia Jennings PhD.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Everyone, my name is Lydia Jennings and I go by
Speaker 3: she her pronouns. I'm a serian of the Oswa, Yackey
Speaker 3: and Mutual Nations. My dog is Salchica. She's right here
Speaker 3: at my feet because she's my partner in crime.
Speaker 1: When I first met you, you're Lydia Jennings. You're now
Speaker 1: doctor Jennings, very doctor Jennings.
Speaker 3: Now, it's been a journey that it finally.
Speaker 1: Happened December twenty twenty, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, December twenty twenty was supposed to be May twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: The pandemic, you know, kind of took its toll. Oh.
Speaker 1: I you know what, I can't believe that I didn't
Speaker 1: have this teed up. But there is an ology for soil.
Speaker 1: Are you aware of this?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pedology?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, A lot of people in soil science are
Speaker 3: like pedologists. So soil science is like an interesting fact,
Speaker 3: right because soils, like people, are very diverse, very ubiquitous,
Speaker 3: like they're besides water, like soil and air, soil is
Speaker 3: the most common thing you're going to interact with. Humans
Speaker 3: have constructed all kinds of surfaces to not interact with soil,
Speaker 3: but soil still makes its way in through dust right
Speaker 3: the transports. And I'm saying all this because I think
Speaker 3: as you talk about pedology, is this over encomassing field.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of different ways that people and
Speaker 3: scientists interact with soils. You know, it's really interesting to
Speaker 3: see and identify as a soil scientist because it's encompassed
Speaker 3: in so many other types of environmental fields, and pedology
Speaker 3: is one of those fields that soil science. That's really
Speaker 3: like the root of how we talk about soil science today.
Speaker 3: But like what I studied in my PhD work is
Speaker 3: much more around soil health and in environmental contamination environmental
Speaker 3: justice work, and it really took a process of like
Speaker 3: am I soil scientists, like most of the analysis that
Speaker 3: I do as soils, but I also could be seen
Speaker 3: as a microbiologist who studies microbes in the soils. It
Speaker 3: took me a long time to actually identify as a
Speaker 3: soil scientist and something I wear really proudly today. But
Speaker 3: it was actually on this when I hope we talk
Speaker 3: about this, this one hundred and thirty five mile run
Speaker 3: that I did with two other women's soil scientists, one's
Speaker 3: a soil ecologist, one is a paedologist, and they were
Speaker 3: able to identify the different layers of the soils, and
Speaker 3: they do a whole thing called soil judging, which is
Speaker 3: something my university didn't have a team in. And I
Speaker 3: remember getting like, even though I have a PhD, getting
Speaker 3: like anxious or having imposter syndrome about being a soil scientist.
Speaker 3: And it led to this really beautiful conversation about who
Speaker 3: we are as soil scientists. Has so diverse because soils
Speaker 3: are so diverse, and we have to be more inclusive
Speaker 3: on how we talk about soils because they are a
Speaker 3: big part of climate science and of contaminant science, of
Speaker 3: agricultural science right there. So there, soils are embedded in
Speaker 3: so many different fields and really important and powerful ways.
Speaker 1: We will indeed talk about that one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five mile run because how could we not. My first
Speaker 1: question about it is does she still have legs or
Speaker 1: did she wear them down to nubs like pieces of chalk,
Speaker 1: because one hundred and thirty five is so many miles.
Speaker 1: But the best part about that run is that she
Speaker 1: made it into a film and it's called Will Run
Speaker 1: for Soil, and it features two other soil scientists and
Speaker 1: it's not out yet as of November twenty twenty two. Again,
Speaker 1: more on all of us in a bit, but for now,
Speaker 1: let's get some questions out of the way that are
Speaker 1: either brilliant or very very not smart. But I love
Speaker 1: this next answer, And what is the difference between soil
Speaker 1: and dirt?
Speaker 3: So it depends when you ask. Okay, I like to
Speaker 3: think about it is like, so dirt is displaced soil.
Speaker 3: Soil is naturally occurring in the ecosystem. It's really full
Speaker 3: of life and microbes and you know, helps fulture water
Speaker 3: and dirt has kind of been removed from its home,
Speaker 3: and I think often it gets degraded as being called
Speaker 3: dirt as opposed to recognizing the life force it is
Speaker 3: in part because of it removal from its home.
Speaker 1: Oh that's such a good answer. I wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: it was like it's got to have a certain percentage
Speaker 1: of rock or a certain percentage of dust, But it's
Speaker 1: really more philosophical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just emoting it from its surface. And so
Speaker 3: that's like I think the easiest place is to call
Speaker 3: it like removed removed dirt soil. I think there are
Speaker 3: so many like soil. Microbiologists will also think about the
Speaker 3: microbes associated with soil. You have to hear people say
Speaker 3: soil is alive, dirt is dead, which I don't think
Speaker 3: is really true, especially as someone who studied mining issues.
Speaker 3: Is like there's a lot of questions about like if
Speaker 3: a reclaimed soil system or a mind soil is full
Speaker 3: of life. And so I think dirt is displaced soil.
Speaker 1: What about mud? Is mud just wet soil that's not but.
Speaker 3: It's also mud is often displaced as well, right, but
Speaker 3: it's highly saturated soil. So I'm in the Sonoran Desert,
Speaker 3: our soils typically have like three percent saturation of water,
Speaker 3: like they're really really dry soils. And then I went
Speaker 3: into North Carolina and to me, the soils there are
Speaker 3: like mud. They have like thirty five percent saturation of water.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, my God. But also those soils,
Speaker 3: you know, they hold so much more humidity and like
Speaker 3: so much more organic matter decomposition, and so I think
Speaker 3: it's all these kind of ecosystem dependent.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about what is in a handful of soil,
Speaker 1: What is in soil?
Speaker 3: So within soil you often talk about in a single
Speaker 3: tea spoon of soil, there's like over ten thousand microbes
Speaker 3: in there, and there's all these nutrients in there that
Speaker 3: help make the soil, and that really speaks to the
Speaker 3: parent material and the climate, so parent material being like
Speaker 3: rocks right.
Speaker 1: For more on that parent material, you can see the
Speaker 1: recent two part Geology episode about rocks with Schmidty Thompson,
Speaker 1: who is a treasure and a gem themselves.
Speaker 3: And the climates that help make that soil color and texture,
Speaker 3: and also the nutrients that are breaking down the soil.
Speaker 3: We often can't see the sort of soiled particles themselves,
Speaker 3: but they have little macropores where different microbes or chemical
Speaker 3: interactions can happen. And so soils are so diverse in
Speaker 3: part because our landscapes are so diverse, and soils are
Speaker 3: affected by the climate and the temperature and the moisture regime,
Speaker 3: even like the slopes and angles. When you want a mountain,
Speaker 3: you can see one side of the area has really
Speaker 3: dry soil, on the other side it has really wet
Speaker 3: soil because of the important things of slope and different
Speaker 3: aspect that can affect a soil system. And then you
Speaker 3: have all the biological activity that's happening. So I think
Speaker 3: of the different plants and animals that are interacting with
Speaker 3: that soil to help make it what it is is,
Speaker 3: And so it really is kind of this embodiment of
Speaker 3: our ecosystems and all the things that interact with our ecosystems,
Speaker 3: including humans.
Speaker 1: What was it about soil that drove you to get
Speaker 1: a PhD? In it run one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: miles with other soil scientists, Like, there's obviously you have
Speaker 1: a passion for this. Where did that come from?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think in talking about my love
Speaker 3: for soils today, it's really been a meandering river. I
Speaker 3: started a community college as like a biology major, and
Speaker 3: I thought at one point in time I wanted to
Speaker 3: bring marine biologists. And my undergrad degree was environmental science,
Speaker 3: Technology and Policy with a minor in chemistry, And so
Speaker 3: I really liked the first soils plast I took. I
Speaker 3: thought so cool to went with a catti and exchange capacity,
Speaker 3: and just like all these chemical reactions that are happening
Speaker 3: within soils themselves, and also just like their ability to
Speaker 3: hold moisture let go of it. I just thought that
Speaker 3: was really cool.
Speaker 1: Ugh, if I had a dollar for every time I've
Speaker 1: thought about cation exchange capacity, I could get it an
Speaker 1: arizona iced ty because I was like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: is that? I looked it up. Let's break it down,
Speaker 1: because it's cool, and soil is all about it. So
Speaker 1: a cat ion has fewer electrons than it has protons,
Speaker 1: so it's an ion with a positive charge. So think
Speaker 1: of a happy positive cat that you're keeping an ion?
Speaker 1: But what is an ion? Even it's an atom or
Speaker 1: molecule with some kind of electrical charge, because either it's
Speaker 1: gained or lost an electron. So a cat ion is
Speaker 1: a positive one. A negative ion is an anion. But
Speaker 1: not all atoms are ions. Some are just neutral and
Speaker 1: not positive or negative. They're just sitting there knitting mining
Speaker 1: their beeswax. But yes, a cat ion is a positively
Speaker 1: charged ion. Cool. Now the cat ion exchange capacity CEC
Speaker 1: is great for soil science, which is probably something you
Speaker 1: never thought you think about, because that cat ion exchange
Speaker 1: capacity is a metric of how many cat ions positive
Speaker 1: ions like calcium and magnesium and potassium that plants need
Speaker 1: can stay in the soil. So clay in organic matter
Speaker 1: tend be negatively charged, which means that they'll attract those
Speaker 1: cat ions like magnesium and calcium and potassium, which you
Speaker 1: now know are positively charged. So the cat ion exchange
Speaker 1: capacity is a measure of the negative charge in the
Speaker 1: soil to figure out how much good cat ion action
Speaker 1: can stick around without leeching from the soil and getting
Speaker 1: washed away before the plant can use it. Kind of
Speaker 1: like if you needed to transport a bunch of weasels,
Speaker 1: you got to figure out how big is your purse
Speaker 1: to calculate how many weasels you can fit in your bag.
Speaker 1: So yes, Lydia was learning about this well, getting her
Speaker 1: associates in biology at Cambrio Community College and an undergrad
Speaker 1: but still soil didn't have her whole heart yet.
Speaker 3: I was much more interested in marine systems and then
Speaker 3: I worked for about three years before going to grad
Speaker 3: school as an environmental toxicologist and I thought I'd be
Speaker 3: doing a lot of like water testing, which I did,
Speaker 3: but I also did a lot of sediment testing for toxicity,
Speaker 3: and I began to think a lot more about texture.
Speaker 3: Like we would owe and sample these river systems. We
Speaker 3: sampled all the major rivers in Health, California, and we
Speaker 3: would look at trying to get the fine grain sediment
Speaker 3: versus like sandy sediment, so the fine grain sediment can
Speaker 3: hold onto toxins in this case a lot of pesticides
Speaker 3: and also like oils that were being sprayed. And it
Speaker 3: was there like understanding how small particles can hold onto
Speaker 3: so much toxins that have all these impacts to ecosystems,
Speaker 3: into different marine organisms that are growing. So I thought
Speaker 3: that part of it was really interesting, just the complexity
Speaker 3: and power of these such small materials right the small
Speaker 3: grains and find fine sediment. And I think as I
Speaker 3: came and pursued my graduate degree, I wanted to use
Speaker 3: my love for science in a way that really served
Speaker 3: my own cultural heritage and of my own tribal nation.
Speaker 3: Environmental injustices are really prevalent in Native committees for a
Speaker 3: variety of like structural racism reasons, but as I was
Speaker 3: studying all this environmental toxicology and sampling all these major
Speaker 3: riverways in California. It was really clear to me just
Speaker 3: in that three year time period of seeing how the
Speaker 3: areas that were most polluted with pesticides were often in
Speaker 3: close proximity to poor income and predominantly ground communities. And
Speaker 3: then you'll also just seeing how the difference between northern
Speaker 3: California and southern California, how they talked about the environment
Speaker 3: so differently, was really interesting. And those are like all
Speaker 3: big scale things, but it kind of comes down also
Speaker 3: to how we concentrate environmental pollution, right, and so again
Speaker 3: those low income areas really having a lot more environmental
Speaker 3: contamination near them. So I wanted to understand how can
Speaker 3: we learn about the soil systems in a way and
Speaker 3: work with the biggest polluters to actually not just mark
Speaker 3: that these areas are contaminated, but actually develop solutions. And
Speaker 3: so as I pursued my PhD program, it was like
Speaker 3: one of the biggest contaminators in Arizona's mining companies some
Speaker 3: of the biggest ones, and there is so much mining
Speaker 3: in close proximity to my tribal nation and other tribal
Speaker 3: nations in Arizona. So how can I use this love
Speaker 3: of science and this understanding of soil systems to be
Speaker 3: able to work and so those environmental contamination.
Speaker 1: So though doctor Lydia Jennings grew up in Santa Fe,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, which are tilla lands, she is a citizen
Speaker 1: of the Pascayaki and who's coal nations. And zoom into
Speaker 1: those lands and you'll find tiny, tiny, itty bitty bits
Speaker 1: of land and minerals and chemicals at animals, tiny plants.
Speaker 3: It's like interesting because I love soils. I love their complexity.
Speaker 3: They're really complex and dependent on the soil systems and
Speaker 3: how they hold contaminants and all of their chemistry. But
Speaker 3: also I think bringing in an indigenous perspective and recognizing
Speaker 3: that relationship and reciprocity that we have with our environmental
Speaker 3: ecosystems in a lot of ways, understanding what are the
Speaker 3: soils tell us about their health that we can understand
Speaker 3: using both indigenous epistemologies and our typical soil science metrics
Speaker 3: to help improve these ecosystems health long term, and that's
Speaker 3: helping humans and animals long term health as well. And
Speaker 3: so that's kind of where I see the work that
Speaker 3: I love to do.
Speaker 1: To when you were doing these samples in northern and
Speaker 1: southern California, how did you even emotionally prepare to try
Speaker 1: to get a sample from the La River? How did
Speaker 1: that go? From someone who lives very close to the
Speaker 1: La River. The La River, for people who've never seen it,
Speaker 1: is wow. So for those who haven't ever seen it,
Speaker 1: quick description. The La River is a fifty one mile
Speaker 1: trickle of runoff that was concreted into a big, massive
Speaker 1: gray ditch by the Army Corps of Engineers. And though
Speaker 1: there are parts like there's this eleven mile stretch of
Speaker 1: Glendale Narrows kind of near Silver Lake that have crumbled
Speaker 1: on the bottom and allowed for plants and animals to
Speaker 1: return amid the shopping carts and discarded gatorade bottles and such.
Speaker 1: But before it became the saddest waterway in the West,
Speaker 1: one which the La Times reported was quote mostly industrial
Speaker 1: and residential discharge, the La River used to be this
Speaker 1: thriving wetland, and the Tongba land that we now call
Speaker 1: Los Angeles was like this giant waffle of ponds and swamps.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been in La have you ever taken
Speaker 1: Losianaga Losianica means the swamp, but now it's just a
Speaker 1: big mall on dry asphalt. But yes, the Elle River
Speaker 1: the aquatic underdog we're all rooting for.
Speaker 3: So I went to college in Santa Cruz, so it's
Speaker 3: really easy to be an environmentalist there, right, because it's
Speaker 3: like redwood trees in the ocean, and like it's really
Speaker 3: easy to be a tree hugger when you get to
Speaker 3: sample in beautiful places. And so I kind of didn't
Speaker 3: know what to expect when I went down sampling in
Speaker 3: the Elle River or the Tijana River where I had
Speaker 3: to like triple layer of protection because it smelled toxic,
Speaker 3: or when I had to collect samples next to meat
Speaker 3: rendering plant, you know, delicious and it just smelled like death.
Speaker 3: Like those are all really tough experiences that I didn't
Speaker 3: know how to mentally prepare. I think that like being
Speaker 3: an endurance runner, where you just like put your head
Speaker 3: down and get through it, is kind of like how
Speaker 3: I process that. One of my favorite experience it's is
Speaker 3: sampling in the La River. So I think it's really
Speaker 3: interesting how in southern California, particular rivers are named after
Speaker 3: the streets that go over them, while in northern California,
Speaker 3: streets are named after the rivers that they are over. What, right,
Speaker 3: and like how just the naming of river systems kind
Speaker 3: of also shapes how people interact with the environment, which
Speaker 3: I found's super fascinating.
Speaker 1: I had no idea.
Speaker 3: So the La County, right, like all the rivers are
Speaker 3: highly channelized, Like if you didn't know to look for
Speaker 3: a river, you might miss it because there's so much
Speaker 3: like concrete built around it. We had to like tie
Speaker 3: your rope on this side pole or whatever in waiders
Speaker 3: and big backpacks that carried a four gallon glass jar,
Speaker 3: like basically slowly lower ourself down on the rope to
Speaker 3: get to the La River channels and then collect soil
Speaker 3: sediments there. And it was amazing when you get down there.
Speaker 3: A lot of times they were like cool to see
Speaker 3: how sediment had built up and there are trees and
Speaker 3: our parians grow areas growing. The other times where like
Speaker 3: there were huge homeless encampments that we had to navigate around.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was definitely always on your toes. But
Speaker 3: I think to me, those experiences of being in the
Speaker 3: heart of the city but also seeing how nature and
Speaker 3: natural ecosystems. We're also trying to reconquer. The concrete was
Speaker 3: really beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I imagine if you've got a glass jar, that's
Speaker 1: because you don't want to use plastics, which could maybe
Speaker 1: contaminate your samples, Like how do you even go about
Speaker 1: figuring out what's in them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in that time, we were looking particularly for
Speaker 3: any presence of heavy metals and pesticides, and so with plastics,
Speaker 3: there are potential for some of those compounds and the
Speaker 3: soils to react with the plastic surfaces. So it's better
Speaker 3: for long term preservation to keep it in glass and
Speaker 3: then keep it in a controlled environment. The type of
Speaker 3: vessels in which you collect samples are really depending on
Speaker 3: what you're sampling for and also like just thinking about
Speaker 3: potential vollatoles that might be happening in plastics versus glass.
Speaker 1: Right when you're doing the soil analysis, what things are
Speaker 1: you looking for, like the metals, how much rock is there,
Speaker 1: how much moisture is there? Is there a histogram of
Speaker 1: what's in each.
Speaker 3: Thing depends on the project. With that project that I
Speaker 3: did in this gap year, these gap years between my
Speaker 3: undergrad and my PhD, that project was a stream Pollution
Speaker 3: Trends Monitoring project, and so we were sampling all the
Speaker 3: major riverways in California and looking for kind of areas
Speaker 3: of more concentrated pollution or not then particularly looking at pesticides,
Speaker 3: heavy metals, and any kinds of oils or other types
Speaker 3: of waste streams that might be in those systems. And
Speaker 3: then we are able to look at, okay, sample one
Speaker 3: hundred spots throughout California. These are areas that are more
Speaker 3: concentrated in terms of pollution, and we were able to
Speaker 3: give that to the California EPA, which then was able
Speaker 3: to talk to the regional epas environmental protection agencies and
Speaker 3: kind of start to make some management decisions about how
Speaker 3: to address those hot spots of pollution. I keep on
Speaker 3: talking about pesticides because that was one of the biggest ones.
Speaker 3: Also insecticides, Like we would actually go out and sample
Speaker 3: on the agricultural fields and like near Sacramento area after
Speaker 3: they had sprayed different types of insecticides to address mosquito populations.
Speaker 3: And so that was really interesting because we would go
Speaker 3: out before they sprayed and then like you know, an
Speaker 3: hour after they sprayed, twelve hours after they sprayed, twenty
Speaker 3: four hours after they sprayed and seven days after they
Speaker 3: sprayed to really see how those levels were decreasing. That
Speaker 3: was just a really interesting example of like how as humans,
Speaker 3: we're using our science and chemistry to address one type
Speaker 3: of irritant, but we're also potentially creating others, and so
Speaker 3: that's why we have to be monitoring that to make
Speaker 3: sure that we're keeping people healthy from both the insects
Speaker 3: but also from the prosecticides and pesticides that we use
Speaker 3: to address those insects.
Speaker 1: So that was an undergrad project, but her PhD research
Speaker 1: focused on looking at microbial critters in soil to figure
Speaker 1: out how much mining waste was left in the soil,
Speaker 1: asking the soil, hey, who's in here, what's the vibe?
Speaker 3: But now like my PhD, where you know, I measured
Speaker 3: very different things, so that was more of like less
Speaker 3: about the chemistry and the environmental toxicology work in this
Speaker 3: In my PhD, where I was looking at soil health,
Speaker 3: then I would measure the soil texture, the soil pH
Speaker 3: the soil electrial connectivity. That I would collect samples and
Speaker 3: I have to collect clean samples to get microbes and
Speaker 3: then do a variety of like analyzes when I got
Speaker 3: back right away, because you don't want your microbes to die.
Speaker 3: They're very sensitive. Will you hang on in that boot?
Speaker 1: You mentioned also that we are so concentrated on making
Speaker 1: barriers to soil, and how important are all of the
Speaker 1: minerals and microbes and funguses and all the things that
Speaker 1: live in dirt, Like should we be breathing more of that?
Speaker 1: Should we be getting that under our fingernails in our ears?
Speaker 1: Are we not dirty enough? I feel like we're not
Speaker 1: dirty enough, and that's maybe that's just maybe not wanting
Speaker 1: to wash my hair.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting question
Speaker 3: about like what is dirty enough. COVID nineteen introduced a
Speaker 3: lot of increased sanitation that I think is necessary in
Speaker 3: that respect. But converse, you know, there has been a
Speaker 3: number of interesting studies so looking at like what is
Speaker 3: happening to us? You know, if you think about the
Speaker 3: one health, which is like this idea that we recognize
Speaker 3: that we living within an ecosystem, and so when we
Speaker 3: would change one factor in that ecosystem, we have potential
Speaker 3: to impact a lot of other factors in that ecosystem,
Speaker 3: and us humans being part of that ecosystems or our
Speaker 3: bodies being an ecosystem and recognizing that. And the reason
Speaker 3: why I bring it up is because there has been
Speaker 3: some really interesting studies that looked at how gardeners in
Speaker 3: particular have lower levels of depression, in part because you're
Speaker 3: actually digging into the soil and you're inoculating yourself constantly
Speaker 3: with those soils which have microbes that actually are really
Speaker 3: good for elevating your mood.
Speaker 1: So for more on this, you can just do some
Speaker 1: light reading of the neuroscience paper titled Identification of an
Speaker 1: Immune responsive Mesolembcortical seroogenic System Potential Role and Regulation of
Speaker 1: Emotional Behavior, which describes findings linking this one soil bacterium
Speaker 1: Mycobacterium vasi to lowered stress and better focus immune modular
Speaker 1: that could lead to less brain inflammation and more serotonin.
Speaker 3: There's been another study that looks at how your pets,
Speaker 3: I'm sitting next to my dog's sal chicha, how your
Speaker 3: pets are really good inoculators of microbes from the soils
Speaker 3: that they're like rolling around and outside and they come
Speaker 3: and rub up on you and they inoculate you with
Speaker 3: microbes that help boost your mood, and so I think
Speaker 3: that there are really interesting ways in which we as
Speaker 3: humans have co evolved to be wanting to be closer
Speaker 3: to natural ecosystems, and more recently, and I like definitely
Speaker 3: Western colonization and industrialization have really built up means to
Speaker 3: keep us separate. Today, we increasingly have more issues associated
Speaker 3: with depression and anxiety, and there's a lot of factors why,
Speaker 3: and there have been studies that show more time and
Speaker 3: nature helps decrease some of that depression. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I think that there are interesting associations that have not
Speaker 3: been correlated, but I hope that more people are interested
Speaker 3: in investigating in the future. I'm a trail runner, so
Speaker 3: I'm turning it outside a much as posile. I have
Speaker 3: a dog who I'm trying to get to constantly indoculate me,
Speaker 3: even if she doesn't want to snuggle, And so I think,
Speaker 3: like you know, there are those really interesting ways that
Speaker 3: we can take that matter into our own hands.
Speaker 1: So being outside and near a live stuff and green
Speaker 1: things are good for you. And we cover some of
Speaker 1: this in the Awesomology episode with Neil Pezerica and also
Speaker 1: in the Dendrology episode about trees. But you can also
Speaker 1: talk to a doctor about it, or just go out
Speaker 1: huffson bark. You can also ask the US Forest Service,
Speaker 1: which has a whole web page dedicated to facts like.
Speaker 1: Studies also show that being outside and nature is relaxing,
Speaker 1: reducing our stress, cortisol levels, muscle tension, and heart rates.
Speaker 1: So even the US Force Service wants you to be
Speaker 1: happy and is like get your keyster in the ated doors,
Speaker 1: which reminds me I would like to start jogging again.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, as a runner, how hard
Speaker 1: is it for you to actually stay on task and
Speaker 1: get your run done without just pulling over and being like,
Speaker 1: look at this, Look at this soil, look at that.
Speaker 1: This one's sol and this one has peeding it, and
Speaker 1: this one's red and this one's brown. How do you
Speaker 1: even keep running?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we call that a soil scientist pace, doing a
Speaker 3: sol scientist's pace. No, But I mean there are different times,
Speaker 3: you know, you have runs for different intentions, and sometimes
Speaker 3: it's like I just need to get out there to
Speaker 3: escape looking at my computer screen and I get pulled
Speaker 3: away and distracted, and that's okay. Sometimes I want to
Speaker 3: go and work, run really hard and like feel my
Speaker 3: lungs burn, and that's okay. I have those times too,
Speaker 3: and I think it's giving myself the permission to as
Speaker 3: long as I'm getting out to experience whatever that's going
Speaker 3: to be. You know, when I was training for the
Speaker 3: Boston Marathon, I didn't run on trails very much because
Speaker 3: I was very workout focused. But you know, today I
Speaker 3: went out with my boyfriend and so we just wanted
Speaker 3: to get out and have a good time and look
Speaker 3: at the sorrows cactuses blossoming and be together. And so
Speaker 3: just like walked, ran, we talked. You know, there's different
Speaker 3: reasons to go out, but each time is enjoyable.
Speaker 1: What about questions that you get? Do you have a
Speaker 1: lot of people with gardens and house plants who are
Speaker 1: like doctor Jennings, what am I doing wrong? Was there
Speaker 1: ever a time when styrofoam balls were necessary in house plants?
Speaker 1: Do they do that or did I imagine that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, I mean I think it's really important to
Speaker 3: highlight that I am not like a master gardener or horticulturist.
Speaker 3: I study contaminated soils, but some of that knowledge around
Speaker 3: soils and soil health applied to other fields. But like
Speaker 3: my dad is definitely much more of a master gardener
Speaker 3: than I will ever be. He doesn't have a degree,
Speaker 3: but it's one of the ways that I feel like
Speaker 3: he is a lived experience expert and has a PhD.
Speaker 3: And just through trial and error. Because community engagement and
Speaker 3: education redistribution is really important to me, So it's really
Speaker 3: important for me to do different workshops with particularly tribal members.
Speaker 3: And last summer I was helping out with some friends.
Speaker 3: They have like a community farm in northern New Mexico.
Speaker 3: It's called the Three Sisters Collective, and they have this
Speaker 3: community engaged farm to create play space space for young
Speaker 3: Indigenous people. And so they had a workshop about like
Speaker 3: just talking about soil health and they asked me to
Speaker 3: come and talk about it, and it was really cool
Speaker 3: because it was a space only for indigenous growers and
Speaker 3: beginning those who are tanch enthusiasts, and so some of
Speaker 3: the people questions I got was like, Okay, so if
Speaker 3: we're trying to think about different like fertilizers or nutrients,
Speaker 3: like I've seen people give cheetos hot cheetos to their plants,
Speaker 3: is that okay? And it was like really funny, you know,
Speaker 3: to talk about it. And they're like I would never
Speaker 3: ask someone normally, but like you're part of my community
Speaker 3: and I feel comfortable to ask this. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: it's not documentation of it, but like cheetos have these
Speaker 3: different chemicals and like maybe, but it's not something that
Speaker 3: I would recommend, and like, okay, if there's a curiosity,
Speaker 3: like we always want to help spark that.
Speaker 1: And for more on sharing traditional knowledge when it comes
Speaker 1: to food, you can see the Indigenous Colinology episode with
Speaker 1: Mariah Gladstone from Indigit Kitchen and I'll link that in
Speaker 1: the show notes. I also looked up the benefits of
Speaker 1: hot Cheetos for plants and I found a viral TikTok
Speaker 1: by Sweet Nothing's TV.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to teach you how to grow your
Speaker 3: own hot Cheetos.
Speaker 1: Ten out of ten convincing as hell, but no not real.
Speaker 1: To obtain Cheetos, you have to meet me at a
Speaker 1: sketchy gas station and I will give you one, like
Speaker 1: you are my special raccoon friend. Also, why is there
Speaker 1: styrofoam in potting soil? I asked the Google and sometimes
Speaker 1: those little white nuggets you see in potting soil, sometimes
Speaker 1: those are just added mineral blobs called perlite, which is
Speaker 1: this lightweight volcanic glass. It degrades naturally over time because
Speaker 1: it's a natural thing. But sometimes those little white beads
Speaker 1: in potting soil are just styrofoam, just lurking in potting
Speaker 1: soil to help with drainage and aeration. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like adding tiny confetti litter into the soil. And
Speaker 1: the next generation of humans on Earth are like, we
Speaker 1: are asking you from the future to not styrofoam the soil.
Speaker 1: When you were going down the pathword a PhD, did
Speaker 1: you talk to elders or did you get any sources
Speaker 1: from the tribal community in terms of what questions you
Speaker 1: were asking or what data you were collecting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's interesting because I did not start I
Speaker 3: got't grew up in my community. I grew up around
Speaker 3: other tribal nations. A big reason why I chose to
Speaker 3: come to University of Arizona was as a close proximity
Speaker 3: to the tribe that I'm enrolled in, and so I
Speaker 3: knew like mining had been a big issue and it
Speaker 3: was something like I reached out to. So the important
Speaker 3: part was like as I began my PhD project, and
Speaker 3: I knew I wanted to work on mining issues. In
Speaker 3: that first year, I really just spent time like going
Speaker 3: and becoming part of community and like talking about what
Speaker 3: I was interested. The project I was hired in on
Speaker 3: was not really community engaged at all. It was more
Speaker 3: working with mining companies on reclaiming the land. But by
Speaker 3: the presence of who I am, it was really important
Speaker 3: for me to ensure that there was a cultural component
Speaker 3: in the engaging with tribal nations. How we teach soil
Speaker 3: education and environmental science education in general is predominantly not
Speaker 3: centering native knowledge or expertise.
Speaker 1: So Lydia said that she began by doing science outreach
Speaker 1: to kids and then building trust within the community to
Speaker 1: get insight into mining practices for her research on the
Speaker 1: importance of traditional ecological knowledge in mining consultation. So building
Speaker 1: that trust was a really key aspect of her research,
Speaker 1: and she says it's tough if you don't have faculty
Speaker 1: or advisors that can guide you in that. So engaging
Speaker 1: properly centering community knowledge, all of that is a skill
Speaker 1: that she developed and she now tries to mentor students
Speaker 1: in a way that she wasn't trained to do, and.
Speaker 3: So I think like right now, in general in science,
Speaker 3: we see a lot more of emphasis and highlighting the
Speaker 3: importance of importance of traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous knowledge systems,
Speaker 3: but like we have to recognize that that's pretty recent.
Speaker 3: I mean even in the PIPHD time, I felt like
Speaker 3: I was really dissuaded from pursuing those and was much
Speaker 3: more encouraged to get the technical science is down And
Speaker 3: so now I've done both and I feel good about that.
Speaker 1: So we'll get back to soil. But this topic was
Speaker 1: really interesting to me and important, especially during Native American
Speaker 1: Heritage Month and also every month. Yeah, do you have
Speaker 1: any advice for any Indigenous students that you wish you
Speaker 1: had known when you started your p.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think finding indigenous mentorship is critical.
Speaker 3: I think getting involved with different Native science organization, whether
Speaker 3: that's the American Indian Science and Engineering Society or SOKNAS
Speaker 3: a Society for Advancement of Chico's Native Americans and Sciences.
Speaker 3: There's Native American Fish and Wildlife Group. I think it's
Speaker 3: really important that you have a network of mentors, not
Speaker 3: just one person too, because each of us have different
Speaker 3: communities that we have been mentored by and who can
Speaker 3: we speak with. But you know, there's five hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy six different tribal nations the United States, so each
Speaker 3: community operates differently, and there's power in the applet. It
Speaker 3: also means to knowing the proper protocols of a nation
Speaker 3: in which you come from and in which you choose
Speaker 3: to engage with. I'm not an expert. I have some
Speaker 3: trained knowledge in something, but there are many people who
Speaker 3: I would say have PhDs in our community without the
Speaker 3: formal letters, and those are I see as my role
Speaker 3: as an indigenous scientist is to amplify their expertise, and
Speaker 3: I can never speak on behalf of them. I can
Speaker 3: only amplify the expertise that has been shared with me.
Speaker 1: So you don't have to have a PhD to be
Speaker 1: an expert or to be on this podcast, even though
Speaker 1: doctor Jennings, that's one. And getting back a little bit too,
Speaker 1: the work that you did with mining and contamination, tell
Speaker 1: me straight, like how fucked is the soil after mining
Speaker 1: and what happens to get it back to a healthy place?
Speaker 1: What can you do? Is it like unringing a bell?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So the work that I did prior to my
Speaker 3: PhD was the heavy metal measurement. But in my PhD,
Speaker 3: it was kind of understanding what the soil can tell
Speaker 3: us about its health after it's been mined. And then
Speaker 3: in Arizona they use a strategy called capin plant. So
Speaker 3: say a mountain, you have a mining right, and that's
Speaker 3: been dynamited out, and then it goes through a series
Speaker 3: of chemical and physical treatments to get out the metal
Speaker 3: of interest, which in our case is copper.
Speaker 1: So Arizona I didn't know this supplies over sixty percent
Speaker 1: of the nation's copper, and I always pictured it like
Speaker 1: gold mining, where people just look for nuggets of copper,
Speaker 1: or like veins in rock, but copper. However, according to
Speaker 1: too many weird old mining documentaries I just watched a
Speaker 1: little too late at night on YouTube, what happens is
Speaker 1: they blast these big, gaping holes in the earth, and
Speaker 1: then they drag out a bunch of grayish brownish dirt,
Speaker 1: and then they take that into a factory and they
Speaker 1: crush it into this sandy texture, and then it's kind
Speaker 1: of boiled with sulfuric acid to nab the metal into
Speaker 1: this copper sulfate solution. So great. So that's how they
Speaker 1: get it out boom boom boom. Then they make that
Speaker 1: into shiny, pretty copper that we use in all kinds
Speaker 1: of applications. I skipped a bunch of steps, but you
Speaker 1: get the point. So what's left over just a bunch
Speaker 1: of extra rock and six of the top ten in
Speaker 1: vironmental toxins according to the World Health Organization, which ones,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you mercury, lead, arsenic, particulate, air pollution, asbestos,
Speaker 1: and cadmium. It's delicious.
Speaker 3: And then all of that waste material from the chemical
Speaker 3: and physical treatments gets put into what they call it
Speaker 3: tailings pond, and so it's kind of like this gray
Speaker 3: slurry and so that gets stapped up into an area
Speaker 3: and it's really really moist because you don't want it
Speaker 3: to get into the local dust transport systems. But you
Speaker 3: have to figure out how to get that to be
Speaker 3: stabilized and then try to get things to grow on there.
Speaker 3: And so often what they do in the Sonoran Desert
Speaker 3: is they take soil from an off site desert area
Speaker 3: and they put it on top of the mind tailings themselves.
Speaker 1: Like if your hair looks a mess, just pop an
Speaker 1: little hat on top, but it's a cap made of
Speaker 1: soil and your hair is byproducts for mining peat.
Speaker 3: And mind tailings, I should say they're about the size
Speaker 3: and consistency of cooking flour. So they're really and it's
Speaker 3: really wet, and that's why it can be an environmental
Speaker 3: contaminant issue, even just because of the small particulate which
Speaker 3: can get deeply embedded in your lungs. And so the
Speaker 3: main strategy is cap and plant, and it's taking the
Speaker 3: soil from the desert area and oftentimes it's surface soil
Speaker 3: and putting on top of the mind tailings, which creates
Speaker 3: what they call a soil cap. And then on top
Speaker 3: of that they will then seed plants to try to
Speaker 3: establish what they call it vegetative cap on top of
Speaker 3: the mind tailings itself. And so that's what I studied
Speaker 3: was looking at an area that have been seeded the
Speaker 3: land was leased from a tribal nation in the area.
Speaker 3: Basically look at that strategy of how has the area
Speaker 3: been recovering after it's conceded and what can the soil
Speaker 3: tell us about how the seed mix is working. And
Speaker 3: so that's where we were able to study all these
Speaker 3: below ground metrics on the biological, chemical, and physical parameters,
Speaker 3: but then also what's happening above ground in terms of
Speaker 3: plant coverage and diversity. And so what was interesting was
Speaker 3: the tribe chose to invest a lot more seats and
Speaker 3: are normally planted. Most mining companies will choose maybe ten,
Speaker 3: but the tribe chose to invest in about thirty seven.
Speaker 3: In part that's informed by traditional ethological knowledge in what's
Speaker 3: commercially available, but also just what kind of plants they
Speaker 3: want that ecosystem to look like into the future. So
Speaker 3: I think that was what's really interesting, and then seeing
Speaker 3: how it changed over six years in terms of revegetation
Speaker 3: and recovering.
Speaker 1: For more on this, you can see Lydia's dissertation titled
Speaker 1: Evaluating the Biotic Potential of Degraded Soil Development on Reclaimed
Speaker 1: mind Tailings in Southern Arizona, which has a section on
Speaker 1: page forty four titled Indigenous Perspectives on Reclamation, and she
Speaker 1: writes that for indigenous peoples, ethics of reclamation are as
Speaker 1: much about redressing inequities of power and capacity and agency
Speaker 1: as it is cleaning up the environment. In the traditional
Speaker 1: context of things like restoration, remediation, revegetation, and rehabilitation, and
Speaker 1: she continues this belief contrasts with the settler colonial tradition
Speaker 1: of viewing land as an object one can own, and
Speaker 1: then she cites the research of doctor Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Speaker 1: who's the author of Braking Sweet Grass and was last
Speaker 1: week's biology guest about moss. But yes, Lydia studied this
Speaker 1: land for more than half a decade.
Speaker 3: And so six years is relatively long for a field study.
Speaker 3: But we found some really cool trends. Of course, there's
Speaker 3: always more things I wish I would have done. I
Speaker 3: wish I've done, like more molecular work and finable work.
Speaker 3: But you know, that's part of being researchers that you
Speaker 3: feel like there are always more questions to.
Speaker 1: Ask, and as a scientist you kind of get to
Speaker 1: keep asking those in your continued work.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, it's like, well, you have a little bit
Speaker 3: of information, but then you have more questions, which I
Speaker 3: think is exciting and I think it's also made me
Speaker 3: think a lot about how we think about how we
Speaker 3: do science moving forward. You know, I talked a little
Speaker 3: bit about my work and kind of the tribal consultation
Speaker 3: piece and thinking about well we value traditional ethological knowledge
Speaker 3: in trying to develop the seed mix to revegetate this area,
Speaker 3: but we don't value it when it comes to tribal
Speaker 3: consultation for new minds, and like why is that? So
Speaker 3: it's kind of left me to shift my research questions
Speaker 3: a little bit now and I'm actually looking at data
Speaker 3: mining in addition to heavy metal mining. Wow, But I
Speaker 3: think that they're interrelated and similar systems operate within very
Speaker 3: similar patterns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something that I'm sure would get overlooked so much.
Speaker 1: And having someone asking those questions and being there to
Speaker 1: understand that many many nuances is so so important. Anything
Speaker 1: that people think about soil that they get wrong, anything
Speaker 1: that you just want to stand on a sebox and
Speaker 1: be like, no, it's this.
Speaker 3: Well, I think like a big part is that we're
Speaker 3: not on the soil. Where with the soil, right, we're
Speaker 3: part of the ecosystems, we're not above it. And I
Speaker 3: think this notion that we're above is a very like
Speaker 3: setular colonial narrative, but recognizing our interdependence on soils, on
Speaker 3: the water that filters through soils, on the foods that
Speaker 3: grow on the soils, on us who gain happiness of
Speaker 3: running and recreating on those soils and just kind of
Speaker 3: recognizing that they're not just something that we step on.
Speaker 3: No matter where where you're at, you're going to be
Speaker 3: interacting with soils, even if you're in a city like
Speaker 3: that city is built on urban soils. Just recognizing all
Speaker 3: of those ways that we are part of the ecosystem,
Speaker 3: so we have to care about it if we care
Speaker 3: about our own health. But also then existing for the
Speaker 3: sole purpose that they are is so important. I guess
Speaker 3: I'm just asking your audience to reframe how they think
Speaker 3: about soils as as something like that's not just to
Speaker 3: be studied or to be extracted from, but as something
Speaker 3: that we we have a responsibility to care for for
Speaker 3: our health, for our planet health, and for our future health.
Speaker 1: And we become soil pretty much, we become soil.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's so amazing, And like all the microbes that
Speaker 3: we're talking about help make us happy, help break us
Speaker 3: down so that we're not covered with crap, you know,
Speaker 3: or poop you know. So I think like that part
Speaker 3: is so exciting. Soils really are everything.
Speaker 1: How much do you love her? We love her? And
Speaker 1: we have a one billion questions from listeners who know
Speaker 1: that you're coming on. Ok Okay, can we lob some
Speaker 1: at you? We'll do like a lightning round. Sure, Okay.
Speaker 1: But before we cut to the break, Lyddy and I
Speaker 1: talked for a little bit about a film that she
Speaker 1: just finished shooting called Will Run for Soil.
Speaker 3: And so myself and two other women's soil scientists we
Speaker 3: ran one hundred and thirty five miles last September in
Speaker 3: running the farthest any of us that I've ran before
Speaker 3: and attempts to really increase public awareness about soils. Most students,
Speaker 3: most college students, don't get training and thinking about soils
Speaker 3: despite it being this ubiquitous medium that we all interact with,
Speaker 3: and so we are all through wan soil scientists and
Speaker 3: literature will tell you the average soil scientists is a
Speaker 3: sixty five year old white guy named Robert. Like statistically speaking,
Speaker 3: but we're like three very different women who are running,
Speaker 3: who are all studies a soil science but also love
Speaker 3: to run, and so we kind of combined forces to
Speaker 3: run this really remote trail in the desert, starting in
Speaker 3: Nuclear Colorado and ending in moab Utah and just looking
Speaker 3: at soils all along the way and talking about them
Speaker 3: and why these soils are beautiful, both color wise but
Speaker 3: also culturally, you know, recognizing the many Indigenous people run
Speaker 3: to those areas prior to us, but also like talking
Speaker 3: about the language and what it means to be a
Speaker 3: soil scientist.
Speaker 1: And they are still working on post production. So if
Speaker 1: any listeners who work in programming for south By Southwest
Speaker 1: know someone, find Lydia Jennings and the will run for
Speaker 1: Soil people because they're interested in screening it at south
Speaker 1: By Southwest when it's done. And if you need me
Speaker 1: to intro the panel, Hi Taller, So that Run to
Speaker 1: Be Visible film is already made, but she's making the
Speaker 1: new one will run for Soil, and you can donate
Speaker 1: to that if you like. I'm going to put a
Speaker 1: link on my website. But for her donation for this episode,
Speaker 1: she chose Rising Hearts, which was founded by Jordan Daniels,
Speaker 1: who also directed Lydia's first film, and Risinghearts dot Org
Speaker 1: is an Indigenous led organization elevating Indigenous voices and fostering
Speaker 1: intersectional growth through organizing and programming, and you can go
Speaker 1: to Risinghearts dot org to learn more about their wellness classes, advocacy,
Speaker 1: community jobs, running with a Purpose and running on Native
Speaker 1: Lands programs. So to find out more, go to Risinghearts
Speaker 1: dot org. And then for fun, we made a second
Speaker 1: donation toward editing Lydia's current film will run for Soil
Speaker 1: and will include a link on a website to both.
Speaker 1: So those donations were made possible by sponsors. Apologies. All right,
Speaker 1: finally your questions, patrons, and if you want to submit questions,
Speaker 1: you two can join for a dollar a month at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash ologies. But you don't have to,
Speaker 1: but yes, patron questions, Okay, I am going to lob
Speaker 1: some questions at you. A lot of folks want to
Speaker 1: know about the spectra of dirt genesis. Ray Holloman, Jess Luffler,
Speaker 1: l E. T. Want to know why does dirt come
Speaker 1: in different colors? Why is it rust colored? Why is
Speaker 1: it brown?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Yes, what exactly what's in there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So the different colors of soil really come from
Speaker 3: the variety of nutrients that are broken down to or
Speaker 3: I say nutrients, but really like the rock materials that
Speaker 3: are broken down. That's one source of color. But then
Speaker 3: there is also a source of color from the chemical reactions.
Speaker 3: You know, you're talking about those red and rust colors
Speaker 3: that can come from kind of an iron oxidation. Here
Speaker 3: I in this Sonorine desert, we have a lot of
Speaker 3: like their areas of how blue soils, and it's from
Speaker 3: different copper oxides, so those are another component of that.
Speaker 3: And then also just like the weathering process, so thinking
Speaker 3: about how those are not only exposed to oxygen or
Speaker 3: to other forces, but then also how they get transported,
Speaker 3: that can often cause different soil colors.
Speaker 1: So to recap, reddish soils tend to have more iron oxides,
Speaker 1: and wider soils tend to contain more salt or silicates
Speaker 1: or calcite. Black soil has more decomposing organic matter stuff,
Speaker 1: and there are even greenish soils that have glauconite, which
Speaker 1: is an iron potassium philosilicate. But I mean you knew that. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering how pedologists agree on color swatches, it's
Speaker 1: not with a pantone wheel, but it's with something called
Speaker 1: a muncill chart that helps them compare the hue like reddish,
Speaker 1: bluish or yellowish, the value which is light to dark,
Speaker 1: and the chroma or like the saturation of color. But
Speaker 1: even without the charts, there's long held knowledge about how
Speaker 1: fertile A soil is based on a look.
Speaker 3: There's different language translations for like black soil being good
Speaker 3: soil and white soil being poor soil, and we can
Speaker 3: look at that how that translates to actual organic matter
Speaker 3: levels or actual salinity levels in the soil. Right there
Speaker 3: is all these different ways our cultures have evolved with soils,
Speaker 3: and somehow we've gotten separate and lost from that. But
Speaker 3: they're part of us, We're part of them. And I
Speaker 3: also want to really give a shout out to my
Speaker 3: friend Karen Vaughan who has the Art of Soil website
Speaker 3: and she actually sells custom made soil pigment kits that
Speaker 3: are amazing, and so she is kind of who I
Speaker 3: would say is like a soil colors expert and has
Speaker 3: these amazing kits and recipes that she's made to kind
Speaker 3: of help amplify the colors of the soils.
Speaker 1: So Art of Soil is a great small company that
Speaker 1: makes watercolor art supplies out of different soils. You can
Speaker 1: just gowk over these refillable cherrywood palettes with little discs
Speaker 1: of earth toned pigments with names like sprout and bluebird
Speaker 1: and basalt, and I can see why they have eighty
Speaker 1: two thousand followers on Instagram. I feel like my heart
Speaker 1: rate goes down just looking at their page. So art
Speaker 1: of soil for any one shopping small businesses this holiday?
Speaker 1: Who knew being gifted a lump of coal is actually
Speaker 1: tight as hell? Okay? Onward, Kelly King, Ashley Okie, first
Speaker 1: time question asker, Karra Funt, first time questionasker Kaylie Shida.
Speaker 1: So many folks want to know clay versus soil. Kelly
Speaker 1: King is a beginner potter here and is wondering if
Speaker 1: clay is technically dirt or if it's something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say clay is not dirt, okay, And
Speaker 3: I might get some pushback on this, but kind of
Speaker 3: going back to this initial definition of dirt being displaced soil, well,
Speaker 3: clay is really more in that place. It does get transported, right,
Speaker 3: and clay is one of those finer particulates. But I
Speaker 3: don't think that it's diked.
Speaker 1: Okay. That's good to know. I think.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh man, am I going to get some pushback,
Speaker 3: you know?
Speaker 1: If it could be a matter of opinion here, So
Speaker 1: everyone who asked if clay was soil, Clay is an
Speaker 1: element of soil, but by itself, it's very very very
Speaker 1: very small rocks surrounded by this molecular film of water,
Speaker 1: which is why it is squishy and multiple. Now, for
Speaker 1: more on clay, you can see the Geology episode on
Speaker 1: rocks with Schmidty Thompson. But honestly, I want to do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on clay and pottery and kilns and
Speaker 1: all that. I don't know what theology is, but I
Speaker 1: want to do it. But in that Geology episode with
Speaker 1: Schmitty Thompson, we also discuss licking rocks. So what about
Speaker 1: sniffing the soil? So many of you, such as first
Speaker 1: time question askers Professor Kosha, Meg Geisinger and Amelia mccardeal,
Speaker 1: as well as Alphabet Lindsay Deal, Rona Taylor, Alexandra romonoitz
Speaker 1: Ologi's editor Mercedes Maitland and aforementioned geology guested Schmitti Thompson,
Speaker 1: as well as first time question asker a new Huh Joshi,
Speaker 1: as well as other people want to know does soil
Speaker 1: smell different in different regions and why?
Speaker 3: Yes, part of it is right the amount of moisture
Speaker 3: and again the material that has been breaking down in
Speaker 3: those regions. So again, I was in North Carolina and
Speaker 3: the Lumby and like, there are just certain plants that
Speaker 3: are there that makes them soil smell so much more uniquely,
Speaker 3: versus being in California last weekend and a lot of
Speaker 3: the soil there it smelled like the eucalyptus to me
Speaker 3: because of the eucalyptus trees that are around there that
Speaker 3: are down.
Speaker 1: For more on why California has so many non native
Speaker 1: eucalyptus trees grown from Australian seeds, you can listen to
Speaker 1: the recent Ziology episode which is all about wood will
Speaker 1: make you laugh and cry, and eucalyptus has hopefully never
Speaker 1: felt so seen so we get into it. But in
Speaker 1: other parts of the continent, in.
Speaker 3: North Carolina have these like tannins in the soil and
Speaker 3: you can see it, and in fact that the indigenous
Speaker 3: people there call themselves people of the Dark Waters from
Speaker 3: the tannins, and so I think there are definitely different
Speaker 3: elements of the soil or of the ecosystem that influenced
Speaker 3: the soil feel and smell in really beautiful ways.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the people of the Dark Waters. The
Speaker 1: Lumbee tribe of Northern Carolina. But why are those waters dark? Well,
Speaker 1: the tannins are plant compounds that evolved to deter herbivores
Speaker 1: who would come along and munchet and you're dark tea,
Speaker 1: that's tannins. So some rivers are just big streams of
Speaker 1: tea if you want to think about it, and you
Speaker 1: can just your body like little biscuit. But back to
Speaker 1: arid lands, and you're in the desert, which is the
Speaker 1: most best smelling, most best smelling dirt place. I feel
Speaker 1: like ever I have never smelled anything like driving through
Speaker 1: the Arizona desert when it rains. And Ronna Taylor, Jessica Jansen,
Speaker 1: Meghan MacLean, Ariel Van Sant, Francesca Huggins, Allison Mason, Hannah Cargrave,
Speaker 1: Live Bruce, First time question askers Apollonia, Pina, Megan Matthews, Aider,
Speaker 1: Emily Kraiger. I mean, we have a lot of people
Speaker 1: want to know essentially about petrocore. Why does soil smell
Speaker 1: so good after a rain? Is it true that big
Speaker 1: drops release some kind of volatile oils compounds.
Speaker 3: I'm this snorin desert, and the smell of the desert
Speaker 3: after rains is really the smell of creoso, which is
Speaker 3: this plant that does have certain oils on it, and
Speaker 3: I feel like that's what gets activated in part I
Speaker 3: think like the desert has just like baked for so
Speaker 3: long that that moisture just activates so many micro organisms
Speaker 3: who start breaking down those materials and really powerful base.
Speaker 3: I think that's like the general smell that we have
Speaker 3: is that breakdown material process. But in the Sonoran does
Speaker 3: in particular, it's the kreoso that gets activated and the
Speaker 3: oil is on there that get released and create those
Speaker 3: aromatics that are just so incredible. And it actually can
Speaker 3: see people who take branches of it and will put
Speaker 3: it in their shower so that they can smell it.
Speaker 3: On a more regular basis.
Speaker 1: We're just replanting our hillside with native plants and it's
Speaker 1: been a process this year. But one of the plants
Speaker 1: that we put in is a native coyote brush, which
Speaker 1: smells is like that smell of the desert. It's a
Speaker 1: baby right now and it's growing and I'm just I
Speaker 1: can't wait to just put my whole face in it
Speaker 1: because it smells so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an amazing, really unique smell and it's funny
Speaker 3: like after it rains in the desert. You know, I
Speaker 3: like to go on for runs and check it out
Speaker 3: because the desert feels so alive. But I you can
Speaker 3: hear the soil just like absorbing the moisture, and it
Speaker 3: just sounds everything in the desert is so happy, and
Speaker 3: you could just hear about soil so thankful for the moisture.
Speaker 3: And it's one of my favorite. And it's a really
Speaker 3: like subtle, weird sound like people like living here, you're
Speaker 3: imagining things. But I swear you can hear it.
Speaker 1: Who I looked everywhere for an example of this, and
Speaker 1: it is not a sound that has been caught on
Speaker 1: table lot. So I'm just gonna have to sit in
Speaker 1: the desert and wait for some kind of monsoon. And
Speaker 1: as for the sweet sweet smell of rain, so petrocore
Speaker 1: means the godly blood of a stone, but scientists call
Speaker 1: it ar glacious odor, which I learned from the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four publication in the journal Nature, which was titled
Speaker 1: the Nature of ar glacious Odor, which says it, yes,
Speaker 1: oils that are produced by plants sink into dry clay soils,
Speaker 1: and then when rainfalls, that oil becomes an aerosol and
Speaker 1: it's mixed with something called giasmine, which is a byproduct
Speaker 1: of little bacteria, little rod shaped ones called actinomyces, which
Speaker 1: are everywhere in soil and in us. The human nose
Speaker 1: is so attuned to finding water that we can detect
Speaker 1: the smell of giasmine in concentrations as low as point
Speaker 1: zero four parts per billion, which is not a lot
Speaker 1: of parts. But what about the types of rainfall. Well,
Speaker 1: In this other paper twenty fourteen's Aerosol generation by rain
Speaker 1: drop impact on Soil, researchers figured out that the way
Speaker 1: the scent hits our faces via aerosol is that the
Speaker 1: rain hits the ground and bubbles form in the rain drop,
Speaker 1: and then the bubbles burst along the surface of the
Speaker 1: rain drop, kind of like a fizzy beverage. So slower
Speaker 1: rain drops produce more bubbles, thus the smell, which is
Speaker 1: why light rains, particularly on really dry soil. That's the
Speaker 1: most bang for your buck when it comes to petrochore,
Speaker 1: I guess our glacious odor. But what does our galicious
Speaker 1: even mean? I just looked it up. It means of
Speaker 1: are relating to clay. And when I saw that, my
Speaker 1: throat closed, my palms got sticky, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: is it possible? And I googled argaylology. Yes, it's the
Speaker 1: study of Clay. Shut up, this is happening. I found
Speaker 1: the ology for Clay. What a same episode payoff that
Speaker 1: never happens. But yes, Petrocore, thank you plant oils, and
Speaker 1: thank you for that sweet musky earth wif that We
Speaker 1: all love you gosmine making Actinomyces bacteria just kisses on
Speaker 1: your tiny micro butts. Have you heard of any of
Speaker 1: their soil scientists looking for antibiotics from soil? Tera McNee, Laura,
Speaker 1: Lauren Cooper and Anne wanted to know are there microbes
Speaker 1: in soil that maybe might be used medicinally?
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. There are a fair amount of research projects
Speaker 3: that look at different antibiotics and microbes that can have
Speaker 3: healing processes. I think a lot of that work has
Speaker 3: traditionally been done more in like Latin America than here
Speaker 3: in the Southwest, although I believe some research has also
Speaker 3: focused on microbes and extreme environments for medicinal purposes. And
Speaker 3: I think there is something to be said that, particularly
Speaker 3: as we think about climate change and how the how
Speaker 3: our environments are changing, how people are looking at extreme
Speaker 3: environments for potential solutions, both environmentally but also pharmaceutically based.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, one tiny gram of soil contains up to
Speaker 1: three billion bacteria and a million fung gui And there's
Speaker 1: soil everywhere, and this was news to me. But the
Speaker 1: vast majority of antibiotics come from soil, including penicillin and streptomycin,
Speaker 1: and researchers are looking at an anti cancer drug that
Speaker 1: was found in a hot spring in New Mexico. Plus
Speaker 1: there's this whole slew of antibiotics called malicidins derived from soil.
Speaker 1: There may literally be a cure for cancer in your garden.
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at you, Patrons, Chris for Harper, Thomas
Speaker 1: Mursa Holtzman, Alessa Vice, Segouaney, Dana Rachel Adams, Shannon Foster,
Speaker 1: and Carly v who asked why people say rub some
Speaker 1: dirt in it when they are wounded. Maybe, though, before
Speaker 1: you do that, you should wait for more research, or
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps you could become a soil scientist, you know what,
Speaker 1: let us help you. A first time question asker Natalie
Speaker 1: Gomez said, I've never asked a question before, but I've
Speaker 1: got a freaking soil science final coming up. Don't let
Speaker 1: me down, JK, they say, But they want to know
Speaker 1: what is the most important mineral element or ion found
Speaker 1: in soil. And they just watched a video that says
Speaker 1: we're going to run out of phosphorus fertilizer in forty
Speaker 1: or fifty years. So is there anything that we're seeing
Speaker 1: as a trend of Oh no, we're really screwed when
Speaker 1: it comes to farming because we're depleting this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, phosphate is continues to be one of
Speaker 3: the more depleted nutrients, so phosphor doesn't to be one.
Speaker 3: And that's like, you know, something that was attributed a
Speaker 3: lot to big dust bowl prime types of processes is
Speaker 3: having I would say anything that's like nitrogen, phosphate, and
Speaker 3: potassium are the big three, right MPK. But I also
Speaker 3: think like you're continuing to see more of like the
Speaker 3: top soil being eroded away, and also with building construction,
Speaker 3: like a lot of the top soil being lost, which
Speaker 3: has the majority of nutrients in it to how self
Speaker 3: fulfilling ecosystems and so, Actually you see in the UK
Speaker 3: they started to make soil health metrics recognizing that we're
Speaker 3: losing top soil at an alarming rate that can't be replenished,
Speaker 3: and I would love to see other countries in the
Speaker 3: world also fulfill some kind of plan and thinking about
Speaker 3: top soil long term. I think this kind of goes
Speaker 3: into it. You know that there are multiple ways to
Speaker 3: think in seasoil. Many people think about it only as
Speaker 3: like a growth medium, as opposed to like an ecosystem
Speaker 3: that we can appreciate for how to prepare an impacted
Speaker 3: and contaminate ecosystem. So for the purpose of the question,
Speaker 3: I would say NPK are the primary ones that we
Speaker 3: want to focus and worry about, but it also depends
Speaker 3: on your ecosystem.
Speaker 1: There are many many ways to see soil, but what
Speaker 1: soil would Lydia stare at? Moonly Many folks, including patrons
Speaker 1: Daniel Solomon, Nicole Climb and Steve Hansen, Charlotte felkerguard or
Speaker 1: JIP seventeen first time question askers Megan Matthews, Adare and
Speaker 1: Lydia Baida and another Lydia, Lydia Lamb all wanted to
Speaker 1: know what in this Lydia's opinion is the best soil.
Speaker 3: Does she have a favorite so favorite soil? Oh, It's sorry,
Speaker 3: I mean there's like a texture, it's like a sand loam.
Speaker 3: I like those a lot, but if it's like a
Speaker 3: specific one. There is one where I grew up in
Speaker 3: New Mexico. It's like one of the places I'd love
Speaker 3: to go running. And it's this yellow sandstone and it's
Speaker 3: called Chipa a series and it makes a really beautiful
Speaker 3: color pigment, this like right yellow. But also I love
Speaker 3: it's on an ancestral publo with the Galisteo basin. And
Speaker 3: I really love that it's called the chipo because so
Speaker 3: in Spanish that means like sucked, like sucker or sucked,
Speaker 3: and I guess it's just like this this integration of
Speaker 3: like language. And it's right next to another soil series
Speaker 3: called a Zea soil series, which is like this right
Speaker 3: red color, and so it's this integration of like language
Speaker 3: and ancestral knowledge and the names of the soil series themselves.
Speaker 3: But then also like Chipato is weathered to weigh sandstone
Speaker 3: and so it's like sucked of it's sandstone material and
Speaker 3: weather away. And I think that like that name correlates
Speaker 3: so well with what the soil is and embodies, and
Speaker 3: just knowing that the care taking ethics of those particular soils,
Speaker 3: and this ancestral pueblo that has made all of this
Speaker 3: beautiful pottery is all embedded with in that soil itself,
Speaker 3: and I think that part is just really beautiful. So
Speaker 3: those are probably two of my favorites.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. And first time question asker Ingrid Saragoza wanted
Speaker 1: to know if we can make a difference to our
Speaker 1: planet via carbon sequestration and changing our farming practices. And
Speaker 1: also if you have an opinion, Caitlin Garofano wants to
Speaker 1: know on regenerative agriculture and trapping carbon, is that something
Speaker 1: we can do with soil?
Speaker 3: I say the evidence suggests yes, that investing in soil
Speaker 3: health and building up soil carbon and being able to
Speaker 3: sequester it is a really important factor to addressing climate change.
Speaker 3: And there is a really great ted talk on YouTube
Speaker 3: by Asthma and Beharhe where she really talks about soil
Speaker 3: being the climate solution. So definitely check it out because
Speaker 3: she speaks to it in a way that I could never.
Speaker 2: There's more carbon and soil than there is in all
Speaker 2: of the world's vegetation, including the lush tropical rainforests and
Speaker 2: the giant sequoias, the expansivelands, all of the cultivated systems,
Speaker 2: plus all the carbon that's currently up in the atmosphere
Speaker 2: combined and then twice over.
Speaker 3: So yes, check her out. And then in terms of
Speaker 3: regenerative agriculture, I do think it sounds it makes me
Speaker 3: really hopeful. I do want to highlight that many indigenous
Speaker 3: farmers have always done what is now renamed regenerate agriculture,
Speaker 3: and the Hoping Nation is one that comes to mind
Speaker 3: right away. Hoping and public farmers have had methods of
Speaker 3: regenerative agriculture, and I think this comes back to this
Speaker 3: methods and means of wanting to live in reciprocal relationships
Speaker 3: with our environments as opposed to extracted ones.
Speaker 1: So there's a one million questions, but I will not
Speaker 1: We're not going to get to them all. This just
Speaker 1: means if you have an interest in soil, go run
Speaker 1: with it literally like Lydia did, because there's a lot,
Speaker 1: there's so much intrigue in it. And let's see just
Speaker 1: a one last listener question. People wanted to know about
Speaker 1: safety and contact with dirt. What is clean dirt? Two
Speaker 1: people said, tell us about soil related fungal illnesses like
Speaker 1: valley fever, et cetera. Things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, valley fever is a huge one out here
Speaker 3: in the Sonoran Desert. I've been fortunate not to get it,
Speaker 3: but it's really common for people's dogs to give it,
Speaker 3: and I'm constantly afraid about both of my pet. So
Speaker 3: in terms of the safety, many people like when we're
Speaker 3: outfield sampling will wear a mask. I think for myself
Speaker 3: has been checking out our state health public health websites
Speaker 3: to see how common it is right now, So.
Speaker 1: Yes, head to the CDC for weekly reports on how
Speaker 1: many cases of cock ideo ido micosis aka valley fever
Speaker 1: have been reported in Arizona. You got a lot of
Speaker 1: copper and cockcidio idomacosis, coccidio ido mycosis. Them's the good
Speaker 1: news and the bad news. And if you have been
Speaker 1: in arid southwestern areas and you have lung symptoms like
Speaker 1: coffee or fever, sweats, fatigue, and maybe even a spotty
Speaker 1: red rash on your legs, maybe get checked out. It
Speaker 1: might totally resolve on its own. But my dear friend,
Speaker 1: doctor Tigan Wall, who hails from Arizona, had to get
Speaker 1: part of her lung removed because there was a fungal
Speaker 1: root ball in there from unchecked valley fever. Oh and
Speaker 1: climate change with potentially wetter winters and drier summers is
Speaker 1: making it more widespread. Not to freak you out, I know,
Speaker 1: I just freaked you out.
Speaker 3: For myself, I'm more concerned about heavy metals in the soil.
Speaker 3: You have to think about the typical public health aspects
Speaker 3: of exposure time and exposure load, and that's different than
Speaker 3: having a fungal or microbial issue, right, So I think
Speaker 3: those are the two pieces that I think about in
Speaker 3: terms of soil health. Another part I think is just
Speaker 3: like thinking about in general, like collecting soils as a woman,
Speaker 3: soil scientists safety and you know, when I didn't field
Speaker 3: tampling in California, I did get chased by someone. And
Speaker 3: let me tell you, like carrying a four gallon jug
Speaker 3: of mud and like running is like not easy. So
Speaker 3: I think that like those are also elements that we
Speaker 3: want to be and think you as loyal health too,
Speaker 3: is I feel more comfortable with the soil than I
Speaker 3: do people?
Speaker 1: Oh man, how what happened with that? Did they chase
Speaker 1: you off of public land? Their land? Did you yell
Speaker 1: back at them. Can I find them?
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was like it was yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: it was myself and another woman. We're collecting soil samples,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, like some some guys we're saying
Speaker 3: some like kind of explicit things to us, and we
Speaker 3: got freaked out naturally, because you're pretty like vulnerable, you
Speaker 3: can be pretty vulnerable, and we had we had these
Speaker 3: big sampling tubes. I'm like, okay, we can hit someone
Speaker 3: with this, but like the best thing to do is
Speaker 3: just like exit the situation. And so it made our
Speaker 3: research group kind of re evaluate some of the safety protocols.
Speaker 3: And so I think, like that is not the question
Speaker 3: that you were asking, and I apologize for like taking
Speaker 3: a different troductory, but you know, I think it's always
Speaker 3: just having a good head about you in the field.
Speaker 3: And I thought, especially like as an indigenous woman in general,
Speaker 3: I think soil science is a really safe field, but
Speaker 3: there's always the human element, and just like I think,
Speaker 3: you know, thinking about soil fungus, there are different methods
Speaker 3: that we do to protect yourself and being aware of
Speaker 3: like wearing the proper masks and the proper gloves and
Speaker 3: those types of things, and the proper awareness.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that Actually my next question was what is
Speaker 1: the hardest thing about what you do? And is there
Speaker 1: anything about soil or about the work or about systems
Speaker 1: that is the hardest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I think soil wise the hardest and
Speaker 3: like the most challenging, and also I think the most
Speaker 3: fun is like analyzing your data and pulling out the
Speaker 3: story of the data. And yeah, there are long days
Speaker 3: in the old and the lab to come back and process,
Speaker 3: particular with microbes, right, come back and process. And there
Speaker 3: are times where the first couple of years of my PhD,
Speaker 3: I was playing the microbes and you have to do
Speaker 3: the series dilutions. And it was like I come back
Speaker 3: from like you know, four days of heavy field work
Speaker 3: and then have like four days where I was three
Speaker 3: or four days where I was basing the lab all
Speaker 3: day and all in the out all night if I could, right,
Speaker 3: because you just don't want it. You want to get
Speaker 3: your microbes played as quickly as possible. I'm so that
Speaker 3: was just like really hard energetically and like personally, But
Speaker 3: I think like also what's really fun is when you
Speaker 3: have all the data then to put it together and
Speaker 3: pick the story and figure out what the story of
Speaker 3: the data is telling us about his health, about this
Speaker 3: landscape that you're studying. And I think that's beautiful and
Speaker 3: also really challenging because you want to make sure that
Speaker 3: you're not having any bias. Is that that in terms
Speaker 3: of the larger work that I do, you know, I
Speaker 3: think for better for worse of kind of myself this
Speaker 3: My Twitter name is Native soil Nerd, and I think
Speaker 3: it's really important for me to talk about Indigenous soil expertise,
Speaker 3: both historically and the present. But there I don't want
Speaker 3: to speak for communities that I'm not part of or
Speaker 3: things that I don't know that you can see. I'm
Speaker 3: really cautious about that, in part because I think they're like, well,
Speaker 3: you're Native, like you're an expert in all of these things,
Speaker 3: and there are definitely things that I'm not And I'm
Speaker 3: responsible to multiple communities, and all of those communities will
Speaker 3: hold me accountable if I misspeak, and so I think
Speaker 3: sometimes there is that is knowing how to pull strength
Speaker 3: in that accountability and how to try to use your
Speaker 3: voice for the best. But like also my community will
Speaker 3: tell me if I mess up, and that's like not
Speaker 3: you know, having any AUNTI be like, why you doing? That?
Speaker 3: Is never an easy part of like the criticism, right,
Speaker 3: And so I think that is an important piece of
Speaker 3: the challenge of coexisting in multiple spaces.
Speaker 1: And wanting to be responsible and in each of those spaces,
Speaker 1: that's got to be a lot of effort to make
Speaker 1: sure that you are you're doing right by everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think sometimes it's just the best thing
Speaker 3: I can do is not speak on something in a
Speaker 3: way and let someone else for my community speak who
Speaker 3: is more appropriate. And that's hard because also, like there
Speaker 3: are different value systems associated with like academic spaces and
Speaker 3: then indigenous community spaces, right or at least like my
Speaker 3: tribal nation community spaces, And so in some of those contexts,
Speaker 3: like there are not things I'm supposed to speak on,
Speaker 3: but like in academa, they're like you get an expert, like,
Speaker 3: am I going? And also but it's like hard, am
Speaker 3: I is it? Because I'm feeling hesitation because I'm an
Speaker 3: early career academic, because I'm a minoritized woman in the academy,
Speaker 3: and so you know, there are all of those different
Speaker 3: layers that make up the onion that is lydia.
Speaker 1: Lydia also recommends that people check out the American Indian
Speaker 1: Science and Engineering Society that's at ai sees dot org
Speaker 1: and that supports professionals in STEM fields through professional development,
Speaker 1: career opportunities, and networking. Lydia says that by showing up
Speaker 1: as herself, including making the time for important things like
Speaker 1: tribal ceremonies, she hopes she'll make it easier for other
Speaker 1: students and make them feel less isolated and give future
Speaker 1: mentors a better idea of how to make space for
Speaker 1: those kinds of experiences for students, especially since it can
Speaker 1: only broaden the scope and the impact of the science itself.
Speaker 1: What about your favorite thing about what you do?
Speaker 3: My favorite thing? I mean, I think so I love
Speaker 3: teaching because you can talk about something when you see
Speaker 3: students like picking their lights, the light inside of them,
Speaker 3: and they get excited. It's really amazing. And I also
Speaker 3: think teaching has made me feel so hopeful in a
Speaker 3: way that like you read typical science like climate science
Speaker 3: literature and that applies to soils as well, and it
Speaker 3: can be really depressing, but then you can constantly be
Speaker 3: so inspired by the students that you work with and
Speaker 3: they're like the future is in good hands and like
Speaker 3: they're going to have a lot to deal with, but
Speaker 3: there's so much passion and strengthen these students, and I
Speaker 3: think that's what makes me feel really hopeful. Also, I
Speaker 3: just the other part is like working with really some
Speaker 3: of my collaborators are just doing such a phenomenal work
Speaker 3: and it's so awesome to be like, these are people
Speaker 3: I looked up to and now are my co authors, right,
Speaker 3: And I think like I'm like, well, we're doing the
Speaker 3: work that fills gaps that I always wish I had
Speaker 3: had as a student, and now we're creating that. And
Speaker 3: you know, one of the great things about being a
Speaker 3: scientist is like you if you can write a good
Speaker 3: brand for and get it funded, you can study that
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, you're never going to get
Speaker 3: bored in this line of work because you have a question,
Speaker 3: you can write a grant and get it funded and
Speaker 3: explore and like, what a privilege that is that that
Speaker 3: is your profession. So I think those are the things
Speaker 3: that make me feel really hopeful. And I when in doubt,
Speaker 3: I just go for a run with my dog and
Speaker 3: seeing how happy she is just to get out of
Speaker 3: the house, Like that's what also fills me with joy.
Speaker 1: So ask some more people the simplest questions and go
Speaker 1: paint with dirt, Go smell the soil, watch a mining
Speaker 1: documentary on YouTube. It's none of my business, but do
Speaker 1: follow indigenous pedologist doctor Lydia Jennings on Twitter at one
Speaker 1: Native Soil Nerd or on Instagram at llcool Jennings, or
Speaker 1: you can check out her website at Nativesoil nerd dot com.
Speaker 1: A donation went to Risinghearts dot org and there'll be
Speaker 1: more links to all of that and info at Aliward
Speaker 1: dot com slash Ologies slash Indigenous Pedology, which is easily
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes for you too. We're at
Speaker 1: Ologies on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm at Aliward with
Speaker 1: one L on both. Thank you to all the patrons
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash Ologies. Thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who has merged from ologiesmerg dot com. Thank you Aaron Talbert,
Speaker 1: who moderates the Ologies podcast Facebook group with assists from
Speaker 1: sisters Bonnie Dutch and Shannon feltis Happy belated birthday Lily
Speaker 1: Talbert too. Thank you to Emily White of the Wordy
Speaker 1: who makes our professional transcripts, Caleb Patt who bleeps them
Speaker 1: Those are up for free at alleywar dot com slash Ologies,
Speaker 1: dash Extras. Thanks Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling and more,
Speaker 1: and Susan Hale for being the best. We also have shorter,
Speaker 1: classroom friendly cuts called smologies up at alleywar dot com
Speaker 1: slash smologies or in this feed. Those are edited by Zeke,
Speaker 1: Thomas Rodriguez and Mercedes Maitland, and many thanks to lead
Speaker 1: editors Derret Sleeper and Mercedes Maitland of mine Jam Media.
Speaker 1: The theme song was written by Nick Thorburn. And if
Speaker 1: you stick around, I tell you a secret. And today's
Speaker 1: secret is that I started the morning with a very
Speaker 1: large Thai iced tea that I made at home with
Speaker 1: some Thai tea and some vanilla creamer. And I apologize
Speaker 1: to all of Chailand for that, but it was delicious. Okay,
Speaker 1: bye bye.
Speaker 3: I will take a little sample of this to the
Speaker 3: lab for a soil analysis.