Speaker 1: Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're
Speaker 1: on the same rate for energy all day, every day.
Speaker 1: With a smart all Day plan from Board Gosh Energy,
Speaker 1: save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual
Speaker 1: fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five You're
Speaker 1: oh welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy dot I
Speaker 1: E Board Gosh Energy.
Speaker 2: Know your power.
Speaker 3: Estimated annual bility twenty six hundred twenty nine, Your new
Speaker 3: customers only thirst of percentI is kent of Smart all
Speaker 3: Day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas.
Speaker 3: You know a seaportcush Energy dot E for fulties and cs.
Speaker 2: Do you know what real power is?
Speaker 1: It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day,
Speaker 1: every day with a smart all day plan from Board
Speaker 1: Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro
Speaker 1: on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five You're oh welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy
Speaker 1: dot I E Board Gosh Energy.
Speaker 3: Know your power estimate annual bill of two thousand, six
Speaker 3: hundred twenty nine. Your new customers only THIRSHPERCENTI is kent
Speaker 3: of Smart All Day electricity unit rates in twenty nine
Speaker 3: percent of gas. You know a seaportsh energy dot E
Speaker 3: for fulties and ces.
Speaker 4: O.
Speaker 5: Hey it's your internet, dad. I'm here with facts about
Speaker 5: things you don't know you care about yet, Ali Ward,
Speaker 5: I'm back with an episode of Ologies. It is not
Speaker 5: about Valentine's Day, because if you are coupled, you have
Speaker 5: had a lot of quality time together this past year,
Speaker 5: and if you're not, it has been a year of
Speaker 5: maybe zoom dates and googling diy hug machine plans. So
Speaker 5: we're just not doing that this week. Okay, there's no
Speaker 5: episodes about matrimoniology or sexology. We had those in previous years,
Speaker 5: and yes they'll be linked in the show notes. But
Speaker 5: this episode is not about that. It's not about roses
Speaker 5: or chocolate. It's about not chocolate. It's about undersung trees.
Speaker 5: It's about something perhaps right over your head that you're
Speaker 5: about to be obsessed about. It's about carab. Yeah, carab stop. Okay. First, thanks,
Speaker 5: thank you to everyone on Patreon. I gushed about you
Speaker 5: in a recent article that I will link on my
Speaker 5: website and heads up, you can join Patreon for a
Speaker 5: one tiny dollar and thanks to everyone who's subscribing and
Speaker 5: posting on social media, texting your friends about the show,
Speaker 5: leaving reviews. I pick a newly left one each week,
Speaker 5: such as this one from NK. Shepherd who says that
Speaker 5: ologies is the best thing they got from NX and
Speaker 5: they say, this recommendation is from an exis friend and
Speaker 5: it's the best thing I'm left with. Incredibly fresh, entertaining
Speaker 5: and educational. Not an easy feat. Also thank you m K. Shepherd.
Speaker 5: If you're single, there is a Flirtology singles group on Facebook.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, and then I wink at you. Okay.
Speaker 5: Charrobology This is indeed a word. It has been used
Speaker 5: just one time in the literature. It was in a
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five La Times article by a columnist who
Speaker 5: wrote quote in his book character Study of a Carab Tree,
Speaker 5: Doctor Arboreal Snodgrass, a karabologist of the nth degree says
Speaker 5: they is a tree of the Seratonia siliqua, and then
Speaker 5: it goes on to describe the charb tree. So yes,
Speaker 5: karabologist used in a nineteen forty five newspaper. It's a
Speaker 5: word so karab itself, though comes from a root word
Speaker 5: in Aramaic Karuba, meaning carab tree or carib shrug. It's
Speaker 5: also related to the Hebrew Carab for carab. Does that
Speaker 5: help you? I don't know, But once I had found
Speaker 5: out that carobology had been used, it was on with
Speaker 5: this Davis based California carab expert. So she studied in
Speaker 5: her undergrad art and humanities, but has had a second
Speaker 5: career as a musician and then decided to go back
Speaker 5: to school to pursue STEM and she launched her own
Speaker 5: research into the carab tree, which she continues as she
Speaker 5: gets her masters at UC Davis, working in almond development.
Speaker 5: And she's passionate about plants, about the underdogs, under our
Speaker 5: noses and above our heads. And we chatted about everything
Speaker 5: from hoggandaws to pupcakes and pods, potassium, the culinary horrors
Speaker 5: of the nineteen seventies, fiber, the drought resistant resolve of carab,
Speaker 5: how to find one, when to pick the pods, what
Speaker 5: to make from them. We also talk about cheesecake, rum, fungi, diamonds,
Speaker 5: and most importantly, how carab is about to make a
Speaker 5: comeback right into your mouth and your heart. With Botany
Speaker 5: nerd outspoken advocate and carobologist, Megan Lynch.
Speaker 4: In terms of my body personally, phenotypically, I'm very irish,
Speaker 4: So being in a place with you know that's not
Speaker 4: too hot. You know, the ideal temperature for me is
Speaker 4: like about seventy five. I love, you know, a reasonable
Speaker 4: amount of rain, a reasonable amount of fog. I love
Speaker 4: all that stuff. And when I went up to Davis
Speaker 4: last fall, I was living down there again, So it
Speaker 4: gave me a basis for comparison in terms of how
Speaker 4: much had changed, you know, as opposed to people who
Speaker 4: live there the whole time. The change is so gradual.
Speaker 4: It doesn't they don't see it. But for me it was,
Speaker 4: you know, there were definitely things that were really dramatically different.
Speaker 5: That's such a scientist thing to say, give me a
Speaker 5: basis for comparison, spoken like a true scientist. Have you
Speaker 5: always wanted to be a scientist.
Speaker 4: No, it's not something that I I mean, I always
Speaker 4: took science. But I have to say, I mean, where
Speaker 4: to start with this. I'm disabled. I became physically disabled
Speaker 4: at twenty nine.
Speaker 5: And as anyone who lives with them knows, not all
Speaker 5: disabilities that are physical or visible, and not all disabilities
Speaker 5: are even physical. And Megan is an amazing advocate for
Speaker 5: all kinds of folks, and I actually started following her
Speaker 5: when I got wind of the disabilities in STEM hashtag
Speaker 5: on Twitter, And like many people using that hashtag, she
Speaker 5: didn't think that she belonged in STEM, despite her love
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 4: I still don't have the money to get an official diagnosis,
Speaker 4: but I'm pretty sure I have dyscalculio, which is is
Speaker 4: sort of like dyslexia for math, you know, and spatial things,
Speaker 4: and so much of the way science is taught in
Speaker 4: junior high and high school, you know, and certainly the
Speaker 4: messages that we get from society at large is that
Speaker 4: if you're not excellent in math, don't even consider going
Speaker 4: into science. Yeah, And so I think for that reason
Speaker 4: that's why I didn't really consider it as an option
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 5: So Megan was readjusting to life after becoming disabled, and
Speaker 5: she says the reality for folks living with a disability,
Speaker 5: visible or invisible, is that a lot of jobs are
Speaker 5: deemed by others as inaccessible to them. And she says
Speaker 5: that sadly, the employment levels and income levels tend to
Speaker 5: be lower, and it really drives those populations into a
Speaker 5: situation where finances are a struggle. In fact, I was
Speaker 5: looking this up and today found out that Section fourteen
Speaker 5: of the Fair Labor Standards Act states that employers can
Speaker 5: pay employees with the disabilities below the minimum wage, and
Speaker 5: in order for the subminimum wage to apply, it says
Speaker 5: the disability of the worker must directly affect their productivity
Speaker 5: in their given position, and that the disabilities affecting productivity
Speaker 5: can include blindness, mental illness, developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, and
Speaker 5: alcoholism and drug addiction. So, since this section was enacted
Speaker 5: in nineteen eighty six, folks with the disabilities of all
Speaker 5: kinds have been legally paid below minimum wage for their work.
Speaker 5: So just feel free to pause this and go break
Speaker 5: some plates, or grab your collar and rip your shirt off,
Speaker 5: or crush some metal in your hands, or perhaps tweet
Speaker 5: your congress person because that is disgusting anyway. So Megan,
Speaker 5: who became disabled in her twenties, was trying to figure
Speaker 5: out what to do.
Speaker 4: When I first went back to community college, I was
Speaker 4: thinking I was just going to brush up the skills
Speaker 4: I was resting on and then look around for what
Speaker 4: I could retrain in, and then within a semester I was.
Speaker 4: I took a botany class as well as a environmental
Speaker 4: chemistry class for non major's, simply to you know, for
Speaker 4: my own interest. And by the end of that semester,
Speaker 4: my botany teacher had sort of pulled me aside and said, hey,
Speaker 4: you know, you're good, and I had actually pulled her
Speaker 4: aside and said, look, I'm you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 4: consider what it is I can do, and I don't
Speaker 4: want to do something that's completely unfulfilling for me, because
Speaker 4: I've actually done a lot of that in my life already.
Speaker 4: Although jobs that I can see for people in horticulture,
Speaker 4: you know, even the most advanced jobs, they want you
Speaker 4: to lift fifty pounds, you need to be certified for
Speaker 4: a forklift work. Blah blah blah. Is this even possible
Speaker 4: for me? And she says, yeah, I think you could
Speaker 4: do lab science.
Speaker 5: Oh so you kind of got discovered almost.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess. I mean, it's just that it took
Speaker 4: somebody to make it clear to me that that sort
Speaker 4: of pop idea of what science is is not necessarily
Speaker 4: the way science works on a daily basis. That does
Speaker 4: doesn't mean that it's easy for scientists with disabilities anything
Speaker 4: but but but the fact is, and even at that
Speaker 4: same institution, there was another prof that I was taking
Speaker 4: chemistry from who was like, why are you even going
Speaker 4: into science if you're not good at math? And yeah,
Speaker 4: I know, which is really rather a ridiculous thing, because
Speaker 4: it's it's like, you don't have to be the person
Speaker 4: in the lab who's in charge of all the calculations,
Speaker 4: you know, even if we even if we didn't have
Speaker 4: computer programs into which you just plugged variables, but for
Speaker 4: some reason, you know, there's that sort of gatekeeping. And
Speaker 4: I think one thing that helped me a lot, besides
Speaker 4: that professor taking me aside and expressing confidence in me,
Speaker 4: was the fact that, you know, I was already on
Speaker 4: Twitter to before I went back to school, just to
Speaker 4: promote my album, And so I switched to sort of
Speaker 4: using my Twitter account to just following as many scientists,
Speaker 4: particularly planned scientists, as I could.
Speaker 5: Megan credits some of her resolve to the working scientists
Speaker 5: she follows who were brave enough to come out and say, hey,
Speaker 5: math isn't my passion or my strong suit, and that
Speaker 5: just have their work double checked or focus on qualitative things.
Speaker 5: And we heard this very thing actually from excellent doctor
Speaker 5: Kaylee Swift of corvid Thanatology, and in that episode she
Speaker 5: discusses her ADHD and she has gone on to be
Speaker 5: a huge star in her field.
Speaker 4: The fact that people were willing to admit, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: not that stereotype.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: We have people in science who are complete whizzes at it,
Speaker 4: and that's great. It's really it's important for the type
Speaker 4: of work that demands that. But it doesn't mean the
Speaker 4: other sides of science don't always need that all the time.
Speaker 4: You're working in a team and everybody has their own strengths.
Speaker 5: When it comes to botany and music. I'm sure that
Speaker 5: they fulfill different things for you, But is there anything
Speaker 5: that's similar about them when you think about projects that
Speaker 5: you work on, or anything that excites you about both
Speaker 5: kind of in the same way.
Speaker 4: Gosh, I suppose for me, when I'm singing or when
Speaker 4: I'm singing in front of an audience, I'm very much
Speaker 4: present in the moment. And when I'm doing field work
Speaker 4: working with plants, or when I'm gardening or that is
Speaker 4: about the most you know. I don't find meditation easy.
Speaker 4: My brain talks to me a lot, so something that
Speaker 4: gets me out of my own head is very much,
Speaker 4: you know, doing that kind of observation of nature does.
Speaker 5: That that's a really beautiful thing. That's got to be
Speaker 5: such a great incentive to do field work to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it's also something that you know,
Speaker 4: doing this work where I chose for logistical reasons, working
Speaker 4: on street trees. It brings me into contact with what
Speaker 4: those trees and what public trials trees mean to people.
Speaker 4: And certainly there have been studies in terms of the
Speaker 4: mental health benefits of living someplace where there's plenty of greenery.
Speaker 4: It's clearly not just working for me. That sort of calming,
Speaker 4: meditative aspect to being around a tree that takes you
Speaker 4: out of yourself and you can just observe the wind
Speaker 4: going through the trees, or you can hear you know,
Speaker 4: like outside my door right now, there's a walnut tree
Speaker 4: and you can hear the sound of the squirrels eating
Speaker 4: the walnuts.
Speaker 5: And you said street trees in particular, how do you
Speaker 5: differentiate a tree tree in a street tree.
Speaker 4: I call something a street tree if it is something
Speaker 4: that is planted, usually by the city, in the little
Speaker 4: hell strip that's in front of people's yards. Is that
Speaker 4: called a hell strip or do you no, that's one
Speaker 4: of the things. I mean, it's not the official name
Speaker 4: of it, but it's something I sort of picked up
Speaker 4: for There's a blog called garden Rant. I think that
Speaker 4: first introduced me to that, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: it can be a heaven strip too, but for a
Speaker 4: lot of people it's.
Speaker 5: A Megan says that generally the city is responsible for
Speaker 5: the hell strip, but sometimes the homeowner will just go
Speaker 5: out and plant something in there, and you know, nobody
Speaker 5: cares or catches them. Maybe a business will prune some
Speaker 5: branches that cover their signage or just chop down a
Speaker 5: tree without getting caught. And then there's nonprofits like tree
Speaker 5: people who sometimes care for the street trees if the
Speaker 5: government is neglecting them. But street trees are all over,
Speaker 5: which makes them both familiar and intriguing but easy to
Speaker 5: get to.
Speaker 4: So I needed some aspect that I could study that
Speaker 4: was nearby that was inexpensive for me to study. And
Speaker 4: that's when I remembered that there had been carab trees
Speaker 4: near my grammar school, and that there were in our
Speaker 4: region a number of street trees that were Caribs. And
Speaker 4: there's a tree fruit that I can study three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty five days a year. That was my initial
Speaker 4: approach to it.
Speaker 5: Ah, And I perhaps you're biased, perhaps you're not. Is
Speaker 5: carab the best street tree?
Speaker 4: Well? I think I think for any species, you know,
Speaker 4: they always the cliche thing is right plant for the
Speaker 4: right place. So carib is very good. And I would
Speaker 4: say it's an ideal tree to plant in coastal and
Speaker 4: some valley parts of California. Once you start getting north north,
Speaker 4: where the winter temps get down below twenty, it's not
Speaker 4: a good good thing to plant.
Speaker 5: What is a carab tree?
Speaker 4: It's a member of the Fabasier family, So that's the
Speaker 4: same family that you know the beans we eat come from.
Speaker 4: It's a very large family. Some of the family does
Speaker 4: what's called nitrogen fixing, and the used to be called
Speaker 4: the legumi noose, so they're legumes. And carib is in
Speaker 4: the genus Serotonia, which only has two members. So it's
Speaker 4: one of two members of that genus.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, that's tiny, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It is. It's really an oddball in a lot of ways.
Speaker 5: By the way, I heard the genus Serotonia, and I
Speaker 5: wondered if it had any kind of shared history with serotonin,
Speaker 5: the neurochemical that keeps us chipper. But serotonia is spelled
Speaker 5: with the sea and it's actually closer to keratin, coming
Speaker 5: from the root for horn in case you feel horn
Speaker 5: up for etymology. For more on serotonin, by the way,
Speaker 5: which comes from the word for serum, you can listen
Speaker 5: to the Molecular Neurobiology episode with Doctor Brain aka Crystal Dilworth, PhD.
Speaker 5: But let's resume the legume chat on this what has
Speaker 5: become a podpod.
Speaker 4: It's an evergreen tree. It's native to the Mediterranean, which
Speaker 4: is one of the reasons it does well in California,
Speaker 4: which has a Mediterranean climate for the moment climate change
Speaker 4: is real. It's what's called dioecious, which means that it
Speaker 4: has sexes. Tends to fall broadly into male or female,
Speaker 4: although there are some that are called hermaphrodites, And what
Speaker 4: they're referring to there really is the flower parts that
Speaker 4: the tree makes and the females and the hermaphrodites produce pods,
Speaker 4: and the pods are very useful. You can use the
Speaker 4: whole pot and the seeds in various ways.
Speaker 2: I'd like to eat the whole thing.
Speaker 5: And are you allowed to collect cara pods. If it's
Speaker 5: a street tree, can you harvest them?
Speaker 4: Yeah? People do. I mean honestly, even though people homeowners
Speaker 4: tend to get very possessive of things that are in
Speaker 4: that hell strip. But even if the if the homeowner
Speaker 4: planted it, the hellstrip is not their property in most places,
Speaker 4: So yeah, you're within your rights. I would just say,
Speaker 4: you know, be polite, don't leave a mess, don't you know,
Speaker 4: climb on people's coores or but yeah, yeah, no, it
Speaker 4: does happen, and.
Speaker 5: They're obviously edible because all of us no care ab
Speaker 5: as chocolate's weird less offensive cousin kind of right, careb
Speaker 5: is called in as a substitute.
Speaker 4: Correct, Well, that's how we've come to use it. But
Speaker 4: it's really a rather recent development relatively speaking. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, yeah, it's very recent. I mean, if you
Speaker 4: think about it, what we think of as chocolate, that
Speaker 4: didn't even develop until the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in this in the sense that we think of
Speaker 4: it in terms of like this bar is that is
Speaker 4: processed and conked, you know, and that it's made with
Speaker 4: cocoa butter. The cocoa butter and chocolate is from cacao.
Speaker 4: It's not from coconut, you know, but it's just processed
Speaker 4: in this very smooth way where those things two things
Speaker 4: are put together. That's more of a mid to late
Speaker 4: nineteenth century development, whereas prior to that, you know, if
Speaker 4: you get like Mexican hot chocolate, like ibarra or something,
Speaker 4: and you have these cakes that are together, that's much
Speaker 4: closer to what chocolate was for years.
Speaker 5: Ps. If you must know which, you must that etymology
Speaker 5: of coconut and cocoa, it's about to go from confusing
Speaker 5: and muddled to just adorable sort of. So cocw and
Speaker 5: chocolate and cocoa, which is a highly processed form of
Speaker 5: rock cocw. Those all stem from an indigenous meso American
Speaker 5: word used to describe the cocow plant, which does not
Speaker 5: have nuts. It has seeds and coconuts. Tropical coconuts are
Speaker 5: neither cocoa or nuts. They're actually something called a drupe,
Speaker 5: which is like an apricot or a peach or a cherry.
Speaker 5: Cocoa in the word coconut comes from the Portuguese word
Speaker 5: for boogeyman or hobgoblin because of its three dots that
Speaker 5: look like a creepy skull. So if you ever again
Speaker 5: order a pinicolata, just know that you're sipping the oily
Speaker 5: blood of a hobgoblin drup dida. So chocolate is from cocaw,
Speaker 5: which is not coconut, which is not a nut. None
Speaker 5: of these things are kerab, and frankly, carab doesn't give
Speaker 5: a shit. It never asked to be involved with any
Speaker 5: of those theatrics. Do you think that humans were yumming
Speaker 5: up on carab before chocolate?
Speaker 4: Broadly speaking, I don't want to say that, because you know,
Speaker 4: the Aztecs and other indigenous peoples of the Americas were
Speaker 4: using cacao, you know, for ages and so even the
Speaker 4: things that we think of as being chocolate, that process
Speaker 4: didn't develop till later. But certainly it was an extremely
Speaker 4: important drink and item in their culture. So I really
Speaker 4: just think of it as a parallel thing, which is
Speaker 4: that in the Mediterranean where carab is, native people were
Speaker 4: using carab in the various ways that they use it
Speaker 4: without even knowing that such a thing as cacao existed,
Speaker 4: And likewise, the people in the Americas were using cacao
Speaker 4: and it was taking the place that it takes in
Speaker 4: their society without even knowing there was such a thing
Speaker 4: as the Mediterranean, this thing called Krab. Because of my
Speaker 4: background in the humanities, you know, I immediately started not
Speaker 4: just looking for botanical information, but looking for historical information.
Speaker 4: And if it leads me down to gas aeronomic history,
Speaker 4: then I go down that road. But I'm not an
Speaker 4: expert in gastronomic history or you know, so I'm sort
Speaker 4: of accruing the knowledge as I can get it. You know,
Speaker 4: the indications I'm seeing are that certain religions that had
Speaker 4: issues with stimulants might have been the reason why Carib
Speaker 4: was grasped that as a chocolate substitute, because the chocolate
Speaker 4: was forbidden to have because of it has some stimulant properties.
Speaker 5: I never connected it until right now that growing up,
Speaker 5: my LDS friends who were in the Mormon Church ate
Speaker 5: carib for religious reasons. I never got that. My friend
Speaker 5: Lizzette always had Tiger's milk bars as a snack in
Speaker 5: her lunch, and those are quoted in carib And like
Speaker 5: a big milk chocolate bar, which is about one hundred grams,
Speaker 5: has about as much caffeine as a coke, Carab has
Speaker 5: none also as an American, I am deficient in the
Speaker 5: metric system. But I just found a website called one
Speaker 5: hundred dash grams dot blogspot dot com that shows you
Speaker 5: what one hundred grams of a bunch of different foods
Speaker 5: look like. It's so helpful. However, they do not feature
Speaker 5: any carrot products. These pods that are on the trees.
Speaker 5: You said you can use the pod as well as
Speaker 5: the seeds.
Speaker 4: Yeah. In fact, actually, when you're talking about you know,
Speaker 4: quote unquote chocolate substitute, what's being eaten there is actually
Speaker 4: the processed bits of the pod itself, not the seeds. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 4: no way.
Speaker 5: You never would have guessed that.
Speaker 4: You can eat them straight off the tree. I mean,
Speaker 4: if they're not too old, they won't be too tasty
Speaker 4: if they're several years old. But if you get like
Speaker 4: that year's crop, it's kind of you know, a little uh.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to describe the texture, right, It's
Speaker 4: almost like the texture you would have in a macaroon.
Speaker 4: If you crack the pod open, inside is a wheat pulp.
Speaker 5: I had no idea. I had no idea that you
Speaker 5: could even do that. Okay, how do you know what
Speaker 5: if you have a carab tree on your street, on
Speaker 5: your hell strip, and you have no idea, how can
Speaker 5: you tell? What do you look for?
Speaker 4: What defines a carab? To look at it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you were to, cause I'm sure that when
Speaker 5: you are running around Davis, you're like carrab, carab, carab, carab.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: People probably go past them all the time and have
Speaker 5: no idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's true. Well, they have what are called
Speaker 4: compound leaves, which is that instead of just that one
Speaker 4: sort of you know, bow shaped leaf that's like most
Speaker 4: people draw if they're drawing a leaf, it's a leaf
Speaker 4: that's composed of leaflets and that can vary anywhere from
Speaker 4: four leaflets to leaf to twelve leaflets per leaf. And
Speaker 4: the leaflets are elliptical and they tend to come they
Speaker 4: are mostly opposite each other they're on. The leaf itself
Speaker 4: is a sort of leathery dark green color when they're mature,
Speaker 4: and a lot of the trees that were planted around
Speaker 4: southern California as street trees are eighty two one hundred
Speaker 4: years old. They get to about twenty five to thirty
Speaker 4: feet tall. They tend to be more gnarled. There are
Speaker 4: ones that are straighter of course, but they I mean,
Speaker 4: they're really beautiful to look at for that reason there,
Speaker 4: and then the dead giveaway would be if you're seeing
Speaker 4: pods coming from them.
Speaker 5: But the difference between a shrub and a tree and
Speaker 5: a bush. Are cara trees big shrubs?
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of. Yeah, the ones that were made into
Speaker 4: street trees, they're literally made into that in the sense
Speaker 4: that all throughout its life, somebody's been pruning its lower
Speaker 4: branches off and like selecting one of the trunks for
Speaker 4: a trunk. But if you left them alone, you'd probably
Speaker 4: get more than one trunk, and it would still grow
Speaker 4: to like about twenty five thirty feet eat however many
Speaker 4: feet it is, it would just be like this bushier
Speaker 4: thing rather than a lollipop.
Speaker 5: So okay, fun history. During the depression, Seventh Day Adventists
Speaker 5: planted a bunch of carab trees in an LA suburb
Speaker 5: called Pasadena, hoping people would eat them and never have
Speaker 5: to go hungry. But people were like, what are these
Speaker 5: turd trees? And why aren't they chocolate looking? A gift
Speaker 5: legome straight in the podmouth. And if you are dying
Speaker 5: to know yourself, where your closest carab tree is? You
Speaker 5: can go to einaturalist dot org and I did. I
Speaker 5: found some within two blocks of me, and now I
Speaker 5: want to go say hi and hug them and see
Speaker 5: if I can nibble on their offerings. Sure, they're in
Speaker 5: season during the late summer and early fall, But Megan says,
Speaker 5: if they're on the tree still and no one is
Speaker 5: fighting you for them, just pocket what you can the seeds.
Speaker 5: What do you make with the seeds?
Speaker 4: Well, have you ever picked up and looked at the
Speaker 4: ingredients of yogurt or cottage cheese or ice cream and
Speaker 4: seen an ingredient that says locus being gum?
Speaker 5: No, oh, locust flint flam about to be busted. Now
Speaker 5: I have a feeling I know where this is going though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, locus being gum or carab being gum that's made
Speaker 4: from the seats?
Speaker 5: Oh my god? Is there a lot of like, uh
Speaker 5: fiber in them? Is it what makes it glooy or
Speaker 5: sticki or gummy?
Speaker 4: Uh? There's a there's a substance in it called galacto
Speaker 4: man and it's a long chain sugar. And when you
Speaker 4: have these sort of long chain kinky sugars, and I
Speaker 4: mean in terms of the shape of the molecule. Then
Speaker 4: it means that they kind of lay on each other
Speaker 4: in a way that is not you know, it doesn't
Speaker 4: collapse very much, right, so it thickens. Whatever it's in
Speaker 4: doesn't have a strong taste on its own, so it
Speaker 4: makes it a perfect thing to put into something that
Speaker 4: you like perfectly. Well, you want to taste the taste
Speaker 4: of that item, but you also want that item to
Speaker 4: be thicker and easier to handle. I remember when yogurt
Speaker 4: really started becoming more popular in a mainstream way when
Speaker 4: I was young in the seventies.
Speaker 5: This taught me that I don't read labels enough.
Speaker 2: You'll play yogurt get a little taste of French culture.
Speaker 4: And for some reason they just decided that we needed
Speaker 4: something thicker, so they thicken it up. And carab being
Speaker 4: gum or locus being gum is it's more commonly called
Speaker 4: lbgut locus being gum. That's vegetarian, and I believe it's
Speaker 4: also you know, as long as it goes through the
Speaker 4: right authority and gets approved, it's kosher, So it makes
Speaker 4: it something you can use in a lot of different products.
Speaker 5: And it is well, why locus being gum does locus do?
Speaker 5: They just love carab trees, locust, flim flam about to
Speaker 5: be busted.
Speaker 4: Another common name in English and also in German and
Speaker 4: other things for carab is Saint John's bread. So in
Speaker 4: the Bible there's a thing where, you know, I think
Speaker 4: it's John the Baptist rather than John the gospel writer,
Speaker 4: but that he was out in the desert and he
Speaker 4: was living on locusts and honey, and the locusts that
Speaker 4: they're referring to there are carab pods.
Speaker 5: Oh, he wasn't eating grasshoppers. No, he wasn't a lot
Speaker 5: of protein though, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly right. Yeah, like from the locus problems they're having
Speaker 4: in East Africa and other places right now, you know
Speaker 4: you definitely go, well, yeah, it would be nice if
Speaker 4: we were all cooler about eating that because it is protein. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it would sort of knock two birds out with one stone.
Speaker 5: Without having to kill a bird, just the locus. For
Speaker 5: more on eating bugs, feel free to listen to the
Speaker 5: Wonderful Entomophagy Anthropology episode back in January twenty nineteen. But
Speaker 5: getting back to Megan's research, she started to gravitate to
Speaker 5: this scrappy, hardy, underloved tree.
Speaker 4: So I just thought, Okay, there, I know that where
Speaker 4: these carib street trees are, I can start looking around
Speaker 4: to see where other locations are in LA area that
Speaker 4: are close enough that I can visit on a reasonable
Speaker 4: frequent basis. And I just went out there literally with
Speaker 4: a clipboard and a pencil and just started writing down
Speaker 4: everything I noticed about the plant. And I think I
Speaker 4: may even have done that before I looked up anything
Speaker 4: more about it, so that I could keep, you know, initially,
Speaker 4: keep very fresh in terms of what am I seeing here?
Speaker 2: I can get it.
Speaker 4: But I did, of course, soon go to the web,
Speaker 4: and this is in twenty thirteen, and there was a
Speaker 4: great deal less about carab on the web than there
Speaker 4: is now. But both then and now, I was sort
Speaker 4: of astounded that a species that I knew had been
Speaker 4: around for so long and had been known for so long,
Speaker 4: had been semi domesticated for so long that there was
Speaker 4: a very little good authoritative information either in horticultural gardening
Speaker 4: kind of side of things or the horticultural science side
Speaker 4: of things. And that just was really odd to me.
Speaker 4: I mean, how could you be around something all the
Speaker 4: time and like nobody's choosing to act study it? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I still can't really answer for you why that is.
Speaker 4: And that's why, like when I do a presentation on it,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I say it, it's it's like
Speaker 4: the Rodney Dangerfield of the fruit world, you know, because
Speaker 4: it don't it don't get no respect, no respect from anyone.
Speaker 5: I love Rodney Daniel, and I'll for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, somebody was using that. Somebody was using a jiff
Speaker 4: of him the other day, and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 4: gotta get I gotta take that for my presentation, that
Speaker 4: that sort of tie tugging motion, you know, yeah, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4: So by looking online, what I could find were a
Speaker 4: lot of sort of myths that would get promulgated about it.
Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is that if you're
Speaker 4: saying that if Caraba takes forty years to become mature
Speaker 4: right to be able to even bear its first fruit,
Speaker 4: well then I want to see your citation for that.
Speaker 4: I happened to know that was extremely unlikely to be true,
Speaker 4: but people repeat that because there's a sort of I
Speaker 4: don't think it's literally from the Christian Bible, but it's
Speaker 4: from I think a judaic text that's sort of like
Speaker 4: largely that you know, old Testament stuff was taken from
Speaker 4: or like the tales of some rabbi or something, and
Speaker 4: in that tale it says it took forty years. But
Speaker 4: you know, forty is also a name number that we
Speaker 4: see crop up over and over again because it has
Speaker 4: you know, forty days and forty nights, forty years out
Speaker 4: in the desert or whatever, you know, So it's more
Speaker 4: of like a symbolic number. It really doesn't have to
Speaker 4: do with what the charab tree does itself. It's just
Speaker 4: that people repeat it so much that they don't even
Speaker 4: link to like where there's an authoritative source. But you know,
Speaker 4: unless say, oh, well, kerab seat's all weigh the same,
Speaker 4: and so therefore the word that we use for carrot,
Speaker 4: you know, it was used for measurement, and therefore twenty
Speaker 4: four carrot carrot comes from the word carob. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: that's what they say. Actually they aren't very similar, but
Speaker 4: they're not like, you know, you wouldn't want to use
Speaker 4: that in any kind of modern content.
Speaker 5: It's not like a metrological standard.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're on Gilligan's Island there's something in
Speaker 4: there's a character there, then maybe yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 4: so there were a lot of things like that. And
Speaker 4: then the other thing that happened was that I kept
Speaker 4: coming across this name of this guy named doctor j
Speaker 4: Elliott Quoit, and I would notice that some of the
Speaker 4: few things I could find on carap that were informative
Speaker 4: were from this guy. And I was lucky that even
Speaker 4: in twenty thirteen, the California Avocado Society or whatever the
Speaker 4: success or organization was to that, had put up PDFs
Speaker 4: of some of these old newsletters and things that they had,
Speaker 4: and Quoit had written quite a few articles. Quite is
Speaker 4: super important in the development of avocados as a commercial product,
Speaker 4: which was really centered in southern California in the early
Speaker 4: twentieth century.
Speaker 5: Oh so yes, doctor j Elliott Quoit was the granddaddy
Speaker 5: of California. Yeah, avocados, there you go. But he had
Speaker 5: a sweet spot for our friend Carab.
Speaker 4: Also, he had put together a carab demonstration orchard in
Speaker 4: San Diego County starting in about nineteen forty nine, I
Speaker 4: think it started and going for a decade or two
Speaker 4: before his money ran out, and that sort of thing
Speaker 4: where he was trialing the best carib and so they
Speaker 4: had gone around the state where there were already lots
Speaker 4: of carab trees planted because it doesn't need a lot
Speaker 4: of water, and in the days before we had huge
Speaker 4: irrigation projects here in California, that was a perfect tree
Speaker 4: to be planning because it provides a lot of shade,
Speaker 4: It provides pods if you want them, if it happens
Speaker 4: to be a female or a hermaphrodite, and they're really
Speaker 4: tough through even prolonged drought. Once they're established, they're very tough.
Speaker 4: So they went all over the state kind of trying
Speaker 4: to find superior specimens of carib and they took cuttings
Speaker 4: of that to propagate, and then they also imported the
Speaker 4: best ones that existed in the Mediterranean and they trialed
Speaker 4: those carib over about a decade and a half or
Speaker 4: something in San Diego County. It led into just really
Speaker 4: interesting stories about world history, California history. In the twenties,
Speaker 4: there was a short lived sort of real estate won't
Speaker 4: call it a boom, but you know, at the same
Speaker 4: time they're trying there was a real estate boom around Citrus.
Speaker 4: They were trying to get people to come out here
Speaker 4: from back East and you know, make a million dollars
Speaker 4: as Citrus moguls. Well, there was a sort of smaller
Speaker 4: version of that done for Carib, and Quoit was convinced
Speaker 4: that that had ruined Carib's relationship because a lot of
Speaker 4: people who weren't able to make a go of it
Speaker 4: the same way that you know, maybe at least was
Speaker 4: being advertised for citrus. There was a period in the
Speaker 4: twenties where carib was highly popular, and so not only
Speaker 4: was it being planted more as a street tree and
Speaker 4: a public tree, but it was also being tried as
Speaker 4: an orchard tree as a crop. One of the interesting
Speaker 4: things was in these archives is seeing pamphlets of them going,
Speaker 4: you know, make your fortune and care. We've got this
Speaker 4: turnkey operation for you. We all provide the trees. You
Speaker 4: do this. You know, you can see our agent and
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. And here's this photo of this bakery
Speaker 4: and all they're doing is turning out carab bread. You know,
Speaker 4: just this really weird, you know, like they're definitely novels
Speaker 4: and films that have sort of the people enjoy a
Speaker 4: lot that really focus on that period of early twentieth
Speaker 4: century southern California where you know, it was just wild
Speaker 4: with all sorts of weird stuff going on. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: that was one of them.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, like I get rich quick plant carab, Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: the pods of the future. Oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: And so and then it did it take off in
Speaker 5: the way they expected.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, I do know that Quoit was of
Speaker 4: the opinion that the experiences people had had with the
Speaker 4: way that that advertising was overblown had soured people on carab,
Speaker 4: and I think part of the problem that was existing
Speaker 4: in southern California. It's I literally just like Quoit, I
Speaker 4: think you could have made a go of it. It's
Speaker 4: really all about how you do it. So a good
Speaker 4: example of like somebody doing what California could have been
Speaker 4: doing this decades ago, and even now. It would be
Speaker 4: a good thing for California to get into because carab
Speaker 4: can be grown on ground that that other plants can't handle.
Speaker 4: Even some of the even some of the ones that
Speaker 4: don't use as much water, are still not tough enough
Speaker 4: to handle some of the stuff that carab can handle
Speaker 4: in terms of how poor the soil can be and
Speaker 4: care can still give you a crop. So it makes
Speaker 4: a lot of sense in this in the day and
Speaker 4: age where you know, we have more intense weather going on,
Speaker 4: we have more intense droughts. What quite knew was a problem,
Speaker 4: and what probably was a problem for people establishing anything
Speaker 4: here in the twenties is that we didn't have the
Speaker 4: machinery that there needed to be to do what's called kibbling.
Speaker 4: And that's what's kibbling. Well, yeah, it's called kibbling. It's
Speaker 4: basically a machine that breaks the pod into pieces so
Speaker 4: and then extracts the seeds from those pieces and separates
Speaker 4: out those those pod pieces from the seed so the
Speaker 4: seed can be processed for locus being gum, which has
Speaker 4: been used you know, even before they were putting it
Speaker 4: in yogurt, they were using it to like have you
Speaker 4: ever bought fabric and the fabric is stiff Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that stiffener is called sizing. And I don't know if
Speaker 4: that's currently what's used, but certainly in the past, carab
Speaker 4: being gum could be used as sizing for fabric. Oh
Speaker 4: my gosh.
Speaker 5: Okay, so we've figured out a way to have all
Speaker 5: of these different uses for different parts of the plant.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and the wood is gorgeous. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you've ever seen anything. But if you
Speaker 4: went online and you put in carab wood, you would
Speaker 4: see amazing artwork and sculptural type things that have been
Speaker 4: made for it. It's not it's very twisty, as my
Speaker 4: understanding from word workers, So it's not a good load
Speaker 4: bearing wood. But in terms of smaller pieces of furniture,
Speaker 4: like using it for live edged tabletops, I think the
Speaker 4: most unusual thing I've ever seen made out of a
Speaker 4: salvaged carab is a Les Paul copy guitar less carab. Amazing.
Speaker 4: It's this gorgeous reddish wood. The heartwood is really gorgeous.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it is this, And that's why I think
Speaker 4: it's like so disrespected. It's like the giving tree. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like you took this from me, You took that
Speaker 4: from me to you know, you never appreciated anything I
Speaker 4: gave you. I gave you, pods, I gave you. You
Speaker 4: know see that you could make this, you know, really
Speaker 4: useful stuff out of I. And when I'm done with
Speaker 4: my life, I give you my wood. Still you don't
Speaker 4: respect men to cry?
Speaker 5: What about the leaves do? I don't tell them like
Speaker 5: the leaves can cure like dermatitis or something I'm like
Speaker 5: willing to believe anything there.
Speaker 4: You know, if it were better funded, it's it's it
Speaker 4: would be interesting to see what you could do. Certainly,
Speaker 4: when I started looking for scientific papers that there wasn't
Speaker 4: a lot out there on it. But I did find
Speaker 4: a fair amount of. Uh is, there are papers that
Speaker 4: are looking at the chemical composition of various components that
Speaker 4: the charab tream makes because the kebs full of phenols,
Speaker 4: those are plant defense compounds. Those sorts of compounds often
Speaker 4: have medicinal uses. So certainly people have been doing research
Speaker 4: on that sort of thing, although I don't know of
Speaker 4: anything conclusive yet, And like I said, partly because it's
Speaker 4: not you know, it's not super sexy.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I started digging around and I found a
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen study titled Chemical constituents and Pharmacological Actions of
Speaker 5: Carab pods and leaves in the gastroone testinal TRAC. Not
Speaker 5: super sexy, how dare?
Speaker 4: How dare?
Speaker 5: But the abstract raved of carab that this plant possesses
Speaker 5: anti inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti diarrheic, antioxidant, anti ulcer, anti constipation,
Speaker 5: and anti absorbative of glucose activities in the gastroone testinal TRAC.
Speaker 5: This was just in twenty seventeen. People are still funding
Speaker 5: out cool stuff about it. Other sources say it offers
Speaker 5: a plant based amino acid linked to collagen production that's
Speaker 5: only typically sourced from animal products. It's also high in
Speaker 5: fiber and calcium and iron antioxidants protein. Another study that
Speaker 5: came out in twenty eighteen said that it could be
Speaker 5: studied as therapy for neurodegenerative disorders. Our friend carab and
Speaker 5: yet people just let the pods fall on their lawns
Speaker 5: like leaving money on the table.
Speaker 4: It doesn't get funded anywhere near as much as other
Speaker 4: things do. And then as far as the leaves themselves,
Speaker 4: I know, goats can eat them. If you go on
Speaker 4: Twitter and you do a search on carab the very
Speaker 4: first thing you're gonna find are, you know, the plant
Speaker 4: equivalent of airline food jokes, what's the deal with airplane peanuts?
Speaker 4: Which is carabos is the most formulaic repeated joke. You'll
Speaker 4: see it weekly. And then when you get below that layer,
Speaker 4: probably the second most numerous thing you'll find about carab
Speaker 4: on Twitter would be people both businesses and actual pet
Speaker 4: owners showing photographs of you know, pupcakes as they call them,
Speaker 4: or various you know baked goods that are made for
Speaker 4: dogs that are made out of Carab.
Speaker 5: If you're not having the best day, you can change
Speaker 5: that by Google image searching the words eating a popcake,
Speaker 5: Corgi's in party, hats, lapping at frosting, you got a
Speaker 5: mutt and a tiara, seizing a treat like a shark attack. Oh,
Speaker 5: welcome to heaven, population Carab.
Speaker 4: I think it's also when I tried to get out
Speaker 4: like why it was that Carib just doesn't get respect.
Speaker 4: There's not only the sense of betrayal that people feel,
Speaker 4: because it's sort of a misplaced anger. Right. So if
Speaker 4: you've got a parent or somebody you trust and you're
Speaker 4: a little kid and that parent or somebody you trust
Speaker 4: is saying, oh, here, try this. It's chocolate, and then
Speaker 4: you have Carab, right, and it's not the same thing,
Speaker 4: but you can't appreciate that. You just feel betrayed. So
Speaker 4: people go all the way through their whole life going oh,
Speaker 4: Carab sucks, and it's like, no, it sucks that your
Speaker 4: relative to that tea. You know, It's like if I
Speaker 4: was telling somebody during this presentation. It's like if I
Speaker 4: am making spaghetti sauce from scratch, right, and one of
Speaker 4: the ingredients is anchovy paste, which comes in a tube, right,
Speaker 4: And somebody decides to play a prank on me and
Speaker 4: switches out the tube of anchovy paste with a tube
Speaker 4: of toothpaste, and I put that in my spaghetti sauce. Right,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna be very happy about it. I like
Speaker 4: toothpaste just fine when it's doing what it's supposed to
Speaker 4: be doing and when it's what I expect. I have
Speaker 4: to go on the record here. I love chocolate and
Speaker 4: I love carib and they're different things.
Speaker 5: How do you eat them differently?
Speaker 4: Like for you, well, you can sort of make over
Speaker 4: chocolate recipes, and especially for people who have religious or
Speaker 4: they're allergic, and there are people who actually do have
Speaker 4: chocolate allergies, you can achieve a flavor profile with carib
Speaker 4: that has enough similarities to like maybe be somewhat satisfying.
Speaker 4: But you see the difference there is that you know
Speaker 4: what you're doing and you know what you're getting into.
Speaker 4: It's nobody telling you this is just like chocolate, right
Speaker 4: right right? You know, it's like you're trying to you know,
Speaker 4: quit sugar or whatever, and so you go to Stevia
Speaker 4: and you know that it's not sugar.
Speaker 5: Right, Someone's got to make a cookbook, Megan, I'm talking
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 4: I'm hoping to come out with a carab cookbook at
Speaker 4: some point when I you know, my copious spare time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And I went at it like I really think carabot
Speaker 4: to be an ingredient on Iron Chef because people don't
Speaker 4: think creatively enough about it. And it would be really
Speaker 4: interesting to see if you gave some really top chefs
Speaker 4: and say here's your ingredient, what are you gonna do
Speaker 4: with it? You know that would they would have to
Speaker 4: think more creatively about it. And so I try to
Speaker 4: return to it what its flavor profile is like, and
Speaker 4: go what pairs well with this? And it tends to
Speaker 4: pair well with with spices like cinnamon and ginger and
Speaker 4: cayenne and cardamom, you know things like that, probably Chinese
Speaker 4: five spice, although I haven't tried that yet. Basically, I
Speaker 4: made a cheesecake that has a crust that's made out
Speaker 4: of super sharp and textural, like you know, those Nubisco
Speaker 4: ginger snaps, and then I fill it with cheesecake. That's
Speaker 4: with all of those spices in it, really, except I'll
Speaker 4: go a little light on the carda mom, if I'm
Speaker 4: putting the pepperin.
Speaker 2: That sounds splendid.
Speaker 4: Oh that's so good. Yeah, I got good feedback on it.
Speaker 4: I usually can convert people with that. I can't tell
Speaker 4: you how many times I've had people they'd like to
Speaker 4: disc carib or whatever. Yeah, I make a carib infused
Speaker 4: rum Ooh. No matter how people talk about how much
Speaker 4: they think Carab sucks, I've converted every single one of
Speaker 4: them with that.
Speaker 5: I love that you're out there being like a champion
Speaker 5: for Carab. It does need to be looked at differently.
Speaker 5: It needs to be appreciated for who it is, not
Speaker 5: what it's not one hundred percent. Can I tell you
Speaker 5: something bananas Carab covered bananas. Okay. So in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: a Food Business News article was forecasting culinary trends for
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one, which is now, and among them your
Speaker 5: buddy Carab. Food trend reporter Elizabeth Moscow wrote back in
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen that twenty twenty one will be Caribs year
Speaker 5: because quote, they didn't position Carab right in the seventies.
Speaker 5: It's not a chocolate replacer. When you're comparing anything to chocolate,
Speaker 5: it's going to fail. And Moscow continued to heap on
Speaker 5: pod praise, saying I wouldn't be surprised if Starbucks came
Speaker 5: out with a carib syrup in twenty twenty one, saying
Speaker 5: it gives an earthy, yummy, naturally sweet flavor. Carib get it.
Speaker 4: And it's like, you know, if you live in California
Speaker 4: or if you live in one of these Mediterranean climates,
Speaker 4: and it can actually go even a little further than that.
Speaker 4: I mean, Arizona's not a Mediterranean climate, and there are
Speaker 4: carib trees that have been there since the early twentieth
Speaker 4: century as well, and they're still growing there. And there's
Speaker 4: a little bit of carib in Florida, although that's really
Speaker 4: not an ideal environment. And I'm given the I'm given
Speaker 4: to understand some people try in Hawaii to Florida, and
Speaker 4: Hawaii are a little too humid for it in terms
Speaker 4: of that sort of tough tree. Where you're now moving
Speaker 4: into this drought prone, super hot climate. And have you
Speaker 4: heard the term urban heat islands?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes I have, and I.
Speaker 4: Certainly saw it in my research with carab, because you know,
Speaker 4: in a I think two or three blocks stretch of
Speaker 4: one street that I started my study on, within just
Speaker 4: a couple of years of my doing my study, eleven
Speaker 4: of these mature carab trees have been cut down.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Why it's there's a variety of reasons. I mean in
Speaker 4: those cases what happens, you know, like you were saying,
Speaker 4: you know, how do you select the right street tree
Speaker 4: and that sort of thing, And there are definitely, like
Speaker 4: you were also mentioning disability issues in terms of the
Speaker 4: sidewalks when they start to get pushed up. When Kara
Speaker 4: first started getting planted in California, we didn't have this,
Speaker 4: you know, profligate irrigation. We didn't have this sort of
Speaker 4: culture of like everybody gets along, and so Carab was
Speaker 4: a wonderful tree to plant then. And you know, there
Speaker 4: were other species that we also had that were very
Speaker 4: tough to drought and didn't need a lot of irrigation.
Speaker 4: But then when people moved into those areas and either
Speaker 4: they put in sidewalks that weren't there before, or they
Speaker 4: definitely were putting in lawns that weren't there before, and
Speaker 4: the tendency in California is that you're going to be
Speaker 4: watering your lawn maybe three or more times a week
Speaker 4: for like fifteen minutes. Right. That's a shallow kind of watering.
Speaker 4: And if you put all your water on the surface,
Speaker 4: well they're like, where's the water, Well, it's up top.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna put my roots up top because that's where
Speaker 4: you put the water.
Speaker 5: Trees know what's up and what's up literally is the
Speaker 5: water at the surface. Also, what is profligate irrigation? You ask,
Speaker 5: I only knew one of those words, and it wasn't profligate.
Speaker 5: So profligate means recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use
Speaker 5: of resources. So what Megan is saying is that lawns
Speaker 5: in a desert are a great way to piss away
Speaker 5: good water. And so that's why you see sidewalks that
Speaker 5: might be uneven or they're getting pushed up by really
Speaker 5: surface roots.
Speaker 4: It's not always the reason, but often in California that's
Speaker 4: often the reason. I mean, there are some species that
Speaker 4: will tend to do that, Like so, for instance, there's
Speaker 4: certain fig species that would be more likely to have
Speaker 4: those big sort of roots pushing everything up to fig.
Speaker 4: The kind of eating fig that we have can take
Speaker 4: a fair you know, it's also a Mediterranean native, but
Speaker 4: probably more to like riparian areas or something.
Speaker 5: Maybe I know what riparian means. Maybe I don't, but
Speaker 5: if I were to look it up, I would find
Speaker 5: out that riparian means near a.
Speaker 4: River, and so it craves water. It can deal with
Speaker 4: that without it for a while, but it likes it
Speaker 4: better so it'll seek it out. But for other species
Speaker 4: like carib if you plant cab from a seed where
Speaker 4: it's at, it'll grow a big taproot because it goes
Speaker 4: looking down for water.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's called the taproot. I didn't know that it's
Speaker 5: tapping the soil, sort of tapping groundwater.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, well, caart is a taproot.
Speaker 5: Oh, I've never even thought about that. And it's just
Speaker 5: going it's digging deep, being like, hey, where's water down here?
Speaker 4: Yeah. The part we eat is the tap It actually carrot.
Speaker 4: If you were able to preserve the whole root system,
Speaker 4: there'd be a whole bunch of other root hairs and
Speaker 4: things sticking out. But we eat the tab root.
Speaker 5: Oh, I never even thought about that. So when you
Speaker 5: see photos of a carrot, but it looks like two
Speaker 5: legs and a tiny dong. That's less weird than we think.
Speaker 5: And if the eating a pupcake search wasn't enough to
Speaker 5: send shimmers down your spine, google carrots that look like dicks,
Speaker 5: but not if you're somewhere that you can't cackle because
Speaker 5: it's really good.
Speaker 2: Poor carrots.
Speaker 5: I always I'm like, uh, sorry, you did such a
Speaker 5: good job growing, And here I am just coming to
Speaker 5: being like thanks. It's too many emotions in botany. Who knew?
Speaker 4: We can look at it as a sort of botany
Speaker 4: of desire thing, which is a symbiotic thing. We help
Speaker 4: propagate them, we help keep them alive too.
Speaker 5: That's true. That's true. We will we will plant your
Speaker 5: children if we can eat you. Okay, I guess, I
Speaker 5: guess just plant my kids, plant my kids. That's all
Speaker 5: I asked. Can I ask you some listener questions?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yes?
Speaker 5: Is that cool? Oh my gosh, We've got some great ones. Okay,
Speaker 5: but before your Patreon questions, just a quick word about
Speaker 5: sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to
Speaker 5: a cause of the ologists choosing This week, Megan selected
Speaker 5: Foundation for Science and Disability FSD. They are a nonprofit
Speaker 5: organization affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of
Speaker 5: Science and FSD promotes the integration of scientists with disabilities
Speaker 5: into all activities of the scientific community and of society
Speaker 5: as a whole. So donation went to them in Meghan's
Speaker 5: name and you can find out more at www dot
Speaker 5: STEMD dot org, which is linked on my website as
Speaker 5: well as in the show notes and how it's made
Speaker 5: possible by these word approve companies.
Speaker 2: Do you know what real power is?
Speaker 1: It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day,
Speaker 1: every day with a smart all day plan from board
Speaker 1: Gosh Energy. Save up to eight hundred and eighty euro
Speaker 1: on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five You're a welcome bonus switch today at board Goosh
Speaker 1: Energy dot Ie Old Gosh Energy.
Speaker 2: Know your power.
Speaker 3: Estimation annual bill of twenty six and twenty nine your
Speaker 3: new customers only thirst percentis kent of Smart all day
Speaker 3: electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas nitrates
Speaker 3: sea Portcusha Energy, dott E for full ties and seas Mom.
Speaker 2: Why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 4: This cottage cheese, honey, and I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think so.
Speaker 3: Well when we get there, well, we've got to fix
Speaker 3: the car first, but there's someone coming.
Speaker 2: To help us.
Speaker 1: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 5: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva.
Speaker 4: Oh there's a van now.
Speaker 6: For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes a Viva
Speaker 6: visit a Viva dotta eat to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria,
Speaker 6: terms and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and
Speaker 6: ten year old. Fifteen percent discant applies to new policies BottomLine.
Speaker 6: See Aviva dott I E for details. Car insurance is
Speaker 6: underwritten by a Viva Insurance Ireland dak Aviva Direct Arland
Speaker 6: Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 5: Okay, your carab questions, This goes to your cultivation discussion.
Speaker 5: Mega McLean wants to know when buying carab, how does
Speaker 5: one pick out the quality carab from the crap carib?
Speaker 5: Are there different types as found in chocolate? How do
Speaker 5: you go carab buying.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad they said that because a lot of
Speaker 4: people when they're kind of crapping on carab because they
Speaker 4: think it's so far short of chocolate, they sort of
Speaker 4: conveniently forget that there's a big difference between cheap Easter
Speaker 4: fifty percent off chocolate and Jaques Torres. You know, there's
Speaker 4: a whole spectrum of chocolate quality, and just as that's true,
Speaker 4: there is a spectrum of cab quality as well. I
Speaker 4: would say for me, what's important is that carib is
Speaker 4: naturally sweet. The pods of the best selected varieties are
Speaker 4: about fifty percent sugars, just naturally, like off the tree.
Speaker 4: You could eat the pod pulp and it would be sugary.
Speaker 4: Oh so adding extra you know, cane sugar or whatever
Speaker 4: to that it just makes it more sickly sweet. And
Speaker 4: especially if you're if you're doing this sort of bargain
Speaker 4: bin bulk bin thing where you've got a lot of
Speaker 4: hydrogenated vegetable fats that are added to make it more chocolate,
Speaker 4: you just get this kind of chalky, gross thing that's
Speaker 4: not good carib and that's what most people have an
Speaker 4: experience with. There are companies like Sunspire that make both
Speaker 4: kinds available, a sugar added and a no sugar added version,
Speaker 4: and I would absolutely encourage people to try what Carab
Speaker 4: tastes like with no added sugar. Ooh, okay, I'm not
Speaker 4: trying to plug plug specific brands. It's just that, you know,
Speaker 4: unlike chocolate, where you really do have this complete galaxy
Speaker 4: of brands to be choosing from, there's just not that
Speaker 4: many people in the US who are making products available.
Speaker 4: So even in a bulk bin, they'll they'll you know,
Speaker 4: if you went to someplace like Berkeley Bowl and Berkeley
Speaker 4: or whatever, you would see it labeled labeled as Sunspire.
Speaker 4: The importer for Australian carib cob products in the US.
Speaker 4: The sole importer and distributor is a company called Azure Standard,
Speaker 4: and they have quite a variety of Carab products available,
Speaker 4: including Australian Carab coat.
Speaker 5: Okay, I snooped on reviews online and one said, I'm
Speaker 5: not that familiar with Carab, but wanted to give it
Speaker 5: a try, and I'm glad I did lovely interesting flavor,
Speaker 5: not chocolate, but I wasn't trying to fool anyone. That's
Speaker 5: the spirit. Okay. So you have yourself a bunch of carap,
Speaker 5: either in powder form or syrup.
Speaker 4: And you were asking me how I use it. The
Speaker 4: two major ways you're going to get a hold of
Speaker 4: it are going to be what's called carab powder. It's
Speaker 4: sometimes called carab flower and carab syrup or molasses. If
Speaker 4: you went to a Middle Eastern grocery, you would likely
Speaker 4: find carab molasses there. Oh so if you live in
Speaker 4: a city that has a Middle Eastern population large enough
Speaker 4: to support one or more Middle Eastern groceries, you will
Speaker 4: probably find carab molasses carb syrup on the shelf. And
Speaker 4: I would use that when I make my cheesecake. Frinds,
Speaker 4: I'm using that.
Speaker 5: Can you add that to coffee at all?
Speaker 2: Easy?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: It's good. I love it added with coffee. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean because I take my I don't know how it
Speaker 4: is when you're when you like your coffee black, But
Speaker 4: for me, I sort of like my cof I like
Speaker 4: my coffee to be as close as to coffee ice
Speaker 4: cream asus. Yeah, And it really gives it a really
Speaker 4: nice richness to the It sort of enriches the flavor
Speaker 4: profile I find. As far as the carab powder, that's
Speaker 4: a lot easier to come across. Bob's Red Mill sells that,
Speaker 4: but there are also other bulk places that sell it
Speaker 4: and that you can really use one for one the
Speaker 4: same way you would use cocoa. Oh okay, if you
Speaker 4: have a chocolate crinkle cookie recipe, you could make it
Speaker 4: out of that. And again I would probably add those
Speaker 4: extra spices, and they're not the Carab I mean absolutely
Speaker 4: needs it. I think adding the other spices helps get
Speaker 4: people out of the mindset. I didn't have hippie parents
Speaker 4: who forced it on me. Mm hmmm, so I don't
Speaker 4: have those associations with it. But for people who do,
Speaker 4: I find that the added spices kind of get them
Speaker 4: out of that frame of mind that, oh, this is
Speaker 4: some cheap you know, I wish I were having chocolate
Speaker 4: instead or whatever.
Speaker 5: Right, and Ethan Botone wants to know, I've only ever
Speaker 5: heard of carab from an episode of Hey Arnold. Do
Speaker 5: you know about this pop culture reference? Or are there
Speaker 5: others to.
Speaker 4: Cab Well, I have to say I'm older gen X,
Speaker 4: so I don't. I'm not sure that I is this
Speaker 4: Arnold the like PBS cartoon or something.
Speaker 5: Hey Arnold was a cartoon that featured one character, a
Speaker 5: child named Chocolate Boy, who is just a jittering, mouth
Speaker 5: smeared fiend who tries to quit his vice by t
Speaker 5: trading via Carab, and I don't think that it works
Speaker 5: out for him.
Speaker 2: Chocolate chocolate choc.
Speaker 5: Do you ever catch in TV shows or movies Carab
Speaker 5: getting hated on, or have they ever used it on
Speaker 5: like Food Network in a respectful way.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen it on places like Food Network or whatever.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be surprised if it starts coming into that, because,
Speaker 4: as I told you, when I started looking for this
Speaker 4: stuff in twenty thirteen, there was a great deal less
Speaker 4: out there. In fact, even the Wikipedia entry was really
Speaker 4: really sparse, and the Wikipedia entry is a good, reasonably
Speaker 4: beefy entry now. But just as there's a sort of
Speaker 4: loc of war movement other places, and just as a
Speaker 4: lot of other places are trying to rediscover their you know,
Speaker 4: indigenous regional cuisines, the Mediterranean has been doing that as well,
Speaker 4: and so Cyprus and Greece and Italy and other places
Speaker 4: where Carab has been an aspect. I think that is
Speaker 4: really important of this is like you know, in the
Speaker 4: US and the UK and places where they had these
Speaker 4: sort of health food movements, did this sort of disingenuous
Speaker 4: stuff with Carab. The reason it wasn't respected in its
Speaker 4: home area quite so much seems to be linked to
Speaker 4: the fact, you know, again like the giving tree, it's
Speaker 4: like it gave, and it's gave during like some of
Speaker 4: the worst times they had, so they you know, they
Speaker 4: had World War One, and then they had the Great
Speaker 4: and then there was the Spanish Civil War, and then
Speaker 4: there was World War Two, and all through that period
Speaker 4: middle class and poorer people were surviving on Carab because
Speaker 4: shipping lanes and things were closed down during the war.
Speaker 4: Carib is a source of sugar, and from sugar you
Speaker 4: can also make alcohol. By the way, it's like anything.
Speaker 4: You know, you can like something, but if you're eating
Speaker 4: at twenty four to seven for weeks at a time,
Speaker 4: you might get so that you don't want to see
Speaker 4: so much of it anymore.
Speaker 5: Hence a lot of people just stabbing Carab in the back,
Speaker 5: slandering it, comparing it to something else entirely. Jonathan Coffman
Speaker 5: wrote a twenty eighteen New Yorker piece titled quote, how
Speaker 5: carib Traumatized a generation Now, unlike the nutty, pleasant flavor
Speaker 5: of carib, opinions on Carib are not mild.
Speaker 4: What I'll see is a quote that says, like Carib
Speaker 4: is the Devil's Raisin or something like that. Oh, no,
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 2: And Satan's Raising.
Speaker 5: Nicholas Zamp is a first time question asker and wants
Speaker 5: to know. I've read that the processing involves using an
Speaker 5: acid or roasting to remove the skin of the seed,
Speaker 5: and has the same effect been achieved through fermentation, essentially,
Speaker 5: how is it processed?
Speaker 4: The factories that do this have only recently started coming online.
Speaker 4: When I first started looking, I knew that this kind
Speaker 4: of processing happened, but I didn't. I couldn't go. You know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't like these factories had websites even that late
Speaker 4: in the game. They're starting to now, though, and I've
Speaker 4: seen progress photos of it being processed. You have to
Speaker 4: ask not just what's possible, but given that we're talking
Speaker 4: capitalism here, whatever's the cheapest is what's probably going to
Speaker 4: get done.
Speaker 5: Okay, So, after you harvest a bunch of neglected, overlooked
Speaker 5: cara pods, you can kitchen process them by washing them
Speaker 5: and boiling it and just enough water to cover it
Speaker 5: or steaming until tender, and then you can cut open
Speaker 5: the pods. You remove the seeds, and you cut the
Speaker 5: pods into small pieces and you dry them out, and
Speaker 5: then you put the pieces in a and grind into
Speaker 5: a powdered and just process only small amounts at a time.
Speaker 5: According to some directions I found on permaculture dot org,
Speaker 5: the seeds, however, get turned into locus bean gum, but
Speaker 5: they're really hard, so don't chomp on them with your
Speaker 5: teeth plas and I did read a few studies that
Speaker 5: commercially processed carab powder has fewer beneficial compounds than home processed.
Speaker 5: So another good reason to ask your neighbors if you
Speaker 5: can eat their lawn trash. Now, what if you want
Speaker 5: to grow your own lawn trash. Some Patreon folks, including
Speaker 5: Austin based Sutton Taggart, Maria Jorovleva's partner, Laura Springer, and
Speaker 5: Catherine Jordan all asked about this. And we have a
Speaker 5: few people that want to know and I'll put their
Speaker 5: names in and aside if they can grow carab in
Speaker 5: their backyard. One person, Katherine Jordan from Saint Paul, Minnesota,
Speaker 5: Can you do that or do you have to be
Speaker 5: in Italy, Australia or California.
Speaker 4: Well, in Minnesota, if you have a greenhouse that you
Speaker 4: can keep to non humid Mediterranean conditions, then yes, you
Speaker 4: would be able to grow care I grow. I don't
Speaker 4: own any land, so minor grown in pots. That's not
Speaker 4: at all the ideal for what you're supposed to do,
Speaker 4: but that's what I do, and so it is certainly
Speaker 4: possible to grow in a pot. Once you get a
Speaker 4: carab into a pot, you're still going to have to
Speaker 4: water it more often than you would normally have to
Speaker 4: water it. But if you live, if you live in
Speaker 4: a Mediterranean climate or very adjacent to it the way
Speaker 4: that Arizona is, then yeah, you can grow it. And
Speaker 4: I would highly recommend that people do so because it's
Speaker 4: part of the way it's drought resistant is it has
Speaker 4: lower water needs. And it has lower water needs partly
Speaker 4: because it's got very leathery leaves that make sure that
Speaker 4: the water doesn't come out of it as easily, but
Speaker 4: also partly because it's not growing as fast and so
Speaker 4: it isn't a bit of an investment. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: not going to grow like a weed. It'll take a
Speaker 4: little while before you see something that grows taller than
Speaker 4: you are.
Speaker 5: Patron Radam Markam wrote in and said that there's a
Speaker 5: Jewish folk tale about an old man being scorned for
Speaker 5: planting a Carab treat because they supposedly take seventy years
Speaker 5: to fruit, and he won't be around to enjoy it
Speaker 5: by then because he's already so old, which I think
Speaker 5: sounds very mean. But Radon wanted to know is there
Speaker 5: any truth to that or does it just make a
Speaker 5: good cautionary story. Is it true that it takes seventy
Speaker 5: years to give you pods? Or is that flim flam?
Speaker 4: No, that's as I said, I think that came out
Speaker 4: of some sort of religious text or story rather than
Speaker 4: the reality. I should emphasize there's because there's so little funding,
Speaker 4: and because Carab does so much and is so good,
Speaker 4: even as it is, there actually has been no breeding
Speaker 4: effort whatsoever that I know of. What I came to
Speaker 4: grad school to do was to learn how to be
Speaker 4: a plant breeder, and so it's kind of remarkable that
Speaker 4: it does so many things so well, and this is
Speaker 4: just with very little improvement other than just going around
Speaker 4: the countryside and picking the best one you see and
Speaker 4: then clonally propagating.
Speaker 5: That clonally propagating means that instead of just rolling the
Speaker 5: dice and planting some seeds. Agriculture relies on things like
Speaker 5: grafting from a parent tree to ensure that they get
Speaker 5: really good genetics for good fruit and apples and bananas.
Speaker 5: Tons of crops are colonally propagated. Megan explains when.
Speaker 4: The Mediterranean in Australia or whatever, what they do is
Speaker 4: they often will either plant a seed out in the
Speaker 4: field and then when the seed gets large enough to
Speaker 4: the they'll graft her butt it, and so the variety.
Speaker 4: If you're grafting or budding, you can get carab in
Speaker 4: anywhere from three to eight years kind of depends. Oh,
Speaker 4: if you're growing it from seed, it's definitely going to
Speaker 4: be longer, and I'm getting the sense that it's like
Speaker 4: eight to twelve. Honestly, if you were to plant a
Speaker 4: peach from seed, you would also be waiting a while.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, food off of I have two more listener questions,
Speaker 5: if that's okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 5: Michelle Dempsey, Ash and Heather N. Nenette all kind of
Speaker 5: want to know that. Well, their questions are similar but different,
Speaker 5: so I'll read Michelle Dempsy's. Michelle Tempsy says, I've seen
Speaker 5: articles suggesting chocolate has nifty qualities like containing antioxidants, has
Speaker 5: blood pressure lowering abilities. What sort of nifty qualities does
Speaker 5: karp have? And Heather wants to know if it produces endorphins.
Speaker 4: Well, because it doesn't have that stimulant property. No, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: It doesn't produce endorphins like that. It does have its
Speaker 4: strong points, just as chocolate also has some strong points.
Speaker 4: What it doesn't have that chocolate has is lots of
Speaker 4: funding to study what those are. Because any group that
Speaker 4: sells something will usually fund scientists to find out what
Speaker 4: can we say about our product, So there's a lot
Speaker 4: of funding like that. It's one of the things that I,
Speaker 4: you know, going back to school has been super interesting
Speaker 4: to me because it's given me the ability to be
Speaker 4: a lot more critical about the sort of things. You know,
Speaker 4: and I had a good, well you know, brad education before,
Speaker 4: but it's just made me realize how much more critical
Speaker 4: we have to be when we read certain things, especially
Speaker 4: if they're not linking directly to the study. Yes, I'm
Speaker 4: sure that there are things that chocolate does. Carab has
Speaker 4: a slightly different profile. It's somewhat high in protein for
Speaker 4: a fruit. It is high I think in potassium. It's
Speaker 4: a relative thing. You know, I don't know that i'd
Speaker 4: put it up next to a banana, but you know,
Speaker 4: it's a slightly different nutrient profile as well. But as
Speaker 4: far as like they're being a miracle cure for whatever,
Speaker 4: that all remains to be seen. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: say it doesn't exist. You have to have the funding
Speaker 4: to go looking for that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: We had some first time question askers. Three of them
Speaker 5: had the same question, Tara Tiger Studio, Chilean and Louder
Speaker 5: and Samantha Ryan. Samantha said, so people tend to go
Speaker 5: all in for the latest food trends without considering the
Speaker 5: environmental impacts of our increased demand. And Samantha has seen
Speaker 5: a lot more care products in grocery stores in the
Speaker 5: last few years. Hey, Krab, bring it on. But Samantha
Speaker 5: is curious as to how sustainable it is as a
Speaker 5: food source, and Nicholas Zemp also thinks that's a solid question.
Speaker 4: I think, I mean, I think it's really rather sustainable because,
Speaker 4: as I said, it can be grown on lands that
Speaker 4: are marginal for other sorts of crops. It can take
Speaker 4: a range of pH but you know, it tends to
Speaker 4: grow in sort of like more alkaline rocky. It can
Speaker 4: grow even you know, anywhere from adobe soil like we
Speaker 4: have in southern California is not ideal for it, but
Speaker 4: you know, there's these eighty to one hundred year old
Speaker 4: trees there, So I think, like anything, it's kind of
Speaker 4: like what you how you decide to go about it.
Speaker 4: But I think one thing that you can say, well
Speaker 4: keep it from being too destructive is the fact that
Speaker 4: it actually doesn't like a lot of water. So if
Speaker 4: you plan it someplace that's really you know, that shouldn't
Speaker 4: be getting irrigated a whole heck of a lot. Cara
Speaker 4: won't do well if you're irrigating it a whole heck.
Speaker 2: Of a lot.
Speaker 4: So that actually keeps it into it keeps it in
Speaker 4: its lane, so to speak.
Speaker 5: Good to know last Patreon question, but I I thought
Speaker 5: you would appreciate that. Well's Howe had a question that
Speaker 5: what the heck even is a carib And why have
Speaker 5: I never learned that those dried brown snake bananas hanging
Speaker 5: in the trees are edible? So wells Howe's life is
Speaker 5: now changed because of you.
Speaker 4: I like Snake Banana. It's a very good band name.
Speaker 4: Snake Bananas. When I break off from my band and
Speaker 4: do a solo project, right Snake Banana the.
Speaker 5: Best last questions? I always asked last two. What's the
Speaker 5: shittiest thing about carab What sucks the most about the
Speaker 5: trees or the process or anything whatever gets your goat.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a lot of things that I could come
Speaker 4: up with, but I think I'll come up with that item,
Speaker 4: which is that they're so underappreciated, I think is what
Speaker 4: sucks for me, and that they're maltreated. So like a
Speaker 4: lot of the stuff that people like to complain about
Speaker 4: about them, So cities will say, oh, this is unsuitable
Speaker 4: for planning here, and it's like, well, you know, if
Speaker 4: you don't hire people whose expertise is trees, if you
Speaker 4: hire people whose expertise is being in a cherry picker
Speaker 4: and using a chainsaw, and they don't know about the
Speaker 4: species they're dealing with, and then you maltreat the species.
Speaker 4: Why are you blaming the species?
Speaker 5: You know? Right right?
Speaker 4: So that's the worst thing, I think is just knowing
Speaker 4: what an amazing cool plant this is for Mediterranean climates,
Speaker 4: and how you know, really selflessly it gives and how
Speaker 4: much credit takes I think it's the worst thing. And
Speaker 4: certainly in the process of doing you know those the
Speaker 4: field work where I was going from street tree to
Speaker 4: street tree, it really hurts when you come back and
Speaker 4: you see a stump.
Speaker 5: M I know, I cry every time I read the
Speaker 5: getting Tree every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. I tweeted out from my account today a
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen story from the east side of LA which
Speaker 4: was a photo of a carab tree that was cut
Speaker 4: down and somebody had made a memorial to it, and
Speaker 4: it had like on gold ink on a black background.
Speaker 4: It had this whole you know, like essay but in big,
Speaker 4: big letters. Was like, why.
Speaker 5: No one listening to this will walk by a dried
Speaker 5: brown snake banana the same way. You know, we'll say
Speaker 5: thank you, and maybe, if you don't mind, I'll chew
Speaker 5: on one of you for a moment as I walk
Speaker 5: down the street. Now, as a person who walks down
Speaker 5: the street, I am privileged in that sidewalk cracks don't
Speaker 5: derail my day or typically threaten my life like the
Speaker 5: wood some folks, especially those who use any mobility devices.
Speaker 5: And one thing I love about Meghan is how great
Speaker 5: of an advocate she is for all kinds of people.
Speaker 5: And she founded You See Access Now. This past July
Speaker 5: on the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act passing,
Speaker 5: and she released something called a Demandifesto calling for better
Speaker 5: design and inclusion and accessibility not just for herself but
Speaker 5: for other University of calib for you students with disabilities
Speaker 5: at every campus. Because she is a badass with.
Speaker 4: A big heart. You have a really obvious disability. You
Speaker 4: don't have a choice. Everybody knows you're disabled. In my case,
Speaker 4: nobody would know unless I told them. And so because
Speaker 4: there's still you know, it doesn't matter that on the
Speaker 4: books it's illegal to discriminate on that basis, the fact
Speaker 4: is that people do, just like people still discriminate about race,
Speaker 4: sex and other things that are illegal to discriminate about.
Speaker 4: So I made a decision very early on that I
Speaker 4: had to be very out about it because I figure
Speaker 4: nothing really changes. You know. It's kind of like coming
Speaker 4: out Day is for the queer community, which is that
Speaker 4: it's a risky thing. But if we all do it together,
Speaker 4: then people will realize this is not this weird, rare
Speaker 4: thing that they can easily other. We are their friends,
Speaker 4: we are their family, And I think with invisible disabilities.
Speaker 4: At least the more out people feel they can ford
Speaker 4: to be or willing to take the risks to be,
Speaker 4: the more well realized. No, look, this is not this weird,
Speaker 4: rare other thing that you're trying to make it. This
Speaker 4: is part of the spectrum of humanity. It was not
Speaker 4: my goal to be an activist. And in fact, one
Speaker 4: thing that I've found other disabled scientists have said, and
Speaker 4: it was certainly my experience as well, which is that
Speaker 4: if you have the temerity to bring this up, they say,
Speaker 4: why don't you go be a disabled advocate? You know,
Speaker 4: you're clearly not interested in science.
Speaker 5: As if you can separate those parts of yourself, you know,
Speaker 5: as if you aren't interested in more than one thing.
Speaker 5: That's very frustrating. What do you say to that?
Speaker 4: Well, uh, it's hard to know what to say to that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, because by this point I should
Speaker 4: start rehearsing an answer to it, really because because in
Speaker 4: the moment you just get so furious about it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because if anything, I'm showing how deep my interest is
Speaker 4: that I'm willing to ford through all the crap you're
Speaker 4: throwing in my way.
Speaker 5: And have you gotten to see the way that your
Speaker 5: efforts have impacted other people in your sphere and other
Speaker 5: people in STEM.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a lot of work, and you take the
Speaker 4: victories where you can get them. But I mean I've
Speaker 4: had I've had people who've told me, either publicly or privately,
Speaker 4: that I really helped them realize that the way they
Speaker 4: were communicating was inaccessible and that it wasn't that hard
Speaker 4: to make it accessible, and so they've changed the way.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of accounts on Twitter, and this includes
Speaker 4: even government accounts, here's something you could do when you know,
Speaker 4: watch Twitter if you see your state or county or
Speaker 4: a politician on their official account, and this is how
Speaker 4: you can check whether it has what's called all text
Speaker 4: and image description, and you can certainly watch for if
Speaker 4: it's a video, for instance, you can watch whether it
Speaker 4: has captions, if it's a press conference, did the press
Speaker 4: conference have an ASL interpreter, there are there video descriptions
Speaker 4: going on for the blind, you know, these sorts of
Speaker 4: things that they can just check for and it's not
Speaker 4: too hard to then, you know, talk back to those
Speaker 4: public Twitter accounts and hold them publicly accountable for that
Speaker 4: what people who are blind to have, you know, visual
Speaker 4: impairments use to access the Internet and the Twitter is
Speaker 4: something called screen reading software. So the screen reader just
Speaker 4: if you don't put anything in the all text thing,
Speaker 4: the screen reader will just say image. All the people
Speaker 4: who are blind are visually impaired, whether they're in stem
Speaker 4: or not, they're just hearing image.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 2: That sucks.
Speaker 4: And of course this exists for web pages as well.
Speaker 4: There's alt tags on web pages and stuff. But in Twitter,
Speaker 4: the all text character field is a thousand characters, so
Speaker 4: it should give you a little space to do that.
Speaker 4: And if it's too big for that, then you can
Speaker 4: always do a Google doc and then link to the
Speaker 4: Google doc and the tweets so that you can give
Speaker 4: you know, blind vision and don't like censor it for people.
Speaker 4: It's like, if it was important enough for you to
Speaker 4: tell people who are sighted, then tell people who are
Speaker 4: blind or have visual impairments exactly the same thing that
Speaker 4: you're giving to sighted people.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I didn't even know that there was an all
Speaker 5: text field.
Speaker 4: Why would you want to make accessibility something that you
Speaker 4: have to dig for and opt into. Why isn't that
Speaker 4: the default? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, God, that's such a good point. And that's something
Speaker 5: that can unless you hear someone speak out about it,
Speaker 5: or unless you know someone in your life who that
Speaker 5: affects you might be just completely naive to it. I
Speaker 5: think the work of advocates, I imagine that must feel
Speaker 5: very heavy at times. How much education needs to happen.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm in terms of my physical disability, I'm
Speaker 4: running at over twenty five years of having it right now.
Speaker 4: And because I wasn't born disabled, you know, I was
Speaker 4: raised in disablest society and very much with an ablest
Speaker 4: view of things, So it's taken me that long to
Speaker 4: throw off all the you know, I'm still not entirely
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, I can't say of it, but you
Speaker 4: have what's like an internalized ableism. So even though I
Speaker 4: was very out about it from the beginning, I also
Speaker 4: still had that sort of idea that had been inculcated
Speaker 4: into me that, oh, I don't want to be a
Speaker 4: problem for anybody, or oh I don't you know, rather
Speaker 4: than saying, no, wait a minute, I'm just as worthy
Speaker 4: of these things as you are.
Speaker 5: Was there any sort of any other advice that you'd
Speaker 5: want to give to anyone who is disabled? In StAmour
Speaker 5: is looking for a career or just kind of start
Speaker 5: their journey that you wish you knew, or any kind
Speaker 5: of words of wisdom or pep talk.
Speaker 4: I'd say definitely. I mean, there are probably other social
Speaker 4: media networks, but I know I probably wouldn't have made
Speaker 4: it to grad school if it had not been for
Speaker 4: being on Twitter. Science. Twitter helped me find out about
Speaker 4: things that I didn't know existed and what it's done,
Speaker 4: especially lately. When I first gone on, there were not
Speaker 4: a lot of sort of visibly disabled scientists. I mean
Speaker 4: what I mean by visibly is that they're out about it,
Speaker 4: and I think people are. You know, a lot of
Speaker 4: social movements in the radicalization of in very ways, various
Speaker 4: ways that has gone on in terms of opening people's
Speaker 4: eyes to forms of discrimination that have been going on
Speaker 4: for a very long time, is starting to sort of
Speaker 4: open the doors as far as disability and the awareness
Speaker 4: of ableism as well. So which that what that means
Speaker 4: is that you're more likely to find disabled scientists to
Speaker 4: speak with, and just even if they weren't like mentoring you,
Speaker 4: just knowing that there are other disabled scientists out there
Speaker 4: really really helps. Love.
Speaker 5: I love the different hashtags and love. I love that
Speaker 5: you can pop on them and then follow a bunch
Speaker 5: of new people and then just just you know, make
Speaker 5: a bunch of new friends online. They tell you what
Speaker 5: their lives are like, and you're like, that's great, you
Speaker 5: just made my world better and speaking of the best stuff,
Speaker 5: But your favorite thing about carab or carab trees what like,
Speaker 5: just lights your whole heart up.
Speaker 4: Again. There's so many things to choose from, but I
Speaker 4: think that, certainly, as far as the work I've done,
Speaker 4: what's most gratifying is what you just said, which is
Speaker 4: that you don't see it the same way people when
Speaker 4: they see you, like standing in front of their street
Speaker 4: tree taking notes, they kind of come out of their
Speaker 4: houses like what are you doing? And so I've had
Speaker 4: that experience a couple of times where people have had
Speaker 4: a talk with me and I, you know, once i
Speaker 4: assure them, no, I'm not from the city, or no
Speaker 4: I'm not you know, I'm not here to case your
Speaker 4: house for a burglary. I've had people come back to
Speaker 4: me and said, like, I totally took this tree for
Speaker 4: granted before, and it is so much more interesting that
Speaker 4: I thought it was, and I really want to make
Speaker 4: sure I'm active saving these trees.
Speaker 5: Now, Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. That must feel
Speaker 5: so gratifying.
Speaker 4: It really is. I mean, you know, it's it's hard
Speaker 4: as a student, and I'm sure I'm not the only
Speaker 4: one who struggles with us, but for somebody who comes
Speaker 4: with my bachelor's and art especially, you know, there's sort
Speaker 4: of inferiority complex you have around whether you're really a
Speaker 4: scientist or not. And at least I can say that
Speaker 4: I'm effective enough at communicating the sorts of facts that
Speaker 4: I've learned and what I've observed from my field work
Speaker 4: that I'm able to persuade people. And really, what more
Speaker 4: do you want? Because you know, most people are not
Speaker 4: going to be looking up scientific journal.
Speaker 5: Articles exactly, so to have the passion and the will
Speaker 5: to communicate it is such a service to the data
Speaker 5: that you're collecting and the appreciation and preservation. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: this has been so fun. Thank you for letting me
Speaker 5: pepper you so many spicy questions. I've learned so much.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, no of my pleasure.
Speaker 5: So ask giving trees selfish questions, but make sure to
Speaker 5: appreciate them for who they are and let them live
Speaker 5: and ask smart people basic questions because you never know
Speaker 5: what is right under the surface in the treasure trove
Speaker 5: of their knowledge. So follow Megan Lynch. You can find
Speaker 5: her on Twitter, at may underscore Gun and at Access.
Speaker 5: You see there's going to be links to those socials
Speaker 5: in the show notes and at my website alibard dot
Speaker 5: com slash ologies, slash Carobology, as well as a link
Speaker 5: to Megan's first album and so many links about Carab's history,
Speaker 5: where to find it and more. Again, check I naturalist
Speaker 5: to look for the nearest one. Tell me if you
Speaker 5: eat them, please, I would like to know. I am
Speaker 5: at Aliboard, at Twitter and on Instagram. Ologies is at
Speaker 5: Ologies now. Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank
Speaker 5: you to Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for managing all
Speaker 5: the merch. They host a comedy podcast called You Are
Speaker 5: the If you're interested in hearing how Ologies is made,
Speaker 5: you can check out Renee Colvert's recent episode on her
Speaker 5: brand new podcast called My Pandemic Makeover Spectacular. She had
Speaker 5: me on as a guest and she asked me all
Speaker 5: about life, work balance and quitting your day job. And
Speaker 5: Renee is just a human delight. I love her, So
Speaker 5: I'll link to that on my website too. Thank you
Speaker 5: Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast facebook group. Again.
Speaker 5: If you're looking for a hot date and our single
Speaker 5: I don't know, join the Facebook group Floortology Singles None
Speaker 5: of My Business. Thank you Emily White and all the
Speaker 5: transcribers for making transcripts available and accessible. They are at
Speaker 5: the link in the show notes for free, alongside bleeped
Speaker 5: episodes for school use. Thank you Caleb Patten for bleeping.
Speaker 5: Thank you to Sweet Sweet no All Dilworth for all
Speaker 5: of the interview scheduling and calendar wrangling. And thank you
Speaker 5: to assistant editor and fiance and midnight cheerleader Jared Sleeper,
Speaker 5: who hosts Quarantine Calisthenics every weekday and nine am on
Speaker 5: Twitch at Jared Underscoresely and of course the locust bean
Speaker 5: gum that holds this pod together. Lead editor Stephen Ray
Speaker 5: Morris hosts the podcast Sea Jurassic Right, the per Cast,
Speaker 5: and now a brand new one, a new Star Wars
Speaker 5: podcast called Everything But the Movie a Star Wars book
Speaker 5: Club podcast, and I will link that on my website
Speaker 5: as well. And if you listen to the credits, I
Speaker 5: tell you a secret and the secret at The end
Speaker 5: of this is that I got some carab chips that
Speaker 5: I've been saving to eat, and I'm not going to
Speaker 5: make any gross smacking noises because i know nobody wants that,
Speaker 5: but I am going to try one right now. M dude,
Speaker 5: this is good. If someone gave it to you and said,
Speaker 5: try this chocolate, you'd be like, that's kind of whack chocolate.
Speaker 5: But if you just try it, being like, try this,
Speaker 5: it tastes like a really nice smoky caramel. Okay, go
Speaker 5: get yourself some carab for by Pacodermatology, Homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology,
Speaker 5: old paratology, napology, seriology, selenology. Their carib bars apear perfectly
Speaker 5: with car of juice.
Speaker 2: Awesome carab is Nature's charcolate. Do you know what real
Speaker 2: power is?
Speaker 1: It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day,
Speaker 1: every day. With a smart all day plan from board
Speaker 1: Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro
Speaker 1: on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five euro welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy dot
Speaker 1: I E Board Gosh Energy.
Speaker 2: Know your Power
Speaker 3: Estimating Annual Ability twenty six hundred and twenty nine Your
Speaker 3: new customers only thirst of percent is kent of smart
Speaker 3: all day electricity unierates in twenty nine percent of gas
Speaker 3: US See Poor Gash Energy, dot E for fourties and
Speaker 3: SIS