Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, it's that yogurt parfe that honestly could use
Speaker 1: a little Moorkanola Alley word. I'm here with an episode
Speaker 1: that took not only two years to make COVID be damned,
Speaker 1: but has also been in the works since the Permian
Speaker 1: period two hundred and seventy million years ago. Nerds, when
Speaker 1: it comes to cycads, she is it, she is the person.
Speaker 1: And wait, hold up, what is a pycad?
Speaker 2: Good question?
Speaker 1: So with a name like cycad, it could be anything.
Speaker 1: It could be a person on top and a shark
Speaker 1: on the bottom. I feel like a cycad could be
Speaker 1: a sixteen dollars cocktail at a speakeasy full of jerks.
Speaker 1: A syicad could be a type of sore, maybe on
Speaker 1: your mouth if you're allergic to citrus, if I had
Speaker 1: to guess. But no backing up a cycad it comes
Speaker 1: from the Greek, a typo for the word palm, despite
Speaker 1: a psycad, which is a plant, not being a palm
Speaker 1: tree at all. So sycads have been on the scene
Speaker 1: two hundred million years before palm trees. Palm trees stumble
Speaker 1: in like, hey, what's up? What I miss? And Sycads
Speaker 1: are like what did you miss, oh, just the rise
Speaker 1: of the dynast and like gymnosperms aka plants that just
Speaker 1: bust out naked seeds without even having these new flowers
Speaker 1: or whatever. You have palms. So cycads ancient plants so
Speaker 1: much older than palm trees, and they have like a stout,
Speaker 1: hairy trunk. It kind of looks like if your cat
Speaker 1: used pineapple as a scratching post. And they have a
Speaker 1: bunch of stiff pinnate leaves. They have a spine down
Speaker 1: the center. And just like in ancient times, there are
Speaker 1: rigid females and males. They are also critically endangered. They're
Speaker 1: surrounded by so much drama. So much drama, you're not
Speaker 1: going to know what to do with yourself. Plants, yes,
Speaker 1: hang tight. So this sycad sleuth got a PhD at
Speaker 1: the University of Melbourne and continued her post doc researched
Speaker 1: at Duke and UC Berkeley in Harvard. She went back
Speaker 1: to Australia to be a research scientist at the Royal
Speaker 1: Botanic Garden in Sydney, and then in twenty seventeen made
Speaker 1: the journey back up to the Northern Hemisphere to join
Speaker 1: the California Academy of Arts and Science in San Francisco
Speaker 1: as an associate curator and the McAllister Chair of Botany.
Speaker 1: And it was there that I met her when I
Speaker 1: moderated a woman in Science panel and I remember it well,
Speaker 1: manyeologites in attendance, and this ologist was someone I just
Speaker 1: adored immediately, and I met her March of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: March fifth oh. No one was in masks, very few
Speaker 1: people had hand sanitizer, and hundreds of us packed into
Speaker 1: a room fearlessly. Instead of handshakes, we knocked sneakers into greeting,
Speaker 1: being like, this is going to save us. We're so young,
Speaker 1: we're so naive. And since then I'd wanted to interview
Speaker 1: her for years, just waiting for this pandemic to be over.
Speaker 1: But you know what, too much waiting. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: So Natalie spoke to me this week from Australia where
Speaker 1: she's with family. We hopped onto chat which are going
Speaker 1: to hear very soon. But first I quick thank you
Speaker 1: to all patrons who support the show. At patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies, you can join up for a dollar
Speaker 1: a month or more and submit questions. Thank you to
Speaker 1: everyone who talks to their friends and maybe they're foes
Speaker 1: about ologies. Thanks to everyone who make sure they're so
Speaker 1: prescribed that really keeps us up in the charts. Also
Speaker 1: reviews to I read each and every one of them,
Speaker 1: and to prove it, I will pick a fresh one.
Speaker 1: Thank you Lubug nineteen, who wrote for lovers and haters
Speaker 1: of science alike. I hated science in high school like
Speaker 1: so much. They write ologies make science of all types
Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating and I cannot get enough of it. So
Speaker 1: thank you lubug nineteen. Everyone else who wrote a review,
Speaker 1: I read it and I love you. Thank you. Okay
Speaker 1: you're ready. Nope, you're not. That was a true question. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. Plant capers, investment strategies, Jurassic flimflam, nudity,
Speaker 1: sort of the Michael Phelps of plant sperm, neighborhood psychat, safaris,
Speaker 1: cultivating pet plants, thumbs that are not green, heists, thrillers, poachers, rangers, gardens,
Speaker 1: and one of the best fixes for procrastination I have
Speaker 1: ever heard with botanist, research scientists, scholar enthusiast of charismatic gymnosperms,
Speaker 1: and one of the world's most respected, charming, funny, and
Speaker 1: endearing scientists, the universally beloved psychiologist doctor Natalie Nagalingham. Oh,
Speaker 1: first off, I should ask, can you say your first
Speaker 1: and last name in the pronouns you use?
Speaker 2: My name is Natalie Nagalingham, and my pronouns.
Speaker 1: Actually I hate to ask this because everyone asks, but
Speaker 1: what time is it there?
Speaker 2: It is thirty four pm?
Speaker 1: Am am?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Okay, did we get you up early?
Speaker 2: Yes? You did. I had like two alarms set to
Speaker 2: make sure I wouldn't sleepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry. No having our first coffee of the day.
Speaker 2: Probably, Yeah, I had breakfast and yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I'm so glad that we're finally doing this
Speaker 1: because I had such a good time talking to you
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. That was just an amazing, amazing time,
Speaker 1: And I have been waiting. That was just a few
Speaker 1: days before COVID, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty COVID. I remember you tapping us
Speaker 2: with your shoes just to greet us. Yeah, we didn't
Speaker 2: know anything.
Speaker 1: I feel like that was like one of the last
Speaker 1: fun times in.
Speaker 3: Public I had was with you.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: Yep, I didn't know what a psychad was until I
Speaker 1: met you. It's right, yeah, and it's so ed and
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, we can call you
Speaker 1: a psychologist. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Is that a real word?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, actually it is. Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh that makes me so happy, because I do feel
Speaker 1: like we we nudge toward words that are very new sometimes.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is real.
Speaker 1: But these plants are so old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pretty ancient. And you know, if you look at,
Speaker 2: you know, all those dinosaur pictures, you're going to see
Speaker 2: something that looks like a psycad.
Speaker 1: Were cycads around during the time of the dinosaurs or
Speaker 1: were their ancestors around.
Speaker 2: Well, that's kind of tricky because so the ones that
Speaker 2: we see today are kind of like a whole new
Speaker 2: crop of species, but they're great great grandparents. They were
Speaker 2: around during the time of the dinosaurs, and they also
Speaker 2: had kind of like distant relatives, cousins, kind of thing
Speaker 2: that looked like them that were around during the time
Speaker 2: of the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: To me, I think of a pineapple wearing a palm
Speaker 1: tree as a hat, and I feel like that is
Speaker 1: perhaps not the best description, But can you explain what
Speaker 1: does this psycad in your experience look like that.
Speaker 2: Is a great it's a really good description. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: never thought of that. I love it. Are used a
Speaker 2: really boring description. I think it's from a botanical description
Speaker 2: saying it. You know, it looks like a palm. It's
Speaker 2: got a stout trunk and it's got a crown of
Speaker 2: leaves at the top. They had cones, and those cones
Speaker 2: look like pine cones, but yours is much more interesting.
Speaker 1: So yes, very deep green, stiff leaves, a hairy, stumpy trunk.
Speaker 1: You've seen a million of them planted in dentist's office
Speaker 1: and maybe malls in business park landscaping, and thought, wow,
Speaker 1: what a very small palm. So people either take them
Speaker 1: for granted or are obsessed with them for like millions
Speaker 1: of years. Now, how long does it take for them
Speaker 1: to reproduce it? Why are they so endangered?
Speaker 2: They grow really really slowly. So if you think of
Speaker 2: the seed, the seed takes a year for the root
Speaker 2: to germinate, and then it's a few months after that
Speaker 2: then you get the first leaf. Oh wow, so that
Speaker 2: in itself is really slow, and then each like psychad plant,
Speaker 2: it just grows about I don't know, one centimeter. I'm
Speaker 2: in cinemed here like half an inch or something. It
Speaker 2: grows really really slowly each year. And so if you
Speaker 2: see something that's probably up to your knee, that's about
Speaker 2: ten years old.
Speaker 1: Oh so they're little guys kind of right, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: If you go into the field, you can find really
Speaker 2: big guys like I've you know, I've been to field
Speaker 2: sites where there's three met at all, and I've had to,
Speaker 2: you know, get my husband to like climb on a
Speaker 2: rock and reach on the stiffy toes to get a
Speaker 2: sample for me because there's no way that I can
Speaker 2: reach it.
Speaker 1: What does your field work look like? Do you have
Speaker 1: to take a time machine at all to the past?
Speaker 2: Only my time machine is our car. And what I
Speaker 2: do is we have all these collections, and this is
Speaker 2: common for you know, all of biology, that we store
Speaker 2: collections of plants and animals that we found in the wild.
Speaker 2: And what I do is I look at those collections
Speaker 2: and find out we have psychades that being collected before.
Speaker 2: And I go back to those collections and note down
Speaker 2: where they're from, and I go back to those locations
Speaker 2: and try to find them. Sometimes I can go back
Speaker 2: and there are no psycheads there. Sometimes I can go
Speaker 2: back and there are psychads there. It is kind of
Speaker 2: hit or miss.
Speaker 1: So part of Natalie's work involves tramping through field sites
Speaker 1: looking for new species or discerning the presence of specimens
Speaker 1: that are thought to be extinct in the wild, or
Speaker 1: she returns to field sites other botanists have documented to
Speaker 1: drop by, like a little you anyway home, just checking in.
Speaker 1: So psychologists pass this baton generationally, kind of like science
Speaker 1: links in this unbroken chain. How long have you been
Speaker 1: studying psychads?
Speaker 2: Well, so I started off my career as a paleobotanist,
Speaker 2: and so you break that word down, paleo meaning ancient
Speaker 2: and old, and botanist meaning someone who's a botanist who
Speaker 2: studies botany plants. So I studied ancient plants and that
Speaker 2: really fascinated me, being able to go back in time
Speaker 2: and psycads are these really really ancient plants? And so
Speaker 2: I started studying psycads and ferns and conifers theft like
Speaker 2: pine trees. Then a little bit later into my career
Speaker 2: we got the ability to use DNA to answer these
Speaker 2: ancient questions, not just through fossils, and so I transitioned
Speaker 2: into that. And so now I use DNA to try
Speaker 2: and uncover all of those questions that I was trying
Speaker 2: to answer just using fossils alone.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so now you have this completely like backstage
Speaker 1: molecular way of looking at things, where as before did
Speaker 1: you just have to look really closely at whatever their
Speaker 1: leaves and their stems and their roots look like to
Speaker 1: try to identify them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it was met like you sort of had
Speaker 2: to group them based on those characters that you said,
Speaker 2: and then were they similar to, say, ones in you know,
Speaker 2: are the ones in Antarctica? Were they similar to ones
Speaker 2: in Australia. So it's sort of just using features like
Speaker 2: that that we figured out what was happening, and that
Speaker 2: if there was changes, or if there were changes over time,
Speaker 2: then you could say this has evolved from that or
Speaker 2: there has been some kind of evolution happening.
Speaker 1: Hold on, backup, did you say Anarctica? Are there psycads
Speaker 1: on Anarcta?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 3: Are you? Is that a joke?
Speaker 2: No? In the Cretaceous there were lush forests in the Antarctic,
Speaker 2: and so I studied some I studied fossil ferns there.
Speaker 2: It's like the last place you would believe there are ferns.
Speaker 2: What happened was that the world was much much warmer.
Speaker 2: It was called a greenhouse Earth. So the world was warmer,
Speaker 2: and there were dinosaurs down there. There were lush forests.
Speaker 2: Those forests were actually really similar to the Australian forests
Speaker 2: and to the South American forests, and so you find
Speaker 2: things like these huge conifer trees. You find ferns, you
Speaker 2: find cycads, you find little bitty moss like relatives, you
Speaker 2: find them.
Speaker 1: All that's blowing my And that underneath tons and tons
Speaker 1: of glaciers and snow are fossils of ferns and masses
Speaker 1: and cycads.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And dinosaurs, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: And the cool thing about the dinosaurs from that region,
Speaker 2: so you know, Australia and Tarctica, South America, is that
Speaker 2: they had these really big eye sockets and because half
Speaker 2: of the year in Antarctica it was dark, and so
Speaker 2: they had these huge ties to allow them to see
Speaker 2: during that dark period.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Okay, did dinosaurs on Antarctica or did dinosaurs in general?
Speaker 1: Did they eat cycads? Were they edible? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yes, So there's over the last few years, there's increasingly
Speaker 2: more evidence that dinosaurs ate cycads. So come, I'm always
Speaker 2: on the lookout for papers that show evidence for this.
Speaker 2: Maybe like fifteen years ago there was kind of like, ah,
Speaker 2: these are some leaves it looks like they could be
Speaker 2: psychads in a dinosaur's gut, that we're not one hundred
Speaker 2: percent sure. And then more recently we found seeds in
Speaker 2: dinosaur guts are definitively psycads, and some leaves as well
Speaker 2: that are from dinosaurs guts.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: That the fact that someone could look at a fossil
Speaker 1: and be able to see certain seeds that a dinosaur
Speaker 1: as it's you know, final meal is veanillas, yeah, or
Speaker 1: rather psychads. But what do their seeds look like? How
Speaker 1: do you even identify a pycad seed?
Speaker 2: So they just kind of around blob. Really, they're not
Speaker 2: very exciting, and they do different they differ by us
Speaker 2: species and genus and stuff like that, but they're just
Speaker 2: so like they're kind of big, maybe like the palm
Speaker 2: of your hand. Oh really, yeah, they're pretty pretty big.
Speaker 2: And then some of them are probably you know, it's
Speaker 2: much much smaller, maybe the size of your thumb. It
Speaker 2: just depends on the spaces and you know, and there's
Speaker 2: always variability.
Speaker 1: So reminder, cycads are gymnosperms or naked seeds, which is
Speaker 1: extremely sensual of them and their nude seeds they're just
Speaker 1: waiting around for pollen, where angiosperms angion means container, so
Speaker 1: I contained seeds have much more complicated reproduction. It involves
Speaker 1: flowers and some other romantic business like encasing their seeds,
Speaker 1: perhaps in a delicious, juicy ovary aka of fruit. But cycads.
Speaker 1: Cycads are like, no, I'm a gymnastperm, I'm here, I'm naked,
Speaker 1: let's do this. And in female plants they can just
Speaker 1: be hanging out in a feathery looking leaf nest in
Speaker 1: the middle of their fronds. There's plenty of variability in
Speaker 1: the seeds, but from the gaze of my light googling,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like dried pinto beans or fava beans.
Speaker 1: How did they get dispersed if they were so dang big?
Speaker 2: That's another question that like I think about a lot
Speaker 2: and people who have done studies. So one of my
Speaker 2: favorite studies by some people up in Queensland is they
Speaker 2: got a cone and they put little bits of metal
Speaker 2: on them, like a nut or a bolt or a
Speaker 2: nail and then they just sort of, you know, let
Speaker 2: it become ripen. And then they went around the bush
Speaker 2: with a metal detector and they tried to figure out
Speaker 2: how far away did these seeds go. So they found
Speaker 2: that it's like they didn't go very far. It was
Speaker 2: like little mammals Australian you know, marsupi or they had
Speaker 2: sort of like picked apart the cone and just sort
Speaker 2: of taken them, you know, a couple of meters away,
Speaker 2: but not very far. There's also thought that e news
Speaker 2: eat them. In Western Australia, other birds might eat them
Speaker 2: like cassawerries. In the north of Australia, I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2: And in South Africa, I don't think there is evidence
Speaker 2: of you know, the big megaphauna, you know, the Big
Speaker 2: five eating the cycad seeds.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, she dropped the Big five like a
Speaker 1: Los Angeles person casually talks about freeway interchange. But I
Speaker 1: look this up for US, and those big five animals
Speaker 1: are kangaroos, wombats, koalas, crocodiles, and EMUs. Well you know, okay,
Speaker 1: another website said kangaroos, wombats koalas crocodiles and platypuses. Shit okay,
Speaker 1: another person okay. Another person lists kangaroos, wombats, koalas, platypusses, echidnas.
Speaker 1: I don't know Australia. I don't know what your big
Speaker 1: five is for a cane toad like me, I reckon
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a dog's breakfast. Good on me, duh.
Speaker 1: I looked up slang.
Speaker 2: So basically, once you've got a psychad population, if you
Speaker 2: take it away, nothing's going to bring it back.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, can you tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: their range? Where do we find psychads now?
Speaker 2: So I like to say that they are found in
Speaker 2: regions that I like, which is warm and tropical, and
Speaker 2: so it's like it's great for field works at ski
Speaker 2: are we. But it's kind of like the warm tropical
Speaker 2: bands like the top of Australia in the Pacific, in
Speaker 2: the Caribbean, in Asia, so Thailand, up into India, some
Speaker 2: in China, and then you go across to Africa and
Speaker 2: Southern Africa and Madagascar as well. So they're sort of
Speaker 2: in a band, sort of in the middle of the globe.
Speaker 1: So if cycads were looking for an apartment, their search
Speaker 1: terms would be like warm vibes, average to above average humidity,
Speaker 1: equatorial adjacent maybe places like Central America or the northern
Speaker 1: parts of South America, Eastern Africa very popular region, and
Speaker 1: the coasts of Southeast Asia. But what about Natalie herself?
Speaker 1: Was it always locations, locations, locations? Did you grow up
Speaker 1: wanting to travel a lot? Did you grow up really
Speaker 1: curious about native habitats? How did you end up getting
Speaker 1: to travel around and learn so much about these very endangered,
Speaker 1: beautiful plants.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that I could have a job
Speaker 2: like this. I'm a first generation. My parents are from Mauritius,
Speaker 2: which is a tiny little island next to Madagascar. Not
Speaker 2: many people have even heard of it. It's actually people
Speaker 2: but probably know it because of the Dodo and that's
Speaker 2: where the dodo was from, and the dodo became extinct there. Wow.
Speaker 2: But otherwise people don't know about them. And so my
Speaker 2: parents moved from Mauritius to Australia and we were encouraged
Speaker 2: to go to school. And you know, we gave me
Speaker 2: here to give you a bit of life. And so
Speaker 2: I just went to school, I went to university. I
Speaker 2: just sort of kept following what really interested me, and
Speaker 2: that was science. And then I didn't realize that I
Speaker 2: could be a doctor and pursue these plants all over
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: What was it like when you got your doctorate?
Speaker 2: It was just released because it was a long time.
Speaker 2: I think once you do it, it's just for me.
Speaker 2: I think for many people, I just felt sick of it.
Speaker 2: It was like, I just want to get rid of
Speaker 2: these I wanted to do something else because it just
Speaker 2: consumes your life. Yeah, and so I was just happy
Speaker 2: to get it done. And I think what was the
Speaker 2: nicest part was my family was so happy and so,
Speaker 2: you know, I have photos of my graduation day and
Speaker 2: they were everyone was so pleased and we're all smiling.
Speaker 2: So that was really nice.
Speaker 1: So doctor Naglingham has published papers with titles like Conservation
Speaker 1: Genetics of Wild Populations and Botanic Garden, Collections of Australian
Speaker 1: psychads and Phylogeny of the gymnastperm species. Psychis l as
Speaker 1: inferred from plastid and nuclear loci based on large scale sampling,
Speaker 1: evolutionary relationships and taxonomical implications. But what plant knowledge is
Speaker 1: she just really digging into?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you are really excited about researching
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this project is basically like a zoo breeding program.
Speaker 2: Now we have all these zoos with you know, like
Speaker 2: lizards or frogs, and we have a population and we
Speaker 2: use their pedigrees to figure out which ones we're going
Speaker 2: to breed together to make sure that you know, we're
Speaker 2: not inbreeding, and we increase their populations for eventually bringing
Speaker 2: them out in the wild. So we're doing that for
Speaker 2: the psychads. So we are doing it for maybebout ten
Speaker 2: species that are pretty much extinct in the wild. And
Speaker 2: we've got samples from private collectors from botanic gardens, and
Speaker 2: we figured out that the DNA profile of each of
Speaker 2: those each of those samples, and what we're doing is
Speaker 2: we're going to determine first are they clones of each other,
Speaker 2: because that's the thing that psychads do is they can
Speaker 2: produce clones. So we don't want we don't want to
Speaker 2: have a botannic guide and full of you know, twenty clones.
Speaker 2: We then in the long term, once they grow big
Speaker 2: enough to breed, we want to breed them and produce
Speaker 2: more plants to increase that population and increase the health.
Speaker 2: And so we're going to use genetics to help guide
Speaker 2: our breeding program, so just like a captive breeding program
Speaker 2: in a zoo, and so I've got someone working on
Speaker 2: that and she's doing an amazing job.
Speaker 1: Has there been a moment where you realize something, either
Speaker 1: with DNA or with through fossils, that you realize you
Speaker 1: might be one of the only people to know that.
Speaker 2: There's a few instances where three subspecies were sort of
Speaker 2: lumped sort of together, and then looking at them with
Speaker 2: the DNA, it was like, no, these are only these
Speaker 2: are two subspecies, and one of the subspecies is an
Speaker 2: entirely new species that's with DNA, And it's not being
Speaker 2: done quite a lot in the psychad worlds. Yet most
Speaker 2: of the time I just take a little segue. Most
Speaker 2: of the time it's psychadologists going into areas that we
Speaker 2: haven't explored and finding new species with these really obvious characters.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that I found really surprising is
Speaker 2: when I was looking at the DNA of today's psychcads,
Speaker 2: I expected them all to reveal that they all evolved
Speaker 2: alongside the dinosaurs, and I would just sort of like
Speaker 2: hangers on, and they made it up until today. But
Speaker 2: then if you think the dinosaurs died out sixty five
Speaker 2: million years ago. My DNA patterns were showing pretty much
Speaker 2: all of these cycads evolved twelve million years ago, So
Speaker 2: there's no way that these species today lived alongside the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: And so really sort of reframes it because if we
Speaker 2: think of how endangered psychads are, then they haven't survived
Speaker 2: all of these millions of years of global changes, you know,
Speaker 2: pressures from dinosaurs. They're actually adapted to modern conditions, and
Speaker 2: so they may not have the abilities to survive things
Speaker 2: like global warming and climate change.
Speaker 1: So yes, well, psycads were here for much longer before
Speaker 1: many other modern plants like these newbie palms and flowers
Speaker 1: and fruits, maybe that pear in your lunch. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that psycads stopped growing or stopped evolving or stopped
Speaker 1: doing the work this entire time, which means that in
Speaker 1: the entroposcene this time they're vulnerable because of us and pycads.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that sucks, and you deserve better.
Speaker 2: There's one species that it's called Encephaladis woody eye, and
Speaker 2: that was found in South Africa as a clump of
Speaker 2: four stems and because of the plants are either male
Speaker 2: or female. That clump was only four males, so of course,
Speaker 2: you know, being the Victorians, they just dug them all out,
Speaker 2: put them at verious potantic gardens. And so now they've
Speaker 2: never found a female and there's only one. There's only
Speaker 2: the males, and they're all around the world that produce
Speaker 2: clones everywhere, but it's never going to reproduce. It's just
Speaker 2: this one pliant.
Speaker 1: It's like that tortoise in the Galapamo George, the loneliest
Speaker 1: Turtlenes George. Yes, Oh my gosh. I wonder if one
Speaker 1: day they're going to find a female somewhere some you
Speaker 1: know old like ancient in some forest or some you know,
Speaker 1: overlooked bush. But it's not just sudden climate change that's
Speaker 1: affecting their population numbers. No no, no, no, no. Stretch your
Speaker 1: thumbs because you're about to text some really weird shit
Speaker 1: to your entire address book. Get the family chat ready
Speaker 1: for this. And one of the reasons why they are
Speaker 1: extinct is partly collecting and trafficking.
Speaker 2: Is that right, Yeah, it's it's crazy people. People are
Speaker 2: astonished when they that act.
Speaker 3: I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: Like when I first interviewed you and I'm still like
Speaker 1: the drama of a psychad, Like what's happening out there?
Speaker 2: It's crazy. It's like I remember Ranger when I went
Speaker 2: to the Tanic Garden in Sydney. He was like, hold on,
Speaker 2: they got stolen and because I had some specimen stolen
Speaker 2: from me, and he was like, but they're not diamonds,
Speaker 2: Like why are they stealing them?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into it. Who are these plant thieves?
Speaker 2: People are so obsessed with psychads that they want every
Speaker 2: single species and they're about three hundred fifty species. We're
Speaker 2: still finding more, and so they want every single species,
Speaker 2: so they will go to all lengths to poach them.
Speaker 1: Got to catch more.
Speaker 2: So some stories of people who are dynamited cliff faces
Speaker 2: to get the psychads out. At the Botanic Garden in
Speaker 2: Cape Jawn. What they have done is they've gone in
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night and they've purposely dug
Speaker 2: up specific species and taken those out. And it's not
Speaker 2: like the psychied garden is sort of on the edge
Speaker 2: of the garden. It's really deeply into the garden and
Speaker 2: so they know these poaches, know exactly what species they're targeting,
Speaker 2: and you just see that, you know, the empty holes
Speaker 2: where they've taken those particular species.
Speaker 1: It's like the worst kind of gophers ever, human gophers.
Speaker 2: They are well, I wouldn't even say gophers are they're
Speaker 2: just criminals.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a better way.
Speaker 1: So what how much are they worth when they're getting that?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so some can be like thirty thousand, forty thousand.
Speaker 1: What crazy? I'm sorry, it's so loud.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Worth more than a car?
Speaker 2: It's oh yeah. And if it's super rare, like someone
Speaker 2: told me there was this huge species that is now
Speaker 2: extinct in the wild, and we saw it in a
Speaker 2: private collection in South Africa. It probably went up to
Speaker 2: your roof and wow, he said to me, it's probably
Speaker 2: worth a million dollars.
Speaker 1: I am losing my shit. Are you losing your shit?
Speaker 1: I'm losing it. That's bananas.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is people in South Africa what
Speaker 2: they do is they'll buy like a rare species for
Speaker 2: their kid. When their kid is young, raise that species,
Speaker 2: and then by the time that kid is old enough
Speaker 2: to go to college, they will sell it and they'll
Speaker 2: have the money to.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, psychads are bitcoin? What's happening. What is
Speaker 1: the world So psychiologists do you all? Are you all
Speaker 1: on a WhatsApp thread talking about this kind of stuff?
Speaker 1: What happens when you meet up in person? What are
Speaker 1: your zooms like?
Speaker 2: So what we're focusing on is trying to figure out
Speaker 2: ways to stop this kind of thing happening. So there's
Speaker 2: different ways. There's national parks and I know how you
Speaker 2: have rangers guiding rhinos and elephants so that you know
Speaker 2: they walk around with him.
Speaker 1: So I was not aware of this, But in countries
Speaker 1: all over the world with critically endangered species like the
Speaker 1: black rhino or African elephants, armed rangers patrol for poachers.
Speaker 1: These units can range from pretty ruthless. For example, Kasaringa
Speaker 1: Park in India sees more poacher deaths than rhino killings.
Speaker 1: That's all over the news. There's also really progressive movements
Speaker 1: like the International Anti Poaching Foundation's Squad of all vegan
Speaker 1: women who are rangers in Zimbabwe and a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one paper I found titled Poaching of Encephalardos trans Venosis
Speaker 1: in the Limpopo Province, South Africa agreed that quote patrolling
Speaker 1: in law enforcement seems to be the agreed means by
Speaker 1: which poaching can be addressed, as indicated by all their
Speaker 1: respondents from the three nature reserves. Oh, in that last
Speaker 1: paper encephalardos trans venosis. That's a psychad. So in South Act,
Speaker 1: three of their thirty eight native species are what Africa
Speaker 1: Geographic Magazine called quote loved to death or extinct in
Speaker 1: the wild. Three out of thirty eight already.
Speaker 2: So there's rangers who do that for psychads. So that's
Speaker 2: one way to deal with them. And they've actually shot.
Speaker 1: People, really people trying to steal them and they're like
Speaker 1: yet out of here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I shot them. People go to jail.
Speaker 1: My god, why aren't there more thrillers about this? You know,
Speaker 1: like where's Liam Neesim?
Speaker 3: Like where's his psycad movie?
Speaker 1: What I do have are a very particular set of skills.
Speaker 2: Yes, it would be a good movie.
Speaker 3: Actually it would be a good movie.
Speaker 1: What Okay, I think you're the You're an EP on
Speaker 1: it obviously, Okay, I'll be. I'll be a PA on
Speaker 1: set who runs around gets everyone's coffee just so that
Speaker 1: I can hang out and hang out with you and
Speaker 1: learn all this stuff. Do you ever have to like
Speaker 1: testify or be like an expert about any of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: No, no, thankfully no, because in the US there isn't
Speaker 2: any native psychads, especially in Floriday's a few and they're
Speaker 2: really really common. But people I know in South Africa, yeah,
Speaker 2: they have had to go to court testify.
Speaker 1: So if botanical burglary drama is what you're after, just
Speaker 1: google word pairings like cycad heist or plant poacher. The
Speaker 1: internet will haul up just a wheelbarrow full of returns
Speaker 1: from a two thousand and one Department of Justice memo
Speaker 1: elaborating in detail about five individuals who sent approximately half
Speaker 1: a million dollars worth of protected cycads to the US
Speaker 1: from South Africa, Australia, and Zimbabwe, and then another criminal
Speaker 1: who bought them. The criminal's name was Donald Wiener. He
Speaker 1: bought two hundred thousand dollars worth of stolen plants in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. That's so many dollars of plants.
Speaker 1: There's also this South African power psychad couple. They each
Speaker 1: ran their own flourishing businesses buying and selling and dealing
Speaker 1: psychads until greed and deceit and gambling and poaching rip
Speaker 1: them apart. Anyway, it's thrilling, it's gripping. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: world of psycha drama. But we're about to get to
Speaker 1: your questions with doctor Naglingham. But first we like to
Speaker 1: donate to a charity of the ologist choosing, and this
Speaker 1: week we're honored to donate to Ovarian Cancer Australia in
Speaker 1: Natalie's name. She has a personal connection to them, and
Speaker 1: if this cause means something to you, or if you'd
Speaker 1: like to think Natalie for her work, consider donating to
Speaker 1: them on February twenty third, as gifts will be matched
Speaker 1: that day. So many symptoms of ovarian cancer could be overlooked,
Speaker 1: like bloating and fullness after meals and abdominal pain and
Speaker 1: it gets overlooked a lot, and you can find out
Speaker 1: more and you can donate if you like at ovariancancer
Speaker 1: dot net dot au. There will be a link in
Speaker 1: the show notes and while you're at it, you can
Speaker 1: find Natalie on Twitter telling her how to appreciate her.
Speaker 1: Her Twitter is at Ennagalingum and will be linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes. So thank you Natalie for telling us
Speaker 1: about that, and thanks to sponsors of the show for
Speaker 1: making that possible. All right, let's get the root of
Speaker 1: your questions. My fronds. Okay, listeners, they know you're on.
Speaker 1: They're excited. Aki wants to know I hear. These plants
Speaker 1: can host many things. What are some of the most
Speaker 1: unusual things that have been found in cycads?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, there's so many. There's so in their roots
Speaker 2: they have a bacteria, and that bacteria gets nitrogen from
Speaker 2: the air and converts it into a usable nitrogen for
Speaker 2: the cycads.
Speaker 1: So these roots side note, are called coloroid roots, and
Speaker 1: I just fell down a musky tunnel about them. But
Speaker 1: the short version is that there are these knobby roots
Speaker 1: of cycads that hang out in this shallow layer of
Speaker 1: soil and they grab tiny sinobacteria the photosynthesize, and they
Speaker 1: recruit them. The sinobacteria they are like, okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: can fix nitrogen for you. What's in it for me?
Speaker 1: And the sycad roots are like sugar carbs, all the
Speaker 1: sweet yums you want for that nitrogen. So the sinobacteria
Speaker 1: are like, all right, I'm in now. If you were
Speaker 1: to cut a coloroid root, you would see that green
Speaker 1: sinobacterial zone as a ring inside of it. So cycads
Speaker 1: ancient living soap operas in just a dirty modern world.
Speaker 1: We love them, but let's not love them to death? Now,
Speaker 1: who else loves them? Bugs? First time question askers Noah
Speaker 1: Siam and Jacob Bowman both asked about beetles. In Noah's words,
Speaker 1: is it true that cycads are pollinated by beetles because
Speaker 1: they existed before bees evolved? And yes, I looked it up.
Speaker 1: Bees have only existed for one hundred and thirty million years.
Speaker 1: They're coming on the scene while cycads were in middle
Speaker 1: age and beetles are like, oh hey, what's up? Be cool?
Speaker 1: That's cool. Other pollinator questions came from listeners Harper Thomas Floridian,
Speaker 1: Gerald Thompson, and Anthony, who asked, if I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to be their personal pollinators, then who is?
Speaker 2: They're pollinators? They host their pollinators inside the cones. So
Speaker 2: pollination is one of my favorite stories because you have
Speaker 2: cycads and the plants look exactly the same. You have
Speaker 2: male and female plants, but they once they produce cones,
Speaker 2: then you can say, oh, okay, this is a male one.
Speaker 2: It produces pollen. This is a female one. It produces ovules,
Speaker 2: which eventually produces eggs. And then you need the beetles
Speaker 2: to go to the male ones. And what they do
Speaker 2: is they get attracted by this odor that the male
Speaker 2: pollen cones emit, and the odor sort of increases. Actually
Speaker 2: it's a slight odor, or technically it's a volatile so
Speaker 2: it attracts all of the beetles. And there's also trips
Speaker 2: as well and weevils and they basically it's an orgy.
Speaker 2: They feed and they made and they lay their eggs
Speaker 2: on there, so they have an orgy on the male
Speaker 2: pollen cone. And then once I don't know how the
Speaker 2: polan hone decides, but it decides that okay, you know,
Speaker 2: you guys have had enough. I need to kick you out.
Speaker 2: And so what it does is it increases the amount
Speaker 2: of the odor and it kicks them all out of
Speaker 2: the cone. I think you should live. And it's kind
Speaker 2: of like it's like when you wear a cologne. You know,
Speaker 2: if you were like a little bit of cologne, that's
Speaker 2: really nice, and then if you were a lot of cologne,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're stuck next to that person who's
Speaker 2: got a lot of colone and you're like, oh my.
Speaker 1: God, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yes, So they get rid of it, and that the
Speaker 2: cool thing about that is that it's possibly the only
Speaker 2: plant system that does that, because if you think of
Speaker 2: other like flowers, they will attract insects with their odors
Speaker 2: to pull them in, but they don't actively push them
Speaker 2: away with their increased cologne. So that's a really unique system.
Speaker 2: And considering that, you know, these are pretty ancient, they've
Speaker 2: still got this very modern, interesting system that nothing else
Speaker 2: has developed.
Speaker 1: That's pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2: It is, it is, And there's somebody at a Utah
Speaker 2: and she's been working on this a lot as well.
Speaker 2: She does some really cool work Irene Terry. And so
Speaker 2: then after that, the insects get kicked out because of
Speaker 2: all the cologne, and then they go to the female
Speaker 2: cone that produces a tiny little bit of odor, but
Speaker 2: enough for the insects to come over and they you know,
Speaker 2: crawl all over and they pollinate the eggs and then
Speaker 2: they leave.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so cunning, it's coning. It's cunning.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when Natalie describes this as like a cologne
Speaker 1: dose gone wrong, she's not kidding. So this species of
Speaker 1: psychad makes a compound called b mercine to seduce these
Speaker 1: tiny little insects called thrips. Now, how does it blast
Speaker 1: him away? How does it suddenly squirt a bunch more colonne?
Speaker 1: The cycad uses its stored carmine, hydrates, and fats and
Speaker 1: it burns them all to raise its own temperature during
Speaker 1: the hates part of the day, which lets off more
Speaker 1: of this beta mercine. So the now pollen doused thrips
Speaker 1: are like, we're out, and then they go find a
Speaker 1: less stinky female plant, dusting it with the cycadsperm. So
Speaker 1: who needs flowers when you have strategy people and be mercine?
Speaker 1: And I wondered what that was and what it smells like?
Speaker 1: What do they smell like? So I googled the work
Speaker 1: of doctor Irene Terry, who Natalie just mentioned, and in
Speaker 1: a two thousand and seven New Scientist article titled Ancient
Speaker 1: plant has hot, stinky sex, doctor Terry stated that the
Speaker 1: whiff quote takes your breath away. It's a harsh, overwhelming
Speaker 1: odor like nothing you ever smelled before. But what does
Speaker 1: that mean? What doctor Terry? Come on to her credit,
Speaker 1: doctor Terry is not one of those perfume guys on TikTok.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that m mercine is used in perfumes,
Speaker 1: so I asked some cologne and fragrance web sites, which
Speaker 1: use terms like fruity, fresh, and clove like the Good
Speaker 1: Sense Company website used the most adjectives including spicy, earthy,
Speaker 1: and musky, refreshing, almost citrusy but warm, balsamic, and ethereal sweet.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I want to be doused in the love
Speaker 1: making of psycad, but trust to threat people. Too much
Speaker 1: of this compound can be irritating and toxic, So even
Speaker 1: if you're enjoying the planches, you're gonna want to bounce
Speaker 1: to On that note, one listener wrote in Carla Maria
Speaker 1: Pyrus and asked, what cycads have motile sperm cells? Tell
Speaker 1: me more? Is that true?
Speaker 2: Yes, So the sperm in psychads have motile sperm cells.
Speaker 1: So there's there are swimming around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do swim around. Yeah, They're like a little blob.
Speaker 2: And there's like a helix of little tails like flagella
Speaker 2: that go all the way to the top, you know,
Speaker 2: like a spinning top.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then as I said, at the top of the point,
Speaker 2: bet you've got all those flagella and then the flagelly
Speaker 2: sort of wind their way around and it just helps
Speaker 2: a swim.
Speaker 1: Wow, so many advancements. They really have a lot of
Speaker 1: bells and whistles, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, And that's sort of something to be
Speaker 2: cautious about, is that, you know, when you talk about
Speaker 2: something that's really ancient, is that it may not be
Speaker 2: ancient in all its ways. So, you know, using the
Speaker 2: term like living fossil, which I have done, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a misin moment because we're kind of just saying
Speaker 2: it's it's old. It hasn't changed, but it's still had
Speaker 2: millions of years to change, and it's got some cool features. Well.
Speaker 1: Zoe Armstead first time QUESTIONSCO asked how someone who is
Speaker 1: not a psychologist, someone who is not a natolie can
Speaker 1: tell the difference between male and female psychad plants. Zoe says,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like they have giant wangs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, any thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the pollen cones, they if you look at
Speaker 2: underneath each individual sort of unit we call them gales,
Speaker 2: you'll find little like little balls underneath them, which is
Speaker 2: funny considering they're tiny, like tiny little balls, and that's
Speaker 2: where the pollen comes out. So it's only when you
Speaker 2: can see the cones.
Speaker 1: So look for round spherical objects on the underside and
Speaker 1: a conical pollen phallus in the center. It's my way.
Speaker 2: And then there's a few different kinds of female cones.
Speaker 2: So the one that's sago palm, it just looks like
Speaker 2: it's almost like an open bud flower, but it's not
Speaker 2: a flower. And you can see the seeds as they
Speaker 2: mature on the edges of the leaves, and then otherwise
Speaker 2: they just look like big pineapples like you said. So
Speaker 2: they're a bit more tricky to the tailerpart. But the
Speaker 2: tailtaler one is the little balls on the on the scales.
Speaker 1: There's going to be people who are in a botanical
Speaker 1: garden looking at psycads and they'll probably have a security
Speaker 1: guard being like, what are they so close up in there?
Speaker 3: What do they wire in the undercarriage? Get out of
Speaker 3: that check.
Speaker 2: But a word of warning, the pollen can be has
Speaker 2: neurotoxins in it, and so just be careful not to
Speaker 2: breathe them in. I mean, I don't know, you probably
Speaker 2: have to, you know, really snuff them in, but just
Speaker 2: just be careful and wash your hands.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had to worry about that when you've
Speaker 1: been out in the.
Speaker 2: Field, not add in the field, but definitely Like I've
Speaker 2: tried experiments where we get pollen and we do artificial pollination,
Speaker 2: and so we get the pollen, and you know, we
Speaker 2: wear masks, like we're all wearing masks now, so we
Speaker 2: get like n ninety five masks, which you all know about,
Speaker 2: just to make sure you know we're not breathing in
Speaker 2: that pollen.
Speaker 1: Prehistoric poaching, plotting, poison, nude seeds, psycads. You are the
Speaker 1: forbidden reality show that we did not know that we loved.
Speaker 1: Now who else asked about toxicity? So many of you,
Speaker 1: including Kersey for some question asker Matt Joel f MB
Speaker 1: and we actually had a few listeners right in to say,
Speaker 1: Kelly Shiver wants to know what is with this thing
Speaker 1: where animals eat toxic cycads and they're fine, but humans
Speaker 1: eat the animals and are affected by the toxins. And
Speaker 1: a magartgen wants to know about poison seeds if that's
Speaker 1: true of all psycads?
Speaker 2: Yes, so are they are poisonous and the toxins, the
Speaker 2: toxins are pretty bad. And so one story that I
Speaker 2: can think of is in Guam where and it's actually
Speaker 2: not conclusive, but they thought that people who were eating
Speaker 2: the seeds of one of the Guam cycads they during
Speaker 2: the war, either they didn't prepare the seeds properly and
Speaker 2: just eat them, you know, without preparation and they got sick,
Speaker 2: or they were eating fruit bats that were able to
Speaker 2: you know, to withstand it, and they got sick from
Speaker 2: that and they ended up with a neurological disease like
Speaker 2: an als Parkinson's like disease, which coincidentally, you know, after
Speaker 2: the Second Wall, when the food shortage is ended, that
Speaker 2: incidence of those diseases ended. But it's still kind of
Speaker 2: there's still a big scientific debate about this, like why
Speaker 2: is this happening kind of thing. I don't really know
Speaker 2: why they're toxic, like to us, not to some animals.
Speaker 2: I mean some you know, some cows they get I
Speaker 2: think the Australian farms called them dropsy or something, so
Speaker 2: they get the paralysis in their legs sometimes if they
Speaker 2: eat psychad leaves and sort of all around the world.
Speaker 2: What I love is that peoples all around the world,
Speaker 2: like in Australia, in Guatemala and Mexico and South Africa.
Speaker 2: People have figured out how to detoxify the seeds, and
Speaker 2: so they figured out you can use ash. You can
Speaker 2: put them in a basket and run that basket through
Speaker 2: a creek and it leaches out all the toxins or
Speaker 2: through a series of soaks. And so this is a
Speaker 2: kind of funny one where they just like soak them
Speaker 2: in a series of soaks and they decide whether the
Speaker 2: the toxins are leached out by giving some water to
Speaker 2: the chickens. I think the chickens die. Oh, then the
Speaker 2: toxins have not been illuminated, so they keep going with
Speaker 2: the six.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I tried to find out if you can
Speaker 1: eat a poisoned chicken. But after learning that the sago
Speaker 1: palm is extremely poisonous to animals, including humans, and that
Speaker 1: pets think it's delicious, but within twelve hours of eating it,
Speaker 1: they can develop vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, seizures, liver failure, bruising,
Speaker 1: nose bleeds, and blood in the stool, and that the
Speaker 1: ASPA Animal Poison Control Center estimates a fatality rate of
Speaker 1: fifty to seventy five percent when ingestion of the sago
Speaker 1: palm is involved. I'm like, I don't think anyone wants
Speaker 1: to eat those chickens. I think they're like catchtory and
Speaker 1: everyone's like absolutely not, No, toss it the river, you know.
Speaker 1: Getting back a little bit to that toxicity. Nano naturalist
Speaker 1: asked about the Oliver Sax book Island of the color Blind.
Speaker 1: Have you read that at all about Yes? Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me more about how you felt about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, so all of us sad. I mean, his writing
Speaker 2: is beautiful, and so he believes that it was the
Speaker 2: bat theory, I think, and that's about Guam and that
Speaker 2: whole process of people not getting enough food and then
Speaker 2: wanting and then using the psychads as a source of food.
Speaker 2: And then so he and another doctor went and investigated that,
Speaker 2: and so that was his conclusion that it was the
Speaker 2: psychads that caused it. Wow, But other doctors have come
Speaker 2: up with other reasons, and you know, there's been other
Speaker 2: incidences in Japan as well, So it's still it's not clear.
Speaker 2: Nobody really knows.
Speaker 1: Just a shout out to listener Bolitovak, who was also
Speaker 1: excited about this question and asked if researchers had yet
Speaker 1: confirmed the cause of this condition yet, which was referred
Speaker 1: to as als dash PDC or Latico Bodig disease, and essentially,
Speaker 1: a recent twenty two twenty one paper seemed to reiterate
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that traditional methods for safe consumption of sycad
Speaker 1: seeds appear to have been lost over the course of
Speaker 1: time since colonizers banned consumption, and other articles have tracked
Speaker 1: the incident's rates, and the cycad seed hypothesis essentially seems
Speaker 1: to be going strong. Also, I started reading yet another
Speaker 1: Bananas article about a cycad caper which led with Joan
Speaker 1: Flack is on the run, suspected of stealing a rare
Speaker 1: African plant thought to be extinct and worth millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: and Sonya Kurtz was hired by the CIA to hunt
Speaker 1: down Joan to find the link between the missing plant
Speaker 1: and a terrorist group hiding out in South Africa. Before
Speaker 1: I realized that this article was a book review for
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty novel Last Survivor by Tony Park And
Speaker 1: I don't know if this book is a good book,
Speaker 1: but it is about cycads and it exists in case
Speaker 1: that kind of action thriller is just what the doctor ordered.
Speaker 1: Oh which brings me to Rachel Walwood. Wanted to know
Speaker 1: first have question. Asker says, this seems like a type
Speaker 1: of plant that would be excellent for research into practical
Speaker 1: application as medicine. Yes, no, maybe, yes, So in.
Speaker 2: South Africa they do use the bark to hit it. Oh,
Speaker 2: they do use it for actually some for voodoo as well.
Speaker 2: So if you put someone under your bed, it kind
Speaker 2: of protects you. But that's all I know. I know.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, if you put a forty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: plant under your pillow, seems like pretty good luck.
Speaker 4: I think it's just a little bit of bark, just
Speaker 4: a little bark, Okay, yeah, Kitty Bailey Also for some
Speaker 4: christ Oskar wants to know if they have any appearances
Speaker 4: in mythology or any interesting stories about them.
Speaker 1: And if not, if there's any in movies or TV
Speaker 1: that you, as a psychologist have seen and said that's
Speaker 1: not right or oh they got it right.
Speaker 2: Oh, so definitely Diress Path they're in there. I'm not
Speaker 2: really sure that. Like the mythology is pretty varied. One
Speaker 2: of the stories I love is in Vanuatu is that
Speaker 2: it's a symbol of war versus peace and it's also
Speaker 2: a symbol of the chief. And so if you have
Speaker 2: two pych head fronds and they're crossed, that means that
Speaker 2: the two neighboring tribes are at war, and it's only
Speaker 2: until that is resolved that the fronds get uncrossed, and
Speaker 2: then they have a huge, big party aho. And so
Speaker 2: it's also a taboo. So if somebody places a pychhad
Speaker 2: front somewhere, it means that this, I say, this person's
Speaker 2: shop is under taboo, and so people won't go in
Speaker 2: that shop. It's also a chiefly symbol. And if a
Speaker 2: chief places a cycad front where, let's say on the beach,
Speaker 2: he's indicating that this is my beach. Nobody can come here.
Speaker 1: Natalie also related a story about Prince Charles being gifted
Speaker 1: a ceremonial psychad frond to honor his power as a chief,
Speaker 1: and warned me before googling.
Speaker 2: He's topless, though, So I was just warned about that, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I looked around for this, and I did find
Speaker 1: some pictures of Prince Charles fully clothed in like a
Speaker 1: rumpled suit on the beach during this exchange, but the
Speaker 1: search of him topless did return some beach frolicking recon
Speaker 1: on that trip. All I can say is that I
Speaker 1: hope that his Royal aides had some sunscreen in like
Speaker 1: a fire extinguisher canister. Just blast it. Now. What if
Speaker 1: it's not enough to take home all of this knowledge?
Speaker 1: What if you want to take home a psychad? So
Speaker 1: listeners Andy Kristy Kazakhov, Jen Squirrel, Alvarez, Joe Mueller, and
Speaker 1: Caitlin Powell asked about their cultivation and in Rebecca Winzel's words,
Speaker 1: can I grow on in a pot in my Midwestern apartment?
Speaker 1: And on that note, patrons Chelsea and Emily Davis wrote
Speaker 1: in not a question, but heck yeah, dinosaur plants. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about people who grow psychads and cultivate
Speaker 1: them just to keep them around? Do you feel like
Speaker 1: it's like maybe only where they should already be growing?
Speaker 1: Or how do you feel about people propagating them?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love them. I mean if you can get
Speaker 2: psychads everywhere, like I remember seeing the Whole Foods once
Speaker 2: someone told me they saw them at Akiya. I've seen
Speaker 2: them at Disneyland. You know, it's the common species are
Speaker 2: not hard to find, and so you can easily find psychads.
Speaker 2: It's just those rare species where you're spending thousands that
Speaker 2: you know may be kind of dodgy. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: I love that people grow psychads. And I love that
Speaker 2: people who have just been to my talks they come
Speaker 2: up to me and say, oh, I found a psychcad
Speaker 2: on my walk, and I'll showing me the picture of
Speaker 2: the psychad, and so they become psychad spotters, And for
Speaker 2: me that's really exciting because you know, now they know
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I understand you don't have the greenest thumb,
Speaker 1: but our psycho. You told me when we met in
Speaker 1: services car that You're like, I'm actually terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't grow anything, which.
Speaker 1: Makes me feel so much better because I am not
Speaker 1: good with plants that I kill like every charactus. I've
Speaker 1: ever had any tips on how to cultivate a psychiat
Speaker 1: Do they like son? Do they like miracle grow?
Speaker 2: I feel like, I feel like this is a really
Speaker 2: mean question, Allie. You know, I.
Speaker 1: Don't you know, it's one of the reasons I fell
Speaker 1: in love with you. That was like, I love that
Speaker 1: this is a botanist. He's like, I'm not very good
Speaker 1: with plants, but you're good with plants. On a level
Speaker 1: that's like saving them and on like a molecular and
Speaker 1: taxonomic and like going around the world. Doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you have to be good at growing one in a
Speaker 1: pot on your desk.
Speaker 2: With you.
Speaker 1: But what about the hardest part of your job other
Speaker 1: than growing plants?
Speaker 2: I think it's just like, you know, there's writing papers,
Speaker 2: and it's just that pressure of writing papers. That's that's hard,
Speaker 2: I think, and I think a lot of academies will
Speaker 2: say that. And it has to be really good, so
Speaker 2: it's that sort of constant churning out of papers as well,
Speaker 2: but you don't want to write rubbish, So it's just
Speaker 2: it's hard.
Speaker 1: Are you someone who writes a lot of drafts or
Speaker 1: are you someone who just wrings your hands, procrastinates it,
Speaker 1: does it all at once? What's your strategy? There? Any
Speaker 1: tips on.
Speaker 2: The way I do it? Is that I will set
Speaker 2: it aside time in the like in the morning usually,
Speaker 2: and I will just sit at my computer and force
Speaker 2: myself to write one or two paragraphs, and in my
Speaker 2: mind I'm like, oh, this is really crap, but I'm
Speaker 2: just going to write it, and then you know, I
Speaker 2: do whatever I can, and then the next day I
Speaker 2: get back to it, and then I fix that one
Speaker 2: and I write another one, and I sort of keep
Speaker 2: going that way. I just can't. I can't do the
Speaker 2: whole thing in one. But it's just like little by little.
Speaker 1: That is really really good advice to revise what you've
Speaker 1: done and then do draft that you.
Speaker 3: Allowed to be rubbish.
Speaker 1: And it's never that crappy, is it when you go
Speaker 1: back and you're like, hey, this is pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if the ideas are there and you know,
Speaker 2: just so you just sort of restructure it and fit
Speaker 2: it in with the next paragraph. So yeah, and you
Speaker 2: know the hard part of starting.
Speaker 1: Oh, tell me about it, man, that's great advice. You
Speaker 1: may have just changed people's lives with that like kind
Speaker 1: of relay writing where you're like, all right, fix the
Speaker 1: last one, do the next one, fix it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm gonna try that. What about your favorite
Speaker 1: thing about psychads or your work?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love talking about psychods because they're so fascinating.
Speaker 2: They've just I mean, I've told you a little bit
Speaker 2: about them, but there's so many more things that I
Speaker 2: could talk about. They're just fascinating. One little group of
Speaker 2: plants have so many stories. I had some dreams of
Speaker 2: writing a book about psychads and all their crazy stories
Speaker 2: about the people and their biology and reproduction, but never
Speaker 2: got around to it.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, we have anything that you would recommend people look
Speaker 1: into if they're now suddenly a psycat spotter.
Speaker 2: There are there's lots of pictures online, but the Academy
Speaker 2: has produced a bunch of videos where I'm talking about
Speaker 2: all these different issues. So if people want to hear
Speaker 2: more of my voice, you can go to the Academy's
Speaker 2: video pages and look up Natalie Megglingham and watch those.
Speaker 1: Including getting to ask you a bunch of questions at
Speaker 1: the Dawn of COVID.
Speaker 3: That's all right, Yes, this has just been such a joy.
Speaker 1: You've been on my list for so long, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad it just I'm glad we didn't put it off anymore,
Speaker 1: just went for because I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: this literally since the day I met you two years ago. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for the excellent, excellent work you do.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So ask iconic people botanic questions. And let this be
Speaker 1: a lesson. When you have a friend you want to
Speaker 1: chat with, do it sooner rather than later. Doctor Neaglingam.
Speaker 1: We straight up love you so much and you're a
Speaker 1: treasure in this world. Thank you on behalf of every
Speaker 1: psychad on the planet for your work. And Natalie's website
Speaker 1: is linked in the show notes if you want to
Speaker 1: find out more about her and her work, as is
Speaker 1: her Twitter at n Nagalingham. We will also link some
Speaker 1: other videos that she's been in through the California Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences. Also mark your calendar for March third. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be moderating another panel with them and it's
Speaker 1: part online, part in person. But March third, tune in
Speaker 1: California Academy of Sciences. I'm really really excited to actually
Speaker 1: be back in person, even if it's in a limited group.
Speaker 1: But again, follow Natalie n Nagalingham on Twitter, tell her
Speaker 1: how cool she is. More links including want to donate
Speaker 1: to Ovarian Cancer Australia On February twenty third. Matching Day
Speaker 1: are all up at aliwar dot com slash ologies slash
Speaker 1: Psychology linked in the show notes. We are at ologies
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L
Speaker 1: on both. Thank you Aaron Talbert for managing the Ologies
Speaker 1: podcast Facebook group. Thank you Shannon and Bonnie of the
Speaker 1: comedy podcast You are that for helping out too. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Susan Hale, who handles everything from payroll to merch. Thank
Speaker 1: you Noel Dilworth who helps schedule and run behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Emily White makes our professional transcripts. Caleb Patten bleeps them.
Speaker 1: Those are up for free for anyone who needs them
Speaker 1: at Alleyward dot com slash Ologies Dash extras. All our
Speaker 1: episodes are also arranged by topic two on my site
Speaker 1: at alliwar dot com slash ologies dash by dash topic
Speaker 1: so you can find all sorts of episodes maybe you've overlooked.
Speaker 1: Kelly Dwyer updates the website. She can make yours too
Speaker 1: her links in the show notes. Every two weeks a
Speaker 1: new Smologies episode comes out and those are shorter condensed.
Speaker 1: They are defilthed digests for all ages, totally parent and
Speaker 1: classroom friendly, and those are in your feed or at
Speaker 1: aliward dot com slash smologies. Thank you Zeegredriguez Thomas of
Speaker 1: mind Jem Media for heading those up and Stephen Ray
Speaker 1: Morris who helps too. As we record this at nine
Speaker 1: forty eight pm on Valentine's Day. Thank you to lead
Speaker 1: editor Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam for making sure this
Speaker 1: gets out the door every week. Jarrett, the mayor of
Speaker 1: Babetown Sleeper the best. Nick Thorburn made the music and
Speaker 1: he is in a very good band called Islands. And
Speaker 1: if you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: I tell you secret. This week's secret is I swear
Speaker 1: adhd is coming out this week. I swear y'all. I
Speaker 1: added two more guests for it. I'm sorry. I can't
Speaker 1: help it. It's such a big episode, so there's now
Speaker 1: four guests for it in a two parter. It's going
Speaker 1: to be so good. I will be making some of
Speaker 1: it on a plane this week. Take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: I love you all for your much, especially you doctor
Speaker 1: Naglingham and Jarrett.
Speaker 5: Happy Valentine's Day. Okay, bye bye.
Speaker 1: You have plants in this building that are poisonous.
Speaker 5: You pick them because they look good
Speaker 1: But these are aggressive living things that have no idea
Speaker 1: what sentry they're in, and they'll defend themselves violently if necessary.