From the Vault: The Queerness of Nature, with Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, author of “Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature” and Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum. (originally published 4/10/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. We have a vault episode for you
here today. This one originally published four ten, twenty twenty five.
I'm going to speak with Patricia Kashian, author of Forest Euphoria,
The Abounding Queerness of Nature. This is a really fun chat.

(00:26):
I found the book super engaging, and this is a
topic that I think everyone out there should should consider.
Gets it in some interesting territory where we think about
the way that we approach our understanding of the natural
world and what sort of linguistic and cultural baggage we
have historically brought into that understanding and what we could

(00:47):
do to correct it. So let's dive right into this interview.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with
Patricia Kashian about her upcoming book Forest Euphoria, The Abounding
Queerness of Nature, publishing next month and available for pre
order right now in all formats. You'll find a pre
order link in the episode description for this podcast episode,

(01:26):
or you can look it up at speakleangrou dot com
slash Forest hyphen Euphoria. So it's a fun shat. We
discuss queer ecology, some amazing examples from nature, and even
brief discussion of the TV show The Last Office. So
without further ado, let's jump right in. Thank you, Hi Patti,

(01:49):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
So the new book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
of Nature, a captivating text that meld scientific consideration of
ecology and about diversity with personal experience and insight. Tell
us how did this project come together?

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Yeah, so I started writing this book a few years ago.
I have a degree in mycology. I have a PhD
in mycology the study of fungi, and I had recently
finished my doctorate, and I throughout the later stage of
my PhD, though, I started getting really interested in philosophy
of science and queer theory, and so I sort of

(02:30):
started to explore those things adjacent to my more formal
academic training in science. And I got really interested in
sort of how science functions, how we produce knowledge, how
we make sense of knowledge within the scientific system, and
how where the power of science lies, but also.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
What its shortcomings might be.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
And so I'm someone who would say I'm very like
science positive. I think science is an amazing zaying tool
and a really powerful way of knowing, but it also,
you know, is a human endeavor and as such pen
be flawed. And so I was sort of interested in
understanding what were the sort of limits of science and
how does science and culture interact. And as a mycologist,

(03:18):
I was, you know, I'm studying a group of organisms
that has historically been extremely maligned and neglected by science
and by popular culture and perception. And I was really
interested in the fact that even though scientists obviously strive
for objectivity, I could find all throughout the science record

(03:39):
around mycology sort of a unwillingness or reluctance to see
their biology as fully as one should. Meaning we were
sort of the history of science is to sort of
pigeonhole fungi as being organisms that are just like dangerous
or deadly or disgusting. And there was actually a lack

(04:00):
of objectivity and approaching this whole group of organisms, and
as it kind of created a vacuum of knowledge. So
I started to sort of be interested in, well, how
did that come to be? How is it that a
group of organisms could be treated so subjectively by scientists,
and what does that mean for sort of our understanding

(04:21):
of them now? And so as I dug into that,
I got really interested in sort of the history of mycology.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
You know, this feeling of fear.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
And revulsion that a lot of people in particularly in
North America or Western Europe have towards fungi. And that
brought me into sort of the realm of queer theory
as well, which is, you know, the understanding of categories
usually relating to sex and gender, but sort of how
we make sense of what is quote unquote normal, what
is quote unquote deviant, And queer theory could sort of

(04:54):
was used as a lens for understanding this construction, these
binaries that we construct in society about what is.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Good or bad, or what is normal what's not normal.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
I had started digging into that and was giving some
talks on the subject, and then an editor reached out
to me and asked, Hey, do you want to write
a book about queer theory and biodiversity? And I was like, yes, absolutely,
So I started doing that in I believe I was
the spring of twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Two awesome So speaking of queerness in the broader sense.
How do we currently define queer and queerness at a
human level, Because I feel like it's easy, it's easy
to sort of culturally absorb the term without really understanding
its history, and I guess you might say evolved meaning sure.

Speaker 4 (05:39):
So I use queerness sort of as an umbrella term
for life and behavior and ways of being that are
outside of the heteronormativity, but also as a way of
invoking kind of a notion of a shared collective struggle
towards liberation. So, you know, used to be an insult

(06:01):
or a pejorative term, and then people in that community
took that back and and sort of proudly self identified
as queer, particularly around the height of the AIDS crisis
epidemic in the United States, and used that sort of
queerness as a rallying cry to bring people from otherwise
sort of disparate LGBTQ groups and like bind them together

(06:27):
and come together for the shared purpose of of, you know,
addressing the AIDS crisis and other injustices related to homosexuality
and so forth. So I actually think that queerness is
a term that is not just about I think you
can be gay and not really embody queerness. And by
that I mean I think that for me, the use

(06:49):
of queer is is always sort of tied to collective.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Liberation and so understanding your role in.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
The collective and sort of how you relate to of power.
And I'm you know, I'm sure other people have different definitions,
and that's one of the beauty of things that's beautiful
about being queer is that, you know, sometimes you don't
have to commit to one singular definition. But for me,
that's how I sort of understand it, and I apply
that not just to the human world in terms of liberation,

(07:17):
but also liberation of non human species and life systems
on earth.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
All right, And that brings us to queer ecology. How
do we bring this definition of queer and queerness into
the ecological world And what's the history of queer ecology?

Speaker 4 (07:34):
So queer ecology is sort of a you know, an
emerging field. I would say it's been there's been some
writings around it for the past decade or so, but
it's starting to take more shape. I think it's becoming
something that people are sinking their teeth into a bit
more in the last few years. There are many dimensions
to it upfront. The most like clear and concise like

(07:58):
element of queer ecology is the fact that many organisms
are simply not binary or sort of heteronormative, and they're
reproductive strategies. So throughout the animal kingdom, there's all sorts
of same sex, mating behaviors, partnerships. There are organisms that
have multiple sexes that sometimes in the same individual or

(08:21):
over a singular life span. In the fungal world, we
have all sorts of reproductive strategies that are non binary.
So there's sometimes sometimes there are you know, quote unquote
male or female species, but oftentimes there's multiple sexes or
mating types depending on the group, their entire lineages of

(08:42):
fungi that are just asexual for all.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
We know, quer.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
Ecologies interested in exploring the biological reproductive strategies of different
organisms and also the behaviors between organisms, and sort of
like bringing to the four research that had been either
neglected to be you know, conducted, or suppressed or sort
of just overlooked regarding these sort of.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Non non normal, you know, non.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Heteronormative reproductive strategies, so that you know, a lot a
lot of the argument to shame queerness or same sex
behaviors or it has been rooted in the fact that
the claim that it's not natural right to be gay,
it's not natural to be transgender, or something like this,

(09:31):
but we actually know that throughout all throughout the tree
of life, there are so many examples of these types
of ways of being. So if the claim is that
it's not natural, that's just not accurate. So part of
it is just sort of a corrective against that claim. Now,
you know, often the goalpost is shifted by those who
are you know, homophobic or whatnot, but that has been

(09:55):
a long standing claim, So queer ecology helps sort of
make that clear. But then going further than that, getting
into the little bit more of the theories and philosophies,
it's also about understanding these constructions of categories, So like,
how do we like, how do science make sense of
the world? Are there limitations to that worldview? Are there

(10:18):
ways in which we've sort of blunted our understanding of
nature because we've been steeped in a particular cultural lens,
so particularly Western European philosophies. So one thing I talk
about a lot in my research and in my book
is the kind of notion of an individual right.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
So I'm a taxonomist.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
I'm someone who names and describes new species of fungi.
So I definitely understand the utility of like a species
concept or you know, drawing the you know, approximate limits
of an individual so we can kind of make sense
of it and communicate about it. But there's also sort
of like under I also understand that that's like a
tool and a way of making sense in certain contexts.

(11:00):
But sometimes to deep more deeply understand a really complex system,
we might need to let go of certain rigid boxes
that we've constructed, and so that can be a really
challenging thing for people deep steeped in Western philosophical thought,
and we really love the idea of an individual as
a unit as a structure. But for example, in fungi,

(11:24):
we see oftentimes that these organisms are not really adhering
to really clear lines of like what is this body
versus the other? Like what is this species versus the other?
And often fungi or forming really complex webs of interaction
living you know, basically living in symbiosis, you know, sometimes

(11:45):
cells with in larger bodies, and then it starts to
challenge your ability to really like draw those lines when
the more you sort of engage with a biological understanding
of these really complex beings. So in quer ecology, we
sort of are like bringing that to light, like how
does how do we make sense of the world if
we kind of decompose some of the notions that we've

(12:07):
long kind of clung onto. And my goal with this
is always to do better science, right, So ultimately I'm
not trying to discard the scientific method. Again, I'm very
positive towards science, But it's about like pushing us beyond
the limits of current knowledge. Can we better understand the
ecosystems around us, like how fungi form complex partnerships or

(12:28):
how you know, desoil function. Can we can we push
past some of the limitations that we've imposed on our
own scientific processes by not examining our own biases.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, I found it really interesting to think about because
I know for some listeners out there, there may be
this sort of maybe instinctual backlash against the idea of
career ecology, thinking that well, okay, maybe this is like
a human cultural matter and it's being used to influence
the shape of scientific undertaking. But it's really quite the opposite,
isn't it. More of an attempt to undo binary, anthropomorphic

(13:02):
interpretations of nature.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
I think that's a really good way of a succinct
way of putting it. You know, so often I hear
or like kind of detect a resistance to this, yeah,
like to politicizing science or making like adding this sort
of like identity politics to science or something like this.
But really, like, actually, when you examine the scientific record,

(13:25):
you can see that it's already fraught with.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Those things, there's all.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
And that's why I think the mycological example is really
powerful because so like even we have examples of like
Carl Lenaeus, one of the founders of modern taxonomy, describing
fungi as rastichi poparini, the poorest peasants of the vegetable class. Like,
that's an incredibly subjective way of looking at an organism, right,

(13:51):
calling it poor and a peasant and obviously filled with disdain.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
So that's not objectivity, that's his.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
He thought they were weird, he called them, you know,
he did categorize them as lower plants, so that obviously
this was prior to our Darwinian evolution knowledge.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
So like I'm not holding that against him.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
But at the same time, that is still the fact
of the matter is that a lot of scientists were
Christian Western European men of high class, and those world
views are present in their writings and in the canon
of science. So I'm sort of look kind of treating
this as like a way a corrective to that history.
How do we go through that history and make sense

(14:32):
of the what we know now understanding that these people
were like all of us, you know, limited, while we're
all limited in our capacity, and that's not a terrible thing,
but it is true. And so sometimes people think that
if you're kind of constantly thinking about sociology or your
own identity, that you might be clouding your own objectivity.

(14:52):
But I think it kind of actually can function the
opposite way, that it actually can make you more conscious
of your flaws and what bias as you might be
replicating because we all have them.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
It's not about saying someone's good or bad. It's just
that we all are people and can and can be limited.
And so it's also not really I think that much
about your own identity. I think that it's really about
understanding how information moves, how do we assign value, how
do we assign how does power function to create meaning,

(15:22):
and anyone is capable of sort of like exploring that. Right,
that's not you don't have to have a particular identity
to be interested in challenging that or like thinking through
that critically.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, because I feel like it's one of those worldviews
where like we're it's we're just in it, and we
don't necessarily like see it, We're not necessarily aware of
these limitations unless we sort of step outside of it
momentarily at least.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
Right, it's a good practice as a scientist, I think,
to kind of reflect on even if you think your
discipline is really, you know, not touched by human culture,
I think it can be, and and I would say
some disciplines are much more into touch with that than others.
But there's still, like, I think it's a good reflection
as a scientist. I think it can make you a

(16:05):
more ethical, more grounded, and more effective scientists to at
least be like considering these how this might function in
your own work.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Now, coming back to the book, very early on in
the book, you mentioned the nineteen ninety six French documentary Microcosms,
which I think a lot of our listeners have probably
seen in spite perhaps of that sort of infamous American
poster that featured the praying mantis with the sunglasses, rather

(16:33):
out of keeping with the actual vibe of the film,
the vibe of which you discussed.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
So I really love that film because it's so immersive
in this world of insects and other arthropods, and I
think that those animals are so often treated with contempt. Right,
So we similar to fungi. There's these persons around insects

(17:01):
and and these you know, invertebrate animals that they're creepy, disgusting,
they're like unworthy of of our care and love.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
You know.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
We we don't have any like coordinated system for ethics
around insects, right, it's all like, actually the ethic is
really that you can kill them without mercy. And so
I I just find but I find them to be
so incredibly well. They are not just I don't not

(17:32):
just me who finds them this way. They are incredibly diverse.
There there are you know, millions of species of insects,
and they are these it's a whole, it's a universe
unto itself, right. And so what I like about microcosmos
is that it really submerses you into that world and
you start to see that these things are animals. Like
I think a lot of people know technically, and I'm

(17:54):
sure most listeners this podcast know that, like, insects are animals,
but you can still like something about out making the
micro sort of macro.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
You really see like, oh, this thing.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Has like all these ornaments, and it has a behavior,
and it has a family, and it has these you know,
and it has sex and like all it is like
an animal world. I think we just reduce them to
these very flat, kind of negative categories otherwise.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
So I love that it kind of.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
Creates this drama that you're like with the music and
you're sort of in and then like these towering plants
all around you and you're kind of in this metropolis
of this other world. And I think it makes them
feel like dynamic, because they are dynamic. They're species that
have complex lives and probably feel all sorts of sensations

(18:42):
that we've kind of typically denied them, so like pleasure
and maybe.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Even pain and fear.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
And you know, we don't know too much about insect
neuroscience in terms of what sensations they're capable of, but
it kind of seems crazy to me that we would
just assume from the jump that they're unfeeling entirely Like,
that doesn't make that doesn't really make scientific sense to me, right, So,
and then there's also so there's other arthropods and and

(19:11):
and then invertebrates. So like, I really love the snail
sex scene where these two uh snails are there is
like a gradual operatic situation where they are finding they
find each other in the in the moss, and then
they are entwine their bodies together and it's just and

(19:32):
the opera crescendos as it is happening, and it's just like, wow,
these animals are really like experiencing pleasure, Like they're really
like in this thing together, and they're and also they're
both you're not sure what the sex is of either
because they're they actually are both hermaphroditic. They both have
both you know, male and female reproductive organs in their bodies,

(19:56):
so there there is this queer literal reproductive the queer
element to them as well.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
So I just it's a great film.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend just setting
aside a couple hours and immersing yourself into this micro world.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, I had seen it years ago, and I noticed
that it's currently on Criterion Channel, so I pulled it
up during lunch the other day. Yeah, it's still gorgeous.
And this is something you touch on in the book
as well. It has almost no narration. There's like a
little opening, narrational, little closing, but for the most part,
like you're just immersed in this visual world of the

(20:34):
creatures studied here.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, it's really beautiful.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
So in the book, you bring up many examples of
queerness in nature, again not exceptions to an imagined binary rule,
but expressions of that abounding queerness that you get to
in the title. What are some of your favorite additional
examples to bring up in discussing queer ecology.

Speaker 4 (21:07):
I really am obsessed with eels, and they specifically the
American eel that I talk about in the book. I
think that they there's so much to their the they're
very there, so they have a very queer body, right.
So they are organisms that spend most of their life

(21:29):
as intersex.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
In zoology, we use the.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
Word hermaphroditic, but I know that humans prefer intersex, so
I try I actually, I guess I think that's probably
the better term to use. So in the snail, sorry,
the eel bodies are intersects in that they both have
both male or they have testes, and they have ovaries

(21:54):
for most of their life, and so you can't you know,
there there was a lot of mystery around them in
the early days of natural history, trying to understand, well,
what are they, you know, and so the a lot
of scientists were determined that they must be either male
or female, and so that sort of lens of trying
to prove that they were one or the other dominated

(22:16):
investigations into their bodies in biology. And one of those
people researching eel sex was Sigmund Freud, and I so
I write a little bit about his early days, before
he became interested in psychology or before he was studying it,
was studying natural history, and he he was someone who

(22:40):
wanted to sort of understand what the eel sex situation was,
and spoke spent actually a much of his time dissecting
the bodies of eels trying to find proof of like
sort of one sex or the other, and he kept
he wanted to find specifically, he didn't understand why, like

(23:00):
where were all the males? So I think it was
easier to find ovarian tissue, but it was harder to
find testicular type tissues, And so he dissected like hundreds
of eels before finally finding some evidence that there.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Were males or male sex organs.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
And some people think that this may have been this
sort of pursuit might have given rise to some of
his later concepts like castration, anxiety and stuff like this,
because he was maybe made anxious by the fact that
this was not actually something he could easily find. But
eels are just, on several levels, incredibly fascinating. And one

(23:39):
thing that also I grew really interested in was the
way that they migrate. So they are spawned. All of
the American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, so
kind of near the Bermuda triangle, and for up until
very recently, this exact location is unknown, and their whole

(24:02):
sort of sexual reproduction was not witnessed or recorded by science.
And then the eels migrate from the Bermuda like from
the Sargasso Sea all the way up to the along
the length of the North American eastern seaboard and enter
into freshwater systems through rivers that reach the ocean and

(24:23):
they swim upstream and they can go pretty far. They
can travel hundreds of miles within the freshwater systems. And
I got to experience eels at when I was teaching
at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, so on the
Hudson River, and.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
There was an eel monitoring.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
Project because eels have their populations have collapsed due to
overfishing and pollution and habitat destruction. So there's a monitoring
project with Hudsonia and Environmental Org. And we would I
would take my students and we'd volunteer to help them
up eels, document them, and then release.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Them into the freshwater systems.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
And so I started learning about how eels do this migration.
They they make this trip from the Sargasso Sea with
just basically only being about an inch long, and they're
totally translucent, except you can see through their bodies. You
can see that their eyes and then their their spinal cords,
and but they're just this tiny little fish that like

(25:27):
swims for for it can take them over a year
to swim from where they were born to these freshwater
systems that the systems that their parents came from. And
so I was like, you know, started reading about how
they are using magnetite, which is a oxidized iron material
that's in their set like in and around their brains.

(25:49):
And this is something that other animals have as well.
It's best studied in fish like salmon, which also are
you know, do these complex migratory routes. But it's magnetite
is present throughout the tree of life. Even humans have it,
but we're not sure exactly if its function in our bodies.
But what's amazing about magnetite is that it is in

(26:10):
the case of these complex animals, like multicellular animals, it's
probably it's believed to have been of bacterial origin, so
it's likely arose from an endosymbiotic event. So end of
symbiosis is a process by which, you know, one species
of a smaller size is engulfed by another larger species

(26:33):
and eventually, over time they become interdependent on one another
through you know, many generations, and so this is the
this is how many of our organelles came to be.
So mitochondria, for example, were used to be free living
bacteria that were absorbed by another cell and then instead
of it being maybe eaten or just being sort of killed,

(26:55):
by that engulfing, it's stato ill live and then persisted
as a living cell within a larger cell, and eventually,
over many, many, many generations, they become you know, like
entangled with each other in physiologically and energetically. And so
this process is so I mean, it's just kind of

(27:16):
crazy to wrap your mind around. It's stranger than fiction
in a lot of ways, Like what are the odds
of these types of you know, cellular events happening, And
how is it that such sort of randomness could then
give rise to such complexity. I mean, this is like
the study of evolution, right, it's just absolutely crazy. I mean,
it's like it sometimes feels just absolutely absurd. But what

(27:40):
I kind of am bringing it back a little bit
to quer ecology in a moment, which is that for
most of a lot of scientific history, Western science was
pretty resistant to this idea of symbiosis or to interdependencies
or sort of that you know, the individual could really
be made up of many, you know, individuals, and we

(28:01):
are collectively a being that is not really discernible without
the presence of all these other micro organisms and such.
So the science there was a scientist, an evolutionary biologist
Lynn Margolis, who was the person who's who brought endo
symbiotic theory to like the attention of science, and for

(28:21):
many years she was dismissed as you know, being kind
of just like part partly on the basis of her gender,
but just also on the basis of the fact that
this just seems so crazy, like we are how could
endosymbiosis really be like the foundation of the human body,
like like the noble amazing, you know, a complex person
couldn't really could we really be just like a bunch

(28:42):
of bacteria and fungi in a in a flesh, fleshy form.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
But over time, more.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
And more evidence accumulated in support of her hypotheses, and
now that is understood as as a like a you know,
a fact of evolutionary biology.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
And so that.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
But she was willing to sort of challenge the paradigm
and push outside of like what is normal and what
is accepted in the scientific discipline, and at great personal
you know, risk and costs professionally. So I think that
that part that story of like how magnetite Okay, okay,
So then going back to the magnetite, there were these
ancient bacteria that probably through just a you know, random mutation,

(29:23):
started accumulating magnetite in their cells, and the magnetite is
receptive to the magnetic fields of the Earth, and so
over time these what was probably just like you know,
a mutation of accumulation of this of this material became
beneficial to that organism. They started to be able to

(29:44):
sort of orient themselves to the man the magnetic fields
of the Earth, and developed something of a magneto taxis,
so being able to move by magnetic fields, and so
we have like chemo taxes or photo taxis, and magnomagnetic
taxis is another form of response, you know, stimulation and response.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
So the over time and we have.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
There there are these basically accumulations of these little packets
of magnetite in a bacterial cell, and they formed in
a tiny like little chain, and that chain became almost
like a compass needle that could move in response to
the magnetic fields of the Earth. And that some ancestor
of that bacteria was probably what was absorbed into another

(30:33):
larger cell. That then is you know, deep in the
tree of life of animals, and just a common ancestor
of most animals probably had absorbed some sort of magnetive
tactic bacteria and that's why we can find it scattered
across all the tree of life. And so some animals
have you know, evolved these magnetostonms, these more complex structures

(30:58):
within with in which magnet is found and they are
basically sensory organs that so, like in salmon, for example,
we know that there's the complex magnetostomes in and around
their little noses and faces and they use that to
guide their migratory journeys from from you know, c in
fresh water. And so we think eels have that as well,

(31:19):
and that's sort of how they're able to travel through
the ocean for weeks and weeks and weeks or oriented
towards this sort of ancestral water that was probably somehow
that imprinted into.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
The magnetostomes that they're using.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
So this is that was a very long story, but
I think both elements of the eel biology are are relevant.
So there's the queer ecological the queer biological fact of
their bodies being intersects for most of their life and
then when they are about to make their journey, so
they migrate up to freshwater, live there for several decades
and then when they are it's time to reproduce their

(31:59):
sort of say into preparing for a journey.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Back to the Sargasso c.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
And at that point they replace all of their digestive
organs get sort of cannibalized and cellularly repurposed into sexual
reproductive organs, and that at that point typically they become
you know, they develop more fully ovariant tissue or more
fully testicular tissues, or they can retain both, and then
they make that journey back to the Sargasso c and

(32:27):
they have a raucous I guess evening of sexual reproduction.
So that is super queer in a sort of queer
like in a direct reproductive sense. But then also this
sort of you know, the history of endosymbiosis as being
a kind of a rejected concept in the scientific establishment

(32:49):
because it showed that these you know, higher quote unquote,
higher level organisms were the kind of random events of
these lowly microbes. And that kind of perspective is something
that challenges is like the agency of more complex beings.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
And the human Wow.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Absolutely, Uh, there's another organism that you bring up, and
I have to admit this is an organism that has
long been one of my favorites, but at a like
a a zoo tourist level, Like I've never researched them
for the podcast or anything, so I only really knew
what was out there already, like you know, going to
zoos and you know up there on the little sign

(33:25):
and so forth. But the castawary, oh yeah, And granted
there's a lot about the castawary to catch your eye
and to explain to a general audience, like their you know,
their their coloration, their their flightlessness, their their feet, the
formation on the top of their head. But I was
really taken by your discussion of how they they fit
into queer ecology. Would you would you tell us a
little bit about this.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, So castwaries they're amazing birds. They're incredibly.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
You know, like they just are very much like, Okay,
you understand that they're related to how closely related they
are to dinosaurs, and so they're completely fascinating. But for
in terms of the like they're sort of queer structures.
They for a long time, it was really not discussed
in any of the literature on their basic biology, like

(34:14):
how they were reproducing and the fact that like some
of the females have these fallacies and some of the
males have like inverted basically like they instead of having
an extroverted fallus, they have inverted structures.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
So they sort of have this like.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
In what you know, what we would consider the opposite
and you know, most people would consider the opposite type
structure representing you know, on the male or female. And
so for a long time, people who the people like
indigenous to this area where castwerries are found, would involve
cassowaries in a lot of their cosmologies and iconographies and

(34:53):
specifically were aware that they had these you know, queer
reproductive organs orans that were not binary organs that defied
sort of expectations around gender or sex, and they incorporated
that into some into ritual and so forth. So this
was known to the people who lived amongst them for
thousands of years that they actually have really sort of

(35:15):
these these structures. But in the Western scientific descriptions of
these birds there were there was really no mention of
this fact. And and so actually I learned about this
through reading Biological Exuberance by Bruce Begamial I believe is
the pronunciation of his last name, which is a wonderful compendium,

(35:35):
very textbook like compendium of examples of queerness in nature,
and I found that it's a wonderful resource.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
It's and it does get a little.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
Bit into sort of the like reasons why certain studies
were maybe not taken seriously or suppressed or ignored. And
so he notes that, you know, these birds were known
for a while to be like this, but you could
not find record of that in in like pub locations.
And he believes it's because there was sort of shame

(36:03):
and anxiety around just simply reporting evidence of queerness or
homosexuality or of you know, sort of gender sex nonconformity
in the scientific literature. So it's it's just an it's
an interesting example of the fact that like, so going
back to the earlier part of our conversation where we

(36:26):
can have or we talk about you know, it's not
actually we're not actually being political when we pull these
things out. We're actually exposing the fact that there were
biases that clouded the objectivity in science, and it's important
to acknowledge those and sort of pull that subjectivity out.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
And actually just look at these things very factually.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
So it's just a good example of like what you
what happens when you're just afraid to make waves in science,
or you're or you're just not looking correctly, so you
might have maybe maybe you know. He has other examples
in the book too, where scientists would talk about, you know,
seeing something and just really not believing them their own

(37:08):
observations because it was contradictory to heteronormativity. It's like, or
they would come up with very non parsimonious explanations as
to why they were seeing what they were seeing, like, oh,
this these two you know birds are have a same
sex partnership, but you know, they're probably just confused or
something like that, right, and so making these sort of
like reaching for explanations that that are not really evidence

(37:31):
based but are just sort of like would would kind
of explain away the fact that you're constantly seeing same
sex behaviors in that species. So the same with the cassowaries.
This was the case as well that they were just
like not either not report. We can't be sure exactly why,
but it seems as if they were either not reporting
what they were seeing or they didn't believe their own
examinations of these birds. They were like, maybe I'm just

(37:53):
not getting it, but maybe it was just that they're
not conforming to our notions of what sexual structure should
look like in males or females.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
It's such a fascinating way to sort of turn the
tables on anthromomorphism and sort of see it as I guess,
you know, on one hand, we have to acknowledge that
anthromeomorphism helps us in some cases care more about animals.
You know, we see ourselves reflected in them, But then
it can stand in the way of fully understanding what

(38:23):
they are and how they operate, because even at a
subliminal level, like we're seeing ourselves in them and seeing
them as models of humans.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
I think that is a really important point because I
think anthropomorphism can be a good tool, and it can
stand in the way, and it kind of is case dependent,
and it's also so it sort of requires you to
be constantly reflexive on like if I like withhold all
of the complexity that I know is found in the
human species from another species.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Am I learning more about it? Or am I making it? Like?

Speaker 4 (38:59):
Am I actually reducing my understanding of it? And so
that kind of negotiation is something that I try to
engage with regularly. It's like, so for example, going back
to the insects. If I assume nothing like no human
qualities can be mapped onto insects, then I might assume
that they're incapable of experiencing pleasure or pain, or that
they don't have like complex social realities, And then I

(39:24):
might actually not really understand insects. But you can take
it then, as you're saying, you can also for the castwaorries.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
If we assume like a.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Male looks like this and a female looks like this,
then you know you're because of what we think is
normal for people. Then we are also reducing our understanding
of these organisms. So it kind of is this constant
like negotiation and toggle between can can anthropomorphism actually enrich
our scientific understanding? Or is in this moment is it

(39:53):
restricting us? And so there isn't like a one answer.
It's sort of a constant question. But I try. I
tin my sort of inclination and this is just sort
of my style not to be prescriptive, is to sort
of assume human like qualities and then scientifically assess what
you know.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Is that accurate?

Speaker 4 (40:13):
And so I'd rather over project you know, feeling and
dynamicism and complexity, and then maybe have you with evidence
take that away or under renegotiate that as opposed to
assuming being that you're this inert, unfeeling species and you
have nothing. You know, you're just a you know, like

(40:35):
a collection of molecules and there's no sort of vitalism there,
and so that's kind of that's if I had to
pick one. I actually think anthropomorphism is likely to enrich
our understanding, but caveats abound.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Now coming back to the realm of mycology and where
it intersects with human culture and understanding. I wonder what
your thoughts are on this. I know that, like in general,
writers have often touched on different cultures being micophilic or microphobic,

(41:21):
like on the whole, seeing like the realm of mushrooms
and fun guys being dangerous or beneficial and not being
like wrapped up in their culture. And this of course
gets into what you're talking about earlier, about the about
certain despised species or forms of life within given cultures.
And I was just wondering, like, do you see an

(41:41):
overlap between traditional cultures that are more micophilic and ones
that are traditionally like less defined and by rigid binary
definitions of sexuality and gender.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
HM, that's a really good question.

Speaker 4 (41:54):
I think in general, yes, I would say that as
I'm not you know, and I'm not an anthropologist or
a sociologists, but from you know, so as a mycologist
trying to sort of explore this topic, I you know,
I don't I can't speak super confidently for other cultures,
but what I can say is that a lot of
the history of homophobia and the history of sort of

(42:19):
the way that the patriarchy functions in Western European and
euro American culture had you know, that's something that has
been exported around the world through colonialism and other you know,
there have been societies all over the world that have had,
you know, have sought to have conformity with gender and

(42:39):
with you know, and have been patriarchal and stuff. But
the type the sort of manifestation that we are now
all pretty familiar with originated in you know, Western European
and euro American thought, and then what has been imposed
pretty forcefully around the world. So I would say that
in general, there's a trend that societies that had less

(43:02):
rigid notions of gender or still do have also had
unders like cosmological understandings of the earth as being, you know,
with as they're being like deep interdependence between species, and
are generally less hierarchical, even in their understanding of species,

(43:23):
not that are non human. You know, so much of
the the binary understanding of like humans and nature that
is also like a wet Western you know, European origin,
the exact manifestation of it in you know that we're
now familiar with.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
You know, there's like there's us and them.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
There are these two categories, there's human and nature, and
that you know, humans are placed atop this hierarchy. We were,
you know, we were the chosen species. We are divine,
and we are the most complex and the most intelligent
and most rational, and everything else is just.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Sort of beneath us, to varying degrees.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
And in Western European thought that the things that were
the lowest on this sort of pyramid would have been
fungi and invertebrates, insects and things like this. So that
hierarchy is really foundational to European and Western European thought.

(44:24):
So that and that's so it is like some I
guess I feel most confident speaking about this society because
I'm someone who grew up in it, and I'm part
Irish Irish and part Armenian, and I grew up in
the United States, so I feel like most, you know,
I'm most able to comment on how that functions. Now,
there are other societies, you know, around the world that

(44:46):
including Eastern European, places in Mexico, places in West Africa, Japan,
where mushrooms are not considered, you know, not as strongly
associated with anything negative, and have a long history being
celebrated and integrated into culture. And historically these places also

(45:07):
had less rigid understandings of gender. But now, of course
it's hard to sort of draw that line because of
the impact of colonialism. So I'd say that there is
a relationship, and I'm always interested in hearing from people
who grew up steeped in other cultures about this specific topic,
because there isn't a lot written about it. So this

(45:27):
is sort of just what I've been able to kind
of piece together over time, again not being a sociologist,
but there is a relationship between sort of how does
a culture respond to the unknown. So in general, there's
like a feeling that what is unknown induces sort of
anxiety and fear versus the unknown inducing something sort of

(45:49):
a feeling of revelation or divinity or you know, sort
of magic. And I think in our culture there is
a association with wanting to control the unknown.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
To be known is to be a threat, and that's subversive.

Speaker 4 (46:03):
And so fungi kind of are these organisms and saying
with insects in particular, they both are groups of organisms
that really subvert the desire to dominate because they're like,
you know, difficult to predict. They can they move in
ways that sort of are unexpected. They can be ephemeral,
they can amass, they can pop up overnight. Right, And

(46:23):
this all of this sort of transitory, ephemeral, difficult to
predict biology makes them sort of induces a feeling of fear,
and I think that that is also there's a parallel
there to how people respond to people who do not
conform not just within matters of sex and gender, but

(46:44):
also in terms of ability, in terms of race. Right,
So there's also this feeling of like, if you're not
what I expect, I will fear you because I can't
I don't quite know how to control you, right, And
control is often you know, executed first by putting someone
in a box. Right, you are either this or that
I need to make sense of you, so I know
what to expect. Instead of Wow, I don't know what
to make of you, how interesting, how how beautiful, it's

(47:07):
it's like, wow, I don't know what to make of you.
I'm now oppositional to you, right, So that sort of
response is something also that's very like steeped into our culture.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Now, speaking of fun, guy, can you tell us a
little bit about labouls. This This is not a This
is not something I was familiar with before.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Sure, they're not a well studied group of fungi, so
I'm one of only a handful of people in the
world who study this entire order of fungi, the la
bulbini Eli's kind of a mouthful. We call them labulls
for short, so that's a little easier, And they are
a very diverse lineage of fungi that live and grow

(47:44):
on insects. People are probably much more familiar with another
group of fungi that live and grow on insects, the
cortisce EPs or the zombie fungi, but these are in
the same phylum but completely different orders and classes. So labouls,
some of them we believe to be parasitic. We believe

(48:05):
they take nutrients from the insect host at the insects expense,
but others seem to be maybe more commensal. Like we
haven't been able to quantify any sort of damage they're
doing to the host, and the host seems kind of
able to just go about its life as normal. But
in any case, they're really interesting fungi if you can

(48:28):
believe it.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
There's tens of thousands of species.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
Of this order, which just is, you know, the biodiversity
is just staggering, right, So a group of funge i've
never heard of living their lives in insects, and there's
just tens of thousands of species of them, and they're
really small. They sometimes can be sort of detected with
the naked eye, but usually you need at least a
hand lens. And then the most common way to find

(48:52):
them is looking at insects under a dissecting microscope. And
they grow outward from the exterior of the insect. Multicellular.
They're really flexible and durable. They're not like ephemeral, so
once they grow there, they you know, are there until
they die. Essentially, they're not like coming up and out

(49:13):
of the insect. Body, they form, the spore basically lands
on the exterior of the insect, and then some minute
penetrative cells germinate from that and enter just like shallowly
into the insect body and form kind of like an anchor.
And then from that, you know, a few dozen cells

(49:36):
will form in a definitive structure, so meaning they always
they're they're not amorphous. They have a pretty defined cellular
growth pattern, and so when we do taxonomy on these fungi,
we are looking at more Our morphological descriptions involve draw
you know, understanding the exact cell like shape, size, and arrangement,

(49:58):
and this is highly variable. There are like really thousands
of ways these fungi can present itself, but it's pretty
fixed within a species, and even within a genus there's
like very common body plans, and so we also would
use genetic DNA sequencing to do the taxonomic work on
these fungi. But they're just really I mean, they're What

(50:20):
I love about them is that they are so quietly
existing in this tremendous diversity. They're the most diverse lineage
of insect associated fungi. So you have, you know, the
incredible diversity of the insect world, and then on that
you have this other whole realm of species that are
you know, have evolved and are living and dying and

(50:42):
I'm pretty much unbeknownst to you know, any witnesses, And
to me, that's just a very like That's one of
the things I love about studying biodiversity, and of these
fungi in particular. It's just that they they are really
kind of uninterested to project a little anthropomorphically on them.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
They're just you know, they're here whether or not.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
People are, and this like and this, and it kind
of really reminds you of It makes me think as
a person, like, while the world like is so dynamic
and it has was here before me and will be
here after me, and there's all these processes going on
that really are kind of be apart from the the
so like my social perception, you know, and I just
think that can be kind of calming and and meditative.

(51:25):
But I really like working with them because I get
to also work with insects, so it brings me into
contact with multiple kingdoms of life in this really intimate way.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
I love doing microscopy. I love being like kind.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
Of immersed in the micro world, so going back to
the microcosmos, I get to you know, getting to stare
at the the an insect under the microscope a dissecting
scope is so fun. You really see like all of
its elaborate, uh evolutionary you know, all the appendages and
hairs and colors, and and it's it's you can it

(51:58):
makes you feel like in touch with these this whole
other realm. And then what's really exciting about being a
micologist is that there are because we've only described you know,
around we estimate three to five percent of fungal species diversity,
there's no shortage of new species descriptions that can be authored.

(52:19):
So I get to you know, been able to name
and describe about a dozen species new species to science,
all within this group, the lavelbni aleies.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
So that's a fun thing too.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
It's like you can say, you can say pretty definitively
that you know, a person has not looked upon this
fungus before because a no one is looking for them,
and also because you need a microscope to see it,
so it's just not likely that someone would have just
bumped into it.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
You know, there there. You have to be looking for.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
Them to find them, so it's just kind of a
fun opportunity for me to like be contributing taxonomically. And
then also one thing that I like about being a
taxonomist is that the practice of naming. And you know,
taxonomy does have a complicated history in terms of ethics,

(53:06):
and you know, all of these forces that we've been
talking about, you know, sort of around colonialism and power
and who gets to, you know, put a name on
something and in what language. So one thing I like
to think about is taxonomy as a practice of honoring,
So not stamping your authority on it, as like an

(53:27):
act of I guess possession, but being like, okay, here,
this is a species that I share the planet with.
This is a species who's been on this multi billion
year journey like every other species here, And how can
we sort of honor its diversity, regardless of its role
in doesn't matter if this fungus is of utility to me.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
Or to people like it.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
It's here, it exists, It is complex and dynamic and
worthy of a name. So I like to think of
naming as a system of like as a practice of
honoring other the existence of and the sort of what
I like to think of as sort of like the
agency and almost like personhood of another being. Right to
name is to sort of acknowledge that complexity. And it's

(54:12):
also an opportunity to sort of embody some of the
practices that I think have been missing in the field
of taxonomy, which would be to name things, you know,
perhaps based on using indigenous languages, from the location that
organism was found, or from you know, you know, naming
scientists who've been forgotten or were you know, sort of

(54:32):
like acknowledging like the complexity of the human life that
might surround the procurement of.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
That species in the first place.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
So yeah, that that's sort of a fun thing that
I can do with with libules.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Now, you mentioned the cord of steps, and I want
to highlight that you you do. You did appear on
Science Friday to discuss uh the fund these particular fun
guy uh and hbos, the last which of course has this,
I guess you'd say, like very sort of you know,
of course, a fantastic Sci Fi treatment of Courtyceps. It's
very micophobic in its manifestation. But I do refer listeners

(55:13):
to that interview if they want to they want like
the full story.

Speaker 4 (55:17):
Yes, yes, I sort fungal fact from fiction on that episode.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
As we're I believe we're about to go into the
second season of the Last of Us, any like quick
reminders for folks about Courtyceps and sort of disconnecting the
fantasy from the reality totally.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
Yes, So I've been asked a number of times like
could people be turned into zombies by a fungus as
they are in the show, And the answers know that
these fungi and the insect hosts that they evolved on
were in a you know, co evolutionary dynamic for millions

(55:57):
of years, and that's how the fungus is perfectly adapted,
not just to like insects broadly, or not even just
to like, you know, a whole group of insects, but
specific species of insects. So, for example, Cordyceps could be
found on a number of species of ants, but there
are ants other ant species that live in and amongst

(56:18):
you know, those in the areas that Courtyceps grows, and
they're not affected because they have you know, the subtle
differences in behavior or chemical ecology is enough that it's
incompatible with that very precise co evolutionary dynamic. In order
for fungi to evolve to be doing that to people,

(56:39):
we would need probably millions and millions of years of exposures.
And our our just bryologies are so different from our ants,
so we're not really at risk in that way.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
I do really like the show. I think it's a
great story.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
It is a little challenging that fungi are demoni is
obviously that's kind of kind of you know, stressful for me.
But from a from a storytelling perspective and from an
action perspective.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
It is a great show.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Yeah. My my wife is a mushroom enthusiast and and
does like some mushroom club stuff and forging stuff, and
so I'll often I would often joke to her after
we'd watch an episode of the show about, oh, well,
mushrooms are bad news. I got to be watch out
for those mushrooms.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
Yeah, that's a good way to get under her skin,
I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Now coming back to the book again, there's a lot.
There's a lot about science in there. There's also a
lot of lately a personal interpretation of everything, and you
get into the philosophy of it all. Can you take
a moment to tell us what a sit spot is
and how that can potentially help us all in our
daily lives.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Yeah, so a sit spot is a place you go regularly.
I mean it could be every day, it could be
once a month, but it's something that you do with
some sort of routine and frequency. And it can be
deep in the forest, it could be in an urban park,

(58:08):
it could be looking out your window if you're someone
who can't leave the house or can't do so easily.
So it's not really about being in you know this
quote wilderness, It's just about being in community with as
many species as possible. So I have I'm a teacher.
I've taught college classes and nature classes, and I have

(58:31):
one thing I tried I often incorporate into my classes
is having.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
My students do a sit spot.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
And the instructions I give is to start by going
once a week. I think once a week is a
nice amount of time because it's both like kind of
reasonable for our hectic schedules, but it's also frequent enough
that you it can kind of become like.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
A personal ritual.

Speaker 4 (58:52):
And when you what I advise you do is that
you go to your sit spot and you go buy
your self.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
I think I do think it.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
I mean, it's not that you can't go with a buddy,
but I think it's really nice to go totally to
be the only human right in that spot. And I
also recommend that you don't bring anything at first. The
first couple spot times, I wouldn't even bring a notebook.
I wouldn't bring anything but just some stuff, maybe some water,

(59:22):
maybe a snack if you're you know, but just try
to go with you know, keep your phone away, don't
try to take pictures, don't try to record anything, and
just be present. And I would recommend the first time
doing it for at least thirty minutes. You go, you
sit for thirty minutes, and you take note as of
everything around you. What do you smell, what do you

(59:44):
take touch with your fingertips, what do you see? Of course,
what do you hear? Kind of roll through the senses,
you know, go, Okay, what am I hearing right now?

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Wait? What am I seeing right now? You know? Look around?
What am I smelling right now?

Speaker 4 (59:58):
Maybe you're sitting on a bench, or maybe you're sitting
on the forest floor, Like what are your fingertips sensing?

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
And kind of go let yourself sort of move through that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
My students will tell me that the first few times
they did it, they were incredibly bored. The time for
them moved very slowly. They were actually some of them
were even detectively irritated with the assignment. But as the
weeks progressed, one hundred percent of the students began to
enjoy their time. And then after a few weeks you

(01:00:30):
start you may maybe you decide, maybe you're an artist
and you love illustrating. Maybe you bring a notebook and
you sketch some of the plans that are growing. Maybe
you're you like your sound person, you bring an audio
way to record some audio. But maybe you decide, or
maybe you're I wouldn't I wouldn't do too much writing
while you're there, because you do want to be mentally

(01:00:51):
loose and receptive. So whatever, and that's that does look
different for everyone. So however, you can be in a
state of looseness and receptivity, to be porous, to be
receiving this sort of the energy and the sort of
information that's flowing from these other species and from the wind,
from the humidity, you know, whatever it is. And so

(01:01:12):
I think that over time, the point is that you
become really immersed and really in tune with that spot.
So I think in the age of climate change and
the age of globalization, it can be really really overwhelming
to understand where where do you put your focus? Right,
There's so many crises, there's so many stressors, there's so

(01:01:33):
many things drawing and pulling at your attention, and so
this is like kind of a practice of attention. Where
do you give your attention in an intentional way and
how does that sort of make you feel held and
attuned with the other organisms around you. I also had
a number of students actually cry at the end of

(01:01:55):
the semester when they had to leave their spots. They
were graduating or they had to leave for the summer
it was, and they were like, I can't believe I
have to leave this spot, Like this is my spot,
this is like my place. And that happened just in
a few months, right, that's just the duration of a
college semester. And so for a lot of people it's
an opportunity to become immersed, to be but also to

(01:02:20):
be like a steward, right. You suddenly may the more
you pay attention to a spot, the more you see.
So it's not just that you're there longer, So it's
like a you know, an exponential line of like you're
there longer, so you're seeing more, but you're actually like
it's actually that your brain starts to rewire a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Especially if this practice is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Really new to you, You start to be a you
actually are capable of noticing more the more you sort
of engage with this meditatively. And so for some people
that can it can help you find a role in
what is otherwise a very crazy world. Right, how do
you become a steward of your own backyard? Like how
can you care for that species? Like maybe you're helping

(01:03:01):
monitor the health of the trees in that area. Maybe
you're realizing that there's a ton of there's a you're
seeing all these salamanders or amphibians and that actually, oh,
actually this is like a vernal pool and this could
be protected because you know, by local legislation. There's all

(01:03:23):
sorts of ways that you can sort of tune into
the life around you and then actually do something to
help care for it. So I definitely recommend it. I
think it's such a nice way of like sort of
I find it really peaceful and therapeutic and sort of
a bomb for my nervous system every time I go
to my sit spot.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
So I recommend it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try it as well,
because I go out of nature, we go on walks
and hikes and all. But this kind of like intentional
meditative approach, setting aside so many distractions and tasks and objectives.
You know. Yeah, I think it's truly attractive.

Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
Yeah, take a little while to like not be a
little bored, but that's really normal that we're all kind of,
you know, overstimulated, So it could take a little bit
of time, but I can assure you that you'll enjoy
it as the ritual is established.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Awesome. Well, the book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
of Nature. It's out next month in all formats, but
available for pre order right now. What is the one
thing you want readers to get out of Forest Euphoria?

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
So, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
Actually the sit Spot conversation is kind of closest to
what I want readers to get out of it. I
think that I want readers to feel closer to nature.
I want readers to feel it like they are part
of nature and nature is part of them, and these
are things that will strengthen each other like that knowledge

(01:04:50):
I find is strengthening.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
It's something that's comforting.

Speaker 4 (01:04:54):
It is a magnetic compass in a time of you know,
poly crises. So I want people to feel that they belong,
their differences are what make them a part of this
ecology that you know, Ecology is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
All about difference.

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
It's all about multiple, multiple ways of being in forms,
and so to not feel shame around that. And I
want people to, you know, see that nature is really
all we have.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
There's nothing without it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:30):
I'm sure a lot of my readers will already be
environmentalists and people committed to the protection of nature, but
maybe it'll bring some more people into that fold as well,
or strengthen that someone's commitment to that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
All right, well, Patti, thanks for coming on the show
and chatting with me.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it's
fun to talk to you. Rob.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Thanks again to Patty for coming on the show. The
book again is Forrest Euphoria The Abounding Queerness of Nature,
publishing next month and available for pre order in all
formatch right now. Again. You'll find a pre order link
in the episode description, or you can look it up
at Spiegel and Grau dot com, slash Forest hyphen Euphoria.
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(01:06:13):
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. Thanks as always to the excellent Jjpossway for
producing the show, and if you'd like to get in
touch with us, you can shoot us an email at
contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Get to WAT to get