A Conversation About Human Relationships with the Biosphere

<v Speaker 1>Ah, God, I'm fucking sick. I got RSV. My daughter
<v Speaker 1>coughed in my mouth like nine thousand times. Ah. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>welcome to another episode of Crime Pays a Bond. He
<v Speaker 1>doesn't podcast. I Uh, I'm here in South Texas. I'm
<v Speaker 1>going head of west tomorrow across this great state. Well,
<v Speaker 1>actually the eastern half is kind of a car slum.
<v Speaker 1>You know a lot of car dealerships and billboards for
<v Speaker 1>personal injury attorneys, and you know the same thing. You
<v Speaker 1>hear me complaining about, uh most of the uh most
<v Speaker 1>of the time. But anyway, today is a conversation I'm
<v Speaker 1>having with my friend Martin Grantham, My dear friend, Martin Grantham,
<v Speaker 1>a brilliant man, an expert propagator, and he's traveled a
<v Speaker 1>lot exploring different biomes as well. This is a really good,
<v Speaker 1>humble human being. I was pleased to meet him almost
<v Speaker 1>fifteen years ago now. But we talk about I guess
<v Speaker 1>the whole conversation is. It's about the human relationship with
<v Speaker 1>the rest of a biosphere what I colloquially refer to
<v Speaker 1>as the living world so often, And it's about why
<v Speaker 1>we are where we are today, how we got here,
<v Speaker 1>how cultural views and many you know, across a broad
<v Speaker 1>spectrum of many different human cultures view the living world.
<v Speaker 1>It's about anthropocentrism versus biocentrism. It's about basically the human
<v Speaker 1>relationship to nature, which if you've listened to this podcast before,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I don't even like that word nature because nature,
<v Speaker 1>nature creates this this kind of separate element. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's corny as hell, but you hear it, but it's true.
<v Speaker 1>You hear you know, humans are nature. That I say
<v Speaker 1>it's corny because oftentimes it's used as some sort of
<v Speaker 1>justification or something. You know, things that are natural are okay,
<v Speaker 1>I got it. I don't fucking know. Natural doesn't mean anything.
<v Speaker 1>Natural is a garbage word. It's a you know, putt
<v Speaker 1>natural on jars of peanut butter, despite the fact that
<v Speaker 1>can still be filled with you know, artificial ingredients and
<v Speaker 1>flavoring and hydrogenated fucking palm oil that was you know,
<v Speaker 1>sourced from a palm plantation in Borneo that destroyed a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of forest. It doesn't mean anything. It's a garbage word. Natural,
<v Speaker 1>it's natural. Yeah, humans are a part of nature. Does
<v Speaker 1>that mean nuclear war is okay? And it's a part
<v Speaker 1>of nature or et cetera. Anyway you catch the point.
<v Speaker 1>But this is about, you know, the way that humans
<v Speaker 1>relate to the the rest of the living world. Nature
<v Speaker 1>quote unquote is just the biosphere of planet Earth. It's
<v Speaker 1>just the real world. And the culture we live in
<v Speaker 1>today has created this weird idea that we are separate
<v Speaker 1>and apart from it, and more so, that we're the
<v Speaker 1>most divine thing in on planet Earth, that were the
<v Speaker 1>most special thing, instead of instead of having any reverence
<v Speaker 1>for living things that that may not directly benefit us.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, everything benefits us if you're not a moron,
<v Speaker 1>If you look closer, you know, you begin to see
<v Speaker 1>that the whole living, living machine that is the biosphere
<v Speaker 1>benefits us. But you know, we've created these religions that
<v Speaker 1>view humans as the most sacred thing and the most
<v Speaker 1>special thing. And of course that's all subject the change
<v Speaker 1>depending on your you know, political backgrounds and views. You know,
<v Speaker 1>one one fetus, a fetus can be special, but as
<v Speaker 1>Martin makes the point, but a homeless person is not.
<v Speaker 1>Fuck them. You know, fetuses are special. Don't give a
<v Speaker 1>fuck about the the human being that fetus later turns into.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, so there's a lot of plasticity for
<v Speaker 1>some of these religions, as you can as you can see,
<v Speaker 1>as I think we all agree, you know, in terms
<v Speaker 1>of what doctrines they want to believe. But the one
<v Speaker 1>thing they all seem to hold true is that humans
<v Speaker 1>are the most important and that everything was put here
<v Speaker 1>for us. Not all of them. Of course, Eastern religions
<v Speaker 1>give a little bit more leeway to the rest of
<v Speaker 1>the living world, as did many Native North American cultures.
<v Speaker 1>But I also point out that you know, you hear,
<v Speaker 1>especially you know, Caucasian progressive is always fetishizing indigenous culture
<v Speaker 1>without talking about without spending a lot of time talking
<v Speaker 1>about the ideologies that made some indigenous cultures, not all
<v Speaker 1>of them so worth trying to emulate or look at,
<v Speaker 1>you know, whereas other quote indigenous cultures the same lineage
<v Speaker 1>of human that formed large cities, you know, I have
<v Speaker 1>had class stratification and exploitation, slavery, et cetera. So it's
<v Speaker 1>very clearly a human thing. There's something that happens to
<v Speaker 1>humans when we, for whatever reason, are are able to
<v Speaker 1>disconnect ourselves from the living world, whether it's technological advancements
<v Speaker 1>or being in a large enough group that you know,
<v Speaker 1>of course, with all these different class stratifications and social hierarchies,
<v Speaker 1>you know, there's something that happens where we start to
<v Speaker 1>delude ourselves into thinking that we don't need it, that
<v Speaker 1>we can just dispose of things, and so that you know,
<v Speaker 1>we're at we arrive at where we are today. And
<v Speaker 1>of course there's this whole history of you know, the
<v Speaker 1>last five hundred and six hundred years of colonization that
<v Speaker 1>occurred out of Europe. But if if that's as far
<v Speaker 1>back as you're looking at human history, you're missing a
<v Speaker 1>whole lot of other dark shit that happened, you know,
<v Speaker 1>in the long spectrum of human history that gives us
<v Speaker 1>a clue as to our behavior as human primates and
<v Speaker 1>why we behave the way that we do. And my
<v Speaker 1>interest in thinking about all this is thinking about how
<v Speaker 1>we can move past that, how we can move beyond it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, culture corrects for some of our innate flaws
<v Speaker 1>as primate animals, and I think that we can use
<v Speaker 1>some of the things that you see, and I want
<v Speaker 1>to say indigenous cultures, just cultures that are closer to
<v Speaker 1>the land that we could maybe benefit from that have
<v Speaker 1>a land ethic and a reverence for the living world,
<v Speaker 1>because that's what a lot of Native North American cultures had,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, Aboriginal cultures in Australia and probably before
<v Speaker 1>they were wiped out by the progenitors of today's death
<v Speaker 1>cult some you know, some of the more pale skinned
<v Speaker 1>quote indigenous people of northern Europe, you know. But I mean,
<v Speaker 1>who knows how far back did that happen, like a
<v Speaker 1>thousand years ago, twelve hundred, When did a feudalism really
<v Speaker 1>get gone right? Because feudalism was kind of the progenitor
<v Speaker 1>to what later became colonialism. You know, you separate people
<v Speaker 1>from the land. You have you know, one head hon
<v Speaker 1>show or maybe a family of head hon shows calling
<v Speaker 1>the shots and kind of you know, treating everyone else
<v Speaker 1>as serfs and peons that serve them. Right, I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>it's sick, it's sick, But I think it's fair to
<v Speaker 1>say that the dominant underlying worldview of which many of
<v Speaker 1>us are you know, taught to believe in, indoctrinated with,
<v Speaker 1>depending on where you grow up, is somewhat perverse. This
<v Speaker 1>this worldview that viewsed the living world is expendable and
<v Speaker 1>not really important, and especially you know, they've used plants
<v Speaker 1>out of the context in which they evolve and out
<v Speaker 1>of the most importantly, out of the context of the
<v Speaker 1>living machine, the specific regional ecosystem that they've evolved in.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, I uh, I don't know. I've been thinking
<v Speaker 1>about this because there's a book I'm writing, and I've
<v Speaker 1>just been really getting into this. I just think about
<v Speaker 1>it every day, you know, to begin with, because it's
<v Speaker 1>all around me. You know, I'm immersed in this world too.
<v Speaker 1>I gotta look at the fucking all the hideous billboards
<v Speaker 1>and the miles of parking lots and fucking the horrible
<v Speaker 1>landscaping in front of the bank or the CVS or
<v Speaker 1>wherever the shit. You know, I try. It's why I
<v Speaker 1>try to live as far away from it as I can.
<v Speaker 1>Where I'm living now, I'm like an hour and a
<v Speaker 1>half from the nearest Walmart. It's fucking great. It's so nice,
<v Speaker 1>you know, mild inconvenience, not being able to get certain things.
<v Speaker 1>But the amount of ugly shit I have to look at,
<v Speaker 1>which is just modern American car culture and suburban sprawl infrastructure.
<v Speaker 1>The amount of that shit is just so far removed
<v Speaker 1>from my current life, though, I do have a beef
<v Speaker 1>with some of the deer that have been residing in
<v Speaker 1>my neighborhood, you know, because they know the mountain lions
<v Speaker 1>aren't going to get them, and they know the rednecks
<v Speaker 1>aren't going to shoot them, you know, unless you know,
<v Speaker 1>like me. I got a redneck friend who's got a
<v Speaker 1>fucking rifle with a suppressor on it. He'll every once
<v Speaker 1>in a while he'll take some out, which I think
<v Speaker 1>is good. It's fine. Is it's still considered poaching if
<v Speaker 1>they're in your neighborhood and destroying your your destroying your
<v Speaker 1>your property.
<v Speaker 2>Huh.
<v Speaker 1>I had one kill a Madrones. I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>I talked about this yet, but I had a deer
<v Speaker 1>sneak into my fucking yard. I got fencing up around it.
<v Speaker 1>They killed them a drone. I'd been nursing for two years,
<v Speaker 1>and when when the leaves were chewed off, I didn't
<v Speaker 1>think anything of it. I said, I figured, fuck it,
<v Speaker 1>it'll come back, it'll re sprout. But to Dan hose Age,
<v Speaker 1>and he said, no, they don't do that if they
<v Speaker 1>get the leaves, not off when they're young, and especially
<v Speaker 1>if they don't, if they haven't been innoculated with that
<v Speaker 1>Michael Rise yet that they need that are buttoid Michael Rise,
<v Speaker 1>which is just Ectomichael rhizol. Fungal species that behave endophitically,
<v Speaker 1>they actually penetrate the cortex, penetrate the cells of the cortex,
<v Speaker 1>he said. If they don't have that yet, you know,
<v Speaker 1>once if you prune that thing or it gets significant
<v Speaker 1>branch damage or like it gets nibbled on, they will rot.
<v Speaker 1>And that's exactly what happened. So the deer it re
<v Speaker 1>sprouted and then the leaves just curled up and wilted,
<v Speaker 1>turned black, and the fucking thing is dead now. So
<v Speaker 1>I got a beef with the deer, but uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'll take that over having to look at some of
<v Speaker 1>the hideous retail sprawl and American suburbs any day. So
<v Speaker 1>uh anyway, Uh, pardon the long ranting introduction. Hope you
<v Speaker 1>enjoy this conversation with Martin Grantham about some very interesting stuff.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, that's all I got to have a gross
<v Speaker 1>to day, go fuck up by and.
<v Speaker 2>Uh Berlin and and the breed love have this book
<v Speaker 2>of all the medicinal plants of Chioppice. And you just
<v Speaker 2>look through and you know, hundreds of abortations, and you
<v Speaker 2>see you know that that that that there was a
<v Speaker 2>whole different mindset about reproduction.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah that it wasn't so so there was And where
<v Speaker 1>did that come from? You think just that just the
<v Speaker 1>self awareness that we can't get so big that I mean, no,
<v Speaker 1>you know, as we've said before, no species of organism
<v Speaker 1>ever willingly you know, stops its population from exponentially growing
<v Speaker 1>like deer won't do it, you.
<v Speaker 2>Know, right, Well, I think it had to have been
<v Speaker 2>in this kind of closer nature. I think, well, I
<v Speaker 2>do think a lot of children die, so you know
<v Speaker 2>that the survival rate was a lot lower. So that's
<v Speaker 2>one thing. But the fact that women did use this
<v Speaker 2>uh and and you know and and identify a lot
<v Speaker 2>of plants as what you do to modify your your
<v Speaker 2>your reproduction is an interesting thing that needs to study.
<v Speaker 2>I'll say that.
<v Speaker 1>Wait, what was the flora? What was the flora? Can
<v Speaker 1>you tell me more about the flora of Chiapas what
<v Speaker 1>you were reading about the ethnobotany? You were there with breed.
<v Speaker 2>Love, Well, no, I wasn't there at all. I was
<v Speaker 2>just planting the plants that he'd collected up at the
<v Speaker 2>botanical garden, and those plants come out of a project
<v Speaker 2>between an anthropologist or and maybeth no I meanth no
<v Speaker 2>botanists called Brent Berlin. But he was also a linguist
<v Speaker 2>and he was analyzing the language and he was looking
<v Speaker 2>for you know, all there's only a very few exceptions
<v Speaker 2>to languages that the UH. They they all do classify
<v Speaker 2>organisms by dissent as opposed by use, but in in
<v Speaker 2>UH in Mexico, like Wahaka. I think the mixed text
<v Speaker 2>had a really extensive I'm conflating what a graduate student
<v Speaker 2>was working on later, so I think it was maybe
<v Speaker 2>a kind of a linguistic and ethnobotanal botanical study. And
<v Speaker 2>they did produce a book and and UH and Breed
<v Speaker 2>Love made all these plant connect collections that then had
<v Speaker 2>documented uses for the indigenous people of of Jiappas. I've
<v Speaker 2>maybe conflating a couple of things.
<v Speaker 1>Breed Love spoke mine, didn't he or a mixed tech.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know anything about that guy? He's not I remember,
<v Speaker 1>don tell me about him. He's sounds fucking fascinating.
<v Speaker 2>He was an interesting guy. I think he I don't
<v Speaker 2>think he was I think he was kind of out
<v Speaker 2>of his depth with the botany there. He I know,
<v Speaker 2>this is what I know about him. He got his
<v Speaker 2>PhD studying and Cleander Fuchias at Stanford and and so
<v Speaker 2>he was a fusia expert and and then he got
<v Speaker 2>involved in this project with the with the Mexican floor
<v Speaker 2>and he was probably the you know an he connected
<v Speaker 2>with Brett Berlin, who was a was more of an
<v Speaker 2>anthropologist linguist kind of thing, and uh, he was rare
<v Speaker 2>for botanists and that he he brought. He liked to
<v Speaker 2>have living specimens. And he had a garden up in
<v Speaker 2>Bolinas that's still there, that is where he planted all
<v Speaker 2>kinds of his collections. And at Berkeley he ran into trouble,
<v Speaker 2>uh like it did. It alienated him. It alienated him
<v Speaker 2>and Bruce Bruce Bartholomew, who was a more of an
<v Speaker 2>Asian camelia expert, and they and so they moved over
<v Speaker 2>to the cal Academy from a being alien but and
<v Speaker 2>and Bred loved to left a lot of his collection,
<v Speaker 2>his living plant collection there. He probably had a massive
<v Speaker 2>one while he was at Berkeley. And I'm not sure exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Why why was he alienated though.
<v Speaker 2>They probably wouldn't let him do what he wanted to do.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's something I don't I don't recall. I just
<v Speaker 2>think and I may be conflating Bruce Bartholomew's story with his,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, he was at Berkeley and they had
<v Speaker 2>this big collection there and he was involved in in
<v Speaker 2>in planning the section that I have ended up planting.
<v Speaker 1>All the cloud Force stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and there had been you know, there had been
<v Speaker 2>ten years lapsed and that they held all these plants
<v Speaker 2>and containers. It was pretty challenging to you know, have them,
<v Speaker 2>get them establish list. Uh. And I did go visit
<v Speaker 2>him at h at the Call Academy to get some
<v Speaker 2>i you know, some to clear up some identifications and what.
<v Speaker 2>And then when I started going to Mexico, I brought
<v Speaker 2>him vouchers of some things and from how he classified them,
<v Speaker 2>I figured he he didn't He certainly didn't know salvia
<v Speaker 2>well and and uh, you know he was fuchies and
<v Speaker 2>I don't know and then uh, uh he there was
<v Speaker 2>There are there are things about him that I don't
<v Speaker 2>uh that you have heard, like that he actually killed
<v Speaker 2>someone when he was down there. And then and and
<v Speaker 2>then I heard that uh, he couldn't go back, and
<v Speaker 2>was really kind of heartsick about that because he in
<v Speaker 2>order to get access to the plants, he had allied
<v Speaker 2>himself with politicians that then were that made him persona
<v Speaker 2>non grata. He was associated with people that had lost power.
<v Speaker 2>And and I don't believe anybody has finished going through
<v Speaker 2>and classifying the material. He had just a huge number
<v Speaker 2>of barium shelves and and and and compactors that were
<v Speaker 2>devoted to these plans he collected that had not been
<v Speaker 2>gone through and identified or whatever. And I don't, I don't,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if. I mean, he was supposed to
<v Speaker 2>be working on it, and and I guess he was
<v Speaker 2>working on it slowly, but it didn't seem to ever
<v Speaker 2>reduced during you know, the four or five years I
<v Speaker 2>was doing that.
<v Speaker 1>Don Don told me about going down to uh Chiapas
<v Speaker 1>with them once and they.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they take some groups they were looking.
<v Speaker 1>For something and they went to the spot where this
<v Speaker 1>this species was supposed to be and they got there
<v Speaker 1>and it was all gone, and and.
<v Speaker 2>And that maybe the story of that depia. Yeah, they
<v Speaker 2>were he brought seeds up and they he did distribute them,
<v Speaker 2>so they and most of the they did have they
<v Speaker 2>did have some diversity here because I'm sure he brought
<v Speaker 2>the seeds to the Bay area and you know, like
<v Speaker 2>we only had one plant of it and the same
<v Speaker 2>at Striving, But turned out the huntington had about five
<v Speaker 2>or six clones.
<v Speaker 1>It's so common in cultivation. It's so common in horticulture
<v Speaker 1>in the Bay.
<v Speaker 2>Now. This well, it wasn't at all. It wasn't at
<v Speaker 2>all when I was working with it.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I know, I'm I'm just saying it's fascinating. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's extinct in the wild, but it's uh.
<v Speaker 2>It's common. Is I would give credit to Bart O'Brien
<v Speaker 2>who it was a plant he was fascinated with antakisa
<v Speaker 2>one who tracked down all the clones of the huntington
<v Speaker 2>and then he grew them at a native plant garden
<v Speaker 2>at the entra Anna Garden.
<v Speaker 1>What was the what's the pollination biology? And I think
<v Speaker 1>hummers probably or what moths?
<v Speaker 2>I don't think it's moths.
<v Speaker 1>It's such a long tube though, right.
<v Speaker 2>It could be. It could be maybe it's you know,
<v Speaker 2>like bridging, bridging between pollinators. I don't really know. I
<v Speaker 2>don't know in that one. Yeah, but something with either
<v Speaker 2>mother or or I mean, but.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, going back to this, this this subject though
<v Speaker 1>of it just you know, I it's so it's such
<v Speaker 1>a talking point that I hear, I get so tired
<v Speaker 1>of it. This you know, indigenous people lived in harmony
<v Speaker 1>with nature. Well, you know, it's it's I don't think
<v Speaker 1>it's necessarily that. I think it's it's uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because I think it has to do again, I think
<v Speaker 1>it has to do mostly with group size and with
<v Speaker 1>cities and technology and kind of what happens. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, but I think about this all the time,
<v Speaker 1>like why why is the deficult that we love under now?
<v Speaker 1>Like why does it? You know? And the Mayans and
<v Speaker 1>the Aztecs had large cities that were very class stratified
<v Speaker 1>and we're not.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I don't think they were in balance. I think
<v Speaker 2>they were on their way to do the same thing
<v Speaker 2>we did.
<v Speaker 1>I think, yeah, I think so.
<v Speaker 2>I think they had they had They certainly modified the
<v Speaker 2>whole Amazon forest. It was really there's endless. Uh they
<v Speaker 2>keep finding with that light? Are they keep finding big? Uh?
<v Speaker 2>You know, settlements and and and and and pathways between
<v Speaker 2>them all.
<v Speaker 1>They were all that the not the Mayan or the Aztecs,
<v Speaker 1>but there was yeah who knows what civilization.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we don't know who they were. I don't think
<v Speaker 2>they died out. They figure they just all died from
<v Speaker 2>diseases that really went out so fast and killed everybody
<v Speaker 2>ahead of the conquise throwers and all. So like I
<v Speaker 2>remember learning in school all the mysterious mound builders of Missouri,
<v Speaker 2>and yeah, how they had died out well before Columbus.
<v Speaker 2>But they hadn't. They were there and had you know,
<v Speaker 2>had agriculture. So we're probably on the expanding end of it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean a lot in my mind is agriculture, and
<v Speaker 2>people like us are to blame that want to grow plants.
<v Speaker 2>So that's you know, but.
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking about this but specifically, this this anthropocentrism, you know,
<v Speaker 1>where like I said, well, we'll go in and clear
<v Speaker 1>land and not leave even a little bit. Whereas I
<v Speaker 1>think smaller groups of people, especially some of the North
<v Speaker 1>American indigenous tribes, did have a uh a reverence. They
<v Speaker 1>had a more biocentric they had more of a reverence
<v Speaker 1>for living things. They had well, they.
<v Speaker 2>They considered it divine. And and there is this religious
<v Speaker 2>religious transition that goes along with with with the societal
<v Speaker 2>transition from from uh uh polytheism and which I think
<v Speaker 2>is a lot healthier. You can always find some god
<v Speaker 2>that you're in tune with, but but you've got one
<v Speaker 2>and and and that transition I think is also important
<v Speaker 2>in in the toxicity of things. You've got one human
<v Speaker 2>form and human centric deity rather than having natural forces
<v Speaker 2>and natural totems and things like that that are that
<v Speaker 2>are significant to you and that your view as has
<v Speaker 2>integrated with humanity. That this way, it's all it's it's
<v Speaker 2>it's one guy. It's all human for humans and and
<v Speaker 2>uh you know, uh that we and it also puts
<v Speaker 2>us in charge of all the natural forces and all
<v Speaker 2>of nature, which is a polytheism. And and with these
<v Speaker 2>and giving nature divinity. I think that's why in New
<v Speaker 2>Zealand when they were you know, gave that river human rights.
<v Speaker 2>That that's in a way that's right and is kind
<v Speaker 2>of going back to to letting letting other parts of
<v Speaker 2>the world have an identity and rights. Yeah, and that's
<v Speaker 2>a polytheism, especially if it's uh you know, uh uh
<v Speaker 2>non human divinity. Uh probably was very you know, was
<v Speaker 2>helpful in in in giving people respect for it.
<v Speaker 1>But it's got to be religion, you think, huh.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I think it goes along with it. It's all,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the population density, the agriculture, the the the
<v Speaker 2>proliferation past, and and then the transition from polytheism to monotheism,
<v Speaker 2>and and from from natural forces being divine to to
<v Speaker 2>basically us being divine, and uh and and and some
<v Speaker 2>figment of our imagination is in charge of everything that
<v Speaker 2>has a human form. That obviously can't be human. It
<v Speaker 2>obviously can't be true. It's just it's a psychosis. But
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's it's much more closer that you know,
<v Speaker 2>the original thing of making parts of nature divine is
<v Speaker 2>much more close, much closer to reality that that that
<v Speaker 2>they are really in charge, you know, but modern I mean,
<v Speaker 2>the sun is in charge of our whole The sun
<v Speaker 2>is in charge of our whole existence. It's the most
<v Speaker 2>logical kind of deity and that we can have in
<v Speaker 2>this social system.
<v Speaker 1>That all that was a George Carlin bit right totally.
<v Speaker 1>And I agree with that. I worshiped the sun because
<v Speaker 1>I can see. But what about I mean, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I just the society we live under does not view
<v Speaker 1>anything in quote nature is divine, like there's no that's
<v Speaker 1>there's everything is expendable if it's in our way and
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't serve us, you know. And also this kind
<v Speaker 1>of because we.
<v Speaker 2>Are divine, so everything is in service of us. It's
<v Speaker 2>a perversion of its perverse.
<v Speaker 1>But where does that come from? Though? I'm so curious,
<v Speaker 1>like why did Why does some human cultures arrive there?
<v Speaker 1>Like why like the one that we live under now,
<v Speaker 1>which is the dominated the earth? Why?
<v Speaker 2>I think more than I think more than one did.
<v Speaker 2>But but I guess, well, I don't know. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know what. I don't really have a lot of framework
<v Speaker 2>for before Abraham and.
<v Speaker 1>But but I think there's a disconnection though to like
<v Speaker 1>if you if you if if the living world is
<v Speaker 1>not in front of you, and you live in a
<v Speaker 1>large city or a city state, even if it's eight
<v Speaker 1>thousand years ago, you are, it's important. It's not there
<v Speaker 1>for you to see and and have any respect for.
<v Speaker 1>So it's off your radar, the way it's off most
<v Speaker 1>people's radar today. They don't even think about.
<v Speaker 2>It, right. They don't know where their food comes from.
<v Speaker 2>It needs to be plastic wrapped. I remember in college
<v Speaker 2>I roomed with these with some engineers, and they could
<v Speaker 2>not eat vegetables that were not a bird's eye plastic
<v Speaker 2>pat that you put in boiled water and slid open
<v Speaker 2>and splattered out on your plate.
<v Speaker 1>I go ahead, sorry, all right, I'm just gonna.
<v Speaker 2>Say I got romain lattice, and it was too strong
<v Speaker 2>for them. They could only could only eat I.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, but most people don't even know that crop
<v Speaker 1>plants were bred from what were originally wild plants. I
<v Speaker 1>mean that's you know. They they see, they see land
<v Speaker 1>that doesn't have buildings down it as scrub and it's
<v Speaker 1>not doing anything. It's that they're completely unaware that it's
<v Speaker 1>serving a purpose, you know, of of holding soil together,
<v Speaker 1>acting as a reserve for biodiversity, for living species, these
<v Speaker 1>living members, these living cogs that are part of the
<v Speaker 1>living machine that is the bioso.
<v Speaker 2>They see themselves as the purpose. Ken has a friend
<v Speaker 2>who's very religious and and and she's just a lovely
<v Speaker 2>sweet person and the very kind and and and and
<v Speaker 2>principled and everything. But what you know when when uh,
<v Speaker 2>she talks about that, oh, there could be many more
<v Speaker 2>people than there are. Look at all these empty places, right,
<v Speaker 2>But the people people are the only thing of value
<v Speaker 2>and and because of the and the and their given divinity.
<v Speaker 2>So and then you know another another thing. But but
<v Speaker 2>you know, for some reason homeless per and doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>that divinity anymore. They're stripped of it. But if he does, right,
<v Speaker 2>it's the range.
<v Speaker 1>Well, but I've heard, I've heard a lot of progressives
<v Speaker 1>they'll even say that too, I mean, they don't. It
<v Speaker 1>became kind of in fashion after COVID to call anyone
<v Speaker 1>who talked about population boundaries and eco fascists, you know,
<v Speaker 1>which is like something that doesn't even exist. But I
<v Speaker 1>understand where it comes from, because you know, that could
<v Speaker 1>be you could go you could potentially theoretically go down
<v Speaker 1>the road. Uh, not to mention the obliviousness of the
<v Speaker 1>first world realizing that it's you know, there's there's a
<v Speaker 1>correlation between impact, not just population. You know, first world.
<v Speaker 2>They're going to co opt it, and they're going to
<v Speaker 2>co opt it and use it against more less powerful groups.
<v Speaker 1>Of course that's true. But but I did hear people.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it was amazing to me how many progressive
<v Speaker 1>that remember that, how many progressives were just ecologically illiterate too,
<v Speaker 1>and not really you know, they'd say we can fit
<v Speaker 1>you know, five more, five times as many people. It's like, man, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but at what costs the biosphere declining? We're already you know.
<v Speaker 1>The goal should be to bring people's standard of living up.
<v Speaker 3>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And also.
<v Speaker 2>Definitely it definitely bridges the whole political spectrum. It's not
<v Speaker 2>really related to whether you're conservative or liberal.
<v Speaker 1>No, religion does have a lot to do with it, though.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's it's it's anthropocentrism, and that's what that's
<v Speaker 1>what I think as a civilization we need the one
<v Speaker 1>they talk about. I don't think we'll get there. I
<v Speaker 1>think we'll get checked, of course, But uh, I just
<v Speaker 1>remember you had said something about, you know, the madness
<v Speaker 1>of the society that we live under and why why
<v Speaker 1>it behaves this way, you know, why we have no
<v Speaker 1>why we afford no rights to the living world around us.
<v Speaker 1>It's sociopathic behavior. It's just so it's so short term thinking.
<v Speaker 1>You know, so it is.
<v Speaker 2>And we but you know, it's hard for us to
<v Speaker 2>realize how what tiny specks we are and what what
<v Speaker 2>our time is so short? Which is a mosquito a
<v Speaker 2>little may fly.
<v Speaker 1>What role do you think class stratification has to do
<v Speaker 1>with all of this, Like you you'd mentioned that as
<v Speaker 1>being a symptom of kind of decline.
<v Speaker 2>Well, right, and but regarded as as as a sign
<v Speaker 2>of advancement and and and development. Yeah, well, well, because
<v Speaker 2>you have more and more people divorced from nature that
<v Speaker 2>don't depend on it or interact with it or you know,
<v Speaker 2>and so they and they're making the decisions. So, uh,
<v Speaker 2>it's it's it's definitely.
<v Speaker 1>But I think having a large a large portion of
<v Speaker 1>your population living in poverty and and not taking care
<v Speaker 1>of or educated and letting it get to that point
<v Speaker 1>is a problem too. That's that's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they can do it because they're completely isolated from
<v Speaker 2>the means of production. They're that they are just great
<v Speaker 2>consumers and they and devourers of everything, and their economic
<v Speaker 2>system works so that every time there's a big downturn,
<v Speaker 2>they have the they buy them up more and have more,
<v Speaker 2>and they see themselves as because they've a mass such
<v Speaker 2>personal wealth and power, that they must be. It's kind
<v Speaker 2>of a religion of a prosperity religion, that they must
<v Speaker 2>be chosen, that they must be, that they deserve it.
<v Speaker 2>And and people don't people want to feel that they
<v Speaker 2>deserve things and and psychologically it's a justification for a
<v Speaker 2>lot that you know that they they those people deserve
<v Speaker 2>you know, more than the earth can sustain, and they
<v Speaker 2>got to go to par Do.
<v Speaker 1>You think do you think there's I mean, is there
<v Speaker 1>something inherent in the primate brain that if we're not
<v Speaker 1>aware of and culture doesn't correct for, like cultural values
<v Speaker 1>can correct for certain behaviors, they can prevent them, or
<v Speaker 1>they can annatigate them. Yeah, but do you think there's
<v Speaker 1>something in the primate brain that happens to anybody or
<v Speaker 1>the vast majority of the population if they're given wealth
<v Speaker 1>and power. I think it's too easy to just be
<v Speaker 1>completely ignorant and shake your responsibilities and think selfishly. Do
<v Speaker 1>you think that's Do you think that's true? Could happen
<v Speaker 1>to any of us?
<v Speaker 2>Well? I know, I know the the the chimpanzee genocide
<v Speaker 2>was an eye opener for me that a lot was
<v Speaker 2>pretty a lot of our behavior is pre human. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>The fact that those chimpanzees haven't been separated for a while,
<v Speaker 2>could then, you know, just the larger group decide to
<v Speaker 2>exterminate what was that?
<v Speaker 1>What was the chimpanzee genocide?
<v Speaker 2>That that's uh, that's you know, what's her name, UH
<v Speaker 2>worked with? Yeah, good, all that was that happened to
<v Speaker 2>her chimps. She she had followed them and had you know,
<v Speaker 2>talked about them as peaceful and living in balance and
<v Speaker 2>and being clever and everything, and and then and then
<v Speaker 2>she was monitoring this population and and the population was
<v Speaker 2>doing well, and it and it and it colonized a
<v Speaker 2>new area to the south, and but there were physical
<v Speaker 2>barriers that the population growth had pushed them over, and
<v Speaker 2>and so they didn't communicate that much. The I guess
<v Speaker 2>in their society, they send the males out to join No,
<v Speaker 2>that's the bonobos, So the females have to go out
<v Speaker 2>and find a new place. But anyway, after so many
<v Speaker 2>years and and the isolation between them, they you know,
<v Speaker 2>the North rediscovered their southern UH population and they regarded
<v Speaker 2>them as as non chimp basically, and they killed and
<v Speaker 2>ate their babies and and killed males and females. They
<v Speaker 2>obliterated them.
<v Speaker 1>Jesus, isn't it just that's just analogous to humans.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So that so, you know, in that that case,
<v Speaker 2>it shows that you know, genocide has existed a long time,
<v Speaker 2>and it's you know, I think it's it's been in mammals.
<v Speaker 2>It's been in mammals a long time because, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>when a when a new male lion comes into a pride,
<v Speaker 2>it takes over a pride. They kill all the young,
<v Speaker 2>They kill all the the the babies that they haven't sired,
<v Speaker 2>so they have they have a sense of who's genetically
<v Speaker 2>related to them, and and and they're gonna stuff amount
<v Speaker 2>and that, so that it's a long term, uh strategy
<v Speaker 2>in at least mammals. I can't think of you know,
<v Speaker 2>probably happened in dinosaurs. I just I think I.
<v Speaker 1>Think with you know, this is why when when I
<v Speaker 1>think about this stuff, I don't look to social theorists,
<v Speaker 1>you know, who went to like liberal Arts college to
<v Speaker 1>think about this. I go to anthropologists and primatologists because
<v Speaker 1>there's a basis for this behavior. The difference with humans, though,
<v Speaker 1>is that there's an element of of willpower to some extent,
<v Speaker 1>and of being able to correct for it via cultural
<v Speaker 1>indoctrination and conditioning and values. Of course, culture can also
<v Speaker 1>condition people to be fucking sociopaths, you know, and and
<v Speaker 1>worship money. But uh, but I just I think about
<v Speaker 1>this stuff all the time. I really appreciate you being
<v Speaker 1>willing to pick up the phone.
<v Speaker 2>Well, no, it's it's actually everybody is the problem of
<v Speaker 2>our time. What's why? What's wrong with us? Why are
<v Speaker 2>we destroying our own habitat? There's something wrong.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's a lack of awareness and and also it's
<v Speaker 1>a lack of awareness and a lack of self awareness
<v Speaker 1>as well. We are animals awareness, animals that don't think
<v Speaker 1>we're animals. And I think religion really really makes things foggy.
<v Speaker 2>Religion transfer, Yeah, the transfer of divinity from nature or
<v Speaker 2>the whole system to us is toxic.
<v Speaker 1>The Abrahamic religions, Islam, Christianity, I don't know, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>the Judaism probably doesn't make any exceptions for the living world, right,
<v Speaker 1>I'd assume you know.
<v Speaker 2>No, no, and I and you know I haven't even
<v Speaker 2>I haven't looked to the Eastern regions. But I always
<v Speaker 2>I always thought that you know, it's not true, of course,
<v Speaker 2>but that but that Buddhism and Hinduism were at least,
<v Speaker 2>at least philosophically more advanced, because ultimately there is is
<v Speaker 2>dissolution of the individual as even our goal is to
<v Speaker 2>become one with the all you know, and then and
<v Speaker 2>then it accepts death in a way that are the
<v Speaker 2>Abrahamic religions do not accept death, and the individual soul
<v Speaker 2>lives forever, which is just a horror, just a monstrous
<v Speaker 2>nightmare that they that they that they believe. And and
<v Speaker 2>so I thought, you know, I was, but I never
<v Speaker 2>studied them. But I thought the Eastern religions that where
<v Speaker 2>they provide for the dissolution of the of the mean
<v Speaker 2>little individual self, that that was an advancement uh in
<v Speaker 2>in uh in religious belief. I feel like I feel
<v Speaker 2>like I haven't thought about it before, about the transfer
<v Speaker 2>of divinity from nature to us and how toxic that is.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I I thought to call you about this because
<v Speaker 1>I get so fucking tired of hearing, especially Caucasian progressives
<v Speaker 1>talking about talking about indigenous you know, like there was
<v Speaker 1>a thing where you couldn't you know, if you if
<v Speaker 1>you did a conservation project without consulting an Indigenous person.
<v Speaker 1>You like, like, Okay, my friend Joe, he's DNA. He's
<v Speaker 1>a fucking he works as a plumber and drives a
<v Speaker 1>forward f one fifty. Should I consult him before I
<v Speaker 1>try to do a restory? I mean, just the dumbest shit.
<v Speaker 1>You know, this identitarianism that the American left, especially the
<v Speaker 1>American left went down.
<v Speaker 2>You opened my eyes to that, because you know, you
<v Speaker 2>open my eyes to that, I really see that that
<v Speaker 2>is toxic and divisive and preventing, preventing a lot of progress.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's it's a shame. Well, also in this case,
<v Speaker 1>there's good stuff there, like there's a lot of good
<v Speaker 1>stuff to take from indigenous cultures, but it misses the
<v Speaker 1>point when you just focus on the fact they're indigenous
<v Speaker 1>and not on the fucking ideas like divinity for the
<v Speaker 1>living world or or reverence for the living world. It's
<v Speaker 1>so fucking stupid. And I think, yeah, it's so easy
<v Speaker 1>for people to confuse culture with race, which race doesn't
<v Speaker 1>really exist. That's what studying plants taught me. That race
<v Speaker 1>is just different.
<v Speaker 2>Pheeno techs genetic related does it's a proxy for.
<v Speaker 4>Genetic relatedness, which we are obsessed with and with Abrahamic
<v Speaker 4>religions show a bizarre, a really incredible obsession with it,
<v Speaker 4>with the with the bigots in the.
<v Speaker 2>Bible to have just just pages and pages and pages
<v Speaker 2>of who begat who? When you know, you read the
<v Speaker 2>Bible and you think Oh my god.
<v Speaker 1>It's tribal. It's just more chimp shit. It's more chimpanzee
<v Speaker 1>fucking behavior, you know. But that's the thing, is like,
<v Speaker 1>I that's something they should teach in fucking grade school.
<v Speaker 1>Is that melanin quote race. Melanin is just the result
<v Speaker 1>of a population living for however many thousands, tens of
<v Speaker 1>thousands of years at a certain latitude. You're too high.
<v Speaker 1>If you're too high, too high in latitude, and you're
<v Speaker 1>too dark, you get vitamin D deficiency. And if you're
<v Speaker 1>too low latitude and and you're too white, you get
<v Speaker 1>vitamin B deficiency. Not to mention fucking skin cancer. That's
<v Speaker 1>all it is. And you learn that when you study
<v Speaker 1>plants and and things like ecotypes and phenotypes, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>phenotypic variation, how that ends up in different you know,
<v Speaker 1>turns into different ecotypes or species. I just you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's maddening. It's maddening to see this fixation on it.
<v Speaker 2>Because because we don't value the natural world, we don't
<v Speaker 2>teach it. We value we value technology, and we and
<v Speaker 2>and so we we we we teach all that, all
<v Speaker 2>everything that supports the advancement of our technology and mastery
<v Speaker 2>of and to have mastery of the natural war.
<v Speaker 1>That's another thing too. Science science is only useful if
<v Speaker 1>it leads to technological or medical advancements. Studying science for
<v Speaker 1>the sake of studying science and learn more about, for instance,
<v Speaker 1>the living world, the living machine, that is, the fucking biosphere.
<v Speaker 1>That's pointless. If it doesn't do it doesn't earn you money,
<v Speaker 1>and it doesn't lead to some sort of advancement, that's
<v Speaker 1>it's pointless. It's such a fucking broken worldview. I remember
<v Speaker 1>you telling me your feelings about this before you know
<v Speaker 1>it's There's what.
<v Speaker 2>I've always I've always thought that that uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>as as as more as a as biology became richer
<v Speaker 2>and richer, that really and and since we're biological phenomena,
<v Speaker 2>that that you know, you should there should be a
<v Speaker 2>requirement for everyone to have biology starting in elementary school
<v Speaker 2>and every year of high school and get them through
<v Speaker 2>the levels of it, you know, start out with with
<v Speaker 2>organisms because people kids love them and get excited about them,
<v Speaker 2>and then move to the more you know, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the more.
<v Speaker 5>Science heavy stufe of like or well, the more the
<v Speaker 5>things that require technology to see like microscope, right, or
<v Speaker 5>DNA sequence abstract Analysisah, like.
<v Speaker 1>Like DNA you can't care about DNA sequencing until you
<v Speaker 1>learn what the point with the benefit of it it is,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like teaching this class, like they wanted me
<v Speaker 1>to teach photosynthesis. I'm like, I'm or in cellular stuff first.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, I'm not gonna fucking do that. First, I'm
<v Speaker 1>going to show them cool pictures of plants first, and
<v Speaker 1>all the all the wild ass field botany I've done,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and get them excited. And then because that's
<v Speaker 1>what happened to me, I didn't give a fuck about
<v Speaker 1>photosynthesis or or well may.
<v Speaker 2>It may filter people too, so that you get the
<v Speaker 2>right people in biology that won't cater to mechanistic uses.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean, you know, to get money, they'll say anything.
<v Speaker 2>So the biologists have gone with this, and and uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I I was a grad student during the
<v Speaker 2>big when the wave of emphasis on DNA hit hit Berkeley.
<v Speaker 2>It had started probably you know, when as soon as
<v Speaker 2>DNA was discovered and and the National Science Foundation changed
<v Speaker 2>their granting structure to to prioritize molecular questions, and and
<v Speaker 2>and then when it got to Berkeley, it disrupted the
<v Speaker 2>whole thing because you know, it was it was traditional
<v Speaker 2>organization along zoology, botany, protosology and all that, and then
<v Speaker 2>suddenly it all had to be integrated and that you
<v Speaker 2>didn't study. It was all DNA, so it didn't matter
<v Speaker 2>what organisms were at all or what are their differences.
<v Speaker 2>And then they changed the name to integrative biology, and
<v Speaker 2>and uh and and and and tightened the emphasis on molecular.
<v Speaker 2>And I can remember, you know, my own, my own
<v Speaker 2>hear my own groups of graduate students, you know about
<v Speaker 2>the three years that that one by one they'd all see,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they'd all do molecular and and shift their topics,
<v Speaker 2>shift their emphasis in order to get grants in order to.
<v Speaker 1>Do what were they doing phylogenies or something or what?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I know one, I know one who didn't and
<v Speaker 2>what she ended in as a kind of a backwater
<v Speaker 2>job as a curator of algae at the uc or Barium.
<v Speaker 2>But she never really became uh, molecular. She was a
<v Speaker 2>morphologist and she did a morphological study. And I know
<v Speaker 2>she gave a talk which I've caught online where she
<v Speaker 2>she kind of bemoaned the fact that she had described
<v Speaker 2>some species of an alga and DNA had revealed that
<v Speaker 2>it was a morphotype of the same species that one,
<v Speaker 2>and so her names were eliminated, and it looked like
<v Speaker 2>she was rueful. She hadn't adopted, she hadn't gone molecular,
<v Speaker 2>but she's the curator of algae there and manages all
<v Speaker 2>the varia specimens and is helping preserve I mean collection science.
<v Speaker 1>I think I think doing the DNA phylogeny stuff is fascinating.
<v Speaker 1>I like it, but it just seems like it after
<v Speaker 1>everything's done, there's no you know what I mean, like,
<v Speaker 1>there's only so far you they.
<v Speaker 2>Have no interest. The people that do that have no
<v Speaker 2>interest in the organisms in general. I don't think that's
<v Speaker 2>true of everybody, and it was more true of people
<v Speaker 2>in the time, you know, like kind of twenty years
<v Speaker 2>after everybody was reorganized along this emphasis of molecular that
<v Speaker 2>you got young people who had been drawn in by organisms,
<v Speaker 2>and then we're using the DNA technology to follow some
<v Speaker 2>of their interests in those organists, big collection of plans
<v Speaker 2>to grow, and she and and that she grew, and she,
<v Speaker 2>you know, felt the pain when the university made her
<v Speaker 2>give him to the botanical garden, and the garden killed
<v Speaker 2>them all and her ginger collection. I've seen a lot
<v Speaker 2>of organismally oriented people who who were young enough to
<v Speaker 2>have both the the the interest in the organisms and
<v Speaker 2>and but but realized that they needed to be molecular
<v Speaker 2>to study them. They'd like to grow them as well. Well.
<v Speaker 2>Jeff Benka has been successful and he's still and he
<v Speaker 2>grows plants, and he even published how to Grow Lycopods
<v Speaker 2>because and he and he had some profound ideas about
<v Speaker 2>it related.
<v Speaker 1>I just can't imagine being interested or doing this field
<v Speaker 1>if you weren't passionate or going pursuing this career path,
<v Speaker 1>if you just wanted to sit in the lab all day,
<v Speaker 1>like if you were if you didn't have a passion
<v Speaker 1>for field work and doing hands on.
<v Speaker 2>The passion for field work limited your limited your career
<v Speaker 2>was this one I know who liked to dive and
<v Speaker 2>collect algae and like to grow them in culture and
<v Speaker 2>and who's working at the ibarium, she's she didn't make
<v Speaker 2>any money and she didn't have she can't have graduate
<v Speaker 2>students as in her as a curator of her thing
<v Speaker 2>that she's in charge of. Where it used to be
<v Speaker 2>those positions were just like a professorship and they could
<v Speaker 2>have students, and they were well paid. But they're not
<v Speaker 2>well paid now. They can't have students. They are lower
<v Speaker 2>tier academic dealing with with collection that you know, the
<v Speaker 2>preservation of the of these collections. Meanwhile, we both had
<v Speaker 2>a good friend who who had been drawn in by
<v Speaker 2>fungi and and their best whatever and and and and
<v Speaker 2>she decided she had to be molecular. Her father was
<v Speaker 2>was a professor, and I didn't realize that she was
<v Speaker 2>among the top point zero one percent they own everything.
<v Speaker 2>But she went molecular big time. She got a big
<v Speaker 2>job and and she left all her organisms behind. And
<v Speaker 2>now that she became she was head of her department.
<v Speaker 2>She owns homes in Malibu and Chicago, and and uh
<v Speaker 2>uh she did. And then she returned when she you know,
<v Speaker 2>she'd done all this, and she did return to do
<v Speaker 2>the organism. But it doesn't, it doesn't. She hasn't gotten
<v Speaker 2>a lot of stuff. She's only gotten molecular stuff published
<v Speaker 2>and and and the way she's been used as an
<v Speaker 2>instructor is to be a catalog of molecular techniques. And
<v Speaker 2>that's that's what she did. Another another person I know
<v Speaker 2>is extremely successful in science and he went to community
<v Speaker 2>college with him, and he discovered he went on to
<v Speaker 2>discover he was always interested in electricity and how it
<v Speaker 2>related to biology. And he discovered the uh, the ion, uh,
<v Speaker 2>the the you know those those what do they call him?
<v Speaker 2>They they're transmembrane uh, A raise of proteins that transfer
<v Speaker 2>sodium and potassium or whatever. And he discovered it in
<v Speaker 2>the heart and and and and he's like one of
<v Speaker 2>the most cited people in in in in science at
<v Speaker 2>this point. And I caught an interview he did, and
<v Speaker 2>he said, you know, I'd much rather be studying, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the plants in in in Malaysia and how they're interacting everything.
<v Speaker 2>But there's absolutely no there's absolutely no money in that.
<v Speaker 2>I can't do it. He got he got taken up
<v Speaker 2>by merk As for pharmacological research, so he went through
<v Speaker 2>that kind of thing and then made this discovery that
<v Speaker 2>an academic than the pharmacical industry. But but yeah, there
<v Speaker 2>has always been this hierarchy, and of course you feel
<v Speaker 2>it really hard for this when you're you know, I
<v Speaker 2>went from being a graduate student and everybody telling me,
<v Speaker 2>you know, you got to be a professor and HD
<v Speaker 2>to being you know, a grant worker the Botanical Garden.
<v Speaker 2>So I saw how those people they don't then you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's just like the people in South Africa who didn't
<v Speaker 2>know that their workers of color were fluent in English
<v Speaker 2>and thought they didn't know understand English.
<v Speaker 1>And uh, that's so disconnected.
<v Speaker 2>Professor. I really admired an English ecologists really liked. I
<v Speaker 2>wish I had had really done ecology, but I was
<v Speaker 2>too much into individual organisms at that time. But uh,
<v Speaker 2>he uh was such a great guy. He was on
<v Speaker 2>my oral exam and and I probably did best in
<v Speaker 2>that area, but on that exam anyway, but uh, and
<v Speaker 2>he had like intellectual sores once a week in his
<v Speaker 2>house or whatever, and he and uh, and I just
<v Speaker 2>thought he was great. He always seen the open minded
<v Speaker 2>and pleasant and and and supportive. And then I worked
<v Speaker 2>at the Botanical Garden and and Wayne Roderick told me
<v Speaker 2>how he had been uh working there when uh, this
<v Speaker 2>professor was the director and he was studying at that time,
<v Speaker 2>he was studying mirabolous, as Wayne said, And that's stupid,
<v Speaker 2>that's stupid. Professor. He kept having me planning these plants
<v Speaker 2>in clay holes and they kept rotting. And he actually
<v Speaker 2>stomped his feet and jumped up and down at me
<v Speaker 2>when I when I, you know, tried to plant them
<v Speaker 2>properly so they would grow Jesus and so so he didn't.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, Wade Rodricks, you know, really knew how to
<v Speaker 2>grow plants. And and uh and and this professor knew,
<v Speaker 2>he knew how plants responded ecologically. He he ended up
<v Speaker 2>his his career studying the escaped cabbages. He called them
<v Speaker 2>feral cabbages that got onto islands, and then started filling
<v Speaker 2>out the ecology before me. Yeah, yeah, there's one that
<v Speaker 2>got to some island and it became something that the
<v Speaker 2>people living on the island used as a walking stick.
<v Speaker 2>It made really nice straight wood. And and we had
<v Speaker 2>we had them. And he had a what used to
<v Speaker 2>be is that uh uh you know a lot of
<v Speaker 2>professors and graduate students had growing projects. They had. It
<v Speaker 2>used to be a requirements you had to grow the plant.
<v Speaker 2>That said, that's I'm from that tradition that you need
<v Speaker 2>to grow the organism through its life cycles four to four,
<v Speaker 2>you know, before you knew it. And and so uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, Orange Duff had his greenhouse. Uh, this guy
<v Speaker 2>had his greenhouse for his feral cabbages and uh, but
<v Speaker 2>but you know that none of that occurs anymore. They
<v Speaker 2>they have the greenhouse in Oxford Track. Some bring collections,
<v Speaker 2>but then you know, they run out of use, so
<v Speaker 2>they make them give them to the botanical garden and
<v Speaker 2>then the garden kills them. We were killing the man,
<v Speaker 2>the other kill them. That was just hard. The first
<v Speaker 2>big kill I saw was, uh, did you ever know?
<v Speaker 2>Did you ever did you ever run into doctor game? No? Uh.
<v Speaker 2>He became a big wig in the Native plant society,
<v Speaker 2>but he was a He was a molecular guy who
<v Speaker 2>invented some profound molecular techniques. In my time, I went
<v Speaker 2>to one of his talks. He was one of these
<v Speaker 2>guys who was so shy he couldn't look you in
<v Speaker 2>the eye, and he talked so soft. He was from England,
<v Speaker 2>but anyway, he he was. He was very, very molecular.
<v Speaker 2>But at the same time he he went around these
<v Speaker 2>islands and collected that Gesneria genus. That is kind of
<v Speaker 2>a mystery how it got to all these islands.
<v Speaker 1>What is that? Which one is it to you? Remember?
<v Speaker 2>No, but I I know it's I probably could get it.
<v Speaker 1>The old world.
<v Speaker 2>Old World islands.
<v Speaker 3>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, he had gone to them like Solomon Island, some
<v Speaker 2>of them are from and uh. But they all had
<v Speaker 2>really tiny, reduced flowers and they grew like crazy. But
<v Speaker 2>I mean, no one else had them. Probably a lot
<v Speaker 2>of them hadn't been grown. And we had them all
<v Speaker 2>in this one greenhouse. And finally the manager said, I
<v Speaker 2>just hate these plants. They need constant renewal. You know.
<v Speaker 2>They built the puts immediately and will team and and
<v Speaker 2>and okay, don't water them on weekends Martin Jesus, And
<v Speaker 2>they all eventually died. Tried to keep them alive. I
<v Speaker 2>even tried to contact doctor Game and say, you machine,
<v Speaker 2>could these plants somewhat else? But uh, I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>because they because there was no interaction between these strada,
<v Speaker 2>these isolated strada in the society of the Botanica garden.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they they the horticultures weren't weren't aware of
<v Speaker 2>the interest in the plant, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know, the scientific worth of a why is.
<v Speaker 2>Berkeley The scientists weren't aware of how much work they
<v Speaker 2>were provided to people who were poorly supported. If they
<v Speaker 2>wanted to keep those plants alive, they needed a horticulturist
<v Speaker 2>for them. But they were, you know, they were only
<v Speaker 2>seven horticulturests for the whole world of that garden.
<v Speaker 1>So that why I have a question. Why why is
<v Speaker 1>Berkeley it's so unique? Is a botanic garden, Like, it's
<v Speaker 1>so unique. I go to most botanic gardens and they'll
<v Speaker 1>have like a quarter of the garden is for science,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in other parts of this country, and then
<v Speaker 1>seventy five percent of the garden will be just the
<v Speaker 1>corny shit like stuff out of the garden section of
<v Speaker 1>home depot planted in uniform lines, five hundred of the
<v Speaker 1>same thing because it applies color or whatever. Just horrible
<v Speaker 1>shit like board rich housewife shit. But Berkeley's not like that.
<v Speaker 1>Berkeley's got the rose garden, which I hope they get
<v Speaker 1>rid of one day. But aside from that, they don't.
<v Speaker 2>They'll never know. They won't get rid of that expanded.
<v Speaker 1>I fucking hate horticultural roses, ornamentous.
<v Speaker 2>They're ridiculous to have. Yeah, well, the thing is, uh, well,
<v Speaker 2>the history of that garden is of God to be
<v Speaker 2>of importance, and the history of a gardens that wasn't
<v Speaker 2>open to the public for many, many years in when
<v Speaker 2>it first existed, and that it was its purpose was
<v Speaker 2>growing the material used in classes for teaching. They didn't
<v Speaker 2>have a greenhouse on campus. And this is back in
<v Speaker 2>the days when the whole that whole area belonged to
<v Speaker 2>the university, and the forestry planted all those groves that
<v Speaker 2>are wildly dispersed all around the canyon. So, uh so.
<v Speaker 1>It literally started as a study garden.
<v Speaker 2>Well, it wasn't started as a garden. It was started,
<v Speaker 2>uh you know, to grow plans for research and for teaching,
<v Speaker 2>and that you know, they had a van go up
<v Speaker 2>and you had your list of plants for the classes,
<v Speaker 2>and they had a person collect them from that part
<v Speaker 2>of it. And then you had the professors doing their
<v Speaker 2>plant research had greenhouses and had their collections in them,
<v Speaker 2>and and and their directorships was always drawn from the faculty,
<v Speaker 2>so they also they've had a series of people in
<v Speaker 2>charge of that facility that were interested primarily a scientific use.
<v Speaker 2>And I don't know, you know, I don't know exactly
<v Speaker 2>the lineage. I know a couple of the directors that
<v Speaker 2>actually knew personally. I mean, I think orn Duff did
<v Speaker 2>a lot for that garden. He was a really prolific
<v Speaker 2>collector of wild plants that he and he liked to
<v Speaker 2>grow his own plants. He got some pleas for me
<v Speaker 2>that he planted across from his house in the centerstrip
<v Speaker 2>of the road and U and.
<v Speaker 1>But just the it's laid out though, it is just
<v Speaker 1>so unique. I mean by I don't know, I don't
<v Speaker 1>know who came up with that.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know who came up with that, And it
<v Speaker 2>had to have been before orn Duff because ah, and
<v Speaker 2>I don't know the sequence of them being established. Obviously,
<v Speaker 2>the Asian one is old.
<v Speaker 1>It's the same thing that like the Natural History Museum
<v Speaker 1>does with dioramas of animals. You know they'll have like
<v Speaker 1>the African section and then you know the North America
<v Speaker 1>section or China. I mean, you can literally get an
<v Speaker 1>idea of what animals you'd see in these places. It's amazing.
<v Speaker 2>So it must come out of the Natural History Museum
<v Speaker 2>kind of way of thinking.
<v Speaker 1>It's so fucking great though it's like a living museum
<v Speaker 1>though it's a museum that's alive.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you couldn't do it in many other climate zones.
<v Speaker 2>The climate there's I mean, but there's this endless they
<v Speaker 2>could be all along the coast in California, you could do.
<v Speaker 2>I have to say, you know, it's it's clearer, uh
<v Speaker 2>you see Santa Cruz because you know there's that director.
<v Speaker 2>It was the founder that died not long not that
<v Speaker 2>long ago, and uh, I'm not sure. He was kind
<v Speaker 2>of an odd guy, but you know it does follow
<v Speaker 2>that because the Australian section is the older. They still
<v Speaker 2>don't have a curator for a South African section. They
<v Speaker 2>and and Brett really developed a big emphasis on the
<v Speaker 2>on the on native plants. But but that that the founder,
<v Speaker 2>great Collette. I mean, it's it's it's basically his idea
<v Speaker 2>that place. So it comes out of his brain, which
<v Speaker 2>eventually became psychotic. But but it was very it was
<v Speaker 2>very good.
<v Speaker 6>Is he still alive, No, no, no, but he was
<v Speaker 6>he was like doctor Game and that he couldn't look
<v Speaker 6>at you, and he was very flighty and quick, quick
<v Speaker 6>speaking and soft whatever.
<v Speaker 2>But and he's such a.
<v Speaker 1>Berkeley thing too. I've noticed that it's that's such a
<v Speaker 1>common trait among very highly educated this maybe slightly mentally ill,
<v Speaker 1>been an academia forever, no.
<v Speaker 2>Shame, Yeah, I'm just saying asper.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe, But.
<v Speaker 2>To survive at Berkeley, You've also got to be a politician.
<v Speaker 2>You either have to be profound and do something, and
<v Speaker 2>they'll recruit you do that. They recruited her.
<v Speaker 1>The glimpses I've got into that world were just so
<v Speaker 1>fucking I mean, the the the intellect and the information
<v Speaker 1>and the knowledge is amazing in the education, but all
<v Speaker 1>the like inner politics and personalities of that world are
<v Speaker 1>so thoroughly revolting. Not only that, but I could not
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't exist. I couldn't do that. I get fucking
<v Speaker 1>thrown out. I mean, no way, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, I I it was. It didn't I think
<v Speaker 2>maybe I would have completed at Davis, where it was
<v Speaker 2>less you meet. At least it was my impression that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if Berkeley, the kind of people you were
<v Speaker 2>working with definitely were thinking of their career a lot,
<v Speaker 2>and not necessarily a pure science. And and they and
<v Speaker 2>they and they were drawn there by the because of
<v Speaker 2>the prestige.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, there's that that primate social hierarchy again, that.
<v Speaker 2>Was very corrupting, I think, and people would do things
<v Speaker 2>to each other for that. Uh that. Uh yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>got knife and I know other graduate students who got
<v Speaker 2>knifed by other graduate students see see once.
<v Speaker 1>Again though, And that's that's something I hear in about
<v Speaker 1>academia all the time. That's another case of this this
<v Speaker 1>fucking primate neurochemistry that we think we don't have.
<v Speaker 2>Well, here's what they tell you as a graduate student.
<v Speaker 2>They say, Uh, academia is like, well, I can remember
<v Speaker 2>my my my general advisor saying, you know, Martin, now
<v Speaker 2>you're not being aggressive enough. Uh. Academias is very much
<v Speaker 2>like real estate. You have to find. You have to
<v Speaker 2>pick an area, a focus that you that is fertile
<v Speaker 2>for continued work, and you have to own it. You
<v Speaker 2>have to defend it against anyone. You You have to
<v Speaker 2>fight for your for your property, for your intellectual property
<v Speaker 2>that you're going to manage throughout your life and mine
<v Speaker 2>for papers. So get so get your spot and keep
<v Speaker 2>other people away.
<v Speaker 3>However, then they were more recently the requirement to get
<v Speaker 3>to get tenure, when when I was a graduate, to
<v Speaker 3>get tenure you needed to.
<v Speaker 2>First of all, avoid having an affair with your graduate students.
<v Speaker 2>You need you needed to I saw one guy thrown
<v Speaker 2>out for that. But you need to publish. It was
<v Speaker 2>publishing three really good peer reviewed papers and and and
<v Speaker 2>then you know, just doing all the grunt work of
<v Speaker 2>the of the department. Of course, the new the professors
<v Speaker 2>didn't have tenure. They had to you know, be in
<v Speaker 2>charge of the colloquia, They had.
<v Speaker 7>To be in charge of the of the of the
<v Speaker 7>botany keys, and and and and they had to you know,
<v Speaker 7>run seminars and stuff at the same time that they
<v Speaker 7>were supposed to be doing this.
<v Speaker 2>Potent research and publishing. And so a lot of them
<v Speaker 2>didn't have wouldn't take graduate students. Uh, some of them did, uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, worked out. But but now you know, I
<v Speaker 2>got to know her because she we I had boarded
<v Speaker 2>part of the teaching collections Hoaracoota State while they was
<v Speaker 2>building the new horrible greenhouses at the Oxford Tract. And
<v Speaker 2>that's when I was in the same had some of
<v Speaker 2>the same greenhouse space with her, with her ginger collection,
<v Speaker 2>and uh and so I didn't mind, uh, you know
<v Speaker 2>over you know, the people actually in charge of that.
<v Speaker 2>I was told by someone a plant pathologists, Oh they
<v Speaker 2>know nothing about plants, Martin. Because they were keeping the
<v Speaker 2>night temperature like an eighty degree, so the rights for
<v Speaker 2>the experiments would grow faster for everything so but but uh,
<v Speaker 2>now where was I going? Ken's Oh, Keny, she she
<v Speaker 2>had she took on like ten graduate students, and at
<v Speaker 2>the same time it was required that she was going
<v Speaker 2>to have nine of these profound, you know, published peer
<v Speaker 2>reviewed papers in her five years waiting for tenure. So
<v Speaker 2>I think that I think Berkeley fucked her over what
<v Speaker 2>she's doing pretty well. But but so they so they
<v Speaker 2>so they had to cooperate. So what they do is
<v Speaker 2>they circulate their papers among their their group as a
<v Speaker 2>group that know you well, and and they all and
<v Speaker 2>they all, you know, like they all change one sentence
<v Speaker 2>or have one contribution, and so they can all be authors.
<v Speaker 2>So now these papers have like twenty authors all the time,
<v Speaker 2>because everybody's signing to get their name on as many
<v Speaker 2>papers as possible.
<v Speaker 1>Oh god, that sounds I just I just want to
<v Speaker 1>get out there and do field botany. I'm so glad
<v Speaker 1>I don't have to deal with any of this ship
<v Speaker 1>and that, you know, my my stream isn't that dependent
<v Speaker 1>on this or on publishing or I can't.
<v Speaker 2>You've done well from having to work for the railroads.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it was I think that was the way to go.
<v Speaker 1>And you just keep your passion as a as a side. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and make sure they make sure that you have time
<v Speaker 1>for it though too, you know, devote your life to it.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I don't know, but I I, uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>how is it? Did it that those astro lipis sports
<v Speaker 1>I sent you? Did you did you try to germinate them?
<v Speaker 2>I have it. I'm sorry, I'm just totally overwhelmed. I did.
<v Speaker 2>I did plant, I did. I did distribute, which is
<v Speaker 2>something I don't do enough of. I distributed the collections
<v Speaker 2>I made in New Caledonia.
<v Speaker 1>So how was your time out there?
<v Speaker 2>Uh? It was a short trip, but it was great.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't get up to the top of any mountain.
<v Speaker 2>We did find where we I guess the entrance to
<v Speaker 2>Mount Move. It's close to a former mental hospital. We
<v Speaker 2>went up there. Uh, but we didn't have time. So,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I saw the McKee, I saw the rain forest.
<v Speaker 2>We went up to Texas at all No and and
<v Speaker 2>then I was told that going out Mount MoU I
<v Speaker 2>would that I could have, but that would have, we
<v Speaker 2>just didn't have time to do it. That was kind
<v Speaker 2>of you know. Some Robin Paraw was going with Lafertis
<v Speaker 2>from Greece and and and they invited us to be
<v Speaker 2>thet the same time, and and so that that was fun.
<v Speaker 2>And but they Robin couldn't go into the field. She's
<v Speaker 2>I mean, she's eighty, I guess. But it was still,
<v Speaker 2>you know, wonderful. I think that one of the well,
<v Speaker 2>the McKee was great, so hot. But but we went
<v Speaker 2>up to this place called the Arcaria Forest Park, which
<v Speaker 2>is did you have you did you go there?
<v Speaker 1>Was it planted or is it native?
<v Speaker 2>Or is it the Oh no, it's native, and it's
<v Speaker 2>all it was all surrounded by mines and actually if
<v Speaker 2>you go online, it says it's permanently closed. Oh but
<v Speaker 2>we went up there and there was no one there
<v Speaker 2>and we went around and it was it was our
<v Speaker 2>carriu for.
<v Speaker 1>That thing's incredible.
<v Speaker 2>It was amazing. It was all misty, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>there were dozens and dozens of shrubs unknown to me.
<v Speaker 1>Why why do you think, why do you think there's
<v Speaker 1>that monocollus habit? Why do you think that's so common
<v Speaker 1>out there, you know, growing this long, stocky Doctor Seuss
<v Speaker 1>looking place. Because it's not just the air carriers that
<v Speaker 1>do it, and a large number of plants do that.
<v Speaker 1>And I also saw the same thing and minas your
<v Speaker 1>eyes Brazil, which is a similar climate, you know that
<v Speaker 1>seasonal dry.
<v Speaker 2>Right right, Well, it's also common in fain Boss. And
<v Speaker 2>what they say, what they say in fain Boss is
<v Speaker 2>that it they that it's it's protection against rodents getting
<v Speaker 2>the seeds at the top, that the stems are kind
<v Speaker 2>of wouldn't support them.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah maybe, but there were No, that's not.
<v Speaker 2>True, but that's not true for these woody ones.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's I think it's something to do with the soils,
<v Speaker 1>the nutrient poor soils, whether it's.
<v Speaker 2>Are just yeah, being economical, but you do to get
<v Speaker 2>up there, so you get pollinated and you get your
<v Speaker 2>seeds out.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, And I mean I know some guy that
<v Speaker 1>the mono, the monos habit among New Caledonian plants. But
<v Speaker 1>I saw the same thing in Brazil. You know, really
<v Speaker 1>weird cool, uh you know, really.
<v Speaker 2>There's mellow like that there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah, you know about the lichnoferas asked the
<v Speaker 1>rac the vernonia relative there there are vernonias that look
<v Speaker 1>like spruces. It's the the fucking weirdest thing.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, yeah. I have to get there someday. I
<v Speaker 2>hope i'll get there.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, yeah, Brazil was great. It's so it's
<v Speaker 1>so chill, you know, it's uh a lot of people, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean the dominant culture has no interest in their
<v Speaker 1>native plant of course, but there's a lot of good
<v Speaker 1>botanists at the university. But you know, I think about
<v Speaker 1>that all the time. I mean it's just you know,
<v Speaker 1>the more I travel, the more I just see like
<v Speaker 1>people just don't the again, it's this disconnection. It's it's
<v Speaker 1>the lack of respect. I mean, does something need to
<v Speaker 1>be divine to have for humans to have respect? You
<v Speaker 1>need to create like a cult around it for people
<v Speaker 1>to have humans to have respect around the living world
<v Speaker 1>or what you know. I just how you could live
<v Speaker 1>in a place like that and not be amazed at
<v Speaker 1>the plant life at all those cool bromeliads on the
<v Speaker 1>Insulbergs and the eraicarrias and it's just wild to me.
<v Speaker 2>Well, wherever, forever where I mean, it's true that wherever
<v Speaker 2>Europeans went there was complete disregard for the for the
<v Speaker 2>native plants. But you could say that the same of
<v Speaker 2>the Polynesians. They had their they had their plants, they
<v Speaker 2>carried in their boats, and when they got to a
<v Speaker 2>new place, they you know, chopped down and did their
<v Speaker 2>agriculture and put their plants in so without report.
<v Speaker 1>Do you think that disregard then as a product of
<v Speaker 1>life in cities and large groups like it's it's if
<v Speaker 1>we're just if it's not right in front of us
<v Speaker 1>and we're not dependent on it. I mean, we're always
<v Speaker 1>the right, but if we can't see that we're dependent
<v Speaker 1>on it, we just don't care about.
<v Speaker 2>Part of it, for sure, that's part of it. Sure,
<v Speaker 2>But also it comes from agriculture because, uh, the plants
<v Speaker 2>are sustain you are not the plants that are there,
<v Speaker 2>and they're they're considered trash, you know, like the people
<v Speaker 2>who want lumber considered the vermeiliads and burns and stuff
<v Speaker 2>on the trees just a hassle and they shave them
<v Speaker 2>off and burn them.
<v Speaker 1>But but it's again, it's it's that ship for brained
<v Speaker 1>lack of awareness, not knowing that every piece in that ecosystem,
<v Speaker 1>you know, is there for a reason. It's a function
<v Speaker 1>in cog and this this grandiose living machine with all
<v Speaker 1>these moving parts.
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah, well I would say that it's very few
<v Speaker 2>people that are thinking like that these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean they're thinking they want they you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>just they need the wood and it's an impediment to
<v Speaker 2>the wood, or it's in it, or it's an impediment
<v Speaker 2>to growing crops. And that there's a lot of people
<v Speaker 2>who are complete because you could call it utilitarianists, and
<v Speaker 2>they and then they regard it. They they don't realize
<v Speaker 2>that that it's that is part of a larger structure
<v Speaker 2>that supports them, and and and so they consider it
<v Speaker 2>totally useless and expendable.
<v Speaker 1>Right, But that this is this leads me to the other.
<v Speaker 1>The other realm of thinking that that always irks me
<v Speaker 1>is is I hear this and it's another talking point
<v Speaker 1>here in social media is that it's it's just capitalism.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm not defending capitalism, and I'm certainly not defending
<v Speaker 1>you know, some of the these fucking evil firms or
<v Speaker 1>tech or companies or you know, venture capitalists, but it's
<v Speaker 1>very clearly not just capitalism.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I agree with you. I agree with you.
<v Speaker 2>I think capitalism supercharges the error, that the problem the
<v Speaker 2>focus that it's on YouTube tell and making and and
<v Speaker 2>you know, making money, so the capital capital doesn't go
<v Speaker 2>to conserve anything. Capital in the capitalist system needs to
<v Speaker 2>be used to make more capital.
<v Speaker 1>There's no incentive to conserve anything in capitalism. But there's
<v Speaker 1>no incentive to conserve anything in socialism or fucking you know, there's.
<v Speaker 2>There's no there's no incentive in agriculture, which is our
<v Speaker 2>basis of everything. So I think it comes from agriculture
<v Speaker 2>where you developed. You know where you're when you're a
<v Speaker 2>hunter gatherer, you you know, you learn so much about
<v Speaker 2>the plants that almost everything is useful. That you have
<v Speaker 2>a lot of useful plants, right, and and and people
<v Speaker 2>started out just protecting those and then they learned to
<v Speaker 2>plant more of them, and when they learned to plant
<v Speaker 2>more of them, then there was displacement, right.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean it's so so you arrived, So the
<v Speaker 1>human arrives at this mindset where the living world there's
<v Speaker 1>a reverend sport when they're a hunter gather. But obviously
<v Speaker 1>we don't want to live as hunter gathers. The question
<v Speaker 1>now is how do we take that same reverence with us.
<v Speaker 2>Well, we can't live as hunter gatherers.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, absolutely not, But how do we take
<v Speaker 1>that mindset?
<v Speaker 2>At this point I wouldn't mind it.
<v Speaker 1>How do we take that mindset though, that reverence for
<v Speaker 1>the living world with us into our technologically advanced civilization,
<v Speaker 1>so that we don't, you know, ship where we eat
<v Speaker 1>and destroy this living machine. That's that's what I wonder,
<v Speaker 1>because that would be enlightenment.
<v Speaker 2>Well I'm glad you're thinking about it, because I don't
<v Speaker 2>know how that is exactly what you would want to solve.
<v Speaker 2>But I don't know how it can be solved. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, people are going to defend with to nail
<v Speaker 2>their economic you know whatever, supporting them economically.
<v Speaker 1>But wouldn't there be a way, I mean, how do
<v Speaker 1>you show them that there's a way to have your
<v Speaker 1>cake and eat it too. You don't need to take everything,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean, like you can you can
<v Speaker 1>make space for all, for this whole, you know, but
<v Speaker 1>but you don't need to take everything like when you're
<v Speaker 1>when they were.
<v Speaker 2>Locked and every life is every life is sacred.
<v Speaker 1>See, there we go. It's a it's at innate anthropost
<v Speaker 1>centrism again. But you know, I'll tell you where I
<v Speaker 1>how I arrived at this was I was just maybe
<v Speaker 1>just so misanthropic and so revolted by everything I saw
<v Speaker 1>around me growing up that this was such a nice
<v Speaker 1>answer to it, and so I started seeing the innate
<v Speaker 1>worth in it. You know, how do you get people
<v Speaker 1>with without being misanthropes to see the innate worth? I
<v Speaker 1>don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if if there was some kind of
<v Speaker 2>educational structure that young people went through, and I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but we don't.
<v Speaker 2>There's so much inertia with what we've got going that
<v Speaker 2>is certainly there's no solution in.
<v Speaker 1>No, No, we're already so far we're cooked.
<v Speaker 2>I think, well, I don't.
<v Speaker 1>Think we're cooked, but I think we're going to have
<v Speaker 1>to hit a wall at some point and maybe then
<v Speaker 1>there'll be an opportunity for learning. But it's the same
<v Speaker 1>way no alcoholic, very few alcoholics quit or addicts quit
<v Speaker 1>their behavior on their own. They have to hit rock bottom.
<v Speaker 1>And I think there is an addictive elopment bad behavior
<v Speaker 1>as a civilization. But I mean, yeah, there's also certainly
<v Speaker 1>a lot to say for education. But I mean, look
<v Speaker 1>at you know that one of the richest countries in
<v Speaker 1>the world, the US, and look at what we've done
<v Speaker 1>to educ cation. I mean, we're a society of dummies
<v Speaker 1>now because we've.
<v Speaker 2>Because of the stratification and you got this bunch of
<v Speaker 2>people that that want drones. They want they we don't
<v Speaker 2>want people educated.
<v Speaker 1>They want thrones. Yeah yeah, yeah, they don't.
<v Speaker 2>They don't think they don't. They have They have a
<v Speaker 2>real contempt for human potential, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And I think it's bad for the eco, for this
<v Speaker 1>economic model that we have consumerism and price gouging and
<v Speaker 1>inflating real estate prices and this this may believe worth.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's very bad to have too smart of
<v Speaker 1>a populace. I think it's not beneficial because they're going
<v Speaker 1>to come around and realize I getting fucked.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, yeah, I just I think that there
<v Speaker 2>was a lot more potential earlier in my life, when
<v Speaker 2>they were more when there was a capacity to protests.
<v Speaker 2>You know, just imagine if people, if there was enough
<v Speaker 2>awareness of the big issues, and if people could all
<v Speaker 2>get together, all of them and just have a general
<v Speaker 2>strike like like it used to happen in France. I
<v Speaker 2>think for the example of protests and exerting power with
<v Speaker 2>your government is uh, the French have something to offer,
<v Speaker 2>as vile colonials as they are. I'm kind of glad
<v Speaker 2>to see him thrown out of Africa somewhat yeah, but uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but I don't know that they're who throw
<v Speaker 2>them out will be any better, uh, because you know,
<v Speaker 2>in order, it's like it's like what happened to Poort Iran,
<v Speaker 2>And they were doomed because the Shaw that we put
<v Speaker 2>in there had such tight control and such focus on
<v Speaker 2>all the assets and everything that the only place people
<v Speaker 2>could organize was in the mosques. So you end up
<v Speaker 2>with Ayatolla uh running the show and fundamentalists. I mean
<v Speaker 2>we really yeah, yeah, we really fucked that country by
<v Speaker 2>by the only option for protests and and uh and
<v Speaker 2>and importantly organization for resistance was in the mosques, and
<v Speaker 2>out of the mosque come the the nightmare for their people. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they were you know, I don't know. In my time,
<v Speaker 2>we had good relationships with well, of course, we we
<v Speaker 2>ran Iran for the oil and we had the Shaw,
<v Speaker 2>and there was all this propaganda about in like big
<v Speaker 2>photo spreads on him and his family and Life magazine
<v Speaker 2>and how wonderful they were the Pallabis or whatever, and
<v Speaker 2>and there were uh, the graduate schools were filled with Iranians.
<v Speaker 2>I had a lot of a lot of friends and
<v Speaker 2>an undergraduate were from Iran. At Davis uh, and and
<v Speaker 2>it's just so sad that uh you know, they're they're
<v Speaker 2>all gone and that's not happening.
<v Speaker 1>That remarkable botany there too. I follow some I follow
<v Speaker 1>some Iranian botanists on social media, and I just I
<v Speaker 1>see the coolest, the coolest ship, you know, being.
<v Speaker 2>It's really yeah, well all kinds of our best orchard
<v Speaker 2>trees come from Iran.
<v Speaker 1>Well just the members of you know, base, the fertilarias
<v Speaker 1>they have, they're the fabaceous things that I talk about
<v Speaker 1>wild plants.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, yeah, I know, no, it's it's it's a
<v Speaker 2>great flora. It's it's it's got they got those swamps
<v Speaker 2>too down the south, and uh yeah, it's confusing that
<v Speaker 2>with someone, Yeah I think so. But yeah, I know
<v Speaker 2>it's a it's a great flora. And well, you know Texas,
<v Speaker 2>it's like Texas, Texas.
<v Speaker 1>There's some there are some of the credible ship out here, right,
<v Speaker 1>but it is god fucking.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's the most live there. But I guess
<v Speaker 2>it's I don't.
<v Speaker 1>Know how well the most honestly, the most depressing thing, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the most depressing thing is not the political differences. I
<v Speaker 1>don't care about that. I mean, I can I you know,
<v Speaker 1>I know Trump supporters I can get along with as
<v Speaker 1>long as they don't talk to me about and even
<v Speaker 1>religious people, they don't talk to them about shit, and
<v Speaker 1>I wouldn't talk to them about my shit too. I
<v Speaker 1>don't want to make that the focus. I take the
<v Speaker 1>good that I can find the people in roll with that.
<v Speaker 1>But the most depressing thing has just been the general
<v Speaker 1>plague of the entire Southeast and the sun Belt, which
<v Speaker 1>is just this miserable fucking car culture. Like streets that
<v Speaker 1>don't have sidewalks. You are destined if you live here,
<v Speaker 1>you are going to spend three or four hours a
<v Speaker 1>day in your car. Whether you like California, yeah, they're
<v Speaker 1>there too, Yeah, but I mean, at least in some
<v Speaker 1>of the cities out there you can there's the.
<v Speaker 2>Option there some public transit, yeah, or.
<v Speaker 1>Walking or being able to fucking bike. Like stuff is
<v Speaker 1>somewhat dense, you know. I mean, Americans have no idea,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they think that this is normal, that having
<v Speaker 1>a twelve lane road with a fucking parking lot every
<v Speaker 1>goddamn a football field size parking lot every three hundred
<v Speaker 1>yards is normal, you know, And just that scenery is
<v Speaker 1>so ugly. The billboards. The fucking it's all personal injury
<v Speaker 1>attorneys and car dealerships. I mean, shit like that. Just
<v Speaker 1>it kills me. It kills me.
<v Speaker 2>And you try to tell people how to rejects. I
<v Speaker 2>tried to reject them. I didn't get a license till
<v Speaker 2>I was thirty five.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, they're great for long distance, they're great for long distance.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean, it's just being trapped in one every day.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's a horrible way to live, you know, especially
<v Speaker 1>some people doing commutes that are ninety minutes two hours
<v Speaker 1>each way. Holy fuck, we did not advise.
<v Speaker 2>I lived on the Bay Bridge for twenty years, I guess.
<v Speaker 1>But it's but that's really I mean, but also but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but that was thirty minute. I mean, spending four hours
<v Speaker 1>a day in a car, four hours a day in
<v Speaker 1>a car is horrible for you, for your fucking physical health,
<v Speaker 1>not to mention your mental health. We didn't evolve to
<v Speaker 1>be sitting down. That's why you know, we live. We
<v Speaker 1>live in these landscapes that have made walking obsolete. That's
<v Speaker 1>why all the metabolic diseases we get, you know, come
<v Speaker 1>down with our brutal.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's so it's so unpleasant to walk in most
<v Speaker 2>places with the car dominance.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because everything's been built for Yeah, there's no sidewalks.
<v Speaker 2>It's just there's so much noise it raises your blood pressure.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's horrible. It's fucking horrible.
<v Speaker 2>Not the human scale is not there.
<v Speaker 1>And that's the thing. When you talk to people in
<v Speaker 1>Texas about this too, there's a there's like they get mad,
<v Speaker 1>They're like, how the fuck do you think we should? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>imagine walking Like there's like this resistance to it, Like
<v Speaker 1>have you ever left this state? Have you ever seen
<v Speaker 1>like what it's like to live Like it doesn't mean
<v Speaker 1>you have to live in the fucking hood or live
<v Speaker 1>in some congested, you know city, Like there's other options
<v Speaker 1>for infrastructure besides like you know, living in a congested
<v Speaker 1>shithole slum city versus living here, Like there's an in
<v Speaker 1>between where you can you know, even if they just
<v Speaker 1>built bike lane or like a bike path in between. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, every like to use as thoroughfares. Every I
<v Speaker 1>saw that in College Park, Maryland. It was like there
<v Speaker 1>was the big, ugly typical American. Uh, main not main street.
<v Speaker 1>It's not a main street at all. It's like an
<v Speaker 1>eight lane road with you know, cars and you know,
<v Speaker 1>commercial businesses, and then you know, half a mile east
<v Speaker 1>of that, going the paralleling it was a fucking bike
<v Speaker 1>path so you could bike, you know, completely free of cars,
<v Speaker 1>and the bike path went up and down. You could
<v Speaker 1>use it to get the businesses to do whatever, you know,
<v Speaker 1>so you'd have to bike on the on the street.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, there's methods of designing these things, but Americans
<v Speaker 1>are just we've been so indoctrinated and brainwashed, we were
<v Speaker 1>inherently against it.
<v Speaker 2>What are you going to China? I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm saving that for for maybe next year. I need,
<v Speaker 1>I need to do Asia at some point, but yeah.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm kind of interest.
<v Speaker 2>I'm interested in China. I mean the they really have
<v Speaker 2>some really incredible botanical gardens at this point.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of research, good researchers over there too.
<v Speaker 1>A friend of mine, Peter Bernhardt, studies at Orchids and
<v Speaker 1>you know, here's a bunch of colleagues there doing good work.
<v Speaker 1>It's they it seems like they put a little bit
<v Speaker 1>more money the government does towards actual you know, funding
<v Speaker 1>actual science. That's not just for technological gain, that's also
<v Speaker 1>just science for science is sick. You know, I might
<v Speaker 1>be totally wrong, but that's what that's what it seems like.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, I'm curious about China and were so actually wrote
<v Speaker 2>a grad I got, I got a lot of nice equipment,
<v Speaker 2>a teaching hood, and I started propagating ferns for him,
<v Speaker 2>and I produced him by the thousands. Really I gave.
<v Speaker 2>And I know she insisted on planning everything out. We
<v Speaker 2>couldn't sell anything, and she planned three hundred of micro
<v Speaker 2>leafit platy fill out. I just thought that was weird.
<v Speaker 2>But but anyway, I didn't realize how much resentment there
<v Speaker 2>was on John's part that I was doing this and
<v Speaker 2>and he couldn't since I could be there. But sometimes
<v Speaker 2>other horticultures would come and say, can you please do
<v Speaker 2>this for me? Kennish John has killed this ten twenty times?
<v Speaker 2>Could you do it? And I said, well, you know,
<v Speaker 2>sometimes I would do it, and then but then when
<v Speaker 2>John would be on the rag I couldn't do it,
<v Speaker 2>I'd tell him I can't do it or whatever. But
<v Speaker 2>one time the guy from South America was in there
<v Speaker 2>and and and was and John had killed the most
<v Speaker 2>gorgon just gunna ra that we'll never see again. It
<v Speaker 2>was finiature, it had translucent it had translucent Uh, what
<v Speaker 2>would you beat red leaves?
<v Speaker 8>And it was gorgeous and and and the guy for
<v Speaker 8>South America Country has said, can you can you do this?
<v Speaker 8>And John was in was in, was being He always
<v Speaker 8>looked like he was gonna punch you in the face.
<v Speaker 2>He was red in the face. And he talked with
<v Speaker 2>this restrained like he was restraining himself from killing you.
<v Speaker 2>And it was very tense. And I said, well, I
<v Speaker 2>can't do it now. So he gave it to John.
<v Speaker 2>And John