From the Vault: Sharks Don't Sink, with Jasmin Graham
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This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. We're out this week, so we have a vault episode for you. This is going to be Sharks Don't Sink with Jasmine Graham. This was an interview episode that originally published 7-16-2024. It's a fun chat. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going to be chatting with Jasmine Graham, a shark scientist and author of Sharks Don't Sink. This is a great book, and it is out right now in all formats. So I encourage you, if this interview grabs you, if the subject matter grabs you, especially if you're interested in sharks, to check it out.

This is definitely some great summer reading for you. So pick up a copy, especially if you are going to go out to the beach or in any way experience the ocean this year. So without further ado, let's dive right in. Hi, Jasmine. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. The new book, Sharks Don't Sink, Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, is out now in digital, physical, and audio formats. I really enjoyed it. It's a science book about sharks, but it's also a social advocacy book and a personal memoir. So I wanted to ask you, I'm going to ask you about all of these aspects, but I guess the best place to start is the simple question, how'd you become interested in shark biology?

I was always very interested in the ocean and I grew up fishing with my dad and come from a fishing family and so the ocean was always part of me. I didn't really think much about sharks. I wasn't one of those people that was afraid of them. I wasn't super obsessed with them as a kid. They were kind of just animals that existed.

But whenever I was in college working on my marine biology degree, I met a professor who studied sharks. And I started talking with him and doing some research with him. And I kind of fell in love with sharks. I did a lot of different marine science research while I was an undergrad. But I just kept coming back to sharks because I just think they're great.

so cool. They've been here so long. They have such neat adaptations. And I've always been someone that roots for the underdog. And they're very misunderstood. So I've always enjoyed working with them. Now, in the book, you discuss the challenges and limitations of the academic world. I think a lot of us outside of academia only have like a surface level understanding of things like publish or perish.

And so I might ask you to discuss that a little bit for everyone. But also, you know, I think it's easy for us outsiders to think about science and research as being, well, OK, this is like a pure logical thing. And we let ourselves forget that we have all these issues of politics and discrimination very much in play in that world as well. What are the challenges facing up and coming research scientists and scientists of color in particular?

Yeah, it's interesting that you point out this

perception that science is objective and without bias. And that's how science should be in its purest form. But obviously, science is conducted by human beings, and human beings all have biases, we have flaws, we're illogical sometimes. And so I think it's really hard for people in the science field, not just people outside of the science field, but even people in the science field, to come to terms with that, that this

area of research that we do. You know, we do the scientific method and all of that, and we like to think of ourselves as being objective. It's really hard for us to admit that our biases come into play in our scientific research. But that's something that we have to deal with because we

We've seen science be used for some really terrible things. We've seen science be used as an excuse for genocide. We've seen science create atomic bombs. We've seen science do all sorts of really not great things. And so we have to recognize that we have this responsibility as scientists to try to be objective and

but recognize that we are not entirely objective. And so we have to be critical of how we think, how we interact with each other and all of those things. Everything to who gets to present at a scientific conference or who gets to work in somebody's lab or who's invited to speak at this university, all of that has bias associated with it. And so we have to work really hard to be responsive to that.

What that looks like in terms of scientists from marginalized communities, it often looks like not getting as much mentorship opportunities. It looks like

not being in the club. There's a clear, these are the cool people in science and we all hang out together and we all talk. Then there's outside ring of people trying to get in to the cool club, into the inner circle as it will. Those in the inner circle have to be really mindful of those who are outside the circle trying to get in and making sure that they're accessible pathways to that.

Because science and academia, the way that it's set up, has a lot of potential for gatekeepers to solely decide who gets accepted into a PhD program, who gets published. We have this idea of peer review, which is really great.

If you assume that your peers are objective and going to be fair and just. And yes, there are a lot of people that give fair reviews, but there's a lot of people whose reviews are biased. They see somebody's name and they say, I don't know that I trust them.

that person just based off of their name. If it's a name that sounds feminine, if it's a name that sounds quote unquote foreign, you know, I've had people that are in different countries trying to publish work and they complain a lot of times that they get really unfair peer reviews and

that basically imply that because they are from a country in the global south, their science isn't as credible as somebody from Europe or North America. And so that's something that we struggle with. So those are just a few examples, but there's lots of areas where bias can creep in. And because we like to think of ourselves as objective, sometimes we choose to ignore those things and kind of stick our head in the sand. But we have to really confront it in order to make sure that science is actually

objective and equitable and just. Thank you for walking us through that. Could you talk a little bit about Minorities in Shark Sciences or MISS, how this came together, what sort of work it's doing, and where you'd like it to go in the future? Minorities in Shark Sciences is four years old. So we were founded in June of 2020. And

We actually met each other on Twitter, me and the other three co-founders, and we really wanted to create a sense of community. That's what it started out as. We want to create a sense of community where people feel like they belong in science, where people are able to build their science identity in a place where they feel that the rest of their identity can come along and they don't have to leave it at the door in order to be accepted.

And so that's sort of where minorities in shark sciences came from. Since then, it's grown to be so much more than just community. It's grown to be this sort of wave of change in marine science and shark science in particular, where we were astounded at how many people you did an open call of people

who is trying to get into shark research or marine science and feels like they are the first or the only person like them in the room, come and join us. And 500 people responded. That's a lot of people. And so having this movement build of, okay, now we have a responsibility to all of these people who are sharing their stories, who are pointing out these issues, who want support,

in their universities, in their academic institutions, in their organizations to bring these issues to the forefront. Because what we found is that a lot of people have been experiencing these things and have been trying to draw attention to them individually. And it's a lot of, "Oh, I think you're imagining that."

They maybe don't mean that, you know, all of these sort of but, but, but, but, but. And so that could be really frustrating to have people not believe you whenever you're trying to address something. But you can ignore one person. You can maybe ignore two people. Ignoring 500 people saying the same thing, that's really hard to do. You got to stick your head pretty far in that sand. And so that's sort of what this movement has become is giving voice to people who haven't

been able to have their voices amplified before, doing cutting edge research and making sure to elevate people who are doing research that maybe wasn't being respected before and being able to amplify that work and bring attention to it with this collective power that MIST as an organization has built. And then also getting to bring more people into the fold, making sure that more people get into that inner circle.

providing the mentorship experiences. So we do mentorship experiences, we do professional development workshops, we help people build skills, all of these sorts of skills that you don't learn in school, but people expect you to magically know how to do. And then also getting internships and fellowships and things like that.

while eliminating the financial barrier associated with that, because that's been a huge problem in the past is this pay to play where you have to pay someone to go work for them, which exists in marine science and is super common. But if you went to pretty much any other field of career, if you say wanted to go intern at Google, it would be absurd for you to pay to intern at Google. Google would pay you to intern at Google.

But in marine science, for reasons, lots of reasons, it's flipped where the expectation is you're going to pay for this. And so that makes it really hard for people to access those experiences. But they need those experiences to get the job, to get in that inner circle, to meet those people.

And so MISS is all about eliminating those barriers, introducing young people to marine science and the ocean. Early on, we serve what we call K to Gray. So we're really interested in bringing everyone in and making everyone feel connected, whether that means they want to be a scientist or they want to just advocate in their everyday lives.

we want to make sure that people have access to the information about what's going on in our ocean ecosystems because it affects all of us. That's awesome. Now, getting, I guess, more into sharks again, you spend a great deal of the book discussing the elegance of sharks, you know, from broad strokes about their appearance and evolution to biological specifics and species level details.

You know, I'm not going to ask you to go through all of that here. I encourage listeners to go check out the book. But in brief, why are sharks such an evolutionary success story? Why have they done so well and why have they changed so little? That's a great question and something that we as evolutionary biologists are really interested in. And we don't have all the answers. But something that's really unique about sharks is that

They've been around on this planet a really long time. And when I say a really long time, I mean before the dinosaurs, before we had trees, before Saturn had its rings. We're talking 400 million years of time, which I think is really hard for us to grasp as human beings who have been on this planet for a blink of an eye. But they've been here.

And pretty much not changing that much. The same basic body plan, same basic... In the time that dinosaurs became chickens, because closest relative to dinosaurs is a chicken, it's pretty wild to think that sharks kind of look the same and we went from a dinosaur to a chicken in that same amount of time. And so it's really cool that...

But it's also something that makes it really alarming when we think about losing them at the rate that we're losing them. So they've survived every mass extinction event thus far. Super volcanoes, meteor showers, you know, all of these things, ice ages, all of these things that other organisms didn't survive. They survived. But we're in the sixth mass extinction that's driven by people and they're dying at an alarming rate.

which we should all be concerned about because we don't know what the world looks like without sharks. Sharks have been here so long that we don't even know what happens to an ecosystem when they're not there. We have no idea what the consequences of that are. And it's also really interesting

upsetting to think that we as a species are more damaging to the marine environment than super volcanoes and meteor showers. That's pretty bad. And we need to start thinking about how we live sustainably. How do we coexist with all of these creatures that are here inhabiting the planet right now? Because we just got here. And

we might not last very long if we keep going the way that we're going. And so that's something that

I think it's really important to think about. And sharks have all of these really cool adaptations that we can really learn from. I mean, Michael Phelps had a whole swimsuit designed like the skin of sharks, and it was actually so effective that they banned it in the Olympics. Like just by copying how a shark's skin is designed, you increased your speed so much that it was banned at the Olympics.

That's wild. Nature has some really cool ways of figuring out how to solve problems. And sharks have really solved a lot of them. And so we can learn a lot from sharks, but not if they're not here. You talk about sharks as K-selected animals rather than R-selected animals and how that plays into their vulnerability. Can you walk us through that real quick? What does it mean to be a K-selected organism?

Sure. So when we think about the term K-selected, and that's a term that's been used for a long time, people are starting to transition away from it. But I think it's really good for this concept. You have an organism, think like a sequoia, grows for a really long time, gets really big. And that's great, you know, lives a long time, super long life, which is a strategy.

And then you think of like a mosquito that lives and dies pretty much within a couple of days. And so you are comparing those two things. And it's not that one is more effective. Mosquitoes are effective at existing. Sequoias are effective at existing. Until you introduce something like people and all the things that we do that,

causes these things that are supposed to be living a long time to not live a long time. And so these K-selected organisms, their strategy is live a long time, produce a lot of young over a long period of time, not just put all of your eggs in one basket right at the beginning.

When we have mosquitoes and things like that, they are selected. They don't live a long time, but they have a lot of young in that amount of time. And that's fine, whatever strategy works, until you start cutting down sequoias before they get to live their full life and reproduce as much as they should have if they lived their full life. Same thing for sharks.

It takes sharks a really long time to mature. So you think about people, we're also long-lived, don't reproduce very much. If we all died before we hit 20 years old, think about how many of us wouldn't have had children. Think about what that does to the population. We're supposed to live roughly 70, 80, 90. Some people live to be over 100 years old.

And you have time to have multiple children. Not if you die at 20. You don't have that opportunity. And so you can't replace yourself. And so that's what's happening with sharks is their strategy worked for a really long time until we had these other things come about that are now killing them and they're not living their full life expectancy like they should have. And so that's affecting everything.

It's affecting how many young are in the next generation. It's affecting the health of those young because we also have things like maternal offloading, which is where a mother shark has so much toxins, think mercury, think all of those things in her body that it starts being detrimental to her.

And the strategy for a K-selected individual is, "I'm going to get rid of these toxins in my next litter of pups. I'm just going to dump it all into them and they might not survive, but I will keep living and I will have more pups. So I will make the sacrifice of these pups so that I can keep living and continue to have pups," which is a great strategy, except for if you then are always accumulating mercury.

And now all of your pups are not healthy and you're continuing to live and reproduce, but the pups that you're reproducing aren't as viable because they have all these toxins in them. And so those are sort of things that you don't start to think about until you kind of dive deep into the ecology and how sharks work. And that's sort of what I like to talk about in the book so that people can understand, hey,

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So fishing is a big problem. We have overfishing, which is where they're taking more out of the population than can replace themselves. But then we also have bycatch. And bycatch is where they're not actually targeting sharks. Sharks are not the goal. Sharks are accidentally being caught. And so that I feel like is something that we can address.

It's not a matter of how do we feed these people? How do we make sure that these people have their economies stabilized? They don't actually want these sharks. They don't want the sharks. We don't want them to catch the sharks. This is a perfect way for us to come together and think, how do we keep sharks out of your gear?

And so that's a lot of what I start thinking about is bycatch reduction. How do we keep these species that people don't want? They don't want to eat them. They don't need them for anything. That's a huge problem where they're dying for no reason at all. We're not even using them.

And so that's one area. Another area with the overfishing is a bit more complicated, but still doable, is how do we cut down on the amount of product that we need? So we think about squalane. Squalane is the oil in sharks' livers. A lot of it's used in cosmetics and lotions and things like that.

Well, scientists have figured out a way to manufacture synthetic squalene. So we replace all of the squalene that's coming from sharks with synthetic. We've already cut out a good number of sharks' deaths. And so little things like that, simple switches that we can make in order to cut down on the amount of product that we use. I think people tend to focus on

other people as a means to change. So we think about

shark fin soup. That's what a lot of people like to focus on is, well, we need to stop the Asian people from eating shark fin soup. This is not an Asia problem. This is an everyone problem. And it's really easy for you to point at somebody else and say, well, it's their fault. We need to start thinking about what can I do? What can we do here to make changes? It's not a

about pointing fingers at people. And I think it's a very slippery slope. It's really easy to fall into racism and xenophobia and be like, these people that are not like me are the problem. Fishermen are the problem. Asian people are the problem. Indigenous people are the problem. It's never I'm the problem. We have to start thinking about how we are contributing to the problem because we all are.

And we can't just go pointing fingers at people, especially because the people that tend to have the fingers pointed at them are marginalized communities who don't have a seat at the conservation table when these discussions are going on. It's really easy to blame someone when they're not there to defend themselves. And so I always like to tell people, just be mindful of that when you're starting to think about conservation. Start with yourself first before you start pointing fingers at other people.

Now, in the book, you bring up the topic of beach renourishment. Is this something that threatens sharks in the wild? Beach renourishment is something that's really interesting because as we have people living on coastlines, we have kind of two, I guess, groups of people living on coastlines. We have people who are living on the coastlines because they don't have anywhere else to go.

And we have people that are living on coastlines because they want beachfront property and they want to look at the ocean. And so these are two groups of people that are often in conflict with each other because there's the people that have the beachfront property have money and power.

And the people who do not and are there because that's where they've been pushed, thinking about indigenous communities in Louisiana. A lot of indigenous communities got pushed to Louisiana in the parishes that are coastal that are now going underwater. And that is not where they intended to be. That is not where their native lands are. That is where they were pushed.

And then we have people, you know, that want to come and live in Miami and, you know, have their beaches and stuff. And so we have to think about this from like two perspectives, because there are renourishment things where we're trying to keep land available for people who have nowhere else to go.

And that's one issue. And there are lots of ways that we can think about how do we keep people where they are? How do we help them decide where they want to go and give them a place to go if that's what they choose to do? Then we have this other group of people who are like, I want white fluffy sand and a beach.

That is a different situation. And that's what I'm talking about. Just to clarify, that's what I'm talking about when I talk about renourishment projects being a problem. Renourishing a beach because you want your nice beach, your hotel, and your private beach is disappearing.

So that's, do we need to do that? I don't know. That's debatable. And so we have this issue where we put this fake sand, or not fake sand, but sand that's not supposed to be there in an area where the ocean wants to move it.

Mother Nature has decided this beach ain't going to be here no more. And when Mother Nature decides something, it's really hard to counteract that. And you need to have a really good reason for doing that because it's going to be really expensive and it's probably not going to work or it will work and it won't last very long.

And so what we have, like in Myrtle Beach, where my family is from, is we have these hotels and these owners of beachfront property saying, well, my beach is disappearing. And that's a natural process, but we're trying to stop it for economic reasons. And we put the sand here and then a hurricane comes, like Hurricane Ian.

came and they had just done a bee tree nourishment project, guess where all of that sand that they spent millions of dollars putting on that beach went? Mother Nature took it away. Mine. Nope, not supposed to be here. But where does that sand go? It gets dumped offshore. It covers up reefs. It covers up seagrass beds. It covers up all of these habitats where fish are living. And all of this sand just...

This whole beach just shifted into the water. And that's where we have an issue is the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away. Like you can put all the sand there you want to. If the ocean does not want that sand to be there, it is not going to stay there. And it's got to go somewhere.

And that somewhere is often covering important habitats. We have fishermen that I've talked to that say immediately after a storm, after a re-nourished area gets swept away, they can't catch fish. And that's just horrible.

terrible because that means all of these where did all these fish go all these fishermen that are relying on this all of these communities relying on this for food it's gone they can't access it until the sand starts moving further and further offshore which who knows how that's how long that's going to take and so these are things we have to take into consideration we make these decisions as humans because we are part of the environment the environment is part of us every decision we make

has an equal and opposite reaction. So we need to be making decisions

based on necessity, not on, I want my beach to look nice. Now coming back to just sort of the character of sharks, being in the water with sharks, the book is coming out in the summer, this episode's publishing in the summer, a lot of people are getting in the water, sometimes people are getting in the water maybe in the vicinity of sharks for the first time or the first time in a while. Do you think there are key things that the average person

person getting in the water with the sharks might need to learn about them or unlearn about them. Like what, what do folks often just maybe not seem to understand or need to understand a little better before they get in there with them? Yeah, there's just a lot of fear surrounding the ocean and sharks in particular. And I mean, there are tons of people that will not get in the ocean because they are that afraid of sharks and,

And I mean, I can give numbers and figures and statistics and maybe that affects people. Maybe it doesn't. You have this fear that's been built by years of watching these shark movies and hearing these news stories and all of this sensationalized things. And that's something that takes time to get over. And I think some of the best ways to overcome that is to

Do it. You just expose your therapy, get in the water, see that you're fine. And then you're like, okay, that wasn't so bad. I'll go a little deeper next time. I'll go a little deeper next time. And once you get in the ocean, you discover all of these amazing things the ocean has to offer. Once you start snorkeling and looking underneath the water and seeing all of these fish that are swimming around you and all of that stuff, you

hopefully the fascination with the ocean will start to outweigh that fear. And I like to kind of remind people, we say things and our language affects people's perceptions. And so I,

you know media all of that just being mindful of the way that we portray sharks so saying things like shark infested waters the the waters are not shark infested that's where they live it's if anything they're people infested because we're the ones that aren't supposed to be there you wouldn't say the sky is bird infested like they live there that's where they are

And, you know, the pictures that we choose to use when we have a story. I mean, someone will get nibbled by like a little tiny leopard shark and they'll be like, shark attack off La Jolla shores. It'll be like a great white shark. No, it was like the little tiny two foot little leopard shark and the person needed a bandaid. We don't need like this whole like thing. Yeah.

And yes, there are people who have bites. They have negative encounters with sharks. It does happen. But we have negative encounters with all sorts of wild animals. They are animals. We have negative encounters with each other. We, you know, it's, it's,

A fact of life that if things are in proximity to each other, eventually there will be a negative encounter. And it's something that I hope that with the love of the ocean and this increased desire to be in the ocean, similar to how we still get in cars,

even though we know that we could get in an accident. That's because our necessity, our desire to get from one place to another quickly and not have to walk outweighs our fear of getting in an accident. And that's sort of where we're going with kind of exposing people to how cool the ocean is, how exciting it is. And then that fear is kind of downplayed a little bit.

And I'm not saying that there's like a 0% chance that you're going to get bit by a shark. What I am saying is, wouldn't you rather experience this amazing thing rather than be cut off from it because you're afraid of this thing that's really not going to happen happening. And I also like to remind people, like I work with sharks for a living. I'm like around them all the time. I've touched them all the time.

doing things that they don't exactly want. Like you don't like for your dentist to be in your mouth. You don't like for your nurse to draw your blood. You don't like these things. They're like good for you. And like the sharks don't understand that sharks can't think like people and be like, Oh, this person's trying to help me. Look, they're removing a parasite. How nice of them. They're like, ah, why are you touching me? Ah. And so, um,

I haven't had any issues with sharks. If I haven't, I have way higher probability than the average person. So you're fine. You just walking in the water up to your waist, it's like, you're fine.

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So if chips are down, what's your favorite shark species? My favorite shark species is the bonnethead shark because they're adorable. It's also the first shark that I got to work with. And they were the first shark to be discovered to be omnivorous. So they eat plants and animals. Seagrass makes 40 to 60% of their diet, actually, which is pretty wild that this little shark is

is eating potentially more plants than they are eating animals and getting more nutrition from plants. And so, I mean, that just goes back to how cool sharks are. We have this one-dimensional view of sharks because you hear the word shark and you think great white, jaws, thorns.

mindless killing machine. But there's so much diversity that actually white sharks are the exception and not the rule. Most sharks are small. Most sharks are less than four feet long. A lot of sharks live in the deep sea. Some of them grow glow in the dark. Some of them have hammers for heads. Some of them eat plants. Some of them are pretty colors. Some of them are filter feeders. It's just, there's so much variety and we're really doing sharks a disservice by only thinking of them in this one way.

that would be like us thinking that all humans are, I don't know, six, five, or like, I don't know, Yao Ming or something like that. Like where they're not like,

We're not all like that. We have a lot of varieties. Some of us have different hair colors. We're different shades. We're different sizes. We have different interests. And it would be doing humans a disservice to narrow us down to like one type of person. So we shouldn't do that to sharks. Now that you pointed out it, it does feel like even in like science reporting, a lot of times like the shark diversity stories that kind of end up

poking their head up are ones about like gnarly looking teeth. You know, it'll be like, oh, look at the goblin shark. It's gnarly looking, you know, and maybe less so on, oh, here's a shark that eats, that is omnivorous. So that's a great point.

Now, in terms of your research, what shark or ray species are you working with the most right now? Right now, my work is mostly on understanding the effects of a harmful algal bloom called Florida red tide on sharks. And so I'm doing that work here in Sarasota Bay and Tampa Bay. And so a lot of the sharks that I'm working with are black tips, black noses, black

I still am working with bonnet heads a little bit, although not as much. And then we have scalloped hammerheads and great hammerheads as well. And so those are the main species that I'm interested in.

working with right now. I still am a part of the sawfish research. Right now, sawfish are experiencing an unprecedented die-off in the South Florida area where they're exhibiting this weird spinning behavior and washing up dead. We've lost quite a number of them, especially considering how small the population is already because they're critically endangered.

So there's not a lot of them. And so that's been a big concern. And so I've been kind of just helping where I can, giving my expertise where I can, since I have worked with them for a number of years.

Because it's all hands on deck right now. No one knows why this is happening, how to stop it, what's going on. And so we're all just kind of lending support where we can. So that's sort of an ongoing side project of mine built more out of necessity where we're trying to deal with this unprecedented event.

Now, in the shark sciences, obviously, they're going to be species that are hard to get to or rare in number. But in general, are there any shark species that are considered like understudied? Not so much because of their remoteness, just because like we just don't pay as much attention to them. Are there any stories like that in the shark sciences?

I feel like there are tons of understudied species and you ask a different scientist and they will give you a different answer. Like the, I mean, there's so many species of sharks, about 500 species of sharks. So we're not studying all of them. Some of them are in the deep sea. We can't get to them. Some of them are in areas where there's not a lot of support.

So as I mentioned, there are scientists in countries in the global south that are doing work

And that work is happening, but it's not making it into the mainstream publication system because of these biases that exist. So we have that issue where there are shark species that are being studied by someone, but we don't get to hear about it that much because their work is being suppressed or undervalued. And so that's,

one thing and then there's also some species that just aren't as glamorous like there are some species where people are like ah yes whale sharks i will give money to fund whale shark research if you're like i want to study i don't know the shy shark or something random people are like um

okay you know there's not as much flashy money um people want to spend money on things that are cool and glamorous and they're like really excited about people aren't really like

investing as much money in sharks that are like, just like super cash. So there's definitely like a not equitable distribution of funding. And so that also drives what people choose to study. Cause if they can't get funding, funding to study that animal, then they have to go and try to study something else. And so there's some of the less,

charismatic, I'd say, shark species that are not being studied as much. But I mean, there's also like tons of people that are working with sharks that are

like I said, aren't making headlines. They're not making it into the mainstream. And so that was part of what MIST is trying to do is amplify the work that's being done on some of those lesser known researchers and areas where people are doing work. In the book, you write so passionately about what attracted you to marine biology and the ocean, as well as the challenges you faced.

What advice do you have for any young people out there who maybe feel the same attraction to the ocean and to marine biology and are considering a career in science? I would say if you're considering a career in science, you should 100% go for it. And don't let anyone tell you that you can't do that. And don't doubt that you can. A lot of people think

Whenever I say, "Oh, I'm a scientist," people's first reaction, like nine times out of 10 is, "Oh, wow, you must be really smart." That's because we have this perception that scientists are smarter than other people.

And I'm going to let you in on a secret. We are not any smarter than other people. That is not true. Because what does smart even mean? I don't know. Like, I think there's a famous quote, and I can't remember who said it, but

It was, and I'll paraphrase, everyone is intelligent, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid. And, you know, we're not any smarter than anyone else. And so if you're like, oh, I want to do science, but I don't think I'm smart enough, throw that out. Because let me tell you, there are some not wise scientists out there. And...

Some of them are like really high up there, big shots. And they do some things that are illogical. So just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they're smart. And so you shouldn't think like, I don't think I'm smart enough to be a scientist. That's a myth. Scientists aren't any smarter than other people. I say as a scientist, I could tell you right now, I am not smarter than anyone else. And then people have this fear of,

well, if I become a scientist, I got to do math and math is scary. And I struggled with math a lot when I was in school. It was like my hardest subject. And I actually had to get through some of my math classes. I basically was in my teacher's class after school every day getting tutoring to make it through.

And so, like, you don't have to be good at everything to be a scientist. All science is, is asking questions and trying to figure out the answer. That's all it is. People put all this flair and hand waving and whatever, and that's all it is, asking questions, trying to figure out the answers. You can do that now. And wherever you are, whoever you are, you can ask questions and try and figure out the answers. You can do science.

That's all science is. Everything else is just flair. It doesn't matter what alphabet is after your name. It doesn't matter if you have a degree. It doesn't matter if you even know how to read. You can do science.

I have seen children, toddlers do science where they see ants walking and they go, where are those ants going? And I say, I don't know. Why don't you follow them and find out? And they will follow the ants and figure out where they're going. Guess what? That's science. They just did science. Can't spell their own name, but they did science. And so that's all it is. So don't be intimidated by it. Don't think that you have to be somebody special to do it. We're not special.

We're just like anyone else, people that do science. And if there's a scientist that thinks that they're special, they're just a little too overconfident themselves. They are not any more special than anyone else. So anyone can do science. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't. All right. Well, this has been delightful.

Before we close out here, I'll remind everybody again that the book is out now in digital, physical, and audiobook, right? You read for the audiobook, correct? I did. I did read for the audiobook. Awesome.

Awesome. So it's out in all formats. And then as far as minorities and shark sciences goes, where can people go to learn more about MISS, to get involved with MISS or donate to MISS? Yes. So we have a website. It's misselazmo.org, M-I-S-S-E-L-A-Z-M-O-R-O-G.

L-A-S-M-O dot org. Elasmo is short for Elasmo Brank, which is sharks, skates and rays. So if you were wondering what that was, Elasmo. And we're also on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. So you can look us up there. Awesome. Well, thanks for taking time out of your day to chat with me here today. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Thanks once more to Jasmine Graham for coming on the show. Again, you can pick up that book right now, Sharks Don't Sink. You can find it wherever you get your books, and it's available now in all formats. Thanks, as always, to the excellent J.J. Possway for producing this show. And if you would like to get in touch with us,

If you have suggestions for future episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, comments on past episodes, or just any other comments you want to share with us, well, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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