The Queerness of Nature, with Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
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Toyota, let's go places. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with Patricia Kayshian about her upcoming book, Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature, publishing next month and available for pre-order right now in all formats. You'll find a pre-order link in the episode description for this podcast episode, or you can look it up at

So it's a fun chat. We discuss queer ecology, some amazing examples from nature, and even brief discussion of the TV show The Last Office. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

Hi, Patty. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. So the new book is Forest Euphoria, the Abounding Queerness of Nature, a captivating text that melds scientific consideration of ecology and biodiversity with personal experience and insight. Tell us, how did this project come together? Yeah, so I started writing this book a few years ago. I have a degree in mycology. I have a PhD in mycology, the study of fungi. And I had recently finished my doctorate in

And throughout the later stage of my PhD, though, I started getting really interested in the philosophy of science and queer theory. And so I sort of started to explore those things adjacent to my more formal academic training in science. And I got really interested in sort of how science functions, how we produce knowledge, how we make sense of knowledge.

within the scientific system and how, like where the power of science lies, but also what its shortcomings might be. And so I'm someone who I would say I'm very like science positive. I think science is an amazing tool and a really powerful tool.

powerful way of knowing, but it also, you know, is a human endeavor and as such can be flawed. And so I was sort of interested in understanding what were the sort of limits of science and how does science and culture interact.

And as a mycologist, I'm studying a group of organisms that has historically been extremely maligned and neglected by science and by popular culture and perception. And I was really interested in the fact that even though scientists obviously strive for objectivity, I could find all throughout the world,

the science record around mycology sort of a unwillingness or reluctance to see their biology as fully as one should, meaning we were sort of the history of science is to sort of pigeonhole fungi as being organisms that are just like dangerous or deadly or disgusting

And there was actually a lack of objectivity in approaching this whole group of organisms. And as it kind of created a vacuum of knowledge. So I started to sort of be interested in, well, how did that come to be? How is it that a group of organisms could be treated so subjectively by scientists and

And what does that mean for sort of our understanding of them now? And so as I dug into that, I got really interested in sort of the history of mycology, you know, this feeling of fear and revulsion that a lot of people in particularly in North America or Western Europe have towards fungi.

And that brought me into sort of the realm of queer theory as well, which is, you know, the understanding of categories usually relating to sex and gender, but sort of how we make sense of what is quote unquote normal, what is quote unquote deviant. And queer theory could sort of was used as a lens for understanding this construction, these binaries that we construct in society about what is good or bad or what is normal, what's not normal.

I had started digging into that and was giving some talks on the subject. And then an editor reached out to me and asked, hey, do you want to write a book about queer theory and biodiversity? And I was like, yes, absolutely. So I started doing that in

I believe that was the spring of 2022. Awesome. So speaking of queerness, in the broader sense, how do we currently define queer and queerness at a human level? Because I feel like it's easy to sort of culturally absorb the term without really understanding its history and I guess you might say evolved meaning.

Sure. So I use queerness sort of as an umbrella term for life and behavior and ways of being that are outside of the heteronormativity.

But also as a way of invoking kind of a notion of a shared collective struggle towards liberation. So queer was, you know, used to be an insult or a pejorative term. And then people in that community took that back and sort of proudly self-identified as queer people.

particularly around the height of the AIDS crisis epidemic in the United States, and used that sort of queerness as a rallying cry to bring people from otherwise sort of disparate LGBTQ groups and bind them together and come together for the shared purpose of, you know, addressing the AIDS crisis and other injustices related to homosexuality and so forth.

So I actually think that queerness is a term that is not just about, I think you can be gay and not really embody queerness. And by that, I mean, I think that for me, the use of queer is always sort of tied to collective liberation. And so understanding your role in the collective and sort of

how you relate to systems of power. And I'm, you know, I'm sure other people have different definitions and that's one of the beauty of things that's beautiful about being queer is that, you know, sometimes you don't have to commit to one singular definition. But for me, that's how I sort of understand it. And I apply that not just to the human world in terms of liberation, but also liberation of non-human species and life systems on earth.

All right. And that brings us to queer ecology. How do we bring this definition of queer and queerness into the ecological world? And what's the history of queer ecology? So queer ecology is sort of a, you know, an emerging field, I would say. It's been there's been some writings around it for the past decade or so, but it's starting to take more shape. I think it's becoming something that people are sinking their teeth into a bit more in the last few years.

There are many dimensions to it. Up front, the most clear and concise element of queer ecology is the fact that many organisms are simply not binary or sort of heteronormative in their reproductive strategies. So throughout the animal kingdom, there's all sorts of same-sex mating behaviors, partnerships.

There are organisms that have multiple sexes that sometimes in the same individual or over a singular lifespan. In the fungal world, we have all sorts of reproductive strategies that are non-binary. So there is sometimes sometimes there are, you know, quote unquote, male or female species. But oftentimes there's multiple sexes or mating types depending on the population.

group. There are entire lineages of fungi that are just asexual for all we know. Prairie Ecology is interested in

exploring the biological reproductive strategies of different organisms and also the behaviors between organisms and sort of like bringing to the fore research that had been either neglected to be, you know, conducted or suppressed or sort of just overlooked regarding these sort of non-normal, you know, non-heteronormative reproductive strategies.

So that, you know, a lot of the arguments to shame queerness or same-sex behaviors or

it has been rooted in the fact that the claim that it's not natural, right. To be gay, it's not natural to be transgender or something like this, but we actually know that in, in throughout all throughout the tree of life, there are so many examples of these types of ways of being. So if the claim is that it's not natural, that's just not accurate. So part of it is just sort of a corrective against that claim. Now,

Often the goalpost is shifted by those who are homophobic or whatnot, but that has been a longstanding claim. So queer ecology helps sort of make that clear.

But then going further than that, getting into the little bit more of the theories and philosophies, it's also about understanding these constructions of categories. So like how do we, like how does science make sense of the world? Are there limitations to that worldview? Are there ways in which we've sort of blunted our understanding of nature because we've been steeped in a particular cultural lens, so particularly

Western European philosophies. So one thing I talk about a lot in my research and in my book is the kind of notion of an individual, right? So I'm a taxonomist. I'm someone who names and describes new species of fungi. So I definitely understand the utility of like a species concept or

drawing the approximate limits of an individual so we can kind of make sense of it and communicate about it. But there's also sort of like, I also understand that that's like a tool and a way of making sense in certain contexts. But sometimes to more deeply understand a really complex system, we might need to let go of certain rigid boxes that we've constructed. And so that can be a really challenging thing for people steeped in Western philosophical thinking.

And we really love the idea of an individual as a unit, as a structure. But for example, in fungi, we see oftentimes that these organisms are not really adhering to really clear lines of like, what is this body versus the other? Like what is this species versus the other? And often fungi are forming really complex webs of interaction, living, you know, in

basically living in symbiosis, you know, sometimes cells in larger bodies. And then it starts to challenge your ability to really like draw those lines when the more you sort of engage with a biological understanding of these really complex beings. So in queer ecology, we sort of are like bringing that to light. Like how do we make sense of the world if we kind of decompose some of the notions that we've long kind of clung on to?

And my goal with this is always to do better science, right? So ultimately I'm not trying to discard the scientific method. Again, I'm very positive towards science, but it's about like pushing us beyond the limits of current knowledge. Can we better understand the ecosystems around us, like how fungi form complex partnerships or how, you know, does soil function? Can we push past some of the limitations that we've imposed on our own scientific processes by not examining our own biases?

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

Yes, exactly. I think that's a really good way of a succinct way of putting it. Um, you know, so often I, I hear or like kind of detect, um,

a resistance to this, yeah, like to politicizing science or making, yeah, like adding this sort of like identity politics to science or something like this. But really, like actually when you examine the scientific record, you can see that it's already fraught with those things. There's all, and that's why I think the mycological example is really powerful because it's

So like even we have examples of like Carl Linnaeus, one of the founders of modern taxonomy, describing fungi as Rostici popperini, the poorest peasants of the vegetable class. Like that's an incredibly subjective way of looking at an organism, right? Calling it poor and a peasant and obviously filled with disdain. So that's not objectivity. That's his, he thought they were weird. He called them, you know, he categorized them as lower plants.

So obviously this was prior to our Darwinian evolution knowledge. So like I'm not holding that against him. But at the same time, that is still the fact of the matter is that a lot of scientists were Christian Western European men of high class. And those worldviews are present in science.

So I'm sort of look kind of treating this as like a way a corrective to that history. How do we go through that history and make sense of the what we know now, understanding that these people were like all of us, you know, limited.

Well, we're all limited in our capacity. And that's not a terrible thing, but it is true. And so sometimes people think that if you're kind of constantly thinking about sociology or your own identity, that you might be clouding your own objectivity. But I think it kind of actually can

function the opposite way, that it actually can make you more conscious of your flaws and what biases you might be replicating, because we all have them, right? It's not about saying someone's good or bad. It's just that we all are people and can be limited.

And so it's also not really, I think, that much about your own identity. I think that it's really about understanding how information moves. How do we assign value? How do we assign, how does power function to create meaning? And anyone is capable of sort of like exploring that, right? That's not, you don't have to have a particular identity to be interested in challenging that or like thinking through that critically. Yeah.

Yeah, because I feel like it's one of those worldviews where we're just in it and we don't necessarily see it. We're not necessarily aware of these limitations unless we sort of step outside of it momentarily, at least. Right. It's a good practice as a scientist, I think.

to kind of reflect on, even if you think your discipline is really, you know, not touched by human culture, I think it can be, and, and, and I would say some disciplines are much more in touch with that than others, but there's still like, I think it's a good reflection as a scientist. I think it can make you a more ethical, more grounded and more effective scientist to at least be like considering these, how this might function in your own work.

Now, coming back to the book, very early on in the book, you mentioned the 1996 French documentary Microcosms, which I think a lot of our listeners have probably seen, in spite, perhaps, of that sort of infamous American poster that featured the praying mantis with the sunglasses, which is rather out of keeping with the actual vibe of the film, the vibe of which you discussed. So I really love...

that film because it's so immersive in this world of insects and, and other arthropods. And, and I'm, I think that those animals are so often treated with contempt, right? So we, similar to fungi, there's these perceptions around insects and, and these, you know, invertebrate animals that they're creepy, disgusting. They're like unworthy of, of our care and love.

We don't have any coordinated system for ethics around insects, right? It's all like, actually, the ethic is really that you can kill them without mercy. And so I just find, but I find them to be so incredibly, well, they are, not just me who finds them this way, they are incredibly diverse. There are millions of species of insects

And they are these... It's a universe unto itself, right? And so what I like about microcosmos is that it really submerses you into that world and you start to see that these things are animals. Like, I think a lot of people...

know technically, and I'm sure most listeners to this podcast know that like insects are animals, but you can still like something about making the micro sort of macro, you really see like, oh, this thing has like all these ornaments and it has a behavior and it has a family and it has these, you know, and it has sex and like all it is like an animal world. I think we just reduce them to these very flat kind of negative categories otherwise.

So I love that it kind of creates this drama that you're like with the music and you're sort of in like these towering plants all around you. And you're kind of in this metropolis of this other world. And I think it makes them feel like dynamic because they are dynamic. They're species that have complex lives and probably feel all sorts of sensations that we've kind of typically experienced.

denied them so like pleasure and um maybe even pain and fear and we you know we don't know too much about insect um neuroscience um in terms of what sensations they're capable of but it kind of seems um crazy to me that we would just assume from the jump that they're unfeeling entirely like that doesn't make that doesn't really make scientific sense to me right um

And then there's also other arthropods and invertebrates. So I really love the snail snake.

sex scene where these two snails are there is like a gradual operatic situation where they are finding they find each other in the in the moss and then they are entwined their bodies together and it's just the opera crescendos as it is happening and it's just like wow these animals are really like experiencing pleasure like they're really like in this thing together and they're and also they're both

You're not sure what the sex is of either because they actually are both hermaphroditic. They both have both male and female reproductive organs in their bodies. So there is this queer, literal, reproductively queer element to them as well.

So I just it's a great film if you haven't seen it I definitely recommend just setting aside a couple hours and immersing yourself into this micro world. Yeah, I had seen it years ago and I noticed that it's currently on criterion channel So I pulled it up during lunch the other day Yeah, it's it's still gorgeous and and and this is something you touch on in the book as well it it has all

almost no narration. There's like a little opening narration, a little closing, but for the most part, like you're just immersed in this like visual world of the creatures studied here. Yeah. It's really beautiful. This episode is brought to you by Microsoft.

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So in the book, you bring up many examples of queerness in nature. Again, not exceptions to an imagined binary rule, but expressions of that abounding queerness that you get to in the title. What are some of your favorite additional examples to bring up in discussing queer ecology? I really...

obsessed with eels and they specifically the American eel that I talk about in the book. I think that they there's so much to their, their very, so they have a very queer body, right? So they are organisms that

spend most of their life as intersex. In zoology, we use the word hermaphroditic, but I know that humans prefer intersex. So I actually, I guess, I think that's probably the better term to use. So in the snail, sorry, the eel bodies are intersex in that they have both male or they have testes and they have ovaries.

for most of their life. And so you can't, you know, there was a lot of mystery around them in the early days of natural history.

trying to understand what, well, what are they, you know? And so a lot of scientists were determined that they must be either male or female. And so that sort of lens of trying to prove that they were one or the other dominated, um, investigations into their bodies and biology. Um, and one of those people researching, uh, eel sex was Sigmund Freud. Um, and I, so I write a little bit about his early days before he became, um,

interested in psychology or before he was studying it was studying natural history and he was someone who wanted to sort of understand what the eel sex situation was and spent actually much of his time dissecting the bodies of eels trying to find proof of like sort of one sex or the other and um

He wanted to find, specifically, he didn't understand where were all the males. So I think it was easier to find ovarian tissue, but it was harder to find testicular type tissues. And so he dissected hundreds of eels before finally finding some evidence that there were males or male genitalia.

sex organs. And he, some people think that this may have been this sort of pursuit might have given rise to some of his later concepts, like castration, anxiety and stuff like this, because he was maybe made anxious by the fact that this was not actually something he could easily find.

But eels are just on several levels, incredibly fascinating. And one thing that also I grew really interested in was the way that they

migrate. So they are spawned, all of the American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, so kind of near the Bermuda Triangle. And for up until very recently, this exact location was unknown and their whole sort of sexual reproduction was not witnessed or recorded by science.

And then the eels migrate from the Bermuda, like from the Sargasso Sea all the way up to the along the length of the North American eastern seaboard and enter into freshwater systems through rivers that reach the ocean and they swim upstream. And they can go pretty far. They can travel hundreds of miles within the freshwater systems there.

And I got to experience eels at when I was teaching at Bard College in the Hudson Valley. So on the Hudson River. And there was an eel monitoring project because eels have their populations have collapsed due to overfishing and pollution and habitat destruction.

So there was a monitoring project with Hudsonia, an environmental org, and I would take my students and we would volunteer to help them trap eels, document them, and then release them into the freshwater systems. And so I started learning about how eels do this migration. They make this trip from the Sargasso Sea with just...

basically only being about an inch long and they're totally translucent, except you can see through their bodies, you can see that their eyes and then their, their spinal cords. And, but they're just this tiny little fish that like swims for, for, it can take them over a year to swim from where they were born to these freshwater systems that the systems that their parents came from.

And so I was like, you know, started reading about how they are using magnetite, which is a oxidized...

iron material that's in and around their brains. And this is something that other animals have as well. It's best studied in fish like salmon, which also do these complex migratory routes. But magnetite is present throughout the tree of life. Even humans have it, but we're not sure exactly of its function in our bodies. But what's amazing about magnetite is that it is...

In the case of these complex animals, like multicellular animals, it's probably, it's believed to have been a bacterial origin. So it's likely arose from an endosymbiotic event that

So endosymbiosis is a process by which one species of a smaller size is engulfed by another larger species. And eventually over time, they become interdependent on one another through many generations.

And so this is the, this is how many of our organelles came to be. So mitochondria, for example, were used to be free living bacteria that were absorbed by another cell. And then instead of it being maybe eaten or just being sort of killed by that engulfing, it stayed alive and then persisted as a living cell within a larger cell. And eventually over many, many, many generations, they become, you know, like entangled with each other, um,

physiologically and energetically.

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

But what I kind of am bringing it back a little bit to queer ecology in a moment, which is that for most of a lot of scientific history, Western science was pretty resistant to this idea of symbiosis or to interdependencies or sort of that, you know, the individual could really be.

made up of many individuals and we are collectively a being that is not really discernible without the presence of all these other microorganisms and such.

So there was a scientist, an evolutionary biologist, Lynn Margulis, who was the person who brought endosymbiotic theory to the attention of science. And for many years, she was dismissed as being kind of just like...

Partly on the basis of her gender, but just also on the basis of the fact that this just seems so crazy. How could endosymbiosis really be the foundation of the human body? The noble, complex person, could we really be just a bunch of bacteria and fungi in a fleshy form? Right.

But over time, more and more evidence accumulated in support of her hypotheses. And now that is understood as a fact of evolutionary biology.

And so, but she was willing to sort of challenge the paradigm and push outside of like what is normal and what is accepted in the scientific discipline and at great personal, you know, risk and cost professionally. So I think that that part, that story of like how magnetite, okay, so then going back to the magnetite, there were these ancient bacteria that probably through just a, you know, random mutation started accumulating magnetite in their cells. Right.

And the magnetite is receptive to the magnetic fields of the earth. And so over time, these, what was probably just like, you know, a mutation of accumulation of this material became beneficial to that organism. They started to be able to sort of orient themselves to the magnetic fields of the earth and develop something of a magnetotaxis. So being able to move by magnetic fields

And so we have like chemotaxis or phototaxis and so magnetotaxis is another form of stimulation and response. So over time,

And we have there are these basically accumulations of these little packets of magnetite in a bacterial cell and they formed in a tiny like little chain. And that chain became almost like a compass needle that could move in response to the magnetic fields of the Earth.

And some ancestor of that bacteria was probably what was absorbed into another larger cell that then is deep in the tree of life of animals.

So a common ancestor of most animals probably had absorbed some sort of magnetotactic bacteria, and that's why we can find it scattered across all the tree of life. And so some animals have evolved these magnetostomes, these more complex structures within the

in which magnetite is found and they are basically sensory organs that, so like in salmon, for example, they, we know that there's the complex magnetostomes in and around their little noses and faces. And they use that to,

guide their migratory journeys from, you know, sea and freshwater. And so we think eels have that as well. And that's sort of how they're able to travel through the ocean for weeks and weeks and weeks, or oriented towards this sort of ancestral water that was probably somehow imprinted into the magnetostomes that they're using. So

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

They're sort of signaled into preparing for a journey back to the Sargasso Sea. And at that point, they replace all of their digestive organs, get sort of cannibalized and cellularly repurposed into sexual reproductive organs.

And at that point, typically they become, you know, they develop more fully ovarian tissue or more fully testicular tissues, or they can retain both. And then they make that journey back to the Sargasso Sea and they have a raucous, I guess, evening of sexual reproduction. So that is super queer in a sort of queer, like in a direct reproductive sense, but then also this sort of

you know, the history of endosymbiosis as being a kind of a rejected concept in the scientific establishment because it showed that these, you know, higher, quote unquote, higher level organisms were the kind of random events of these lowly microbes. And that kind of perspective is something that challenges like the agency of more complex beings and the human. Wow, absolutely. Absolutely.

there's another organism that you bring up. And I, and I have to admit, this is an organism that has long been one of my, my favorites, but at a, like a, a zoo tourist level, like I've never researched them for the podcast or anything. So I only really knew what was out there already, like, you know, going to zoos and was, you know, up there on the little sign and so forth, but the cassowary. Oh yeah. And granted there's a lot about the cassowary to, to catch your eye and to,

explain to a general audience, like their, you know, their coloration, their flightlessness, their feet, the formation on the top of their head. But I was really taken by your discussion of how they fit into queer ecology. Would you tell us a little bit about this? Yeah, so cassowaries, they're amazing birds. They're incredibly...

They just are very much like, okay, you understand how closely related they are to dinosaurs. So they're completely fascinating. But in terms of their queer structures, for a long time...

it was really not discussed in any of the literature on their basic biology, like how they were reproducing and the fact that like some of the females have these phalluses and some of the males have like inverted, basically like the, instead of having an extroverted phallus, they have inverted structures. So they sort of have this like in what we, you know, what we would consider

the opposite, and, you know, most people would consider the opposite type structure representing, you know, on the male or female. And so for a long time, people who, the people like indigenous to this area where cassowaries are found would involve cassowaries in a lot of their cosmologies and iconographies, and specifically were aware that they had these

you know, queer reproductive organs, organs that were not binary, organs that defied sort of expectations around gender or sex.

And they incorporated that into ritual and so forth. So this was known to the people who lived amongst them for thousands of years, that they actually have really sort of these structures. But in the Western scientific descriptions of these birds, there was really no mention of this fact. And so actually, I learned about this through reading biological exuberance studies.

My Bruce Begumil, I believe is the pronunciation of his last name, which is a wonderful compendium, very textbook like compendium of examples of queerness in nature. And I found that it's a wonderful resource. It's and it does get a little bit into sort of the reasons why certain studies were maybe not taken seriously or suppressed or ignored.

And so he notes that, you know, these birds were known for a while to be like this, but you could not find record of that in in like publications. And he believes it's because there was sort of shame and anxiety around just simply reporting things.

evidence of queerness or homosexuality or of you know sort of gender or sex non-conformity in in the scientific literature so um it's it's just an it's an interesting example of the fact that like so going back to the earlier part of our conversation where we can have um

or we talk about, you know, it's not actually, we're not actually being political when we pull these things out. We're actually exposing the fact that there were biases that clouded the objectivity in science. And it's important to acknowledge those and sort of pull that subjectivity out and actually just look at these things very factually. So it's just a good example of like what you, what happens when you're just,

afraid to to make waves in science or you're or you're just not looking correctly so you might have maybe maybe you you know he has other examples in the book too where scientists would talk about you know seeing something and just really not believing them their own observations because it was contradictory to heteronormativity it's like or they would come up with very non-parsemonious explanations as to why they were seeing what they were seeing like oh this this

these two, you know, birds are, are, have a same-sex partnership, but, you know, they're probably just confused or something like that. Right. And so making these sort of like reaching for explanations that, that are not really evidence-based, but are just sort of like would, would kind of explain away the fact that you're constantly seeing same-sex behaviors in that species.

So the same with the cassowaries, this was the case as well, that they were just like not either not report, we can't be sure exactly why, but it seems as if they were either not reporting what they were seeing or they didn't believe their own examinations of these birds. They were like, maybe I'm just not getting it.

But maybe it was just that they're not conforming to our notions of what sexual structures should look like in males or females. It's such a fascinating way to sort of turn the tables on anthropomorphism and sort of see it as, I guess, you know, on one hand, we have to acknowledge that

anthropomorphism helps us in some cases care more about animals. You know, we see ourselves reflected in them, but then it can stand in the way of fully understanding what they are and how they operate because even at a subliminal level, like we are seeing ourselves in them and seeing them as models of humans. Yeah, exactly. I think that is a really important point because I think anthropomorphism can be

a good tool and it can stand in the way and it kind of is case dependent. And it's also, so it sort of requires you to be constantly reflexive on like, if I like withhold all of the complexity that I know is found in the human species from another species, am I learning more about it or am I making it, like, or am I actually reducing my understanding of it? And so that kind of negotiation is something that I try to engage with regularly. It's like, so for example, going back to the insects,

If I assume nothing, no human qualities can be mapped onto insects, then I might assume that they're incapable of experiencing pleasure or pain or that they don't have like complex social realities. Yeah.

And then I might actually not really understand insects. But you can take it, then as you're saying, you can also, for the cassowaries, if we assume like a male looks like this and a female looks like this, then, you know, because of what we think is normal for people, then we are also reducing our understanding of these organisms. So it kind of is this constant like negotiation and toggle between can vaginal

can anthropomorphism actually enrich our scientific understanding or is in this moment, is it restricting us? And so there isn't like a one answer. It's sort of a constant, but,

But I, I, I, my sort of inclination, and this is just sort of my style, not to be prescriptive is to sort of assume human like qualities and then scientifically assess what, you know, is that accurate as much. And so I'd rather over project, you know, feeling and dynamicism and complexity. And then maybe have you with evidence, take that away or re,

renegotiate that as opposed to assuming being that you're this inert, unfeeling species and you have nothing, you know, you're just a, you know, like a collection of molecules and there's no sort of vitalism there. And so that's kind of, that's, if I had to pick one, I actually think anthropomorphism is likely to enrich our understanding, but caveats abound. Yeah.

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Now, coming back to the realm of mycology and where it intersects with human culture and understanding, I wonder what your thoughts are on this. I know that, like, in general, writers have often touched on different cultures being mycophilic or mycophobic, like, on the whole, seeing, like, the realm of mushrooms and fungi as being dangerous or beneficial and that being, like, wrapped up in their culture. Yeah.

And this, of course, gets into what you were talking about earlier about certain despised species or forms of life within given cultures. And I was just wondering, do you see an overlap between traditional cultures that are more mycophilic and ones that are traditionally less defined by rigid binary definitions of sexuality and gender? That's a really good question. Yeah.

I think in general, yes, I would say that as I'm not, you know, and I'm not an anthropologist or a sociologist, but, you know, so as a mycologist trying to sort of explore this topic, I, you know, I don't I can't speak super confidently in for other cultures. But what I can say is that a lot of the history of anthropology.

homophobia and the history of sort of the way that the patriarchy functions in Western European and Euro-American culture. You know, that's something that has been exported around the world through colonialism and other, you know, there have been societies all over the world that have had, you know, have sought to have conformity with gender and with, you know, and have been patriarchal and stuff. But, you know,

The sort of manifestation that we are now all pretty familiar with originated in Western European and Euro-American thought and then has been imposed pretty forcefully around the world. So I would say that in general, there's a trend that societies that had less rigid ideas

notions of gender or still do, um, have also had under like cosmological understandings of the earth as being, um, you know, with, as, as there being like deep interdependence between species and are generally less hierarchical, even in their understanding of species, um, not that are non-human, you know, so much of the, the binary understanding of, uh, like, um,

and nature that is also like a Western, you know, European origin, the exact manifestation of it in particular, you know, that we're now familiar with, you know, there's like, there's us and them, there are these two categories, there's human and nature. And that, again,

Humans are placed atop this hierarchy. We are the chosen species. We are divine and we are the most complex and the most intelligent and most rational. And everything else is just sort of beneath us to varying degrees.

And in Western European thought, the things that were the lowest on this sort of pyramid would have been fungi and invertebrates, insects and things like this. So that hierarchy is really foundational to European and Western European thought. So that and that's so it is like some I guess I feel most confident speaking about

this society because I'm someone who grew up in it. I'm part Irish, Irish and part Armenian. And I grew up in the United States. So I feel like most, you know, I'm most able to comment on how that functions. Now there are other societies, um, you know, around the world that is including Eastern European, um, places in Mexico, places in West Africa, um,

Japan, where mushrooms are not considered, you know, not as strongly associated with anything negative and have a long history of being celebrated and integrated into culture.

And historically, these places also had less rigid understandings of gender. But now, of course, it's hard to sort of draw that line because of the impact of colonialism. So I'd say that there is a relationship. And I'm always interested in hearing from people who grew up steeped in other cultures about this.

specific topic because there isn't a lot written about it. So this is sort of just what I've been able to kind of piece together over time, again, not being a sociologist. But there is a relationship between sort of how does a culture respond to the unknown? So in general, there's like a feeling that what is unknown induces sort of anxiety and fear and

versus the unknown inducing something sort of a feeling of revelation or divinity or, you know, sort of magic. And I think in our culture, there is a association with wanting to control the unknown. To be unknown is to be a threat and that's subversive. And so fungi kind of are these organisms and same with insects in particular. They both are groups of organisms that really subvert the desire to dominate.

Because they're like, you know, difficult to predict. They move in ways that sort of are unexpected. They can be ephemeral. They can amass. They can pop up overnight, right? And all of this sort of...

difficult to predict biology makes them sort of induces a feeling of fear. And I think that that is also, there's a parallel there to how people respond to people who do not conform, not just within matters of sex and gender, but also in terms of ability, in terms of race, right? So there's also this feeling of like, if you're not what I expect, I will fear you because I can't, I don't quite know how to control you, right?

And control is often, you know, executed first by putting someone in a box, right? You were either this or that. I need to make sense of you so I know what to expect instead of, wow, I don't know what to make of you. How interesting, how beautiful. It's like, wow, I don't know what to make of you. I'm now oppositional to you, right? So that sort of response is something also that's very like steeped into our culture. Now, speaking of fungi, can you tell us a little bit about labules? This is not something I was familiar with before.

Sure. They're not a well-studied group of fungi. So I'm one of only like a handful of people in the world who study this entire order of fungi, the Labbulbinielles, kind of a mouthful. We call them labules for short, so that's a little easier. And they are a very diverse lineage of fungi that live and grow on insects.

People are probably much more familiar with another group of fungi that live and grow on insects, the cordyceps or the zombie fungi. But these are in the same phylum, but completely different orders and classes. So leboules are...

Some of them we believe to be parasitic. We believe they take nutrients from the insect host at the insect's expense. But others seem to be maybe more commensal, like we haven't been able to quantify any sort of damage they're doing to the host. And the host seems kind of able to just go about its life as normal. Yeah.

But in any case, they're really interesting fungi. If you can believe it, there's tens of thousands of species of this order, which just is, you know, the biodiversity is just staggering, right? So a group of fungi I've never heard of living their lives in insects, and there's just tens of thousands of species of them. And they're really small. They sometimes can be sort of detected with the naked eye, but usually you need at least a hand lens to

But the most common way to find them is looking at insects under a dissecting microscope. And they grow outward from the exterior of the insect. They're multicellular. They're really flexible and durable. They're not like ephemeral. So once they grow, they

They are there until they die, essentially. They're not coming up and out of the insect body. The spore basically lands on the exterior of the insect, and then some minute penetrative cells germinate from that and enter just shallowly into the insect body.

and form kind of like an anchor. And then from that, you know, a few dozen cells will form in a definitive structure. So meaning they always, they're not amorphous. They have a pretty defined cellular growth pattern. And so when we do taxonomy on these fungi, we are looking at, our morphological descriptions involve

draw, you know, understanding the exact cell like shape, size and arrangement. And this is highly variable. There are like really thousands of ways these fungi can present itself, but it's pretty fixed within a species. And even within a genus, there's like very common body plans. And so

We also would use genetic DNA sequencing to do the taxonomic work on these fungi. But they're just really, I mean, what I love about them is that they are so quietly existing in this tremendous diversity. They're the most diverse lineage of insect-associated fungi. So you have the incredible diversity of the insect world. And then on that, you have this other whole realm of diversity

species that are, you know, have evolved and are living and dying and pretty much unbeknownst to, you know, any witnesses. And to me, that's just a very, like, that's one of the things I love about studying biodiversity and of these fungi in particular is just that they, they are really kind of uninterested to project a little anthropomorphically on them. They're just, you know, they're here whether or not people are in this, like, in this

and it kind of really reminds you of, it makes me think as a person, like, wow, the world like is so dynamic and it has was here before me and will be here after me. And there's all these processes going on that really are kind of

be apart from the, the, the, so like my social perception, you know, and I just think that can be kind of calming and, and a meditative, but I really like working with them because I get to also work with insects. So it brings me into contact with multiple kingdoms of life in this really intimate way. I love doing microscopy. I love being like kind of immersed in the micro world. So going back to the micro cosmos, I get to, you know, getting to stare at the

Um, the, an insect under the microscope can, a dissecting scope is so fun. You really see like all of its elaborate, uh, evolutionary, you know, all the appendages and hairs and colors and, and, um, it's, it's, you can, it makes you feel like in touch with these, this whole other realm. Um,

And then what's really exciting about being a mycologist is that there are, because we've only described, you know, around, we estimate three to 5% of fungal species diversity. There's no shortage of new species descriptions that can be described.

authored. So I get to, I, you know, I've been able to name and describe about a dozen species, new species to science, um, all within this group, the lab bulbineales. So that's a fun thing too, is that you can say, you can say pretty definitively that, you know, a person has not looked upon this fungus before because A, no one is looking for them. And also because you need a microscope to see it. So it's just not likely that someone would have just bumped into it. You know, there, there, you have to be looking for them to find them. Um,

So it's just a kind of a fun opportunity for me to like be contributing taxonomically. And then also I, one thing that I like about being a taxonomist is that the, the, the practice of naming and, and,

You know, taxonomy does have a complicated history in terms of ethics and, you know, all of these forces that we've been talking about, you know, sort of around colonialism and power and who gets to put a name on something and in what language.

So one thing I like to think about is taxonomy as a practice of honoring. So not stamping your authority on it as like an act of, I guess, possession, but being like, okay, here, this is a species that I share the planet with. This is a species who's been on this multi-billion year journey, like every other species here. And how can we sort of honor its diversity, regardless of its role in society?

It doesn't matter if this fungus is of utility to me or to people. It's here, it exists, it is complex and dynamic and worthy of a name. So I like to think of naming as a system of like, as a practice of honoring the existence of, and the sort of what I like to think of as sort of like the agency and almost like personhood of another being, right? To name is to sort of acknowledge that complexity.

And it's also an opportunity to sort of embody some of the practices that I think have been missing in the field of taxonomy, which would be to name things, you know, perhaps based on using indigenous languages from the location that organism was found or from, you know, you know, naming scientists who've been forgotten or, or, you know, sort of like acknowledging like the complexity of the human life that might surround the procurement of that species in the first place.

So, yeah, that's sort of a fun thing that I can do with the bulls.

You mentioned the cordyceps, and I want to highlight that you did appear on Science Friday to discuss this particular fungi. And HBO's The Last Obvis, which, of course, has this, I guess you'd say, like, very sort of, you know, of course, a fantastic sci-fi treatment of cordyceps that's very...

in its manifestation. But I do refer listeners to that interview if they want the full story. Yes, I sort fungal fact from fiction on that episode. I believe we're about to go into the second season of The Last of Us. Any quick reminders for folks about cordyceps and sort of disconnecting the fantasy from the reality? Totally, yeah. So I've been asked a number of times, like, could cordyceps

people be turned into zombies by a fungus, um, as they are in the show? And the answer is no, um, that these fungi and the insect hosts that they evolved on were in a, you know, co-evolutionary dynamic for millions of years. And, um, it took, that's how the fungus is perfectly adapted, not just to like insects broadly, or not even just to like

you know, a whole group of insects, but specific species of insects. So for example, cordyceps can be found on a number of species of ants, but there are ants, other ant species that live in and amongst, you know, those in the areas that cordyceps grows and they're not affected because they have, you know, the subtle differences in behavior or chemical ecology is enough that it's incompatible with that species.

very precise co-evolutionary dynamic in order for um fungi to evolve to be doing that to people we would need probably millions and millions of years of of exposures um and uh our by our just biologies are so different from our ants so we're not really at risk in that way um

I do really like the show. I think it's a great story. It is a little challenging that fungi are demonized. Obviously, that's kind of, you know, stressful for me. But from a storytelling perspective and from an action perspective, it's a great show.

Yeah, my wife is a mushroom enthusiast and does like some mushroom club stuff and foraging stuff. And so I would often joke to her after we'd watch an episode of the show about, oh, well, mushrooms are bad news. We've got to be watching out for those mushrooms. Yeah, that's a good way to get under her skin, I'm sure. Yeah.

Now, coming back to the book, again, there's a lot about science in there. There's also a lot of personal interpretation of everything, and you get into the philosophy of it all. Can you take a moment to tell us what a sit spot is and how that can potentially help us all in our daily lives? Yeah. So a sit spot is a place you go regularly,

I mean, it could be every day, it could be once a month, but it's something that you do with some sort of routine and frequency. And it can be deep in the forest, it could be in an urban park, it could be looking out your window if you're someone who can't leave the house.

or can't do so easily. So it's not really about being in, you know, this quote wilderness. It's just about being in community with as many species as possible. So I have, I'm a teacher. I've taught college classes and nature classes. And I have one thing I try, I often incorporate into my classes is having my students do a sit spot. And the instructions I give is to start by going once a week,

I think once a week is a nice amount of time because it's both like kind of reasonable for our hectic schedules, but it's also frequent enough that you, it can kind of become like a personal ritual. And when you, what I advise you do is that you go to your sit spot and you go by yourself. I think, I do think it, I mean, it's not that you can't go with a buddy, but I think it's really nice to go totally, to be the only human right in that spot.

And I also recommend that you don't bring anything at first. The first couple of times, I wouldn't even bring a notebook. I wouldn't bring anything but just some stuff, maybe some water, maybe a snack if you're, you know. But just try to go with, you know, keep your phone away. Don't try to take pictures. Don't try to record anything. And just be present. And I would recommend the first time doing it for at least 30 minutes. You go and you sit for 30 minutes.

And you take note of everything around you. What do you smell? What do you touch with your fingertips? What do you see, of course? What do you hear? And kind of roll through the senses, you know, go, okay, what am I hearing right now? Wait.

What am I seeing right now? You know, look around. What am I smelling right now? Maybe you're sitting on a bench or maybe you're sitting on the forest floor. Like, what are your fingertips sensing? And kind of go let yourself sort of move through that. My students will tell me that the first few times they did it, they were incredibly bored. The time for them moved very slowly. They were actually some of them were even detectably irritated with the assignment.

But as the weeks progressed, 100% of the students began to enjoy their time. Then after a few weeks, you start, maybe you decide, maybe you're an artist and you love illustrating. Maybe you bring a notebook and you sketch some of the plants that are growing. Maybe you're a sound person. You bring a way to record some audio.

But maybe you decide or maybe you're I wouldn't I wouldn't do too much writing while you're there because you do want to be mentally loose and receptive. So whatever. And that's that does look different for everyone. So however, you can be in a state of looseness and receptivity to be porous, to be receiving this sort of the energy and the sort of information that's flowing from these other species and from the wind, from the humidity, you know, whatever it is.

And so I think that over time, the point is that you become really immersed and really in tune with that spot. So I think in the age of climate change, in the age of globalization, it can be really, really overwhelming to understand where do you put your focus, right? There's so many crises. There's so many stressors. There's so many things drawing and pulling at your attention, right?

And so this is like kind of a practice of attention. Where do you give your attention in an intentional way? And how does that sort of make you feel held and attuned with the other organisms around you? I also had a number of students actually cry at the end of the semester when they had to leave their spots. They were graduating or they had to leave for the summer or whatever it was.

And they were like, I can't believe I have to leave this spot. Like, this is my spot. This is like my place. And that happened just in a few months. Right. That's just a duration of a college semester. And so for a lot of people, it's an opportunity to become independent.

immersed to be, but also to be like a steward, right? You suddenly make, the more you pay attention to a spot, the more you see. So it's not just that you're there longer. So it's like a, you know, an exponential line of like, you're there longer. So you're seeing more, but you're actually like, it's actually that your brain starts to rewire a little bit, especially if this practice is really new to you, you start to be a, you actually are capable of noticing more, the more you sort of engage with this meditatively.

And so for some people, it can help you find a role in what is otherwise a very crazy world, right? How do you become a steward of your own backyard? Like, how can you care for the species? Like, maybe you're helping monitor the health of the trees in that area. Maybe you're realizing that there's a ton of

there's a you're seeing all these salamanders or amphibians and that actually oh actually this is like a vernal pool and this could be protected because you know by local legislation there's all sorts of ways that you can sort of tune into the life around you and then actually do something to help care for it so I definitely recommend it I think it's such a nice way of like sort of

I find it really peaceful and therapeutic and sort of a bomb for my nervous system every time I go to my sit spot. So I recommend it. Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to have to try it as well because I go out in nature. We go on walks and hikes and all. But this kind of like intentional meditative approach, setting aside so many distractions and tasks and objectives, you know, I think it's really attractive.

Yeah, it can take a little while to like not be a little bored but that's not that's that's really normal that we're all kind of, you know, overstimulated so it could take a little bit of time but I can assure you that you'll enjoy it as the ritual is established. Awesome.

Well, the book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature. It's out next month in all formats, but available for pre-order right now. What is the one thing you want readers to get out of Forest Euphoria? So I think actually the sit spot conversation is kind of closest to what I want readers to get out of it. I think that I want readers to feel closer to nature and

I want readers to feel like they are part of nature and nature is part of them. And these are things that will strengthen each other. That knowledge, I find, is strengthening. It's something that's comforting. It is a magnetic compass in a time of poly-crises. So I want people to feel that they belong. Their differences are what make them different.

a part of this ecology that, you know, ecology is all about difference. It's all about multiple, multiple ways of being and forms. And so to not, um,

feel shame around that. And I want people to, you know, see that nature is really all we have. There's nothing without it. I'm sure a lot of my readers will already be environmentalists and people committed to the protection of nature, but maybe it'll bring some more people into that fold as well or strengthen that someone's commitment to that. All right. Well, Patty, thanks for coming on the show and chatting with me. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's fun to talk to you, Rob.

Thanks again to Patty for coming on the show. The book, again, is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature, publishing next month and available for pre-order in all formats right now. Again, you'll find a pre-order link in the episode description, or you can look it up at spiegelandgrau.com slash forest hyphen euphoria.

Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Thanks, as always, to the excellent J.J. Possway for producing the show. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can shoot us an email 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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