Today's episode is the reason why I started this podcast is to provide a platform for people to tell their stories and today We're gonna be talking about storytelling not just storytelling in general for the ocean But storytelling for different communities and how they're being affected by the climate crisis I have on the podcast today towel leg off who has a book called dark laboratory on Columbus the Caribbean and the origins of the climate
Crisis, it's a fantastic book. I'm looking forward to diving into it how comes on and talks about her journey of Not only being a pre-med student in university, but also looking at humanities Looking at natural sciences and really changing her course of life to help tell
people stories. It's an amazing interview It's one of the one of my favorites already so far in my 10 years of doing this and I can't wait for you listen to It so that's what we're gonna be talking about on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean
podcast. Let's start the show Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I'm your host Andrew Lewin And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can Do to live for a better ocean
By taking action on today's episode. I've got a great one for you We have towel a golf dr Towel a golf and she has she's on the podcast talking about a new book that she published just about a week ago from this recording called dark laboratory on Columbus the Caribbean and on the origins of the climate crisis
It's a phenomenal book a phenomenal. I can't wait to dive into it She talks a lot about just sort of how different communities are affected by the climate crisis and going back in history Knowing the history and how this has affected these different types of communities all over the world island communities nylon communities like land-based communities like like continental communities just how they're affected and how they treated science and environment and economy and
success as a community compared to Western science and Western communities It is one of my favorite interviews so far I know I'm biased because I'm part of this interview, but how just just brings the heat we we connected a lot over I love for hip-hop we connect a lot over. I love for storytelling and podcasting And just sort of internet storytelling and democratizing
storytelling. It is a phenomenal time I had a great time and I'm still like this is I'm just we just hung up and we talked a lot afterwards Tell us it was just phenomenal person.
I'm looking forward to getting to know where I'm looking forward for you to gain to know We're in this interview and I've invited her back on so I can't wait for you to see the next conversation that we have But I don't want to delay any further Here is the interview with Talley and dr Talley golf talking about her book dark laboratory on Columbus the Caribbean and the origins of the climate crisis Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after hey, Tal welcome to the how to
protect the ocean podcast Are you ready to talk about climate and people? Hey Andrew, yes, I am ready. I'm ecstatic because my book dark laboratory just came out a week ago still on cloud nine It's really in disbelief that I'm a published author Here's the book. The subtitle is on Columbus the Caribbean and the origins of the climate crisis
There's a lot of water in this book. So I'm excited to see what you thought and to kind of just Discuss all of these really urgent issues when it comes to climate action
Absolutely. Yes, this is gonna be I'm really excited this because before we press record I was telling you like this is not a topic that I get to talk about a lot It's not covered on sort of like the mainstream Social science or science is talked about but it's not talked about enough And so it's really great that you have dedicated your research your life to this You've lived through some of this as well and and seeing other people live through this and it's it's great to be able to talk
about this type of topic climate and especially people and How we react to climate action how we are supposed to react and how some of us seem powerless to react To certain climate action and if we have the ability to do so So I'm really excited to talk about you know, the entire journey But before we do why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do Sure. So I'm an associate professor at
Hunter College. I teach in the environmental humanities so we are looking at the huge scale of Geographies and ecologies but very much through a human-centered point of view So it's exciting to have come on this journey and to have written this book that is so informed by the natural sciences But I was trained in literature at Princeton University as an undergrad Though I was also taking biology classes and have always had a deep love for science
I did my PhD in American studies and that really informed the way that Intellectually this book came into being because within American studies which is a mixture of cultural historical analysis etc. We often think about an oceanic frame of history So yeah, there's just a lot of different oceans that brought me here as a professor And I love teaching at Hunter College, which is part of the City University of New York and Manhattan So I teach classes there related to this
book on climate crisis and racial justice
It's really interesting. It's quite fascinating to be honest to be able to talk about this because a lot of people when we talk about ocean conservation We talk about climate crisis and oceans We think about the consequences that the ocean brings us in these times We think about the flooding we think about the sea level rise we think about the intense storms and typhoons and hurricanes Tsunamis and earthquakes and so forth But we don't really talk about how it
affects people in general and and how certain areas and certain countries Benefit more or or or don't benefit less, you know, like in terms of they don't feel it as much as other countries And and you know with North America even in the US as you you study American You know American studies and humanities you look at it's such a melting pot and such a history there of just different people coming over In different waves right at different
times. Sometimes it's it's by choice other times It wasn't by choice and there's a there's a lot of Like I said, I think that's a really interesting question There's a lot of things that we've seen and I think that's a really interesting question. There's a lot of things that we've seen and I think that's a really interesting question. This is a very unique path to take. A lot of people are like, "Well, I like water, I like biology.
I'm gonna go into, be a marine biologist, I'll be a wildlife biologist, or an oceanographer, or a climate scientist." And as you mentioned, you had, you always had that type of passion for animals and for nature and so forth. But what led you to go towards the humanities route, you know, with natural science, you know, like skimming on both sides, and then diving in on your PhD for humanities? What led you to that, like in your childhood and so forth?
I feel that there's just such an absence in the way that people teach literature traditionally with great American novels like Moby Dick, without recognizing that this is a climate novel, that the whale matters and we think about conservation. What about the, yeah, the different indigenous communities that are part of the cast of a book like that? What about the whaling industry?
So I feel like it's really inseparable, and yet in so many English literature classrooms, they separate that part out. So I really want to do this work interdisciplinarily to bring everyone into the conversation, because we have a shared fate in the sense of the climate crisis. Whichever country we're in, whichever continent, we're all going to meet the same fate, a planetary fate. So I just feel that we need to come together to find many different solutions from many different cultures.
So I do that by looking to my family history and by encouraging others to look to their family histories as well, in order to contend with migration and how it is that we ended up on these shores if we're not indigenous to the place where we're living. So yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot from scholars in Canada. I've learned a lot from indigenous scholars across the globe, especially in the Pacific. And there's a really fascinating oceans back movement, which has really inspired me.
And I just want to, I guess, give people permission to think back in their family tree about who their ancestors were and what were the ecologies that surrounded them, that protected them and that they protected because I feel that we have a responsibility to protect the earth and that includes the oceans. So really, it was just thinking about my ancestors that that led me on this journey to look into the humanities as a way to tell this climate story.
Fascinating. When when you started to look down this journey, did your parents, did your friends be like, what are you doing? Like, you can't make a living off of this. Like, I have to admit, like I, my daughter, so my wife is a woman, and I'm like, I'm not a woman. The only thing that I can do is is Chinese descent and her parents are from Hong Kong and Taiwan. They're very, you
know, they're very literal, right? Like, you know, you're being brought up, they want to make sure that you're financially safe when you grow up and you want it. So my daughter wants to be a wildlife biologist and she's like, she tells them that and they're like, well, can you make money off of that? Like, why don't you be like a pharmacist? Why don't you be like a doctor or something?
And it's very interesting to see, you know, that not the pressure, but sort of that I want to take care, I want to make sure you're taking care of where you can take care of yourself financially because that's really important in the Asian culture is to make sure that the next generation is taking care of. Right? That's one thing that I've learned
from this. What did your parents say when you start to go down this avenue, you know, looking at literature, but looking also in the natural sciences and how it's all related. It's not, you know, it's not a profession that you hear about in elementary school or even in high school in some ways. What were the reactions? I'm curious. I think they were always proud and they set me on his path. My mother is a doctor. So she definitely, you know,
wanted us to go into the sciences. So in a way, I feel that even though I was premed and I didn't follow through on that path, I was like, I'm not going to do that. So much of what I'm doing is still informed by a love of biology in particular. And yeah, my dad has written books about our family history. So I think that that really gave me a sense in which this is work that you can choose to do. And you can go into the historical archives and find out where you came
from. And in part, that research has led to Jamaica. And once you look at an island like Jamaica, that was part of the British Empire, it takes you across the globe. So even if we think about Nova Scotia, closer to where you are, there were maroon people who were brought there and fascinating histories to contend with regarding salt cod. So it's just endless the kinds of ways in which we can think about family history,
commercial histories. That journey also led me to Hong Kong, I guess where some of your wife's family is from. And I think places like Taiwan and Hong Kong being islands, they have a deep understanding of what it means to survive. So I can understand that they want to be encouraging the youth to pursue law or medicine. But there are other forms of survival that people who have lived on islands for
generation are aware of. So this book for me really is about looking into those scientific traditions that may have been lost or discredited over the years by Western Science. So yeah, it's a book about Jamaica, Hong Kong, really all of these different islands and people that I've learned from geologists, bird watchers, ornithologists. So yeah, it's full of all of that. I love it. I love it now. I have this interesting story. So I had a colleague, a mentor of mine, who was from
Newfoundland, another island, right? They called it the rock. And she was telling me a story. She went to Jamaica at one point. And she she she was at a restaurant, not at a hotel restaurant, but at a restaurant in a local town. And the waitress and her just got along really, really well. And even the waitress, like it's really, it's really cool. She's like, she's like, where are you from? You're from Canada. She's like, usually I get along well with canes, but I don't get along this well.
And and and she said, she, Colleen, was her name. She says, you know what it is? Like, I'm from an island as well. And it's like people on islands, they know each other. They get along because they've felt the same struggles. They felt the same happiness. They felt the same kind of it's although, you know, Jamaica and Newfoundland are very different climates, very different
people. There's this laid backness a little bit, like it's similar in terms of the way they they live and the way they go about their day and their outlook on life. And I think when you mentioned that you talked about all these different islands having the same sort of struggles and the same sort of challenges, they also have the same kind of way. And they feel like they they get along quite well, for the most part, when they go.
So I just want to share that because I thought that was kind of a cool story. Totally. Thank you for sharing that because I did not know that they call it the rock. Yeah, they call Jamaica the rock. That's what we'll call it. Yeah. So even like, welcome to Jamrock. Yeah, the song from a while back. Like, it's it's such a huge mountainous island made from volcanoes that. Yeah, it's the rock. So there it is. It's all ideology. That's probably what it is. It's all the
geology. That's that's the fascinating thing too, right? Is your your your tying science to humanities and a lot of times, especially these days, we separate out, as you mentioned, we separate out the environment aspect of our lives. You know, especially when it comes to competing challenges. So like you look at economy and the environment, you can't have the good economy without the environment, especially in like places like Canada, the US, where we can have the environment.
You can have the environment, especially in these days, is affecting the economy more and more as we as we grow these these consequences that we're facing these these disaster natural disasters that we're facing that are getting worse and worse. That costs money to clean up that costs money for restitution and so forth. And at one point relocation, it's some other places that are getting worse and worse. They're going through to they've already gone through relocation small island
states, especially in the Pacific. And it's really interesting because you look at and I know more from learning about indigenous populations here in Canada, where environment and even like success was tied together, whether it's prosperity in terms of what it's going through.
And it's really interesting because you look at and I know more from learning about indigenous populations here in Canada, where environment and even like success was tied together, whether it's prosperity in terms of money or prosperity in terms of like a village prospering.
They were tied together like they are they continue to be still the keepers of the land, you know, that's this turtle island that we that we live on and it's it's really impeccable and it seems to me that more scientists are and so especially social scientists are when they we talk about conservation of the ocean is going back to that mixture of.
You know, indigenous knowledge and and like almost like you can almost say indigenous science and knowledge and Western science to tie the technology together to help so that they you know everybody can be on the same playing field but we have a lot to learn like Westerners have a lot to learn from our indigenous brother and sister and right like that's that's a big thing but why is it that we continue, why do you think is we continue to separate this out from like the
environment and just sort of like our regular humanities or, you know, how we succeed in life here. I think it's a great book and it's a trade book I was really excited that penguin Random House would get the distribution to be across the world. Yeah, and especially the Commonwealth. So I have a British publisher and they're really doing their best to get the book to the Caribbean.
Yeah, it was a continuous conversation about racial justice and climate justice, and then people would say to me, so are you saying that we need to have racial justice to have climate justice or climate justice to have racial justice, right? And they were really confused like they thought we could have one without the
other. But it's specifically because these communities who are the most vulnerable, the most living at the edge of society or the map who are being affected by coastal erosion or rising sea levels that we have to see it as all part of the same problem. So, yeah, I feel the book was really meant to explain to those who do see it as so separate that we actually cannot have one without the other. And if we keep trying to do one without the other, we're never going to succeed.
But if we do approach both questions as entangled and intertwined, then I think that there's a lot of hope. Yeah, in terms of putting different indigenous folks and scientists at the policymaking table, because like you said, they do have knowledge that comes from generations of indigenous science, Asian views of natural science, African ways of understanding time that really just have not been included when it comes
to policy. So this book is really about the kind of optimism that would require bringing all of these different people together, not only of different ancestral backgrounds, but also of different disciplinary training. So, yeah, I feel that the question to do with economy is one that I came up against when I was doing research at the Geological Society in London, at the Royal Academy. And I was just shocked to learn that there used to be a discipline called economic geology.
And I learned from a group of geologists in DC, who invited me to give a keynote on geosciences, that this discipline kind of fell out of fashion in the 1970s. But it really was a, I guess, a branch of science that was developed by petrochemical corporation. I assumed. Yeah, but I think we see this coming back now where economic geology with DC mining becomes. Yeah, something that's being funded by these
corporations. So, um, yeah, it's, it's something that I think we need to be aware of how much we're, we're selling away in terms of the future. Oh, my God. When we look to solutions and geo engineering. I, I, the way you put it, how much we're selling away. I think that's a, that's a really important statement, right? That you just said that that just resonated with me because I find in everything, we are now equating everything to how much did it sell? Yeah, instead of impacting and it's not
just science, it's everything. It's not just books, it's everything. Instead of having the impact, right? Of reading a book such as yours and being like, wow, okay, so this really changed my mind. But maybe it doesn't sell 3 million copies, right? And then you get another book that sells 3 million copies, but it doesn't impact anybody. It didn't maybe entertain somebody, but it may not change their lives. And I find the same thing in music. I'm a big hip hop fan. And I find
the same thing in music. And so like I came from a generation where, you know, I grew up in the, like my teenage life in my twenties were in the nineties. And there was like, I feel like it was a great time for hip hop. It was about lyrics. It was about poetry. It was about, you know, really getting and learning. About a culture that I did nothing. I knew nothing about. And now and now and that wasn't like you either still like the, it wasn't necessarily a pop chart
type of music. So it was still a lot of it was underground or close to it. But nowadays, because hip hop and rap has become such a huge part of everybody's lives. It's on the pop charts. It's on, you know, that popular music and everything is I see it seems to be equated to like your goal. It's not like you're great because you sold this many albums or you sold this many streams or you had this many streams. That's what makes it great. It's
not the impact of your lyrics. Cause sometimes the lyrics you're like, this, this person said nothing, you know, but you look at, you know, people like, like Mo Steph and Talib Kweli and Common who had very, like, I call them the conscious rappers, right? Where you're like, they made even Tupac Shakur. Like they make you think about stuff. Yeah. Instead of just talking about money and talking about, you know, women or or cars and things like that.
You're, you're actually thinking like, wow, like there's pain in that there's there's happiness. There's like there's conflict in a lot of the the poetry that's been said through hip hop. And I find, I know I'm going on quite a tangent, but I find like we do that with a lot of the stuff that even when we look at environment and stuff. We look at environment and economy. It's like, well, this will make us money. You know, deep sea mining will make us money or, you know, doing this oil and gas
business will give us money. And that's all we care about. We don't care about the people at harms. We don't talk about the people that harms. We don't care about the damage to the environment. We'll just make up stuff and we'll deny it. And then the messaging comes out to the people and then everything gets confused. You know, the history obviously more than I do. And it's like, holy cow, like, when are we going to stop and think like, impact on the people that harm.
And I think like impact over profit. Right? Like, let's worry about how it
impacts people. And I just did an interview with Dr. Andrew Thaler on deep sea mining and he was saying that we are at an we have an opportunity here as scientists and as people as citizens, whether you're studying humanities or science or both, to develop regulations around deep sea mining that if it does decide to go ahead, that we can actually be ahead of this and be very cautionary and make sure that, you know what, people
might might be able to make money, but they might not be able to make money. But they might not be able to be like crazy, you know, trillions of dollars or anything like that, but it could help in bringing down our our emissions, but it also might not. We have to be very careful in what it what the damage it does to our deep sea.
Did you find that when when doing the research for your book, did you find that, you know, you talked about the economy, like, was that always a case where it's like, how much money we could make on stuffing always outweighed the impact on the people and the society and the environment? Unfortunately, yes. And I just love this question because it brings me to the 1970s and Jamaican politics at a certain moment where you have the the pull of the
United States. This is the Cold War. And then you have the the dream of a democratic socialist, maybe more Marxist led economy. Right. But I look to the fact that both were looking to mining a box site as the solution. And I really just point to the fact that both both were selling away the future, both communism and capitalism when you think about industrialism in that moment. So I think we do need to have a bigger imagination about what sorts of economies
can sustain the future. And I think it's a question of temporality and time. So just like how you were talking about Taiwan and Hong Kong, how they see time maybe as longer in terms of generations. I've learned the same from Haudenosaunee folks, both in Canada and the US that they think in terms of seven generations. So I feel that if we actually were going to look at the economics of these deals over seven generations, then the price
point would be different. So we need that kind of scale to really think about how much money is being made because I'm under no illusions that we need to be able to do that. And I think we need money to sustain livelihoods, people, families, but but there is a lot ethically that I think you're pointing to that we have to reckon with when it comes to valuation.
As well as advisory board members, Fred Mouton, he's a philosopher and works, I guess within black studies, and he always talks about how every moment of valuation is also a moment of devaluation. that has really stuck with me because even being on TikTok or on social media, when you're doing everything for likes, you're also aware of how many likes you're not getting. So everything that becomes valued becomes devalued, just like you're saying with sales and putting a price on everything.
And there's a cost to that. And Fred Milton's point was that black people in particular are no stranger to this because of the auction block and just like the original sin of trafficking humans in slavery. So we just can't forget that it wasn't that long ago that these kinds of horrific markets existed. So there's just a lot to be considering ethically.
And I see countries like Guyana who just discovered oil in the deep sea and they're making those decisions right now, having been the poorest country along with Haiti in the Western hemisphere to drill, I guess like Trump was saying drill baby drill. And even though these are more radical or socialist leaders, they're also going towards drilling as a solution.
So it just shows me that there's something more that we need to be reckoning with when it comes to the regulations that you said your guest was talking about. And to bring it back to hip hop, because I'm also a fan of 90s hip hop, there's so much in here that I could say about Biggie. And the fact that he was such a profound storyteller. Both of his parents are from Jamaica, The Rock. And even though he's from Brooklyn, there's just so much of Jamaica in his lyrics.
And I think that we could learn from a storyteller like him about the kinds of stories that we need to be telling about climate so that everyone realizes they need to be a part of this. So I think storytelling is actually a great tool to engage everyone into realizing nobody, like everyone is a part of this human history, this non-human history. Like we all have to tell this story together, no matter where we're from on the planet.
So I wonder if Biggie had lived till today, like what he would have been saying about ecology and climate. It'd be very interesting him and Tupac, you know, we all I think both of us who are fans of both, you know, we hope that they are that they would have been best friends again at some point. And I believe that and changing the world.
I think both of them were very conscious of what was happening around them, you know, being from, you know, parents who were very aware and active in their youth about what was happening to their communities. And I think it'd be cool. You know, you never know. They could have invented a genre of climate rap, you know, to be that's the best storytelling for me anyway.
But you know, you really you really hit the nail on the head here with with the storytelling is a lot of people, when we think about climate change and I talk about this all the time. So I'm also guilty of this. We talk about energy. How do we reduce greenhouse gases? That's what everybody is like. That's the big topic right now. And there's and there's debate and controversy around a lot of the different methods of doing it. Renewable energy, carbon taxes, cap and trade.
We think about that and we think about sort of the overall populace, but not the individual communities. So we think of Canada and the countries and how each country is doing. And so I think there's we lose a feature of the story of the story that's supposed to be told because we don't get all the stories. We just get one narrative when it comes to climate.
Right. It's we need to reduce emissions or else, you know, certain states or certain provinces or certain parts of the world are going to be flooded, are going to be burnt, are going to be all this type of stuff. But we don't think of the individual people. We don't think of the individual communities that will be affected more or less. And those stories don't really come to to the front. Right. They don't they don't come to the forefront and we don't get to listen to him. You know, how?
So my question is, you've you met a lot of different communities right in this book and your career. And we'll talk about your lab in just a second. But when you talk to the different people and you hear these stories and they're always compelling, they're always interesting. How do we get those stories to the forefront of of climate action so that people like myself, like yourself, can learn about the different people and how they're affected?
I mean, I was very lucky on January 1st of twenty twenty five. So just a month ago to meet Julian Alguan, who is from Guam. He's a Chamorro indigenous writer, but also human rights activist and lawyer. So he and a number of other lawyers are actually taking a case to the Hague. So to the ICJ about climate reparations. And it's actually coming from the Pacific. So islands like Palau that you had mentioned, you have listeners out there. Yeah. But also to the Caribbean, where my family is from.
And I think African nations are included as well. So I find a lot of hope in the fact that there's actual. People who are trained as lawyers. Really thinking about shaping this policy by coming to these, yeah, tribunals in Europe and really saying these are the crimes against humanity. And this is our plan for what can be done about it. So it's going to take global action for sure.
And I think it's also really important what you said about greenhouse gases and emissions, because in the book I write about how, yes, that is one metric that we tend to just focus on the carbon footprint. But let's say that we did solve that problem. I'm sure there would be a thousand other problems to do with climate to do with loss of biodiversity, to do with all of these issues that don't technically fall under global warming and yet are part of the bigger problem.
So I'm very suspicious of what's called blue washing. And I think we should have more attention to to that and the ways that these corporations are using false narratives about ocean conservation to cover up the fact that they're just raking in more profits. So that's why we need to really take control of the narratives around climate and and the metrics that it's more than just carbon emissions. It's it's about corals under the sea, which I write about in the fourth chapter.
It's it's everything. And it's all related, at least as I see it, to modern capitalism, which really is, as I see it, not inevitable. And I think the crisis was not inevitable. So therefore, I have hope that we can get beyond it. But I think we'd have to break free of this this logic of profit and more profit that capitalism sells us. I completely agree.
And there are so many like this is one of the reasons why I started this podcast was to be able to provide a platform for people to find out more about the ocean, but also the the complexities and the layers of ocean conservation. The stuff that you're talking about and that we're talking about today is one of those complexities that we don't often talk about.
And just like a lot of the scientists, you know, what was happening like when I started this back in 2015, I started truthfully, I started interviewing in 2014. But I was scared to publish. And that's another that's another thing because we didn't really talk about science back then.
But I was meeting so many really interesting people that had cool projects and and I want to put them on this platform and to have them tell their story because they're not going on Discovery Channel Shark Week or on that all the time. Like some of them have and they've developed their careers, but but they're doing such interesting projects that nobody knows about that would bring optimism to ocean conservation, to climate change and so forth. But they just don't get that platform.
And it's just like the communities that you're talking about. They don't get that platform. They don't get that even a YouTube channel or thing because they're telling stories within their own communities because that's important to them to continue on. So people learn from the history and they learn through that storytelling. But other communities outside that don't get to hear because they're worried about their own community. They have to worry. So they're starting.
They're telling stories internally, but they're also worried about the challenges that they're facing as a community that may or may not be climate induced, but they still have to worry about that. And that was that was one thing I really learned that that really floored me was there are certain communities that are worried about other things than climate because that's it's more threatening to them at that time.
It could be poverty. It could be well, I mean, I guess it's climate related, but there's chemical there's chemical alley down in the south in the US where people are getting cancer at historic rates and unprecedented rates because of where they live and they live by refineries and so forth. It's it's to get those stories told on a network or on a channel that would be popular would be phenomenal to be. But we don't see that.
Why is it that we don't see those stories being told on a regular basis and not just to highlight a certain month or that they're honoring a group? Why don't we see it on a regular basis so that we can say. Excuse my honest, but holy shit, like they're going through that. Like, why are they going through that? Like, why are the why are these people in this community going through it and weren't weren't we're okay over here?
That's not right. Like how why don't we focus more on this group so that everybody can focus on climate change, right? I guess I would say Hollywood. Yeah, I would say the producers. Yeah. They think that X is what sells. If we're able to show them that these other stories that you're talking about from small island nations would sell. I think they actually would be open to green lighting those movies.
So Dark Lab, which I founded in 2020, really is inspired by old Hollywood and this idea of playing in the dark, the idea of those old studio stages. And again, that comes back to storytelling. Yes. And the power of storytelling because I think we need more climate movies. We need these stories that are intergenerational about climate in places like Guam. And I don't know enough about those Pacific islands, but I visited Tahiti. I talked about it in the book that was probably in 2023.
And I just my mind was blown to just learn so much from individuals, some were tour guides, but also to learn from sharks. And you mentioned shark week and I love shark week as much as the next person I'm tuned in. But I think it's a real opportunity to tell the climate crisis through sharks because they are so incredible. I don't even know how to swim, but I was swimming with sharks in Tahiti. That's amazing. And just with learning from the indigenous people there that they don't
fear the shark. It's just they're not hunted. They don't attack humans in a certain part of the reef. And they're just hundreds of them swimming around as well as stingrays and that their cousins stingrays and sharks. Like it was just it gave me so much hope. It also helps me to confront my fear of the ocean, which I write about in the book. But I would love to see more climate storytelling from the perspective of
nonhuman ecologies. And I think this could be a really great way to work across these national boundaries because there are sharks in the Caribbean and there are sharks in the Pacific. There are corals around like this tropical belts of the world. I think if we we look to mangroves, if we look to different storytellers about this crisis, then we may actually get somewhere different. Instead of just seeing humans as like the protagonist of the climate crisis, like
will we survive? Like who is the we? And I think it needs to include animals, microbes, like everything. Yeah, I almost feel like we'd be the first to go. You know, me compared to the rest. Yeah, I mean, that's what's good. If we if we do this, then we are the ones who should go. But yeah, yeah, that's that's that's really interesting. So dark laboratory, you know, you started your own own laboratory. How did this
start? Does it start with the appointment of being an associate professor and then you start or is this always an idea that you had to start this laboratory? So it started when I was an assistant professor in 2020 at Cornell University. And yeah, they have a lot more financial resources than CUNY where I am, which is
a state institution. Yeah, but I'm very glad to have brought those resources in terms of founding the lab at a wealthy institution like Cornell, which allowed me to, yeah, fundraise. So we started with $20,000 and from there just began to build and to think globally, because it was the early part
of the pandemic. And so much dynamism was happening on the moon with podcasting that it really felt like I could bring together people that I knew from around the globe to get to answer these questions about the crossroads of stolen land and stolen land. So, so yeah, our pillars are climate, race and creative technology. And I basically I'm just making a space we we're on the 16th floor of Hunter College, which is at 68th and Lexington in Manhattan.
Okay, so we have this incredible view city and I just invite folks to come and, you know, share the story that they have to tell. I love that. And if I can help to put them in touch with technologists who can find a creative way to tell it, maybe it's going to be a TikTok video, maybe it's going to be a major feature film or a DJ set. I'm a DJ as well. So I feel that there's just many forms of storytelling. And yeah, we need more climate stories to
exist. So the lab is here for my students, but also for people who are who don't have college degrees and are outside of the Academy, because we need to embrace everyone to create these solutions. I think this is really interesting. You know, when I hear someone's a professor and they have a lab, you know, just with with my experience with research and science and you know, I've never been a professor. I've been part of labs as a
graduate student, so forth. But you know, it's always very academic, you know, it's very siloed. It's like, okay, get my research money. I'm going to do what I can for for the science. Some of it's applicable, maybe, but some of them it's not. It's just pure science. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's just pure science. And there's nothing wrong with that. I
think it's really great. But I feel like when people when people think about academic institutions are thinking about, well, you know, funding and then perpetuating sort of the universities so that they can get funding and come up with products and it's very negative view. I feel like your lab is very different than that. It's not just about trying to, you know, feed the university money. It's how do we fix things? How do we help
people? Like it's almost like you're a nonprofit organization and academic institution in a way.
Because, yeah, because you're, you're, you're finding ways just from what you told me from the research that I did is like, I'm, we're trying to get people to understand other people and trying to find pathways to get those stories out and get the get you to that, to that, that area so that you can, you can listen like a podcasting as we discussed before we press record is a very, very good way to democratizing storytelling.
You can, you can start a podcast on anything you can if you want to learn the banjo, you can actually go and learn the banjo from podcasts. There's a podcast about learning a bed to be able to have that platform to tell stories and do it in an academic setting and inviting people up and just be like, yes, we're, we're a college, we're a university. This is not a scary place. This is a
place that safe. It's a place that you can tell your story that you can be vulnerable that you can help other people understand where you're coming from so that if you need it, you can get the help to is that is that the goal? Is that what you're trying to and that's very different. And for a university to, you know, be a home for that is pretty cool to do, right? Yeah, thank you. I, I struggle every day as the executive director. Yeah, to translate that very mission to
universities. So I should have you come with me and explain that to me. Because, um, yeah, it's, it's really an uphill battle, but it's so worth it. And when my students come to the physical space of the lab, we have like two small rooms. And it still means so much to have that real estate in a place like New York City. Um, they see all the sound equipment and they want to learn how to
podcast. So that's why it was amazing to learn about the platforms you're using, because it's just so empowering to students. And I think within a semester, I'm telling them you can learn to podcast, you can have a podcast. And obviously, there's a range of budgets for course how to do it. But yeah, in a very basic way, you can. Oh, yeah, I think it's almost anyone could do this.
So, yeah, we're celebrating that victory because you need that capital to really create a foundation and I'm learning so much from labs like science labs about the structure. So probably like the ones that you were in as a grad student about hourly wages, weekly lab meetings, all of these different things.
And also about co-authoring because in the humanities, we just, it's a single author publication, but I was just excited to think about co-authoring and we published in 2021, an article with 32 co-authors. That's amazing. Yeah, on speculative cartography and it's peer reviewed. And I think this really helped a lot of the authors to get jobs in the Academy. So I'm really trying to help to credential folks to show that
this research is rigorous. And what I will say is that it has to exist beyond the university. So Hunter College is a great home physically for the lab. But we're also really grateful to the new museum, which has given us space. And I think it just makes sense to bring different cultural institutions together in terms of the funding so that I'm not answering to any one source.
Yes, because just to be transparent. I don't think they should mind that I'm saying this, but when I brought the Ford Foundation grant to Hunter College, so the City University of New York, they told me that the overhead that they would take is 60%. I could not believe. It's crazy, right? I couldn't believe it. This is how grants work at universities. So they're not the only one. Where does that money even go? Yeah, but this is pretty typical. And I think most students are not aware of how
all of this works. So I just try to make things transparent about how money works within universities, but also, I guess the lab travels with me where I go. And it's me just trying to fund people's projects, who've had artists and residents who really are artists. But what I found, especially in developing countries, like the climate activists are climate artists. They're the ones protecting the reef, photographing the reef, protesting against all inclusive hotels that are damaging the reefs.
And if I can provide money to support their profession, I feel like that goes a long way because artists don't have a pension or health care. And these are the people on the front line of the climate crisis, especially in island nations. And so we've been able to support people in Trinidad and St. Vincent. And yeah, I feel lucky to be able to do this work, but it's a lot of administrative work that it does. Yeah, it's not easy. I've seen that too. I worked for Fisheries and Oceans Canada here in
Canada for the federal government. And I just, I live just by the Great Lakes. So we studied the Great Lakes Laboratory. And it was a science section of the government. And my boss was a PI. I was a scientist. And I had two different bosses within that. And I remember both of them saying, they're like, they turned to me. And I remember one of them, my first one, Nick Mandrake, he turned to me, he's like, I'm so jealous of you. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, you get this
prestigious position. You know, you get all this money, like you get a good comfy job. And you've been there with the government for a long time. He's like, yeah, but I'm in all these meetings. And I'm doing administrative stuff. And I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And he goes, I never actually get to do the fun science that I give you all this work to do. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. I do get that. That's why I enjoy my job. And he's like, yeah, he goes, if I could
do it, you wouldn't have a job. But I need to go to meetings and all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I'm doing administrative stuff. And I'm doing administrative stuff. And I'm doing this and I'm doing this stuff, and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this stuff. And he's like, wow. I need to collaborate with other labs and all this stuff. And it was with government to just as as much as universities, you everything's administrative. I always used to joke.
They needed to fill up paperwork just to go to the bathroom and stuff. Yeah, government's like, oh, yeah, and it takes away. And I guess like, in a way, it's it's the price you pay for the home you have. And I guess that "Okay, that's a lot, that's a big percentage you're taking "and just for the home, okay, I get it, I get it."
And then you have to, it's the way it goes and there's no other way to see it unless you get outside, like outside funny or you go outside the university enclave but then you lose the quick connections that you make, like you talked about like the biology and everything like that. It's a tug of war of sorts and a lot of people don't talk about that. I'm glad you did, you'd mentioned it because it's really interesting to be able to say it.
But essentially you are a storytelling studio that provides different ways of telling that stories, whether it's through art, whether it's through photography, videography, podcasting. It's a place where people can go and be able to tell their story and be able to do that. So I have some ideas on that. Maybe it might be a little bit better, but I just love this and I love this conversation.
I just want to, I have one last question about the book, the title, it's "Dark Laboratory on Columbus," which is an interesting figure in himself in terms of his history of what we were taught when I was a kid. I'm not sure if you had the same kind of teaching because you had a very different background, but also talking about the Caribbean and then talking about just like the climate crisis. So why lead off with a person like Columbus in your title?
Really because he arrived in Guana Hani, which is the Bahamas in 1492. And I just think that Americans don't even see the Caribbean beyond for vacation often. And they conflate the Mayflower with his three ships and that voyage. So every year when they celebrate Columbus Day, they're not even thinking about the fact that he never set foot on the continental United States.
So I wanted to just confront folks with that fact in the subtitle and to kind of conjure him as this figure who, you know, how do I even put it? In 1493, he brought sugar cane to the Caribbean. So we have to begin to understand plantation, slavery, that economy, chattel through the notion of what it means to enact monocrop agriculture. So the violence against the soil just can't be overstated. Because before that, these islands were forests.
So the deforestation for me is a major part of this cascading of the climate crisis that I think people overlook. They just imagine these like desert islands with palm trees and sand. But there were, you know, thick, vast forests that were... Mango forests. Yeah, mangroves. Protecting the
coastlines and yeah. Exactly. So I've read his journals and the accounts of the time and it was just fascinating reading about mangroves that he encountered around the shore of those current day Bahamas islands and how the queen and king of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, they sent him to reap that mangrove wood for the shipbuilding economy because that wood is waterproof because the mangroves grow out there and convert the salt from ocean water into water that they can use to sustain.
So I think it's just about drawing our attention to those extractive economies from the 15th century. And we still see it today. Yeah. Like what happened with Maui, not even two years ago, right? Yes, exactly. That was because of an invasive crop that still continues to do. They just never took it, they just never started cutting it down. They just let it run wild. And that was the reason, that was the fuel for the fire because it got dried out, because of the climate crisis.
It's unreal to see that even though we know the history, not everybody knows the history, but it continues to repeat itself. And again, it goes back to storytelling to understand this. If you think about it, there's an entire major holiday in the US that's surrounded by Columbus coming to the Bahamas, not even the US. Yeah, and it's like a huge, it's almost bigger than Christmas in some cases. And it's all based on a bad story tell. Exactly. He thought he was
from China. Yeah, exactly. I just think this whole discussion has been fascinating. I hope it's the first of many that we can have on this podcast with you. I'd love to invite you back to discuss more of individual projects. Because I know you talked to so many people and we really got an overview of the book, but I would really love to dive in. I'll put the link to the book now. I know on your site it says pre-order, but you're saying it's been out for a week right now, right?
Yeah, so now you can order it. Now you can order it. Highly recommend it. I'm going to order a copy myself and I'm looking forward to diving into this. So again, Tao, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. And again, we're looking forward to having you back. Thank you, Andrew, and I would be very happy to come back. Thank you, Tao, for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I had to take a breath. That was so much fun.
I really love doing interviews. I know a lot of times they're longer and people don't always listen to them all the way. And I get that. You got 20 minute commute or 20 minute walk with your dogs or whatever you're doing cleaning the house or your apartment or wherever you're living. And you don't necessarily have time to listen to all this, but this is the one that you're going to want to listen to all of them.
You want to listen to all of them all the way through, but you're going to want to listen to this one all the way through. It's just a phenomenal interview. It really starts. We really get into talking about how looking at climate change and climate crisis and climate action as well as ocean conservation action affects communities and how communities need to be a part of it. All communities need to be a part of it.
And we talk a lot about how the narrative around climate change is really about limiting greenhouse gases, which understandably is a big part of it. But we don't get the stories of how it affects different communities. We just kind of get it all from sort of one community that we think about, whether it's your own community or sort of like this white community, western community that we often talk about.
And a lot of the other communities within North America, within the US, within Canada, within Mexico, they all get lost and in and around the world, they get lost in the shuffle of that narrative. And that's a travesty. And I think what TAO has set out to do to be able to bring storytelling to platforms that you can get access to that are freely accessible to be able to provide a space within within Hunter to have people come in and to be able to get access to that.
I think what it's going to be a lot of fun to bring people in the box, is having a conversation about it and then tell their stories. I think it's powerful. It is so powerful and empowers people to get their story out there for people to other people to listen. And I'm looking forward to hearing what she has going on. And it's going to be a lot of fun. So that's today's episode. I gonna put the link to the book. If you want to buy it, you can go ahead and click on that link.
There's different options to buy. follow Tao on her different social media sites I'll put those links up as well And of course if you have any questions or comments on this podcast You can leave it in the comments below on the YouTube channel on Spotify And if you're listening to this through an audio podcast, obviously, you know, I love you I love you for it because we started off
on audio. We continue on audio. It's one of my favorite platforms Please sit me out hit me up and DM me on how to protect the ocean on Instagram at how to protect the ocean That's at how to protect the ocean. Let me know your questions or comments I'd love to hear from you about this episode and any episode that we put out But that's it for today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo and have a great day We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation