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It's that tiny dog that the passenger next to you brought on the plane and you follow them on Instagram, but you don't know how to bring it up casually. Alliboard back with another episode of Ologies, but not just any episode. We are creeking the door open and we're stepping a foot into the chill of Spooktober.
That's right, kiddos.
Last year we had waldwall creepy halloweeny episodes in October, like Osteology about bones, and Spidronology all about spiderwebs, and cue Curvatology all about pumpkins, and it was so creepy. Then then cut to us standing wide eyed holding twenty twenty speer. So think of Spooktober this year as a respite from the inferno of chaos that is an election year pandemic. Let's chill out by talking about flesh eating birds.
But first we think, thank you to every single patron at patreon dot com slash Ologies, I love you make the show possible. Thank you to everyone for buying Ologies shirts or a winter hat or a fall blanket or face masks, which we now have at Ologiesmarch dot com. Thanks to everyone who's writing the podcast and making sure you're subscribed and telling friends and family, enemies, and of course for those writing a review. I have been known
to read every single one. I read them, sometimes in a deep Southampton in just to keep me going on tough nights such as this one.
This week.
Bye JLU ninety eight, who says, beware, do you want to become an avid birdwatcher, a taxidermist, an astronaut. If you said no to any of those things, you're wrong. And if you said yes, beware you will want to pursue a college degree in everything. After listening to this podcast, JLU ninety eight, thank you so much.
It's true.
Okay, chondrology it is word and Google confirmed it for me. Just ask the two thousand and four paper titled Migratory connectivity in Bicknell's Thrush, locating missing populations with hydrogen isotopes. So the word condor, by the way, just looked it up. It means bird of prey and it comes from an ink and word hunter, so now you know that, but there's no relation to that other word. So this kondrologist,
I'm a fan of his on Twitter. He got his bachelors in biology and his PhD in ecology and is now an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University and has been a researcher on projects involving the decline of vultures in India and how the landscape affects the recovery of the famed, almost
once extinct California condors. So let's dip our smooth skin covered skulls into the festering slop of carry on talk as we learn about vultures and gut eating and ecology and wingspans and live cams and a comeback from the brink of peril, and we summon up all kinds of respect for one of the gothiest birds in the game with chondrologist, doctor Jonathan C. Hall like a condor scientist, I like you never even thought I'd ever get to talk to one.
I'm so excited.
People are people are stoked awesome. And so you study geography but also how geography impacts different species.
Right, So I'm actually not a geographer by training. So my PhD is in ecology. So I got a degree in evolution ecology and organismal biology. But my work is very spatial, and oftentimes I think it's difficult for people to wrap their brains around what geography is. You know, you say geography and people think, oh, maps and capitals,
that geography is so much more. And I recently heard a brilliant and famous geographer, doctor Ruth Wilson Gilmour, explained geography as why things happen where they do.
Oh, once again, geographers study why things happen where they do. That's beautiful. I've never heard that before. This is great because geography, not being an ology, is a hard one to sneak in. So you're helping me sneak in some geography.
Covering two bases.
And you know, tell me a little bit about like where you grew up. What kind of kid were you?
Yes, I was the nerdy black kid forever and always since day one. So I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, which I think at one point was voted the number one small city in the country. So I grew up very privileged economically. My folks worked in DC and in Prince George's County. My dad's in public health, and my mother is a high school guidance counselor.
Before that, she was a.
High school biology teacher. And I grew up as an only child, so I'm very well adjusted.
My only child.
You know, it was a very good environment because, you know, the neighborhood I was in, I had everything that I needed, right, wasn't worried about where food was going to come from, or you know, whether or not there was issues in the home or anything like that, and so I had a lot of time to just kind of like sit
and think and wonder about things. And my mother, being a high school biology teacher for most of her career, would always kind of her work would kind of spill over into the home, and so, you know, she'd bring home, like, you know, extra specimens that she was, you know, working on for dissections. And my dad grew up fishing, and so he would take me fishing all the time. And so from a very early age, I was just really curious about the natural world, curious about the creatures that
were there. And so one of my earliest memories growing up was sitting down every Sunday night and turning on PBS and watching nature and just being fascinated by all of the interesting animals that were out there, and so growing up, I wanted to always be associated with cool, cool critters.
This next question is in regards to regurgitated for and rodent bones. So starting off strong here charm school with dad word owl barf. Did your mom emember bring how many extra owl pellets?
Yes? Check button, Yes, they're so amazing. Yeah.
My mother was running a what was it like a summer like a summer science camp or helping out with the summer science camp. And I got to go and it was really boring because for a while because she was lecturing and I was like, I don't know eight And then when the owl pellets came out, I was like, oh my goodness, it was awesome.
I swear it's like a kinder surprise egg. It's just like something that's like who knows what it's.
Gonna be, so you put it together. And were you ever a bird nerd?
No?
And it's funny because I don't. I don't yet consider myself a bird nerd. And there's a graduate student in my lab, Darren Gross, who actually works for the Ventana Wildlife Society. I actually have two graduate students who worked in my lab who worked for the Ventana Wildlife Society, and Darren is a burden nerd and I tease him all the time about being a bird nerd and identifying things.
And I've always liked the predatory animals. Raptors have always been something that's really interesting to me.
Well, I think when it comes to condors too, not hard to identify. Nope, they are giant and numbered. That would be a condor. Yeah, and this is so exciting. So, you know, especially being in California, I don't know if I've ever seen a condor in the wild, but I have friends who have and they say it's like time stops and this huge wingspan Josh, yes, okay, quick aside, how giant are these wingspans? We're going to find out
in a minute. But it's about one point seventy five alley wards twenty pounds of inky mystery bird hummeling the air above you to take flight. But yeah, so I've never seen one in the wild. But what was the first time you ever saw a California condor?
And are they even called that?
Yes? Okay?
Are most people just call them condors? And you're in South America, then there's a different condor there. It's bigger, than the one we have it here in North America.
That's a good question. It was the first time I saw condor.
I'm trying to think it was a Bitter Creek, one of the wildlife refuges a bit aways north of LA We were driving up to the flight pen that the US Fishing Wildlife Service runs is part of their condo management program, and I think the first condor I saw was one of the older birds that had been that was sitting on top of the flight pen. What you described it as like time stopping. I was just like whoa, and as we pulled up. As we pulled up, I
think it took off. And then that was another just like what moment, you know, when it spread its wings
and kind of took off. And so I think it took me a little bit of time to get adjusted because you know, I had been reading about them, and obviously when I was when I was younger reading about them, I had that you know, Natural geographic kids, and had an article on what the captive breeding program was all about and the little puppet feeding the baby condors, and so you know, it was like my childhood catching up with me in real life, which is really amazing.
So what exactly is a condor what kind of separates them from maybe turkey vultures that we see?
How can I put this? Why are they so cool? Biologically speaking?
Yeah, condors are sort of this class of like very large, obligate scavengers birds that primarily are only feed on carrion dead things. And there actually used to be more species of condors or birds that we that would be classified as condors in this part of the world. When you're talking about a condor, you're talking about a bird that only feeds on dead animals and essentially like a big ass bird, much much larger than turkey vultures or other raptors.
The California condors wingspan can be up to nine nine and a half feet wide. Yeah feet what Yeah, Yeah, that's that's kind of the maximum. I mean like seven eight seven eight nine is.
About you know where they're at.
But yeah, there's some some big ones in the Amian condors ten feet oh wingspan, yeah, which is just bonkers, but you know, there was species, there were some species of condos that are o extinct that were even larger than that.
Right, Oh my god.
Yeah, okay, quick establishing scene here. So condors are super social birdies, and they're considered New World vultures whose bodies are mostly black with large white triangles on the undersides of their wings. And they have this ruddy orangish bald head that's ensconced in a spiky black feather boa that shits creaks. Moira Rose might envy.
Now I'm flattered beyond all.
Reason anyway, Condors they're huge, kind of like a baby dragon or if melissafant low key eight rotting flesh, and they are bigger than turkey vultures. Turkey vultures only have about six foot wingspans, but condors are smaller than the giant wandering albatross, who can have up to twelve foot wingspans. Now, what about giant birds of the past. Well, about a decade ago, scientists discover fossil remains of an extinct seabird with a seventeen foot wingspan, which is about as long
as the average minifan. Now that will become more important later on, but for now, why so, why do you think they're so big? Is there something also geographically about the hills of California and the updrafts and the coast, like why are they so huge.
Yeah, So you know, I mean the condors evolved in spaces where there were very very large mammals to feed on, right, And so in thinking about those Pleistocene North America, in this part of the world, there were just you know, just a lot of big mammals, you know, sloth bears and marsupial lions and all these giant mammals that are
no longer around. And so you know, you have these giant mammals that are living and dying on the landscape, and so the niche of cleaning up those those carcasses gets filled by birds that you know, can eat a lot, can grow really big, and the landscape allows them to kind of cover a lot of distance, and so if you're a larger bird, you can cover a longer distance. Also, if you're a larger bird on the ground, you can kind of fight off smaller scavenging birds. So there's like
a pecking order of those sorts of things. The environment that these birds evolved in was really conducive to them being really big.
It gave them an advantage over turkey vultures and other scavenging birds.
Are there big enough animals still to support.
Them, Yes, And a lot of that support comes from what sort of the settlar ecologies have kind of introduced into this landscape through cattle farming, right, and so cows are cattle are really big animals, and so condors.
Feed a lot on cattle.
But there's still you know, animals like elk and mule deer and that part of the part of the country. And then the birds that are on the coast, you know, feed on marine mammals, right and so, oh yeah.
I never even thought about a condor eating a whale carcass. Yes, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I can't oh the smells. I mean, okay, wait, hold on one second.
Yes, oh my god, thank god.
We edit because I just had to have a conversation about whether or not my tiny poodle.
Pooped, So you should keep that in.
I mean, oh my god, I mean parenting during COVID am I right? JK, I have It's so easy. I do not know how parents are doing it. I don't even have to teach her to read. She keeps pushing the door open with her snoop. But okay, so condors feeding on marine mammals, oh, and seals, I guess too.
Ye, seals are a big part of the diet of coastal condors that occupy the coastal area. Yeah, oh my.
God, Okay, I have seen videos. Okay, I had watched a video put out by West Virginia University documenting doctor Hall's traveled California for his field recent search in Maricopa, California at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge. And it's set among these golden hills with oak trees and populated by giant frickin' birds. I had questions. I've seen videos with you. I have seen videos of the refuge that you do some research at their beaks. What are we
even talking about? With these beaks a whole lot of pain? Yeah?
Have they ever nipped you?
I have not been nipped in a way that was ornery. I've been nipped in a playful way by a captive condor named Dolly who lives at the Los Angeles Zoo, and I think as a chick. She fell out of the nest and like really messed up her wing. It was broken beyond the repair that she would be able to fly. She's a kind of an instructional condor and very tame. Has a good relationship with one of the
keepers at the Los Angeles Zoo, Mike Wallace. I just wanted to make sure they're recognizing the folks who work with condors on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, because I've learned so much from them and like they are such badasses. I mean, these are the folks who are repelling down sheer cliff faces into a condor nest to like check on the chick and having the parents land on their head and like bite their chest and
all the stuff. So yeah, I've good shout out to Mike Wallace, Joseph Brandt, Mollie, Steve Kirkland, Joseph Burnett, Darren Gross, Evan mcgreeth.
Oh my goodness, I know I'm leaving people out.
Doctor Hall has so much gratitude for his colleagues and so feel free during this episode to take a large glug of whatever is in nearby beverage or do a tiny imperceptible butt dance each time. He's so kind and that should be celebrated.
I love it. It's like an Oscar speech. People taking the work possible exactly.
Like they're all really interesting, awesome, caring, loving, wonderful brilliant people, and they are what makes my work possible. They are what makes these birds so interesting. Like there's some one setting up condracams all this stuff, so got to make sure that I thank them because they're just awesome humans.
Can you can you look at condor cams? Is that just for researchers? Is that just for chondrologists? Or can the general populace.
The general populist, can can can look up condo cams? I'll uh yeah, I will definitely send you a link.
That you can and that I did. And when I opened the window on the Ventana Wildlife Societies page at bantanaws dot org to see a pair of giant bald headed hunched birds bearing these red numbered wing tags tending to one fuzzy, tiny little gray chick, I made like a squawk of joy. I freaked out, and then I just started to exting the link to people.
Every year, you know, condors are making babies in the wild, and these nests have some of these nests have cameras set up in them so you can watch a condor kind of develop over time. It's really cute.
How many now are in existence.
Condos.
Condos are on the verge of extinction.
And how threatened did they get.
They're still critically in dangered. They're about five hundred and ten five and twenty condors in existence, which is a big improvement from the you know, less than thirty that were around in the mid eighties. Yeah, so it's a it's a big conservation success story. And so just over half of those just over five hundred birds are living outside of human captivity, right, So they're out there in the world. And there's a couple of different population centers
for the birds. And so there's there's two populations in central California, the Big syrupop which is on the coast, and then a little bit more inland is the Pinnacles National Forest population. And then there's the Southern California population, which is the one that I've been working with. There about one hundred birds, and then there's another one hundred or so I think out in the Grand Canyon sort of Arizona, Utah area. And then there is a population of about forty in Baja Mexico.
Oh yeah, I didn't even realize that we had them in southern California.
Oh yeah.
I think one of the awesome things about being a scientist. Being a researcher is getting to travel and meeting new people and more importantly, eating all the foods of the area. So every time I come up to LA I'm just like, Okay, where are we.
Going on the topic of research. Let's back up a little bit and get some of Jonathan's history, which I derailed earlier by asking about the owl vomit.
Let's see, I started out from PBS at home to wanting to be a veterinarian. I went to Morehouse College. Some say it's the best historically black college in the in the world. I tend to agree, but you know, you might have others who might disagree they're wrong. That's cool, shout out to Morehouse. And so I went to Morehouse as a biology major, and by that time I was
not satisfied with wanting to be a vetinarian. I wanted to work with animals that were less conventional than donson cats, and then also not realizing that veterinarians work with all sorts of you know, unconventional pets and things like that, And so I had a lot of learning to do about what animals a vetinarian worked with. But at the time I was like, oh, yeah, I don't want to work with just dogson cats, And so I wanted to
become a snake venom biologist. And so I had heard about this snake venom curator who, over the course of several decades injected himself with a diluted cocktail of snake venom. Oh my god, to build up an immunity.
I think he's talking about Bill Host, a Florida venom milker who headed up Miami's serpentarium laboratories Miami Serpentarium founded in nineteen forty eight and nearly died twenty times from venomous bites. Yet he lived to the ripe age of one hundred, probably without much of a health insurance or life insurance policy.
And I was like, Oh, that's the coolest thing.
And so this man, you know, after a period of time of taking a cocktail of snake venom, was immune the snake venim And so he'd been bitten by all of the venomu snakes that he.
Kept and not going to the hospital and just kind of like.
Wrote it out and I was like, Oh, I want to do that because that's a superpower. Oh yeah, So you know I thought that, Okay, I'll get an mdphd, right and run a snake venom research lab and have all of these venomous snakes and be a superhero, but also so be a source of antivenin for particularly for communities black and brown people who are just fortunately subject
to death by venomous sakes. Right Oftentimes, you know, people in rural communities in the global South, they're alongside, you know, things like russell spipers and bushmasters and cobras and all sorts of you know, mambas and things that will kill you dead, and they just don't have access if they are bitten by one of these animals to anti veenta, because it's really expensive to make and produce, and so, you know, I wanted to do that, but I kept
being drawn to the idea of being out in the field. And I spent some time working in a lab during a summer research program, and that really wasn't my cup of tea, and so I wanted to be out with field.
So Jonathan had spent some time working with parasitoid ants and performed termite necropsies and worked in fisheries and began to really enjoy research on ecology. Settler ecology he says, is much different than indigenous ecologies, which are not destructive
to plants and wildlife populations like settler ecology is. And he went on also to study grasshopper agriculture in Wahaka and then had an opportunity through an advisor to look at vultures in India who are actually an example of convergent evolution, so they're not closely related to vultures that we might see in the Americas, but they evolved to
have similar traits for eating corpses. And Jonathan has gotten to spend time in India studying the effects of La Nina weather on Indian vultures, as well as the positive effects that local Bishnoi people have had on forest conservation. And in the seventeen thirties he told me three hundred and sixty three Bushnoy people sacrificed their lives in a massacre to save a species of tree. So the next time you're like, should I bring a canvas toat to the grocery store? Should I recycle this box?
Just yes, do it for the trees.
Anyway, he ended up in the thick of condrology.
Shout out to Anil Changani, who is another mentor colleague who worked with me on my dissertation, A dear, dear, dear, dear friend. Miss him tremendously. Last time I was in India was in twenty thirteen, and just want to shout him out because again, you know, like without him, I wouldn't be where I am today.
And did you find that you kind of your career in ecology has kind of been like a relay race between these different mentors and different labs you've gotten to work with. Have they each kind of influenced your path?
Definitely? Definitely.
The work they scientists do is is never really just about one species. It's how it impacts the environment as a whole. Yes, for sure, especially with condors who are so known to be so critically endangered and to be this kind of humback story of this, like champion, I imagine that there must be so many people who are excited to meet someone who's on team condor, like thanks for helping the coma. So not only is it thrilling to meet a chondrologist, but it's also a joy to kind
of meet the birds themselves. So should you ever spot one, take note if you can, of the color and the number on their wing tags, and you can go to condorspotter dot com and you click on the color of the tag and then the number, and you get a link to a bio about that specific bird. And this gossip is juicy, okay. For example, one bird named Redwood Queen used to be called slop Slug because she was such a homebody and she just didn't stray far from
the place she was released. Slop Slug, though, it's rude, and scientists misgendered her for years, thinking she was a boy until she did a mating dance and they were like, oh, sorry, also rude. Now I'm going to read the rest of her official bio verbatim because it's just too good so quote. As far as status goes, Redwood Queen was at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy when she was first released.
She was mercilessly harassed by the rest of the flock and forced to wait until everyone else had fed before approaching a carcass. Many years later, though she paired with number one sixty seven, the most dominant male and the big surf flock at the time. Since then, she has reveled in her increased status as Redwood Queen, she laid her first egg with number one sixty seven in the cavity of a redwood tree, the first ever documented case for a California condor.
Day.
This is more enthralling than anything in Game of Thrones or US Weekly. You know, Okay, I have a stupid question about condors as well. You know, the tags that they have on their wings. This is so stupid, But how exactly are those fastened.
They're fastened with a piercing in the wing and it's sort of the equivalent of getting your ear piers Oh okay, Yeah, So what folks like like Joseph and Molly and Joseph and folks have to be careful of when they're when they're sort of feeling around for the wing of the condor is to not you know, puncture like a vessel or a nerve that's running through the wing and they're you know, they get really good at kind of feeling around and then they kind of punch a hole through
and yeah, that's how they attach the wing tag. And there's like a little screw on when one end of it. And one of the things that happens when the birds are captured and kind of we're monitoring their condition is to sometimes depending on how long that tag has been in there, they check the size of the hole because it widens over time. Oh and so maybe they'll change it because if it gets too big, then the you know, the the tag flops around in the wind and that causes more damage.
And wind hole even more. So, Yeah, I.
Always wondered about.
Okay, So obviously with carrion feeders, they have kind of that bald head so that they just don't get will just use something auto monopoetic this on their face, right, So what other adaptations do they have for eating dead flesh?
Yeah, So there's just some really interesting work that had been done relatively recently and kind of looking at like carrion eater's microbiome.
Yah.
Yeah, and it's like some of the like most intense microbiome environment. And so one one thing is like, you know, their stomach acid is you know, a next next level acidic because you know they're eating all sorts of noxious stuff. But animal's microbiomes kind of extend, you know, from their gut to their skin, and so their skin is really resistant to a lot of kind of nasty microbes. They're just kind of like biologically armored against a lot of the noxious stuff that they're encountering.
That makes a lot of sense that they would need some sort of like first line of defense against just the nastiest amount of worms and maggots and funguses. And what about their feet?
What are their feet like?
So their feet, you know, I get this, I get a question a lot, you know, especially when people see pictures of condors and they're like, oh my goodness, those feet are intense, and they are I mean they I mean they look intimidating. They I mean they look like a dinosaur's foot, right, long bones, long long digits, and
they end in claws. But their feet are not really designed the same way that like a predatory raptor's feet are, which are essentially like killing fingers, right, like those things, and the crushing power that and gripping power that let's say a golden eagle has is very very scary, but you know, a condor foot is very mild in comparison, And really what they need them for is balance, right,
and standing and things like that. They don't really need to like grip their prey because their prey is dead, it's not moving, and so they just need to be able to stand, and so the claws on their feet are not all that sharp because they don't need to be, and their feet don't really kind of grip the same way that like an eagle's foot would, which I'm very
thankful for because I've been scratched by condor feet. They kind of kick around a little bit and it's you know, it's not anything serious, doesn't break the skin, but it is intimidating the first time you get scratched by a condor foot.
Oh yeah, because the just think of how gross that wound would be, Like, is there enough to be a sporn to kill whatever is in like a vultures toneenail?
It's not what you want. I actually, I actually have a colleague shout out to Todd Katsna and the Katsna Lab, who is the person who actually got me connected with condors. So he and I had done research at different times. I'm in the same part of India in Rojasthan, India on vultures and their ecology in that part of the world. So Todd Katzner and his partner Aaron sort of band birds and do all sorts of research and work with raptors.
But they were rehabilitating a turkey vulture, and Todd took a bite from a turkey vulture and it was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.
It's like how it's like curry mannaise. It's just kind of.
So you you, you, you definitely want to make sure that whenever when whenever you take a bite from if you ever take a bite from a carry eating organism, you watch that immediately. I think I think Todd had to like get antibiotics because.
It's just oh, I'm sure, like a hand transplant, like but just you know, like sell my head on a different body out you know.
Ye, just cut it off, just cut it off. I'm done.
Oh god, what other kind of bites or scratches have you heard about?
I did hear and I you know, this is just hearsay. Maybe this is something that like, you know, people told me when I first got there, like a condor myth of somebody who had been partially degloved by a condor. And so we don't normally wear gloves when we're holding condors, and people often see films I'm like, are you insane?
Yeah, same question, yes, But the thing is is.
That you know, a glove that that would be thick enough to protect you from a condor bite doesn't give you the sort of dexterity and the ability to kind of feel the condor and control the condor as as well as you could with your bare hand, because when you're muzzling the bird, you kind of have to make a circle with your thumb and either ring finger or
middle finger to kind of keep the beak closed. But depending on the size of your hand, you could be kind of pressing in on the condor's eye, right, and so you need to kind of like hold the bird delicately but firmly and not press on their eyes or not press on their names or their nostrils, and so all of that like sensitive equipment on the bird is very close to its main ripping instrument, and so putting a glove on would really kind of like hinder your
ability to keep the bird safe, even though you'd be much safer. So partially degloved without gloves means that your skin comes partially. So I have not verified this story, and I kind of don't want to, because it's really good when you tell graduate students and undergraduate students who come out with you to like, really be careful.
Glove, Like you need to know, Oh gosh, what kind of eyes actually do they have? They need good eyesight to see a big dead whale.
They do.
It's really awesome to like to look at the different life strategies that birds have and specializations that like carrying eating birds have. And so when you look at a picture of a turkey vulture, they have these huge naars, these huge, huge nasal openings. And when you compare that to a condor or a black vulture, whose naars and nasal openings are much smaller, it turns out that that
turkey vultures primarily use all faction to locate carrion. And they, I mean, they have good eyesight, but their kind of specialty is sniffing out to the dead thing. Whereas black vultures and turkey vultures they do have very good senses of smells, but their eyesight are is usually what they're using to primarily locate things, right, And so different specializations, and so their eyes are kind of scary because they're
red and they're piercing. They look at you with intent, they look at you with intelligence, and they're very very smart birds. They're intimidating, but they're they're really beautiful, beautiful eyes.
How are the doors doing?
Let's check in?
Are they okay? Are they staying hydrated? Are they doom scrolling?
Am I projecting where things at are with condos? Now? I mean, you know, the recovery and the captive beating program has been an incredible success, and you know, it's
kind of like the next stage of condo conservation. Can these magnificent birds exist in an anthropogenic landscape, a landscape whose ecologies, you know, as I was mentioned before, have been completely transformed, right, the modes of being and the ways that condos have evolved to be on the landscape are not as congruous to highways and plastic and chemicals, and you know, far far fewer species than they're used
to seeing and cities and all of these things. And so sort of the next stage and what my work is focused on now is trying to understand the ways in which condos are moving across the landscape, and particularly for the work that would doing in my lab is what condors are doing where they're doing it on the ground, you know, where they're feeding, because you know, the primary threat to California condors persistence in the landscape is lead poisoning.
Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah, So this is where things might get a little interesting in terms of folks who might have an opinion about this.
And they're picking up lead from spent ammunition.
So we're talking about guns in America, which is always a really you know, welcoming conversation. Absolutely, and I say this as somebody who is learning to hunt and everything, but I use non lead ammunition. California recently enacted legislation where now you cannot purchase lead ammunition for hunting in the state. Part of the reason why is because of the research that was on on condors and found that these birds when they're feeding on a gut pile of
an animal that's been shot by a hunter. You know, condors eat very fast when they're on the ground. They're
big birds. It's difficult for them to take off, and they're awkward on the ground, much more awkward on the ground than they are in the air, So they have to gobble down their food really quickly before some other predator might come around and make a meal out of them or just kill them, you know, to get them off the concass so they eat really quickly, and so they're you know, just gulping down hunks of meat, and in the meat that's left are lead fragments, and so
you know, these birds they have a pretty high blood lead concentration in terms of their loads sort of on the landscape, right, And so a lot of mortality of condors has been from lead poisoning.
I didn't know that.
So Jonathan says that one of the reasons lead is used as ammunition is because it's cheap, it's heavy, and it fragments on impact, and it leaves a bit of a snowstorm. He says, of lead in flesh, especially in the guts of an animal, which are usually discarded in
the field by hunters. And I did a little more ready on this, and it takes only a few fragments the size of a couple grains of sand to potentially kill a condor, which, as a person who has absent mindedly eaten the stickers on more fruits than I care to admit, is pretty easy to do. Will they come and start to gobble down an animal that's just been hunted before the hunter can get to it.
No, Well, it depends on how long it takes the hunter to get to it and where the animal is. If you're out hunting and you shoot a mule deer or something like that, the condors usually won't get there. Like you know, if you had to walk like two hours to get to your quarry, you wouldn't be getting there when the condor is already starting to feed. One of the interesting things about a condor is that they're
very cautious. So oftentimes they'll they'll find a carcass and they'll just if they can, sort of roost nearby and just watch, sometimes for hours, maybe even day, just to make sure that nothing else is coming by, because they don't want to become a snack. If you're a hunter, you're not in danger of losing any meat to a condor.
Well, a hunter shoots something and then kind of lose the animal if.
It runs Definitely, yeah, definitely.
You can tell I have not been hunting. But do they run away and don't just have no idea?
Definitely, yeah.
I mean shooting and making contact with an animal is definitely no guarantee that you're actually gonna have meat your freezer. You lose them, or sometimes you might shoot one and it falls and it gets into a spot that you just can't you just can't get to Oh.
I never even thought about that.
I mean, imagine just like going to get a burrito and then the burrito takes off.
Or you know what I mean, like you just can't get to it.
You're like, I just pay for this burrito, but it's running away.
Yeah, yeah, Condour's gonna eat it.
So there's a movement in ecologically conscious hunters and wildlife conservation is to use copper bullets instead, and they don't fragment like lead does, and they're more expensive. So, as you can imagine, there is some resistance, shall we say, to this, But Jonathan himself, who's new to hunting, says he doesn't shoot with lead for ecological reasons. And apart from that issue, there are other environmental factors affecting our favorite dead flesh feeders.
These birds that are feeding on marine mammals that hang around kind of these runoff areas of cities and all this chemical downlocks that's happening, and then you get kind of the amplification biological amplification of chemicals sort of as you move through the food web, you know you've got kind of a large population of smaller organisms, and they get more and more concentrated as you move through the food web into these top predators.
Right.
So you know, you could have a low contaminant load for like an anchovy, but by the time you know a sea lion is eating another fish that's fed on the anchovy, that those toxins.
Become concentrated, right.
And so condors are picking up all sorts of nasty stuff from the marine animals that they eat that are living in these environments where human beings are kind of dumbing chemicals into the watershed.
So these are a few reasons why the condor population was so low. It was nearly extinct, but it's steadily rebuilding.
So we're going to hear more about that in a second, But first, a quick break for sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to toss some cash at a cause of Jonathan's choosing, which this week is Blackinappalachia dot org, which, in their words, works to highlight the history of African Americans in the development of our region and its culture through research, local narratives, public engagement, and exhibition. The project aims to raise the visibility and
contributions of black communities of the Mountain South. So you can visit Blackinappalachia dot org to donate or to find out more, and you can also listen to their podcast, which appropriately is titled black in Appalachia. And that donation was made possible this week by the following sponsors, who you may now hear about.
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If we real this?
Naharn okay your condor queries? Can I ask you lightning round Petreon questions?
Oh, people are excited? Okay.
I thought this was a great question, Ethan, But tone I think gets Italian.
I'm not sure. First time question asker.
Says, I've heard that vultures will project al vomit as a form of defense.
Do condors do this as well?
No, I mean they will, but there are other birds, like turkey vultures who are big fans of that defense strategy. Yeah, it's awful, but the worst, the worst the birds. People who know me, especially my family, know that I have like a vendetta against cormorants.
So specific.
Yes. So when I was a graduate student, I worked at a outdoor classroom. Shout out to Michael Hogarth, the muscleman. He works with freshwater muscles.
Maybe I've lived in southern California too long, but when he said the muscleman, I definitely pictured a guy in a tank top drinking away protein shake anyway by Valve Guy.
One of his first field trips in the field Zoology course is out on Ohio State's Outdoor A class from Stone Lab on Lake Erie is to go to Green Island, which is an island in sort of western part of Lake Erie close to the Bass Islands that's uninhabited by humans and has been so for a couple of years. And it is a heron and cormorant rookery.
Oh okay, so your hell world.
Yes, yes, the night Circle of Hell is being stranded on that island because the birds are nesting in the trees. We go to that island, like the second field trip that's there. The first field trip is to a pond where their leeches. The second field trip are Barf Island and so there's like biting flies and you have to road to the island and as the TA, I had to like shuttle people back and forth. So I was
on the island getting torn up by black flies. And then you get onto this island and they're just like their nests above you, and these birds are just vomiting fish on for like three hours. I shouldn't know, and I've never been hit, but a couple of A couple of students have been hit by like just like rotting, half digested fish, and I hate it.
Oh my god, I hate it.
I understand now, I understand.
Yeah, condors. Condors are pretty are I mean, as long as you as long as you keep their head controlled, and you do that by pinning their head against their body, right, because a lot of their most of their power is in ripping right, and so if you've already got their head kind of cocked back on their body, then they can't really do much more damage if you were to, you know, get your finger in that area. And so once you have them controlled and you're kind of hugging them,
they really kind of chill out. I did have a student who, for her first condor was a juvenile who had just fledged and it peed on her the entire time she was holding it for like forty minutes.
It's just drinking a mountain dew as it's peek, it's just rehydrated.
It was like a steady trickle, you know. Yeah, So yeah, yeah, condoors. Condos are pretty chill when it comes to like, you know, vultures and everything.
Oh my god.
Another great question. Jeffrey Bradshaw wants to know who eats condors when they die.
That's a good question. I don't know of of like macrofauna that regularly feast on condors, aside from canids or maybe bears that might like be able to snag one. But since you know, the birds have been kind of really closely monitored, they don't really run into trouble. They don't really run into predation that much. Like who would scavenger condor? Yeah, I don't know of any examples of like other con doors, like, oh Jerry died, let's let's go eat them.
It's like the like the same thing is just like crying into ice cream as you're eating it. You know, man, he was, I can't stop.
He was a great guy.
Man, he's so oh so Yeah.
I think the only thing that would want to eat a condor, given the fact that it's you know, it's microbiome, is like holding a bay a lot of nasty stuff, and once it dies, that microbiome is kind of like out of commission. I think that other scavengers that would be able to handle digesting a dead condor are probably it's probably not worth the effort to like try to
pick through all the feathers and everything like that. So I think the microbes are the ones that end up doing most of the The microbes and the and the macroinvernbits end up doing most of the work.
Ah.
So it's little little ones.
It's just break free, oh, Grace Lauren. Two great questions, Grace says, Hi, doctor Hall, I understand that California condors used to have a much wider range prior to their population dwindling down. Do we think they'll ever reach a point where they can return to their past range? And also, what's with the tiny patch of fuzz fuzz on their noggin?
Yeah, so the tiny patch of fuzz fuzz on their noggin. I'll answer that question first. I imagine Grace is talking about the little fuzz that kind of shows up in their nostrils, their nails, and oftentimes you'll see that with like younger birds as they're kind of down is they're shutting their down and getting their adult adult feathers, and they just kind of gets caught in that in that area.
Ps. These big ass birds can live maybe up to sixty seventy years maybe more. But another reason for the condors of vulnerability is that they raise really small clutches of one to two eggs, and those babys can take six to seven years to reach se actual maturity, and during that prolonged awkward pubes sence, their heads change from a modeled dark gray color to a sherbet orange or reddish color, depending.
On if they're horny.
And that's all you need to know about their heads.
There's no more information.
Sometimes I've been asked, so I'm sorry, I'm going to ask my own question. But what does a condor head feel like? It feels like a ball sat That's exactly what it feels like. And you know, for listeners who have felt a scrotum, you know exactly what that feels like, and you can immediately call that up.
For those of you who have not felled to scrot them, then you know maybe.
Condor Yeah, I mean you know you could you could feel if you touch a condor head, that's what a scrodon feels like.
If you touch a scrot them, that's what a condor head feels.
Oh my god, No, we know.
An answer. I never knew to ask the question. What is with the tiny patch of buzz buzz? Maybe that's you know, the condescaping.
Oh my god, it's important for the listeners to know, so you know, like very delicate, very stretchy, very warm, and kind of smelly. So a lot of parallels.
Checks all the boxes.
Yeah, oh my god.
And then what about their range?
What are we thinking?
So I think this is this is a really good question, and it kind of gets to the crux of my work and trying to understand is it even possible for condors to you know, extend their range into northern California, up the West coast, into Alaska, down into Mexico and even you know, populations in Texas, even in the eastern part of the United States. Right, I think the short answer is I think that we're a long way off
from that. And that has to do and has everything to do with the way that settler ecologies have to be reworked or dismantled for those birds to return, because you know, it's just human beings living in this particular way have such a humongous footprint. Yeah, and they take up a lot of space and they do a lot of damage, and that has to change, I think in
order for condors to return to their normal range. And I think that goes for a lot of you know, charismatic macrofauna that used to be ubiquitous in the landscape. Human beings, particularly ones that are practicing this particular type of ecology, need to change.
Okay, And side note, because doctor Hall is amazing. He went back to Patreon and answered so many questions, including describing the really strong acid in the condor's gastric system as quote like piste Off, wonder woman, fire nazis strong. Their bacteria gang is just stronger. Quote at This microbiome of the condors can break down even small amounts of lead so well that researchers estimate that up to sixty percent of the condor fatalities in the wild can be
attributed to lead poisoning. But things that contributed to their extinction in the wild around nineteen eighty seven. This was before the captive breeding programs, where things like the use of DDT, which has been known to cause really fragile shells that break in the nesting process, and these effects of DDT were still happening decades after it was banned in nineteen seventy two, because it was stored in the blubber of sea mammals.
That the condors eight years later.
And another risk not to bum you out is unlike a turkey vulture, a condoor sense of smell isn't so great. And sometimes they mistake trash for rotting flesh, which would not be trashed to them. So helping out with a beach cleanup could be safe these fuzzy little flesh rippers. Oh and speaking of diet in Ky Cauldron's words, as California condors have a taste for carry on, do they have a preference for how long their nourishment has been dead?
And if it's been dead too long, will they turn their beak up at it?
Oh?
That is a good question that I do not know the answers. Yeah, it would be really interesting to like layout like a you know, relatively fresh carcass and then one that's you know, a couple of weeks old. But I would imagine that like animals, you know, carrion gets maybe even a little too funky for a condor.
I wonder, yeah, I wonder if it just becomes like jerky, you know, if they're.
Like, oh, it's kind of dried up.
No, thank you.
Doctor Keay Swift, who is a corvid thanatologist who not Yeah, she's amazing. She works with them Crow funerals.
Oh, that episode was amazing.
So this is her, She says, I have so many questions. I'm going to post all of them and let you pick. She says, do you consider gut piles left by hunters essential to the sustainment of condors or would there be enough prey without them?
Do you think that is another really good question that I don't think we have a clear answer to. I think the supply of food that comes from human activity has to be sustained to a certain level. What humans make available through hunting versus what other predators and sort of like dying of natural causes is made available to condors. That's a good question about like where they are feeding
and what exactly they are feeding. One I would be worried if hunting activity didn't make some of the larger ungulates available on the landscape, and that's because they're just They're not a lot of predators, particularly in California, that are going to feed on like an elk or bighorn.
Sheep or a mule deer.
So I think humans are an important part of like condor ecology. But you know how much food they're getting from like ranchers.
That's a good question.
Yeah, she has another question. She said, are you familiar with or do you support plas to scene rewilding and do you think that would significantly advance the conservation of condors? And she also says thanks for all you do to conserve these epic dynos.
Well, thanks to you, dot boy. So how much time do you have because this issue of rewilding of a lot of thoughts. Okay, this and plas to scene rewilding and all this stuff.
Just a heads up.
If plas to scene rewilding sounds like a new beauty routine you don't know about, or a synth folk band you've never heard of, I gotcha. So the Pleistocene era started over two million years ago, it ended about eleven thousand years ago, and rewilding means introducing species that flourished before, essentially colonization. So for more on this, you can also see the Bisonology episode about Buffalo's Anyway, Jonathan has thoughts, great ones.
European settlers are almost entirely responsible for the sort of conservation crises that we are witnessing in what's now called North America and in large, large part of the world.
Right.
You know, with European expansion and colonization, you get this massive transformation of human life that exists amongst indigenous people, but you also get this massive transformation of these ecologies. And we never, we meaning researchers who are kind of involved in this conversation, almost never acknowledge or talk about the restoration of keystone cultures, keystone human cultures.
Right. And so there's.
A PhD student in my lab who is researching buffalo restoration. Shout out to Meg Davenport. She's studying, like, you know, you're talking about buffalo restoration, but you know there are dozens of people peoples who are intimately ecologically and spiritually, and you know, all of these ways in which humans interact to a particular species. We talk about bringing the buffalo back, but it gets contentious because then you have to start talking about why are you bringing the buffalo back,
and the buffalo back for whom. So you talk about buffalo restoration, you have to talk about restoration of indigenous lands, restoration of indigenous people, and you have to talk about, you know, the really uncomfortable stuff that settler ecologies are really good at avoiding talking about and so you know, I think rewilding has to contend with those two issues, right, who's responsible and are we talking about bringing back human
cultures and who's the we and how is that being done? Otherwise, you know, it's just another way of settlers controlling the landscape and tramping on indigenous sovereignty and not really taking an ecological approach to the situation, right, because then you're talking about having to control more land, having to keep certain people out of the land to bring these species back.
You're talking about needing authorities to kind of maintain boundaries, and that's really not something that's really congluous with, you know, trying to restore these ecologies in which you know, human created boundaries.
That's such a good point, and it's interesting that a lot of times we don't think about how broad and how wide the story of a condor is. It's not about just the birds. It's about the you know, our entire system of the way that we take land use land, you know, exactly.
Yeah, And some colleagues of mine are working on publishing a paper and looking at the daily travel distance of condors, and other folks have done this research too, But We've got some really awesome technology which essentially amounts to strapping a GPS, strapping a cell phone onto a bird, onto a condor, and being able to get their local their speed, their altitude, and like real time, you know, like every second, like data points like every second, every ten seconds, or
every hour, every half hour, every fifteen minutes. And so looking at the daily travel distances of condors, and these birds cover an incredible distance. We had we tracked one bird that essentially traveled the equivalent length of the state of California north to south in three days.
What is faster than I can do it in a car.
Exactly exactly, I mean, it just stupendously fast. And so when you talk about, you know, restoring these birds to the landscape, you're talking about a bird that has the capability of flying across the state border, right or you know, it gets really interesting and really complex and really uncomfortable when we when you know, we start talking about condor
restoration on indigenous land. And so the Uruk and the Kurrak people have a reservation and that are currently based in northern California are working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the condor biologists to kind of help manage a northern California population, and the Nez Perce tribe in what's now Idaho and that region are are kind of beginning that process of bringing condors back because these birds are really important culturally for them. But it gets
really to a contentious point. And it was interesting at one of the condor meetings, I asked a question sort of like in the coffee hour to one of the folks who was organizing, and I just, you know, this question, who owns condors? And it was a tough question, and I meant it to be sort of a tough question.
I don't know the answer, right, Ye. What happens when condors that are managed by the US Firstern Wildlife Service, or who are managed by the Peregrine Fund, or condors from Mexico start crossing the border right as they are being you know, as we hope they expand their range. Well, then we have to have all these difficult conversations about who has jurisdiction, who's responsible, who's going to, you know,
look after these birds that they get into trouble. You know, what kind of conditions you cross the border, you know, anywhere outside of California and you don't have lead ammunition legislation, right, And so you know condor that flies from Los Angeles into you know, Utah, Arizona or Nevada or wherever gets into trouble in just some lead and then comes back and is sick, like who.
And who pays for that?
Yeah?
With a bird in these treatment So it's a it's a lot.
Yeah, it's an issue even bigger than their.
Wingspans, if you can imagine that.
So, Doctor Swift great questions and if you would like to hear more about inky birds with great brains and Halloween vibes, definitely check out the Corvid Sanatology episode with doctor Kayley Swift, which.
Is about crow funerals.
Crows have funerals, and it aired around Halloween twenty eighteen, so definitely go back and listen if you haven't heard it.
Oh oh.
On the topic of their giant wings, I.
Know a number of folks who have condo wing tattoosh oh man, they are really awesome.
Is it a fullback tattoo? I mean you need some real estate.
For the yeah you do, and it's yeah, it's not. It's not to scale. We have to have like one wing from the bottom of your neck to like the back of your calf. But yeah, shout out to Nick Heinen, geographer at the University of Georgia, and then shout out to Joseph Brandt, who's work with condors in southern California for most of his career. They both have condo wing tattoos and so they're kind of smaller on their arms.
And they're just like, really awesome.
I want to see a picture of it.
Of course, I will be finding these instagrams and reposting the pictures if I find them. I mean, come on, what is something about condors or your work that sucks?
What sucks?
Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that before listening to the show, and I was what sucks? Well, I will tell you the scaredest I've ever been researching condors, which had nothing directly to do with condors, but a couple of years ago, and that was the day when it was really cold and rainy and we were not prepared for the weather. But what had happened a couple of days before was a giant mountain lion had wandered into
the trap. Oh no, and so you know, you bait the birds and you have a cow carcass that's there, usually like a stillborn cast.
So doctor Hall had taken a few students with him, Evan and Vince, and it was Vince's first time doing field work. And it was cold and rainy, and a day or two before the condor bait had lured a mountain lion into the trap Doctor Halsaw photo and it was.
Like the like the most muscly mountain lion I'd ever seen in my life. Like, ugh, it was really bad. So this is before the flight pen had had this big what I called their Jurassic Park fence around to keep the paters out. So we show up a couple of days later and this mountain lion is like, we don't know. I mean, it's it's no longer sort of directly in the vicinity, but mountain lion could be just like just over the next hill. I think there's elk
there are, there's plenty to eat in that area. And so we're in the barn and the field house is about three hundred yards away, and so Vincent didn't have. All he brought was short sleeves and short pants. It's fifty eight degrees fifty six degrees and raining silence. And so even in the barn, Vincent is like really cold and he's like, doctorhol I'm really cold. Can I go back to the field house and get like a jacket?
And I was like.
Yes, but nobody could go with him because we were all kind of like busy, and I, you know, I started hesitated, and I'm like, he's like shivering. Oh, and so I was like, oh, no, Vince, like he's gonna get hypothermia. But I don't want anybody walking around here by them shows with a giant mountain lion.
Oh my god.
That was the longest thirty minutes of my life waiting for Vince to come back. And like like he he was, he was tired, and so like I think he like went to the bathroom and maybe just sort of like hung out because this is his first time in the field and maybe he's like I don't want to do this.
He's like googling other jobs.
But like Vincent is.
Vincent took half an hour to come back, and I am, I'm like, oh my god. You know, I bring out this you know, undergraduate and he's sophomore at the time. Bring up this undergraduate student and he gets eaten my mountain lion and Vincent's black, okay, and so you know, like we're the only two black people out there, and of course I'm like, okay, this is like a horror movie, and of course one of us is going to get eaten first. No, you know, how would it look like?
You know?
But he eventually makes his way back in one of the one of the field jackets, and I was just like, really glad to see Vince. Shout out to Vincent, if you're out there, hopefully you haven't been eaten by a mountain lion.
Seriously, Oh my god.
Yeah, he's got a jackets like breaker is necessary. What about your favorite thing about your work?
I would say my favorite thing about my work is working with students. Is working with young folks and trying to do the same thing that the mentors that I mentioned, you know, the Tom Waits, the Dwayne Jackson's, then Neil chong Ghani's, the Todd Kastners have done for me and just giving us an opportunity to explore the world, explore our interests, build skills, and really kind of gain confidence.
It's the best part of my job, and particularly when I get to work with students of color, which is not often and something that I'm really need to do a lot of better job of connecting with other particularly black folks sort of in this realm, which is why, you know, I'm just so impressed and so thankful and so in awe of people like you know, Karina Newsom and doctor Esther, who's somebody you should you should definitely talk to me. She does incredible work in creating space,
and so many other people, right. And one of the things I was thinking is I was listening to the Black and Stem episode, was I was thinking, and I wanted to say to everybody who was on that, like, if you are looking for post docs, yeah, I'll let you boy, you know, but also just you know, I look forward to connecting with with folks because you know, it's obviously there's a lot of work to do in the realm of racial diversity within these fields, and working
with students and backgrounds that are not represented is just so enriching because we have a lot to contribute and there's a lot about our experience as black people and as other people of color that we bring to bear.
And you know, these fields are incredibly white, and you know, there's nothing sort of inherently wrong with you know, white people doing this work, but looking at the lack of racial diversity, you know, there's a lack of perspectives and ways of approaching problems and questions that we definitely need to have in order to kind of make things like rewilding not problematic and not replicate, you know, the same
sorts of marginalized environments that exist. So shout out to all of the people of color, black volks, especially in these fields and doing what you do. You're an inspiration and a big reason or the reason why I continue to do what I do.
Do you have any words to people who are a black and stem who are just coming up that you wish you knew, any advice to them?
Oh goodness, that's a whole that's a whole other.
Episode. I think.
One of the things that has that I that I've struggled with sort of throughout my career is wondering whether or not I was crazy, Wondering whether or not I was insane right for the interest that I had, for the ways that I approach questions, for the approaches that I was taking, the things I was interested in, and sort of like once I got into the fields. Right as I've progressed in my career, I've had to kind of create a space sort of an epistemology or approach
to questions that is not really there. I think that I would say to folks, particularly black folks in this field, is the way that you are passionate about approaching problems and the way that you are thinking about ways to solve problems. Don't let anybody take that perspective away from
you or try to dampen that perspective. And it can happen actively, but it could also just happen by the fact that there's a tremendous pressure within these fields to value knowledge in a particular way, and it's problematic because of its lack of diversity, diversity of perspectives. And so I would also say to white folks in this field, and just sort of white folks in general, that it's really important that you know those who are seeking to
be accomplices. And I like accomplices that term better than allies, because allies can can be kind of like cheerleading from the sidelines, but they're not actually in the thick of it, right, so you can you can you can advocate from the sidelines, but not actually risk anything, and there's a certain safety in that. But I think what folks need is accomplices, people who are willing to put themselves at risk in an equal measure as they can being in their privileged
identities that people who are marginalized do. And I would say that being an accomplice or being an ally really there's a tremendous learning that has to happen. Don't ignore and don't push aside the fact that there's just so much about the way in which race functions in our everyday lives that we have to learn before we can be good actors in dismantling it. Being a good advocate, being a good accomplice really starts with that learning and it's intense, but it's necessary.
Absolutely. So yeah, that's all such great advice. I think that so many people who don't maybe don't have mentors like you, Like that's that's a really amazing statement to You're almost acting as like a mentor to a lot of people that you'll never meet.
Which is really great. You know, eyes are starting to sweat Alley.
It's true, Like it's you know, just the more voices and the more voices that people hear, the more you can see yourself doing something, and yeah, we're we're definitely not going to dismantle a system that was built by white colonizers by just having people who are descended from white colonizers. It's not going to you know, yeah, that's really eye opening and really wonderful.
Yeah, no, no, And thank you for creating the space. I mean, like this is really important.
I think that what you have done, what you were doing, is just an incredible hub for people to kind of understand understand these sorts of things.
Jonathan also said that one thing he wished he would have learned earlier that would have saved a lot of energy would have been to not debate and engage with people who think racial injustice or privilege doesn't exist.
It would be a lot easier to deal with if I got paid for the labor of like racial justice that I'm doing, Like yeah, it's and you know that's one thing for like, you know, administrators who are who are firm, firm in this idea of legitimacy. It's time to get creative to compensate people of color for doing
this work. And we're talking like we're talking like straight cash homeie, like like for real, that would go a long way, and so deans and presidents and department chairs and all these folks like where we're talking like real meaningful compensation in direct correlation to the ways in which a lot of people say like, oh we value you know, your input, and oh this is so amazing and those
is so helpful, and oh thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, you know, there's a there's an epic freestyle by Black Thought from the roots.
Know if you've seen it, no, no.
It is seriously one of the most amazing literary feats I've ever seen a human being. Do he freestyles for ten minutes. It's it's bonkers. He's like, by far one of my favorite hip hop artists. So like Black Thought, if you're listening, like it'd be awesome to connect. But if not, just now, I'm a huge fan. But in that, you know, I mean, he's he's a brilliant human being. In it, one of the lines is you know, I'm gonna say three hundred K and even in the ballpark,
I charged more just for an awkward small talk. I'm gonna say three hundred even in a ballpark, more just for awkward small talk. And I'm not saying three hundred K for awkward small talk, but you know, people in positions of power who value our work as black people, who recognize what we're doing and how we are making change in ways that other people who are there cannot do.
I just pay us more worth, you know.
And just a side note, I love that he raised this point because I've seen a lot of folks online mentioned that this work is understandably exhausting, especially on top of all the grief and the fear and the anger in the midst of a pandemic and trying to handle workloads, on top of being asked to explain how to dismantle systemic racism of which they are the victim and just
heads up. For the last six months or Soologies has been paying honorariums to guests who take on this work and educate us, and I want to thank Patreon for helping make that possible. And if you're out there, no matter who you are, and you're asked to do free labor to educate others based on your lived experience of systemic oppression, ask for honorariums. Certainly say I'd love to consider it, depending on my availability, what's the honorarium for this?
And then decide after you think about it, just saying old Dad Ward and doctor Jonathan Hall know you're worth it.
Now.
Thank you so much for letting me ask you so many stupid questions.
Of all kinds. I just know.
Yeah, this has been amazing. This has been really awesome.
So ask the smart people the goofy and sometimes not so goofy questions and thank them for learning you something new.
I hope you are enjoying.
The crisp autumn mornings and the leaves rustling and the smell of a distant fireplace and the knowledge that a condor would absolutely find you delicious.
Cut Banks, text your crush, We're all going to die.
You can follow doctor Jonathan Hall, who I am sure you are already a very big fan of on Twitter and Instagram. His handles are out there j H on both, and there will be links to that in the show note, alongside a link to his website and more. And we are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward with one L on.
Both, so do say hello there.
More links for this entire episode will be up at Alleyward dot com slash Ologies slash chondrology. If you would like t shirts or mugs or worm hats or blankets or any of these things, you can go to ologiesmerch dot com. Tons of stuff is up there. Thank you Shannon Feltys and Bonnie Dutch. They host the podcast You Are That, which is hilarious, so do find that.
Thank you.
Aaron Talbert, she admin's Theologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White and her team of transcribers who are awesome and are getting transcripts up available to our deaf and hard of hearing Ologites and anyone who would just like a free transcript. Those are up at alleywar dot com slash ologies dash extras. Thank you all the folks at patreon dot com slash ologies for making all these perks possible. Thank you to Gremy, who was walking through
the room and who will not be edited out. That thing's perfect. She's digging around the bed. Thank you to Caleb Patten who bleeps those episodes making them kid friendly. Those are up at alliwar dot com slash ologies dash extras. Thank you to Noel Dilworth who schedules the Ology and helps me stay on top of my own schedule. Thank you to editors Jared Sleeper and of course Stephen Ray Morris, who are some of the biggest best birds in the biz.
I usually have notes in a list of who I think at the end of this and I don't today, and I'm just loosey goosey. Nick Thorburn wrote the music and performed it. And if you listen to the very very end of the episode, you know I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is I did one of those foot peels where like you put your foot in an acid bath and then like four days later, your skid's supposed to fall off. And it's been day
four and so far nothing's happening. And I'm worried that, like my feet are so calloused and nasty that it's just no match for it. I might have to use some condor stomach juices next. Anyway, remember to vote, because honestly, November three is the scariest thing about October.
But either way, we'll be back next week with.
Another Spook episode. Oh it's so good, Okay for my pacadermatology, homeology, for do zoology, lithology and theology, meteorology, paratology, the apology, seriology.
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