Oh hey, it's the leg that's asleep and waking it up is only going to feel worse. Ali ward, and we're deep into autumn. A few weeks ago we talked trash, and today we're dishing dirt. We got a soil episode. So what is soil made of? Why it's different colors, what it smells like, if you should rub it on yourself? What happens after you mind stuff out of soil? Do you need a PhD to be a dirt expert? What
is dirt versus soil? Is mud? Soil is clay? And how long does it take a soil scientist to go for a chalk So this indigenous pianologist is someone I've wanted to shout with for years and is so deeply
revered and respected in her field. In her actual field doing field work, they have an associate's degree in biology, an undergrad degree in Environmental science, Technology and Policy in a minor in chemistry from California State University, Monterey Bay, and just got a PhD from the University of Arizona in soil microbiology with a minor in American Indian policy. So this ologist is now to doing a postdoc in community environment and policy, the University of Arizona and Tucson.
And the most gruntable coincidence is that, after all these years waiting and waiting and finally just recording remotely, I'll be in Tucson this week visiting Jared's grandma. SOO so two. Some people get at me. Also, thank you to everyone who's submitted questions for this via patreon dot com slash ologies. A dollar a month gets you in that club. Thank you also to everyone who tells friends and subscribes and rates and leaves reviews that has helped Ology stay at
the top of the science charts. And I appreciate it so much that I read all the reviews and then I pick one to whisper at you, like this fresh one from the Zebra Emoji reviewer, who wrote, I feel like if I randomly ran into Ali at a sketchy gas station, I would recognize her immediately and she would probably give me some of her cheetohs she just bought. And those are facts I would so thank you for those.
Let's get into the episode. Indigenous comes from the Latin meaning sprung from the land our native and peedology comes from the Greek word for ground or earth, and this particular ologist is a perfect fit for this episode, which coincidentally it is coming out during November, which is Native
American Heritage Month. So yes, let's listen, let's learn, celebrate, and let's get dirty with soil microbiologist, researcher, data scientist, runner, filmmaker, and indigenous pedologist Lydia Jennings PhD.
Hi.
Everyone, my name is Lydia Jennings and I go by she her pronouns. I'm a serian of the Oswa, Yackey and Mutual Nations. My dog is Salchica. She's right here at my feet because she's my partner in crime.
When I first met you, you're Lydia Jennings. You're now doctor Jennings, very doctor Jennings.
Now, it's been a journey that it finally.
Happened December twenty twenty, right.
Yeah, December twenty twenty was supposed to be May twenty twenty. The pandemic, you know, kind of took its toll. Oh.
I you know what, I can't believe that I didn't have this teed up. But there is an ology for soil. Are you aware of this?
Oh?
Yeah, pedology?
Yes, yes, A lot of people in soil science are like pedologists. So soil science is like an interesting fact, right because soils, like people, are very diverse, very ubiquitous, like they're besides water, like soil and air, soil is the most common thing you're going to interact with. Humans have constructed all kinds of surfaces to not interact with soil, but soil still makes its way in through dust right
the transports. And I'm saying all this because I think as you talk about pedology, is this over encomassing field. There are a lot of different ways that people and scientists interact with soils. You know, it's really interesting to see and identify as a soil scientist because it's encompassed in so many other types of environmental fields, and pedology is one of those fields that soil science. That's really like the root of how we talk about soil science today.
But like what I studied in my PhD work is much more around soil health and in environmental contamination environmental justice work, and it really took a process of like am I soil scientists, like most of the analysis that I do as soils, but I also could be seen as a microbiologist who studies microbes in the soils. It took me a long time to actually identify as a
soil scientist and something I wear really proudly today. But it was actually on this when I hope we talk about this, this one hundred and thirty five mile run that I did with two other women's soil scientists, one's a soil ecologist, one is a paedologist, and they were able to identify the different layers of the soils, and they do a whole thing called soil judging, which is
something my university didn't have a team in. And I remember getting like, even though I have a PhD, getting like anxious or having imposter syndrome about being a soil scientist. And it led to this really beautiful conversation about who we are as soil scientists. Has so diverse because soils are so diverse, and we have to be more inclusive on how we talk about soils because they are a big part of climate science and of contaminant science, of
agricultural science right there. So there, soils are embedded in so many different fields and really important and powerful ways.
We will indeed talk about that one hundred and thirty five mile run because how could we not. My first question about it is does she still have legs or did she wear them down to nubs like pieces of chalk, because one hundred and thirty five is so many miles. But the best part about that run is that she made it into a film and it's called Will Run for Soil, and it features two other soil scientists and
it's not out yet as of November twenty twenty two. Again, more on all of us in a bit, but for now, let's get some questions out of the way that are either brilliant or very very not smart. But I love this next answer, And what is the difference between soil and dirt?
So it depends when you ask. Okay, I like to think about it is like, so dirt is displaced soil. Soil is naturally occurring in the ecosystem. It's really full of life and microbes and you know, helps fulture water and dirt has kind of been removed from its home, and I think often it gets degraded as being called dirt as opposed to recognizing the life force it is in part because of it removal from its home.
Oh that's such a good answer. I wasn't sure if it was like it's got to have a certain percentage of rock or a certain percentage of dust, But it's really more philosophical.
Yeah, it's just emoting it from its surface. And so that's like I think the easiest place is to call it like removed removed dirt soil. I think there are so many like soil. Microbiologists will also think about the microbes associated with soil. You have to hear people say soil is alive, dirt is dead, which I don't think is really true, especially as someone who studied mining issues. Is like there's a lot of questions about like if a reclaimed soil system or a mind soil is full
of life. And so I think dirt is displaced soil.
What about mud? Is mud just wet soil that's not but.
It's also mud is often displaced as well, right, but it's highly saturated soil. So I'm in the Sonoran Desert, our soils typically have like three percent saturation of water, like they're really really dry soils. And then I went into North Carolina and to me, the soils there are like mud. They have like thirty five percent saturation of water.
And I'm like, oh, my God. But also those soils, you know, they hold so much more humidity and like so much more organic matter decomposition, and so I think it's all these kind of ecosystem dependent.
Well, let's talk about what is in a handful of soil, What is in soil?
So within soil you often talk about in a single tea spoon of soil, there's like over ten thousand microbes in there, and there's all these nutrients in there that help make the soil, and that really speaks to the parent material and the climate, so parent material being like rocks right.
For more on that parent material, you can see the recent two part Geology episode about rocks with Schmidty Thompson, who is a treasure and a gem themselves.
And the climates that help make that soil color and texture, and also the nutrients that are breaking down the soil. We often can't see the sort of soiled particles themselves, but they have little macropores where different microbes or chemical interactions can happen. And so soils are so diverse in part because our landscapes are so diverse, and soils are affected by the climate and the temperature and the moisture regime,
even like the slopes and angles. When you want a mountain, you can see one side of the area has really dry soil, on the other side it has really wet soil because of the important things of slope and different aspect that can affect a soil system. And then you
have all the biological activity that's happening. So I think of the different plants and animals that are interacting with that soil to help make it what it is is, And so it really is kind of this embodiment of our ecosystems and all the things that interact with our ecosystems, including humans.
What was it about soil that drove you to get a PhD? In it run one hundred and thirty five miles with other soil scientists, Like, there's obviously you have a passion for this. Where did that come from?
Yeah, I mean, I think in talking about my love for soils today, it's really been a meandering river. I started a community college as like a biology major, and I thought at one point in time I wanted to bring marine biologists. And my undergrad degree was environmental science, Technology and Policy with a minor in chemistry, And so
I really liked the first soils plast I took. I thought so cool to went with a catti and exchange capacity, and just like all these chemical reactions that are happening within soils themselves, and also just like their ability to hold moisture let go of it. I just thought that was really cool.
Ugh, if I had a dollar for every time I've thought about cation exchange capacity, I could get it an arizona iced ty because I was like, what the fuck is that? I looked it up. Let's break it down, because it's cool, and soil is all about it. So a cat ion has fewer electrons than it has protons, so it's an ion with a positive charge. So think of a happy positive cat that you're keeping an ion?
But what is an ion? Even it's an atom or molecule with some kind of electrical charge, because either it's gained or lost an electron. So a cat ion is a positive one. A negative ion is an anion. But not all atoms are ions. Some are just neutral and not positive or negative. They're just sitting there knitting mining their beeswax. But yes, a cat ion is a positively
charged ion. Cool. Now the cat ion exchange capacity CEC is great for soil science, which is probably something you never thought you think about, because that cat ion exchange capacity is a metric of how many cat ions positive ions like calcium and magnesium and potassium that plants need can stay in the soil. So clay in organic matter tend be negatively charged, which means that they'll attract those cat ions like magnesium and calcium and potassium, which you
now know are positively charged. So the cat ion exchange capacity is a measure of the negative charge in the soil to figure out how much good cat ion action can stick around without leeching from the soil and getting washed away before the plant can use it. Kind of like if you needed to transport a bunch of weasels, you got to figure out how big is your purse to calculate how many weasels you can fit in your bag.
So yes, Lydia was learning about this well, getting her associates in biology at Cambrio Community College and an undergrad but still soil didn't have her whole heart yet.
I was much more interested in marine systems and then I worked for about three years before going to grad school as an environmental toxicologist and I thought I'd be doing a lot of like water testing, which I did, but I also did a lot of sediment testing for toxicity, and I began to think a lot more about texture.
Like we would owe and sample these river systems. We sampled all the major rivers in Health, California, and we would look at trying to get the fine grain sediment versus like sandy sediment, so the fine grain sediment can hold onto toxins in this case a lot of pesticides and also like oils that were being sprayed. And it was there like understanding how small particles can hold onto so much toxins that have all these impacts to ecosystems,
into different marine organisms that are growing. So I thought that part of it was really interesting, just the complexity and power of these such small materials right the small grains and find fine sediment. And I think as I came and pursued my graduate degree, I wanted to use my love for science in a way that really served my own cultural heritage and of my own tribal nation.
Environmental injustices are really prevalent in Native committees for a variety of like structural racism reasons, but as I was studying all this environmental toxicology and sampling all these major riverways in California. It was really clear to me just in that three year time period of seeing how the areas that were most polluted with pesticides were often in
close proximity to poor income and predominantly ground communities. And then you'll also just seeing how the difference between northern California and southern California, how they talked about the environment so differently, was really interesting. And those are like all big scale things, but it kind of comes down also to how we concentrate environmental pollution, right, and so again those low income areas really having a lot more environmental
contamination near them. So I wanted to understand how can we learn about the soil systems in a way and work with the biggest polluters to actually not just mark that these areas are contaminated, but actually develop solutions. And so as I pursued my PhD program, it was like one of the biggest contaminators in Arizona's mining companies some of the biggest ones, and there is so much mining in close proximity to my tribal nation and other tribal
nations in Arizona. So how can I use this love of science and this understanding of soil systems to be able to work and so those environmental contamination.
So though doctor Lydia Jennings grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which are tilla lands, she is a citizen of the Pascayaki and who's coal nations. And zoom into those lands and you'll find tiny, tiny, itty bitty bits of land and minerals and chemicals at animals, tiny plants.
It's like interesting because I love soils. I love their complexity. They're really complex and dependent on the soil systems and
how they hold contaminants and all of their chemistry. But also I think bringing in an indigenous perspective and recognizing that relationship and reciprocity that we have with our environmental ecosystems in a lot of ways, understanding what are the soils tell us about their health that we can understand using both indigenous epistemologies and our typical soil science metrics to help improve these ecosystems health long term, and that's
helping humans and animals long term health as well. And so that's kind of where I see the work that I love to do.
To when you were doing these samples in northern and southern California, how did you even emotionally prepare to try to get a sample from the La River? How did that go? From someone who lives very close to the La River. The La River, for people who've never seen it, is wow. So for those who haven't ever seen it, quick description. The La River is a fifty one mile trickle of runoff that was concreted into a big, massive
gray ditch by the Army Corps of Engineers. And though there are parts like there's this eleven mile stretch of Glendale Narrows kind of near Silver Lake that have crumbled on the bottom and allowed for plants and animals to return amid the shopping carts and discarded gatorade bottles and such.
But before it became the saddest waterway in the West, one which the La Times reported was quote mostly industrial and residential discharge, the La River used to be this thriving wetland, and the Tongba land that we now call Los Angeles was like this giant waffle of ponds and swamps. If you've ever been in La have you ever taken Losianaga Losianica means the swamp, but now it's just a big mall on dry asphalt. But yes, the Elle River the aquatic underdog we're all rooting for.
So I went to college in Santa Cruz, so it's really easy to be an environmentalist there, right, because it's like redwood trees in the ocean, and like it's really easy to be a tree hugger when you get to
sample in beautiful places. And so I kind of didn't know what to expect when I went down sampling in the Elle River or the Tijana River where I had to like triple layer of protection because it smelled toxic, or when I had to collect samples next to meat rendering plant, you know, delicious and it just smelled like death. Like those are all really tough experiences that I didn't
know how to mentally prepare. I think that like being an endurance runner, where you just like put your head down and get through it, is kind of like how I process that. One of my favorite experience it's is sampling in the La River. So I think it's really interesting how in southern California, particular rivers are named after the streets that go over them, while in northern California,
streets are named after the rivers that they are over. What, right, and like how just the naming of river systems kind of also shapes how people interact with the environment, which I found's super fascinating.
I had no idea.
So the La County, right, like all the rivers are highly channelized, Like if you didn't know to look for a river, you might miss it because there's so much like concrete built around it. We had to like tie your rope on this side pole or whatever in waiders and big backpacks that carried a four gallon glass jar, like basically slowly lower ourself down on the rope to get to the La River channels and then collect soil sediments there. And it was amazing when you get down there.
A lot of times they were like cool to see how sediment had built up and there are trees and our parians grow areas growing. The other times where like there were huge homeless encampments that we had to navigate around. I mean, it was definitely always on your toes. But I think to me, those experiences of being in the heart of the city but also seeing how nature and natural ecosystems. We're also trying to reconquer. The concrete was really beautiful.
And I imagine if you've got a glass jar, that's because you don't want to use plastics, which could maybe contaminate your samples, Like how do you even go about figuring out what's in them?
Yeah, So in that time, we were looking particularly for any presence of heavy metals and pesticides, and so with plastics, there are potential for some of those compounds and the soils to react with the plastic surfaces. So it's better for long term preservation to keep it in glass and
then keep it in a controlled environment. The type of vessels in which you collect samples are really depending on what you're sampling for and also like just thinking about potential vollatoles that might be happening in plastics versus glass.
Right when you're doing the soil analysis, what things are you looking for, like the metals, how much rock is there, how much moisture is there? Is there a histogram of what's in each.
Thing depends on the project. With that project that I did in this gap year, these gap years between my undergrad and my PhD, that project was a stream Pollution Trends Monitoring project, and so we were sampling all the major riverways in California and looking for kind of areas of more concentrated pollution or not then particularly looking at pesticides, heavy metals, and any kinds of oils or other types
of waste streams that might be in those systems. And then we are able to look at, okay, sample one hundred spots throughout California. These are areas that are more concentrated in terms of pollution, and we were able to give that to the California EPA, which then was able to talk to the regional epas environmental protection agencies and kind of start to make some management decisions about how
to address those hot spots of pollution. I keep on talking about pesticides because that was one of the biggest ones. Also insecticides, Like we would actually go out and sample on the agricultural fields and like near Sacramento area after they had sprayed different types of insecticides to address mosquito populations.
And so that was really interesting because we would go out before they sprayed and then like you know, an hour after they sprayed, twelve hours after they sprayed, twenty four hours after they sprayed and seven days after they
sprayed to really see how those levels were decreasing. That was just a really interesting example of like how as humans, we're using our science and chemistry to address one type of irritant, but we're also potentially creating others, and so that's why we have to be monitoring that to make sure that we're keeping people healthy from both the insects but also from the prosecticides and pesticides that we use to address those insects.
So that was an undergrad project, but her PhD research focused on looking at microbial critters in soil to figure out how much mining waste was left in the soil, asking the soil, hey, who's in here, what's the vibe?
But now like my PhD, where you know, I measured very different things, so that was more of like less about the chemistry and the environmental toxicology work in this In my PhD, where I was looking at soil health, then I would measure the soil texture, the soil pH the soil electrial connectivity. That I would collect samples and I have to collect clean samples to get microbes and then do a variety of like analyzes when I got back right away, because you don't want your microbes to die.
They're very sensitive. Will you hang on in that boot?
You mentioned also that we are so concentrated on making barriers to soil, and how important are all of the minerals and microbes and funguses and all the things that live in dirt, Like should we be breathing more of that? Should we be getting that under our fingernails in our ears? Are we not dirty enough? I feel like we're not dirty enough, and that's maybe that's just maybe not wanting to wash my hair.
But yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting question about like what is dirty enough. COVID nineteen introduced a lot of increased sanitation that I think is necessary in that respect. But converse, you know, there has been a number of interesting studies so looking at like what is
happening to us? You know, if you think about the one health, which is like this idea that we recognize that we living within an ecosystem, and so when we would change one factor in that ecosystem, we have potential to impact a lot of other factors in that ecosystem, and us humans being part of that ecosystems or our
bodies being an ecosystem and recognizing that. And the reason why I bring it up is because there has been some really interesting studies that looked at how gardeners in particular have lower levels of depression, in part because you're actually digging into the soil and you're inoculating yourself constantly with those soils which have microbes that actually are really good for elevating your mood.
So for more on this, you can just do some light reading of the neuroscience paper titled Identification of an Immune responsive Mesolembcortical seroogenic System Potential Role and Regulation of Emotional Behavior, which describes findings linking this one soil bacterium Mycobacterium vasi to lowered stress and better focus immune modular that could lead to less brain inflammation and more serotonin.
There's been another study that looks at how your pets, I'm sitting next to my dog's sal chicha, how your pets are really good inoculators of microbes from the soils that they're like rolling around and outside and they come and rub up on you and they inoculate you with microbes that help boost your mood, and so I think that there are really interesting ways in which we as humans have co evolved to be wanting to be closer to natural ecosystems, and more recently, and I like definitely
Western colonization and industrialization have really built up means to keep us separate. Today, we increasingly have more issues associated with depression and anxiety, and there's a lot of factors why, and there have been studies that show more time and nature helps decrease some of that depression. So, you know, I think that there are interesting associations that have not been correlated, but I hope that more people are interested in investigating in the future. I'm a trail runner, so
I'm turning it outside a much as posile. I have a dog who I'm trying to get to constantly indoculate me, even if she doesn't want to snuggle, And so I think, like you know, there are those really interesting ways that we can take that matter into our own hands.
So being outside and near a live stuff and green things are good for you. And we cover some of this in the Awesomology episode with Neil Pezerica and also in the Dendrology episode about trees. But you can also talk to a doctor about it, or just go out huffson bark. You can also ask the US Forest Service, which has a whole web page dedicated to facts like. Studies also show that being outside and nature is relaxing, reducing our stress, cortisol levels, muscle tension, and heart rates.
So even the US Force Service wants you to be happy and is like get your keyster in the ated doors, which reminds me I would like to start jogging again. I was going to ask, as a runner, how hard is it for you to actually stay on task and get your run done without just pulling over and being like, look at this, Look at this soil, look at that. This one's sol and this one has peeding it, and this one's red and this one's brown. How do you even keep running?
Yeah, we call that a soil scientist pace, doing a sol scientist's pace. No, But I mean there are different times, you know, you have runs for different intentions, and sometimes it's like I just need to get out there to escape looking at my computer screen and I get pulled away and distracted, and that's okay. Sometimes I want to go and work, run really hard and like feel my
lungs burn, and that's okay. I have those times too, and I think it's giving myself the permission to as long as I'm getting out to experience whatever that's going to be. You know, when I was training for the Boston Marathon, I didn't run on trails very much because I was very workout focused. But you know, today I went out with my boyfriend and so we just wanted to get out and have a good time and look at the sorrows cactuses blossoming and be together. And so
just like walked, ran, we talked. You know, there's different reasons to go out, but each time is enjoyable.
What about questions that you get? Do you have a lot of people with gardens and house plants who are like doctor Jennings, what am I doing wrong? Was there ever a time when styrofoam balls were necessary in house plants? Do they do that or did I imagine that?
Yeah? So, I mean I think it's really important to highlight that I am not like a master gardener or horticulturist. I study contaminated soils, but some of that knowledge around soils and soil health applied to other fields. But like my dad is definitely much more of a master gardener than I will ever be. He doesn't have a degree, but it's one of the ways that I feel like he is a lived experience expert and has a PhD.
And just through trial and error. Because community engagement and education redistribution is really important to me, So it's really important for me to do different workshops with particularly tribal members. And last summer I was helping out with some friends. They have like a community farm in northern New Mexico. It's called the Three Sisters Collective, and they have this community engaged farm to create play space space for young
Indigenous people. And so they had a workshop about like just talking about soil health and they asked me to come and talk about it, and it was really cool because it was a space only for indigenous growers and beginning those who are tanch enthusiasts, and so some of the people questions I got was like, Okay, so if we're trying to think about different like fertilizers or nutrients, like I've seen people give cheetos hot cheetos to their plants,
is that okay? And it was like really funny, you know, to talk about it. And they're like I would never ask someone normally, but like you're part of my community and I feel comfortable to ask this. And I'm like, well, it's not documentation of it, but like cheetos have these different chemicals and like maybe, but it's not something that I would recommend, and like, okay, if there's a curiosity, like we always want to help spark that.
And for more on sharing traditional knowledge when it comes to food, you can see the Indigenous Colinology episode with Mariah Gladstone from Indigit Kitchen and I'll link that in the show notes. I also looked up the benefits of hot Cheetos for plants and I found a viral TikTok by Sweet Nothing's TV.
So I'm going to teach you how to grow your own hot Cheetos.
Ten out of ten convincing as hell, but no not real. To obtain Cheetos, you have to meet me at a sketchy gas station and I will give you one, like you are my special raccoon friend. Also, why is there styrofoam in potting soil? I asked the Google and sometimes those little white nuggets you see in potting soil, sometimes those are just added mineral blobs called perlite, which is this lightweight volcanic glass. It degrades naturally over time because
it's a natural thing. But sometimes those little white beads in potting soil are just styrofoam, just lurking in potting soil to help with drainage and aeration. But yeah, it's just like adding tiny confetti litter into the soil. And the next generation of humans on Earth are like, we are asking you from the future to not styrofoam the soil.
When you were going down the pathword a PhD, did you talk to elders or did you get any sources from the tribal community in terms of what questions you were asking or what data you were collecting.
Yeah, so it's interesting because I did not start I got't grew up in my community. I grew up around other tribal nations. A big reason why I chose to come to University of Arizona was as a close proximity to the tribe that I'm enrolled in, and so I knew like mining had been a big issue and it was something like I reached out to. So the important part was like as I began my PhD project, and
I knew I wanted to work on mining issues. In that first year, I really just spent time like going and becoming part of community and like talking about what I was interested. The project I was hired in on was not really community engaged at all. It was more working with mining companies on reclaiming the land. But by the presence of who I am, it was really important for me to ensure that there was a cultural component
in the engaging with tribal nations. How we teach soil education and environmental science education in general is predominantly not centering native knowledge or expertise.
So Lydia said that she began by doing science outreach to kids and then building trust within the community to get insight into mining practices for her research on the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in mining consultation. So building that trust was a really key aspect of her research, and she says it's tough if you don't have faculty
or advisors that can guide you in that. So engaging properly centering community knowledge, all of that is a skill that she developed and she now tries to mentor students in a way that she wasn't trained to do, and.
So I think like right now, in general in science, we see a lot more of emphasis and highlighting the importance of importance of traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous knowledge systems, but like we have to recognize that that's pretty recent. I mean even in the PIPHD time, I felt like I was really dissuaded from pursuing those and was much more encouraged to get the technical science is down And so now I've done both and I feel good about that.
So we'll get back to soil. But this topic was really interesting to me and important, especially during Native American Heritage Month and also every month. Yeah, do you have any advice for any Indigenous students that you wish you had known when you started your p.
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think finding indigenous mentorship is critical. I think getting involved with different Native science organization, whether that's the American Indian Science and Engineering Society or SOKNAS a Society for Advancement of Chico's Native Americans and Sciences.
There's Native American Fish and Wildlife Group. I think it's really important that you have a network of mentors, not just one person too, because each of us have different communities that we have been mentored by and who can we speak with. But you know, there's five hundred and seventy six different tribal nations the United States, so each
community operates differently, and there's power in the applet. It also means to knowing the proper protocols of a nation in which you come from and in which you choose to engage with. I'm not an expert. I have some trained knowledge in something, but there are many people who I would say have PhDs in our community without the formal letters, and those are I see as my role as an indigenous scientist is to amplify their expertise, and
I can never speak on behalf of them. I can only amplify the expertise that has been shared with me.
So you don't have to have a PhD to be an expert or to be on this podcast, even though doctor Jennings, that's one. And getting back a little bit too, the work that you did with mining and contamination, tell me straight, like how fucked is the soil after mining and what happens to get it back to a healthy place? What can you do? Is it like unringing a bell?
Yeah? So the work that I did prior to my PhD was the heavy metal measurement. But in my PhD, it was kind of understanding what the soil can tell us about its health after it's been mined. And then in Arizona they use a strategy called capin plant. So say a mountain, you have a mining right, and that's been dynamited out, and then it goes through a series of chemical and physical treatments to get out the metal of interest, which in our case is copper.
So Arizona I didn't know this supplies over sixty percent of the nation's copper, and I always pictured it like gold mining, where people just look for nuggets of copper,
or like veins in rock, but copper. However, according to too many weird old mining documentaries I just watched a little too late at night on YouTube, what happens is they blast these big, gaping holes in the earth, and then they drag out a bunch of grayish brownish dirt, and then they take that into a factory and they crush it into this sandy texture, and then it's kind of boiled with sulfuric acid to nab the metal into this copper sulfate solution. So great. So that's how they
get it out boom boom boom. Then they make that into shiny, pretty copper that we use in all kinds of applications. I skipped a bunch of steps, but you get the point. So what's left over just a bunch of extra rock and six of the top ten in vironmental toxins according to the World Health Organization, which ones, I'll tell you mercury, lead, arsenic, particulate, air pollution, asbestos, and cadmium. It's delicious.
And then all of that waste material from the chemical and physical treatments gets put into what they call it tailings pond, and so it's kind of like this gray slurry and so that gets stapped up into an area and it's really really moist because you don't want it to get into the local dust transport systems. But you have to figure out how to get that to be stabilized and then try to get things to grow on there.
And so often what they do in the Sonoran Desert is they take soil from an off site desert area and they put it on top of the mind tailings themselves.
Like if your hair looks a mess, just pop an little hat on top, but it's a cap made of soil and your hair is byproducts for mining peat.
And mind tailings, I should say they're about the size and consistency of cooking flour. So they're really and it's really wet, and that's why it can be an environmental contaminant issue, even just because of the small particulate which can get deeply embedded in your lungs. And so the main strategy is cap and plant, and it's taking the soil from the desert area and oftentimes it's surface soil and putting on top of the mind tailings, which creates
what they call a soil cap. And then on top of that they will then seed plants to try to establish what they call it vegetative cap on top of the mind tailings itself. And so that's what I studied was looking at an area that have been seeded the land was leased from a tribal nation in the area. Basically look at that strategy of how has the area been recovering after it's conceded and what can the soil
tell us about how the seed mix is working. And so that's where we were able to study all these below ground metrics on the biological, chemical, and physical parameters, but then also what's happening above ground in terms of plant coverage and diversity. And so what was interesting was the tribe chose to invest a lot more seats and are normally planted. Most mining companies will choose maybe ten, but the tribe chose to invest in about thirty seven.
In part that's informed by traditional ethological knowledge in what's commercially available, but also just what kind of plants they want that ecosystem to look like into the future. So I think that was what's really interesting, and then seeing how it changed over six years in terms of revegetation and recovering.
For more on this, you can see Lydia's dissertation titled Evaluating the Biotic Potential of Degraded Soil Development on Reclaimed mind Tailings in Southern Arizona, which has a section on page forty four titled Indigenous Perspectives on Reclamation, and she writes that for indigenous peoples, ethics of reclamation are as much about redressing inequities of power and capacity and agency
as it is cleaning up the environment. In the traditional context of things like restoration, remediation, revegetation, and rehabilitation, and she continues this belief contrasts with the settler colonial tradition of viewing land as an object one can own, and then she cites the research of doctor Robin Wall Kimmerer, who's the author of Braking Sweet Grass and was last week's biology guest about moss. But yes, Lydia studied this land for more than half a decade.
And so six years is relatively long for a field study. But we found some really cool trends. Of course, there's always more things I wish I would have done. I wish I've done, like more molecular work and finable work. But you know, that's part of being researchers that you feel like there are always more questions to.
Ask, and as a scientist you kind of get to keep asking those in your continued work.
Right. Yeah, it's like, well, you have a little bit of information, but then you have more questions, which I think is exciting and I think it's also made me think a lot about how we think about how we do science moving forward. You know, I talked a little bit about my work and kind of the tribal consultation piece and thinking about well we value traditional ethological knowledge in trying to develop the seed mix to revegetate this area, but we don't value it when it comes to tribal
consultation for new minds, and like why is that? So it's kind of left me to shift my research questions a little bit now and I'm actually looking at data mining in addition to heavy metal mining. Wow, But I think that they're interrelated and similar systems operate within very similar patterns.
Yeah, that's something that I'm sure would get overlooked so much. And having someone asking those questions and being there to understand that many many nuances is so so important. Anything that people think about soil that they get wrong, anything that you just want to stand on a sebox and be like, no, it's this.
Well, I think like a big part is that we're not on the soil. Where with the soil, right, we're part of the ecosystems, we're not above it. And I think this notion that we're above is a very like setular colonial narrative, but recognizing our interdependence on soils, on the water that filters through soils, on the foods that grow on the soils, on us who gain happiness of running and recreating on those soils and just kind of recognizing that they're not just something that we step on.
No matter where where you're at, you're going to be interacting with soils, even if you're in a city like that city is built on urban soils. Just recognizing all of those ways that we are part of the ecosystem, so we have to care about it if we care about our own health. But also then existing for the
sole purpose that they are is so important. I guess I'm just asking your audience to reframe how they think about soils as as something like that's not just to be studied or to be extracted from, but as something that we we have a responsibility to care for for our health, for our planet health, and for our future health.
And we become soil pretty much, we become soil.
Yes, it's so amazing, And like all the microbes that we're talking about help make us happy, help break us down so that we're not covered with crap, you know, or poop you know. So I think like that part is so exciting. Soils really are everything.
How much do you love her? We love her? And we have a one billion questions from listeners who know that you're coming on. Ok Okay, can we lob some at you? We'll do like a lightning round. Sure, Okay. But before we cut to the break, Lyddy and I talked for a little bit about a film that she just finished shooting called Will Run for Soil.
And so myself and two other women's soil scientists we ran one hundred and thirty five miles last September in running the farthest any of us that I've ran before and attempts to really increase public awareness about soils. Most students, most college students, don't get training and thinking about soils despite it being this ubiquitous medium that we all interact with, and so we are all through wan soil scientists and literature will tell you the average soil scientists is a
sixty five year old white guy named Robert. Like statistically speaking, but we're like three very different women who are running, who are all studies a soil science but also love to run, and so we kind of combined forces to run this really remote trail in the desert, starting in Nuclear Colorado and ending in moab Utah and just looking at soils all along the way and talking about them and why these soils are beautiful, both color wise but
also culturally, you know, recognizing the many Indigenous people run to those areas prior to us, but also like talking about the language and what it means to be a soil scientist.
And they are still working on post production. So if any listeners who work in programming for south By Southwest know someone, find Lydia Jennings and the will run for Soil people because they're interested in screening it at south By Southwest when it's done. And if you need me to intro the panel, Hi Taller, So that Run to Be Visible film is already made, but she's making the new one will run for Soil, and you can donate to that if you like. I'm going to put a
link on my website. But for her donation for this episode, she chose Rising Hearts, which was founded by Jordan Daniels, who also directed Lydia's first film, and Risinghearts dot Org is an Indigenous led organization elevating Indigenous voices and fostering intersectional growth through organizing and programming, and you can go to Risinghearts dot org to learn more about their wellness classes, advocacy, community jobs, running with a Purpose and running on Native
Lands programs. So to find out more, go to Risinghearts dot org. And then for fun, we made a second donation toward editing Lydia's current film will run for Soil and will include a link on a website to both. So those donations were made possible by sponsors. Apologies. All right, finally your questions, patrons, and if you want to submit questions, you two can join for a dollar a month at patreon dot com slash ologies. But you don't have to, but yes, patron questions, Okay, I am going to lob
some questions at you. A lot of folks want to know about the spectra of dirt genesis. Ray Holloman, Jess Luffler, l E. T. Want to know why does dirt come in different colors? Why is it rust colored? Why is it brown?
So?
Yes, what exactly what's in there?
Yeah? So the different colors of soil really come from the variety of nutrients that are broken down to or I say nutrients, but really like the rock materials that are broken down. That's one source of color. But then there is also a source of color from the chemical reactions. You know, you're talking about those red and rust colors
that can come from kind of an iron oxidation. Here I in this Sonorine desert, we have a lot of like their areas of how blue soils, and it's from different copper oxides, so those are another component of that. And then also just like the weathering process, so thinking about how those are not only exposed to oxygen or to other forces, but then also how they get transported, that can often cause different soil colors.
So to recap, reddish soils tend to have more iron oxides, and wider soils tend to contain more salt or silicates or calcite. Black soil has more decomposing organic matter stuff, and there are even greenish soils that have glauconite, which
is an iron potassium philosilicate. But I mean you knew that. Also, if you're wondering how pedologists agree on color swatches, it's not with a pantone wheel, but it's with something called a muncill chart that helps them compare the hue like reddish, bluish or yellowish, the value which is light to dark, and the chroma or like the saturation of color. But even without the charts, there's long held knowledge about how fertile A soil is based on a look.
There's different language translations for like black soil being good soil and white soil being poor soil, and we can look at that how that translates to actual organic matter levels or actual salinity levels in the soil. Right there is all these different ways our cultures have evolved with soils, and somehow we've gotten separate and lost from that. But
they're part of us, We're part of them. And I also want to really give a shout out to my friend Karen Vaughan who has the Art of Soil website and she actually sells custom made soil pigment kits that are amazing, and so she is kind of who I would say is like a soil colors expert and has these amazing kits and recipes that she's made to kind of help amplify the colors of the soils.
So Art of Soil is a great small company that makes watercolor art supplies out of different soils. You can just gowk over these refillable cherrywood palettes with little discs of earth toned pigments with names like sprout and bluebird and basalt, and I can see why they have eighty two thousand followers on Instagram. I feel like my heart rate goes down just looking at their page. So art of soil for any one shopping small businesses this holiday? Who knew being gifted a lump of coal is actually
tight as hell? Okay? Onward, Kelly King, Ashley Okie, first time question asker, Karra Funt, first time questionasker Kaylie Shida. So many folks want to know clay versus soil. Kelly King is a beginner potter here and is wondering if clay is technically dirt or if it's something else.
Yeah, I would say clay is not dirt, okay, And I might get some pushback on this, but kind of going back to this initial definition of dirt being displaced soil, well, clay is really more in that place. It does get transported, right, and clay is one of those finer particulates. But I don't think that it's diked.
Okay. That's good to know. I think.
I'm like, oh man, am I going to get some pushback, you know?
If it could be a matter of opinion here, So everyone who asked if clay was soil, Clay is an element of soil, but by itself, it's very very very very small rocks surrounded by this molecular film of water, which is why it is squishy and multiple. Now, for more on clay, you can see the Geology episode on rocks with Schmidty Thompson. But honestly, I want to do a whole episode on clay and pottery and kilns and all that. I don't know what theology is, but I
want to do it. But in that Geology episode with Schmitty Thompson, we also discuss licking rocks. So what about
sniffing the soil? So many of you, such as first time question askers Professor Kosha, Meg Geisinger and Amelia mccardeal, as well as Alphabet Lindsay Deal, Rona Taylor, Alexandra romonoitz Ologi's editor Mercedes Maitland and aforementioned geology guested Schmitti Thompson, as well as first time question asker a new Huh Joshi, as well as other people want to know does soil smell different in different regions and why?
Yes, part of it is right the amount of moisture and again the material that has been breaking down in those regions. So again, I was in North Carolina and the Lumby and like, there are just certain plants that are there that makes them soil smell so much more uniquely, versus being in California last weekend and a lot of the soil there it smelled like the eucalyptus to me because of the eucalyptus trees that are around there that are down.
For more on why California has so many non native eucalyptus trees grown from Australian seeds, you can listen to the recent Ziology episode which is all about wood will make you laugh and cry, and eucalyptus has hopefully never felt so seen so we get into it. But in other parts of the continent, in.
North Carolina have these like tannins in the soil and you can see it, and in fact that the indigenous people there call themselves people of the Dark Waters from the tannins, and so I think there are definitely different elements of the soil or of the ecosystem that influenced the soil feel and smell in really beautiful ways.
Shout out to the people of the Dark Waters. The Lumbee tribe of Northern Carolina. But why are those waters dark? Well, the tannins are plant compounds that evolved to deter herbivores who would come along and munchet and you're dark tea, that's tannins. So some rivers are just big streams of tea if you want to think about it, and you can just your body like little biscuit. But back to arid lands, and you're in the desert, which is the
most best smelling, most best smelling dirt place. I feel like ever I have never smelled anything like driving through the Arizona desert when it rains. And Ronna Taylor, Jessica Jansen, Meghan MacLean, Ariel Van Sant, Francesca Huggins, Allison Mason, Hannah Cargrave, Live Bruce, First time question askers Apollonia, Pina, Megan Matthews, Aider, Emily Kraiger. I mean, we have a lot of people want to know essentially about petrocore. Why does soil smell
so good after a rain? Is it true that big drops release some kind of volatile oils compounds.
I'm this snorin desert, and the smell of the desert after rains is really the smell of creoso, which is this plant that does have certain oils on it, and I feel like that's what gets activated in part I think like the desert has just like baked for so long that that moisture just activates so many micro organisms who start breaking down those materials and really powerful base. I think that's like the general smell that we have
is that breakdown material process. But in the Sonoran does in particular, it's the kreoso that gets activated and the oil is on there that get released and create those aromatics that are just so incredible. And it actually can see people who take branches of it and will put it in their shower so that they can smell it. On a more regular basis.
We're just replanting our hillside with native plants and it's been a process this year. But one of the plants that we put in is a native coyote brush, which smells is like that smell of the desert. It's a baby right now and it's growing and I'm just I can't wait to just put my whole face in it because it smells so good.
Yeah, it's an amazing, really unique smell and it's funny like after it rains in the desert. You know, I like to go on for runs and check it out because the desert feels so alive. But I you can hear the soil just like absorbing the moisture, and it just sounds everything in the desert is so happy, and you could just hear about soil so thankful for the moisture. And it's one of my favorite. And it's a really like subtle, weird sound like people like living here, you're
imagining things. But I swear you can hear it.
Who I looked everywhere for an example of this, and it is not a sound that has been caught on table lot. So I'm just gonna have to sit in
the desert and wait for some kind of monsoon. And as for the sweet sweet smell of rain, so petrocore means the godly blood of a stone, but scientists call it ar glacious odor, which I learned from the nineteen sixty four publication in the journal Nature, which was titled the Nature of ar glacious Odor, which says it, yes, oils that are produced by plants sink into dry clay soils, and then when rainfalls, that oil becomes an aerosol and
it's mixed with something called giasmine, which is a byproduct of little bacteria, little rod shaped ones called actinomyces, which are everywhere in soil and in us. The human nose is so attuned to finding water that we can detect the smell of giasmine in concentrations as low as point zero four parts per billion, which is not a lot
of parts. But what about the types of rainfall. Well, In this other paper twenty fourteen's Aerosol generation by rain drop impact on Soil, researchers figured out that the way the scent hits our faces via aerosol is that the rain hits the ground and bubbles form in the rain drop, and then the bubbles burst along the surface of the rain drop, kind of like a fizzy beverage. So slower rain drops produce more bubbles, thus the smell, which is
why light rains, particularly on really dry soil. That's the most bang for your buck when it comes to petrochore, I guess our glacious odor. But what does our galicious even mean? I just looked it up. It means of are relating to clay. And when I saw that, my throat closed, my palms got sticky, and I was like, no, is it possible? And I googled argaylology. Yes, it's the study of Clay. Shut up, this is happening. I found the ology for Clay. What a same episode payoff that
never happens. But yes, Petrocore, thank you plant oils, and thank you for that sweet musky earth wif that We all love you gosmine making Actinomyces bacteria just kisses on your tiny micro butts. Have you heard of any of their soil scientists looking for antibiotics from soil? Tera McNee, Laura, Lauren Cooper and Anne wanted to know are there microbes in soil that maybe might be used medicinally?
Yeah, definitely. There are a fair amount of research projects that look at different antibiotics and microbes that can have healing processes. I think a lot of that work has traditionally been done more in like Latin America than here in the Southwest, although I believe some research has also
focused on microbes and extreme environments for medicinal purposes. And I think there is something to be said that, particularly as we think about climate change and how the how our environments are changing, how people are looking at extreme environments for potential solutions, both environmentally but also pharmaceutically based.
Okay, so, one tiny gram of soil contains up to three billion bacteria and a million fung gui And there's soil everywhere, and this was news to me. But the vast majority of antibiotics come from soil, including penicillin and streptomycin, and researchers are looking at an anti cancer drug that was found in a hot spring in New Mexico. Plus there's this whole slew of antibiotics called malicidins derived from soil. There may literally be a cure for cancer in your garden.
And I'm looking at you, Patrons, Chris for Harper, Thomas Mursa Holtzman, Alessa Vice, Segouaney, Dana Rachel Adams, Shannon Foster, and Carly v who asked why people say rub some dirt in it when they are wounded. Maybe, though, before you do that, you should wait for more research, or maybe perhaps you could become a soil scientist, you know what, let us help you. A first time question asker Natalie Gomez said, I've never asked a question before, but I've
got a freaking soil science final coming up. Don't let me down, JK, they say, But they want to know what is the most important mineral element or ion found in soil. And they just watched a video that says we're going to run out of phosphorus fertilizer in forty or fifty years. So is there anything that we're seeing as a trend of Oh no, we're really screwed when it comes to farming because we're depleting this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, phosphate is continues to be one of the more depleted nutrients, so phosphor doesn't to be one. And that's like, you know, something that was attributed a lot to big dust bowl prime types of processes is having I would say anything that's like nitrogen, phosphate, and
potassium are the big three, right MPK. But I also think like you're continuing to see more of like the top soil being eroded away, and also with building construction, like a lot of the top soil being lost, which has the majority of nutrients in it to how self fulfilling ecosystems and so, Actually you see in the UK they started to make soil health metrics recognizing that we're losing top soil at an alarming rate that can't be replenished, and I would love to see other countries in the
world also fulfill some kind of plan and thinking about top soil long term. I think this kind of goes into it. You know that there are multiple ways to think in seasoil. Many people think about it only as like a growth medium, as opposed to like an ecosystem that we can appreciate for how to prepare an impacted and contaminate ecosystem. So for the purpose of the question, I would say NPK are the primary ones that we want to focus and worry about, but it also depends on your ecosystem.
There are many many ways to see soil, but what soil would Lydia stare at? Moonly Many folks, including patrons Daniel Solomon, Nicole Climb and Steve Hansen, Charlotte felkerguard or JIP seventeen first time question askers Megan Matthews, Adare and Lydia Baida and another Lydia, Lydia Lamb all wanted to know what in this Lydia's opinion is the best soil.
Does she have a favorite so favorite soil? Oh, It's sorry, I mean there's like a texture, it's like a sand loam. I like those a lot, but if it's like a specific one. There is one where I grew up in New Mexico. It's like one of the places I'd love to go running. And it's this yellow sandstone and it's called Chipa a series and it makes a really beautiful color pigment, this like right yellow. But also I love
it's on an ancestral publo with the Galisteo basin. And I really love that it's called the chipo because so in Spanish that means like sucked, like sucker or sucked, and I guess it's just like this this integration of like language. And it's right next to another soil series called a Zea soil series, which is like this right red color, and so it's this integration of like language and ancestral knowledge and the names of the soil series themselves.
But then also like Chipato is weathered to weigh sandstone and so it's like sucked of it's sandstone material and weather away. And I think that like that name correlates so well with what the soil is and embodies, and just knowing that the care taking ethics of those particular soils, and this ancestral pueblo that has made all of this beautiful pottery is all embedded with in that soil itself, and I think that part is just really beautiful. So those are probably two of my favorites.
That's awesome. And first time question asker Ingrid Saragoza wanted to know if we can make a difference to our planet via carbon sequestration and changing our farming practices. And also if you have an opinion, Caitlin Garofano wants to know on regenerative agriculture and trapping carbon, is that something we can do with soil?
I say the evidence suggests yes, that investing in soil health and building up soil carbon and being able to sequester it is a really important factor to addressing climate change. And there is a really great ted talk on YouTube by Asthma and Beharhe where she really talks about soil being the climate solution. So definitely check it out because she speaks to it in a way that I could never.
There's more carbon and soil than there is in all of the world's vegetation, including the lush tropical rainforests and the giant sequoias, the expansivelands, all of the cultivated systems, plus all the carbon that's currently up in the atmosphere combined and then twice over.
So yes, check her out. And then in terms of regenerative agriculture, I do think it sounds it makes me really hopeful. I do want to highlight that many indigenous farmers have always done what is now renamed regenerate agriculture, and the Hoping Nation is one that comes to mind
right away. Hoping and public farmers have had methods of regenerative agriculture, and I think this comes back to this methods and means of wanting to live in reciprocal relationships with our environments as opposed to extracted ones.
So there's a one million questions, but I will not We're not going to get to them all. This just means if you have an interest in soil, go run with it literally like Lydia did, because there's a lot, there's so much intrigue in it. And let's see just a one last listener question. People wanted to know about safety and contact with dirt. What is clean dirt? Two people said, tell us about soil related fungal illnesses like valley fever, et cetera. Things like that.
Yeah, yeah, valley fever is a huge one out here in the Sonoran Desert. I've been fortunate not to get it, but it's really common for people's dogs to give it, and I'm constantly afraid about both of my pet. So in terms of the safety, many people like when we're outfield sampling will wear a mask. I think for myself has been checking out our state health public health websites to see how common it is right now, So.
Yes, head to the CDC for weekly reports on how many cases of cock ideo ido micosis aka valley fever have been reported in Arizona. You got a lot of copper and cockcidio idomacosis, coccidio ido mycosis. Them's the good news and the bad news. And if you have been in arid southwestern areas and you have lung symptoms like coffee or fever, sweats, fatigue, and maybe even a spotty red rash on your legs, maybe get checked out. It
might totally resolve on its own. But my dear friend, doctor Tigan Wall, who hails from Arizona, had to get part of her lung removed because there was a fungal root ball in there from unchecked valley fever. Oh and climate change with potentially wetter winters and drier summers is making it more widespread. Not to freak you out, I know, I just freaked you out.
For myself, I'm more concerned about heavy metals in the soil. You have to think about the typical public health aspects of exposure time and exposure load, and that's different than having a fungal or microbial issue, right, So I think those are the two pieces that I think about in terms of soil health. Another part I think is just like thinking about in general, like collecting soils as a woman, soil scientists safety and you know, when I didn't field
tampling in California, I did get chased by someone. And let me tell you, like carrying a four gallon jug of mud and like running is like not easy. So I think that like those are also elements that we want to be and think you as loyal health too, is I feel more comfortable with the soil than I do people?
Oh man, how what happened with that? Did they chase you off of public land? Their land? Did you yell back at them. Can I find them?
And yeah, it was like it was yeah, I mean it was myself and another woman. We're collecting soil samples, and I don't know, like some some guys we're saying some like kind of explicit things to us, and we got freaked out naturally, because you're pretty like vulnerable, you can be pretty vulnerable, and we had we had these big sampling tubes. I'm like, okay, we can hit someone with this, but like the best thing to do is
just like exit the situation. And so it made our research group kind of re evaluate some of the safety protocols. And so I think, like that is not the question that you were asking, and I apologize for like taking a different troductory, but you know, I think it's always just having a good head about you in the field.
And I thought, especially like as an indigenous woman in general, I think soil science is a really safe field, but there's always the human element, and just like I think, you know, thinking about soil fungus, there are different methods that we do to protect yourself and being aware of like wearing the proper masks and the proper gloves and those types of things, and the proper awareness.
So yeah, that Actually my next question was what is the hardest thing about what you do? And is there anything about soil or about the work or about systems that is the hardest.
Yeah. I mean I think soil wise the hardest and like the most challenging, and also I think the most fun is like analyzing your data and pulling out the story of the data. And yeah, there are long days in the old and the lab to come back and process, particular with microbes, right, come back and process. And there are times where the first couple of years of my PhD, I was playing the microbes and you have to do
the series dilutions. And it was like I come back from like you know, four days of heavy field work and then have like four days where I was three or four days where I was basing the lab all day and all in the out all night if I could, right, because you just don't want it. You want to get
your microbes played as quickly as possible. I'm so that was just like really hard energetically and like personally, But I think like also what's really fun is when you have all the data then to put it together and pick the story and figure out what the story of the data is telling us about his health, about this landscape that you're studying. And I think that's beautiful and also really challenging because you want to make sure that
you're not having any bias. Is that that in terms of the larger work that I do, you know, I think for better for worse of kind of myself this My Twitter name is Native soil Nerd, and I think it's really important for me to talk about Indigenous soil expertise, both historically and the present. But there I don't want to speak for communities that I'm not part of or
things that I don't know that you can see. I'm really cautious about that, in part because I think they're like, well, you're Native, like you're an expert in all of these things, and there are definitely things that I'm not And I'm responsible to multiple communities, and all of those communities will hold me accountable if I misspeak, and so I think sometimes there is that is knowing how to pull strength in that accountability and how to try to use your
voice for the best. But like also my community will tell me if I mess up, and that's like not you know, having any AUNTI be like, why you doing? That? Is never an easy part of like the criticism, right, And so I think that is an important piece of the challenge of coexisting in multiple spaces.
And wanting to be responsible and in each of those spaces, that's got to be a lot of effort to make sure that you are you're doing right by everyone.
Yeah, And I think sometimes it's just the best thing I can do is not speak on something in a way and let someone else for my community speak who
is more appropriate. And that's hard because also, like there are different value systems associated with like academic spaces and then indigenous community spaces, right or at least like my tribal nation community spaces, And so in some of those contexts, like there are not things I'm supposed to speak on, but like in academa, they're like you get an expert, like, am I going? And also but it's like hard, am
I is it? Because I'm feeling hesitation because I'm an early career academic, because I'm a minoritized woman in the academy, and so you know, there are all of those different layers that make up the onion that is lydia.
Lydia also recommends that people check out the American Indian Science and Engineering Society that's at ai sees dot org and that supports professionals in STEM fields through professional development,
career opportunities, and networking. Lydia says that by showing up as herself, including making the time for important things like tribal ceremonies, she hopes she'll make it easier for other students and make them feel less isolated and give future mentors a better idea of how to make space for those kinds of experiences for students, especially since it can only broaden the scope and the impact of the science itself. What about your favorite thing about what you do?
My favorite thing? I mean, I think so I love teaching because you can talk about something when you see students like picking their lights, the light inside of them,
and they get excited. It's really amazing. And I also think teaching has made me feel so hopeful in a way that like you read typical science like climate science literature and that applies to soils as well, and it can be really depressing, but then you can constantly be so inspired by the students that you work with and they're like the future is in good hands and like they're going to have a lot to deal with, but there's so much passion and strengthen these students, and I
think that's what makes me feel really hopeful. Also, I just the other part is like working with really some of my collaborators are just doing such a phenomenal work and it's so awesome to be like, these are people I looked up to and now are my co authors, right, And I think like I'm like, well, we're doing the work that fills gaps that I always wish I had
had as a student, and now we're creating that. And you know, one of the great things about being a scientist is like you if you can write a good brand for and get it funded, you can study that and I think, you know, you're never going to get bored in this line of work because you have a question, you can write a grant and get it funded and explore and like, what a privilege that is that that is your profession. So I think those are the things
that make me feel really hopeful. And I when in doubt, I just go for a run with my dog and seeing how happy she is just to get out of the house, Like that's what also fills me with joy.
So ask some more people the simplest questions and go paint with dirt, Go smell the soil, watch a mining documentary on YouTube. It's none of my business, but do follow indigenous pedologist doctor Lydia Jennings on Twitter at one Native Soil Nerd or on Instagram at llcool Jennings, or you can check out her website at Nativesoil nerd dot com.
A donation went to Risinghearts dot org and there'll be more links to all of that and info at Aliward dot com slash Ologies slash Indigenous Pedology, which is easily linked in the show notes for you too. We're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm at Aliward with one L on both. Thank you to all the patrons at patreon dot com slash Ologies. Thank you to everyone
who has merged from ologiesmerg dot com. Thank you Aaron Talbert, who moderates the Ologies podcast Facebook group with assists from sisters Bonnie Dutch and Shannon feltis Happy belated birthday Lily Talbert too. Thank you to Emily White of the Wordy who makes our professional transcripts, Caleb Patt who bleeps them Those are up for free at alleywar dot com slash Ologies, dash Extras. Thanks Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling and more,
and Susan Hale for being the best. We also have shorter, classroom friendly cuts called smologies up at alleywar dot com slash smologies or in this feed. Those are edited by Zeke, Thomas Rodriguez and Mercedes Maitland, and many thanks to lead editors Derret Sleeper and Mercedes Maitland of mine Jam Media. The theme song was written by Nick Thorburn. And if
you stick around, I tell you a secret. And today's secret is that I started the morning with a very large Thai iced tea that I made at home with some Thai tea and some vanilla creamer. And I apologize to all of Chailand for that, but it was delicious. Okay, bye bye.
I will take a little sample of this to the lab for a soil analysis.