SUMMERSODE: Balmy Vibes & Seasonal Factoids with various Ologists

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Oh hey, it's the mesh patio chair that leaves your thighs looking like snakeskin ally ward back with a sticky, languid episode of ologies I had to make. I tried to not make this one many times. They said, Nah, it's too much work, will anyone even care? But I wanted it. I wanted this episode. I needed a collage of aids, kind of like a vision board for the summer that's to come. Also, what is summer?

Well?

Years ago I made a minisot about it, called astatology, I think. And we learned then that the Earth's axis is a little wonky, It's a little tilted. So as we cruise around the sun, one hemisphere gets more direct sunlight and the other gets less for a bit, and the result is three months of us wearing horts. And here in the northern hemisphere, where my actual rump is

During the summer, A lot of things have settled down. So once the migratory birds have arrived, for example, they're there to breed, and so they do their thing all summer, they're hanging out, and then they will start their southern migration usually in the fall. So that's another thing too that we have a lookout for. Be on the lookout for. Also that would be when the leaves start to change color and leaves fall, and then you know, it's pretty quiet for the winter.

What is a rundown of the function of each season? We did to think of summer as like this feeding season and then kind of like a feast and a famine through winter is Does that do anything for plants, like to reset their cycles or anything for animals? Oh?

Yeah, right, So birds will often have, at least in the northern hemis, their breeding season is in the summer. So during the winter they're fattening up, they're getting ready they come back north, and they're establishing their territories, building their nests and then making a family. And so there

So this time is the time when your under boobs weep with sweat and your hormones say maybe at my nest, and your brain dreams of bouncing out of town like bye, and maybe you are one of the lucky few who can dip your bod in some water or nap by a splashing sea. And I asked marine biologist policy expert in oceanology guest doctor Iana Elizabeth Johnson about how to enjoy the ocean. Do you listen to any ocean apps on your phone to chill out?

Like ocean sounds?

Like?

Yeah, No, I put earplugs in and just like Zone all the Way app.

I wasn't sure if someone who studies the ocean and has dedicated their life to essentially saving the ocean would be like, I don't I don't want to hear an app because it's just a bad simulation.

Or yeah, I'm a pretty light sleeper, Okay, so I like complete silence, and I think, yeah, as someone who is like ninety five percent vegan mm hmm and who never eats fake meat, is maybe the same thing, right, Like I'm not going to go have like a soy hot dog and I'm not going to listen to like fake ocean sounds.

Do you do a lot of like diving? You have to do a lot of diving.

I used to, Yeah, for my PHDV search, I did three or four hundred dives.

Do you like being underwater? I know some people are like, it's so beautiful, it's like I'm flying, and other people like it's so big it's terrifying. It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

I mean some people think that if you don't scuba dive, you can't experience the ocean fully, and I totally disagree with that. I think scuba diving is nice because I can't hold my breath for an hour.

Yeah, I neither can.

I I only learned to dive when I realized that I needed to as a tool for my scientific research, and it's pretty neat. I mean, to be able to, you know, be underwater long enough to really watch the behavior of an octopus or a parrot fish or whatever it is is an amazing opportunity. But I think snorkeling is underrated.

Yeah.

I think more people should get like super into snorkeling because you can see so much despite you know, diving down and taking a look and being in shallow water. So I hate the thought that people think if you're not scuba diving and then like why bother because there's so much you can learn about the sea and just enjoy like the spectacular creatures from the surface or from like a little shallow dive down with your mask on.

You just got to learn that trick where you blow the water out when you surface.

Right, Yeah, okay?

Is that hard to master?

Now you can totally do it. Anyone can do okay. Or sometimes when I like don't have enough air left in my lungs when I come after the surface for whatever reason, I just take the mouthpiece out and just breathe are normally you could do that too. There are definitely ways that anyone can figure this out.

Can't get to an ocean? Can you just pick up a dusty shell from your ant's guest bathroom. Let's ask actual shell expert Biominerology episode guest in Human Delight rob Ulrich. Okay, A lot of people, a lot of people wanted to know. Can you hear the ocean in shells? What makes them sound like the ocean? Ras says. I heard that the sound is created by blood moving in our own ears being echoed by the shell. Do people ask this of you when you tell them you study shells.

I feel like nobody ever asks me anything. I would love more questions about shells all the time. And I really want to say yes, because it sounds very magical, but the answer is no, unfortunately. And it's also not

Flim flam busted. The noise that you hear from shells has a name. It's called seashell resonance. But that ambient amplification would also work with like an empty Starbucks cup. So I'm sorry to have just broken your heart. Curious Land mermaids including Christa Charter, Rachel Moore, Elizabeth Ross, Kate Rampy, Kelly Windsor Teak and Andrews, Megan Y and Slivia Meyer, and Dealeno Pelt. Somewhere between the turquoise shimmer of the Caribbean and a nautical display at a Michael's craft store,

Yeah, it's actually the shape of Florida and like the surrounding bits of lander islands that causes that to happen. A lot of the islands run parallel to Florida, and so they're like aligned with the water currents running around Florida itself. However, beaches like Santa bell I think that it starts with an s. It's actually perpendicular, and so it sort of catches all the shells that come out of that current, and that's why it has so many more shells and a lot of other beaches.

Oh okay, So do you think if you were to find a shell from someplace in Florida and there were a lot of them, it would be okay to take home? Or is it still like leave them on the beach?

I think to be safe, leave them on the beach. But I'm sure if you take one, it's like fine, definitely, not if they're alive or but if they're like fully still like formed and like together, you probably should leave them, Okay.

Not a beach person. I get it if you happen to have found a small bucket of money buried in your backyard and you can use it for a quick summer break. Maybe you want a head straight for the hills and get cozy around the smell of some melted pine sap. Or you can just stare at some hashtags

Or a tree.

Well, one big difference is that we now can rent structures everywhere, and part of that is made accessible through social media. So we can now not just have, say, our own cabin, but we can rent anybody and everybody else's cabin almost anywhere in the world. And I think that's really changed. And then we can immediately share that experience with an innumerable number of people. So you know, those are probably the big things that have changed through the media as we understand it today.

Are you okay? Are you okay with that with cabin sharing?

And are sure sure no, absolutely. In fact, I think one of the phenomena about cabins is that we feel much more comfortable with sharing our cabin with others than we say to our home, So we're less likely to offer up our home as a place for strangers to stay in, whereas cabins traditionally were places where maybe we'd

Do you have any memories of being in a cabin that are some of your favorites?

Well, I think snowfalling and sitting quietly reading a book with a fire crackling and my wife's good cooking smells in the background is probably one of my best experiences. Or looking out the window and seeing the five or six deer that are reading the corn just set out there. You know, those are some of the best. And I think then I've had an opportunity to gather larger family groups together, not necessarily in my cabin because mike cabin is a bit too small for that, but through the

Okay, quick aside, I made you a list of things you can do in a cabin this summer. You can play dominoes. You can read a book. You can gossip. You can ask older people important questions about their lives. You can carve spoons. You can learn to needle point. You can roast marshmallows. You can write a list of all the things you want to do in your life. You can make your friends all tell stories about how they met each other. You can enjoy a poem. You

Is that?

Okay?

I've certainly recorded cabins that occur in the backyard of somebody's home. Now they might think of that cabin as a man cave to escape to, or her writing place that she can retreat to for writing. We call that a scriptorium.

Oh, I've heard called it, she shed, Yes.

She said. So, I think that's not uncommon, and I've recorded a few of those in books I've done and in articles I've written.

Yeah, I guess a cabin is kind of like our childhood version of a fort, but realized and with plumbing.

Yes, well, you know, and some not with plumbing or the outhouse or whatever nearby. But yeah, it might have some modicum of plumbing and in some way to heat up, which maybe our little fort when we're kidnaping.

Yeah, so who forwarded? Maybe you perhaps this summer, maybe you have a patch of backyard, or you have a generous friend with one and can make a tiny respite out of some recycled palette wood and just get away from the world. Maybe you can listen to podcasts radio. Hey, Now, if you're somewhere it's safe to do so, you could bring some cabin vibes to your own patio with a little,

I don't know about that specifically. That's that's a really good question, but yeah, no, I'd agree there is that kind of satisfaction of it as well. Is that something like inherently biological and controlled by hormones is a really good question? Or if it's if it's something we're essentially conditioned to do. You know what a baby who hasn't been raised, you know, within around campfires find discomforting or terrifying it.

Okay, So if you would like some science to explain why you love campfires, I will point you toward the twenty fourteen paper Hearth and Campfire Influences on arterial blood pressure defraying the costs of the social brain through fireside relaxation, which explains quote. Fires involve flickering light, crackling sounds, warmth, and a distinctive smell. For early humans, fire likely extended the day, provided heat, helped with hunting, warded off predators

Yeah, no, that's a great question that there is some evidence for boiling as being in kind of like pits in the ground, being more of the first instance of cooking in like a pot, you know, over a campfire. Because again, that's a very recent innovation in terms of living longer. I mean in a certain way. Evolution doesn't care about it that much.

They're like, you make babies or not. Okay, get out of here, you're done.

Yeah, exactly.

And I mean so for Neanderthal you and I are you know, of a good age?

Yeah?

Oh god, Oh we're fossils. Can you imagine they're like, what gray hair?

What is it?

Yeah?

I did have to explain this, like just to my students a week or two ago when I showed them replica Neanderthal bones from an.

Old man who was probably around you know, forty five, right, Yeah, exactly. So, so on a certain way, it doesn't matter on in terms of living longer, but even in terms of like you know, pest control or something like that in a cave, if you're trying to avoid like getting bit by a bat, you could potentially use fire as a way to clear out bats and mice or something like that from a cave or something like that.

So there certainly are potential health aspects that deep in the past that using fire as a tool could could have assisted with. Do I think that humans figured out like if you boil water it gets rid of the germs.

No, I don't.

I don't think that was at all on anyone's minds.

Over all of your research. Do people ever ask you what is the best way to construct a fire? Is it leaning everything together in a triangle shape or is it like stacking like a log cabin?

Yeah?

See, everyone everyone expects me at the party to be like the fire tender, right, Like I keep an eye on the fire pit, and naturally I just usually like pass it off to my kids, like yeah, just poke at it a bit.

Doctor fire yeah yeah, an apprentice, yeah yeah.

Or I'll occasionally say, like, you know, I should really have you know, some sort of really cool firing pit in the backyard or something like that, and my wife will be like, why don't you let's get the house painted first. Yeah, I finish, finish that job before you start building a kiln in the backyard or right?

Can I fire away with a lot of questions from a lightning around yes? Please from listeners. Okay, oh we have so many questions. Okay, And just to follow up, what kind of fire you make depends on what you're doing. For long lasting campfires, the log cabin method might be the best, but for cooking on skewers roasting stuff on a stick, you might want to lean logs into each other.

A lot of the ignitions are human ignitions, you know, people accidentally starting fires, machinery getting too hot, people driving over dry grass, and things like that.

So Gavin says that eighty to ninety percent of all wildfires are human caused ignitions. Half of California's largest fires in the last century happened in the past five years. By the way, a complex fire means a cluster of related fires in one area. But what's the difference between a wildfire and a forest fire?

We talk about wildfires. Typically when we're talking about wildfires, those are unplanned, so fires that we as people don't plan. So you can kind of juxtapose that with a prescribed fire or a cultural fire. So prescribed fire is often fire that is purposely set and then managed by teams to achieve some type of objective. Maybe they're trying to restore some area, restore fire. You know, you probably hear a lot about, you know, people burning prairies and things

And obviously indigenous cultures and just the planet at large saw the benefit of prescribed burns. So what good do fires do, either in prescribed burns or just in nature.

Yeah, that's such a good question.

I mean, fires are a critical piece of ecosystems around the world. Every square inch of land that has vegetation has some type of fire regime, It has some sort of natural fire cycle, and fire is kind of a restorative process. There's many benefits of fire from we can think about it from a human perspective, we can think about it from a sort of an ecosystem perspective, you know,

Side note, A fire regime sounds like Satan's cabinet members farting flames in a hades boardroom, but it's actually just a gentle term. A fire regime describes a pattern of fire, how frequent, how intense, what kind of fuel of gobbles? And maybe me just calling it Satan's cabinet members farting in hades. Maybe that's part of the root of Europeans fear of fire and thus this historical fire suppression by colonists. Don't you kind of wish I had talked to an

Yeah, so there's a bit of a danger of that this whole thing now or we're seeing prescribed fire and just kind of throwing cultural burning into that. So prescribed fire is you know generally what agencies do so where they're setting fire on the landscape, but in many cases they're setting you know, high severity fires.

It's burning really fast and they.

Want to burn a lot of land in a little bit of time. So we see like lots of aerial ignition of fires. We see them using you know, basically like helicopter ignition, and in Canada, like lots of times people put that together as you know, being a crown fire being these big, bad, kind of out of control

There's a great photo that's run in a few news articles about Amy's work, and she's standing in a golden grassy field. It's hazy with smoke as a cultural burn grass fire she's overseeing lurches behind her, and there's a husky wolfy dog sitting to her right, staring off. And Amy's wearing black leggings and a red flannel shirt and is pregnant with what would be her second daughter. So the mood is very calm, unlike what most people's experience of land on fire might be.

Lots of times, you know, we don't wear personal protective equipment, you know, like the kind of nomes that you usually see firefighters wearing, because usually the fires are honestly just so slow and most people find them I think a bit boring too, because it can take a really long time to burn a really small piece of land, and so for agencies it doesn't really work well, right, because that for them means set more staffing dollars and other

At what point did you decide to spread the word about good fire? And the term good fire too is something that I'm I kind of just learned too. Can you talk a little bit about what good fire is? Is sure?

So if good fire I think comes just from the idea that you know, it's very obvious that we can have good fires on the landscape. You know, that fire is something that is helpful to the environment into people, And so I think indigenous people lots of times see fire almost in a dichotomy, so kind of you know, these bad fires and then the good fire that we can use as a tools. But before colonization, indigenous people

So at this point, our FaceTime call cut out because of spotty internet, So Amy recorded a clip answering a few more questions because she is the best and knew that we only had a few days until this went up. And she's once again the best.

I also just wanted to mention the importance of Indigenous people in fire in Canada, but also in other countries.

So whole episode on that awaits if you haven't heard it, And of course all these episodes mentioned will be linked on this episode's page at aliwar dot com, slash ologies, slash summersode. Now what if part of taking care of the land is eating the weeds? So this clip from the Foraging Ecology episode is for you, and it's also for anyone who DMS or emails me asking me to have Black Forager Alexis Nelson on ologies who has missed that she has been on and it was so good.

Yeah, so in the.

City it's going to be a lot more of the kind of classic quintessential weeds, the plants that like taking advantage of disturbed ground where they don't have to outcompete any of our other native species. So right now in the cities, I'm seeing a lot of Queen Anne's lace already putting up their new sets of leaves for the year, ton of dandelions, a lot of clover, white clover, red clover, and now sweet clover is starting to show up to hang out.

A ton of mug art.

I passed a couple very healthy stands of mug art while I was on a walk around the neighborhood today that I whibble be visiting this weekend because I'm in the mood for mugwort rested potatoes.

So what does mugwort look like? Okay, I had to look it up. It's a member of the daisy family, so it's leaves look like daisy leaves, and it has clusters of these drooped bell buds at the tip of a stock. And mugwort can grow meters and meters high. And while scientists call it artemisia vulgaris, close friends call it riverside, wormwood, felon herb, old uncle, Henry, and naughty man. And I feel like I have to buy mugwart a beer to hear how it got those nicknames. But mugwort

Just a lot of the friends who you see enjoying spaces that maybe have been modified for something else. We have a couple empty lots in our neighborhood in which the ground was turned over before the winter, and now that ground is just covered in weeds.

Oh wow.

Whereas if I'm in the forests right now or out in the woods, oh gosh, it's like almost a completely different biome. We're still in the middle of spring ephemerals seasons. I'm seeing trout lilies, trilliums, ramps, cut leaf two four Virginia bluebells. I'm starting to see pheasant back mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, morales of course. And then you have a lot of the trees whose early leaves are edible starting to leave out,

Okay, how can you make sure that you don't accidentally die though, you know, Hope says, And maybe this is some flim flam you could bust, Hope says. I'd been told that you can test for berries being poisonous by rubbing them on your hand and seeing if it tingles or numbs, and then if it doesn't, doing the same with your cheek, and if nothing there either, you might be able to eat it. Is that true at all? Is it flim flam? Is it reliable?

For a lot of us, especially who grew up being very outdoorsy. That was kind of the way that we were told to deal with the situation if we like found ourselves stranded in the middle of the woods. The way that I always heard it was, you know, you'd rub it on the inside of your ankle. You pretty much just travel to more sensitive pieces of skin and wait a few hours to see.

If it reacts.

Because I am a cautious bean, and because not every hazardous plant behaves the same way or possesses the same toxins, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that unless you are dying, probably not the best rule of thumb.

To go by.

If you are dying, probably not the best rule of thumb to go by. Also, if you are looking for berries, I can say with confidence if you are in North America, we don't have any poisonous compound berries. So if it looks like a raspberry, you're good to go.

Okay.

So compound or aggregate berries include the dewberry, the BlackBerry, the raspberry, So that should help. Rebecca racial Sorder, Mandy Smith, Donnell O'Neil, and Megan Burnett Toscawitz.

Just a ps from twenty twenty two. I texted Alexis last week to ask if serviceberry season has ended, and she told me that in the northern US you could still go out and grab them, but now, like right now, And just a quick follow up question, I'm sorry, what is a service berry?

Oh?

On that topic, this is a very very good question, Emma. Kylie is a first time question asker and their greatest love is for service berries. Is a service berry like a raspberry?

Oh?

My god, service berries.

I'm so glad someone brought service berries up because I always want to shoehorn them into the conversation. Huh, But I never know if people are going to know what I'm talking about. So service berriers, which are the amalanchier genus. There are a couple of different species that fall under it, but we call them all service berries or juneberries or Saskatoon berries. In southern Ohio sometimes they just call them service or service berries. They actually look a lot more

Oh man, so can you make a cobbler? Can you get enough to make like a cobbler out of them? Or is it like if you get three of them, you've had the best day of your life.

Oh no.

So last year, just from the soul tree closest to my house, I gathered enough berries while still leaving all the ones that I couldn't reach, which was most of them for the birds, I gathered enough to make like ten hand pies.

Ah.

Last year, for whatever reason, I gathered like one big jar of service berries and was like, you know, what I'm tired, and by the time I wasn't tired anymore service berries.

So this year I'm gonna stock.

Up all of my my energy and my strength and we're gonna go ham on service berries. My neighborhood loves planting them as ornamentals.

So they are.

Oh man, that's gonna be in like apartment listings. What is around you that you could eat?

Yeah, I honestly think that people need to start listing it because if someone told me that a house that I was maybe gonna move into has a service berry tree outside, I'd be like, oh.

I'm done.

So you know, you don't have a losher or a dryer, but you have a service berry tree.

Who cares.

I'll wash my clothes in the same That's fine, it's better for the environment an.

Okay, but what if you belly up to the berry bar to find that it's berry in other ways? So we did back to back Ersnology episodes that are so good all about bears, and I asked doctor Lana Cheron Yellow, who's a wildlife consultant and conservationists who studies human bear interactions. I ask her your questions about.

This, Okay, So Hannah asks a tax aside, what are the best ways to prevent a bear encounter? So, Hannah, this is really kind of dependent on whether you're going to going camping or whether you're hiking, or whether you're asking me about what are the best ways to prevent an encounter around your home, like removing your bird feeder. So I'm going to answer it like you're going hiking.

Those kind of things.

Then, when we're hiking ourselves, you asked us, singing loudly work absolutely. I highly recommend using your voice. Your voice identifies you as humans, and the vast majority of bears no humans and human beings, so singing loudly definitely works. Clapping your hands absolutely works. You've asked here about bear bells. I don't recommend bear bells. I don't recommend bear bells because they don't identify you as human. They've been shown

Of sight around us.

We want to keep our eyes open, We want to keep our ears open and our nose open in bear country, avoid those surprise encounters and let bears know we're coming. Also, we never ever ever feed bears or provide food for them them, so.

Bears can find their own food. Do do not provide human food for them.

It really is true that a fed bear becomes a dead bear. Another thing that we want to keep in mind in preventing a bear encounter is the direction of the wind. So is the wind blowing towards you, is it carrying or your scent down the trail so that the bear can get your scent before it's there. So if you're using your voice and then it picks up

You ever need it.

We'd ever want to negative encounter with the bear, but should we have one, we want to be prepared for it. You're also really going to want to know your wind direction then, because the last thing you want is to dispense that spray and get it back all over you, because it really does debilitate you, sort of incapacitates you for quite a while.

Wes has studied bears all over the world and has not gotten killed one time, so let's hear his advice.

Okay, Lucy asked, I've heard mixed reviews on tools like bear bells and bear bangers, and a first hand scene that bear spray does basically nothing. What are the best tools for people to have with them when they head out into bear country. Well, Lucy, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the bear spray thing. I've also seen it firsthand a lot of times, and I've seen at work almost every time I've seen it deployed,

And that was grizz Kid aka Wes Larson, who is another great bear expert that you should be following. But one bloodthirsty threat that you should not shoot at is a tick in your butt crack? So how do you make sure that no one is eating and living rent free in your crotch? Let's ask acarologist and take expert doctor Nita Pardonani. Shall we what's the best way to not get bitten by woman? Is it propellant? Is it wearing just a wet suit?

I suit of armor?

Yeah.

So, unfortunately, in you know, the forty years since lime disease was first described, you know right here in the state of Connecticut, we you know, haven't really done a super job at getting people to prevent disease. In fact, the number of cases in the nation has been growing rather than rather than subsiding. But what we we do know from many research studies is that there are some

The you know, arm paus.

Yeah.

Well right, so, because a tick will crawl up right, so it'll crawl, it'll find its host. It'll be waiting on the vegetation for a host to walk by, and so it may you may encounter it at your leg, but if there's no skin showing there, it will keep walking up until it finds some skin. So that might mean it will crawl under your shirt and into your

Oh okay, so this is amazing news. There's a magical window, an almost biological grace period in which you are less likely to have one of these tiny bastards drool a disease into your blood. So take a moment to just feel yourself all around. Get comfy with a hand mirror. Also, you can do this one thing that people on the bus might appreciate as well.

Yeah, so the other thing you can do, and there's a couple of studies that support this, is take a bath or shower shortly after coming inside from being outside. So that could work in a couple of ways. So you could be washing off ticks that haven't yet attached. If the tick is attached, you know it's not going to wash off. Unfortunately, it will stay there. The water will not do anything to deter it. But if you

So, kiddos, like we always say here on ologies, check your crevices. We even have check your crevice's merch at ologysmerch dot com if you need it. I'm just saying, and for more on all of this you can see the acroology episode and the lime disease and tickborn disease ecology episode with doctor Andrea Sway, which we'll also link on this episode page on my website, because tickborne infection not something you want to be writing home about, speaking

That's a great I think you could have something there because, particularly because the back was divided in half and one side you had to put the address on, so you were left with one half of a postcard to write the message.

And I have messages on some of them.

Where you know, people used up the space because they wrote too big, and then they're like writing all around the edges.

On the top.

But I don't think you were supposed to. The post office did not like it if you ran over into the side with the address right, because that was like the rule, the address the stamp, and only the side is for the right, so you were that's a great point. You were forced to write almost like a post it

I love this, I love this, because you had.

To write in phrases, and there were certain things people come in and on repeatedly, the weather, car breaking down.

They're like one of the kids poked the other's eye out and we're getting a divorce, see one.

But interestingly, we also found that there was a lot of we're not sure how far they stretched it, but people tended to want to make their vacations sound really good.

Oh my god, that's what they do on Instagram.

Exactly and Facebook. I mean it's a bragging thing, right, so like we are here and you are not. Yes, therefore we're going to make it sound as good as possible. And there's you know, the classic having a wonderful time wish you were here.

Yeah, showed up repeatedly.

I mean it's not made up. Yeah, it was always that kind of we're having a great time and you're not, you know, yeah not kind of a little bit of one's one upsmanship.

A lot of times, no one's ever like, uh, the wife got salmonila from the shrimp buffet.

I I don't hear that a lot on a maybe a letter, yeah, you know, maybe a letter, but where people have a little more time to play that out. Certainly journals that we've read, sort of trip diaries where they don't don't expect anyone to ever read them. Oh yeah, I have a lot myself on those. But postcards, No, it's very short and sweeten. It's mostly highlights m h. And don't like social media now it is kind of like that, you know, we get a picture and a little bit of impression, mostly positive.

So now the Americans on vacation collection you put together, Where did you get those postcards? And what was it like reading all those little messages and like seeing the handwriting and the post was that just was that mind blowing for you?

We I can't even remember how we came up with the idea to do a presentation in the exhibit on the messages and postcards. I think as we read about vacations, we realized that everybody's familiar with the pictures on the front, but not a lot of people are familiar with what people say on the back. Nobody's written anything about that. It was a new idea. So when we started reading them, they went, this is rich and we thought, all right,

How do we do that?

So we went to antique shows and there was a one nearby here that was every month, and so my colleague I was working with and I went there for the specific goal of looking at postcards with messages. And there were a few dealers we knew that had postcards, and they were all organized by state or topic, and they were freaked out by what we were doing.

They're like, well, what topic are you looking for?

I can help you, and we're like, no, we're not really looking for topic, we're just reading the bags. And eventually they just gave up and threw out their hands and said, okay, you're on your own, and they let us stay for like I don't know, an hour or two hours at a time, because they didn't organize anything

Long gone moments and voices to people who would never know that their road trip or steamer cruise memories would be in the hands of postcard collectors and in the ears of future strangers. And I tried so hard to find audio of this, but we're just gonna have to imagine. I'm imagining and it's super cool, okay, Like maybe someone this summer will send a postcard that reads, dear Grandpa, I'm having such a good time this summer with my friends, even though one of them wouldn't let me pee on them.

What happens?

Uh? Please don't pee on it? Nobody should pee. Yeah, that's a very common slim flam. I guess yes, you say that, So let me start from So, when you're stung by a jellyfish, what's happening is that you've either touched the tentacles or something and hundreds to maybe thousands of stinging cells have now kind of punctured and are sticking to you and injecting venom into your through your skin. I am in no position to give medical advice. I want to say that right away, but I can definitely

No, it's like throwing kerosene on a fire, only it's pa and it's venom filled cells firing into a skin inferno. Now, if you have ever had the insults of pea being added to the injury of a sting, I am so sorry for the emotions that this is bringing up in you. So other than see a therapist later, what should you do?

So the one of the best things that you can do is to try and get if there's any pieces of tentacle, which is very possible. You want to get that off, and you want to try and get as many of the stinging cells off as possible. And one of the better ways to do that if you have tweezers. You can try and pick them off with tweezers. Tweezers

Oh smart, Okay, So go back to the scene of the crime.

Yeah, be careful, you're not like there's not more jellyfish or whatnot.

So Anna says that doctor Angel Janagahara of the University of Mana does amazing work in venoms as well, and she got into the field after sustaining a nearer fatal sting during a morning ocean swim decades ago. But her twenty seventeen study showed that seawater could worsen the stings if the pressure of the rins is too hard, like it would be with a robust stream of.

Pea, then the next best thing. So it now kind of varies.

A lot of.

Places recommend vinegar. So vinegar will actually prevent more if there are singing self less, will prevent them from firing, so it kind of deactivates them. But there's some controversy that for some species it might make them fire more. But for box jellyfish, I should say box jellyfish in places where you know there's box jellyfish, vinegar definitely helps. Okay, like a good citizen, before you go out into the ocean, check if it's jellyfish season and what jellyfish will be there.

Oh, you can do that is a jellyfish forecast.

Yeah, my family will go to South Carolina fairly often, so they do have reports on when jellyfish season is, which is normally the warmer months, but it varies again between species, and they will have the most up to date for that area kind of precautions.

So do some googling. Should you worry about sharks though, well, you can listen to the Slack of Morphology episode with doctor Chris Lowe or the follow up Alasmo Bracology episode which includes safety stats and pop culture clips from various shark scientists from miss Alasmo and the myths stands for minorities in shark science and this is a great time to toss some money their way. Thank you to sponsors

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Okay, where were we?

Yes?

Alasmo brainchology facts.

From Jasmine Graham. My pronouns are she, her, and I am the President and CEO of Minorities and Shark science is also known as miss.

Any favorite or least favorite pop cultural sharks.

My favorite shark movie is Deep Blues because it's so ridiculous, the science is so ridiculous that it's hilarious, and it is genetically modified sharks, which I think is a very interesting take on things, So I like that in the movie they talk about how you know, the natural order of sharks. They're not aggressive, they're not doing all these things. And so they set the stage and say, we're going to make this movie, but we're going to acknowledge that

Going to pull together and we're going to find a way to get out of here.

And then gets eaten by a shark is hilarious and the greatest moment in cinematic history in my opinion. So yeah, that's kind of what I have to say about sharks.

What about minorities in shark science.

We are an organization dedicated to supporting women of color interested in shark science, and we want everyone to get an appreciation for sharks. There is a misconception that sharks are these man eating, findless killing machines, and that is not true. Sharks are extremely intelligent. They are actually more discerning in what they want to eat than we give them credit for, and movies and things like that. They're

It's true, the twenty twenty Shark chomp Report. It's a real snooze, to be honest. Not a lot going on. So these facts are like sleepy at best. Thirty three people in the US got bitten by sharks last year, three fatally, only ten fatalities worldwide from sharks. What so, how many sharks die by human hands each year? Well, the Journal Marine Policy estimates one hundred million.

So in this scenario, definitely, the sharks have a bigger reason to be afraid of us. So that's really what I want people to take away from all the outreach and education that I do is that sharks are just like any other animals. They're just out here trying to survive, and they need our help because we are killing them

And that is why Jasmine and miss is amazing. And just as long as we're confronting some of your summer anxieties, let's check in with sphexology guest Eric Eaton, who wants to make wasps not your summer enemy. They're just trying to make a living. First time question asker G Zero Pyochoki wants to know how is it that wasps and bees are so similar? Look so similar? But wasps have evolved to consume me eat while bees are content just to rub their butts in flour dust. Why do some

Well, you know again it goes You know, the adult wasps are not consuming protein matter, they're taking it back for their offspring.

Amazing.

So yeah, so though I've watched a yellowjacket cut a piece out of my turkey sandwich and fly off with it. It's like, you know, the one by the way. One thing I want to caution all your listeners about is serving beverages outdoors. Do not serve them in cans or opaque bottles or glassware. You can get a yellowjacket crawling in there. And if you get stull in your tongue. You know, even if you're not allergic, that can be

So about a million people go to the er every year for insects stings, but most are just fine. But about sixty to seventy people die every year from allergic reactions to stinging bugs. So just look for symptoms like tingling, sensations, dizziness, hives, the skin kind swelling of your lips or tongue, maybe having a hard time breathing or wheezing, or if someone just straight up passes out no matter why, you should probably go to the er for that last one anyway.

Justin Schmidt, the King of sting he's called, who created the Schmidt Pain Index of insects stings. Yes, yeah, yeah, He occasionally will self inflict a sting upon himself and then describe it and rate it on a scale of one to four, four being the worst thing and one, you know, being the barely detectable. Basically, a honeybee is a number two on his scale. By the way, but he found out that tarantula hawks, which they need their

So for solitary wasps, their venom is really pray specific. Now, what about the city wasps, the ones who live in big papery buildings on the side of your house or underground with thousands of other ones, and they just love, love the hustle bustle of the nest life.

But for social wasps, that's another story. I mean there, that is the purpose of their sting is, you know, get the hell away from our nest. We got babies in there. Get out. Yeah, well, you know they can route a bear out of their nests.

So what's the highest on the Schmidt Index you've ever been stung?

Oh?

Wow, somewhere around a three. Probably a paper wasp got me once and that was pretty painful.

Yeah, I'm mer. Mycologist Terry McGlenn talked to me about his bullet ant. Yeah, bite did not feel good a sting. Will Eric ever be sticking his face into a nest for YouTube clout?

My feeling about myself is that if it ever becomes about me, I need to find another line of work because I want it to be about the message. And my message is that you know, these things deserve, you know, an appreciation and respect that we're not giving them right now.

So sure they may have knives on their butts, but that's just how they evolutioned. Not all of us can have an ass that's a disco like fireflies, which are out right now in many parts of North America and the world. And this next cologist, Doctor Sarah Lewis, is one of the world authorities on fireflies, and in a surprise twist, instead of the more expected limp periodology title, she insisted as a matter of record that she is

Yeah, it's crazy. You know, I don't know what people who live in the tropics were firefly seasons all year round. I don't know how they survived, because, you know, in the temperate zone, you have a kind of a short firefly season. It might go from I don't know, like May until September, or maybe just June, July, August. And during the firefly season, my students and I basically we work day and night. We get so strung out it's ridiculous.

It's really bad.

You can do it for a few years and then you have to take a break, but you know, we're usually out in the field at night, and then we are often doing lab experiments with fireflies that we've collected from the field and then put on a reverse like light cycle so that they think it's nighttime when it's actually daytime. And so during the day we work in a dark room on fireflies that think it's night. So you can get kind of strung out on that for

They're real and they're spectacular.

And you mentioned the tropics and the temperate zones. Does that mean that they don't inhabit like arid climates as much? Why don't we have them in California?

Yeah. So another myth that I am actually really glad to well happy to be able to debunk is that a lot of people think that there aren't any fireflies in the Western United States and that's not true. So happy you should be happy.

They should be happy.

Because there are. So there's at least three different kinds of fireflies. There's the daytime fireflies. They fly during the daytime. The adults don't light up, even though the larvae do. They're still in the same firefly family. There's lots of those in California and in the West. There are also glow worm fireflies, where the females typically well, the females glow. Typically they are worm like, as in, they don't fly.

Okay, hold the phone, boy, Howdy hot damn?

What?

Okay? So I'm a lifelong Californian, absolute sniveling simp for bugs, and yet this is the first I'm hearing ever of the pink glow worm alias the firefly beetle, microphotos and gustus. Now the ladies stay kind of babylike in a larva ish form, and they just cruise the leaf litter kind of like salmon colored segmented tiny hot dogs. And then their soulmates are dude beetles who fly around, not glowing,

And the other exciting news, and this is something that we're really just actually this is really really recent that we have begun to realize that there are flashing fireflies in the Western United States. So there's actually there's a Western Firefly Project that's run out of the Natural History Museum of Utah and they've been mapping flashing fireflies in Utah, Nevada nearby dates for since twenty fourteen. There's a new

In Colorado.

I heard a rumor there might be flashing fireflies in Oregon. So a lot of this is very very recent, and a lot of it is based on citizen science, like community science observations, just people going out into the night looking for fireflies in different places where there are certain characteristics like moisture, like darkness and food for the firefly larvae. So yeah, it's really exciting there are Western fireflies. That's a myth that it just gives me great pleasure to

So yeah, So if you've been asking fireflies, where have you been all my life? The answer is perhaps closer than you thought. Right here literally with a flashing fight you just didn't notice. Okay, super exciting. Twenty twenty two update. I saw a peeni wally at last in California. Okay, so it was last week. It was a little glow worm. It was segmented kind of the color of raw tuna, with an led posterior, and I posted some photos on my Instagram at ali ward and after the first night

It just one of the oldest, I think, right, I think I don't know if it's the oldest, but it's definitely top five oldest. The interesting thing about the world is, especially as I've really learned to appreciate other societies, this is not the only way to do this. Our constitution is so old, and you know, we kind of hold it up as a model. I think that politicians love to call America the light on the shining hill, or whatever the term is.

I looked up this term, and it's been said a few different ways over the centuries, many times in presidential speeches, but remixes include that light on the hill, that shining city on the hill, the shining city, and a city upon a hill. And it's said to come from Puritan colonist John Winthrop's speech as a bunch of folks were boarding a ship to set sail to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Winthrop said that the new settlement would

But this is not the only way to do this, and so comparatively, I don't know how it stacks up, because I've never lived in any other system. But I also welcome suggestions from other types of government, because from other forms of government, because I recognize that this is not the only way to do it. It's not perfect, and we're still working on it.

Right.

It really is a question of how much work are we willing to put in in order to build a society where everyone can feel included.

We the people of the United States, and.

That might require looking at other constitutions and looking at other countries and seeing how they do it.

And how about this, two senators for every state situation like can we just go in there with a little little racer? Is that going to Do you think that that will continue or was that what they had in mind.

That's what they had in mind. It's part of the compromise. The House of Representative is based on population and in every stake gets two senators. I don't see that change in anytime soon. I know that people have strong feelings about it, right, It seems weird that Wyoming in New York State and California and North Dakota all have the same representation. Yes, and then the Senate rules make them make the Senate especially non democratic, right, and yeah, non

So just side note. After this interview, I realized I forgot to ask for Nita about the electoral college. So I emailed her, was like, what's the deal with the electoral college? Is it fair? Is it unfair? Is going anywhere? And she wrote me right back and said, quote, Unfortunately,

And Washington.

If you're like, hmm, my state was not listed. How might I get myself some of that legislative action? Go to Nationalpopular Vote dot Com. Now, remember, amendments can take a little bit longer than state to state legislation.

And as I pointed out, we haven't amended the Constitution since nineteen ninety two, and because we have depended on the court so much, I don't even think there are people in this generation that understand the political sort of capital and the political cost and a political mold ability that will be required in order to change the Constitution.

Know tonight we have the people.

Who are just from a promise, or the political movements of the progressive era, which also led to some constitutional changes.

Right.

And so I just don't think that people alive today. No offense millennials, right, no offense. But I don't think if my generation included, have a clear sense of what will be required in order for us to actually amend the constitution, what would.

Be required of what kind of revolution or uprising?

Oh gosh, you know, I don't even know, right, because I think that the Progressive era they were really concerned about corruption and government.

Okay, So side note, I did not know when the Progressive era was, so I googled it and it was in the eighteen nineties to around nineteen twenty. And according to a glossary on the George Washington University page, the early Progressives rejected social Darwinism. They believed that poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare could best be addressed by providing things a good education and a safe environment and a good workplace, and they encouraged Americans to register to vote and to

People were really politically active, People were paying attention, they were focused. It would have to be like that across many states and for a longer period of time. And given the fact that we live in the social media Twitter, Facebook, what's going on today world? Will people pay attention that log? I don't know.

Yeah, we could always try.

Right, we could try. I am an advocate of trying. I have nothing against using Article five.

So Article five was on the original Constitution. So this is not to be confused with the fifth Amendment on the Bill of Rights. So Article five on the original parchment Constitution says that to make an amendment you need two thirds of the House and Senate or two thirds of all the states calling a convention. So who ends up in the House and Senate matters.

And in fact, I think that constitutional amendment is important because even if you are able to go to the Supreme Court and get them to interpret the Constitution in a way that you agree with, it's only good for as long as that coalition is on the court. Right now, we have justices like Justice Thomas who don't believe in b that the Court should really adhere to the precedent.

And if you have been meaning to read the Constitution in its entirety, I did it for us. Part two of nomology is every word of the United States Constitution, with a few clarifying asides here and there, just for your hammock swing and pleasure. You can nap to it. You could take notes, you could change your whole life, apply to the law school, or you can just soak your lows, maybe with a margarita. Hey, how do you

Very simple so it was always two ounces of spirit and then three quarter lime three quarter of gaviy. If you were just doing it on its own, you would up the lime to one.

So an easy way to remember this is the golden ratio roughly two to one to one, two part spirit, one part sweet like a liqueur or some kind of simple syrup, and one part tart like lemon, lime or grapefruit. Two to one to one. You can make almost any cocktail a good one at home for almost three and then when you go to fancy speakeasies like LA's Varnish or New York's Death and Company, you'll be to nod as a mixologist in a way that says, I know your tricks. You're a math nerd.

Remember one time this guy got me like the specs for the Varnish, you know what I mean, like all of their classes. And I looked at it and I was like, Okay, I can see what they're doing. I can see some patterns or I can see what they do when they do a straight thing. So it was like that just kind of strengthened it. In terms of technique,

Just do that.

Just get used to stirring it. So I got into I got sympathetic and interested in tecing people that knew nothing. It was more more interesting to me than someone who had technique already. But I still feel like I don't really have a strong technique.

That's funny that you say that, because I think you're you're widely regarded as probably one of the best cocktail chefs in the country. Easy hands down is funny. Your name is just like you're just at the top of the of the pyramid. For sure. How do you feel about cocktail culture.

And the.

Buttoned vest, sneery faced suspender class.

Well, I personally feel Listen, I think I understood where it started from and all that, and I just I don't know, I just I think what I'm not even referring to the vest because I think it's nice that, you know, people will look nice. I understand all that, But I really do think that as time went by, I think a lot of the attitudes that people had and the kind of feeling what's the superior, it kind

So, yeah, it's uh, you know.

There's a lot of layers in that, and for me, the biggest challenge for me was to just stay true to who I was, even though some of it, some of the times it was like fuck, you know, difficult, you know, And I never wavered from what I did. That was always important to me is I never wavered from what I was doing.

If you are drinking, your balance and judgment may waiver just a little. PSA here, designated driver. There's just a lot wrong in the world right now. The last thing we need is an accident. This is why I'm your dad. Please be safe. I love you. Also, just in buttoning up this episode, I thought maybe we could revisit summer makeouts as a person who had a hookup in July with a guy nine years younger than me and then married. Is asked a decade later, what he's now your pod mon, Jared.

We're huge fans growth fluids.

Why do you think humans slobber on each other?

This is almost the big evolutionary question that remains unanswered. Thoughts clear, There are various suggestions one can make.

One is it's.

Clearly very kind of erotic if you like, it's very arousing, and the lips have a lot of brain tissue devoted to them, sensory brain tissues devoted to the lips, you know, disproportionately. So put it this way. Monkeys and apes are very tactile. They do a lot of cuddling and stroking and if you like petting, all those kind of things we do, and a lot of this sort of social grooming, and social grooming triggers the release of endorphins in the brain, which kind of makes you feel very relaxed and.

Happy.

It can tented with the world. It's very nineteen sixties hippie ish, you.

Know, endless sun chill, vibes, hot bodies.

The world is a beautiful place and very trusting as a person you're doing this with or who's doing it too. And these involve a very special set of neurons which only respond to light, slow stroking of the skin. And we have those neurons too. They're known as the sea tactile neurons. They don't do anything else. They're not involved in pain or anything, you know, sensing pain or anything like that. We respond exactly the same way. So that's

Of thing that goes on.

You know, we're very tactile in that sense, even though we don't really think about it. But on the other hand, is because it's a very intimate thing, as it is in monkeys' names, you don't do it with everybody. This is why, you know, when you're caught in a crowded lift, you feel very uncomfortable because there are all these people you know, in very close physical contact with you, and normally you do only allow your nearest and dearest family

Bacteria.

Right now, a ten minute kiss, I forget the exact amount, but it results in the exchange of something like ten million bacteria from one body to the next.

So a twenty fourteen study out of Amsterdam revealed that one ten second French kiss can transfer eighty million microbes into your partner's mouth. That is, the entire population of New York City cramming into your mouth every second of a kiss. That's love, baby.

If he was interested in me one my germs, he just crave my germ.

Now this is quite useful because actually it tells an awful lot about the other person. So we've both got bacteria, that probiotic sort of elements from the other person being exchanged. But also you're getting a lot of there in the saliva and stuff, a lot of the enzymes and other bits and pieces that the body producing, particularly immune systems.

Really, so we're using our tongues and our snoops to gather intimate intel about a person's immune system. You thought Google was sneaky, who the nose is sneakier, so is the tongue. So you're just doing research, Okay, let your brain suss things out. You're doing great if you're like makeout Scarfire's ocean visits, whatever. I just want to be happy in a world that feels weird. Let's end this summersde with some science on how to stack your mental

That's interesting.

I don't know of any data that have look specifically at IQ and happiness. My guess is there's probably not the relationship that you're looking at, but there is definitely a relationship between happiness and optimism obviously, I think sort of optimism is sort of part of our general happy life life. And the good news according to based on this question, is like you you can in fact learn

Out there.

Our minds are naturally tuned to negative things, you know, the yucky stuff out there, the griping. But we can tune our minds towards positive things. You can focus on what you're grateful for. Another practice that I've been into lately, which I talk about on the podcast, is focusing on delights. Sometimes gratitude can feel sort of cheesy, but you can just focus on like things that are delightful out there, you know, like you know, the sunshine and like that's delightful.

Okay, So if the term gratitude journaling conjures up visions of sickly sweetened camera lt, just opt the term delights, which is just like a straightforward good cup of coffee. Actually, for years, my husband Jay has cited a short taally of favorite things. His are lavender soap, coffee, and sandwiches. And he says just thinking of those three things and letting his mind wander to more helped him during a really deep depression. So gratitude journaling delights whatever you want

Is it really Miami Cola that's on the list?

Again, your brain is going to focus on whatever you give it data for. So if you give it data about things that you're feeling really grateful about or that are really delightful, that's what your brain's going to start noticing.

I love that you just are. You're constantly filling evidence folders for like things are shitty and things are good. It's like what are you putting in your evidence folder? Pretty much?

And it's not just like you know what you're picking, it's like you're training your brain to look for that stuff. In my podcast, I interview this fantastic guest, Ross guy, who's a poet and an essays who is this book called the Book of Delights And he decided that for every day for a year after his birthday, he would write an essay about something that delighted him. And he talks about how at first he was like really worried, like am I really going to find things that really

So yes, Ross Gae the Book of Delights and again check out Neil has re work and his ostomology episode. Another fun project. Start a private Twitter just for yourself and chronicle delights of your own, or a private Instagram

Will never meet.

So if you'll shout it at a march, or you'll repost it on Instagram, then consider dropping some facts in the fam chat. If you have a mixed political family like I do, I'm kind of the blue sheep in a red family. If I'm being honest, it's pretty fucked up time just all around. My voice is hoarse from crying and maybe from COVID as my sister just tested positive after hanging out with us and my parents. So a little stressed, but we're getting through it day by day.

It's weird.

I don't care those that's all my secrets. You guys.

Take care, Good day, Bye bye.

I'm Summer.

Summer