Minisode: WTF Biologist, Nancy Johnson

Regent's Professor at Northern Arizona University, Dr. Nancy Johnson is a world-famous mycorrhizal researcher. She has roughly 163 publication with over 13,000 citations (according to Google Scholar). So with a track record like that, she deserves an enormous ego, but to her credit, she is the kindest, most down-to-earth, sweetest person who will intellectually bitch-slap you (but only if you deserve it). 

In this mini-episode, I revive some of Nancy and my conversation we recorded for the Rachel Carson episode that ended up on the cutting room floor.

A blub about Nancy from her lab website:

"Nutritional symbioses among soil organisms fascinate me. I study arbuscular mycorrhizas in natural and agricultural systems. A better understanding of the factors controlling the balance of trade between plants and mycorrhizal fungi could lead to their management so that fertilizer inputs can be reduced. Also, since mycorrhizal fungi are enormous (yet invisible), understanding how to manage them may help generate an important belowground carbon sink in our increasingly carbon dioxide enriched world."