Q Is for Quarantine

And we’re … back? Meet some of the new podcast team as they discuss this even newer age of humanity (from home) and learn what kind of vital work remains when a museum with a collection of 22 million items is closed to the public.

Transcript

Sloan:   0:07
Welcome to the first episode of the second season of A is for Anthropocene. We have a new cast of characters to introduce you to this year. And the first of those is my boss and colleague, Dr Steve Tanzer. Hi, Steve.

Steve:   0:26
Hello. Good to see you. Sloan on, uh, good to talk to everybody out there.

Sloan:   0:33
I should say we're both, you know, under quarantine, podcasting from our homes. You might hear my dog barking at the Children playing outside and you might hear said Children and run into my room here and a truck basis might have some guest stars.

Steve:   0:49
I think the only things you might hear from here would be me wiggling around. I don't hold still very well by the Blue Jays and hawks and other birds off the back. The steep hillside behind our house

Sloan:   1:01
so that that would be good sort of ambiance. Yeah, a lot has happened since. Well, we last spoke to you in our previous episode. I had a different co host, Dr Eric Dorf in. And we're sad to say that he recently left the museum. We're proud of his new post. He is the director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science. We wish, Eric good luck. We're very proud of this podcast. And, um, we're excited to interview some new ghosts that I'll be joined with this year. Steve is the Deo gi and Carol. L came an interim director here at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He is the former director of science and research. And as an aside for our natural history museum population here, we're all grateful that he came out of retirement to lead this museum after Eric's departure. Through what has, Unbeknownst to you proven to be some trying times? Yeah. No one wants to be in your shoes at this point. Were you there?

Steve:   2:12
Fools walk in where angels fear to tread. And as I say that I am reminded of E e Cummings Uh oh. To be a fool One spring is in the world.

Sloan:   2:22
Tell us about yourself. What? When did you first fall in love with nature And what brought you to this museum?

Steve:   2:31
Yeah, When did I first fall in love with nature? When we're little takes were sort of fly larvae. When we first come out, we only kind of slowly swim to the surface of consciousness and memory. And so I can't really say when I first fell in love with nature, my mother was fond of telling me about my life is a baby and lying under a tree and being happy to stare up at the leaves in the tree. So I don't know. I think maybe I, uh, maybe I was born this way. But my earliest memories, my family did a lot of camping and a lot of gardening, especially in the camping. I remember going to the dunes along Lake Michigan, and in between the dual dunes are these places where the wind has sort of hollowed out, sort of scooped out an area of sand. And then when the water tables high in the spring, that scooped out area becomes a pond. And I remember, um, looking down into the clear water of that pond, maybe maybe eight years old. I think that's when we bought our first cars family looking down into the water and seeing what I now know where the tadpoles of the Fowler's toad and seeing the dragon flies flit above the pond, and later that evening, or maybe it was on a second trip later in the summer, being out at night in the moonlight and seeing a Luna moth for the first time. And I think those experiences at that age were times when, for the first time in my life, I really kind of acknowledged being in love with nature and with being a part of all of those creatures around me and of the Clouds. This guy,

Sloan:   4:25
I have a young daughter. She's six, But from early on, when she was two, when she was three, I as a parent, it's one big one of my best moments is sort of noticing her have similar reactions to things curiosity and wonder.

Steve:   4:42
Yeah, yeah, well, those things go together, right? Um, curiosity and wonder. And this word that we use maybe too often. So it's lost some of its meaning now awesome. That has both that aspect of wonder. It also has this aspect, sometimes of off of almost like terror at the bigness of things. So it's in my early memories. It's both the small things that expressed this extraordinary beauty and intricacy. Ah, beetle crawling across a lock or the inside of a flower. But at the same time, the kind of realization that this thing is huge, so much huger than anything we can directly experience even staring up into the stars at night or looking at, uh, sequoia trees in a tall forest. And it's so great that you give your daughter the gift of bringing her out into that and opening that door for her to discover

Sloan:   5:48
it's been one of my as I said, like my phone. This thing's the parents so far. I know going looking forward her I can't wait to see what sort of new discovery she makes. Yeah, no. Yeah, your connection. She hasn't.

Steve:   6:01
Here's to opening to upward, to leave and to sap into you flowering in my arms. So I think that every year, this time when my older offspring was born and holding them in my arms from first time in the springtime So what a great thing that you're experiencing now

Sloan:   6:19
is making ah, this current reality more bearable. Yeah, yeah, right. It's funny where we have a small house and the four of us are really enjoying each other's company and getting closer, and so far the cabin fever has not turned us toward each other. which is That's great. Can you talk a bit about your, uh, your areas study?

Steve:   6:43
Sure. Yeah. Um, so, I mean, I really came at my career at the beginning. Is it as a naturalist in a kind of a classic sense of the word, um, didn't much care for high school. Didn't actually go all that much, but I got bored after high school pretty quickly. I thought college would be more like more of high school, but, uh, but I got bored. And so I talked my way into taking some classes at the University of Michigan, and I really liked him. And there were girls in the class is too. That was good, eh? So I kept going, and after you, I guess about 5.5 years I had a degree. And so I kept going symbol. And, uh, I went to the University of Chicago. I've been a zoology major at the University of Michigan. I stuck around for another year and, uh, finished out an undergraduate sort of compliment of courses in botany as well, learned some theory and some programming, and had some other enjoyable experiences and then applied for graduate school and got in at the University of Chicago. And there I discovered evolutionary genetics. I was really interested in how organisms came toe have their very forms and functions and why it is if you walk out into a field. One area is occupied almost solely by Golden Rod. And in another area you've got, say, big bluestem grass and uh, maybe some purple Astor's blooming in the fall. Why do they sort out the way they do? And how did they come to have these different and peculiar and wonderful characteristics coming from a common ancestor? How did that whole process work? And, um, I I thought for a while about being a philosopher and decided it wasn't smart enough to have anything to contribute there. So I thought instead, I just look at things and learn about what they did and how they did it. And I got a degree in evolutionary and quantitative genetics with a focus on physiological function and organisms in an attempt to understand how organisms of all kinds adapt to changing circumstances. When you take a golden rod from a field or, let's say, a relative, the golden ride, a plant called Siddhi CEO, which we find growing and fields with golden round. It's another little yellow, uh, daisy relative, but you also find it in succulent form, growing in the high latitude deserts of South America. That group of species has diversified to cover an extraordinary range of habitats. How does that happen? How do organisms come to fit themselves to the circumstances they find around them? So I spent ah career doing that. Mostly, um, it was that, actually at West Virginia University for two years as my first job than Michigan State University for 10 years on then University of Pittsburgh from 1995 until 2015 when I retired. And while I was there, I also ran the university's field station for a period of time, uh, and spend a bunch of time doing field work in Spain, understanding how plants adapted across Climate Radiance and I reported to the state on the effects of all underground mining throughout the state on the surface ecology of the state. And I spent some time at the National Science Foundation as a program officer, helping to determine which exciting projects would get federal funding and transform the way we thought about ecology and evolution in the world, Um, and was ready to retire and had announced my retirement at the University of Pittsburgh and got contacted by a search firm. And the more I talked to them about Carnegie Museum, the more interesting it seemed. Uh, that was my first retirement failure, but I've had a wonderful time here.

Sloan:   11:05
Can you talk a bit about your work at the University of Pittsburgh with with artists class? I know they are sure you're you're laughs and do art.

Steve:   11:17
Yeah, yeah, Well, yeah, Maybe I'll preface that by referring to my mother again who maybe a decade or 15 years ago said to me, Steve, I've been surprised. I can't say this without laughing that I've been surprised at how successful you've been Is a scientist, I thought, Well, I guess that's a compliment. I'm not sure. And I asked her to explain, and she said, Well, I always thought you'd be an artist, and it's true. In my family, there's a There's a threat of arts and the humanities that runs through it, and in a way, I was sort of a black sheep. By going into science and studying mechanism physiology and genetics, that sort of thing. But I've always retained an interest in science. I mean, an art and a zay got further along in my career, I thought more and more about two aspects of science. We talk about science in and philosophy of science in a kind of a mechanistic way. It's this rational process, Right? Um, we we come up with a theory, a rational explication of an idea. And we use deductive logic to determine what predictions would be made by this theory. And if we can see that those predictions holed up in the world, it bolsters our belief in this theory. And if those predictions are not held up, there's something wrong with our theory. We know how to teach that. And we know how to teach the myriad really amazing tools that we've developed for looking into the world at all conceivable scales. We don't know how to teach how to come up with a theory. Where does this theory come from? Well, calculate winning. When he came up with certain molecular formulas that have been very important in the development of organic chemistry, he came up with his theory by staring into the fireplace, and he just saw he imagined the structures. Those things come from a different kind of thinking from the rational thinking that we believe is at the heart of science. And actually what's truly at the heart of science is the unsupervised thinking or the differently supervised thinking that we do outside of that rational framework. The rational framework is fantastic, but it it not only provides a vehicle for exploring the world, but it also constrains us in how we explore the world. We have to be able to say it as a sentence, and somewhere in our thoughts things start in a way that's before a sentence can be formed s o to pull those things out. How do we do that? What we call those from the deep well of of unsupervised thought in the same way that we pull language for poetry out right. It's not a rational process, and we can't teach it by the rational methods. So how can we teach it? So what I decided to do was have an artist come into my lab and show us how how they bring things forthe. I was very lucky to be contacted by an artist named Natalie Settles, who lives here in Pittsburgh now, and it recently moved from Wisconsin and was looking for, I think, a kind of, you know, slightly wacky scientists with whom she could share ideas and thoughts and see if we could reach across the disciplinary boundaries. And we had a great time. And in our initial conversations, which I want to give Natalie credit for starting, Um, and in one of those conversations, I said to her, Well, how do you think you know, you're not thinking like a scientist? How do you think? And she said, Well, I drop And we talked a lot about material practices and thinking my material practices were plant A bunch of plans put him in a growth chamber where carefully controlled conditions measure them with this instrument that determines how much co two there breathing in and how much oxygen there giving off. Natalie gets out a piece of paper and a pencil and begins to make motions with her arms. She sort of dances with her hands and arms and her mind. That's her way of thinking, and out of that comes a visual image, which is a manifestation of her thoughts, a manifestation of what she draws out of that well. And so we put Natalie's studio in the middle of my lab and the 15 or so people working in the lab then had to work in concert with Natalie. She participated in all our land discussions. She brought her own sort of laboratory results. Her studio results to those discussions showed them in our power point displays, et cetera, and in the process challenged the scientists about how they were thinking and why they were thinking in the way that they were. And it was for me. And I think for the students and other people in the lamppost stocks, etcetera, it was really fruitful, really productive in our ability to think creatively and toe up the game on the kind of science that we could do. The more of that there is the more transformative it ISS

Sloan:   16:48
that's so exciting to hear and why I'm so excited. Thio coast this with you because that's exactly the kind of intersection that I think we we need to explore here and those those that cynicism about years that the otherwise would not come about. I think is the fertile ground for for your this find gas and company gravelly of what it means Thio live with the F.

Steve:   17:15
Yeah, you know, we together with our Director of education Lorry Jr. A Tommy and a couple of people from University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research Center. Tim Crowley and Laura Midson. Karen Benson. We just This last sometime last year finished up of three year project funded by the Sloan Foundation, called 21st Century Naturalist, and the idea there was that this term naturalist came about a couple of centuries back. Three idea was that scientists of the kind that were my sort of intellectual ancestors were called natural philosophers. The whole idea of being a naturalist came out of that tradition. Well, in this time period, when the effects of humans on all earth systems air so profound when our set of tools is so really also profound, we thought it would be a good idea to rethink what it means to be a naturalist and rethink how we open, um, avenues for pursuit of one's interests as a naturalist. And we came to realize we interviewed a lot of people who would consider themselves attached in one way or another to nature and ask them about their early experiences. Sir, the same question you asked me. When did you first fall in love with this? And where did that take? You and I It becomes pretty clear pretty quickly when you do that that people don't start that career path on which they embark by thinking I love nature. I'm gonna be a physiological Ecologist. They don't even know what that means. And you often end up. If you say I love biology, someone says to you, You should be a doctor and that's great for some people, that's absolutely fulfilling. But for other people, what they really want, what they need is for us to listen to them and to provide for them the pathways, the openings that allow them to question which of these things really work for me. Do I think better with my hands and drawn Or do I think better by doing some engineering that makes a measurement possible that couldn't otherwise he made? Or do I think better with a violin? Uh, you know, if I, um if I think of Beethoven's pastoral symphony, for example, as a different kind of experience to draw out of an experience in a meadow from mine. When I ask, why is that plant growing there? Why does this plan going over here? Uh, you know, I love the science that I did, but I love listening to the Pastoral Symphony while I do it.

Commercial Female:   20:18
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Steve:   21:00
dot com. I think there's so many avenues of approach to natural history, and part of our goal in the museum is to open that up for people

Sloan:   21:14
agreed. Speaking of Museum Your unfortunately closed to the public and to most of the employees, um, for until further notice. But there is a lot of essential work at the museum. They goes on, especially the Natural History Museum goes on, even when we're closed and you are one of the few staff members who have access the museum since leaving clothes on March 14. So it's been some time now. Can you talk about what it's like to be there by yourself? You know, in a labyrinth of creation, basically is our is our museum. It's amazing. Yeah, And then what else? Oh, what kind of work is essential with the collections when no one's there?

Steve:   22:07
Yeah. Uh, well, so what's the experience like? It's really amazing. I mean both when people are there and when they're not there, those are being present in the midst of that. It's one of the gift of having taken on this role when the sort of administrative work in my office gets to be a little too much on. I can't make my brain work anymore. I walk out of the doors in my office into the museum when it's open, and it's full of kids and families and, uh, clusters of two or three people standing in front of a case of butterflies and talking animatedly about it. And I feel as though I'm lucky to be where I am if I walk out of my office and it's night or I just leave my door open. It's night and the museum is empty. I can hear the recorded bird songs from the third floor drifting down the grand staircase. I can hear the white throated sparrow that I love so much in the North woods singing to me from the third floor. Uh, so that's a pretty cool thing, too. But then the really magic thing I have is this key ring, and that key ring gets me into any of the storage areas for the 22 million specimens and artifacts in our museum and I Congar go into the Butterfly Collection, an open drawer after drawer of shimmering butterflies and mods and strange crane flies that look like the mosquitoes. They're three inches tall. I mean, just astounding stuff where I can go down into the dinosaur, the big bone room, as it's called and I want to tell you those bones are big. It's big, refers to the size of the room, but But it also describes the bones in that room pretty well. And to come across the skull of ah tyrannis Oris in the semi darkness. That is just a great experience. So, yeah, being in the museum when nobody's there is is spectacular.

Sloan:   24:30
Some what has to happen in those stories.

Steve:   24:33
Yeah, well, you might think that these dinosaur bones which are, you know, on the order of, say, 150 million or more years old You might think that they're just fine sitting there all the time. They were fine when they were embedded in rock, and we're sort of impervious to the elements around them. We've extracted them from the rock, and that's no longer true. They can actually be pretty sensitive to environmental conditions. So just as you get uncomfortable when the furnace goes out at home, so do these faucets. And so we need to make sure we maintain even temperature and humidity. That's really true of are spectacular mollusc collection. For those of you don't know, molluscs are clams, snails, conks things of that sort. And you'll probably are familiar with Mother of Pearl, right? That beautiful iridescence, that ihsaa layer that's laid down on the interior of a mollusc shell that players called the Knack ER. And as the humidity and temperature go up and down, the shell itself expands and contracts a little bit. And then Acker expands differently from the rest of the shell and eventually will flake off. And you've lost this precious, beautiful thing that was pulled out of the ocean in 18 32 or something like that on may not be discoverable again, so we have environmental monitors all over the building. We check those regularly. There are also quite a few things in our collection that, unlike fossils and clam shells, are pretty tasty to other creatures. Molds a little beetle called the domestic that would eat our entire collection of 13 million insects in cases within a year or two if we let them. So we monitor carefully for outbreaks of pests like that. Our entire insect collection has been cycled through two big walk in freezers over the last year and 1/2 and we do that on a very regular basis. Every week There's a cart full of study drawers that go into the freezer and another cart full of come out and back into their cabinets. So we take care of all of those things. We just look for any problems that we might see with anything. We're also very vigilant about the pipes and heating ducts in this 120 year old building because they run right on top of the collections. So we have to be really vigilant about watching for leaks of any kind or rain that might get in and a heavy rainstorm. And we have well worked out protocols for how we deal with all of those kinds of things. There also some other kind of interesting and perhaps a little creepy sorts of things that go on. For example, we have this little beetle that I told you about that could eat our whole insect collection. They also eat a dead animals.

Sloan:   27:43
I was gonna ask you about them. Yeah,

Steve:   27:45
so they're called domestic beetles, and we have probably one of the best maintained domestic beetle colonies in the United States. Our collection manager for birds is the keeper of the domestic comedy. Maybe we can do a YouTube of him one of these days with this colony. So if someone collects ah, an animal and we want the skeleton of that animal, we have a vast collection of animal skeletons for study. And so, for example, our curator of mammals. Right now John Bible is using those skeletons along with a bunch of kinds of molecular evidence and fossil evidence, to reconstruct the early diversification of the placental mammals mammals that there babies the way we do it in a wound at the time, just following the last great mass extinction. So those skeletons air very important study to us for understanding who we are, how diversity arose and how it's maintained. And Steve Rogers will take the body of, Ah, Wolverine or Ah, see eternal and put it in this domestic comedy, and the Beatles will gobble up every bit of flesh and sin you and leave us with a perfectly clean set of bones. They do a much better job of that than humans could possibly do without marrying the bones at all.

Sloan:   29:08
How long does it take?

Steve:   29:09
Well, it depends on the size of the animals.

Sloan:   29:13
How long would it take like a human?

Steve:   29:16
Oh, Human. Yeah. So this would make a great element of a crime, now, wouldn't it? Uh, probably for a human. It would take, uh, I'm guessing a month and 1/2. Something like that. Two months.

Sloan:   29:30
So if every funds did not do this with human and get you some time elapsed photography, Uh, that's a great idea. Yes, I think there's a nine inch nails, you know, say that.

Steve:   29:44
Really be so. That colony has to be maintained. It has to be fed something. If we don't have any study specimens that we want the Beatles to process, they have to be feeding on something to keep the colony going. So Steve feeds them jerky

Sloan:   29:59
and a light like beef jerky. Deer jerky?

Steve:   30:02
Yeah, that's my understanding. I mean, it's really available. It's dried, so it's preserved, and they're fine with dried food. That's why are insect collection is so vulnerable to them?

Sloan:   30:11
Wow. We could get Slim Jim to sponsor our collection. That's a crypt. Steve, Thank you for joining me. Um, I'm looking forward to many future conversations like this. I believe our listeners are as well it's gonna be a tough year, but I think a good year for this podcast. I think we'll have some really enlightening conversations. We have some great guests already on town. So when we come back, I'm going to introduce everyone to another one of our new co hosts, Asia Ward who? I can't wait for you to meet

Steve:   30:49
Sloan. I I really have been enjoying this, and I'm really looking forward to it. I think we'll have a great mix of some, some humor, some fun and some fundamental ideas. At the same time.

Sloan:   31:00
I should also say our next episode is gonna be diverted to Earth Day and we have a great conversation with Grant Irvin, Pittsburgh's chief resilience officer, that I can't wait for everyone to hear. Yeah, that's gonna be good. This is something We're trying a little different this year. We're gonna call it Dispatches from the Anthropocene On might be a poem. It might be a piece of music. It might be, who knows, But it'll it will sort of be like we spoke about earlier. We're going to take advantage of that intersection between humanities and science to sort of interpret the answer, proceed. So here's our very 1st 1 Take it away, Steve.

Steve:   31:45
This is a poem by Gary Snyder, one of my favorite poets. It's called for the Children. The rising hills The slopes of statistics lie before us The steep climb of everything going up, up as we all go down in the next century or the one beyond that, they say are valleys, pastures. We could meet there in peace. If we make to climb these coming crests One word to you to you and your Children. Stay together. Learn the flowers. Go like

Sloan:   32:32
welcome back. I am thrilled to be joined by age Award and to introduce you to the newest member of the house for Anthropocene. Team Asia recently joined the museum and she is the Antichrist seeing science communication fellow. So welcome, Asia.

Asia:   32:50
Hello. Thanks for inviting me. So I I want to tell you a little bit of what I do at the museum, but also what I do now that the museum this is temporarily closed. So I was brought on to toe work with the exhibit team, the marketing team, the education team and, of course, the Anthropocene section. And to think about exhibit labels so like thinking about how to either bring in Anthropocene stories in temporary labels, looking at the existing labels and seeing how things can be changed to represent our current time or currently thinking about the Anthropocene and in general, thinking about ways to engage the existing permanent exhibits in a way that is more program based. So developing programs so facilitated activities that talk about contemporary issues related to these permanent exhibits. So that's kind of one part of my role. That's a big part of my rule. And the second part is more of the education side, the programming, And that's thinking about ways that I can work with our community members, whether they're in the arts. So the creative community members, researchers and scientists, Of course, all of our developers within the museum and think about ways to talk about the exhibits and pull out those really strong um, pieces of our collection that speak to these contemporary issues related to the embassy. So somehow developing programs that do that and since the museum's temporarily closed that right now has been in the form of, um thinking about these stories and representing them in media, so either social media or thinking about ways to work with scientists and artists collaborating and showing their inspiration and work together in the form of some type of media. The digital media

Sloan:   35:08
you like myself, have a have an artistic background in the humanities. Is that correct?

Asia:   35:15
I do. So I my I feel like I have Ah, two careers, one career, and my main practice is in I'm a sculpture artist. So my work recently has been in plastic for the past five years. But beyond that, it's like metal fabrication. And early on it was more like animatronic, so robotics. And that early work is what brought me to working with museum science, museums, Children's museums, history museums. And, uh, that's kind of how I developed. Start developing my second career, which was in this science communication role, like educational, informal, educational, facilitated wool.

Sloan:   36:06
Sometimes with our scientific colleagues. I feel like that I myself too artsy fartsy. I should have a brain you like reading hike you somewhere. So I think we're talking about the Anthropocene. The crossroads between arts and sciences is absolutely vital because we can cite statistics. But it's also about interpretation, about philosophy and one is all this mean now? And how are we gonna live? Going forward?

Asia:   36:36
I am glad, too that you have an arts background because I think that working with and I have a history working with engineers I had this this company for many years. It was a renewable energy education company. And I worked with wind and solar the industry there as well a CE like distributed energy companies. And it's like you talk to these business people, these people working in an industry, and they understand, like the business aspect of how things work. But they still struggle with, like, how did they reach their audience? They want to develop, let's say, a wind or solar farm in a town. And there's a lot of resistance and they want to reach them a lot of times that resistance is from people not understanding how things work, and and they also have, like, all these misconceptions that hell things are and so like, how do you reach those people? And if you just say, Oh, we're gonna educate you, those townspeople feel like you know what? What am I stupid?

Sloan:   37:40
What we're missing is like vegetables, right? I mean, uh, Vince a vegetables. But it is that old like like here's some This is good for you and you have finished. There's no, uh, Susan thinks

Asia:   37:53
it's like it's it's These facts and figures often feel like overwhelming or maybe not relevant or also kind of like talking down. You know, two people who may be interested in thinking about it, say, a new solar wind development. But they feel like you were kind of talking down to them. And so I feel like the best way to approach this is really talking to people's values. There are similar values that we share, and the arts are really one way that we can we can have. We can share a similar language. So some type of using our emotion to express things, different ways to communicate things are really good. Way too kind of break down those barriers between, you know, like it's it's not just scientific values. It's also emotional values and kind of making sure that those two things can kind of meat in the middle. And so that's why I like your tic tac's of, um, I feel like you're right work. It's making the scientists almost. I don't know what's weird, but to make them more human. What is that mean? But I feel like it means that that they understand, like our everyone else, is emotional value to

Sloan:   39:14
something. It's like taking a lab coat off. But I mean, it's not like it's sort of like there's there's some kind of thing kind of distancing, I think just a stereotypical scientist from, you know, just media presentations. And the word itself has received distrust in some noticeable circles. I mean, we have people who do not believe the evidence when they see it because they distrust scientists. And I think there's been a It's like this mysterious, you know, trope, right? It's It's this, um, character that lives in a laboratory, that it is dispassionate, I guess so. I never thought we'd have to sort of work Thio gain trust on behalf of the word scientist, but that that actually does happen. And then you actually a point we're lucky to have. If you haven't seen our museums tic tac, you should. And we have this amazing guy, Tim Pierce, who's our curator? Molluscs, who is, You know, one of the ah, uh, here to four previously, like best kept secrets in in the World. I think he's this amazingly wholesome, brilliant man who can connect with people on an individual level. But we've seen can connect with people across thousands of miles on social media. And I'm excited about taking the mystique out of out of the word scientist. So let's talk about another troublesome word. Anthropocene. Yes. So what? I I took this position. It was still, you know, a pretty new concept of not a household name. Not as I said, I said before, not is easy and my job to market the end. Racine has like a t. Rex. You know, Have you found that there's a greater understanding of the term and you know, So

Asia:   41:14
that's it. Yeah. Thank you for asking, You know, when I so So Anthropocene is in my job title event. It's so whenever you know, like my family. For example, when I first got the job, I told him what my title was, and you know, I was like, Do you guys know what that means? It's Do you know what Anthropocene means? So I just started asking everyone my closest relatives, you know, If I got into a lift car, I'd ask the driver. I asked just pretty much anyone. And truth is, most people have no idea,

Sloan:   41:52
but I don't

Asia:   41:53
know. So I I I know that part of my job is to kind of that word is to kind of build it up so people have a better understanding of that word. But really, it's about understanding the time period that were in this age of humans and what things we will leave behind. This is why I'm working with the scientists and researchers here at the Carnegie Museum. Natural history is to think about their work and hello there. Work can be communicated to our general audience. So the audience that the visitors have come to the museum on a regular basis, but also people who wanna toe understand this work internationally. How can people think about their work in the way that communicates personal Anthropocene stories? So how does this work? So there's like, for example, I was just working with an artist today, and she was working with Mason Booze in botany, and Mason's work is thinking about like tree canopies. He's studying. He's researching this area at powder mill. He's thinking about how the early growth of the tree canopy, how that's affecting the undergrowth beneath and thinking about like Why is that happening? And what will happen with that early growth in the future? So if if the tree canopy is is already like, the leaves are already out than the flowers that have been evolving over many years to kind of take advantage of the early spring loss. I mean, if they don't have the son to grow than what is gonna happen here in the future with that. So I think it's it's interesting to think about research now and thinking about that deep time, how things have evolved to get to this point and where we might be in the future with that.

Sloan:   44:01
Well, you said a bit ago about, um, sort of, you know, the life we choose and we can choose Thio. What contribution or impact we'd like to make got me thinking about something that Richard Power said Richard Powers. He wrote three over story that which one? The Pulitzer Prize thinking 2018. You recently spoke at Pittsburgh guards and lectures, and someone asked him a question about you know. Is it too daunting? Is the problem too big? And we just need to accept futility. Like, how do we oh, still live differently from our fellows if we're the only ones making his choices? And his response was in a paraphrasing was still the right thing to Dio. Yeah, you know, it's still there still, like, unethical way to live with nature that, um doesn't matter if everybody else does it or not, you know, like I know they will, and we will change things for the better somehow. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it if the overwhelming majority isn't there yet.

Asia:   45:08
I agree.

Sloan:   45:11
What are you doing now that the museum's closed like like what you were talking before about your gardening? Um, are you able Thio connect meaningfully with the with the world that way?

Asia:   45:22
Yeah, so there's a few things. So I live in Dormann and I live off of a busy intersection, and right now the intersection is is it's almost vacant, which is really strange. A few cars, but really pretty vacant. And my goal, um, assumes I moved in was to turn my back yard into a garden and the front yard. I didn't really think much about because it hasn't intersection face. And now that this pandemic has hit, I have been thinking more about transforming that front part of the yard into an edible garden because it's not getting as much of that. The carbon monoxide and all the you know, the fumes coming off the road because I'm a sculpture artist. I have a really large truck, and I picked up two giant pallets of dirt. Since I don't know the history of the land that I'm digging in, I have pretty much covered my yard and new dirt. And it's really it's strange because I am a I rent this, this house, this property. So it's I asked the landlord, So it's okay, but it's still really funny, Like I I've never owned anything. I've always been a venture my whole life, So, um, it feels good to kind of dig into the dirt. But even now when I dig into, I feel really funny. Like I know this is dirt that's not mine, but I have permission to move, so it's like a really strange feeling. So I have been digging this really big deep hole in my backyard, and I've made these, like on the side there, all by my garden dirt piles, which kind of look mysterious or funny. So I have, like, my backyard is pretty much like under construction, but it helps me cope with the pandemic, but also gives me this this hope for the vegetables that I can go. I feel more self sufficient, and I'd also gives me this feeling that I just feel closer to the to the earth, more connected to even my tiny yard. You know, I'm recognizing things like the birds that come through. I'm I'm trying to identify some of the birds, some of the plants, and I'm not from Pennsylvania from Minnesota. So some of these weeds things that we call deeds I'm not familiar with They didn't hit Minnesota. So familiarizing myself with those plants, um, so kids, oddly enough, this time has given me a chance to look harder at the piece of land that I'm borrowing and thinking about what's on it. And, you know, as I dig into it like impacts I'm making on it. And this this I think, desire I have for making the space I'm living, Uh, not just more comfortable, but better, like, look better. I want to feed me and I and I wanted to provide this environment I wanna live in. So that's one thing I've been doing is thinking about by thinking acting on on my backyard and in my front yard to The second thing is, I've been making sculpture, so I have, as I mentioned earlier, my work has been in the past five years in plastic. And I've been thinking in the reason why bring this stuff is because Earth Day is coming up. I mean, now when when we think of Earth Day, we think of making personal choices and changes we think about Okay, I should recycle more. Maybe I should reduce my single use plastic. We can't avoid it, and then especially now we really need it. So all those masks, all the protective gear, everything that we use that we feel like a sanitary is really single use plastic. So I've just been thinking more about this. So at a time when we're thinking about you need to reduce our single use plastic. Now, more than ever, we're thinking about plastic is like a way of saving us way. Can't produce enough plastic, huh? It's like thinking about the Platte. Just life cycles off. Ah, human made materials and thinking about why we make them and how they might, you know, plastic being one of those things that were is definitely part of the answer Racine and what we will see And the geological layer, like way after work on So thinking about that

Sloan:   50:09
you spoke a bit ago about your being in your backyard and, uh, two things I wanted to bring up one. Pittsburgh is seeing a really beautiful spring. We had a couple of days, but it is sunny and the birds air out and then the trees are in bloom is very strange that the streets are empty and you see very few people house this very strange. I am legend sort of landscape without human beings, you know? Is it since we were speaking

Asia:   50:42
of that, I just watched that about I watched so many apocalyptic films a week. I don't know what is with me. Am I trying to scare myself or prepare? I don't really know.

Sloan:   50:54
We've been watching a lot of Simpsons episodes that air apocalyptic in. There's a surprising amount of them. Way found. That's a good way to sort of Coke because it's okay if it makes you laugh. But the other thing we were talking about about being outside, you're saying how there's already here. There's there's noticeably, noticeably less government oxide around. And that's kind of one of the big underreported stories in these recent months worldwide. And clearly we're not trying to diminish the tragedy or the crisis we're all coping with right now. But there are some positive if we can use that word environmental impacts on. And it's almost as if human activity stood still in a lot of high population areas for the past few months. And I guess I hope that the corresponding drops in, uh 02 and the corresponding benefits. I hope those air are looked at quantified somehow, and I also hope that we emerge from this crisis with a plan to keep some of that unanticipated progress in place opens. It's not business as normal, you know, as soon as we on day one, when when there's a vaccine or when the when the peak is flattened and reached right like I hope it's not just a absolute return Thio business as usual.

Asia:   52:36
Yeah, yeah, So I agree. So right now, Like I said earlier, I'm building a guard in my front yard, which I really would not do otherwise because it would just be too busy. But now I feel like if if there's gonna be two months a quiet, this is a good time to think about how can I use that space to provide for me? And and secondly, you're right, so because there's not as much traffic, I you know, I'm a I run and I bike and I wouldn't bike or run on the roads that are near me because they're just too busy. It's just I don't I see other people doing it when it's normally busy, and I'm just like, I don't know why the health benefits of that It's. But now I would because it's it's just not as bad. So I feel like I can run. I'm not, um, smelling like the air, and I know and that when I'm breathing, it's just a better air quality. So that's a really good thing, and I It's something I forgot to tell you. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm taking pictures of signs that people are putting in their doors, you know, like the business doors and stuff like that. So, like, you would think that the signs would be all the same, right? Like, you know, because of Kobe 19 isn't it? They're not. They're all personal throw personally different, you know? And so even the parks I live by door on park and there's the pool and even the the big construction signs you the language is all, like a personal like message. So I've been taking that because I feel like like it represents kind of the mood that we're feeling during this time. And I experienced 9 11 Then you know that time, period and I remember thinking back on it, how it's hard to represent that moved. I mean, you have some really tragic video, But when it comes to like what I was experiencing around me in my community, like I didn't I don't have representation of that, you know? And so this is kind of what I'm trying to document now, Like, how is my community responding to this is in a way to kind of in the future, maybe reflecting. I don't want to do with this material, but I feel like it's valuable

Sloan:   55:12
for sure. That's gonna who knows what that will yield, you know, like artistically. And just like personally, you know, I wonder what my kids are gonna sort of feel, because there's their ages six and eight and, um, you know, there's a pretty formative years for, uh, you know, being isolated from your friends, seeing your teacher on a computer screen. And you know, it's gonna impact different generations differently. We'll see what happens

Asia:   55:43
tonight. The change of the signs to like so some will be like a you know, a and 1/2 by 11. And then maybe another one plaster on top of it. No, in plaster. And whenever there's an update, you know, you see all these different changes in the tone of voice, and it's just like something that I just didn't realize was going to be different for each store. And there's even in some there's, like even denial and resentments. You know, there's there's like hope. There's like, you know, people are giving advice, so it's Ah, I think it's a good snapshot of seniors different stories of this time period.

Sloan:   56:27
Yeah, I agree. I think two sides for in my neighborhood over. So I live in Oman and we have a great movie theater that has concerts and, you know, bingo and trivia and also shows retro movie nights and has beer tastings. ITT's acidic treasure. And, of course, they've been closed for a while Now. You know the Marquis and I'm paraphrasing, and maybe I'll insert I'll go. What asked it? And a little later date Servant actually says, Essentially, uh, you know, together, apart Were we together? We're strong like that, you know, it's just on the platitude, but it's also really just nice to see and big block letters on then that is so different than you walk past the wine and spirits store. And it's just the lights off and just big science is closed until further notice.

Asia:   57:23
Yeah, probably hand written

Sloan:   57:25
like hell out of

Asia:   57:26
him, either Professional businesses and sometimes even like our subway or the Starbucks. They have these hand written signs, you know, and it's just, uh I don't know. I feel like they just kind of left in a hurry, you know,

Sloan:   57:41
right I just got it.

Asia:   57:44
But I love I think that, you know, like you were saying earlier. It's just thinking about it helps me. Okay, So social distancing is like a really funny work just to kind of bring that up, because I feel like that's gonna have repercussions in the future. Um, this idea off, it's almost like isolating or, you know, we're pushing people away socially. It's kind of a strange way to think about a way of protecting ourselves. Um, I'd like the idea of physical distancing so thinking enough just kind of a distance between each other. But in this time where there's physical distancing and these people so I feel like people are still trying to communicate. Like right now when I walk down the street, there's someone ahead of me will cross the street and they'll be walking, you know, another side sidewalk. But we're still be shouting to each other, you know, And I you know, I'm a talker. I would normally say hi. But now the other people are saying hi to me first because they are so excited to kind of, I don't know, they're just excited to talk. I don't know if they're just pent up, they've been inside, too. But I just feel like everyone around me is, um you know, they're very cautious of, you know, almost like the like, a magnet, like people like who pushed away the upset, maybe just pushed away from each other. Um, but the same time, attracted to two talking to each other, even more so than before. So it's it's a really weird time proven. That's what. When I see these signs, I feel that coming out of the science like there's this part off a resistance, Um, and another part of, like wanting to send a message, you know, when you communicate to their to their put the public, the visitors, but also their community that might lead by

Sloan:   59:43
I think this has been a wonderful conversation.

Asia:   59:46
Okay, thanks for inviting me. I had

Sloan:   59:50
Asia. Welcome again to the podcast team. This has been the first of what I'm sure are gonna be many really great conversations. Stay safe out there and I look forward to talking to you soon and everyone you just met Asia.

Asia:   1:0:09
Thanks. Slowing for inviting me. Thanks for letting me talk things out during this time and

Sloan:   1:0:15
I look forward to coming back. All right. Thanks, Steve. I will see you soon. All right, By everybody and be safe

Steve:   1:0:23
by everyone.