Episode 22 – Ethics, Conflict of Interest, and Science

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Karen Stollznow, a linguist, an
author, and she shares podcast hosting duties on Monster Talk with
Blake Smith. She's published a new book, focusing on a single
word, Bitch. Bitch is a highly contextual word, controversial in
that sometimes it's cool and other times Very Uncool. In Bitch:
Journey of a Word , Karen examines the etymology of the word and
its various meanings along with the social context of how we use it
to demean or elevate the person we're referring to. When you read
it, just remember not to dog-ear the pages, that would make you a low
down son of a bitch. Use bookmarks, always. 

There's a push to remove the moratorium in Minnesota against developing nuclear power as s ource of energy. We are hearing claims that it is a renewable energy source, and that it doesn't produce carbon emissions. When this podcast was actually being recorded (there was snow on the ground,) the Minnesota Legislature was in session. So, yes, that's a while ago. But this is still relevant, and will be for the future. There's no guest on this show, because I am interviewing Greg Laden, who is the co-host and has been working on the issue so he has some expertise.

  [caption id="attachment_464" align="alignnone" width="860"] Marlene Zuk presenting a TED Talk.[/caption] For this episode, Greg and Mike Zoomed with Marlene Zuk to ask her some pointed questions about her book Paleofantasy:  What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live. We didn't ask what she had for breakfast, nor what she suggests that we have for breakfast, because that isn't the point of the book.  Zuk wrote about the complexity of evolutionary development and that it's not necessarily so that modern people can look to the past to build our menus, our patterns of relationships, nor what we do for exercise.  We don't need to be stuck in the past, since evolution doesn't teach that we should.  Evolution doesn't stop, so why should we? As usual, the conversation touched on concepts that both Greg and Marlene developed during their field research. Even the Bing Chat AI made a contribution.  Not a great one, but then it's just a bot. Marlene will return to give us inside baseball on her most recent book Dancing Cockatoos and the Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man's Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters. (Purchasing through these links helps fund the podcast, so, if you're going to buy a book, you know... especially if we turned you on to it.)

It's been a few months since our most recent podcast, but we are happy to see that our listeners are still tuning in. Greg Laden and Mike Haubrich welcome the return of Laurent Penet to the show. Listen in for some great info on his study of fruit trees, fungi and the spores from Ivory Coast, and folk medicine. Here are some links that he shared for more information: Tropical Fruit Tree Species and Climate Change Diversity is the best thing about fruits and vegetables Fruits tropicaux (Fr) Agro-Forestry (Encyclopedia Britannica) Medicinal plant knowledge in Caribbean Basin: a comparative study of Afrocaribbean, Amerindian and Mestizo communities Wikipedia Entry on Colletotrichum Sand Mist and Cyclones

Yes, it's true, and our guests explain why.

This is an overlapping continuation of episode 31, including the part about Silver Bay.  Greg Laden and Mike Haubrich spoke a bit more, about our travels and experiences along the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.  We also talked about the Iron Range in some greater detail, we talked about the gas fires in a flooded Grand Forks in 1997, how Hibbing had to move for the mines in the 1920's and how even the mountains in Minnesota are almost flat. This is how our conversations go when we get together.  You should join us sometime.

In this interview, Megan Bond talks extensively with Greg Laden about the importance of the watershed to Minnesota's Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park as well as the Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario; but more importantly, the watershed flows out from a contintal "trivide" to Hudson's Bay, The Atlantic Ocean's East Coast through the St. Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf Of Mexico through the Mississippi River. More information at Ikonokast.com https://ikonokast.com/2022/10/28/episode-30-protecting-the-watershed-with-megan-bond/

In this wide-ranging episode, we explored ideas in agriculture on how to make it both more productive and ecologically friendly. Our guest is Laurent Penet, PhD, a researcher with the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment. While we strayed from the initial question, we did cover a lot of ground on maintaining our ability to continue to produce food in the tropics and the temperate zones, how to encourage biodiversity by not killing all the weeds, why we need pollinators, and reiterated that farmers are great resources because they know the land they are working.

Ethan Siegel is a primo science communicator, with a blog at Starts With a Bang, a podcast of his own of the same name, and articles that he has published in a diverse array of magazines.  He's an enthusiastic interpreter of science, and we assure you there is no math required to listen to this podcast. The episode post is at https://ikonokast.com/2022/05/08/fourteen-questions-with-ethan-siegel/

Especially since Covid-19, everyone you argue with either in person or on the internet about masks or vaccines, or climate change, or evolution, or whether the earth is flat or round, or whatever people fight about, there's going to be a demand to produce the science to support your argument. That's not always as easy as you might think.