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Gabriel Gadsden joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the intersection of rodent infestations and energy justice and how we can simultaneously tackle both issues.
Gadsden, a current fellow and Ph.D. student of Environmental Sciences at Yale University’s School of the Environment, also talks about getting researchers to break out of siloed thinking, tips for science communicators and how his golf game is going.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Gadsden, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
Gabriel, how are you doing today?
Gabriel Gadsden
I'm doing great. It's very exciting to be on the podcast. Also, we've gotten some time to hang out with each other and learn a little bit about each other. And so to bridge that conversation further is exciting. And hopefully, you know, people listen to it and take something away from our conversation today.
Brian Bienkowski
Yes, hopefully people do listen to it. That's an important part of this. And I know that people will and are listening right now. So that's, that's good to know. And Gabriel, where are you today? Where are you talking to us from?
Gabriel Gadsden
I'm in New Haven, Connecticut. In the basement, in my office, my advisor said that doesn't look like I live in ... which I don't know if is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your take on academia being a grad student. Funny or not even funny. But we just had our first snowstorm in New Haven. But it's already gone.
Brian Bienkowski
Came and went, hey
Gabriel Gadsden
yeah, already gone, indeed.
Brian Bienkowski
When our snow comes here, it doesn't leave 'till May. So we just keep, we just keep stacking it, and stacking it on top of old snow, which I like it is a good, it is a good thing for us to have that. So speaking of place, if you've listened to the podcast, you know, I'd like to go back to the beginning, before we talk about the exciting stuff you're working on now. So tell me about Hayti. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. But historically Black community in Durham, North Carolina where you grew up.
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, no. So Hayti. And don't feel bad because I feel like everybody gets it wrong when they first read it. It does read like Haiti, but it's Hayti. It is the Black section of I would say more like center-southerner. There's actually a Hayti historic center, which kind of documents both a congregation space but also a area that documents the history of that area. So it kind of runs between Fable street and Highway 55, in North Carolina. The Center is around there. A lot of Black businesses, the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company is kind of connected to the Hayti center, a lot of Black elementary and middle schools ... Shepherd Middle School is around there. So a hub of you know, Black entrepreneurs and academia educators kind of in that areas, putting roots down. And that's where a lot of my family grew up in North Carolina.
Brian Bienkowski
And I'm guessing that Hayti, since you grew up there as a child, you don't know any difference, right? I mean, when you're a child, wherever you grow up, that's what you know. But what can you pieced together from growing up there? maybe it is how it affected you now or in your youth?
Gabriel Gadsden
you know, but maybe not outside so much of Hayti in my family. I... my dad was always big on you know, understanding the history of where we're coming from, you know, ancestors and whatnot. Understand the history of Durham. He was there when he was a child while his mother was in grad school at UNC in public health while his dad was in law school as well. And so, you know, he got to see Durham and Hayti in a very different light. And so, you're just kind of understanding that, you know, by the time that I was being reared in North Carolina, North Carolina Mutual had closed down its doors. And so that's kind of, you know, you can see in a lot of black areas of cities, you know, there's this really steep incline of entrepreneurship and whatnot, and then there's a decline, for whatever reason, whether there's a highway being built, you know, just kind of distant disinvestment into an area, it still had a lot of the history and the roots was still there, but it wasn't maybe as bustling as, as it would have been in maybe the 50s, 60s.
Brian Bienkowski
And where and how did science enter your life?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, you know, I was most excited about this question. And I kind of molded over it and thinking about it. I think that for me, science was always a part of my trajectory, as it was a part of my life. And so I'll say this: growing up, I was diagnosed with a speech impediment that was in part because I couldn't hear, and I still can't hear out of my right ear. And so, you know, not being able to talk to kids, and not really being able to hear anybody, I kind of stayed in my own head, stayed to myself, but, you know, when you're wandering, you know, devoid of interaction with other kids, you find other things to interact with. And so my first thing was rocks, loved them loved how they looked, clean them, you know, put them in buckets, and had this rock collection. So you know, first thing was geology for me. And then I got a little bit older, and then it became PBS. So I was watching Zoom. And learning about chemistry didn't know it was chemistry at the time. But they were adding baking soda and sodium chloride and making gases. And so I would go into my parents’ bathroom probably wasted about $200 worth of product throughout that time period. And I was mixing Vitalis, and Listerine, and alcohol and hoping that I was making and make a discovery of some new chemical, some new gas. My mom had a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Central University. That was her first degree from there. And, you know, she said to me, "don't mix ammonia and bleach." As you know, she saw what I was doing, but they kind of let me stay off for myself after that it was Zaboomafoo. And, you know, I won't sing the catchphrase. But you know, you know, who do you see? Can you identify this mystery? What was this animal? and loved Animal Planet, "Top 10 dangerous," and all of these other shows just really captivated me when I was younger. And so you know, taking that into the classroom, being generally curious, not really having the foundations. And I think we'll get into that a little bit more. But in the last thing, I'll say, and why I say that science was just kind of always the part of me, was that I grew up and still am religious. And so in Christianity, what is my religion that I identify with, but you know, whether it's Judaism, Buddhism, Muslim, you will find environmentalism, ecology in the roots of them. And that's something that I've kind of come back to now here at Yale School of the Environment, a lot of connections with the Divinity School, and recognizing the similarities and recognizing that our morality is tied to the environment. And obviously, with traditional ecological knowledge, TEK, I think kind of making a resurgence in people's psyche, and the paradigm shift that we need to really get back to, quote-unquote, "roots" is something that I've always carried with me. There's tons of verses in the Bible that a lot more knowledgeable people could spout off in terms of connecting those two. And so I was filled with wonder when I was a kid, and it carried me to here.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. And you just alluded to this; you said, I remember this in your application. You mentioned that your primary education left you woefully unprepared to conduct research, which I don't think is an uncommon thing. I know I hadn't seen a scientific paper until graduate school. I didn't know what they were. So I don't think you're alone. But can you talk about this obstacle? And how you overcame it to go on to, right now, one of the most prestigious universities in the country?
Gabriel Gadsden
Absolutely, I'll start with this. I don't want that statement. You know, people hear it to say that I had bad instructors or teachers. My elementary school was filled, filled with amazing educators. I could name them, and some of them are still friends with me now. These were incredible people. But when it came to specialists, we had computer PE, art, and music. There was no science special. It was, there was one teacher at the school at the time, Mrs. Daniels, who had a classroom filled with animals and that was probably the closest thing we got to true science education at that time. Then I went to middle school and so obviously I've been watching these shows and asking my own questions, reading my own books. But it's just another step up now you're just learning about tectonic plates and geology, you know, kind of periods and whatnot, the Paleocene or Jurassic, kind of understanding that. But that stuff there I had already read. It wasn't fascinating to me. It was nice to be able to raise my hand and know that, you know, the question that kind of kept my interest in science. But we weren't learning the scientific method, we weren't looking at two different species and asking, Why is this one different, and whether or not we could change in the laboratory, we weren't getting any kind of hands-on experience. Same thing in high school. I didn't see science shown to a younger audience until I was a TA, and teaching assistant for Duke TIP, which is a talent program run by Duke University. And there I saw, you know, true scientific method building, trying things, failing, going back, you know, iterative process, that's kind of part of the science experiments that you see in laboratories. You know, went to a high school college. And so, I did get some early science classroom experience before going off to the UNC. But when I got there, you know, understanding how to navigate those classrooms, but also recognizing that there was a world outside of chemistry and biology, which just was not something that clicked to me, I think about it now, and I probably should have should have been an environmental science major, I would have had an easier time. You know, it wasn't until sophomore year that I realized that I was taking classes that were for pre-med, you know, doctors, and that's not what I wanted to do. I knew that going in. But I didn't know of other majors. And so it's it's kind of a multi-tier thing, both from the kind of primary education getting students prepped for the many fields that are going to be available to you as a college student, but also colleges recognizing and you know, I've seen I have some friends now who are in like STEM education, at the kind of academic level, and are trying to write papers and trying to understand what fails when they make that jump from high school to college. I think that there's some really good progress going on. But I think it's kind of a two-fold issue. One, a lot of the primary education, particularly in Black communities, don't have the money to bring in science instructors to do specials, or science Fridays and stuff like that. But then two, when you get to the university level, universities just aren't understanding that students are coming in from very different standpoints, and maybe have very different interest and maybe only thinks that biology is the only way to get into science, which isn't the case.
Brian Bienkowski
It's a great point. And I like to think that this program, not only is... the point is to show that scientists themselves are from diverse backgrounds and can be diverse people. But also that science itself is diverse. I think I grew up thinking that science; maybe, I think you were saying this kind of too, I thought of chemists, chemistry, beakers, and you know, the lab experience experiments and didn't think of social scientists or, you know, even forestry and fisheries to a certain extent, were things that I think if I would have been exposed to at a younger age, I would have said, "Oh, my goodness, yes, I want to do that! That's excellent" So yeah, those are excellent points. And I hope I hope some of this program is opening people's eyes to different types of cool science. So before we get into that cool science that you are doing right now, what is the defining moment or event that shaped your identity?
Gabriel Gadsden
So from a science standpoint, when I was an intern with the Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, with Dr. Harris, Sam Harris at the University of Michigan, at the time, was the first time going and doing kind of forested wildlife ecology fieldwork. And I remember going into the forest and kind of seeing the light beams, and hot and sweaty – and had just climbed a hill and gone through the thicket– and I kind of emerged into this field and felt a spiritual connection, a birthing. You know, it was, it was truly a moment of great pleasure for me to knowing that I had finally done that, what I felt like my life was supposed to be, like was going out and collecting data and trying to then come back and share that data with with people. From a more personal standpoint... Maybe, man, my parents would have a different story. I know the story my dad would tell. For me, it was maybe a bit of a devotional, I was actually dedicated to God when I was seven. And I felt like I was always a good kid, I felt like I always had this connection, you know, we talked about a little bit earlier. But for me, it was this recognition that... humbling experience to know that I am just a small dot in this great big world, and a lot of it that we don't understand and that we have faith in it. We have faith in science, right, that we'll learn some of our answers, and we have faith in our religions. We have faith in humanity and our people. I think that was a moment, you know, being very young and actually just realizing that I'm just a dot in this, you know, kind of vastness, but I could make a difference. Clearly, people felt like I was making a difference in their lives within that, that congregation. And so I think, "oh, I can make a difference in this world. And whatever capacity I am," I've tried to carry that with me.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. That's an excellent, excellent couple of moments. And let's get into some of the research you're doing now in making that difference. And so I've had the good fortune to not only talk to you when you applied for this program, but we met in Philadelphia and talked about your research. So some of this I know, but some I don't. And I find it fascinating. So as you put it, it's kind of at the intersection of human health, wildlife, and energy justice. So can you, just off the top, tell us how these three fields merge in your research?
Gabriel Gadsden
How does it merge? It started when I was back an intern, and walking through the forest with with my advisor, Dr. Harrison, starting to ask questions about society, and how all this what it really meant, when it boiled down to it. Again, my dad and mom had instilled in me, you know, we need to stand up for what we think is right. You know, being just and being fair, and morality. Science was the path that I was taking. It wasn't like I was gonna go to law school, though my dad might still think that's a possibility. And the questions in ecology just weren't there. At that time, I don't think ecology –this was, you know, back in 2016, 2017– I don't think that they had really kind of saw that ecology could really be tied to social justice or social equity. And at that point, I'm really grateful that Dr. Harris kind of saw that and wants people to be great. So it's like, well, you should probably go into environmental science, try to find Dr. Tony Reams, who was at the time taking on students who does energy justice work. And I kind of made that pivot and knew at the time that it was a hard pivot. But it worked out. And I just had a text message kind of chat with Tony and just, you know, still believes in me, He still thinks that the ideas are great, and going to continue to do good things. But there, I was able to actually collect data that was directly tied or more visceral for people doing air quality data in an efficient housing. And so environmental justice is, you know, public health, public health is epidemiology, and you know, all these things kind of merge and mix together. And so recognizing that people were living in inefficient housing, and then had bad health, having this background in ecology with wildlife, and you know, how as a story goes, I was reading energy justice papers, and I was reading wildlife papers. And I thought to myself, "Oh, foxes, and other things like raccoons and bats live in people's homes. How do they get into those homes, though?" And then, you know, I just, you know, the literature, you know, they talk about these gaps in the foundation and inefficient walls. And so there's no insolation. So it becomes, basically just a nesting place for wildlife. And I thought, "Oh, wow, this is, it's pretty interesting." And, you know, lo and behold, there wasn't a lot of data on it. Now, I can certainly talk more about the literature that is there. But at the time, and still to a large degree, there is not any hard data about housing quality and wildlife and health and putting those two together, even though you know, wildlife, they carry zoonotic diseases that can be, you know, obviously transmissible to humans, that make us sick. And so, you know, it's kind of becomes this double jeopardy of if you have wildlife that are in your house carrying diseases and you're already in poor health because of your inefficient housing, what that could mean for public health crises? and kind of being cost effective. If there's a solution to multiple things, we should probably champion that solution. And I have to thank Dr. Grove for that, in the urban ecology class that I just was a teaching fellow for, understanding this complex nature of problems. And if we don't think complex, you know that they are complex problems, and there's multiple ways of entering the issue, then we're not going to get very far.
Brian Bienkowski
And just on the ground level, what does this research look like? How do you conduct a study that examines both energy inefficiency and rodents?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, so, as a first year, as then, last year, first-year Ph.D. student or someone trying to get into grad school, I thought I was going to save the world and then realized, no, it wasn't realistic. But you know, we have an unlimited supply of plunder, right? Um, I thought I was going to talk to some people in Philadelphia; they were going to let me into the house, we were going to get all this money and do home interview scores. ATS is, and then we're going to trap inside. And then we were going to retrofit with another $15,000. And then do a before-and-after controlled trial. None of that happened or didn't happen yet. We were still optimistic that some of those things would happen in time. And hopefully, you know, the funders who are listening to this will recognize the importance of this. But the reality is that we're starting outside, you know, Philadelphia. While they do have vector control, Philadelphia has not kind of systematically kept ties with, you know, what the pathogens are, and where the rodents are in the city outside of 311 calls. And so hopefully working with them to get them just kind of more data, where the rodents in the city, I think it's kind of the first question and what environmental variables, you know, both, you know, trash receptacles, Park size, you know, trash on the street, housing, type of housing stock, is attributing rodent populations, or is increasing or decreasing rodent populations, excuse me. I think that’s, so that's the first step. And then the second step is to then, you know, ask for in these neighborhoods, collecting rodents making contacts, hopefully, we have a meeting tomorrow with 57 Blocks, which is a gun violence advocacy kind of research group out at the DA office in Philadelphia, recognizing that some of these issues with what is attracting rodents in cities, also could mitigate or increased gun violence. And so I say that to say, you, you work with people who are already doing great work in the city on different issues – Philly Thrive and other folks that are doing EJ work – And hopefully, by those connections and those collaborations, then they will say, "Oh, yes, this person, it would love to talk to you about this research." And that's how we're going to get into homes.
Brian Bienkowski
So to zoom out, we're talking about cracks in the foundation are problems in the home that are first leading to energy inefficiency. So maybe your bills are higher, your house isn't as warm, your house isn't as cool. And then the second part of that is rodents are able to get in. And what kinds of diseases or health problems are we talking about when we think about rodents getting into people's homes?
Gabriel Gadsden
So first is childhood asthma, allergens that are already so if you're in a low income area, you likely maybe have some type of power plant or some type of industry that's near you. So you already have those pollutants getting into your home more because it's inefficient, or for whatever reason, you have higher rates of asthma, and now you add on allergen load from mice and rats, so that's going to be exacerbated. So, you know, more ER trips, more money spent on inhalers and other types of treatments. There's also the issue of leptospirosis, which, and hantavirus, s more in the west right now. And I'm not going to get into kind of the debacle of funding that research in cities or in other areas outside of the West. But but certainly those are kind of the two main ones. There's also typhus –plague is still in Detroit.
Brian Bienkowski
and I have to imagine that there's a mental health, stress component to this. There's social stress, I mean, the idea of maybe you don't want to invite people into your home when you know you have an infestation. So I can see this kind of spider webbing outside of the very acute, physical, physical illnesses into mental and social struggles. So I don't want to place blame here and I know this is probably a large issue with some historical roots. But who's to blame? What is the... why is this historically been a blind spot for regulators, housing officials and others?
Gabriel Gadsden
1950s was a really big time. I don't know the researcher's first name but Davies, I believe it's his last name, did a lot of work in Baltimore. There's a lot of really great case studies in Budapest and some other cities of like kind of rat-proof towns that brought population levels of rats down to less than 1% of their historic numbers. Even in Philadelphia in the 1940s, they have their first really big campaign about getting rid of rodents. And then in the 1960s, the mayor kind of created the rat control group, and that rat control group, you know, said, you know, that we will not take the job, if you do not seal up all the cracks in any, you know, in your home, you know, essentially, you know, back then maybe they didn't think about is energy efficiency of sealing up your envelope and the energy inside it, you know, get that, but it makes sense. But life happens, policy change, you know, turnover, it's a lot easier to say, you know, put out bait blocks, and rodent trapping, than to actually do systemic change. We see that time and time again. Actually, solving an issue takes coordinated efforts between many different factors from public health, to housing and development, to parks and rec, all coming together at that table. And cities are not willing to make that choice, at least in America right now, major cities, I'm not going to bash on any politician. But if you follow New York politics, you would have received like a rat czar job posting recently. And the reality is, you know, all the memes where, you know, Charlie Day from Always Sunny Philadelphia, kind of what's his kind of mace-bat-like situation that's gonna go, get rid of all the rodents. And that's not going to work. You know, it’s, and it's not just sanitation, is not just sealing up the home. And it's not just getting rid of vacant lots. It's all of those things at once, across a large scale in a city. And so until we're ready to put up that money, allow natural predators into our cities and kind of coexist with nature in a healthy way. And I don't think that you know, so, you know, really, really comes down to is political will and resource allocation. I mean, most researchers will say, you know, that's a lot of the issues. And if you throw money out enough, it'll fix itself, and you get the right people in the room. But right now, we just, there's really great researchers. Jason Munchie. I'm drawing a blank. But even Merkin Rosenbaum. These are people who are doing rodent research right now. And certainly know more than I do. But I think would advocate the same thing that is a, you know, you have to have this team of teams. To quote Dr. Grove, Morton Grove, if you don't have this team of teams, you're not going to solve the issue. And so cities have to really be ready to sit down and bring people together and spend the money.
Brian Bienkowski
What makes you hopeful about this? you mentioned some researchers who are doing very good work. Are you seeing any on-the-ground movement in Philadelphia or beyond? What makes you hopeful and optimistic?
Gabriel Gadsden
Yeah, I mean, Matt Fryer, another researcher, just trying to create like this really handy, simple rodent tool you can kind of put into cracks and understand whether, you know, it is susceptible to being infested by rodents. So you have this, you know, research-entrepreneurship, kind of burgeoning space, you also have new sensors, with Rat Mo, there are different technologies that are trying to get up, you know, making sure that we spend money in an efficient manner. As much as I don't think the idea of a rat czar going to work, the fact that, that that is a possibility that, you know, maybe the right person that's in that position could really make a change if they're kind of advocating for all of these different methods and allocating funds in the right spaces. I also think that there's maybe a little bit of a change in public perception... I kind of write and so I'm working on, you know, Environmental Health News with you and Maria, that, you know, it's time that people stop accepting this as the normal and I'm seeing that more and more maybe that's because I'm in this space. But I certainly think that as it gets out of hand again, I think COVID-19, and this kind of increase in route and sightings people at home are recognizing that, you know, they're out during the daytime, they're out during the night time, they're, you know that the squeaky wheel is going to get squeakier. And so I think I'm seeing a little bit more of that. I certainly know all of my friends know about it more. And so they send me a lot of papers and different articles from different fields, kind of hinting at this as well. And so I think that does make me optimistic. You know, I certainly have gotten some great responses for my work and so recognizing that people see this as a, as a serious issue, I think it will only get easier to advocate for true rodent exclusion or reduction of populations in an impactful way.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, sometimes a big first step for any of these kinds of wicked issues is just awareness. It's a good, it's a good first step. And speaking of that, so I know after I talked to you about your research, it seemed very intuitive, that these problems would be linked, but it is different and intersectional. And I'm sure you've had to explain it to folks, I'm wondering if you just have any tips for scientists interested in learning to better communicate.
Gabriel Gadsden
After just giving two presentations, two final presentations, I should have practiced more and everybody in my lab as a practice, you know? giving a talk to very different fields also helps. You know, most people don't study rodents, particularly in ecology, or at least well, urban ecology, just because they're not considered wildlife. And so you have to talk to the epidemiologists who are in a very public health, atmosphere or medical research. And so you have to link these things, even this idea of, you know, retrofitting versus, you know, sealing up the envelope, what word you use? those choice words, getting rid of the jargon, paring it down writing different grants, and then writing research talks, and then writing an academic article about it, you're putting it in very different ways. And you find out what works and what clicks with people. Just keep harping on it, if you believe in it, you know, the right words are going to come. And, you know, the same thing as you're reading widely talk to as many different groups. Because they know, someone in social science may say, "this is a word that would really clicked with people."
Brian Bienkowski
I also think starting off, as you as I've heard you do, with just kind of how this affects people is a very tangible way to make these issues click with people. I mean, we've all, most of us – I had a mouse in the house the other day – I mean, this is, this is common, this is a common thing that a lot of people have dealt with, maybe not on the scale that you're researching. But I think starting with, how does this impact people and their health is a really good starting point. And I've seen you do that. So of course, you can't be out there chasing rodents and looking at foundations all of the time. I happen to know you're a golfer. So what is... I don't know if it's golf weather out there if you're getting a bunch of snow, but when you are able to golf, do you get out much, and what's your handicap these days?
Gabriel Gadsden
I do get, I get out as much as I can. Yale is really generous and allows students to play at a discounted rate after turn hours. And so I'll go over there, it's a great golf course. And handicap, you know, I'll say this, there are no pictures on a scorecard. And that can work in a good way or a bad way. What I'll say is that I can get some pars most of the time. I'm shooting bogey, every now and again. I'll get a double bogey or triple bogey more often than I'd like. But if I were doing like a two-man scramble, I wouldn't hold you down as badly as you would think.
Brian Bienkowski
Before we get you out of here today, I have three rapid-fire questions that are supposed to be fun. Hopefully they are fun, where you can just answer with one word or a phrase. So the first one is, what was the highlight of the past year for you
Gabriel Gadsden
was able to go to... see my family. You know, I don't get to see them often. And so in spending any time with my dad and playing golf with my brother. It's always a treat seeing my nieces and my nephews is always fun; being with them
Brian Bienkowski
For sure. The best concert I've ever been to was
Gabriel Gadsden
Oh, two. So Mick Jenkins not maybe a conscious rapper but a little bit less conscious. Really fun and authentic feeling, and then Jidenna, the '85 to Africa tour was really great. I'm a small concert like... I'm huge I love going to concerts. I like going to the smaller ones. I don't think I'll ever go see Beyonce or Drake. But the 30,000 people do It doesn't seem fun.
Brian Bienkowski
That makes, that makes two of us this, the more intimate concerts are, well, they're more intimate. You get to see and feel things in a much different way. I totally agree. And last question every day I look forward to blank.
Gabriel Gadsden
Being a good person, trying to be a genuine and caring person, I think, sometimes can throw people off. Like, what's up with this guy? But I hope that I hope that people who know me and or will meet me now this is just as genuine as I can to be nice.
Brian Bienkowski
But I sure hope being kind doesn't spark too much skepticism among people in your life or beyond. Because it's, it's something I felt from you, and I think it's it's a good thing. We should all be kind and genuine. So last question. I've been asking everybody, what is the last book that you read for fun?
Gabriel Gadsden
Cool. The last book I read for fun. I have to I pulled them off-site, so I won’t butcher their name. So the one I actually just finished was The Age disaster, the failure of organizations in New York and the nation. Great book, quite old, at this point. 1990 was published, but still is very salient, particularly because of the COVID-19, the climate disaster, I mean, you name it, there's a lack of, of coordination and whatnot. So yeah, go go get that. And that was like a free book lying around that I had just picked up from the department. And then, the other book is Fighting the good fight: The militarization of the civil rights movement. And so I'm currently reading that, and I've had some really good conversations because there's something to be said about whether or not we should be using this language. Is it helpful? Is it actually more harmful because of traumatic kind of imagery that comes with militarization? I'm still debating that myself, but I certainly find it a thought-provoking book, if not a bit challenging for a person to kind of wrap their heads around. So I've been asking people, you know, that's my question now at talks. Hey, should we be using this language? Is that hopeful to take that militarization of civil rights to the militarization of climate justice, and whether or not these campaigns and precision and training and communications, those types of things that make campaigns go well, should be co-opted?
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Sounds like a thought-provoking book. And speaking of thought-provoking, you can find Gabriel's essay soon out on ehn.org, where you can learn more about his research. And we'll be sure to get that in front of readers and listeners, Gabriel, thank you so much. We're doing this today. It's a pleasure having you in the program.
Gabriel Gadsden
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And thank you to everybody who's listening.
As I’ve aged, I’ve found myself increasingly diverted from my great interest in human achievements in science to increasing distress at certain features of modern human culture that I believe threaten us all, and by all I mean the natural world, not just ourselves.
I, of course, have lived in an amazing time for a scientist. When I was first fooling around with butterflies, scientists knew nothing about DNA. We thought humanity’s prehistory was a pretty straight line from a chimplike ancestor, through Australopithecus, to Homo erectus, to Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only later did scientists uncover the great diversity of our ancestors and the evolutionary relatives with which they interacted. Doctors had just begun using catheters to diagnose problems in beating hearts, electron microscopes had just been developed, nuclear power and nuclear proliferation were still in the future, computers did not then control much of human activity as they do now, no artificial satellites were circling Earth, and no human being had ever ventured above the atmosphere.
That we now know so much more about how organisms function and evolve and how ecological systems work than was known when I caught that Euphydryas phaeton in Bethesda at the age of fifteen I find mind-boggling. At a more plebeian level, when I started at Stanford in 1959 we had no Xerox machines, no smartphones, no desktop computers, and, of course, no word processing and no email.
On the cultural front, as noted earlier, I might have been able to write a similar screed of social and political accomplishment for America if I were writing this in, say, 1980, before the Reagan presidency set us on the facilis descensus Averno.
In 1980 the situation of African Americans compared to twenty-five years earlier had improved greatly — lynchings had died out in the South, no facilities in Lawrence, Kansas, were still segregated, and increasing numbers of people were realizing that those with darker skins could be top scholars and excellent politicians. Women were well on their way to penetrating niches once reserved for men, and I had taken much of my instrument training from a female pilot.
People in religious minorities were infrequently at risk of violence.
Further, official notice of and action on environmental problems was, if inadequate, in existence and cheering, bolstered by some landmark legislation. Much of that was reversed by Reagan, and since Reagan, socioculturally it’s been at best a roller-coaster of destruction of environmental safeguards and social safety nets followed by the reinstitution of these safeguards, greater acknowledgment of the threat of fossil fuel – induced climate change, and attempts to increase access to affordable medical care and the like.
Nevertheless, inequality has continued to grow, and there has been a decline generally in American indirect democracy, epitomized by the nearly successful Trump putsch of January 6, 2021, a set of events virtually inconceivable a decade or more before. To cope with the crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, overpopulation, and threats to the provision of life’s essentials, far more is needed than scientific reports that are too often largely ignored.
To rescue the human enterprise in the long run requires strong action in the short run directed toward saving biodiversity and bringing the human enterprise within sustainable limits.
This is an excerpt from Life: A Journey Through Science and Politics by Paul R. Ehrlich is published by Yale University Press.
Banner photo credit: Left - Wikipedia Commons; Right - Yale University Press.
Carolyn Ramírez joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the importance of old growth trees and the environmental justice implications of forest management.
Ramírez, a current fellow and staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, also talks about who has access to renewable energy and their relationship with hiking and nature.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Ramírez, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Transcript
Brian Bienkowski
Carolyn, how are you today?
Carolyn Ramírez
I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you, Brian?
Brian Bienkowski
I'm doing wonderful. And where are you today?
Carolyn Ramírez
I am in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah, the ancestral homelands of the Potawatomi, the Ojibwe, the Odawa, the Ho-Chunk and the Menominee nations. And it is getting chilly. It is finally winter.
Brian Bienkowski
So what neighborhood are you in, in Chicago? If you don't mind me asking.
Carolyn Ramírez
I'm in North center. Yeah, the north side.
Brian Bienkowski
NoGreat. I used to live in Ukrainian village a long, long time ago and really, really loved it. I really loved being in Chicago. It's a great city. Well, excellent. Speaking of Chicago, there's a little horn for us a little little urban background.
Carolyn Ramírez
Yeah, that will happen. I apologize.
Brian Bienkowski
No worries. So speaking of cities and place, I usually like to start to hear about where people were from. So I know you split time between the Midwest, Southern US, but also spent some time in the Bronx in New York City. Can you tell me about how these disparate places shaped your upbringing and what that look like?
Carolyn Ramírez
Yeah, sure. Thank you for that question. So I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri. I grew up there. Alright, my job is done with her treat. I'm sorry. The last time I gave her a peanut butter Kong, it took her an hour to finish it. So I really thought we had this figured out –anyway. So yeah, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri until I was about 13. And then my family, we moved to Houston, Texas. But when I was growing up, living in St. Louis, every summer, we would split our time between North Texas and the Bronx in New York. Because my dad is from the Bronx, my mom is from Texas. And so those were just very different places that I went to every summer. It was a lot of fun. I associated very specific things with each place. I would say Texas felt more familiar because we just went to another suburb to visit my my mom's parents and my great grandparents. But when we were in New York that felt like such a different experience than what I grew up with. Because we would be in the Bronx. It was really loud. A lot of people like... I felt like I blended in more. I saw a lot of Puerto Ricans, never really saw any Puerto Ricans anywhere else that I that I went when I was growing up. And yeah, it was just... I saw a different side of my dad there, you know, his accent would come out, his New York accent. My mom always tells this story. I mean, I was in the car, so I remember it, but she just always tells the story of when someone was trying to double park in front of my, like our rental car, and my dad leaned out the window and he just goes "Yo yo yo, I'm trying to leave here." And like with a thick New York accent that I'm not going to try to impersonate and my mom just looks at him and goes "Yo yo yo?" it's just like, you can take the boy out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy kind of thing. And then, you know, the the nice person in the car that was and we got out of the spot and then the person took our spot and that was fine. But yeah, that was that was New York. It was very different experience. I got to, that was the one time a year I got to be around other Puerto Ricans because we'd see all my cousins, my grandparents. And you know, we'd eat food, we'd, we'd talk, we'd go to a Broadway show or something, we'd swim in a pool. It was just like, that was the experience that always felt really different from every other part of the year in my life.
Brian Bienkowski
So you, you ended up at Northwestern University for your PhD with some with some work in between, obviously, but tell me about your path there. And how did you decide on chemical engineering?
Carolyn Ramírez
Yeah, so when we moved to Texas, when I was in middle school, when I got to high school, I mean, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought I always wanted to be a writer, because that's what both of my parents do. And then I took chemistry, and that things really clicked I had the best teacher I'd ever had in my life. I mean, we still keep in touch Amber's homesick shout out, she was just the best teacher I'd ever had. Let me be my, you know, loud, overexcited self about nerdy, nerdy subjects and chemistry just really clicked in my head. And I was like, this is very interesting. And I want to keep doing this forever. So, uh, but then I talked with her, I talked with my parents about that, because when I was thinking about what to apply for, for college, and everyone was suggesting chemical engineering, because it's a little easier to get a job as an engineer than a chemist, if you don't want to go to grad school. Lo and behold, I went to grad school anyway. But it just, it gave me more of a an application-based education on chemistry-based topics. So I was always kind of thinking bigger scale, even though most of my research has always been at the nanoscale. But I was, always had this idea of applications in my mind. And I think the fact that I studied chemical engineering instead of chemistry largely led to my environmental justice interests, because I was thinking about people a lot more in the context of my work.
Brian Bienkowski
Great. And I want to talk about that intersection between chemical engineering and environmental justice. But before we get to that, what is a moment or event that shaped your identity up to this point?
Carolyn Ramírez
That's a heavy question. There are many, I would say, I do think one that is going to happen is next year when my family and I finally go to Puerto Rico for the first time, I think that's going to be a very emotional experience for me. But I won't predict the future. I'll reflect on, I think, what we're kind of a series of moments in the year, we all want to forget, 2020. I don't choose to remember much of that year. But there are a series of conversations and, you know, a lot of introspection that I did during that time, where I really kind of figured out who I was, coming into... becoming more comfortable with my queerness, reckoning between my racial and ethnic identities as a white Puerto Rican person. And just having like a lot of really interesting and impactful conversations with a lot of people close to me. And I think a lot of that was caused by the environment of the world in 2020, everyone suddenly cared more about racial justice than they did the year before. And so we did a lot of that work in my department trying to get DEI and anti racism more intertwined in the work we were doing. So that obviously made me think a lot more about about my own identities. And I don't really feel like I've looked at myself the same way since then. So while it's not like one defining moment, even though obviously, we all wish we didn't have to go through the pandemic. It gave me more time than I ever wanted to, to think. And I think I finally figured some stuff out.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And I think that's true, regardless of what we came out as different people in whatever respect is it gave us all time to kind of, at least for me too, and I know my wife, just to think about how we live, what we're doing, how we're, what makes us happy, what doesn't make us happy. So I think that that time that we often don't have is a really big part of that. And of course, we don't want that time to be because people are getting ill, but I'm, I'm glad you had a somewhat positive experience come out of the pandemic.
Carolyn Ramírez
The rest of it wasn't but...
Brian Bienkowski
Of course, right. Look at the silver lining. So I'm looking back at the chemical engineering work as I said, I want to talk a little bit about.... I don't think this is a field that me personally I know a ton about. And it's not hasn't been too common on this podcast. So specifically when it comes to chemical engineering, can you talk about the environmental justice aspects, specifically maybe about, you know, technologies like solar cells, I know that was something that you worked on and who is able to access those types of sustainable technologies.
Carolyn Ramírez
Chemical engineers make stuff, right. So they make everything from the oil, the gasoline that goes in your car to the cosmetics that, you know, we use, to, I mean, the processed food that you're eating every day. So everything that chemical engineers do affects people. And all of those processes need to have that context. So I went into this field, kind of as a lifelong environmentalist wanting to do something, to work on the energy crisis, to work towards renewable energy sources. So I was really lucky to be able to study organic solar cells in grad school, I studied them at a very fundamental level, really taking the materials we were interested in and doing spectroscopy on them, which means shooting lasers at them and seeing what bounces off basically. That was really interesting. But at the end of the day, I was kind of like, "well, you know, who is this helping, and who's actually, if I make a breakthrough, if I find a material that is going to change the game, who's gonna have access to that material who's gonna have access to that technology?" So I started looking more into that. And, as is predictable in these sorts of scenarios, it's pretty much wealthy white people who have access to these technologies, and who use them. And I found this paper, I cited it in my policy,position paper, but I'm forgetting the name of the author. But this paper in Nature Sustainability that came out a few years ago, that found that even when you correct for wealth disparity among different racial classes, or homeownership, which as we know, because of the Federal Housing Administration is desperately more or disparately more homeownership with white people and a lot more people of color rent because of redlining. Even when you correct for all that, white people still buy into solar cells way more than Black people, than Latinos, than all other people of color. So I, you know, kind of wanted to understand why and what are the kind of compounding issues that that we need to tackle to, to get at that. And it's because in a capitalist society, like the United States, the way we solve a problem is just by making one thing to solve one problem and put it out into the world. But then the, you know, economic markets and the capitalistic way that the products are brought into the market, you can't undo all of the generational economic, and racial injustice that has happened here. So the same thing keeps happening and the same people get access to the technologies that really the opposite end of the spectrum should be getting, the environmental justice community should be getting, because they're the ones who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. They're the ones who are dealing with extreme heat in the cities. They're the ones who are dealing with outside of the US in the in the Global South, they're the ones dealing with the dramatic effects of climate change, and also in the US, just natural disasters impact.
Brian Bienkowski
And you mentioned having a policy paper on this and you you you publish some research in both an academic journal and you actually, I had the chance to work with you on an op-ed for EHN, and that looked at this and these were ideas on how local and federal policy can center environmental justice to make access to renewable energy more equitable. So what were what were some of your solutions or ideas in this in this area?
Carolyn Ramírez
Last year, so in February, the Texas power grid failed. And as we spoke about, a lot of my family lives in Texas, a lot of people looked at that as like, "Oh, look at these southern people who don't know how to deal with the cold." But I don't think people understand how bad it was. The power grid failed. And people's house temperatures like inside their homes got down to like 27 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of people died. And Texas has chosen to do nothing about that. They've chosen to not weatherize the grid to not do anything. I mean that and I'm able to look back on what I wrote about, you know, a year later because I think I published this last August. So you know, we had a little bit of optimism about how things might change But it's no not not with the state government the way it is, especially after the midterms. So that really got me thinking about both state and federal policies and how in order to, you know, get people access to solar cells and renewable energy. In order for that to be impactful, we have to fix a lot of other things first. So one of them being weatherizing our utility plants. So weatherizing the grid, preparing it for all kinds of natural disasters. So in a place like Texas, you think about hurricanes, wind damage, but also preparing for the cold. I mean, preparing for what, you know, the, the utility companies claim are unlikely catastrophes that wind up killing hundreds of people because we didn't prepare for it. So I've proposed a lot of this. President Biden made a commitment when he got into office to environmental justice communities, and pledging, you know, billions of dollars for this, this kind of innovation and policy. So a lot of, while I didn't do like a full financial breakdown in here, I do think there is funding within those promises within an administration like this, to improve weatherization of grids. And also, for anyone who doesn't know, Texas is the only state that has its own power grid. So the other two grids and the United States, there's two, you know, right down the middle, there's a West and East grid, and they're connected. But Texas is its own little island. And that's, that's a pretty big problem. And so the other solutions that I propose in this paper were built around individual home weatherization. So this is something that a few other of our fellows look into ideas of energy poverty. So energy poverty, and this definition, is when a family pays more than pays, you know, like, a large enough fraction of their income on utilities, because of how inefficient their home is. So that definition can range from like more than 10% of their income or, but in a lot of cases, it's a lot higher than that. So if you just change the source of the power, powering their home to solar, that doesn't solve their income problem that doesn't solve how inefficient their home is, that doesn't solve how, you know, maybe unsafe some of the building materials are, so we need to go in and fix those problems, too. And that's where part of that environmental justice funding needs to go. And then finally, I also proposed some environmental justice task forces that would be groups of of government officials, community workers, people who come together in states and tribal governments, like a tribal government could propose, apply for this kind of funding, where this would be funding directed for a specific community, more of like a grassroots element to implement renewable energy and weatherization solutions in their community. So these are just some ideas, you know, I thought of on my own. And so now that I'm actually working in science policy, I'm really excited to see how that kind of those kinds of solutions can can really materialize.
Brian Bienkowski
And you are working in science policy, but your career took a little bit of a turn. So you're now at the Natural Resources Defense Council working to understand and protect, mature and old growth forests, something very near and dear to me up here in the in the North Country. So can you outline what you're working on and the importance of these forests?
Carolyn Ramírez
Yes. So now I work at the Natural Resources Defense Council as a staff scientist, which has been pretty great. Going from working on more renewable energy, urban energy science policy to protecting public lands is very different. But the thread that connects it at the end of the day is climate change. And this work focuses on, we're focusing on protecting maternal growth forests, which you can define. Well, the federal government is actually trying to define what that means right now. They put out a comment period. So President Biden put out an executive order in April, on Earth Day, about how we need to start protecting mature old-growth forests. In order to do that, we need to define what they are, and we need to inventory them and we should protect them to some degree. It's, you know, as it was, it was really awesome executive order because it gave us a platform to finally you know, get the agency's attentions to tell them our ideas. So there was a federal comment period this summer, where and that's when like a federal agency will ask you, will just ask for public comment on either something they're proposing, or in this case, it was a little different, they just wanted to know, "So what's your idea for a definition of mature old-grown forest?" and that was through the USDA, which is where the Forest Service and BLM sit under. So we propose this idea that mature and old-growth trees, you can define them as kind of a combination of when that tree has sequestered, its like maximum amount of carbon at once. So it will continue, a tree will continue to sequester more and more carbon over its entire lifetime. But the rate of sequestration will peak. And we consider that to be a sign of maturity, as well as old-growth that mean, there are a lot of other biological components of maturity. But that's kind of a policy idea that is a little simpler, we found that a good mark for that was about 80 years, across national forests. This is not a blanket kind of rule that we're proposing here, we want to see, there would be a lot of specifications, a lot of wiggle room for being able to, you know, cut down a tree that was needed to in a dry forest in the West, for example. So it's by no means a blanket rule, but it's a good baseline to build from, because it would protect a lot of a lot of the carbon stores that currently are cut down. Because I think something that I failed to explain at the beginning here is that, so federal lands are all managed differently by different organizations. So like the National Park Service, that's what everyone thinks of when they think of public lands, you think of going to a beautiful national park, and how well preserved it is. National Forest, while you should also go there and recreate there, they're a little, they're managed a little differently. And most of them are logged. So they're a lot of the wood in National Forest is cut down and sold in order to fund the Forest Service's work or you know, what have you, but they recently got a lot of money from the IRA. And so hopefully, we can have a little bit more pull here with limiting the logging and increasing the protections because if we cut down fewer of these trees, which are mature and old growth trees, they have been undergoing biological evolution, you know, for millennia, they're a little bit ahead of us on how to manage ecological problems. So they know how to protect themselves. So if we can protect more of those old trees, that's a really easy way to preserve some carbon stores.
Brian Bienkowski
And Pardon my ignorance. But if you have a, say you have a tree that is has reached its rate of carbon storage, and we cut that down, is that carbon just immediately released? Or is it released when it is burned or cut? Or how does that work?
Carolyn Ramírez
When a tree is cut down, not all that carbon immediately evaporates in the atmosphere, you lose a little bit of it during the harvesting process. But typically, in our estimates, and like a lot of the literature that you can find out there, maybe about 30% of the carbon in in a tree like that is going to be preserved in a long term wood product like something made of wood, like the chair I'm sitting on right now. But a lot of it is lost throughout that process, because a lot of it is going to be waste from cutting down the trees, a lot of it is going to be turned into woodchips, or in a lot of timber mills also use parts of those logs as biofuels and biomass. So that's immediately emitted into the atmosphere. So there are a lot of different components of where this comes off. And typically, if we're thinking about a typical long-term wood product is going to be about 30% of the carbon that's preserved. So versus if we left the tree there. There's also a conversation around if you needed to cut the tree down because it was contributing to some sort of outbreak of a disease or bug. You could cut it down and leave it in the forest. Then you're cutting it down you're leaving all that carbon in the forest you're not losing any of that carbon
Brian Bienkowski
where I am we I grew up downstate in Michigan and now I live on the edge of a boreal forest almost. We're pretty close and I have fallen in love with many species including Tamarix and Cedars especially they just an even balsams I'd like to pinching the leaves and it's almost citrusy. So I am I'm a big tree guy. I was wondering if there's a tree that has spoken to you if there's a certain tree or species that you just find beautiful, delightful for whatever reason?
Carolyn Ramírez
the most recent local trip, I was up in northern Wisconsin, so not quite up in the boreal, but I, I really love some of the conifers that are up there. And the Eastern Hemlock is one of my favorites, it's very easy to pick out. And as well as Sugar pines, Sugar pines are really cool, because they have these humongous pine cones, like bigger than your head. And so that's just that's really cool to see, too. I would say those are probably a few of my favorite that I've seen recently.
Brian Bienkowski
We've lost a lot of Hemlock here. And there's I have in my head mapped out, we live pretty close to the Hiawatha National Forest. And I know where they're at. So I have special places where I go to see the hemlock. So I'm glad, I'm glad when that one speaks to you. And speaking of some of these visits, I know you've gotten to visit some pretty cool areas. Maybe this is Wisconsin or California or maybe somewhere else. But what are what's what's a place are a couple places that have been memorable so far when you've gotten out and seeing the forest.
Carolyn Ramírez
Yeah, I would say the two most notable to me... So when I was up in northern Wisconsin, we also briefly went up into the Upper Peninsula. So I saw the Chequamegon-Nicolet national forests, which is in northern Wisconsin, and then we briefly sojourn over to the Ottawa, in the Upper Peninsula, and we went to the Sylvania wilderness, which I don't know if you've been there, but it's incredible. It's one of the, it's one of the only like Virgin old growth forest in the eastern side, because the eastern part of the United States was logged so quickly, when, when white settlers took over and just colonize everything, they just cut down, like all of the wood. So a lot of the mature and old-growth that we're talking about when we're looking on the east side of the country, a lot of that's going to be you know, less than 100 years old. But there are some patches like this that are hundreds of years old. And it was just such a beautiful forest. I'm deeply enchanted by these organisms called lichen. Which, for people who aren't aware, it's this kind of like, codependence between an algae and a fungus. And they're just beautiful. And they take so many different forms and diverse lichen are a really strong sign of old-growth forests. And in a wet place, like the Upper Peninsula, there are tons of them. And so we just saw a lot of, you know, down old logs that are amazing habitats for all kinds of species, from pine marten to other kinds of rodents. And seeing the beautiful lichen all over those trees is just so different than anything I'd seen before.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, I'm really happy to hear that the Upper Peninsula spoke to you because it can be an unforgiving bog to a lot of people, especially in the middle, I don't know when you were there, but in the middle of summer, the bugs will just carry you away, but I find a lot of beauty in it. And I'm glad. I'm glad you did, too. Was hiking and being in the forest kind of part of your life before this job, or is it something new to you?
Carolyn Ramírez
It was, but it's definitely more a part of my life now. You know, we're in part of this fellowship, we're writing these essays that we've been working on. And I talk a lot about how hiking and being in public lands, like I associated that a lot more with whiteness than anything else. And so I, you know, I grew up hiking, but it wasn't like a huge, super fun thing. I also lived in a relatively flat part of the country. So we didn't do a ton of hiking. But as I grew up and became an adult, that became more interesting to me, because I was interested in exploring nature. And then, you know, the last, you know, kind of in college and grad school is really when I started doing that a lot more with friends.
Brian Bienkowski
Looking at this juxtaposition between your career I think just as people we often think of environmental racism or injustice, as being an industry in cities, at least that's how it's often portrayed in the media. So what are some of the environmental injustice implications when it comes to forest protection?
Carolyn Ramírez
Yeah, that's a great question. It's definitely something I had to think a little bit harder about when I started this job because they're less obvious. I mean, one thing we talked a lot about when I was interviewing for this position was how important indigenous coalition building is with with this work, because, I mean, everywhere we are, we are on the ancestral homelands of indigenous people. And so these forests specifically –So when I was up in Wisconsin, I had the really awesome opportunity to go to the Menominee reservation, and meet with some of their timber company and their land manager and like just a really amazing group of people who have a completely different perspective on forest management than what I'm used to encountering. And one image that they showed me was that if you looked at a GIS map of like the state of Wisconsin, and you don't draw a border around the reservation, if you're just looking at like canopy closure, tree closure, you can see the outline of the reservation because of how much better preserved their forest is. So they just, it's yeah, it's co-management with indigenous people is such a key part to better preserving our forests from because of the perspective that well, those were their lands to begin with. And then we as settlers took those from them. So there's a lot of rectification that needs to happen there. And co-management is a big element of that environmental justice aspect. As well, as, you know, indigenous people having access to those lands for cultural reasons, a lot of times, that's that's not a given. And that's a lot, then into these treaties that you know, gave reservations, or that created reservations are very important to consider. But a lot of times those treaty rights aren't always respected and in terms of cultural access to ancestral homelands. But in addition to that, when I talked about I mentioned positionality, in terms of access to public lands, the reason why it's, it's, you know, public lands are seen as this rich white place to go and be with nature, is because that would be the group of people that's going to feel safest out there.
Brian Bienkowski
Well, before we wrap up, I have three rapid-fire questions. And then one final question. And you can just answer with a phrase or a word on these, it is just something fun. And we already know your favorite tree. So we will not answer ask that one. So the first one is, what is your favorite animal?
Carolyn Ramírez
A penguin
Brian Bienkowski
What is the best gift you've ever received?
Carolyn Ramírez
Probably when my parents told my brother and me that we're going to go to Puerto Rico. It was supposed to happen in 2020 actually, obviously didn't. So
Brian Bienkowski
if you could have dinner with one person, it would be
Carolyn Ramírez
Right now –I think this answer changes a lot– But right now, I think I would want to have dinner with Brittney Griner in the United States, because that would mean that they were not wrongfully detained in Russia anymore. I look up to them a lot as an incredible basketball player, athlete and activist and I think about them a lot not not being here.
Brian Bienkowski
A quick programming note shortly after we recorded this podcast, Brittney Griner was released in a prisoner swap with Russia. And what is the last book that you read for fun?
Carolyn Ramírez
So I read this book called "The Inheritance of Arcadia Divina" by Zoraida Cordoba. And it's this novel that's about kind of this through bruja, witchy power this family has and it's just a lot about nothing needed and also kind of like a fantasy book. So it was it was a really really fantastic but what about you what was the last book you read?
Brian Bienkowski
last book I read so I am reading right now a book called "Eager" it is by Ben Goldfarb. It is about beavers. About these it's called eager Yeah, it's not eager beavers but it is just called the eager and it is it is just a great book. I live around. I live on a river so I have a beaver dam across the pond. I am a brook trout fisherman and a deer hunter. So Beaver Dam areas have always been something that I seek out and are very important to me. And they're just a fascinating rodent. They are, they reshape ecosystems and landscapes in ways that Ben Goldfarb argues could save the western US and the water issues that they're having out there. So I'm I'm reading that right now. Well, Carolyn, this has been excellent to talk to you. I'm so happy that I have gotten to know you. Beyond just writing an op-ed for EHN and your work, your attitude, your thoughts are just something I really admire. So thank you so much for doing this and being part of this program.
Carolyn Ramírez
Thank you so much for having me, Brian.
Brian Bienkowski
That's all for this week, folks. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Carolyn. If you enjoy this podcast visit agent ofchangeinej.org. And while you're there, click the donate button to support us. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram and please follow us on Spotify, iTunes or Stitcher wherever you get your podcast.