ASH CLOUD
ASH CLOUD
Challenging meat politics and promoting regenerative agriculture with Sparsha Saha, Harvard University
Political scientist Sparsha Saha from Harvard University joins us to challenge the status quo in meat politics. How can a sector so vital be so overlooked? Sparsha shares groundbreaking insights, exposing the unusual political dynamics surrounding animal welfare and the unexpected urban-rural divide on climate policies related to meat consumption. We grapple with the low prioritization of food and water in political discourse and the urgent need for heightened awareness in tackling ecological crises.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the path toward building inclusive strategies in the plant-based and regenerative agriculture sectors. By bridging gaps across ethical and expertise boundaries, we uncover how collaboration can drive meaningful social progress. Sparsha and I discuss the public's yearning for genuine moral leadership on critical issues like food and water, and consider how emerging leaders, particularly younger ones, could resonate with people's fundamental needs. Furthermore, we examine how cultural expressions, especially music, can capture our deep-rooted connection to the land.
We turn the spotlight on the pressing challenges and potential solutions within the global food systems. Recent crises, from food shortages to geopolitical tensions like the Ukraine war, have emphasized the vulnerability of these systems. Sustainable practices such as regenerative agriculture and mindful water usage in farming are more essential than ever. We also introduce the "eat less but better" concept, advocating for reduced animal product consumption to enhance biodiversity and sustainability. Sparsha and I underscore the socio-economic struggles faced by vulnerable communities dependent on unsustainable food systems, urging systemic policy changes to foster security and equity.
Welcome to the Ash Cloud. I'm Ash Sweeting. Today we are joined by Sparsha Saha, a political scientist at Harvard University and the only empirical political scientist studying meat politics. Her research focuses on how voters respond to issue around meat, animal rights and the links between animal agriculture, food accessibility and climate change.
Speaker 2:Meat politics is very much all around us. Our human food system really relies on the animal, so it's a form of human animal relations which is ultimately a political relationship.
Speaker 1:Given the extent of the political discourse on meat and the role of animals in our society, this topic is not well studied.
Speaker 2:As far as I'm aware, there is not a lot of empirical political science on meat politics.
Speaker 1:There are many things that our society broadly agrees on.
Speaker 2:I found that in the United States there is really no backlash for political candidates who talk about animal welfare, and so I created profiles of animal friendly candidates and they performed really well among voters, both Republican voters and Democrat voters. So my kind of this was this is the first empirical work on this topic in political science.
Speaker 1:Unsurprisingly, there are also areas of divergence.
Speaker 2:And I picked that up really strongly in the paper. There was a big difference between urban and rural respondents on their preference for political candidates who are proposing climate policy to address meat.
Speaker 1:We need to be aware of what many of us take for granted.
Speaker 2:The fact that food and water have such low salience right, despite the fact that for what thousands of years, humans? What we were thinking about most of the time was how to get food and water, and now that's so different. It's gone away, this main concern, and actually it's now maybe more important than ever for humans to be thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Are society's current priorities sustainable?
Speaker 2:I ran a pilot study to kind of get a sense of how people were thinking about food and water and it was so low down on people's kind of ranking of like what is important. So people don't know we're in a food and water crisis, but we are and it's going to get worse. So to me, the fact that we sort of have become so disconnected from our food we're not close to it at all is really dangerous actually, because it means that we're not paying attention now when we could be doing something about it.
Speaker 1:We need to respect other people's differing opinions.
Speaker 2:How can we talk about this in a way that is true to what we believe, true to what you believe, without feeling like it has to be? You have to convince everyone that that's the way to think about it.
Speaker 1:The political process is slow.
Speaker 2:There seems to be some thought about regenerative agriculture for the farm bill, which is amazing, right. Whether there will be enough, I don't know. I hope so, but at least it's kind of entering the conversation.
Speaker 1:Quality is key when it comes to human and environmental health.
Speaker 2:What we are eating matters and the decisions we are making matter. One of the frames that I like a lot is eat less but better, and I think that that is something that might appeal to a lot of people, where you are reducing your consumption of animal products and replacing it with animal products that have higher nutritional content and are also supporting biodiversity.
Speaker 1:Thousands of years of evolution still run deeply through our veins.
Speaker 2:Being outside, being with the soil, having access to land, just I think that's like inside every human. I wish we would support it.
Speaker 1:Situational awareness is vital.
Speaker 2:We have to address the underlying root causes of our ecologic crisis, and one of those root causes, I believe, is our human anthropocentrism. I'm not a hunter I don't hunt but I view hunting as one of the solutions to that because for so long our ancestors on every continent hunted and had such an intuitive relationship to hunting and growing food.
Speaker 1:Is our current thinking and research fit for purpose?
Speaker 2:There was a piece by Tim Benton that was published recently I think it was in Nature Food, and he was sort of arguing look, we as academics we really need to think outside of the box some of the deepest, um, uh kind of assumptions of our discipline. Um, and and the time really is now for for academics to do that sparsha, thank you very much for joining me today thanks so much for having me ash joining me today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me, ash. So meet politics it's something that I think is around us in so many different things when you walk through the grocery store, when you meet with friends but it's not something that a lot of people are actually studying. Could you let us know or share with us what you're doing in this space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, as you correctly said, meat politics is very much all around us. Our human food system really relies on the animal, so it's a form of human animal relations, which is ultimately a political relationship, and so meat politics reflects the ways in which humans interact with non-human species, with nature, with soil you know all of it with water, with all of these resources in planet Earth, on planet Earth, and so my work in meat politics is unique. To my understanding, as far as I'm aware, there is not a lot of empirical political science on meat politics. So within political science there's a work that's more analytical, and then there's work that we call empirical.
Speaker 2:Usually people associate empirical work with quantitative analysis, but it can also be qualitative. The main kind of element of empirical political science is that we are testing hypotheses, so we will borrow from theories and concepts that exist. In my work I borrow a lot from social psychology. There is a very interesting conversation around human-animal relations in social psychology. There is a very interesting conversation around human animal relations and social psychology, so I take a lot of those ideas and I apply them in political science to come up with predictions about how meat politics might go across different countries and then I go and I collect data. I have a methodology, so I am quantitative. I'm quantitative, I'm also an experimentalist, so I'll go out and I'll run some survey experiments to test my hypotheses, to see was I right or was I wrong.
Speaker 2:The last paper I wrote and maybe this is a pattern in my work I tend to be wrong, so I have a lot of null hypotheses, and my last paper is an example of this, where I was really surprised to find that in the United States and this was a probability samples, which means that my generalizability is high because it's probability based I found that in the United States there is really no backlash for political candidates who talk about animal welfare, and I also found that, you know, because I was so surprised by this, I ran a follow-up study, which is a kind of experiment called a conjoint experiment, where I am able to manipulate a lot of different traits about the political candidate and then I ask people what they think about the candidate, and so the follow-up was to explore this a little bit more, and so I created profiles of animal friendly candidates and they performed really well among voters, both Republican voters and Democrat voters.
Speaker 2:So my kind of this was this is the first empirical work on this topic in political science, so my takeaway was whoa, there might be some taste out there among people, and I think this might translate to other countries as well, other European countries there's taste out there for bringing the animal into politics potentially.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for sharing that potentially. Thank you very much for sharing that. That's, I guess. Your study looked across geographies as well as across the middle of the country as well as the coasts, where you would expect the differences. Were there differences based on geography or was it fairly universal across geographies as well?
Speaker 2:That's something I was really interested in is would I see differences based on whether the respondent was living in a rural area or an urban area? The study itself was representative, so I had good representation of different states and also different regions in the United States. One of the hypotheses it was a sub hypothesis that did end up being correct. So, wahoo, I had one that I was right about. But this was this is the one that I borrowed from some of the distributional analysis that's done by political economists in the sort of climate policy on fossil fuels area which has a lot more work in political science than meat politics.
Speaker 2:But in that distributional analysis, you know, political economists were sort of saying look, there's probably going to be backlash against climate policies to address fossil fuels. That's spatially distributed and so similarly, I hypothesize well, that makes sense for meat as well, right, if you're proposing climate policy to address meat's environmental costs. And there's a lot more to say about how this could have been framed differently. I just did a very kind of basic framing that the backlash might be concentrated in rural areas because those are the areas that are agricultural, where there are agricultural interests, and I picked that up really strongly in the paper, there was a big difference between urban and rural respondents on their preference for political candidates who are proposing climate policy to address meat. However, for animal welfare, there was a there was a difference, but it wasn't as big. Um it?
Speaker 1:I think I think rural, in rural areas right, you know, people are closer to their food and and farmers are working with animals and and workers are working with animals and I and I think that that it makes sense that that even in those areas, there would be concern for the welfare of animals do you think how well I guess the distance especially urban and city dwellers have from their food and the fact you just go to the supermarket or the grocery store and buy something it's nicely wrapped in some plastic or whatever, rather than actually interacting with the animals, impacts the way the politics of meat and our food?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, 100%. And I think that's a real problem, because humans in 2100 are going to look back, hopefully, and note that we humans in this century were able to feed our growing human populations without degrading our soil, without using up all our water, without completely destroying the web of life I could keep going on and on without polluting our waters. So that'll be what they remember from this 100-year period, because this century will be marked by humans figuring out how to feed and water our growing human populations while not destroying our planet. And so to me kind of the fact that food and water have such low salience, right, despite the fact that, for what? Thousands of years, humans, what we were thinking about most of the time was how to get food and water, and now that that's so, that's so different. It's gone away.
Speaker 2:This, this main concern, and actually it's now maybe more important than ever for humans to be thinking about it a lot and for us to be all engaged and involved in food and water.
Speaker 2:We might have disagreements about what the way forward is, and we should be talking about all of those, but the big problem I see is that it's not even on the radar.
Speaker 2:People don't know. I ran a pilot study to kind of get a sense of how people were thinking about food and water, and it was so low down on people's kind of ranking of like what is important. So people don't know we're in a food and water crisis, but we are and it's going to get worse. So to me, the fact that we sort of have become so disconnected from our food we're not close to it at all is really dangerous actually, because it means that we're not paying attention now when we could be doing something about it. We're not paying attention now when we could be doing something about it. If we kind of let it go and we don't put resources and time and energy and political will and leadership and businesses as well, business interest as well now we will fail. So now is the time when we need people to be thinking about food and water and the way the system currently does not help people to think about that.
Speaker 1:I guess in the, in the general media, there's this conception that either it continues business as usual and there's no issue with the way our food and our meat is being produced, or we all need to go vegan, and there's obviously a huge middle ground between those two diverse views. How do you see that middle ground and what do you see as the dangers or the risks in that polarization of either one or the other?
Speaker 2:That's a great question, I think I mean. So there's a framework called the kind of the deviance model, and this comes out of social identity theory and this very brilliant Russian theorist named I'm probably going to pronounce his name incorrectly, but Moscovici, I think, is his name incorrectly, but Moscovici, I think, is his name and his argument was that in society, those who are extremists, right, who are pushing social boundaries and social norms, can actually be useful, right, they oftentimes trigger social progress. So so I so one thing I will say is I bring that up to say you know, in in my head, in my mind, a lot of that work can be helpful, right, it can put things on the agenda and it can trigger discussions, and you oftentimes get very passionate, impassioned people who are passionate about food, right, and that's a good thing. Now, there's also a downside, right, which is that if your strategy is not inclusive, if your strategy is not providing space for other people's ethics and other people's way of thinking about things, people who have expertise in food and water, right, farmers and ranchers and folk who work with their hands in the soil, who know what they're talking about and what they're doing if there's not space for that, then that work will be less effective, sort of the plant-based sector, or or the, the, the the sector of folk who, who identify sort of along those, those, those groups on, on the boundaries of of social progress.
Speaker 2:Um, how can you look inward and bring people in? Um one thing that I I I think teaching on this topic has been helpful for me, because the more I've learned, the more I've understood how complex it is, and the more I've learned, the more humble I've become. So you know, how? How can we be short? How can we talk about this in a way that is true to what we believe, with true to what you believe, without feeling like it has to be? You have to convince everyone that that's the way to think about it, right? So so I I will always be really clear with my students. Like, there are things I believe, right, I'm going to teach you facts, I'm going to teach you information, and there are things I believe, but I don't it's, I don't view it as you needing to believe that too. So instead, where's the common ground? What?
Speaker 1:can we?
Speaker 2:all agree on and there's so much agreement. Actually, the other part of this framework is that social progress is hastened when members of the deviant groups start including outgroup members. So that would be for vegans to champion non-vegans who are, you know, championing or moving things forward, and I think regenerative agriculture is one of those places right where there is a lot of common ground and I think that there's so much work that could be done by people collaborating and forming coalitions and not thinking that everyone has to agree on every single thing. We can agree on the big things that need change and we can debate the other things openly and with kindness.
Speaker 1:That's very interesting, because there's been many a passionate argument or debate depends on where that fine line sits between people who are very, very passionate about climate change and the impacts of climate change on our society, and the only area they're differing is the approach to address it, rather than actually the fact that we need to make changes to, you know, reduce our footprint on the environment. Are you getting? Because, at the end of the day, a lot of. There's what happens within individuals, there's what happens within business and there's what happens within government in terms of policy and any legislation. Where do you see, I guess, engagement, interest, pushback from, especially, government and industries?
Speaker 2:back from um, especially government and industries. So I think I'll kind of start with the, with the interest portion. Um, I think a lot of politics across and my expertise is is, you know, advanced, the developed western um democraciesacies, right. So across these countries, across these peer similar countries there there really are, there's such low levels of trust in government on the part of citizens. We see that, like from data set to data set People. People don't feel like government is working for them. They oftentimes don't feel like their leaders are working for them.
Speaker 2:And so I, I, we and we see this with the meteoric rise of like these maverick politicians and oftentimes maverick political parties and parliamentary systems, that people are hungry for something that's authentic, that speaks to them, authentic that speaks to them, and I feel that there is a need for that. People are hungry for new forms of moral leadership, because that's been lacking, and to me, food represents a way. Food and water represents a new platform for that moral leadership, that new kind of moral leadership to be built. You don't hear politicians really talking about food and water, but I think that the ones who kind of start doing that, who start talking about animals, who start talking about our food, our water, our needs, our kind of what are the things that are important to people in their daily lives? There's another question about whether that will. You know how effective something like that might be to even make its way up right. There's so many, there's so much gatekeeping that kind of gets in the way of that, but it doesn't mean that that urge and that need isn't there. And actually I think we can sort of learn a lot from other sectors of society, like the arts music, right, music. We're seeing this sort of research, this renaissance, in a way, of artists like Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan, who Noah Kahan sings about love for New England. He's really singing about land. Similarly with Zach Bryan he's Oklahoma's son, he sings about land.
Speaker 2:And I just I feel like that that urges inside people and and leaders, who who are authentic, who who emerge during this time, this great crisis, you know, could really connect with people in positive ways. We see, I think, a lot of the negative ways that that can happen, but I also want to believe that there are positive ways that leaders can connect with people still. So I think that's while leadership there might, you know, while the crisis in leadership kind of there could be an argument about leaders not being that important, or especially political leaders kind of not being that important anymore. I actually think that they really could be. So that would be sort of an interest, I would say, in emerging leaders, youth activists, so leaders who are younger now, who will be our leaders of tomorrow. I think that if they kind of study the people, if they study people's needs and desires and think more about the land, that they might actually be very successful.
Speaker 2:Now, barriers to some of this I mean I worry that food and water won't make it onto the political agenda until we have a serious crisis. I wouldn't like that to happen. I would prefer that we tackle these problems preventatively, but I'm concerned that it would take a crisis for food and water to make their way on the agenda Just because of the way that we have set up some of these systems. So the way people are getting their news, it can oftentimes feel like political entertainment If you're, if you're, watching the news. It's it's not always like digging into issues to educate people, which was part of the role of I guess it was the fourth, is it the fourth estate? Um, the, the media, um. One of the roles is to to educate the public, and I and I don't I don't see that as much. I think there's a lot of focus on entertaining the public. Um, I think, um, mental health is a problem. I think we have an enormous mental health crisis in in richer countries, particularly among young people, and if you're just trying to get through the day and not have a meltdown because you're, you're, you're not, you know, you're not tied to land, you're not tied to a place and you just feel like you're a cog in a machine, that means that you're, you know. I really don't. I think it's tougher to thrive or transform in the ways that I think we need a lot of people doing so now.
Speaker 2:What are other? I think gatekeeping is another big problem. So, you know, on kind of the you know how can we make sure that new forms of moral leadership are rising up through through the ranks? I think everything is sort of in place to prevent these kinds of leaders from rising up through the ranks. So so I worry a lot about, like, how gatekeeping shuts down really promising leaders. Promising leaders Because if you're, if, I think, oftentimes, if you're not willing to, you know, doing the work of uncovering the middle ground, can you know, can piss a lot of people off too right. So if you're, you know, if you're playing the game of trying to get promoted in a certain way that will help you get promoted, you might not actually be uncovering common ground. Now, that's a very blanket statement, and there are many amazing leaders who still are able to do that, but I just worry that it's less possible. So I could keep going on and on, but I think there are more barriers, probably, than interest.
Speaker 1:Given what you mentioned about the need for well, hopefully not the need for a crisis. If you look more globally, the war in Ukraine, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and what that did to grain supplies coming out of Ukraine, what that did to fuel prices, what that did to fertilizer prices the fertilizer prices very much hit the entire world. But then when you look at what that did to food supply and food price in much of the developing world, that is a big, from a global perspective, a crisis. Did you notice that impacting attitudes very much in the Western world? Or, unless the crisis hits you directly, it's more likely to fly under the radar?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that I mean COVID is such a good example of this, like, until it hits directly. I think it's difficult for human societies to move quickly on something. That said, I mean, I'm not sure, I'm not aware of much work on this, but I do wonder if some of the food shortage problems which I think clearly revealed that, you know, we, that the, the globalized system we've built which, when it's running smoothly, the globalized system we've built which, when it's running smoothly, can sort of work there's a lot of problems still with it, but it gets things to places but because we've built such a consolidated system in a way that, um, that that you know what one, what, like that was one, one thing, right, and it just sort of created this enormous problem right down the line that affected so many different areas. Um, so we, we saw that so clearly, um, but, but I think, and I wonder if that did provide some foundation for some of the discussions that we're having now. I mean five, six years ago.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine, like some of the things that that are somewhat on the agenda now, right, like there seems to be some thought about regenerative agriculture, for the farm bill, which is amazing, right, whether there will be enough, I don't know. I hope so, but but at least it's kind of entering the, it's entering the conversation, and perhaps the Ukraine war was a part of that for us even in, even in the Western countries, to trigger some of that discussion. But to me, I think Some of what I see is kind of obviously happening is remarkably off the radar of like entities who I would think would be very concerned.
Speaker 1:What sort of things are so obviously off the radar that you're seeing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's changed a little bit, but, like, even just a year ago, you know, when there was a discussion around when there was an article about water, for instance, you know idea, you would think it was your lawn and golf courses that was that was causing a water shortage. And it's in the US, I mean, if you look at the regional planetary boundary, it's it's growing food and forage, feed and forage crops that is tipping us over the regional water planetary boundary in the central part of the country. So that, to me, is a really big, big problem. We have to rethink our relationship to water in agriculture and that's a security concern for the United States. So I, I, and perhaps I'm not like privy to some of the, some of the things, some of the, the, the, the, the, hopefully the, the attention that that is being put on the issue, but to my knowledge I don't think there's a.
Speaker 2:There's much work being done and kind of preparing for problems, right, you know, next summer being particularly bad in the El Nino and that impacting all the feed that we're, you know, supposed to be growing. So, so like, how do we, how are we, how are we preparing for some of the inevitable, unpredictable changes that are going to be impacting crops in the United States. I'm not seeing that, at least from from my vantage point, and I would. I would love to see more of a focus on being prepared for these events.
Speaker 1:I think that what you've just shared with us shows that the choices we face are so much broader and more complex than just whether you choose the Impossible Burger or you choose the Ground Beef. Choose the impossible burger or you choose the ground brief background beef. How do you bring that nuance into the general discourse?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I, I think in an so, so in an, in an ideal world, I I do think, like what, what we are eating matters and the decisions we are making matter, um, one of the frames that I like a lot is eat less but better, and I think that that is something, um that that kind of that might appeal to a lot of people. Uh, where you know you're, you, you are, um, you are reducing your, your consumption of animal products, um, and and replacing it with with animal products that are have a higher nutritional content and um are also supporting biodiversity, um, right, so so I, so so that you know, and and and also allowing for some areas like America's grasslands, like some of those areas, really, they've been overgrazed. So those those kinds of needs, we need to kind of do some restoration as well. So so it would be great to sort of be able to have a system where we're incorporating animals that are living lives that we we want to imagine that they're living right and contributing to the soil, and contributing to making the land more biodiverse and increasing all of the good things that they can do, and also rewilding and giving areas kind of room to be restored, and that I think, just we have to kind of accept that that's going to be a reduction in the production of this, of animal products.
Speaker 2:People, um, who, uh, who, I think, care about um, getting the nutrition they need, um, uh, and and also, um, uh, getting closer to their food and and understanding more about what, what it means to to make food, um uh, but, but, yes, the, the, the problems are also much broader in the sense that, um, we have set up a system in the United States where a lot of vulnerable groups rely on unhealthy and unsustainable forms of food production to survive. So, if you know, inflation has been increasing more than more, like it. Just it's kind of crazy, it's stupid, I think. If you talk to the average person and they're like, oh, half my paycheck is rent and the other half buys me four blueberries, like this has become a huge problem. People are struggling. People are unable to eat the healthy, diverse diets that I think most of us would agree would be healthy. They rely on McDonald's, right? So that's a much broader problem about access, about food security, about governmental food policies.
Speaker 2:And wouldn't it be great if we invested more in allowing people to? You know, could we be paying people to grow their own vegetables, for instance, like we know from a study in nature that it's the transportation emission costs that are highest for fruits and vegetables that are being imported. So that's a tradeoff Like that could be something we could be, could be more localized, right, we could be investing in, in, in, in teaching people how to grow food from a young age and, and just you know, the idea is like, yeah, 50% of your time is is you grow your own food, right? What is what is wrong with that? I don't think I don't see anything wrong with that, where we all, in some, in some ways, we all are farmers again and to to kind of I, I crave that and I know I would love that, but unfortunately can't find the time as much time as I would like to to do it. Um, but being outside, being with the soil, um, having access to land, just I think that's like inside every human. I wish we would support it.
Speaker 1:See our food systems being very much a symptom of our societies. It's not like the farmers are out there doing what they're doing separate to society. It's the economic and social and all those pressures that is actually creating the food systems that we've currently got, and I think there's, as you mentioned, a lot of thinking outside the box will be where possibly the best solutions will be coming from, in terms of your work and the studies you see most important to be conducted. What do they look like and what are they focused?
Speaker 2:on. One of the things I believe on a deeper level is that we have to address the underlying root causes of our ecologic crisis, and one of those root causes, I believe, is our human anthropocentrism. And to me and this is why sort of I'm you is this is why sort of I I I'm you know I'm not a hunter, I don't hunt, but I I view hunting as kind of one of one of the solutions to that, because, um, for for so long, um, our, our ancestors, right on every continent, hunted, um and and had such a um like, uh, intuitive relationship to intuitive relationship to hunting and growing food. So I think what I would like to know more about is you know, can? Is there a world in which we are able to have better represented in our politics? A lot, and this isn't everyone's interest, but I think it's a big, it's a large portion of us who would like to see a world that is less anthropocentric. Is there a way to have those interests represented in politics?
Speaker 2:Because right now, if you're somebody who you know scores lower on sort of that, on anthropocentrism, you have no representation in politics at all, and it can look like many different things.
Speaker 2:It can be because you care about animal welfare, it can be because you believe that food should be locally produced, right Like there can be many different ways that you know somebody who has like lower levels of anthropocentrism, but none of those interests are being represented in politics, and so it's a big gap, and so I would first like to understand what portion of people is this? So I think it goes across partisan boundaries. I really do. I think, on average, people who are right-leaning may be more anthropocentric, based on some scales, but actually we have barely done much studying on this, so I do think that there's more we can understand that goes beyond partisan ID, that gets at kind of like an underlying psychological construct about people's relationship to nature, beyond partisanship, and I would love to learn more about that, to see how this could be framed back to people in a collaborative way or in a way that includes more people rather than pushes them away. So that would be my kind of dream agenda an institute for new forms of moral leadership.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, whether we like to believe it or not, we are the subset of nature and not the other way around. And it's when you start looking at things from a temporal scale and the different timeframes I was actually down in Los Angeles the other week at the Arboretum and the scientific name for the Californian redwoods, the last part of it, is Sempervirens, which means always living, because whoever named that, however many hundred years ago, it was just living for so long and our timelines of our lives, our lives, are much, much shorter. So I think it's interesting to think about that and include. When you include that temporal scale, and it does certainly change your perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love to, I love to, I love that example. I I love to tell my students about like, so, so not just temporal, but also size. So they're like organisms that are, that are, that are fungus Some of them are are, they're single organ, they're, they're in one organism, but they're enormous, they're. They might be the size of six football fields, right, and that. And they're living for like the last 6,000 years like under, like a web under the ground. And I'm just, I'm like, you know, they're more closely related to us than plants are, A they're like closer to the animal kingdom. So so all of these stories, I think, that kind of like, remind people that that there's this wondrous, mystical, like magical thing just right in front of us that we can all believe in. Again, I think is such a way to inspire people, I think, to remember that the planet is a living. It's not a rock, actually, it's a living I don't know poly being maybe, I don't know but it's a very much alive.
Speaker 1:Oh, completely. Thank you so much for sharing everything you have Before we leave. Is there anything else that you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?
Speaker 2:I think the only, the only other thing I would thing, I would sort of say and this relates to some of the points I was making earlier about kind of the emergence of leaders who cut against the grain or who challenge norms, I think, you know, academia, I think, can be a similar sort of like tough place to bring up new ideas, even though it's supposed to be so receptive to new ideas and new conversations it's actually not is what I've kind of been finding, and I do. I do sort of there was a piece by Tim Benton that was published recently, I think it was in Nature Food, and he was sort of arguing look, we as academics we really need to think outside of the box, more about power actually, and challenge some of the like, some of the deepest kind of assumptions of our discipline, and the time really is now for academics to do that. So I thought I would kind of just bring that up as a final kind of point to make. Is that really no matter kind of what our jobs are, what we're doing in our jobs, um, what you know, asking ourselves what, what is it that we can do? That is transformational um, that that um cuts against the grain? Uh, because I think the, the kind of the, the more people who are who are thinking that way, but in an inclusive way too. Right again, I think it's.
Speaker 2:It's, um, it's it's my mom. My mom said you can agree, you can disagree, uh, with with somebody, but you can agree with their character, and that has always stuck with me and I just sort of like I want some of that to come back of, like look, look, I disagree with many people, but there are people who I disagree on more things with and I agree with their character, and there are people who I disagree with their character and probably agree on more points with them, and I would take the person on the other side, like every other day. So so I, I just I think how can, how can we do that? How can we support people around us? How can we transform ourselves and do it in a way that doesn't push people away around us?
Speaker 1:Sparsha, thank you so very much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me it's such a pleasure and thank you for all of your great work.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to the Ash Cloud with me Ash Sweeting in conversation with Sparsha Saha, recorded in California in December 2023.