Ep 57: From Extinction to Legend: The Tasmanian Tiger's Journey in Popular Culture with Daisy Ahlstone

Do you believe the Tasmanian tiger is still alive today? In episode 57 we chat with Daisy Ahlstone, a folklorist, cryptozoologist (legend scholar), eco-philosopher, and mycologist about their research on the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) as a folk legend after it had been declared extinct since 1986. We discuss the cultural and ecological significance of the Tasmanian tiger and its unique status in cryptozoology. Daisy also discusses mycology and folklore and what they believe are similarities between the two areas. Daisy dives into how folklore can be used for resistance in communities struggling with oppression. As the director of WiseFolk Productions, Daisy also walks us through the YouTube and Twitch streaming channel Folkwise, which explores the study of tradition non-traditionally through digital content creation, public education, and direct community engagement. Its not an episode to miss!

Links
Folklore and Resistance Paper: https://daisyahlstone.substack.com/p/folklore-resistance

WiseFolk Productions

Folkwise YouTube 

Twitch 

Folkwise Instagram

Timeline:

• 📚 Defining Folklore (04:45 - 08:27)
• Daisy explains the broad definition of folklore, emphasizing both 'folk' and 'lore'.
• Folklore includes traditional, informal culture and creative communication.
• 🌍 Folklore and Ecology (10:00 - 12:01)
• Daisy discusses the interconnectedness of folklore with ecology and systems thinking.
• Importance of understanding everyday creative communication.
• 🐾 Cryptozoology and the Tasmanian Tiger (17:16 - 24:04)
• Cryptozoology research on the Tasmanian Tiger.
• Cultural and ecological significance of the Tasmanian Tiger.
• 🍄 Mycology and Folklore (37:12 - 41:10)
• The study of fungi and its similarities with folklore.
• The community and knowledge-sharing aspects of both fields.
• ✊ Folklore and Resistance (49:43 - 55:53)
• Folklore can be used in resistance efforts.
• The importance of community and creative communication in resistance.
• 🎮 Folk Wise Productions (59:49 - 01:07:04)
• The concept and activities of Folk Wise Productions.
• The Twitch show and its focus on engaging with folklore through gaming.

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Transcript

Vanessa: 0:06

Welcome, welcome, folksy folks, to fabric of folklore. I am Vanessa White Rogers, your hostess of the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. This is a show about exploring the fascinating world of all elements of folklore and understanding its depths so that we better understand ourselves and each other. I found a really cool quote recently from Lord of the Rings by Junior Otolen. I think many people are familiar with that. The book series pay heed to the tale of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what is once needful for the wise to know. And I like this quote, because in our modern world we often gravitate towards the new and the shiny and dismiss the old. But when we take the time to understand our folklore, our stories, our legends, our traditions, our wives tales, we find truths, or at least a path to knowledge. And this is a show about what it means to be human, what it means to be a part of community. And at the heart of what we're doing on this show is building connection through curiosity and understanding. So if that is a show that you want to continue to listen to, make sure you hit that subscribe button so that you get our notifications every week, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform like Apple or Spotify. And if you are a subscriber, I would ask you to write us a review that is so helpful for indie podcasts like ourselves to be found by other people. So, Daisy Allstone, I forgot to ask you, is that how you pronounce your last name? Allstone?

Daisy: 1:40

Allstone. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of weird that everyone off just.

Vanessa: 1:43

Yeah, it was ages. Yeah. Daisy Alstone is a folklorist, cryptozoologist and legend scholar, eco philosopher, mycologist and collective joy enthusiast. They are currently the director of productions, producers of YouTube and Twitch streaming channel Folkwise, which explores the study of tradition non traditionally through digital content creation, public education, and direct community engagement. They are also a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University Comparative studies department. On the show today, we'll be discussing the making of the tasmanian tiger, the similarities between folklore and mycology, folklore and resistance, and their work with folkwise. So lots of fun topics to discuss today. So thank you so much for joining us, Daisy.

Daisy: 2:35

Yeah, absolutely. You might have, thank you for that introduction too. That was really sweet. You might have to like, rein me in because I feel like I could talk for an hour about each of those.

Vanessa: 2:47

I have a part time reign. It's going to be great.

Daisy: 2:53

Cool. Cool.

Vanessa: 2:54

Okay, so tell us first how you even discovered the world of folklore, because not a lot of people know about folklorists.

Daisy: 3:03

Yeah, yeah, it's true. I didn't either for most of my young adulthood anyway. So I'm different than a lot of folklorists in that I kind of stumbled into it in my undergraduate studies. So I went to University of Oregon, and at that time, there was a somewhat robust undergraduate major in folklore. By somewhat robust, I mean, like, I think there were 13 in our graduating class of folklore majors. But there was a place where you can actually major as opposed to just minor in folklore. The folklore minor is usually something that actually something that's really commonly tacked on to people in, like, degrees outside of arts and humanities. So, like, sometimes business students, sometimes econ students, but also sometimes, like, science, too. People who are just trying to, like, get out there in STem fields or they're interested in, like, adding just a couple more focus layers to, of, like, cultural influence, artistic influence into their studies. So I was lucky in that I, like, went to University of Oregon my first semester, and I was, like, a psychology major. I just wanted to understand how people work. And then I took a class with Doctor Lisa Gilman, who now teaches at George Mason University. Wonderful folklorist, wonderful scholar, and dear mentor to me. She taught my first folklore class. And I thought it was going to be all about, like, fairies and trolls, or maybe it was going to be about, like, dancing or music or something, but it was about so much more. And I realized, like, pretty immediately that's what I wanted my major to be. I just, like, felt compelled. So that was pretty early for me. So that's how I found I the field of folklore. And I've kind of been, like, a dedicated folklore scholar since I was, like, 20, and I'm 28 now. So it was like, for a while, I've been like, oh, yeah, okay. So that's, like, really what I'm doing.

Vanessa: 5:00

But anyway, so I love to ask folklorists to define folklore because there's a different definition. Lots of people use different definitions. And you know what you were saying before I, even before, right before I got into this podcast, I didn't really understand the breadth of folklore because I also, I thought that it was synonymous. I thought folklore was synonymous with folk tales because lore is another word for, you know, story. So I just thought that they were the same thing. I did not realize how large of a field it was.

Daisy: 5:34

Yes. So I'll answer your question a second, but you're making me think about so I've been teaching introduction to folklore as part of my graduate, like, stipend package. When you're a graduate student, usually you have some kind of role that you're fulfilling as, like, work for the university. And so I've been teaching introduction to folklore for a while, and I realized, like, so many of my students, like, hearing this for the first time, also in that position of, like, I can study this, what they're, like, so interested in the lore, and they forget about the folk. And I think that's the part, like, I see memes online talking about, like, oh, my lore. Or, like, we build up cool stories so that people tell stories about me later. And that's like, your lore or whatever, but the history, the context of which you came from. But I try to emphasize to students that, like, you're forgetting the other half of the word, the folk. So, like, the people, the collective, the sort of communion between each other. That's the thing that's really important to me. So you're just making me think, like, yeah, that's like a total entry point. And then I disturb that by saying, like, remember the first part of the word. Yeah, yeah, no, it's totally true. So I don't know. Like, defining folklore is really hard. Obviously, this is probably not new information, but there are a couple different ways I like to think about it. So one way that I have appreciated recently hearing about it was actually a definition from your past guest, Toque Thompson. He said when he was filming an episode of Folk Wise with us when we interviewed him, folklore is just non institutional discourses. And I was like, whoa. My mind was kind of blown a little bit for a second because I was like, shoot, that is what it is. But there's a problem with that definition in that it negates the relationship between institutions and folklore. And it also, by calling it discourses, has an emphasis on language and storytelling. That's verbal or other kinds of stories like that. But folklore is so much more the artistic communication, the non verbal, the symbols, and all of these other elements, too. Usually I say something along the lines of, like, traditional, informal culture, just from Lynn McNeil. But I try to caveat it with something like talking about these other relationships. So maybe if I were to say my own definition of folklore, it would be creative communication across, I don't know. Let me see. Let me think about this. How do I. How have I said this?

Vanessa: 8:07

Communication?

Daisy: 8:09

Yeah, it's, I would say probably like, ground level or like everyday creative communication, something like that. Ground level, everyday, or informal creative communication, something like that. I tend to focus less on tradition in what I do, but only because I think it's been emphasized for so long. And when you hear tradition, you think past. And a lot of my work is about talking about the present, but also making sure that the things we call traditions have space in the future or they don't end. Talking about, like, what stays, what changes? And how do we create spaces for people who are struggling to be able to do traditions that they've held for a long time in the first place, like climate change, colonialism, and other things that affect marginalization, oppression in general, and other things that keep people from doing the things that bring them together, which tends to be around some kind of creative communication with the group. So it's kind of. I'm sure that whatever.

Vanessa: 9:21

It's hard to describe. Yes, I am. I appreciate it.

Daisy: 9:25

Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's complicated. Yeah.

Vanessa: 9:30

I found a good quote on your website. I explore the relationality of folklore. The orientations affect ecologies and ontologies of creativity in everyday life. Do you want to talk a little bit more about how you use folklore?

Daisy: 9:51

Yeah, I was like, do you mean like. I can answer both. So I think about folklore almost. I don't know. Lately I've been thinking about it as almost like a collection of values and perspectives with a particular orientation towards the grassroots, the everyday, the marginalized, the people who don't get the most benefit from a lot of, I should say, like, institutional or industrial. How do I want to say this? Like, when I think about how I study folklore, I'm really interested in the ways that people every day are doing things that they love and care about, or that they just have an impulse to do without any kind of pressure, or maybe in some pressure from institutions. But like, how all of the kind of interactions that guide our world in this very, like, present moment, with what we can perceive in front of us and around us, as opposed to like, the overarching concepts, in particular, how those little micro interactions are influencing these, like, big picture ideas about what it means to be part of culture and what to, what it means to be in community, for example. So in particular for me, I've been interested in ecology and systems thinking and philosophy around how the interconnectedness of our beings are facilitating the context in which we can actually create and share and connect at all. When I think about like, oh, go ahead. Yeah, jump in.

Vanessa: 11:47

Interconnectedness with the earth as well as humans. Is that what you're saying?

Daisy: 11:54

Yes. With all of us? Yeah, every sort of living, being near and far. We have some kind of stake in whether it's like your gut biome community that's sort of disturbing. The question about the individual, or it's how my actions as an american citizen affect global issues, you know, and do they? And to what degree? And how does my small piece fit into this big puzzle of movement, of community and culture? So I guess that's what I mean when I think about, like, ontologically, ontology is just like the study of being. It's a question about what does it mean to be? What does it mean to have consciousness? And, like, what does it mean to be a human or not a human? But sort of just like, how does one begin to think about, like, how do I know that I exist? Those kinds of philosophical questions and I.

Vanessa: 12:50

Deep questions.

Daisy: 12:51

Yeah, but I think folklore has some really concrete answers to some of those questions. Like, I don't know, like, do you have things in your life? I mean, this is to you, but also the audience, I guess. But, like, are there things in your life that you do because you just like to do them that are creative? Like, you feel compelled to do things. It doesn't even need to have that much intentionality to it. It could be like, okay, well, we're having a holiday, and I've always gone to this, and I need to bring a dish because that's the expectation of my community, my family, my people I'm connecting with or whatever that is part of the creative piece that is influenced by this larger scale cultural context. But it's the action. And I've always been really drawn to folklore's way of, like, identifying the actions that people take. Usually creative or maybe aesthetic is the better way to put it. Like, it's not necessarily positive or negative. Or rather, it's a spectrum of, like, stuff that we do, but that it gives a kind of, like, concretized example of how we enact, like, what it means to be in community or a conscious being. Like, we share things with people, how we share them. And what we share is like an echo of reality. And so. But even. And you can think of it in such a way that it's like you doing the action and you base it on a human history. But I try to take it a step further and say, like, okay, well, if you're making a dish, a meal, all of the food that grew to get to your table, all of the systems that this went through to be able for you to do and practice that tradition is part of the community that makes it possible for you to connect. So I'm trying to, like, open up this definition or open up this idea of the depth of what I call embodied context in folklore studies, because folklorists are really interested in context. And so I think of it as, like, how is every part of me embodying a folkloric way of being, you know, this emphasis on the everyday, the creative, and the things that bring us together in the face of marginalization or other, you know, large scale factors. Not all folklorists do that. Some folklorists are just, like, noting patterns and stuff. But I see it as an opportunity for activism personally.

Vanessa: 15:23

And so is that why you think that this. Why folklore is an important field in one?

Daisy: 15:31

In some ways. I mean, I think folklore is an important field. I mean, maybe in part, as I said earlier, that, like, emphasis on the, like, everyday, concrete sharing of creative communication, of that, like, how does it actually happen? I think is something really important to tap into that. A lot of other disciplines don't do it as much, or their. Their focus is different. Their emphasis is not necessarily on the everyday lived experience in community. It might be a question or an element, but they're making a different point or argument. I just, for me, have found a lot of joy in validating all of my hobbies because folklore does. Because it says, like, why, you know, like, you're making a thing. And there's a lot of, you know, research to suggest that being creative or doing a, you know, finding space to connect. And how do we connect? Usually there's some kind of thing we do, a mutually shared idea of what connection means, and that folklore can, like, unravel and kind of explore some of that, I think, in better ways than other disciplines.

Vanessa: 16:48

Absolutely.

Daisy: 16:49

But I'm obviously very interdisciplinary, so I just love folklore also. But, you know, there's lots of people thinking this way. Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa: 16:58

But I feel like folklore is, in general, like, to look at different fields as well. Like, it seems to be a field that reaches out to lots of other fields and pulls in.

Daisy: 17:09

Yep.

Vanessa: 17:11

Let's talk about your work as a cryptozoologist and legend scholar. So tell us about this.

Daisy: 17:17

Okay, so what is cryptozoologist?

Vanessa: 17:21

First, for those who don't know?

Daisy: 17:23

Okay, so for those who don't know, cryptozoology is this. It is translated literally as the study of hidden animals. The term cryptid is, like, the shortened version of cryptozoology, and that is meant to describe the hidden aspect of these beings. So, like, a hidden animal is a cryptid, and usually what gets filed under this, like, idea of hidden animal or cryptozoology in general, are beings with that I refer to as having contested existences. So, like, Mothman is the perfect example, Bigfoot is another perfect example. Chupacabra. There's lots of these. And they're like, there are these creatures that have legends and stories about encounters with them, but the encounters are nothing validated by institutional science or backing, really, in any way. It is a totally, like, vernacular, everyday kind of belief system and potential for encounter with these beings. So in my research, I was really interested in this animal called the tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine. And this is animal that had verified, documented physical existence in earth. It was a threatened and sort of endangered specie for a long time and then officially was declared extinct in 1936. Rather, the last captive thylacine died in a zoo in 1936. And then there were some sprinklings of probably valid sightings. And then in the eighties, there was like, the institutional recognition, like, this animal is functionally extinct. But since its official extinction, there have been many, many reportings of sightings of this animal. The thylacine lives on in Tasmania and Australia. There are people who are organizing to set up trail cams out to try to capture it on film. There are people who. It just has become a kind of like, metonymous for Tasmania. It is a symbol in stand. They are one in the same in the way that it has been institutionally marketed since its death also. So there's like this really complex relationship between colonialism, commodification, tourism, but also like, ecological resistance and conservation. It's used a little bit as, like a symbol for conservation because one of the largest exports in Tasmania is logging. And if the thylacine is still out there, you're damaging an endangered species population, and therefore you should stop logging. So there's some kind of rhetoric like that's. That's actually similar to Bigfoot, too. Anyway. Yeah, Bigfoot is also sometimes used as a kind of, like, environmental advocate, rhetorically, you know, protect. Protect the forest, protect Bigfoot. And so I'm interested in, like, all these different layers that this legend has had influence in and around Tasmania and Australia, both with national identity, but also with just like, on the ground, like, what are people doing? So my master's degree, which I got at Utah State University, my district, or my thesis that developed from that training, was all about the complex legend of the tasmanian tiger. Both its legend of its, like, continued existence past its death, but also things like cloning and tourism and like, just all of the stories that it's told that are told about it in popular culture. So you can kind of see, like, my linear history of development. Not to be linear about it, but you can see that I got interested in, like, legends and ecology and this, like, animal that's unique to cryptids and cryptozoology because it, like, had verified existence and then went extinct. And now is a cryptid. It really. It's different than, like, Bigfoot. And so now I'm very interested in, like, the concept of extinction in general and how we narrativize mass death. Not to get too grim, I guess, but those. But, like, and then how are we connected in part to the stories that are told, these non humans that influence that don't influence that? And then, like, now, my dissertation, since I've gotten, like, bigger, my current work at Ohio State University is all around this question of, like, what holds us together? And in particular, a chapter of my dissertation is focused on disciplinary traditions. So, like, within the field of folklore, having a kind of foundation built on a scarcity mindset, a colonial mindset that says stuff is going extinct. There's a kind of rhetoric of, like, people are going extinct or languages are going extinct, or we're never going to have, you know, we must preserve for the future. And so I'm kind of being critical of that and at the same time talking about what we mean when we mean extinction and how messy a lot of that rhetoric actually kind of is the term extinction, too, if you think about it. Like, there is no way you can quantify exactly the number left of XYZ animal, human, whatever, and not realistic, because that's also not how bodies and people and environments work. Like, we're all kind of breeding with each other, and there's not different. We're all too deeply interconnected. So the way that most scientists talk about extinction is that they say functionally extinct, which means that whatever animal, plant, subject is within a community that's going extinct, it no longer serves whatever ecological niche that it was fulfilling before. So tasmanian tigers, for example, were like the largest predator carnivore scavenger in Tasmania at the time, which they were then sort of usurped by dingoes, wild feral cats, and other, like, animals in the area that sort of, like, took over that niche that had maybe more hardiness from being from other parts of the world. It's not such a, like, isolated climate, but anyway, because long wind.

Vanessa: 24:03

Can you describe what a tasmanian wolf or tiger? Because sometimes it was called tasmanian wolf as well, right, yes.

Daisy: 24:12

Yeah.

Vanessa: 24:13

Can you describe what they look like and how that perspective changed through its history?

Daisy: 24:22

Yes. So the tasmanian tiger. I mean, insert photo here, there are actually photos from before 1910 of tasmanian tigers. And those are the ones that keep getting, like, cycled around a lot in scientific communities. But the tasmanian tiger, it's a quadruped. It has four legs, and it looks a lot like a dog or a wolf. It's not, like, shaggy. It has, like, tight brown hair, mostly all over it. It has a jaw that can open over 80 degrees, which is pretty rare for carnivores. And along its backside, it has a series of stripes. Usually there were, like, twelve to 14 or twelve to 16 stripes, something like that down its back that were just black. So it would have, like, black stripes. None of them were, like, touching each other there. It's pretty uniform, which is part of what gives it the name tasmanian tiger. The thing that's really cool about this animal, though, is that it is, like, taxonomically completely unrelated to wolves. It is much more closely related to the kangaroo that it is to the wolf. And that has to come. That is part of the story of the tasmanian tiger. It's, like, weirdness, its uniqueness, its kind of exploitable body figures. These interesting elements of the body of the tasmanian tiger are part of what I talked a little bit about in that. In that project, too, but also marsupials.

Vanessa: 26:02

Right. Like, they have a pouch that is in a very weird place.

Daisy: 26:06

Yes. So they have a pouch just like other, like, kangaroos or wombats or tasmanian devils, which they're sometimes confused for. But if you put them next to each other, that's not the same. They look very different, but they have actually what's. I don't remember what the official, like, name for this is called, but they have sort of reverse facing pouches. So if you think about a kangaroo, their pouch faces towards their head because the baby goes, like, into it and can poke its little head out. But because tasmanian tigers are on all fours, it faces backwards. And that is so that if they're, like, running in the brush, like, their pouch doesn't get filled with, like, debris, basically. It's very smart. Think about it. Like, they're running around. Like they have more protection. And probably there's other, like, physics related reasons that this makes more sense. But, Yeah. And also male and female tasmanian tigers had pouches as well. And so males would. Males hold the babies, they would not hold the babies. But that pouch is much smaller and it is more to protect their goods, so to speak. But, yeah, that was. That was part of it. But, yeah. So they both had pouches. They're very strange. And, like, part of my thinking about, like, the way that they look shows up in the settler colonial interpretation of them upon first settlement. So in part of the reason this, like, the tasmanian wolf or some other names, like the hyena wolf or these, like, kind of, like, confusing, like, what is this animal? Like, we can't really put it into a box comes from some of the, like, cultural imaginations of what's out in the woods in Europe. So at that time, there's, you know, and even still today, there's, like, wolves were extremely dangerous. They were actually, like, hunting in packs in the woods, like, before. They were almost eradicated, which is a whole other story. They were actually. They were a real true threat to. To people living out in more rural areas. So think about, like, the settling of Tasmania and Australia. So there were people who were threats, right? So there were individuals, too. But then if you were, like, a settler and look in the wilderness, to you, to that person in that time, seeing a tasmanian tiger looks a lot like a wolf or a dog, so you might just, like, start calling it that. And of course, these, you know, upon their quote unquote discovery by colonizers, this has led to, like, essentially their long term persecution because of the relationship that they share in the settler mind to wolves or to a kind of animal that's a threat to livestock, threat to human life or otherwise, a kind of pest. And they look really cool, so they make great carpets. And for a really long time, there was a bounty, which was common for lots of different animals. It wasn't like just the thylacine, but there was both a private and a state funded bounty to kill thylacines. And you would get money for them because they were seen as pests and vermin. But are they aggressive? No. There's actually almost like. My short answer is no. But there's almost no evidence to suggest that they actually were damaging livestock populations at a degree to which the force was put upon them. It was not a measured reaction, and it probably could have been a lot of different animals. And there's some evidence to suggest that they were scavengers. Like, they didn't hunt in packs like wolves. They were more solitary or were in family units. And they probably, like a lot of the carnivores in Australia, were scavengers. So, like, tasmanian devils don't hunt in packs. I mean, they might kill stuff, but mostly they're feeding off of recently dead carcasses of animals.

Vanessa: 30:08

Right? Like hyenas as well, I think.

Daisy: 30:10

Hyenas as well, yeah. So they're much closer to that kind of style of, I don't know, behavior in that particular niche that they occupied there. So there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest that they were really that much of a problem. But this is a really great story for demonstrating how powerful legend narratives about these animals that we share our lives with can have a dramatic effect on their long term success and outcome in life, really. So at this time, too, people weren't sure that we could actually, like, cause an extinction. There were other animals. This is similar kind of question happening in North America as well as Australia, too. But really, like, people were confronting for the first time, like, oh, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe there is a point to overhunting where we could actually decimate an entire population. And so the thylacine is also a story of that. So it's been, whether the story or the legend is of its present existence or the legend is of its persecution that led to its extinction, which is also kind of a false narrative. The thylacine has, like, had this cultural symbolism in Tasmania as, like, a. Watch out. Like, we could. We have a very unique space in the world, a unique wildlife system, and a unique and complex, collection of people who live here. Like, let's persevere past persecution and, you know, protect the environment and. And have pride in the ecological makeup of. Of Australia and Tasmania, which is met with, you know, mixed interpretation and practice. But I. Yeah, so I don't know, there's just so much there. I am writing a paper about, like, what I think the qualifications necessary for a cryptid status could be for other threatened and endangered species. So I'm trying to make an argument that about, like, set factors that contribute to, like, the narrativizing of a kind of cryptid and one that persists past or its life persists past. It's officially declared extinction by institutions. So it's led me to, like, much bigger projects while being, like, a very specific animal concept, context. It's like all of these bigger pictures things like, what is extinction? What does that mean for folklore? What does that mean for the environment? And how does that manifest in everyday life, you know?

Vanessa: 33:00

Yeah. So that makes me think about the giant squid, for instance, or the colossal. The colossal squid, right. That one, they've. There's like, one or two that they've ever caught, right. And they don't actually have any idea how many there are in. In the oceans? And there's probably a lot of, you know, the kraken and lots of different sea creatures that have come about.

Daisy: 33:28

Yeah.

Vanessa: 33:29

Likely due to these actual creatures that were mistaken, as you know. So is that kind of what you're thinking about?

Daisy: 33:38

I am thinking about that. There's another animal, some of these animals, or plants, too. There's also cryptozoology we've been talking about, but there's also crypto botany, which is just like the plant life instead of animal life. And so there are things like sacred trees, for example, that are known to exist, but people, mostly, like, settlers, haven't seen them, those kinds of things. But, yeah, so I am thinking about that. There's, like, animal, for example, called the coelacanth, which is, like, a prehistoric, which was thought to only exist in the fossil record. It's this big fish, bony fish, that at one point washed up on the shores of Japan and was, like, still living, and it was presumed extinct because we had only a fossil record for it. So, animals, that happens for. There's a handful of them. I can just think of the coelacanth right now, but those are called living fossils, and this also happens with plants. I think the ginkgo tree is another example. Like, they're almost. They're fairly prolific now, but the ginkgo tree is in the fossil record. It's one of the earliest kinds of trees that we know about, and they were for a long time presumed extinct until they were found by settlers in China. So, again, a lot of these are, like, about. You can kind of see how I'm, like, qualifying this, like, question about discovery and, like, who knows? Certain things. Like, this is also an important question to me. Like, because with the tasmanian tiger, for example, like, aboriginal peoples in Tasmania, from the records that I have experienced, do not disagree or do not think that the thylacine is extinct. But part of that comes from a different cosmology, a different idea about how we live among the planet than settler descendants do. So a lot of times, the narratives about cryptids and, like, discovery is like, discovery for white people or people who haven't lived there from the get go, basically. And they think that you can call them different things. Like, the Wendigo is an interesting example where it's been kind of co opted from indigenous storytelling about the winter into this kind of, like, narrativized representation of a sort of, I don't know, a bipedal elk type skeletal figure. I don't know how to describe it, but, like, that's not what everybody's story of the Wendigo is. So I'm interested in, like, all of the different stories about these creatures, but, yeah, so I guess in my, I'm thinking about that, and I'm also thinking about how many species are on the threatened and endangered species list. And, like, what's. Maybe there's a way to think about what stories we start to tell or that folklorically are being told. Like, the legends that are being told about sightings, for example, or encounters with, like, sometimes people count encounters with, like, jaguars or something become these huge news stories because of how rare they are. But so I guess I'm trying to figure out, like, what is going to be Kalma cryptid or if we're going to see an increase in what we consider cryptids or if this concept is going to go away as we think more deeply about, like, how those narratives are colonial or whatever. I don't really know, but I think it's really fascinating. I think it's really interesting. And there's, like, a lot of fruitful stuff to talk about there.

Vanessa: 37:06

Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Okay, so let's go to mycology. And it's really kind of mycology and ecology and how you see the similarities between folklore and ecology and mycology. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Daisy: 37:21

Yeah. Yeah. So mycology is like the study of fungi. So we have mushrooms. Yes. We have three kingdoms. So there's the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and then the Fungi kingdom. And I think it's like, the least, I mean, I don't just think people have documented this as being, like, the least studied category of being right for a really long time. And most of that has to do with the fact that most mushroom or fungi influence happens underground where humans are not, or at least not usually. At least not in any kind of communicable way. So I have noticed. So there's a couple ways that I've been interested in. This one is just in general, I have been a mushroom like forager in different, differing, like, ways over depending on what state I've lived in and who I was hanging around with.

Vanessa: 38:22

Oregon's a big one.

Daisy: 38:24

Oregon's a huge one. Oregon's a huge one foraging. There is some foraging in Ohio, but it's the best place to do it is like, southeast Ohio. It's about an hour ish away from me. So, like, I'd have to really plan go, which I plan on doing, but it's a little less than like, walking in my backyard and there's mushrooms. But, yeah, so I've done that in different places. And so I've just been interested in the community around it. And for a long time, I didn't quite understand, like, what about it? Like, why are mushrooms cool? Why are certain kinds of people interested in mushrooms and mushroom hunting and whatever? But I started to think about the mycology community, and a lot there's a lot of similarities between the mycology community and the folklore community in terms of how we treat knowledge. So folklorists are really interested in everyday kind of vernacular, co created community knowledge. It doesn't necessarily come from institutions or it becomes shared in a way that feels like it's connected to family histories or other kinds of communities in our lives that aren't necessarily the news or aren't necessarily. Like my teacher said, we can complicate those in specific instances, but they're interested in the everyday kind of like underrepresented kinds of knowledge, the experiential knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, but also something called citizen science, which is just like us, everyday people going out foraging mushrooms and documenting what you see. And there's a huge community of people who are mycologists or mushroom foragers, who have a wealth of knowledge about how the environment works and what kinds of fungi are in their particular region. Because much like bird watchers, they're going out and documenting all the fungi that they see. And they're participating in communities online, having conversations about the conversations about what they're finding or if other people can help them id like strange or rare mushrooms. And then theres also a thriving art community related to this. So it is also like its own kind of interesting folk group, but theyre doing a lot of the same practices of science or of inquiry about the planet and our social lives, like folklorists do, which is prioritizing that kind of local knowledge, indigenous knowledge, or otherwise underrepresented everyday kind of knowledges that influence our understanding of the planet, I guess. But, yeah, so there's just like a lot there in terms of how it's also super disciplinary. Like, lots of mycologists are also philosophers or they're artists, or they're, you know, people who are doing different. Like they're just approaching the question of this kind of, like, everyday. Or they're in a hard sciences and they're doing, like, studies about the influence of mushrooms on mental health or whatever. Like they're just all of these different fields that are coming together around this kind of like core validation and question about, like, the everyday kind of knowledge and experience that we have with the environment through the vehicle of fungi. And I think folklorists are really good at that, too. They're. Instead of just fungi, it's art or whatever, creative communication. And so I think we're doing similar things. And I just, like, I don't know what to do with it, but I, like, we can learn from each other in a deeper way than I think even I. On the surface, it may appear, you know, like, you could study mycologists like a folk group, because they are. You can study folklorists like a folk group, which is also what I do. So I'm like, it's deeper than that. It's about, like, our practice and our orientation towards everyday life that I think is really cool about mycology.

Vanessa: 42:30

So that is not at all what I thought you were gonna say, because I. I was thinking that you were talking about the actual communication between fungi, between themselves because, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because I read that book that came out a few years ago. I've lost the name of it. It was about how trees actually communicate through the fungi networks.

Daisy: 42:53

Oh, the tree. The mother tree.

Vanessa: 42:58

The mother tree, yes. It was a really great book. I really enjoy it and recommend it for other people who are interested in how that was discovered, because a lot of people had before said that they thought that, you know, something was happening. Yeah, we're communicating somehow. But it was dismissed for so long until it was scientifically proven that the fungi networks were actually creating pathways for these plants to have, like, pass nutrients to one another and help one another. And they're an actual thriving community, not just individual. So that's kind of what I was thinking.

Daisy: 43:35

I'm also thinking about that, too. I just don't like thinking about studying mushroom fungi communication as, like, maybe having folklore or a kind of folklore. But, yeah, I get. I don't think I have the means to study that or to do research enough that could make a good claim yet. But I'm with you, too. Like, I think there's something. There's a lot we can learn about how to redistribute, like, resources by watching fungi do it. Yeah.

Vanessa: 44:11

Or ants.

Daisy: 44:12

Or ants. Yeah, totally. Totally. Or other kinds of, like, you know, just thinking about how we do. I guess this kind of relates to another chapter I'm working on in my dissertation is about decomposition and ending community engaged projects. There's a lot of folklorists when they do research, they're doing community engaged work, which just means that the community knowledge about whatever the subject is or the need that's being filled is prioritized in the interpretation, crafting and practice of the research method and writing of the data, which is great. You would think more people would do that, but it makes better research to have, like, a lot of different voices involved. But a lot of times those projects like start and they receive grant funding or any kind of funding, and there's no really, like, plan for the end. And sometimes the exiting of those projects can do a lot more harm in the long term than people realize. And so I'm trying to think of a way through a metaphor of decomposition, untangling the kind of exiting or ending of a project to be seen as a transformation to the next stage of the project, which is rather a long term redistribution of nutrients that happens through the decomposers, namely fungi, but also like water, animal disturbance, whatever. There's lots of layers of decomposition, or lots of actors, I should say, involved in the decomposition cycle. But thinking about how that might be a way to plan for the end, or rather the next phase of the project, which would be one of harvest and then kind of redistribution of the leftover nutrients into our own lives and our own projects, because we carry with us in our bodies and in our minds the experiences that we've had working on these different projects. And that is a nutrient, that's a knowledge, that's a harvest, something that we take from those experiences and then transport them into our next vehicle or our next project, whatever it may be. And so I'm trying to think of a way that, like, uses that framing to be less terrified of the kind of culmination or exiting end of a project, it's not that finite. And if we plan for it from the beginning is not that finite, but in specific ways that allow us to release ourselves from the, like, core of the project. I think it will do less damage in the long term than the lack of planning for exiting projects that exist right now.

Vanessa: 46:51

Can you. Can you give us an example of a damage done by a project that ended abruptly?

Daisy: 46:59

Yeah, I don't want to like, or.

Vanessa: 47:03

Like, hypothetical you can do.

Daisy: 47:06

Okay. There are some. There are some projects that, like, for example, take a lot longer than are initially planned and that the funding is able to offer them. So you start getting into a project, you acquire funding, and it feels like, all exciting, and you start doing the work and you realize, like, oh, we didn't ask for enough money, or we didn't have enough people involved in special areas that we needed. So we need to hire another person or something like that. So therefore, the project may need to take longer. But sometimes the funding only comes in one chunk, and there isn't enough support to get funding, or because you're applying for it and hoping you get funding, it's not guaranteed. So that could lead a large chunk of money to be removed from a community that was actively using it. Yeah, I'm trying to thinking of, like, smaller, nonprofit kind of examples. Like, you know, there used to be lots of access to COVID test kits. It was getting mailed to houses and stuff, and then it just isn't anymore. And they say, well, the funding ran out. Well, okay, what if we, like, imagine that in community, like, do it? That's not necessarily a community engaged project. So it might be a bad example, but there are instances in which that happens, and it can end a community space for people to gather or things like that. So I'm just trying to think of ways to help people who are designing projects that they may want to do plan better for the end. There's no perfect solution, and this isn't like the be all, end all of it, but I'm hoping that it could give some support to thinking about how those projects, one, never really end, and two, when they do kind of dip down on their, like, client after their climax, and they're kind of in the resolution stage of the project, how to, like, internalize the good work that we did and see it as a success by all of the lessons that we learned. Whatever. Yeah.

Vanessa: 49:25

All right, so I want to move on to folklore and resistance, because you were on a panel recently that spoke specifically about how folklore can be used in a manner in resistance endeavors. Can you talk a little bit about what you spoke about there and some things that you're passionate about?

Daisy: 49:48

Yeah, that's a really big question. Folklore and resistance. To me, part of it does come from, like, what. What are you resisting? Is a question, but if you're thinking of resisting, maybe something like oppression or, you know, a harm being done unto your community by an institution or something like that, which is kind of what I usually see people using the framework of resistance around folklore, an interest in folklore and practice of folklore, which we all do anyway. Not necessarily, like, folklore as a researcher, but I mean, the practice of doing folklore, the creative communication, in a kind of everyday way, that is the thing that connects you to the beings around you. And I think one of the most important things that folklore tells us about resistance is that community is first, individual is second, so being able to connect with the people who are already doing resistance or resisting practices, folklore stuff around organizing or around, you know, like getting access to needs, services, products that are underserved in communities, folklore is a good way. The networks of how people are talking about this on the ground in your community, in your neighborhood, are the things that are going to make. They're the things that are going to help you not tire from the just like constant weight of how horrible the universe can be. Sometimes I feel like the community being strong, whatever your community is, which can be identified through the shared folklore practices that you have, it's the thing that really keeps you alive and really keeps you going. If you do all this in isolation, you miss the picture of what the power of connection can be through even the symbols that we share or the micro creative acts that folklore looks. So, to me, folklore has something to say about resistance through its identification and support from communities that you are around and participating in an everyday way.

Vanessa: 52:24

So can you give us an example of what that looks like?

Daisy: 52:32

Yeah, so mutual aid funds are a good example. Mutual aid, I mean, we could not to derail and to go like long into the history of mutual aid or anything, but folklore can look at, can help you identify individuals within communities that know a lot about the communities and can identify the needs of those communities. So being able to identify like, what needs people have through it can be something useful for an act, like a mutual aid act. So if people need, like, baby formula, you could know that through statistical information. But you can also know what, like, specific barrier needs to people getting access to baby formula are in your community. For example, is it because you live in a food desert and the closest, like, place to get groceries is a gas station and they don't have, you know, baby formula? Or is it because people don't know where to get it? Maybe you need to create some advertising to educate and help people, like, know where to get access to this. Maybe it's financial. Maybe mutual aid is part of giving funds so that people can go out and buy formulas. So I think, like, need identification can only be something you can have sort of generalized ideas about it from like large scale, big data, statistical information. But actually being like, on the ground and talking to people about the barriers to access to whatever it is, education, health, blah, blah, in their communities, is part of what I think folklore is really good at training people for listening to what the needs and the communities that you are part of have. And that isn't to say, like, your county or something. I mean, it could be, but it could also be, like your little neighborhood, you know, that you draw on a map, like, where you consider your neighborhood. Or it could be, like, people online, like your folk, your fandom group. I'm part of tons of fandom groups. And, like, there are, like, certain ways that we talk about, I don't know, like, political issues or something, like being able to identify with that community about the complexity that is, like, influencing our ability to be in communion with each other and how we feel about those things and how we make art about those things and how we talk about them in an everyday way is something that I see folklore really facilitating an awareness of that. Like, I don't think I would have had that awareness if I wasn't a folklore, or at least as much, you know, it would have just been different. Yeah.

Vanessa: 55:21

So do you have suggestions for those who have something that they're really passionate about, that they are wanting to resist, or something that affect how they themselves can utilize the practices of folklore?

Daisy: 55:34

Yeah, the first thing I would. Well, one of the big lessons from folklore for me is listening to other people, how to listen and in what ways to listen, not just in, like, an interview or an oral history setting, but also just like, listening to how communities talk and what they talk about and how they talk about it. Like, the form it takes. So that's like one level, and then on another level, I had, like, a really good thought, I swear. And it's, like, left. Could you say your question, maybe it'll come back to me.

Vanessa: 56:11

Those who are passionate about something that they. They feel the need to resist something that they see that is happening in their community, how can they utilize folklore?

Daisy: 56:24

Yes, I remember it. I remember what I was gonna say. Okay, so that's part one. Part two would be joining and participating in an existing community towards the goal that you or value system that you share. I'm a big fan of tacking on your support to an existing and established community that you listened to for a long time. If you know, agree with them or like them, don't. Don't do this stuff on your own, I guess, is what I'm saying. There is still. I mean, and maybe this is more like a me thing than what I've been trained in. Folklore, there's sort of two sides to folklore. One is like, you're the individual researcher. You're the one with the knowledge that's being disrupted. But in practice, I see it much more of like a, you listen, you know, where the stuff is. Don't be like, the individual, like, just going out there, being like, I'm the folklore. I know stuff like, actually just be folklore, be the community person, which we all are, and have your own special knowledge, but participate in the ways that the existing organization, community, whatever, is supporting you, or if you must, because a community like that doesn't exist in your space. Take a model from an existing community that is somewhere else and see how you can adapt that to your own structure or whatever. Be in conversation with the larger community of values, of shared values that you're engaging with or whatever. And then I guess, like, the third piece, if I can, I don't know, off the top of my head, beyond just like, listening and tacking onto an existing organization, is that in a very practical way, folklorists are taught archiving and documentation strategies that emphasize consent, ethnography, and kind of community collaboration. So if you are in an area or a really good service, I think folklorist can offer any community is skills in documenting and keeping record and making summaries and kind of making sure that there is record of the thing that you are doing together. Folklorists tend to be trained in some level, whether it's interviews or like, media or like, material culture, the stuff of folklore, documentation, like, who knows how to organize or, like, preserve a protest sign, folklorists do, and other arc and archivists do. I mean, again, there's, like, interdisciplinary disciplinary right. Like, some people are trained to do that, but that's one thing that folklorists can be trained to do. Document ephemeral, the stuff that, like, gets thrown away of folklore. So that way it doesn't get thrown away because it was part of the creative act of the message at that time or whatever, within that context. So those are just some. Those are like, the three things that I'm thinking of right now. I'm sure I said something similar when I. When I did folklore and resistance, too. Now I'm thinking about, like, there's some, like, conceptual pieces and then there's. And the sort of personal practice, but then there's also the, like, hard skills. There are some hard skills that you. That folklore can do too important.

Vanessa: 59:44

Yeah. All right, so let's talk about why spoke productions and folk wise. Because they're. They're not one in the same, but they're interconnected, right?

Daisy: 59:52

Yeah. So wise folk productions is just the name of our single member LLC. And right now, we, our largest project is folk wise. So we, folk wise is really fun. We've been doing it for, like, almost four years now, which feels, like, wild. Yeah, it's. Yeah, we're really getting there. But basically we're a group of folklorists who came together to create, like, video based content around the subject of folklore. We call. We like to say that we look at or study tradition non traditionally. We're not really doing a study. We're more like engaging with tradition non traditionally. But what we meant by that is we started a Twitch show. Were you familiar with the platform Twitch?

Vanessa: 1:00:38

I only know because my husband is a gamer, but I am not familiar with it at all.

Daisy: 1:00:44

Okay, so for people who don't know what Twitch is, I tend to describe it as, like, public access tv, but the lingua franca, the like, the way the name of the game is video games, but really you can stream anything. So it's sort of a platform for creating video based content and live streaming in community, usually video game playing. So, like, sometimes that can be a very solitary activity. But people who, like, are into video games know it's not usually a solitary activity because you're part of all of these extended gaming communities, either people who are playing similar games and you're talking on forums online, or you're actually co op gaming where multiple people are playing the game at the same time and you want to share that with your friends or whatever. It facilitates things like esports, speedrunning, culture, like these other kinds of folkloric expressions of video gameplay, which is really cool. So Twitch is a live streaming platform that allows you to live stream video content. And the way that we have sort of co opted this for folklore is that we will live stream a video game, but we will invite on a guest to be interviewed who is a folklorist, an artist, a musician, somebody who's interested in storytelling or the field of folklore broadly. And we will choose our game based on a thematic relevance to whatever our guest is studying. So, for example, Jean Marie Rohir Willoughby. I don't know. She's coming to my head right now. A folklorist in Kentucky who studies russian and ukrainian culture, we played a game with her that was, it's a new and somewhat popular game called Baba Yaga. It's just called Yaga. And it's basically a game where we're like a little farmer and we're doing quests for Yaga the witch, and she got to illuminate some of the imagery for us. So, like, she what? We play this game and then our guest watches with us, and she would say things like, oh, my gosh, the sunflowers that create all the borders of the map in that game are important because it's like one of the sunflowers, and sunflower oils are like one of the largest exports in Ukraine, you know, like she just knows stuff like that, you know, or like Baba, you know, you might miss if you're not a folklorist or that, if you're not in that specialty or whatever. So that's really fun. So, and then we cut the game and we do an interview for about an hour with that, with the guest that is related to like their work and their career, but we also have some funsy questions and then we play a little like parlor game with them at the end too. And it's been very rewarding. Like I've gotten to interview so many amazing, beautiful, wonderful people who just have influenced me in uncountable ways, basically.

Vanessa: 1:03:31

So are you gaming and asking questions or is who is doing the gaming? Who's asking questions?

Daisy: 1:03:38

So my co host on the show most frequently is Doctor Dom Tartaglia. He's the Florida State folklorist, or the folklorist of Florida State. And he and I trade off who is hosting and who's playing the game, but almost never the guest is playing. Usually the guest's whole job is just to notice and wonder. They are there to receive game content and to notice what is cool and wonder, you know, about it with their folklore brain. Some guests prepare more by reading about the game. They do not, we don't ask them to do that, but they, we are always like, if you want to, you can, but yeah, and that can be funny. And then sometimes, very rarely, the guests play a game with us at the same time. We'll all play a video game together. For example, we've played some fighting games together. That's been really fun too, because sometimes the folklorists are like into fighting game communities, but their primary research is something totally different or whatever. And so we get to have these fun community conversations. It's very like our goal is that it is very humanizing interview and it decenters academia from both conversations about folklore, but also the ability to co create community lore. Because the really special thing about Twitch is that unlike doing like say a live stream on YouTube, there's a very active, I mean, on live stream on YouTube has an active live chat as well that can be influenced in some ways. But Twitch is prioritizing the level of community engagement where like YouTube adopted it later. So they are really good at helping our channel and all channels on Twitch create community engagement. So at the same time, that we're talking about folklore, or we're talking about folklore in Russia or whatever. In the chat, we're also developing our own channel, folklore. So for example, one of our little, like, emotes that you can get just our little images is a ladder. And if you subscribe to us, you can get a ladder. And that comes from kind of a really early on gameplay, a playthrough of legend, of Breath of the wild, where were joking about how when that game came out, like, you can climb everything, and at some point it came out from one of us. Everything is ladders. And so we kind of, it kind of has become like cheering for a channel. Like everything is ladders is like a cheer. But that's also folklore, right? Because it was kind of emergent, this emergent gameplay, emergent lore, emergent community conversation that all gets to happen at the same time. We're learning from people, like every week. It's really cool. We streamed out pretty much every Tuesday for the last four years. Not all the time.

Vanessa: 1:06:30

A couple hours, right?

Daisy: 1:06:32

It's a four hour show. Yeah. Our guests are usually only on for. We asked them to be on for the middle 2 hours, typically about 45 minutes of gameplay and about an hour of interview. And sometimes people choose to put those 2 hours in different spots, like the front half or the back half or the middle. Or they get. They have fun with us and they start early because they want to see more of the game, or they end late because they had more fun than they thought they would, or whatever. Or the interview went a little long and they're like, it's only 20 more minutes. Let's hang out, or whatever.

Vanessa: 1:07:08

Yeah.

Daisy: 1:07:09

And sometimes that happens too, and that's always fun. But yeah, we've been doing that really consistently for a long time. We are probably going to switch to a more monthly model this year at the end of the year. But we also do other things on our channel too. Like on YouTube, we have curated a handful of video essays about subjects related to folklore and pop culture, usually. So there's a really great one I like. There's a video essay about Dune and mythology and what folklorists think about Dune as a kind of mythos. And then there's the most recent one is about Twitch plays Pokemon, which is an event that happened on Twitch like ten years ago. It was for the ten year anniversary where people. It was a sort of an event on this platform, wherever thousands of gamers got together to play Pokemon at the same time. So like, it's like, so hard. It's almost hard to explain. Like, basically the way that it was set up is every. Everybody could be playing it at the same time. So everybody was, like, trying to make decisions together, using the tech to, like, make for it. And there was all of this, like, emergent religious folklore that happened, like, worshiping certain characters and, like. But, you know, being the harbingers of morals or whatever, and, like, all of these stories that happen. So we have a video about religion and Twitch plays Pokemon from a folklorist and a past guest on our show, Doctor William Chavez, who now works in Florida as a professor, but he is a theology major. He was a theology guy. So, yeah, so we do. We get into, like, fringe kind of, like, stuff you don't necessarily think of as folklore, and then we're like, oh, wait a second. Actually, it is. Or we try to make a connection to, like, pop culture, other, like, really relevant events that people are every day kind of talking about, instead of just, like, talking to academics about academic speak. It's very fun. And, like, it literally, like, it's the joy of my week. Almost every single time. It is the joy of my week, even if it's long and even if, like, you know, the team together, we research questions as a team, and we get the show going every week. We post on social media and stuff. Even if it's a lot of work. Like, I have never felt more connected to the folklore community than when we started that show. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

Vanessa: 1:09:35

What segment do you put on YouTube? Because you have videos? Yeah, yeah.

Daisy: 1:09:39

So we do some of those video essays on YouTube, and those are there as well. But mostly what we put on YouTube are just the interview portions. So say the video game part is, like, overwhelming. It's not your jam or it's, like, distracting from the conversation or whatever. All of our episodes stay on Twitch, the platform itself for two weeks from when they were recorded. But then for sort of semi archival slash, like, more accessibility for people to engage with our content, we put just the interview part. We edit that out and clip that and put that on YouTube. So most of our YouTube videos are about an hour to an hour and a half because they are just that bounded interview. And I think they're fun. I tell my students to, like, you know, look on our channel and see if we've interviewed somebody that they're reading. That's kind of fun.

Vanessa: 1:10:30

Which is fun.

Daisy: 1:10:31

Yeah. They're like, they assume, like, I don't know, maybe I have the false notion that they assume, like, all of the people they're reading are dead. It's not true. Like, I very intentionally choose to living people to put on my syllabus. But whatever, you know, you have this idea that you're separate somehow or that they're different and they're not. And we're trying to undo some of that. So what you read in a polished piece is very different than what the person is. Just like, passionately talking about it, you know?

Vanessa: 1:10:58

Right.

Daisy: 1:10:58

It's cool.

Vanessa: 1:11:00

Exactly. Well, we are at time. Do you have anything that we've missed that.

Daisy: 1:11:09

I don't know, just. I guess the last thing I would say is, like, be aware of how your university is treating students right now and consider donating to bail funds for students who've been arrested peacefully protesting on their campuses in the name of ending the genocide in Palestine. That's probably the last thing I would have to say, but it's very top, very relevant right now. I have no idea what your politic is this, of course, but I. That's mine. So.

Vanessa: 1:11:36

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing yours. Well, thank you so much for joining, Daisy, joining us. Daisy, this was such a delight.

Daisy: 1:11:45

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for keeping me on time. I hope that you cut whatever you need to cut to make this fit your story.

Vanessa: 1:11:53

And thank you, folksy folks for joining us on this journey of legend filled tasmanian wolf and folk wise and all sorts of fun, interesting elements today. So I love to ask my audience members, what did you learn today? What surprised you? We want to hear from you. We want to hear your comments. Either that's on YouTube or on our Facebook group. We have a Facebook group where we continue the conversation. We encourage you to tell us what your thoughts, your opinions are and what you learned today. We love hearing from you. We're on YouTube. We're on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and on Facebook. So you can find us on those social medias. So you can connect with us wherever you are. Thanks for unraveling the mysteries of folklore. Once again, I'm Vanessa Y. Rogers, your hostess. And until next time, keep the folk alive.