[on-hold music] It's Quinn. Maybe you're like me, and sometimes you just spiral out, not just because everything is a lot all of the time, but because some part of you actually wants to do something about it.
But, I mean, holy shit, where to start, right? Great news. We built an app for that. It's called What Can I Do? Even better news, it's free and it's fast. It takes just three clicks to start unfucking the world.
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[on-hold music] You've heard people say it.
It shouldn't have been called Earth. It should have been called Ocean. But it is simultaneously a planet of trees.
As Richard Powers put it in The Overstory, we live in a world of trees, once something like six trillion trees, and humanity are the late arrivals. So how do we reconnect with trees to stop using them for toilet paper?
How do we learn more about why they're suffering, and in some unexpected places, surviving? To know them, to care for them, and maybe even know ourselves a little bit better along the way.
Every week, thousands of people ask us the most important question in the world: What can I do? So every week, I turn around and ask someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about the very same question.
Someone who's already answered it for themselves, maybe even in book form.
Someone who's working on the front lines of the future in everything from medicine or sustainable agriculture, Alzheimer's research or electric school buses, whatever.
I find out why they're doing the work they're doing and what we, you and I, can do to support it, to join their work, to fund their work, to find our own way to the front lines of the future.
I am your host, Quinn Emmett, and my guest today is Marguerite Holloway. Marguerite is the author of the wonderful new book, Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America's Imperiled Forests.
It is available now everywhere. Marguerite is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She loves maps and is the author of The Measure of Manhattan.
She has also written about science, including climate change, natural history and environmental issues, public health, physics, neuroscience, and women in science for publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Natural History, Wired, and Scientific American, where she was a longtime writer and editor.
For questions or feedback, you can email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com. Please enjoy one of my all-time favorite conversations with Marguerite Holloway.
[on-hold music] Marguerite, welcome to the show. Thanks for already putting up with me. Thank you so much for having me. It's been delightful already- Oh, boy...
so I look forward to our conversation. Give it time. Give it time. Okay.
We're here to talk about your new book, Take to the Trees, which I did not realize going into it, 'cause when I'm really excited for a book or a movie or anything, again, I'm getting old and cranky, I actually don't wanna know anything about it before I go into it.
Ev- they spoil everything these days. It's crazy. Right. You know? You actually did take to the trees, and that is just the most wonderful thing. I was like, "Oh, what a wonderful, like, calling thing."
I was like, "Oh, shit, we're doing this. Okay, that's awesome." [laughs] And it's, it's the whole thing, and I think that's so lovely, and I'm excited to get into this.
But I've got a question that I start everybody with, and it's a two-part question, and it sounds like it's the same question, but it is not. Are you ready? Oh, I am. Okay. I'm gonna give you both before we get going.
First part is, why do you have to do this job? So if everyone in the world who could have taken to the trees and written about it, why you? And the second part is, why do you have to do this work?
So of all the ways that you, Marguerite, could answer the call in a world like ours today, why did you have to do this work in particular? Why did you have to scratch this itch? Yes.
So objectively, why Marguerite Holloway? But subjectively, when were you like, "I gotta go start climbing some trees, I think"? Okay, so I'm gonna start with the second part first- Everybody does...
and then hopefully, 'cause the first one is harder to answer- Okay... and hopefully it arises out of the second part. Perfect. So this book began for me in several different ways.
It began in some ways, although I didn't know it, right after my mother died in two thousand seventeen. As I write about, she had dementia,
and I was very much in charge of caring for her and taking care of her life, and that, for many people who've been through that, know that it involves going through people's things and taking care of finances and all of that.
So I had done all that. I knew every paper in her apartment, I thought. After she died, I discovered that she had kept a tree journal, and it was this just beautiful journal that I didn't know anything about.
For 11 years, she had written about her encounters with trees. She had written about their natural history. She had drawn them. She had included photographs. She had included leaves.
So that was very powerful because she had taught me a lot about trees when I was young, and my brother. But in the inner flap of this journal, she had left an envelope that had a questionA mystery that she was posing me.
And it said, "I have not been able to find the leaf yet." And inside, she had collected a sample from a tree. So that happened.
Then several years went by, and I was talking with an arborist, and I was looking at this incredibly beautiful forest in Western Massachusetts, and I was saying to him how beautiful it was, and he showed me what he was seeing.
And what he was seeing was disease and pests and too much water and too much drought. And he saw a struggling forest. And I realized that I couldn't see very well. Mm-hmm.
I couldn't see these beautiful trees with the kind of eyes and knowledge that he did. That was the second strand.
And that led me to doing a piece for The New York Times about what climate change is doing to trees in New England.
And that led me to meet this extraordinary group of women led by Dara and Melissa Levangie, who run this women's tree climbing workshop.
And all that together is the why I got there, because they invited me to do a tree climbing workshop.
And as I got up into trees, I learned more about what climate change is doing, and I eventually found the answer to the question my mother had posed to me. That's amazing. That is so beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that, and obviously sharing so much of that in here. What about the first part?
Well, I think that, and you know this, and many people who are listening know this, there are lots and lots of books on trees, and we need them all. We need people who are writing about trees in every way possible.
And we need books on fiction that are rooted in science. We need nonfiction books. We need guides. We need everything. And I feel that I needed to do this book.
Because of the work for that article, I began to understand that there was a lot written about sort of individual impacts on trees, a lot about beetles, a lot about invasive pests, a lot about invasive diseases, a lot about fire, drought, too much rain, the extreme weather.
But there was, as far as I had found, nothing that sort of pulled it all together in a survey and sort of had different trees telling different components of the climate change pest story.
So maybe that's an answer to the question [laughs] and an answer to the question. It's a beautiful answer to it, which is, like, you looked around at everything that had been done.
Like you said, we need all of it and every version of it. We need the-- I mean, we talk about it all the time here, the kitchen sink approach to this stuff. And you kinda caught up with all of it,
inserted yourself into it, and climbed up into the rafters and took this both incredibly grounded and personal view of it, but also an overview of all of these different pieces. Well, it is a wonderful addition.
One of my favorite conversations I had is with a woman, another professor named Beronda Montgomery, and this is called Lessons from Plants. Yeah. This is a few years ago now.
Don't even ask me what the year is 'cause who can know at this point, Marguerite? Beautiful conversation, one of those ones where you go, like, "We need everyone
to read this and enjoy this," and also, "How do I go and, like, audit this person's classes immediately?" As long as I don't get graded. That's the key. [laughs] That's the key. I still have those nightmares.
Don't need that anymore. We don't do a whole lot of tell us your whole life story stuff. You, you put a decent amount of what was necessary for that in, in this book.
But it is a very personal book, and so I do wanna actually start both from the beginning and the end here. In your acknowledgments at the end, which I always love reading for some
reason, probably because this is so hard. My wife is a screenwriter. She works extremely hard. She's been very successful. It, it takes not a village, you know, it takes a metropolis for any of these things to happen.
So I always appreciate that. In acknowledgments at the end, you mention how writing in the first person and writing about your family are new to you. You feel very exposed. Any of us do. More than ever for, I think,
a million of reasons, people are attracted to more personal reporting, more vulnerable reporting. And of course, this isn't simply a book about trees. It's about specific people. It's about you. It's so beautiful.
The moment you wrote about this whole journey, climbing and using all the apparatus for the first time and how scared you were and what if it failed. And then you said, "I was two feet off the ground.
I was so in," for a million reasons we can get into.
But you end with a dedication to not only your husband and your kids and to your late brother, I'm so sorry for your loss, but you mentioned that he, and then to everyone, you said, "To all the forces for good and care."
Can you tell me a little bit about what that phrase means to you? 'Cause it's clearly such a part of this book, but it's so specific.
The people I met reporting this book, not just the women in the Women's Tree Climbing Workshop and the arborists and the many arborists outside of the workshop community I met, but all of the researchers, all of the people working for the Park Service, in research labs, for the Forest Service, all over the world, everybody is trying to do good.
People are trying to do right by things, and they're trying to do right by, by other people and by the larger world and by, I don't know, by the environment, sort of, you know, that very general term, by trying to understand the world, see it clearly, and then care for it.
I feel that is really not seen as clearly as it should be.And I've covered science most of my career, and there's this quality, I write about it in the book with regard specifically to trees and plants.
But there's this quality of curiosity of trying to understand the world to make it a better place that I think is shared by a lot of people who work in science, in research, and in the broader conservation community.
And they try to treat people and the non-human natural world with deep respect. And so that was what I was trying to get at with that phrase, and that was very nice that you asked about that. It sticks with me.
You know, I have a number of friends who either are or recently became-- were in service jobs throughout or associated with the federal government and USAID and science and all those different things.
It's not the most glamorous work by any stretch, no matter what any part of it is. Do you get pretty good leave? Yeah, I'm jealous of that sometimes. I don't really get leave 'cause it's just me and my dog.
But most of them are there because they actually really give a shit about that specific job.
Again, whether you are on the ground and just you're getting grants from the government and USAID or used to, or you're directly employed by them, whatever it is, it's a job of service.
I have a very good friend who works in a lot of budget stuff and healthcare and things like that, and he's now worked for two Tru-Trump administrations and has a hard time saying that out loud.
And he's one of those ones who, until they fire him, which I expect they will, he's staying to keep doing the fight. And I try to convince him to go private and have an easier time, whatever it might be,
and he can't leave his job of service.
And I think about those people when we talk about frontliners from COVID or whatever it might be, teachers at my kids' schools, and like you said, the folks in your book who are either and/or arborists in any manner of scientists or part-timers or volunteers who just need to reconnect with the trees and wanna say, "I used to do this as a kid.
Why can't I do it?" And they really do just care and then try to put good out and effect good. And I love your relentless focus on making sure those folks are highlighted here.
This book has a very sort of Churchill quality to it, in that like, "I'm gonna tell you how it's going, which is not great," but also that there are so many people who refuse to give up and reasons to not give up, and I really love that.
Oh, I'm really glad. I have a really specific question for you. Okay. Because I really, completely, and viscerally identified with it. Why do you think, and this is semi-off track, so you're welcome.
Why do you think you and I both became terrified of heights after becoming parents? I couldn't do the research I needed to do on that because I was trying to understand so much else.
But I think there's gotta be some kind of evolutionary... You know, there's gotta be something that kicks in, where you're just-- you become hypervigilant- Mm-hmm... and hyperprotective. Mm-hmm. And it just spreads out.
You don't want anyone else to go and become vulnerable. Mm-hmm. Your kids- Mm-hmm... anyone you love- Mm-hmm... but actually anyone. Mm-hmm.
And you don't wanna put yourself at risk either, because you need to be there for these people you have brought into the world. So I don't... I spoke to someone else. I mention her in the book too.
She also developed [chuckles] like this terror of heights after having kids. I was reading it, and I was like, "What? This is the..." I'm not shamed by it. I'm not embarrassed by it. I'm not like private about it.
I was literally talking to my wife about it the other day. I'm just genuinely confused, like, "Where the hell did this come from?" [laughs] Like, all these things- Yeah. [upbeat music] Hello, hello.
Malcolm Gladwell here. On this season of Revisionist History, we're going where no podcast has ever gone before. In combination with my three-year-old, we defend the show that everyone else hates. I'm talking, of course,
about Paw Patrol. There's some things that really piss me off when it comes to Paw Patrol. It's pretty simple. It sucks. My son watches Paw Patrol. I hate it. Everyone hates it, except for me.
Plus, we investigate everything from why American sirens are so unbearably loud, to the impact of face blindness on social connection, to the secret behind Thomas' English muffins' perfect nooks and crannies.
And also, we go after Joe Rogan. Are you ready, Joe? I'm coming for you. You won't wanna miss it. Listen to Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. But it makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, 100%.
It's the same that, you know, I had a little bit of anxiety with flying for a while, too, and I'm like, "I know the math. I know how this works."
Like I, I know how safe it is, and I yell at my kids all the time about how dangerous driving is by comparison. And yet, but yeah, the heights thing, I'm just like, "This is ridiculous."
Every time you just-- That's why when you said, "I was two feet off the ground," and then later, huge accomplishment, you're like, "I'm seven feet off the ground," I was like, "This is amazing, but also that's kinda scary to me.
What's happening?" [chuckles] I know. And it's very funny that you've noticed that because that was my editor. I would write all this description, and he'd be like, "But how high were you?" Mm-hmm.
And I was like, "Uh, two feet off the ground."
[laughs] And then he would keep referring back to that, so that is very much his hand in sort of, you know, really having that curiosity about where exactly I was, which as you know, was not very high.
I have to say also, I think this is in the book, but when I was very pregnant with my daughter, like just weeks before she arrived,
I was late for a train, and I was running across a campus with this scientist I had been interviewing. And I was gonna miss the train if I didn't, and there was not another for hours.
And so I climbed over this huge chain link fence, you know, very much taller than me, and she prodded me on. I had this huge belly, and it just-Cracks me up that my daughter was inside me. Mm-hmm.
I had no fear of heights at all, and I was very vulnerable. It was extremely dangerous and stupid- Mm.... because I was climbing a chain link fence to end up on some tracks. Like, a train [laughs] was coming in.
And then a few weeks later, after she arrives, I'm just terrified. Scared of heights. Yeah. But at the same time, this is probably why we're still around. Like, we've had some close calls.
You know, there's have been a few ice ages where like there's not a whole lot of folks out there. [laughs] It's ridiculous. But I so appreciated that. So again, thank you for making yourself vulnerable.
And now I'm gonna ask you to do it one more time because, again, we do the video of these, but obviously audio is so important to so many people, and they're driving around in their cars or their subway or washing their dishes, whatever.
Do me a favor, and as best you can, because you do such a good job of it in the book, describe the Mohonk Preserve to me and for our listeners- Mm... over audio. It does such a number on everyone. Why?
It's like a magical place. It is this place that has deep history. It was a place that New Yorkers went to, and that people sort of rode carriages through to see.
It has these beautiful wide carriage trails to see nature. It has this incredible lake. It has these exposed rocks that are part of the Shawangunks that are vivid, like white against all of the green of the forest.
It is just a very beautiful place. And it has meaning to me as I write about because I went there with my mother and my brother.
But it also was in the hands of this family that was incredibly attuned to nature, and they recorded everything.
They recorded when different flowers bloomed and when different creatures came, and they recorded the weather for decades. And this young scientist shows up there,
and he's really interested in trees and understanding the history of trees, the stories told by trees in their tree rings.
And because this family, the Smiley family, had kept these extraordinary records, he was able to sort of fact check his hypothesis about- Mm-hmm... the trees telling the story about the weather.
And I- I just, all these things come together in that place. The risk taking, people do a lot of rock climbing there.
The attention to the natural world and to its rhythms and, you know, this emergence of a very important part of modern science and climate science, which was this work done by this dendrochronologist that led us to really understand drought- Mm-hmm...
all across the country and the world in a new way. Th- that's amazing. I really appreciate it. And what I really take out of it, and I thought about this, and you connected the dots on these two a little bit.
Obviously, there's always this, you know, hippie thing that I love where they're like, "We shouldn't have called it Earth. We should've called it ocean or trees or whatever," right?
You have a quote early in the book about how from our typical vantage point now that we are out of the trees, we don't see this entire world living in the trees, the whole ecosystem and all the sub ecosystems that comprise it and mix it up.
And it made me think about, and we've done a number of conversations with this, about how little we know about the ocean, how little of it we have mapped, and how being
out of sight is, turns out, like very much out of mind. You know, I had on twice now Deep Sea Dawn, Dr.
Dawn Wright, and she works with Esri on, on mapping the ocean, and she's now the first Black woman to go to the bottom of Challenger Deep.
And we talked a lot about, you know, what she sees even at that depth, how the ocean has absorbed most of our historical missions, and we've totally taken it for granted, if you even know that.
And you talk about how the northeast is heating up on land because of how much the ocean has heated up in the Atlantic. Even though it's so much water, it's hard to explain how difficult it is for all that to heat up.
But when you talk about Mohonk, you talk about it as the attention paid to it is part of what makes it so incredible, that it was known over time, and how much we seem to take care for those places and then mourn them later if we actually do find ways to, to pay attention to them, to make them known.
Am I off track? No, you're completely on track, and I think so much of what we know about what's changing is because people paid attention. They recorded the changing seasons.
They recorded the arrival of spring or the migrations. So we can compare what's happening today with some of these historical records.
And that is incredible gift, but it also is absolutely critical to our understanding about what's changing, what the impacts are, how fast it's changing. And that's so interesting what you said about the ocean.
I completely agree.
One of the scientists in the book who was critical to sort of bringing the world of the canopy into public view, who did sort of among the very early research on this incredible life in the canopy and what the role of the canopy is in the forest and all of these creatures living there.
She spoke about getting up in the canopy as like she compares it to when people were able to start getting down in the ocean. Mm-hmm.
Because you're just suddenly seeing a world that most people don't have access to, and as- Mm-hmm... you pointed out, don't see, out of sight, out of mind.
So I think that is a really interesting comparison and parallel, and one that is very resonant for people in tree work.
If I never do anything else, and it's, you know, immeasurably small compared to folks like yourself and so many others.
A few years ago, I had like a maybe 20-minute conversation with some producers at Sesame Street about how to talk about climate with...
You know, they kind of, about, I don't know what it was, 10, 15 years ago, m- m- moved slightly younger.And how to do that.
And what we kinda came to, and again, to them, no one remembers this, world's briefest conversation, to me, Sesame Street was my life and my kids' life. It was about relationships. Like, start with relationships.
What do these kids have access to, if anything? And, and understand that they are part of that. They are among this, you know, how to care for these things.
And it makes me think of what you were just saying, you know, about the oceans or all that, but also how you can climb this chain link fence, and then moments later, infuriatingly, like, moments later, you're scared by it [chuckles] and all these things, because, you know, they always talk about kids as, like, your heart's outside your body type of thing.
Once you know kids or identify that you have a relationship with these trees or a particular stretch of beach or ocean or whatever it might be, you can't un-know them.
And that is devastating, and amazing, and makes you very protective, and makes you become irrational about some things, [chuckles] you know, for sure. But it might be our best tool that we've got.
And I wonder, after all of this,
how you feel like we can build that soft power of not only, you know, providing kids and adults with much more access to nature, again, of which they're part of, but again, reinforcing this soft power of knowing and empathy, because again, we do know
that once you have that, it's very difficult to walk away from. I think we need to get kids who don't have access to the out of doors much more access, and with, and in groups of people who
have that ethos of caretaking and of stewardship. And I think it reminds me actually of a story I worked on several years ago.
There was a group, I think it was at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based at the Bronx Zoo in New York, and they had this grant to sort of train teen ecologists in New York City in the summer.
And I got to go watch these teen ecologists. They were from all these different schools throughout the city.
They went into Green-Wood Cemetery, and they started setting up camera traps, and they started sampling from one of the lakes there.
And they just suddenly started seeing the world around them in this completely different way. And they did so with this wonderful, supportive group of teachers and with each other.
And so I think it, you know, some people's route to connection with the natural world, and then understanding how they fit in, comes through solitude. And for some people, it comes through sort of group and community.
And I think they both bring us to the same place, to this sense of interconnection, and sort of the upstream, downstream, how everything really is, is a network in some way.
But these kids, I just remember the one I interviewed was studying lichen. Mm-hmm. And he had never noticed lichen around the city. And he was telling me, he's like, "It's on bricks. It's on the side of those buildings.
You can see it on the pavement over there. It's on the side of trees." It's like all he could see as he walked around the city after this program was lichen. Mm-hmm.
And because of him, I started seeing lichen everywhere. And that kind of magic of sort of foregrounding
the world around you and really seeing it is just, it doesn't matter whether it's lichen, or it's birds, or it's rats in New York.
It doesn't matter what it is, but it's a way of seeing and understanding that makes you realize how much bigger things are, and that you are connected to it in some way.
How much you wanna make that a requisite policy for all young people e-everywhere.
It's just like, you wanna build a life of service, give them, you know, mandate cities and states and governments have to fund that kind of stuff. It's, again, it doesn't matter what it is, right? It doesn't matter.
It really does- First of all, because there's so much else out there, but again, once you see it, and you understand it's been there the whole time, and that it might be changing. [gentle music] It's Quinn.
Maybe you're like me, and every second of every day of my life, I have every intention of doing something, and I'm almost there, and then life, work, kids, whatever.
If I don't leave a browser window open or add it to my to-do list, it's like it never existed. But what about when you're earnestly trying to unfuck the world? Great news.
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Head to whatcanido.earth to start saving your favorites now. [gentle music] Yeah, it's extraordinary.
And as I was saying before, one of the women in the book, she was an urban kid. She grew up in Toronto, and she talks about being very academic.
And then she saw an advertisement for Outward Bound, and went on it, and had this incredible- Mm. -experience soloing on an island. And for her, it came through being alone.
So yeah, there are many different routes to it, but the point is to see, to really see. As anyone in my family can tell you, I am a crier.
That's very obvious, especially, again, the further I go with parenting, extremely annoying, crying, all the things. We- [laughs]... you know,
we're in Williamsburg, Virginia, so we got three different airports, every kind of military around.
All, uh, y-you just walk through the airports, and it's kids, like, running into their parents' arms in fatigues they haven't seen in six months. Tears the whole time. It never stops.
It's, uh, you know, feels like a trap. But that's part of why-And this just happened so recently.
So on Highway 64, near me, it kinda cuts north-- Well, depending on which way you're going, cuts across Virginia, and they are clearing the median of trees to add a third lane to each side.
And I was driving my kids to a swim meet up in Richmond, about an hour away, this weekend, when I was reading your book, and they're in process.
So in some stages, you can see pink tags where the trees are marked to come down, and in other places, you can see that they've been cut down and they're just piled up.
Some of them are fresh, some of them are browning further along, and then some are just gone.
And I think I would've had this response anyways, but reading and identifying with all of these researchers returning to their trees decades after a first visit to either find them
sick or gone, or to find them unexpectedly there, right after a f- fearing the worst, and other people being like, "I had to look away." This is obviously an extremely emotional thing.
I was like, eyes on the road, like telling my kids, I was like, "I can't look at that stuff." It's hard, and I understand
why it can make some people, I don't wanna say put their head in the ground, but be really kinda pessimistic that we know so much and we're still doing so much. Does that make sense? Yes, it does.
But I think we do know so much. We also don't know so much. Mm-hmm. And, and I think sometimes we can't know it all the time. We have to move in and out of it, I think, because it's too much.
For a long time, as I was working on this book, every time we drove anywhere, like you're describing, all I could see was, you know, vines taking over trees, or trees that were not coming into bloom, or trees that had bloomed- Mm-hmm...
and then there'd been a frost or... And I could only see that, and it is too much, and I was making my family, I think, very depressed. Like, not great to go on a drive with me.
My wife, for a while when I first got into this, was like, "He's a blast at parties, let me tell you." [laughs] " 'Cause he can take anything and be like, 'Well...'
" My friends are, you know, I think I've told this story before. You know, we're in a place now that's four seasons, and it's great, but we'll have a warm winter day, and you hear people going, "Oh, this is so nice.
What a warm winter day." And I'm like, "Don't fucking ruin it for them." [laughs] Don't... They're having a nice time. Don't do the thing we always do. Don't say anything.
Like, both things can be true, bud, lay off for a minute. But you're right. Once you've paid that attention, it is a gift and a curse, and it's important, and it can be indescribably infuriating
to be forced now to see loss everywhere because we know so much. And there are people who have paid attention and still, you know, make the money decision, whatever it might be.
But I have to believe there's more of us on the other side. I wanna talk about, 'cause like you said, there is so much happening, and there's so much we do know, and there's so much we don't.
And what I love, there's so many layers.
Like, your personal story literally is you're moving feet up the tree, and everyone else's, and this amazing training school which I wanna go to, I'm not allowed to go to, uh, but- No, you can.
It's becoming, it's expanding. Great. I'm in. It's all gender, and you should go. The odds of me getting two feet off the ground or more are slim, but we'll see. Yes. I'll send one of my kids there.
You've got this section in there, 'cause you, you split it up in, in parts into specific trees, which I love, is great. Again, this overview, but these little deep dives with these uniting parts.
And you wrote about beech trees, which generally surround my house here in Virginia. But instead of just focusing on this specific leaf disease parts, there's a quote that stuck out to me that I think both
is the most maybe realistic way to describe a lot of just scientific progress for better or worse, which progress doesn't always necessarily mean positive.
To me, it just means, like, the uncovering of the laws that are out there, and, and theories and such.
After some biologists discovered this dying tree, and forgive me for a sec, you wrote, they said, "At that point, we didn't even know what to call it, so let's call it beech leaf disease, you know, just for lack of imagination.
Nobody had ever seen anything like that before anywhere, so that was really cool and concerning and disconcerting."
And later you said, "Beech leaf disease is such a new phenomenon that the science is unfolding in real time. We don't know where it's coming from, much less how to fight it."
And again, you said beech trees are these potential climate stalwarts, possibly able to fill in some gaps in new but different forests, but they can't do that [chuckles] if they're also struggling and dying too.
How do we approach the need to address problems that are happening in real time without an inkling of even where it's starting or how it's happening? H- H- How do we cons- most constructively come at that?
We talk to people about climate problems all the time, and one of my big things is generally we know what we need to know, and we have the tools we need to do a lot of mitigation.
But in some cases, stuff like this, we don't know. So how do we most constructively a- approach that sort of thing? Well, there are a couple of different things.
One, you keep funding research on things like this so that scientists can understand where it came from, and so that they have the resources to study it with the passion that they have, and, and identify perhaps trees or forests that are doing okay despite all of these assaults.
And that is something that I write about in the book, but there are researchers, and many, who have identified trees that have made it through waves of disease or infestation, these lingering trees that we're just really beginning to understand and identify, and there's this whole team of people looking at that.
And so I think we really need to support research. There is a big community of people who have devoted their lives to really understanding invasive pests- Mm-hmm...
and diseases, and to trying to figure out strategies and policies by which they could be identified rapidly-And I don't know, nobody I think would say that we could control that immediately, but we could at least be prepared, and we could try to do some initial control in a much better, faster, more nimble way than we have in the past.
And, you know, those policies, they're groups that have done brilliant work on this, and those policies could be supported, again, with research funding and other support.
I think one thing that I've learned over and over again reporting this book is that trees that have resilience and forests that have diversity seem to do a lot better than obviously monocultures that get wiped out.
And I think that's something that we need to increasingly recognize. So I don't know, supporting research, supporting policy decisions that allow researchers to use the knowledge that they have quickly- Mm-hmm...
and effectively, which we really don't have anything like that in place at the moment. Mm-hmm.
That researcher who you quoted who said beech leaf disease, he's had a really interesting idea that he published about I think a couple years ago, about having sort of like a, a rapid response unit.
I think he sort of compared it maybe to a, a CDC that looks at- Mm... emerging, quickly at emerging issues and responds quickly and proactively. And, you know, that takes resources. It does.
Basic research is one of my, like, favorite things in the world as a concept and as a platform because it is the, for history, the epitome of we don't know if any of this is gonna apply to anything, or when [chuckles]
or how, or if you can monetize it or anything, but it is where so many of our most fundamental understandings have come from. And of course, as humans, then we shortchange it.
It's kinda, you know, vaccines, we're like, "Nobody's got measles anymore. Why should we give it anymore?" And you're like, but it's... You're so close. You're so close to understanding it.
And your description of focusing on the trees that are resilient, it reminds me of maybe you've-- maybe you're not as obnoxiously online as some of us. There's a meme that goes around, and it's a picture of a...
It's like a World War II era, like B-2 kinda bomber. It's just a diagram, and it's got a ton of red bullet holes all over it. And it's a picture of a plane that made it back, right?
And the casualty rate of these planes was just horrendous. And there's some people who argue, "Okay, we obviously need to look at this plane that made it back and plug up all these bullet holes."
And everybody else goes, "No, you need to look at the parts where there aren't bullet holes 'cause those are probably how the other planes that did go down went down, and we need to find out where the weaknesses are, but also that some of these are survivors.
And, like, what are the places to protect, and what can we learn from these ones that, again, on the surface at the beginning are inexplicably resilient?" Yeah.
And there might be some basic research stuff, like you said, just pure diversity.
I mean, nature does not really do [chuckles] like monoculture, which is why so much of the rewilding movement has become so understandably popular, which is you can't just plant a forest of ash, right?
That's not how it works or how it does best. It makes sense, right? I mean, CDC of course, you know, disease is complicated. This stuff isn't usually one-to-one. Remembering exactly what his idea was, it was...
It's really interesting. I think my description was not perfect. But the idea was mostly- Sure... to be able to identify things rapidly and then to move rapidly and with resources to try to contain and understand,
which we don't have. This is one of those jobs,
whether it's real or not yet, that I really wish I was smarter so that I could just do that job, not because it'd be easier, but because I feel like I would be doing something intangible.
Like, how great would it be to be on, like, the, you know, the EMT squad for trees? What a great conversation starter, you know? And just, like, feeling like your day's going pretty great. "What'd you do?"
"I saved a bunch of trees today." It's fucking great. I got a podcast. You know, in 20 years, my kids are gonna be like, "Dad, what did you do wh- when [chuckles] everything was going to shit?" I had a podcast. Ugh.
Talking with people about science. I know. I know. I'm just saying that saving the trees would be... With your bare hands? [laughs] Come on. Don't give me that. You know that's a better gig. Amazing.
I don't wanna keep you too long 'cause you got a lot going on. I don't know if you know literally anything about everything here. This started off as a tiny little newsletter. Now we're in this podcast.
We've got various newsletters, and we built this whole app, and it's called WhatCanIDo.Earth. And it exists because it turns out most people come to us asking, "What can I do?"
And when you join the newsletter at least, you get this little automatic email that says, "Why are you here?" And- Hmm...
man, the wealth and diversity of stories we get from folks like yourself or people with $2 or artists or third grade teachers or grandparents. It doesn't matter. People who run a college endowment- Hmm...
grand- grandparents. And a lot of them will share their stories, and it could be one line or a paragraph.
They're really excited about solar and whatever, or they care about the ocean, or they lost someone to COVID, whatever.
The point is we try to really, as much as we can, angle our work towards helping them answer that question as efficiently and economically and realistically as they can, and that's part of what the app is designed to do is you don't have to listen to this whole conversation if you don't want to or read 3,000 words.
Like, if you're just spinning out in the middle of the night or you're excited to contribute to something in some way, that's what it's there for, a couple links. Either way, we try to work all of our work around this.
We generally group it into what can I do-How can someone help with their voice, their dollar, to volunteer or organize, to get educated, just to learn, to teach, or to be heard by the representatives?
I know you don't wanna specifically call out anyone, but if there are just generally places you wanna recommend or avenues that you feel are really effective at whatever level, we would love to find some way to include those.
I think that there are scales of impact and scales of things you can do, and people can do different things and have the bandwidth to do different things at different times.
I think fundamentally, we need to be supporting science in a massive way, and you can do that by your vote.
I think that we need to vote for people who put issues of climate and science first, and ecology, because that is the future. And if we don't do that and we aren't supporting and choosing candidates based on that,
you know, things are not gonna improve at all, to say the least. That's sort of like a big general scale that isn't, you know, that everyone should be thinking about.
But on a more practical scale, I think people love to visit arboretums, they love to visit botanical gardens. It's a world that I've gotten to know a little bit.
I don't know how much support they get, but they should be getting a lot of support. And, you know, and that goes along with the federal science funding.
But those organizations should, I think, get a lot of support as well.
And there are many international organizations, like international groups of botanical gardens that are really working on these issues, and international conservation societies, lots of NGOs in, in the US too.
I think the one thing I would say that I don't see all that often- Mm-hmm... is support for journalism. I think that journalists are among the people... Like scientists, we are trying to figure out the truth.
We have great curiosity about the world. We are trying to improve things. It's like science. We don't get it right all the time- Mm-hmm... and then we try to be open about that.
But journalism needs a lot of support, and particularly journalism that is looking at science and climate.
So I would make a big shout for journalism and for reading, another thing we're not doing as much of, but for reading as much as possible. And I don't mean that, read my book. I mean, like- I do, but yes...
read everything you can about trees and forests and plants, and all the people you've had on the show.
There's so much we don't know, but there is so much we do know that is so fascinating, and I think that would help people make these decisions.
I personally, I have said this a couple times in some interviews, [chuckles] but I decided to become a citizen pruner in New York City so I could start caring for the street trees on my block.
So I took a course- Mm-hmm... an online course to do that, which is an extremely popular course. It sells out immediately.
And for various reasons, I haven't taken my exam yet, so I'm not officially a citizen pruner, but that is my intention this summer, to review my notes, take my exam, and start getting out and, in my small way, when I can, take care of the trees on my block.
So they're just all these scales. Yeah. And we can do some sometimes, and others- Of course... at other times, and nobody should feel like there's one they should do. Just whenever you can, do something.
I have a number of really practical questions. One, once you pass your exam, do you get, like, a badge? I think you get a badge, and I think they were talking about maybe getting... What are those things? Pennies.
Like- Oh. Mm-hmm... wouldn't that be great? And you buy your own equipment, and you have to work with the city on things, but I'm very excited. I'll send you pictures if I pass my exam. 1,000%.
My brother lives in Brooklyn, and I'm clearly gonna just sign him up for it and make him do it. He may already have a citizen pruner's license. It's possible.
Maybe he's just, like, vigilante nighttime pruning, and [laughs] I don't know about it yet. It's possible. He's up to anything. This is all wonderful. I love the point about support for journalism.
You know, there's so many legacy outlets that I grew up with, I'm sure you grew up with as well, that need help if they exist anymore. God knows who they're owned by at this point.
There's also some wonderful new ones, you know, independent journalists, which are often journalists who are cast off. And local. Yeah.
And I always wanna be clear with this too is no one's asking you to change your career. That if you are able to or want to, go get 'em.
Look, man, if you got transferable skills, I will point you in a thousand different directions. Like, we, we can do this all day. But you don't have to. At whatever shape and part of your life, you can.
If you're like, "How do I get my kids into it?" Take them outside and see what they're into, and start there. That's it. You know, you're watching Wild Kratts. What episode do they like, what animals the most?
And just go down that rabbit hole. Whatever it takes, it can go a long way.
We just recommended, came out this week, Ed Yong's Young Readers edition of The Immense World, is just the most, again, like your book, like Beranda's book, it's very difficult. It's a little like The Matrix.
Once you take the red pill, that's it. You know now, and it's very difficult to separate yourself from that- Yeah... in a spiritual way and pragmatic way, but also in an ecosystem.
You realize, "Oh, I'm not gonna choose to be part of this thing. Like, I am, and I've been ignoring it or naive to it- Yeah... and now I have to do this because I see it everywhere." See the light- Yeah...
everywhere, right? Y- yeah. He's extraordinary. Oh my God. Yeah. That's- Yeah. He is- He's- He is just a remarkable, incredible force for good and care in the world. There you go.
That feels like a wonderful place to bring it on around. In all of your free time, what is a book you've read in the past year or so that's awesome?
Could be fiction, nonfiction, could be about trees orYou know, unicorns doesn't matter, or something that's changed your thinking I'd best read Foster at the recommendation of a former student, and I thought that was incredibly beautiful.
Mm-hmm. I loved that. I also read The Sentence. I loved that.
I haven't read a lot in the last bunch of months for a whole variety of reasons, professional and personal, but I very much look forward to getting back to that. But Foster, because I chose...
Actually, The Sentence has a list of, of novellas in the back- Oh, interesting...
that are recommended by the bookstore, and I started thinking that maybe that was how I [laughs] could get back to reading more, and Foster was incredibly beautiful. I love that. Incredibly beautiful. There is nothing
like looking forward to getting in bed and reading. Every night, I get in bed and pick up my book and go, "Why didn't I do this an hour ago?" And my children are like, "It's 7:30, old man." And I'm like, "Sorry."
[laughs] What are you reading right now? Right now, I like to read... So my kids are 10, 11, and 12, and I mean,
partly selfishly because it's just fun, but also to retain any sort of connection with them if they'll have it, is I love reading a lot of their stuff that they're reading. First of all, some of the books are incredible.
Some of these new graphic novels, holy shit, these things are unbelievable. You know, Where the Stars Are Scattered, Mexie Kid, like, uh, these things just tell beautiful stories about
cultures and places I would never otherwise interact with in a language that they speak, which most of the time they tell me I'm not allowed to speak. Again, I'm always reading work stuff. I've got a thousand things.
I'm reading a book, it's called Take to the Trees, I just finished- [laughs]... by Marguerite Holloway, recommended by Ed Young, among others. Gosh, what else is on my... I'm reading...
There's a couple really good books. So I have another podcast started recently that's under our brand about parenting in these moments. It's called Not Right Now. Really? Oh, yeah. That's such a good title.
I- It took us a while.
W- at one point it was almost called Screaming in the Shower, but we decided to call it Not Right Now because I realized one day at the end of the day, I texted my co-host, a woman named Claire Zuelke, who writes an incredible newsletter I feel like you would love called Evil Witches.
It's for people who happen to be mothers. And I'll send you some of my favorite pieces from her. They're amazing. Oh, thank you.
But we realized, like, that's the thing we say to our children most often is, "Not right now." But also you say to the world when you're actually trying to be a present parent.
Like, you get a notification, they're like, "Democracy's over," you're like, "Can I get a minute? Like, I'm trying for one moment to have dinner with my family." [laughs] So, but we're trying to do it.
It's not an advice show. It is a commiseration, like we're all going through it show. It is for everybody basically except anti-vaxxers. That's the gist.
And if we radicalize you into using our app, great, but most of the time that's what it is. So anyways, what the hell was I saying? I was talking to her about something, a book, and reading to my kids. I don't remember.
Nothing matters. Okay. [laughs] This is my life as a dad. Nothing exists. I don't know. I've got some other stuff. What was I reading? I'm just looking at my bookshelf right now.
New books about like puberty and al- adolescence, which are very interesting. They're really good.
They're like, "Hey, here's how it's actually changed in like the 400 years since you were an adolescent," which is like biologically, but also all the other stuff, because again- Cool...
you know, they think I'm a corpse, so. Marguerite, this has been so wonderful. Where else can people follow your work besides buying your book? Um, I have a website, margueriteholloway.com. Mm-hmm.
And I have links to some of my stories there. Okay. And events and things, and I'm gonna start, I think, writing more shorter pieces, and they'll probably end up there or linked to from there. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah.
Perfect. I love it. Very concise plan. This has been so lovely. Thank you so much- Oh, it was really fun... for this book and letting so much of yourself be known in this, which is hard to do and can be uncomfortable.
I really appreciate it. [outro jingle] That's it for this week's conversation. For more conversations, scroll back in the feed or visit podcast.importantnotimportant.com to search by name, topic, whatever.
Thanks for sharing. Thanks for leaving a review, and thanks for giving a shit. [outro jingle]