Ologies with Alie Ward - Carobology (NOT-CHOCOLATE TREES) with Megan Lynch

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

You might only know carob as not-chocolate, which is a tragedy of its disco-era branding. This tough, gnarly, drought-resistant plant is the real-life Giving Tree, explains passionate Carobologist Megan Lynch. Dripping with leathery banana-shaped legume pods, this tree quietly dots suburban streets but has kept people alive through wars and famines, can feed livestock, makes beautiful furniture, and might cure ailments from neurodegenerative diseases to the dark depths of your irritable bowels. Oh also? It can stand in for chocolate if you need it to. LET’S SHOW SOME RESPECT. Megan also chats about the #DisabilitiesinSTEM movement, academic gatekeeping, and making science more accessible. And cheesecakes. Follow Megan Lynch at Twitter.com/May_Gun Megan’s website: http://meganlynch.net/ A donation was made to STEMd.org Sponsor links: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors More links and info at alieward.com/ologies/carobology Buy Megan’s album! “Songs the Brothers Warner Taught Me” Other Ologies episodes mentioned: Matrimoniology (MARRIAGE), Sexology (SEX), Entomophagy Anthropology (EATING BUGS), Corvid Thanatology (CROW FUNERALS), Molecular Neurobiology (NEUROTRANSMITTERS), Experimental Archeology (ATLATLS) Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey. It's your internet dad. I'm here with facts about things you don't know you care about yet. Allie Ward, I'm back with an episode of oligies. It is not about Valentine's Day because if you are coupled, you have had a lot of quality time together this past year. And if you're not, it has been a year of maybe Zoom dates and Googling DIY hug machine plans. So we're just not doing that this week. Okay, there's no episodes about matrimonialogy or sexology. We had those in previous years. And yes, they'll be linked in the show notes. But this episode is not about that. It's not about roses or chocolate. It's about not chocolate. It's about undersung trees. It's about something perhaps right over your head that you're about

to be obsessed about. It's about carob. Yeah, carob. Stop. Okay, first, thanks. Thank you to everyone on Patreon. I gushed about you in a recent article that I will link on my website. And heads up, you can join Patreon for a one tiny dollar. And thanks to everyone who's subscribing and posting on social media, texting your friends about the show, leaving reviews, I pick a newly left one each week, such as this one from NK Shepherd, who says that oligies is the best thing they got from an ex. And they say this recommendation is from an ex's friend, and it's the best thing I'm left with incredibly fresh, entertaining, and educational, not an easy feat. Also, thank you NK Shepherd. If you're single, there is a flirtology singles group

on Facebook. I'm just saying, then I wink at you. Okay, carobology. This is indeed a word. It has been used just one time in the literature. It was in a 1945 LA Times article by a columnist who wrote, quote, in his book, character study of a carob tree. Dr. Arborial Snodgrass, a carobologist says they is a tree of the serotonia silica. And then it goes on to describe the carob tree. So yes, carobologist used in a 1945 newspaper, it's a word. So carob itself, though, comes from a root word in Aramaic caruba, meaning carob tree or carob shrug. It's also related to the Hebrew carob for carob. Does that help you? I don't know. But once I had found out that carobology had been used, it was on with this Davis based California carob expert. So she studied in her undergrad

art and humanities, but has had a second career as a musician, and then decided to go back to school to pursue STEM. And she launched her own research into the carob tree, which she continues as she gets her master's at UC Davis working in almond development. And she's passionate about plants, about the underdogs under our noses and above our heads. And we chatted about everything from hog and does to cupcakes and pods, potassium, the culinary horrors of the 1970s, fiber, the drought resistant resolve of carob, how to find one, when to pick the pods, what to make from them. We also talk about cheesecake, rum, fungus, diamonds, and most importantly, how carob is about to make a comeback right into your mouth and your heart with botany nerd, outspoken advocate,

and carobologist, Megan Lynch. In terms of my body personally, phenotypically, I'm very Irish. So, so being in a place with, you know, that's not too hot, you know, the ideal temperature for me is like about 75. I love, I love, you know, a reasonable amount of rain, a reasonable amount of fog, I love all that stuff. And when I went up to Davis last fall, I was living down there again. So it gave me a basis for comparison in terms of how much had changed, you know, as opposed to people who live there the whole time, the change is so gradual, it doesn't, they don't see it. But for me, it was, you know, there were definitely things that were really dramatically different.

That's such a scientist thing to say, it gave me a basis for comparison. Smoking like a true scientist. Have you always wanted to be a scientist? No, it's not something that I, I mean, I always took science. But I have to say, I mean, where to start with this, I'm disabled, I became physically disabled at 29. And as anyone who lives with them knows, not all disabilities that are physical are visible, and not all disabilities are even physical. And Megan is an amazing advocate for all kinds of folks. And I actually started following her when I got wind of the disabilities in STEM hashtag on Twitter. And like many people using that hashtag, she didn't think that she belonged in STEM,

despite her love of it. I still don't have the money to like get an official diagnosis, but I'm pretty sure I have dyscalculia, which is, is sort of like dyslexia for math, you know, and spatial things. And so much of the way science is taught in junior high and high school, you know, and certainly the, the messages that we get from society at large is that if you're not excellent in math, don't even consider going into science. And so I think for that reason, that's why I didn't really consider it as an option for me. So Megan was readjusting to life after becoming disabled. And she says the reality for folks living with a disability, visible or invisible, as a lot of jobs are deemed by others as inaccessible

to them. And she says that sadly, the employment levels and income levels tend to be lower. And it really drives those populations into a situation where finances are a struggle. In fact, I was looking this up and today found out that section 14 of the Fair Labor Standards Act states that employers can pay employees with disabilities below the minimum wage. And in order for the sub minimum wage to apply, it says the disability of the worker must directly affect their productivity in their given position and that the disabilities affecting productivity can include blindness, mental illness, developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, and alcoholism and drug addiction. So since this section was enacted in 1986, folks with disabilities of all kinds have been legally

paid below minimum wage for their work. So just feel free to pause this and go break some plates or grab your collar and rip your shirt off or crush some metal in your hands or perhaps tweet your congressperson because that is disgusting. Anyway, so Megan who became disabled in her twenties was trying to figure out what to do. When I first went back to community college, I was thinking I was just going to brush up the skills I was rusty on and then look around for what I could retrain in. And then within a semester, I was, I took a botany class as well as a environmental chemistry class for non majors just simply to, you know, for my own interest. And by the end of that semester, my botany teacher had sort of pulled me aside and said,

hey, you know, you're good. And I had actually pulled her aside and said, look, I'm, you know, I'm trying to consider what it is I can do and I don't want to do something that's completely unfulfilling for me because I've actually done a lot of that in my life already. Although jobs that I can see for people in horticulture, you know, even the most advanced jobs, they want you to lift 50 pounds, you need to be certified for a forklift work, blah, blah, blah. Is this even possible for me? And she says, yeah, I think you could do lab science. Oh, so you kind of got discovered almost. Well, I guess, I mean, it's just that it took somebody to make it clear to me

that that sort of pop idea of what science is, is not necessarily the way science works on a daily basis. That doesn't mean that it's easy for scientists with disabilities. Anything but but but the fact is, and even at that same institution, there was another prof that I was taking chemistry from, who was like, why are you even going into science if you're not good at math? And yeah, I know, which is really rather a ridiculous thing, because it's like, you don't have to be the person in the lab who's in charge of all the calculations. You know, even if we even if we didn't have computer programs into which you just plug variables. But for some reason, you know, there's that sort of gatekeeping. And I think

one thing that helped me a lot besides that professor taking me aside and expressing confidence in me was the fact that, you know, I was already on Twitter to before I went back to school, just to promote my album. And so I switched to sort of using my Twitter account to just following as many scientists, particularly plant scientists as I could. Megan credits some of her resolve to the working scientists she follows who were brave enough to come out and say, hey, math isn't my passion or my strong suit, and that just have their work double checked or focus on qualitative things. And we heard this very thing actually from the excellent Dr. Kaylee Swift of Corvid Thanatology. And in that episode, she discusses her ADHD, and she has gone on to be a

huge star in her field. The fact that people were willing to admit, yeah, I'm not that star that stereotype. You know, we have people in science who are complete whizzes at it. And that's great. That's really it's important for the type of work that demands that. But it doesn't mean the other sides of science don't always need that all the time. You're working in a team, and everybody has their own strengths. When it comes to botany and music, I'm sure that they fulfill different things for you. But is there anything that's similar about them when you think about projects that you work on or anything that excites you about both kind of in the same way? Gosh, I suppose for me, when I'm singing or when I'm singing in front of an audience, I'm very much present in the moment.

And when I'm doing fieldwork, working with plants or when I'm gardening, or that is about the most, you know, I don't find meditation easy, my brain talks to me a lot. So something that gets me out of my own head is very much, you know, doing that kind of observation of nature does that. That's a really beautiful thing. That's got to be such a great incentive to do fieldwork, too. Yeah. And I think it's also something that, you know, doing this work where I chose for logistical reasons, working on street trees, it brings me into contact with what those trees and what public trees mean to people. And certainly, there have been studies in terms of the mental health benefits of living someplace where there's plenty of greenery. It's clearly not just working

for me, that sort of calming meditative aspect to being around a tree that takes you out of yourself and you can just observe the wind going through the trees or you can hear, you know, like outside my door right now, there's a walnut tree and you can hear the sound of the squirrels eating the walnuts. And you said street trees in particular. How do you differentiate a tree tree and a street tree? I call something a street tree if it is something that is planted usually by the city in the little hell strip that's in front of people's yards. You call that a, is that called a hell strip or do you just call it that? No, that's one of the things. I mean, it's not the official name of it, but it's something I sort of picked up for. There's

a blog called Garden Rant, I think that first introduced me to that. And, you know, I mean, it can be a heaven strip too, but for a lot of people it's a hell strip. Megan says that generally the city is responsible for the hell strip, but sometimes the homeowner will just go out and plant something in there and, you know, nobody cares or catches them. Maybe a business will prune some branches that cover their signage or just chop down a tree without getting caught. And then there's nonprofits like tree people who sometimes care for the street trees if the government is neglecting them, but street trees are all over, which makes them both familiar and intriguing, but easy to get to. So I needed some aspect that I could study that was

nearby that was inexpensive for me to study. And that's when I remembered that there had been carob trees near my grammar school and that there were in our region a number of street trees that were carabs and there's a tree fruit that I can study 365 days a year. So that was my initial approach to it. And perhaps you're biased, perhaps you're not. Is carob the best street tree? Well, I think for any species, you know, the cliche thing is right plant for the right place. Hmm. So carob is very good. And I would say it's an ideal tree to plant in coastal and some valley parts of California. Once you start getting north, north where the winter temps get down below 20. It's not a good, good thing to plant. What is a carob tree? It's a member of the Fabassier

family. So that's the same family that you know, the beans we eat come from. It's a very large family. Some of the family does what's called nitrogen fixing. And the used to be called the leguminose. So they're legumes. And carob is in the genus serotonia, which only has two members. So it's one of two members of that genus. Oh, wow. That's tiny, right? Yeah, it is. It's really an oddball in a lot of ways. By the way, I heard the genus serotonia. And I wondered if it had any kind of shared history with serotonin, the neurochemical that keeps us chipper. But serotonia is spelled with a C and it's actually closer to keratin, coming from the root for horn, in case you feel horded up for etymology. For more on serotonin, by the way, which comes from the

word for serum, you can listen to the molecular neurobiology episode with Dr. Brain, aka Crystal Dillworth, PhD. But let's resume the legume chat on this, what has become a pod pod. It's a never green tree. It's native to the Mediterranean, which is one of the reasons it does well in California, which has a Mediterranean climate for the moment. Climate change is real. It's what's called dietius, which means that it has sexes. It tends to fall broadly into male or female, although there are some that are called hermaphrodites. And what they're referring to there really is the flower parts that the tree makes. And the females and the hermaphrodites produce pods and the pods are very useful. You can use the whole pod and the seeds in various

ways. I'd like to eat the whole thing. And are you allowed to collect carob pods if it's a street tree? Can you harvest them? Yeah, people do. I mean, honestly, even though people, homeowners tend to get very possessive of things that are in that hellstrip. But even if the, if the homeowner planted it, the hellstrip is not their property in most places. So yeah, you're within your rights. I would just say, you know, be polite. Don't leave them best. Don't, you know, climb on people's cars or whatever. But yeah, yeah, no, it does happen. And they're obviously edible because all of us know carob as chocolate's weird, less offensive cousin kind of, right? Carob is called in as a substitute, correct?

Well, that's how we've come to use it. But it's really a rather recent development, relatively speaking. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's very recent. I mean, if you think about it, what we think of as chocolate, that didn't even develop until the late 19th century. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. In the sense that we think of it in terms of like this bar that is, that is processed and conked, you know, and that it's made with cocoa butter, the cocoa butter and chocolate is from cacao. It's not from coconut, you know, but it's just processed in this very smooth way where those things, two things are put together. That's more of a mid to late 19th century development. Whereas prior

to that, you know, if you get like Mexican hot chocolate like Ibarra or something, and you have these cakes that are together, that's much closer to what chocolate was for years. P.S. If you must know what you must, the etymology of coconut and cocoa, it's about to go from confusing and muddled to just adorable sort of. So cacao and chocolate and cocoa, which is a highly processed form of raw cacao, those all stem from an indigenous Mesoamerican word used to describe the cacao plant, which does not have nuts. It has seeds and coconuts, tropical coconuts are neither cocoa or nuts. They're actually something called a droop, which is like an apricot or a peach or a cherry. Coco in the word coconut comes from the Portuguese word for boogeyman or hobgoblin

because of its three dots that look like a creepy skull. So if you ever again order a pina colada, just know that you're sipping the oily blood of a hobgoblin droop. So chocolate is from cacao, which is not coconut, which is not a nut. None of these things are carob and frankly, carob doesn't give a shit. It never asked to be involved with any of those theatrics. Do you think that humans were yammin' up on carob before chocolate, broadly speaking? I don't want to say that because Pete, you know, the Aztecs and other indigenous peoples of the Americas were using cacao, you know, for ages. And so even the things that we think of as being chocolate, that process didn't develop till later, but certainly it was an extremely important

drink and item in their culture. So I really just think of it as a parallel thing, which is that in the Mediterranean where the carob is native, people were using carob in the various ways that they use it, without even knowing that such a thing as cacao existed. And likewise, the people in the Americas were using cacao and it was taking the place that it takes in their society without even knowing there was such a thing as the Mediterranean, this thing called carob. Because of my background in the humanities, you know, I immediately started not just looking for botanical information, but looking for historical information. And if it leads me down to, you know, gastronomic history, then I go down that road. But I'm not an expert in gastronomic history,

or, you know, so I'm sort of accruing the knowledge as I can get it. You know, the indications I'm seeing are that certain religions that had issues with stimulants might have been the reason why carob was grasped that as a chocolate substitute. Because the chocolate was forbidden to have, because it has some stimulant properties. I never connected it until right now that growing up my LDS friends who were in the Mormon church ate carob for religious reasons. I never got that. My friend Lisette always had Tiger's milk bars as a snack in her lunch. And those are coated in carob. And like a big milk chocolate bar, which is about 100 grams, has about as much caffeine as a coke. Carob has none. Also, as an American, I am deficient in the metric system. But I just

found a website called 100-grams.blogspot.com that shows you what 100 grams of a bunch of different foods look like. It's so helpful. However, they do not feature any carob products. These pods that are on the trees, you said you can use the pod as well as the seeds? Yeah. In fact, actually, when you're talking about, you know, quote unquote chocolate substitute, what's being eaten there is actually the processed bits of the pod itself, not the seeds. Really? Yeah. No way. I never would have guessed that. You can eat them straight off the tree. I mean, if they're not too old, they won't be too tasty if they're several years old. But if you get like that year's crop,

it's kind of, you know, a little, I don't know how to describe the texture, right? It's almost like the texture you would have in a macaron. If you crack the pod open, inside is a sweet pulp. I had no idea. I had no idea that you could even do that. Okay. How do you know? What if you have a carob tree on your street, on your hell strip, and you have no idea? How can you tell? What do you look for? What defines a carob to look at it? Yeah. If you were to, because I'm sure that when you are running around Davis, you're like, carob, carob, carob, carob. People probably go pass them all the time and have no idea. Yeah, no, that's true. Well, they have what are called compound leaves, which is that instead of just that one sort of, you know, bow shaped leaf that's like,

most people draw if they're drawing a leaf. It's a leaf that's composed of leaflets, and that can vary anywhere from four leaflets to leaf to 12 leaflets per leaf. And the leaflets are elliptical, and they tend to come, they're mostly opposite each other on the leaf itself. Is this sort of leathery, dark green color? When they're mature, and a lot of the trees that were planted around Southern California as street trees are 80 to 100 years old. They get to about 25 to 30 feet tall. They tend to be more gnarled. There are ones that are straighter, of course, but I mean, they're really beautiful to look at for that reason. And then the dead giveaway would be if you're seeing pods coming from it. But the difference between a shrub and a tree

and a bush, are carob trees big shrubs? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, the ones that were made into street trees, they're literally made into that in the sense that all throughout his life, somebody's been pruning its lower branches off and like to select selecting one of the trunks for a trunk. But if you left them alone, you'd probably get more than one trunk. And it would still grow to like about 25, 30 feet, however many feet it is, it would just be like this bushier thing rather than a lollipop. So okay, fun history. During the depression, Seventh Day Adventists planted a bunch of carob trees in an LA suburb called Pasadena, hoping people would eat them and never have to go hungry. But people were like,

what are these turd trees? And why aren't they chocolate? Looking a gift legume straight in the pod mouth. And if you are dying to know yourself where your closest carob tree is, you can go to iNaturalist.org. And I did, I found some within two blocks of me. And now I want to go say hi and hug them and see if I can nibble on their offerings. Sure, they're in season during the late summer and early fall, but Megan says if they're on the tree still and no one is fighting you for them, just pocket what you can. The seeds. What do you make with the seeds? Well, have you ever picked up and looked at the ingredients of yogurt or cottage cheese or

ice cream and seen an ingredient that says locust bean gum? No. Locust flimflam about to be busted. I have a feeling I know where this is going though. Yeah, locust bean gum or carob bean gum, that's made from the seeds. Oh my god. Is there a lot of like fiber in them? What makes it gluey or sticky or gummy? There's a substance in it called galactomanin and it's a long chain sugar. And when you have these sort of long chain kinky sugars, and I mean in terms of the shape of the molecule, then it means that they kind of lay on each other in a way that is not, you know, it doesn't collapse very much, right? So it thickens whatever it's in.

It doesn't have a strong taste on its own. So it makes it a perfect thing to put into something that you like perfectly well. You want to taste the taste of that item, but you also want that item to be thicker and easier to handle. I remember when yogurt really started becoming more popular in a mainstream way when I was young in the 70s. This taught me that I don't read labels enough. You'll play yogurt. Get a little taste of French culture. And for some reason they just decided that we needed something thicker. So they thicken it up and carob bean gum or locust bean gum is it more commonly called lbg locust bean gum. That's vegetarian and I believe it's also, you know, as long as it goes through the right authority and gets approved its kosher. So it

makes it something you can use in a lot of different products and it is. Well, why locust bean gum? Do they just love carob trees? Locust flim flam about to be busted. Another common name in English and also in German and other things for carob is St. John's bread. So in the Bible there's a thing where, you know, I think it's John the Baptist rather than John the gospel writer, but that he was out in the desert and he was living on locusts and honey. And the locusts that they're referring to there are carob pods. Oh, he wasn't eating grasshoppers? No, he wasn't. A lot of protein though. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Like from the locust problems they're having

in East Africa and other places right now, you know, you definitely go, well, yeah, it would be nice if we were all cooler about eating that because it is protein. Yeah. It would sort of knock two birds out with one stone. Without having to kill a bird, just the locust. For more on eating bugs, feel free to listen to the wonderful entomophagy anthropology episode back in January 2019. But getting back to Megan's research, she started to gravitate to this scrappy, hearty, underloved tree. So I just thought, okay, there, I know that where these carob tree trees are, I can start looking around to see where other locations are in LA area that are close enough that I can visit on a reasonably frequent

basis. And I just went out there literally with a clipboard and a pencil and, and just started writing down everything I noticed about the plant. And I think I may even have done that before I looked up anything more about it. So that I could keep, you know, initially keep very fresh in terms of what am I seeing here? I can get it. But I did, of course, soon go to the web. And this is in 2013. And there was a great deal less about carob on the web than there is now. But both then and now, I was sort of astounded that a species that I knew had been around for so long and had been known for so long, had been semi domesticated for so long, that there was a very little good authoritative information either in horticultural gardening kind of side of

things, or the horticultural science side of things. And that just was really odd to me. I mean, how could you be around something all the time? And like, nobody's choosing to actually study it. Yeah. I still can't really answer for you why that is. And that's why, like, when I do a presentation on it, I mean, you know, I say it, it's, it's like the Rodney Dangerfield of the freak world, you know, because it don't, it don't get no respect. Well, I don't have no respect for anyone. I love Rodney Dangerfield. And I love you for that. Yeah, somebody was using that. Somebody was using a GIF of him the other day. And I'm like, oh, I got to get, I got to take that for my presentation. That sort of tie tugging motion,

you know. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. So by looking online, what I could find were a lot of sort of myths that would get promulgated about it. And what I mean by that is that if you're saying that if caraba takes 40 years to become mature, right, to be able to even bear its first fruit, well, then I want to see your citation for that. I happened to know that was extremely unlikely to be true. But people repeat that because there's a sort of, I don't think it's literally from the Christian Bible, but it's, it's, it's from, I think a Judaic text that's sort of like, largely that, you know, Old Testament stuff was taken from or, or, or like the tales of some rabbi or something. And in that tale, it says it took 40 years. But, you know, 40 is also a

name, a number that we see crop up over and over again, because it has, you know, 40 days and 40 nights, 40 days, 40 years out in the desert or whatever, you know, so it's more of like a symbolic number. It really doesn't have to do with what the carab tree does itself. It's just that people repeat it so much that they don't even link to like where there's an authoritative source. But, you know, let's say, Oh, well, carab, carab seeds all weigh the same. And so therefore, the word that we use for carrot, you know, it was used for measurement. And therefore, 24 carat, carat comes from the word carab. Oh my gosh. That's what they say. Actually, they are very similar, but they're not like, you know, you wouldn't want to use that in any kind of modern content.

It's not like a metrological standard. You know, if you're on Gilligan's Island or something, then maybe yeah. Oh my God. So there were a lot of things like that. And then the other thing that happened was that I kept coming across this name of this guy named Dr. J. Eliot Coit. And I would notice that some of the few things I could find on carab that were informative were from this guy. And I was lucky that even in 2013, the California Avocado Society or whatever the successor organization was to that had put up PDFs of some of these old newsletters and things that they had. And Coit had written quite a few articles. Coit is super important in the development of avocados as a commercial product, which was really centered in Southern California

in the early 20th century. So yes, Dr. J. Eliot Coit was the granddaddy of California avocados. There you go. But he had a sweet spot for our friend carab also. He had put together a carab demonstration orchard in San Diego County, starting in about 1949, I think it started, and going for a decade or two before his money ran out and that sort of thing, where he was trialing the best carab. And so they had gone around the state where there were already lots of carab trees planted because it doesn't need a lot of water. And in the days before we had huge irrigation projects here in California, that was a perfect tree to be planting because it provides a lot of shade. It provides pods if you want them if it happens to be a female or a hermaphrodite.

And they're really tough through even prolonged drought. Once they're established, they're very tough. So they went all over the state kind of trying to find superior specimens of carab and they took cuttings of that to propagate. And then they also imported the best ones that existed in the Mediterranean and they trialed those carab over about a decade and a half or something in San Diego County. It led into just really interesting stories about world history, California history. In the 20s, there was a short-lived sort of real estate, I won't call it a boom, but you know, at the same time they're trying, there was a real estate boom around citrus. They were trying to get people to come out here from back east and, you know, make a million dollars as citrus

moguls. Well, there was a sort of smaller version of that done for carab and Coit was convinced that that had ruined carab's relationship because a lot of people who weren't able to make a go of it the same way that, you know, maybe at least was being advertised for citrus. There was a period in the 20s where carab was highly popular and so not only was it being planted more as a street tree and a public tree, but it was also being tried as an orchard tree as a crop. So one of the interesting things was in these archives is seeing pamphlets of them going, you know, make your fortune in carab. We've got this turnkey operation for you. We all provide the trees, you do this, you know, you can see our agent and blah, blah, blah, and here's this photo of this bakery and all they're doing is

turning out carab bread, you know. Just this really weird, you know, like there are definitely novels and films that have sort of, the people enjoy a lot that really focus on that period of early 20th century Southern California where, you know, it was just wild with all sorts of weird stuff going on. Yeah. And that was one of them. Oh my gosh, like a get rich quick plant carab. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The pods of the future. Oh my god, that's amazing. And so, and then did it take off in the way they expected? Not so much. No, no, no. I do know that Coyt was of the opinion that the experiences people had had with the way that that advertising was overblown had soured people on carab. And I think part of the problem that was existing in Southern California,

it's not, I literally just like Coyt, I think you could have made a go of it. It's really all about how you do it. So a good example of like somebody doing what California could have been doing this decades ago. And even now, it would be a good thing for California to get into because carab can be grown on ground that other plants can't handle. Even some of the ones that don't use as much water are still not tough enough to handle some of the stuff that carab can handle in terms of how poor the soil can be and carab can still give you a crop. So it makes a lot of sense in this in the day and age where we have more intense weather going on, we have more intense droughts. What Coyt knew was a problem and probably was a problem for people establishing anything here

in the 20s is that we didn't have the machinery that there needed to be to do what's called kibbling. What is kibbling? Yeah, it's called kibbling. It's basically a machine that breaks the pod into pieces and then extracts the seeds from those pieces and separates out those pod pieces from the seed. So the seed can be processed for locus bean gum, which has been used even before they were putting it in yogurt, they were using it to like, have you ever bought fabric and the fabric is stiff? Yeah, yeah. That stiffener is called sizing and I don't know if that's currently what's used, but certainly in the past, carab bean gum could be used as sizing for fabric. Oh my gosh, okay. So we figured out a way to have all of these different uses for different parts of

the plant. Oh yeah, and the wood is gorgeous. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen anything, but if you went online and you put in carab wood, you would see amazing artwork and sculptural type things that have been made for it. It's not, it's very twisty is my understanding from word workers, so it's not a good load bearing wood. But in terms of smaller pieces of furniture, like using it for live edge tabletops, I think the most unusual thing I've ever seen made out of a salvaged carab is a Les Paul copy guitar where the veneer was carab. Amazing. It's this gorgeous reddish wood. The heartwood is really gorgeous. So yeah, it is this, and that's why I think it's like so disrespected. It's like the giving tree, you know? It's like you took this from me, you took that from

me to, you know, you never appreciated anything I gave you. I gave you pods, I gave you, you know, seed that you could make this, you know, really useful stuff out of. I, and when I'm done with my life, I give you my wood and still you don't respect me. I'm gonna cry. What about the leaves? Do I don't tell them like the leaves can cure like dermatitis or something? I'm like willing to believe anything. They're, you know, if it were better funded, it's, it's, it would be interesting to see what you could do. Certainly when I started looking for scientific papers that there wasn't a lot out there on it, but I did find a fair amount of, is there are papers that are looking at the chemical composition of various components that the carob tree makes because the carob's full

of phenols. Those are plant defense compounds. Those sorts of compounds often have medicinal uses, so certainly people have been doing research on that sort of thing, although I don't know of anything conclusive yet. And like I said, partly because it's not, you know, it's not super sexy. Okay, so I started digging around and I found a 2017 study titled Chemical Constituents and Pharmacological Actions of Carob Pods and Leaves in the Gastrointestinal Track. Not super sexy, how dare, how dare, but the abstract rave of carob that this plant possesses anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-diarrheic, antioxidant, anti-ulcer, anti-constipation, and anti-absorbative of glucose activities in the gastrointestinal track. This was just in 2017. People are still

finding out cool stuff about it. Other sources say it offers a plant-based amino acid linked to college and production that's only typically sourced from animal products. It's also high in fiber and calcium and iron, antioxidants, protein. Another study that came out in 2018 said that it could be studied as therapy for neurodegenerative disorders. Our friend, carob, and yet people just let the pods fall on their lawns like leaving money on the table. It doesn't get funded anywhere near as much as other things do, and then as far as the leaves themselves, I know goats can eat them. If you go on Twitter and you do a search on carob, the very first thing you're going to find are, you know, the plant equivalent of airline food jokes. What's the deal with airplane peanuts?

Which is carob jokes is the most formulaic, repeated joke. You'll see it weekly. And then when you get below that layer, probably the second most numerous thing you'll find about carob on Twitter would be people, both businesses and actual pet owners, showing photographs of, you know, pup cakes, as they call them, or various baked goods that are made for dogs that are made out of carob. If you're not having the best day, you can change that by Google image searching the words, eating a pup cake, corgis in party hats, lapping at frosting, you got a mutt and a tiara seizing a treat like a shark attack. Oh, welcome to heaven, population, carob. I think it's also, when I tried to get at like why it was that carob just doesn't get respect,

there's not only the sense of betrayal that people feel because it's sort of a misplaced anger, right? So if you've got a parent or somebody you trust, and you're a little kid, and that parent or somebody you trust is saying, oh, here, try this, it's chocolate. And then you have carob, right? And it's not the same thing. But you can't appreciate that, you just feel betrayed. So people go all the way through their whole life going, carob sucks. And it's like, no, it sucks that you're relative to that. You know, it's like, if I was telling somebody during this presentation, it's like, if I am making spaghetti sauce from scratch, right? And one of the ingredients is anchovy paste,

which comes in a tube, right? And somebody decides to play a prank on me and switches out the tube of anchovy paste with a tube of toothpaste. And I put that in my spaghetti sauce, right? I'm not going to be very happy about it. I like toothpaste just fine when it's doing what it's supposed to be doing when it's what I expect. I have to go on the record here. I love chocolate, and I love carob, and they're different things. How do you eat them differently, like for you? Well, you can sort of make over chocolate recipes, and especially for people who have religious or, or they're allergic, and there are people who actually do have chocolate allergies,

you can achieve a flavor profile with carob that has enough similarities to like, maybe be somewhat satisfying. But you see, the difference there is that you know what you're doing, and you know what you're getting into. It's nobody telling you this is just like chocolate, right? Right, right. You know, it's like you're trying to, you know, quit sugar or whatever. And so you go to stevia, and you know that it's not sugar, right? Someone's got to make a cookbook. Megan, I'm talking to you. I'm hoping to come out with a carob cookbook at some point when I, you know, my copious spare time. Yeah. And I went at it like, I really think carob ought to be an ingredient on Iron Chef,

because people don't think creatively enough about it. And it would be really interesting to see if you gave some really top chefs and say, here's your ingredient. What are you going to do with it? You know, that would, they would have to think more creatively about it. And so I try to return to it what its flavor profile is like and go, what pairs well with this? And it tends to pair well with, with spices like cinnamon and ginger and cayenne and cardamom, you know, things like that. Probably Chinese five spice, although I haven't tried that yet. Basically, I made a cheesecake that has a crust that's made out of super sharp and textural, like, you know, those Nabisco ginger snaps. And, and then I fill it with a cheesecake that's carob with all of those spices

in it really, except I'll be go a little light on the cardamom if I'm putting the pepper in. That sounds splendid. Oh, that's so good. Yeah, I get good feedback on it. I usually can convert people with that. I can't tell you how many times I've had people that they'd like to discard or whatever. Yeah. I make a carob infused rum and no matter how people talk about how much they think carob sucks, I've converted it to every single one of them with that. I love that you're out there being like a champion for carob. It does need to be looked at differently. It needs to be appreciated for who it is, not what it's not 100%. Can I tell you something? Bananas, carob covered bananas. Okay. So in 2019, a food business news

article was forecasting culinary trends for 2021, which is now, and among them, your buddy carob, food trend reporter Elizabeth Moscow wrote back in 2019 that 2021 will be carob's year because, quote, they didn't position carob right in the 70s. It's not a chocolate replacer. When you're comparing anything to chocolate, it's going to fail. And Moscow continued to heap on pod praise, saying, I wouldn't be surprised if Starbucks came out with a carob syrup in 2021, saying, it gives an earthy, yummy, naturally sweet flavor. Carob, get it. And it's like, you know, if you live in California, if you live in one of these Mediterranean climates, and it can actually go even a little further than that. I mean, Arizona is not a Mediterranean climate, and there are

carob trees that have been there since the early 20th century as well. And they're still growing there. And there's a little bit of carob in Florida, although that's really not an ideal environment. And I'm given the, I'm given to understand some people try it in Hawaii too. Florida and Hawaii are a little too humid for it. In terms of that sort of tough tree, where you're now moving into this drought prone, super hot climate. And have you heard the term urban heat islands? Yes, yes, I have. And I certainly saw it in my research with carob because, you know, in a, I think two or three blocks stretch of one street that I started my study on, within just a couple years of my doing my study, 11 of these matured carob trees have been cut down.

Oh my God, why? There's a variety of reasons. I mean, in those cases, what happens, you know, like you were saying, you know, how do you select the right street tree and that sort of thing. And there are definitely like, you were also mentioning disability issues in terms of the sidewalks when they start to get pushed up. When carob first started getting planted in California, we didn't have this, you know, profligate irrigation. We didn't have this sort of culture of like everybody gets a lawn. And so carob was a wonderful tree to plant then. And, you know, there were other species that we also had that were very tough to drought and didn't need a lot of irrigation. But then when people moved into those areas and either they put inside walks that

weren't there before, or they definitely were putting in lawns that weren't there before. And the tendency in California is that you're going to be watering your lawn maybe three or more times a week for like 15 minutes, right? That's a shallow kind of watering. And if you put all your water on the surface, well, they're like, where's the water? Well, it's up top. I'm going to put my roots up top because that's where you put the water. Trees know what's up. And what's up literally is the water at the surface. Also, what is profligate irrigation, you ask? I only knew one of those words, and it wasn't profligate. So profligate means recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources. So what Megan is saying is that lawns in a desert are a great way to piss

away good water. And so that's why you see sidewalks that might be uneven or they're getting pushed up by really surface roots. It's not always the reason. But often in California, that's often the reason. I mean, there are some species that will tend to do that. Like so, for instance, there are certain fig species that would be more likely to have those big sort of roots pushing everything up to fig, the kind of eating fig that we have can take a fair, you know, it's also a Mediterranean native, but probably more to like riparian areas or something. Maybe I know what riparian means. Maybe I don't. But if I were to look it up, I would find out that riparian means near a river. And so it craves water, it can deal with that without it for a while, but but it likes

it better. So it'll seek it out. But for other species like carob, if you plant carob from a seed where it's at, it'll grow a big taproot because it goes looking down for water. Oh, that's called the taproot. I didn't know that. It's tapping the soil sort of tapping groundwater. Yeah, I mean, well, carrot is a taproot. Oh, I've never even thought about that. And it's just going it's digging deep in like, Hey, where's water down here? Yeah, the part we eat is the taproot. It actually carrot, if you were able to preserve the whole root system, there'd be a whole bunch of other root hairs and things sticking out, but we eat the taproot. Oh, I never even thought about that. So when you see photos of a carrot,

but it looks like two legs and a tiny dong, that's less weird than we think. And if the eating a cupcake search wasn't enough to send shimmers down your spine, Google carrots that look like dicks. But not if you're somewhere that you can't cackle, because that's really good. Poor carrots. I always am like, Oh, sorry, you did such a good job growing. And here I am just coming to be like, thanks. It's too many emotions in botany. Who knew? We can look at it as a sort of botany of desire thing, which is just a symbiotic thing. We help propagate them. We help keep them alive too. That's true. That's true. We will, we will plant your children if we can eat you. Okay. And I guess, I guess just plant my kids, plant my kids. That's all I asked.

Can I ask you some listener questions? Yes. Yes. Is that cool? Oh my gosh, we've got some great ones. Okay, but before your Patreon questions, just a quick word about sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to a cause of the oligarchist choosing. This week, Megan selected Foundation for Science and Disability, FSD. They are a nonprofit organization affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And FSD promotes the integration of scientists with disabilities into all activities of the scientific community and of society as a whole. So a donation went to them and Megan's name. And you can find out more at www.stemd.org, which is linked on my website, as well as in the show notes. And that was made

possible by these ward approved companies. Okay, your care of questions. This goes to your cultivation discussion. Megan McLean wants to know, when buying carib, how does one pick out the quality carib from the crap carib? Are there different types as found in chocolate? How do you go carib buying? I'm really glad they said that because a lot of people, when they're, they're kind of crapping on carib because they think it's so far short of chocolate, they sort of conveniently forget that there's a big difference between cheap Easter 50% off chocolate and Jacques Torres, you know, there's a whole spectrum of chocolate quality. And just as that's true, there is a spectrum of carib quality as well. I would say, for me, what's important is that

carib is naturally sweet. The pods of the best selected varieties are about 50% sugars. Just naturally, like off the tree, you could eat the pod pulp and it would be sugary. Oh, so adding extra, you know, cane sugar or whatever to that, it just makes it more sickly sweet. And especially if you're, if you're doing this sort of bargain bin, bulk bin thing where it's you've got a lot of hydrogenated vegetable fats that are added to make it more chocolate, you just get this kind of chalky, gross thing. That's not good carib. And that's what most people have an experience with. There are companies like Sunspire that make both kinds available a sugar added and a no sugar added version. And I would absolutely encourage people

to try what carib tastes like with no added sugar. Oh, okay. I'm not trying to plug specific brands. It's just that, you know, unlike chocolate, where you really do have this complete galaxy of brands to be choosing from. There's just not that many people in the US who are making products available. So even in a bulk bin, they'll, they'll, you know, if you went to someplace like Berkeley Bowl in Berkeley or whatever you would see it labeled labeled as Sunspire, the importer for Australian carib code products in the US, the sole importer and distributor is a company called Azure Standard. And they have quite a variety of carib products available, including Australian carib code. Okay, I snooped on reviews online and one said, I'm not that familiar with carib,

but wanted to give it a try. And I'm glad I did. Lovely, interesting flavor, not chocolate, but I wasn't trying to fool anyone. That's the spirit. Okay, so you have yourself a bunch of carib either in powder form or syrup. And you were asking me how I use it. The two major ways you're going to get ahold of it are going to be what's called carib powder. It's sometimes called carib flour and carib syrup or molasses. If you went to a Middle Eastern grocery, you would likely find carib molasses there. So if you live in a city that has a Middle Eastern population large enough to support one or more Middle Eastern groceries, you will probably find carib molasses carib syrup on the shelf. And I would use that when I make my my cheesecake, for instance, I'm

using that. Can you add that to coffee at all? Is it used? Yeah, it's good. I love it with added with coffee. Yeah, I mean, because I take my I don't know how it is when you're when you like your coffee black. But for me, I sort of like my I like my coffee to be as close to coffee ice cream as possible. Yeah, me too. And it really gives it a really nice richness to the it sort of enriches the flavor profile, I find as far as the carib powder, that's a lot easier to come across. Bob's Red Mill sells that. But there are also other bulk places that sell it. And that you can really use one for one the same way you would use cocoa. Oh, okay. If you have a chocolate crinkle cookie recipe, you could make it out of that. And again, I would probably add those

extra spices and they're not the carib I mean, absolutely needs it. I think adding the other spices helps get people out of the mindset. I didn't have hippie parents who forced it on me. So I don't have those associations with it. But for people who do, I find that the added spices kind of get them out of that frame of mind that Oh, this is some cheap, you know, I wish I were having chocolate instead or whatever. Right. And Ethan Bottone wants to know I've only ever heard of carib from an episode of Hey Arnold, do you know about this pop culture reference or are there others? Well, I have to say I'm older Gen X. So I don't I'm not sure that I is this Arnold though, like PBS cartoon or something. Hey Arnold was a cartoon that featured one character,

a child named chocolate boy who was just a jittering mouth smeared fiend who tries to quit his vice by titrating via carib. And I don't think that it works out for him. Do you ever catch in TV shows or movies, carib getting hated on or have they ever used it on on like food network in a respectful way? I haven't seen it on places like Food Network or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if it starts coming into that because as I told you when I first started looking for this stuff in 2013, there was a great deal less out there. In fact, even the Wikipedia entry was really, really sparse. And the Wikipedia entry is a good, reasonably beefy entry now. But just as there's a sort of Locovore movement other places and just

as a lot of other places are trying to rediscover their, you know, indigenous regional cuisines, the Mediterranean has been doing that as well. And so Cyprus and Greece and Italy and other places where carib has been an aspect I think that is really important of this is like, you know, in the US and the UK and places where they had these sort of health food movements did this sort of disingenuous stuff with carib. The reason it wasn't respected in its home area quite so much seems to be linked to the fact, you know, again, like the giving tree, it's like it gave and it's gave during like some of the worst times they had. So they, you know, they had World War One, and then they had the Great Depression. And then there was the Spanish Civil War. And then there

was World War Two. And all through that period, middle class and poorer people were surviving on carib because shipping, shipping lanes and things were closed down during the war. Carib is a source of sugar. And from sugar, you can also make alcohol, by the way. It's like anything, you know, you can like something, but if you're eating at 24 seven for weeks at a time, you might get so that you don't want to see so much of it anymore. Hence a lot of people just stabbing carib in the back, slandering it, comparing it to something else entirely. Jonathan Kaufman wrote a 2018 New Yorker piece titled quote, how carib traumatized a generation. Now, unlike the nutty, pleasant flavor of carib, opinions on carib are not mild. What I'll see is a quote that says like,

carib is the devil's raisin or something like that. Oh, no, something like that. And carib is satan's raisin. Nicholas Zemp is the first time a question asked her and wants to know I've read that the processing involves using an acid or roasting to remove the skin of the seed. And has the same effect been achieved through fermentation? Essentially, how is it processed? The factories that do this have only recently started coming online. When I first started looking, I knew that this kind of processing happened, but I didn't. I couldn't go, you know, it wasn't like these factories had websites even that late in the game. They're starting to now, though. And I've seen progress photos of it being processed. You have to ask not just what's possible. But given that we're

talking capitalism here, whatever is the cheapest is what's probably going to get done. Okay, so after you harvest a bunch of neglected overlooked carib pods, you can kitchen process them by washing them and boiling it in just enough water to cover it or steaming until tender. And then you can cut open the pods, you remove the seeds, and you cut the pods into small pieces and you dry them out. And then you put the pieces in a blender and grind into a powder and just process only small amounts at a time, according to some directions I found on permaculture.org. The seeds, however, get turned into locust bean gum, but they're really hard, so don't chomp on them with your teeth, please. And I did read a few studies that commercially processed carib powder has fewer

beneficial compounds than home processed. So another good reason to ask your neighbors if you can eat their lawn trash. Now, what if you want to grow your own lawn trash? Some Patreon folks, including Austin based Sutton Taggart, Maria Joravleva's partner, Laura Springer and Catherine Jordan, all asked about this. And we have a few people that want to know, and I'll put their names in an aside, if they can grow carib in their backyard, one person, Catherine Jordan from St. Paul, Minnesota, can you do that? Or do you have to be in Italy, Australia, or California? Well, in Minnesota, if you have a greenhouse that you can keep to nonhumid Mediterranean conditions, then yes, you would be able to grow carib. I don't own any land, so mine are grown in

pots that's not at all the ideal for what you're supposed to do, but that's what I do. And so it is certainly possible to grow them in a pot. Once you get a carib into a pot, you're still going to have to water it more often than you would normally have to water it. But if you live in a Mediterranean climate or very adjacent to it, the way that Arizona is, then yeah, you can grow it. And I would highly recommend that people do so because part of the way it's drought resistant is it has lower water needs. And it has lower water needs partly because it's got very leathery leaves that make sure that the water doesn't come out of it as easily, but also partly because it's not growing as fast. And so it isn't a bit of an investment. I mean,

it's not going to grow like a weed. It'll take a little while before you see something that grows taller than you are. Patron Raida Markham wrote in and said that there's a Jewish folktale about an old man being scorned for planting a carib treat because they supposedly take 70 years to fruit and he won't be around to enjoy it by then because he's already so old, which I think sounds very mean. But Raida wanted to know, is there any truth to that or does it just make a good cautionary story? Is it true that it takes 70 years to give you pods or is that flim flam? No, as I said, I think that that came out of some sort of religious text or story rather than the reality. I should emphasize there's because there's so little funding, and because carib does so much

and is so good, even as it is, there actually has been no breeding effort whatsoever that I know of. What I came to grad school to do was to learn how to be a plant breeder, and so it's kind of remarkable that it does so many things so well, and this is just with very little improvement other than just going around the countryside and picking the best one you see and then clonally propagating that. Clonally propagating means that instead of just rolling the dice and planting some seeds, agriculture relies on things like grafting from a parent tree to ensure that they get really good genetics for good fruit, and apples and bananas, tons of crops are clonally propagated. Megan explains. When the Mediterranean and in Australia or whatever,

what they do is they often will either plant the seed out in the field and then when the seed gets large enough to graft, they'll graft or bud it. And so the variety, if you're grafting or budding, you can get carob in anywhere from three to eight years, kind of depends. If you're growing it from seed, it's definitely going to be longer, and I'm getting the sense that it's like eight to 12. Honestly, if you were to plant a peach from seed, you would also be waiting a while before you cut the fruit off of it. I have two more listener questions, if that's okay. Yeah, sure. Michelle Dempsey, Ava Schaefer, and Heather Ninette all kind of want to know that, well, their questions are similar but different. So I'll read Michelle Dempsey.

Michelle Dempsey says, I've seen articles suggesting chocolate has nifty qualities, like containing antioxidants, has blood pressure, lowering abilities. What sort of nifty qualities does carob have? And Heather wants to know if it produces endorphins? Well, because it doesn't have that stimulant property, no, it doesn't produce endorphins like that. It does have its strong points, just as chocolate also has some strong points, what it doesn't have that chocolate has is lots of funding to study what those are, because any group that sells something will usually fund scientists to find out what can we say about our product. So there's a lot of funding like that. It's one of the things that I,

you know, going back to school has been super interesting to me because it's given me the ability to be a lot more critical about this sort of things. You know, and I had a good, well, you know, broad education before, but it's just made me realize how much more critical we have to be when we read certain things, especially if they're not linking directly to the study. Yes, I'm sure that there are things that chocolate does. Carob has a slightly different profile. It's somewhat high in protein for a fruit. It is high, I think, in potassium. It's a relative thing. You know, I don't know that I'd put it up next to a banana. And, but, you know, it's a slightly different nutrient profile as well. But as far as like

there being a miracle, you know, cure for whatever, that all remains to be seen. I'm not going to say it doesn't exist. You have to have the funding to go looking for that sort of thing. We had some first time question askers. Three of them had the same question. Tara Tiger Studio, Chalene N. Louder, and Samantha Ryan. Samantha said, so people tend to go all in for the latest food trends without considering the environmental impacts of our increased demand. And Samantha has seen a lot more Cara products in grocery stores in the last few years. Hey, Cara, bring it on. But Samantha is curious as to how sustainable it is as a food source. And Nicholas Zemp also thinks that's a solid question. I think, I mean, I think it's really rather sustainable because, as I said,

it can be grown on lands that are marginal for other sorts of crops. It can take a range of pH, but, you know, it tends to grow in sort of like more alkaline, rocky. It can grow even, you know, anywhere from adobe soil like we have in Southern California is not ideal for it. But, you know, there's these 80 to 100 year old trees there. So I think like anything, it's kind of like what you, how you decide to go about it. But I think one thing that you can say will keep it from being too destructive is the fact that it actually doesn't like a lot of water. So if you plan it someplace that's really, you know, that shouldn't be getting irrigated a whole heck of a lot, Cara won't do well if you're irrigating it a whole heck of a lot. So that actually keeps it into,

it keeps it in its lane, so to speak. Good to know. Last Patreon question, but I thought you would appreciate that Wells Howe had a question that what the heck even is a Cara and why have I never learned that those dried brown snake bananas hanging in the trees are edible. So Wells Howe's life is now changed because of you. I like snake bananas, a very good band name. Snake bananas. When I break off from my band and do a solo project, right? The best. Last questions I always ask. Last two, what's the shittiest thing about Cara? What sucks the most about the trees or the process or anything? Whatever gets your goat? Well, there's a lot of things I could come up with, but I think I'll come up with that item, which is that

that they're so underappreciated, I think is what sucks for me and that they're maltreated. So like a lot of the stuff that people like to complain about about them. So cities will say, oh, this is unsuitable for planting here. And it's like, well, you know, if you don't hire people whose expertise is trees, if you hire people whose expertise is being in a cherry picker and using a chainsaw, and they don't know about the species they're dealing with, and then you maltreat the species, why are you blaming the species? Right, right. So that's, that's the worst thing, I think, is just knowing what an amazing, cool plant this is for Mediterranean climates and how, you know, really selflessly it gives and how much credit takes. I think it's the worst thing.

And certainly in the process of doing, you know, those, the field work where I was going from street tree to street tree, it really hurts when you come back and you see a stump. I know, I cry every time I read the getting tree, every dang time. Yeah, yeah. I tweeted out from my account today, a 2016 story from the East Side or LA, which was a photo of a carob tree that was cut down and somebody had made a memorial to it. And it had like on gold ink on a black background, it had this whole, you know, like essay, but in big, big letters was like, why? No one listening to this will walk by a dried brown snake banana the same way. You know, you'll say thank you. And maybe if you don't mind, I'll chew on one of you for a moment as I walk

down the street. Now, as a person who walks down the street, I am privileged in that sidewalk cracks don't derail my day or typically threaten my life like they would some folks, especially those who use any mobility devices. And one thing I love about Megan is how great of an advocate she is for all kinds of people. And she founded UC Access Now this past July on the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act passing. And she released something called a demandofesto, calling for better design and inclusion and accessibility, not just for herself, but for other University of California students with disabilities at every campus because she is badass with a big heart. You have a really obvious disability. You don't have a choice. Everybody knows you're disabled.

In my case, nobody would know unless I told them. And so because they're still, you know, it doesn't matter that on the books, it's illegal to discriminate on that basis. The fact is that people do just like people still discriminate about race, sex, and other things that are illegal to discriminate about. So I made a decision very early on that I had to be very out about it, because I figured nothing really changes. You know, it's kind of like coming out day is for the queer community, which is that it's a risky thing. But if we all do it together, then people will realize this is not this weird, rare thing that they can easily utter. We are their friends. We are their family. And I think with invisible disabilities, at least, the more out people

feel they can afford to be or are willing to take the risks to be, the more we'll realize, no, look, this is not this weird, rare other thing that you're trying to make it. This is part of the spectrum of humanity. It was not my goal to be an activist. And in fact, one thing that I've found other disabled scientists have said, and it was certainly my experience as well, which is that if you have the temerity to bring this up, they say, why don't you go be a disabled advocate? You know, you're clearly not interested in science. As if you can separate those parts of yourself, you know, as if you aren't interested in more than one thing. That's very frustrating. What do you say to that? Well, it's hard to know what to say to that. I mean, you know,

because by this point, I should start rehearsing an answer to it really. Because in the moment, you just get so furious about it. Because if anything, I'm showing how deep my interest is that I'm willing to forward through all the crap you're throwing in my way. And have you gotten to see the way that your efforts have impacted other people in your sphere and other people in STEM? Yeah, it's a lot of work. And you take the victories where you can get them. But I mean, I've had people who've told me either publicly or privately that I really helped them realize that the way they were communicating was inaccessible, and that it wasn't that hard to make it accessible. And so they've changed the way like a lot of accounts on Twitter. And this

includes even government accounts. Here's something you could do when, you know, watch Twitter, if you see your state or county or a politician on their official account. And this is how you can check whether it has what's called alt text and image description. And you can certainly watch for if it's a video, for instance, you can watch whether it has captions. If it's a press conference, did the press conference have an ASL interpreter there? Are there video descriptions going on for the blind, you know, these sorts of things that they can just check for? And it's not too hard to then, you know, talk back to those public Twitter accounts and hold them publicly accountable for that. What people who are blind to have, you know, visual impairments

used to access the internet and Twitter is something called screen reading software. So the screen reader, just if you don't put anything in the alt text thing, the screen reader will just say image. All the people who are blind or visually impaired, whether they're in STEM or not, they're just hearing image. And of course, this exists for web pages as well. There's our alt tags on web pages and stuff. But in Twitter, the alt text character field is 1000 characters. So it should give you a little space to do that. And if it's too big for that, then you can always do a Google doc and then link to the Google doc and the tweet so that you can give, you know, blind and don't like censor it for people. It's like if it was important enough

for you to tell people who are sighted, then tell people who have who are blind or have visual impairments exactly the same thing that you're giving to sighted people. Yeah, I didn't even know that there was an alt text field. Why would you want to make accessibility something that you have to dig for and opt into? Why? Why isn't that the default? Yeah. Yeah. God, that's such a good point. And that's something that unless you hear someone speak out about a door, unless you know someone in your life who that affects, you might be just completely naive to it. I think the work of advocates, I imagine that must feel very heavy at times, how much education needs to happen. I mean, I'm in terms of my physical disability, I'm running at over 25 years

of having it right now. And because I wasn't born disabled, you know, I was raised in this ablest society and very much with an ablest view of things. So it's taken me that long to throw off all the, you know, I'm still not entirely 100%, I can't say of it, but you have what's like an internalized ableism. So even though I was very out about it from the beginning, I also still had that sort of idea that had been inculcated into me that, oh, I don't want to be a problem for anybody or oh, I don't, you know, rather than saying, no, wait a minute, I'm just as worthy of these things as you are. Was there any sort of any other advice that you would want to give to anyone who is disabled in STEM or is looking for a career or just kind of start their journey

that you wish you knew or any kind of words of wisdom or pep talk? I'd say definitely, I mean, there are probably other social media networks, but I know I probably wouldn't have made it to grad school if it had not been for being on Twitter. Science Twitter helped me find out about things that I didn't know existed. And what it's done, especially lately, when I first gone on, there were not a lot of sort of visibly disabled scientists. I mean, what I mean by visibly is that they're out about it. And I think people are, you know, a lot of social movements in the radicalization of various ways that have gone on in terms of opening people's eyes to forms of discrimination that have been going on for a very long time is starting to sort of open the doors

as far as disability and the awareness of ableism as well. So what that means is that you're more likely to find disabled scientists to speak with. And just even if they weren't like mentoring you, just knowing that there are other disabled scientists out there really, really helps. I love the different hashtags. And I love that you can pop on them and then follow a bunch of new people and then just make a bunch of new friends online that tell you what their lives are like. And you're like, that's great. You just made my world better. And speaking of the best stuff, but your favorite thing about carob or carob trees, what like just lights your whole heart up?

Again, there's so many things to choose from. But I think, I think that certainly as far as the work I've done, what's most gratifying is what you just said, which is that you don't see it the same way. People, when they see you like standing in front of their street tree taking notes, they kind of come out of their houses like, what are you doing? And so I've had that experience a couple of times where people have had a talk with me. And I, you know, once I assure them, no, I'm not from the city or no, I'm not, you know, I'm not here to, to case your house for a burglary. I've had people come back to me and said, like, I totally took this tree for granted before. And it is so much more interesting than I thought it was. And I really want to make

sure I'm active saving these trees now. Oh, my gosh, that's so beautiful. That must feel so gratifying. It really is. I mean, I, you know, it's, it's hard as a student. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who struggles with this. But for somebody who comes with my bachelor's in art, especially, you know, there's sort of inferiority complex you have around whether you're really a scientist or not. And at least I can say that I'm effective enough at communicating the sorts of facts that I've learned and what I've observed from my field work that I'm able to persuade people. And really, what more do you want? Because, you know, most people are not going to be looking up scientific journal articles. Exactly. So to have the passion and the will to communicate it is such a service

to the data that you're collecting and, and the appreciation and preservation. Oh my god, this has been so fun. Thank you for letting me pepper you with so many spicy questions. I've learned so much. Oh, sure. No, my pleasure. So ask giving trees selfish questions, but make sure to appreciate them for who they are and let them live and ask smart people basic questions, because you never know what is right under the surface in the treasure trove of their knowledge. So follow Megan Lynch. You can find her on Twitter at may underscore gun and at access you see there's going to be links to those socials and the show notes and at my website alleyword.com slash allergies slash caribology as well as link to Megan's first album and so many links about

caribs history where to find it and more again, check iNaturalist to look for the nearest one. Tell me if you eat them, please. I would like to know. I am at alley board at Twitter and on Instagram. Allergies is at allergies. Now merch is available at allergies merch.com. Thank you to Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltas for managing all the merch. They host a comedy podcast called You Are That. If you're interested in hearing how allergies is made, you can check out Renee Colvert's recent episode on her brand new podcast called My Pandemic Makeover Spectacular. She had me on as a guest and she asked me all about life work balance and quitting your day job and Renee is just a human delight. I love her so I'll link to that on my website too. Thank you Erin Talbert

for admitting the Allergies podcast Facebook group. Again, if you're looking for a hot date and are single, I don't know. Join the Facebook group Flortology Singles. None of my business. Thank you Emily White and all the transcribers for making transcripts available and accessible. They are at the link in the show notes for free alongside bleeped episodes for school use. Thank you Caleb Patton for bleeping. Thank you to Sweet Sweet Noel Dilworth for all of the interview scheduling and calendar wrangling and thank you to assistant editor and fiancé and midnight cheerleader Jared Sleeper who hosts quarantine calisthenics every weekday and 9am on Twitch at Jared Underscore Sleeper and of course the locust bean gum that holds this pod

together. Lead editor Stephen Ray Morris hosts the podcast See Jurassic Right, The Percast and now a brand new one, a new Star Wars podcast called Everything But The Movie, a Star Wars Book Club podcast and I will link that on my website as well. And if you listen to the credits I tell you secret and the secret at the end of this is that I got some carob chips that I've been saving to eat and I'm not going to make any gross smacking noises because I know nobody wants that but I am going to try one right now. Dude this is good. If someone gave it to you and said try this chocolate you'd be like that's kind of whack chocolate but if you just try it being like try this it tastes like a really nice smoky caramel. Okay go get yourself some carob. Bye bye.

Awesome. Carob is nature's chocolate.