00:13:55.420But this, I wanted to know more, the Leonardo's Choice book was about how science and biotechnology specifically was affecting not only, well, animals themselves, and really, you know, changing, and this is still going on, of course, changing genetic codes of animals so that they're much more what we want them to be.
00:14:19.540And that whole idea of that our creativity is about changing things in to make it more like us seems to me to be a real dead end when you're talking about creativity.
00:14:38.140You're cutting out any kind of flexibility or openness to the world around you.
00:14:43.720and if we i and i say this in the book if we end up with just us we're sunk we are not you know we
00:14:53.180are only one small part of the universe and one species among eight million other species on the
00:15:03.840planet and we really have to think of things like that or we will never understand the way to be a
00:15:11.820good planetary citizen, for instance. Now, when I got my PhD, I worked at the Advanced Computing
00:15:18.360Center for Art and Design and Computer Science. So, you know, I started to get this view of science
00:15:26.320that wasn't so negative. I mean, I was up in a cabin with my son in the snow, and I was taking
00:15:33.560a computer science course. And this was before I went to Ohio State to do the PhD. And I was
00:15:40.460reading about if then else you know that very basic kind of way to write algorithms and
00:15:48.320I was like I was totally shocked I for some reason had never understood and which was probably a real
00:15:57.540problem that if this happened then this would happen but if you did this this might happen
00:16:05.860so the idea that things were possible if one thought about them enough I mean certainly
00:16:17.160I understood that but that I could change it that all I had to do was keep going but if this
00:16:25.480this this that was a major and I know this sound I've said it to computer science and they're like
00:16:31.740really? But for me, it was this major breakthrough. Well, sure. I think an artist and thinker in the
00:16:39.540woods comes to it and goes, everything is open. Change is everything. Everything is change. I am
00:16:46.280in the moment of choosing change at every pass. And this person who did this computing laid out
00:16:51.460a certain path for me, but those aren't all the paths. And I think that also helps us think about
00:16:55.880the built world versus the animal world or the living world that's around us. We're set up into
00:17:00.740this limited set of possibilities if this then this yeah they're with us to going like no also
00:17:07.940this well and you know when I wrote my dissertation I actually wrote it using Brecht the dramatist
00:17:15.140and his idea that we are not you know sort of against Aristotle it's not about destiny it is
00:17:23.280about choosing what will happen choosing to be good choosing to look at animals in a different
00:17:32.320way choosing you know to be vegan or whatever you're doing and choosing not to kill someone
00:17:40.900even a human or an animal so you know those kinds of things I think led up to
00:17:47.500the book and some of the thinking behind it and and this kind of openness to bio well biology
00:17:56.900particularly which i kind of always have been interested in but it was also meeting people
00:18:01.120like mark beckoff who's a biologist and you know just his writings and his books are are really
00:18:07.780wonderful because they just lay it out for you and he's a biologist who's worked with you know
00:18:13.660wolves and coyotes and all different kinds of animals. But his ideas on play, I think,
00:18:20.580are really powerful. And certainly play is an enormous part of creativity. You know,
00:18:27.640you take kids who've never been played with and may have a hard time doing anything creative
00:18:33.480or anything else for that matter. Certainly in the U.S., there's a lot of problems with kids,
00:18:41.560you know, only doing what the teacher wants. Is this what you want? I don't want you to do what
00:18:46.500I want you to do. I want you to think about what you want to do and then do that. See what happens.
00:18:53.880Yeah. It makes me think about, you know, if, if we're genetically modifying animals into being
00:18:59.160more like, not just like us, but like what, what is useful and subservient to us and the kinds of
00:19:05.700creativity that we're losing, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I was so moved in the conclusion
00:19:13.380of your book when you talk about, I'm going to paraphrase it so badly, but you talk about this
00:19:19.420idea of cultures, you know, that so much of the focus on biodiversity, preserving biodiversity
00:19:25.140focuses on, you know, make sure we have X amount of X species or whatever, but we're missing
00:19:32.760the individuals and the cultures within species yes the leadership of mothers among elephants
00:19:39.340you know so we didn't notice and and and lost a lot of moms and lost a lot of history and a lot of
00:19:45.300like wisdom and genius in in those families yeah i was really really struck by that that making it
00:19:51.600so concrete like we we have to look for the creativity in these animals and not just to
00:19:57.440think about it in this broad general stroke of like ants have instinct towards this or there's
00:20:03.620there's a uniqueness there that has to be looked at in such a fine grain way yeah and well two
00:20:08.860things one is that and i'm blanking on his name moffat i think we'll put the link in the show
00:20:14.200notes okay and he talks about being able to tell individual ants who's what because he's studied
00:20:21.480them for so long he's down on the ground looking at what they're doing and certainly you know tom
00:20:28.520seeley i'm sure you read the b section about b democracy he has a book out on b democracy that
00:20:35.500everyone should read and i talked about his research that was really wonderful that individuals
00:20:42.200are so important in deciding where the nest the next nest is going to be but how the the individual
00:20:55.460then gets together with the group and then it's decided which nest which area is best
00:21:03.780he calls a quorum they decide in a quorum so it's not everybody waits around for everybody to agree
00:21:10.360which is sort of what we do in meetings, which is like fruitless, but it is, we need a nest.
00:21:18.280We need this particular, and the requirements for a bee's nest are very, very particular and very
00:21:24.460precise. And so they decide which one is the best with most of the bees, most of the scouts that are
00:21:33.380doing this actually agreeing. And there's much more to that free bee democracy because it's really
00:21:38.920quite useful for what's going on in our country right now. Boy, I wish people would read that.
00:21:45.220Wild. That's top of my list now. Can you give us some other examples of kinds of creativity that
00:21:51.740you were delighted by doing the research? One of the things that I thought was really,
00:21:56.960and I really didn't know very much about, was desert iguanas emitting scents that reflect
00:22:03.800ultraviolet light. I mentioned that before to mark their territories. And then the other iguanas see
00:22:10.620the ultraviolet light in the markings and they stay out of the territory. Now, we could never
00:22:17.660do that. First of all, we can't see ultraviolet light without help. So there's that. And this idea
00:22:24.760of different kinds of communication, elephants using infrasonic rumblings, which they kind of
00:22:32.280knew about before but how did they do that they hear those rumblings through their enormous feet
00:22:40.700and they can hear these from miles and miles so they're communicating and telling each other
00:22:47.760you know where they where another elephant group is and you know what's safe what isn't
00:22:55.520you know whatever it is they're talking about and this one i actually got from richard prum
00:23:03.220richard prum is really interesting a brilliant guy who you know wants us to think very seriously
00:23:12.480about sexual selection in evolution not just natural selection and how animals select for
00:23:21.300desires really for instance the bird of paradise you know i don't know if you know the bird of
00:23:28.680paradise but they're really beautiful gorgeous birds well the males are because the females
00:23:35.160are the ones that judge they sing and dance i mean cornell university has a whole project that
00:23:42.480was done by a photojournalist who's a biologist and a biologist who went to where birds of paradise
00:23:49.180isr and you know documented them for a number of years and then went back they realized really
00:23:57.160what they were seeing was not what the females were seeing once they put the camera to see what
00:24:06.420the female was seeing good lord completely different and so that idea and i went off to0.92
00:24:14.420from these other two scientists, is that females have had a great deal of power in actually being1.00
00:24:26.220able to decide what is beautiful to them. And in terms of the kinds of biodiversity that we think1.00
00:24:34.940about in terms of the beauty of the world, certainly females have had a lot to do with that
00:24:40.420In a number of situations, it's not always just about beauty, but I think that is one of the most, at least for me, was sort of mind-blowing kind of thing.
00:24:50.520And once I got onto that project, I literally, I got addicted, and I'm sure that slowed the book down.
00:24:56.280And really, once you get to this, you won't be able to get off, so just be prepared.
00:25:02.620I want to ask how this work intersects then with your feminism, not to derail you because you're in the middle of a thought, but I want to know that too.
00:25:09.720Well, I know. Certainly, Prum actually mentions that, and I love him for it. He talks about the fact that, you know, feminism is not just some sort of idea, human idea, but it's actually biologically very important.
00:25:27.280and and he goes on to talk about all kinds of ways ducks for instance which I hope I don't
00:25:35.740screw up telling this there's a long section about ducks the idea that you know ducks male
00:25:41.380ducks are quite aggressive and so the females have developed vaginas that are really complex0.95
00:25:48.680and sort of allow the duck to put off the male
00:25:54.260because, you know, they're kind of like corkscrews.
00:25:58.300But then the male has also figured out biologically.
00:26:03.160Well, then, okay, well, we're going to do this.0.99
00:26:06.300I don't know if you call ducks penises,0.98
00:26:13.540which, you know, kind of sounds like men in general, you know.
00:26:18.680But yeah, there's just so many things like that.
00:26:21.840And also, I think we were talking about the idea of feminism a bit in another context.
00:26:30.940There are so many animal studies or women who have been writing about animals who certainly are feminists as well.
00:26:39.180I mean, certainly you can't talk about that particular subject without talking about Carol J. Adams, who wrote The Sexual Politics of Meat.
00:26:47.200And she's very active in and has a number of other books out, a friend of mine and just a wonderful person. And then there's sort of a different care perspective for animals that goes along with feminist thinking, Josephine Donovan.
00:27:05.060I think feminist thinking has really influenced the kind of thinking that we have on animals.
00:27:12.420I mean, if you go back through history, you know, there's been lots of women who have started animal welfare, I'm using air quotes, you know, who really cared about animals.
00:27:22.660And I think one of the reasons is, you know, women and people who are discriminated against for race or sex, well, sexual proclivity, anything like that for their cultures, you know, have that understanding of what it's like to be seen as inferior and second class.
00:27:44.720And I think that allowed a lot of women to really understand animals in a way. I'm not saying that there aren't wonderful, you know, men who are involved in animal rights and didn't come to it from that. But I think that's really true in terms of feminism itself as a movement.
00:28:04.400And if you go back, an early feminist really in Britain was Bridget Brophy, who was a feminist and an activist.
00:28:10.300And she died very young, unfortunately, in 1995.
00:28:14.900But she was very influential and was a fiction writer as well and has tons of fiction books and nonfiction.
00:28:21.700Val Plumland in Australia, you know, is known as an eco-feminist and has thoughts about animals I don't always agree with.
00:28:29.120but her understanding and her need to understand how animals exist in the world and in the habitats
00:28:38.060that they are in and what makes them so important for biodiversity. I think she's really good with
00:28:44.420that. Jane Gadol, of course, even though I think she says, you know, I don't know if I would call
00:28:50.580myself a feminist, but I was always the only woman in the room. And, you know, Jane Gadol says she's0.85
00:28:57.240been vindicated by how we are looking at animals as individuals. Now, you keep mentioning culture,
00:29:04.480and I just want to get to that because of all the things in the book, it's the last chapter.
00:29:09.660And I think it's really important because even biologists like Kevin Leland, who was very,
00:29:17.840very influential and really was one of the first people to talk about animal innovation and
00:29:23.220creativity they don't really go past that like humans do because we have culture and you're like
00:29:31.180what animals do have culture and i think as you said at the very beginning that's so important
00:29:39.140to recognize you know a particular individual in a in a particular culture group culture
00:29:46.580it's not just one you know one species has a large culture they're all these different kinds
00:29:52.140cultures. You know, in Wales, the East Coast and the West Coast, Wales have very different cultures
00:29:57.680in terms of what songs they sing. So I think that idea of animal culture is really, really profound.
00:30:05.540And I think it's really important for people to think about. And I hope that more books will
00:30:11.380come out of that, as well as what that means for conservation. And I want to also note that I did
00:30:19.000include domestic animals like pigs and, well, I don't know if pigeons are domestic, but
00:30:24.900animals that we see as underlings. I don't want to compare animals and say this animal's smart
00:30:32.920as this animal, because as far as I'm concerned, as when I was teaching, everyone is creative in
00:30:39.660a different way. We, all species are intelligent and creative in their way. And that doesn't mean
00:30:47.820that ours is superior ours is just one of those processes one of those ways that we live in the
00:30:55.040world so can you then think out loud about this idea that appears in your book about a new way
00:31:03.080of thinking about creativity and what it is at all and where it comes from this you know this
00:31:10.180this earth creativity one of the things that really helped me look that out was David Blahn
00:31:16.240I'm the physicist. All that reading I did when I was miserable and couldn't do anything else,
00:31:20.520I guess, was important. It was useful. Now I see that. He said, because in his book on creativity,
00:31:28.300it cannot be too strongly emphasized that what is being suggested here is that intelligence does not
00:31:36.860thus arise primarily out of thought. Rather, as pointed out earlier, the deep source of
00:31:44.440intelligence is the unknown and indefinable totality from which all perception originates
00:31:51.740and i give a definition of creativity in the book that really i felt would work for biologists and
00:32:03.260and also for the general public the idea that individuals create novel that seems to be what
00:32:12.040biologists want and i made a point of saying it could be novel for only that individual and that
00:32:17.980counts and meaningful that was not a word that a lot of biologists use but i wanted to use it's
00:32:24.120meaningful they created something meaningful not maybe to humans but to themselves but also that
00:32:31.040that would happen at an individual group species and evolutionary level so i guess
00:32:40.060my thought about creativity being instead of saying the deep source of intelligence i kind of
00:32:48.740when i read that i thought the deep source of creativity is the unknown indefinable totality
00:32:55.280from which all biodiversity originates and that would include animals and i'm i'm i you know i i
00:33:07.140know that some people will think that means intelligent design. I didn't mean that. And I
00:33:12.040know some people think that means there's a designer or this is very sort of Christian
00:33:18.000mysticism. It doesn't mean that. Evolution is what this planet is about. Now, whether or not
00:33:24.800in the cosmos there are other ways of doing things, I'm sure there are. But living on this
00:33:31.760planet i think that that is what i tried to get across and i think it's important for us to be
00:33:37.400again good citizens of the of the planet a planetary citizen good planetary citizen
00:33:43.580you remind me so much of octavia butler in earth's in earth's seed right you know god is change god
00:33:52.140is only change but we dance with change and that's a whole lesson to learn i don't like change i
00:33:56.900I love change everywhere, but you know, for me, changes are, everything's changing. So we're at
00:34:03.220a loss. And, and I think it's a very uncomfortable moment for most people right now. Uncomfortable
00:34:08.640is probably an understated word. I do think your book offers some, some kindness for that, you
00:34:14.340know, like we, while we're sort of in the overwhelm of how fast and how scary change is, I, I take
00:34:22.700comfort in this idea that there are communities and cultures around me that I I can notice you
00:34:29.900know that like an interaction with the other isn't so far away you know like I I have bees and ants
00:34:37.740and there's a mink that lives there you know like I can bring my I can bring my attention much much
00:34:44.400closer and and that that could still be of value because those are individuals I can think about
00:34:49.720an interaction with those creative individuals. And maybe that helps anchor me when I feel the
00:34:55.220loss of diversity happening, you know? Yeah. That's, thank you. That's, that's,
00:35:01.560I'm glad that happened for you. Despair is, I would like to sink into it, but it's probably
00:35:07.360not a very good idea. I think it's better to just keep working and fighting and, and making sure
00:35:13.160that voices are heard. Yeah, just keep insisting on what the truth is. I'm going to take both of
00:35:21.280those away from this conversation. Is there anything else that you think our listeners,
00:35:26.960strange, diverse, and glorious as they are, many a witch among them? And thank you, by the way,
00:35:34.620for being willing to come on a witch podcast. I know for some scientists and academics that can
00:35:40.540be and especially women working in in scientific fields who have been kept on the outside and0.80
00:35:47.540treated like witches or emotional head cases for some of the ideas that we have to bring into
00:35:53.140different fields it can be asking a lot to come onto a podcast with this name and i i take it
00:35:58.020really seriously so thank you i was happy to do it my friends who are wiccans and and i'm an artist
00:36:04.360So, you know, I really nothing is strange to me anymore.
00:36:10.020But also, I just had a grandson, as you know, and called her my son.
00:36:15.160He wanted to call me Nani after my mother.
00:37:29.400I was starting that question before I went on that detour.
00:37:32.700Sometimes at the end of episodes, I like to ask, is there something that our readers can take from you, like something you offer to them as a way to move forward in being inspired by your work?
00:37:46.160So sometimes that could be a ritual practice you have. Sometimes it could be, you know, a way of interacting or looking at the world or an art practice or something you want them to read.
00:37:57.200you know you asked me about creativity forms of creativity and and i think i have it here oh yeah
00:38:04.820it was a line from the book for those moments when the clarity of the world was sufficient
00:38:09.080and thinking about it became unnecessary and i know you like that quote and i i have to say i
00:38:14.960like that quote too um and i really i really do not to do really but i i i love that so much and
00:38:22.340what a what a what an easeful way of thinking about anything we do to find that those moments
00:38:28.400anything we do and I I wanted to point out that you know and for children I know that happens it
00:38:35.420happened to me I'm sure it's happened to you where you were young and understanding the world just
00:38:39.920came at you like a comet and hit you on the head you know because all of a sudden you've just felt
00:38:47.940connected and part of the world. At least that's what happened to me when I was about five. But
00:38:52.940there's other things like play. Play is creative. And there's the whole idea of flow that you get
00:38:59.580into a space where you don't have to think. I think play does that. I think caring for a human
00:39:08.480or an animal. And for me, one of the things is being with trees. If I go sit in the midst of
00:39:13.680trees and just watch not only does it calm me down but I I feel as if I'm talking to another
00:39:22.520being or they're talking to me let's put it that way I'm not saying anything they're talking to me
00:39:27.520and there's more on that about drawing but I'll end there I wish you wouldn't but I no thank you
00:39:36.520I feel very much the same about just watching trees and the way that that kind of
00:39:43.860unparalyzes my my ego brain a little bit thank you so so much for being here I can't wait to
00:39:51.160share the links to your book and to your work and I I already look forward to getting to speak again
00:39:58.460thank you so much I really enjoyed this I really have I I you're great you're great
00:40:04.780keep going thanks i think that title is perfect it's perfect and i think it really says what i
00:40:14.800think you're trying to do with with the podcast very much and i'm very happy to be here thank you0.76
00:40:21.660thank you bless the fucking me but don't hang up that's just how we end the podcast0.99