Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Geoscience is Important. Period.

Transcript

Geoscience is Important. Period. · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, Chris.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Jesse?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: How about yourself?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Doing well.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little uh a little hot and humid out today, but doing well.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get this thing started.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start off.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing here?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you know, this this is kind of how funny how this whole uh thing came about.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: You just called me one day and said, Hey Chris, you listen to podcasts?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, yeah, I listened to a few.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what do you think about doing a podcast?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Well, that's that's kind of how we got the ball rolling.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put all this on me.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put all the weight on me here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take credit for a bad idea.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um look, here's what it comes down to, though.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: We you and I are uh on the ridiculous side of loving the geosciences.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: We are excited about the geosciences, and uh we think the geosciences are uh uh maybe underestimated, underplayed, and we want to do what we can to change that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right because we think that geoscience is important.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we you we were talking the other day, and and it just uh to me it comes down to there is no planet B.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is the one we've got.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing place, it's an amazing planet, it's gorgeous, it's beautiful, it's awesome.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um we need to learn as much about this planet as we possibly can.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so geology or geosciences in general, this is a you know relatively new field.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you compare it to biology and chemistry and physics, these are all fields that sort of came of age in the early 1900s, late 1800s.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh geosciences really we came to our understanding of plate tectonics, which we'll talk about later, only in the 1960s.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so it's kind of a relatively new field.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we both share share the the the passion for it and the opinion that most people, if you if you're paying attention to the world around you, most people should know something uh about the earth and and how it works.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be targeted at people who are just generally interested in things.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um you don't need any any previous background knowledge to to listen to and and gain something from this podcast.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I would just I I guess I'm a little bit more of a hard line on that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: That you know, earth science, geology, geoscience is it is new relative to biology, chemistry, and physics, and it's always been my impression from an educational standpoint that we're struggling for legitimacy, and and I don't get it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because this is this is our place.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's for everybody should know um the way this planet works.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: For an everyday person, uh, geoscience or earth science is is uh regarded as sort of the little cousin, the the the ugly stepchild or whatever whatever you you may call it, uh, to biology, to physics, to chemistry, to the things that grab the news.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it's very important to our everyday life, uh, your the economy, um, and and just your experience as you walk around in the world.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, uh, we both have a background education, um, and we have a very kind of interesting relationship, and we're both practicing geoscientists, but uh kind of in very different aspects.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's talk about that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: We do have very different uh experiences and backgrounds.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am a high school geology, earth science, astronomy teacher.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um in fact, you were one of my students in high school.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um I when I went Unfortunately, unfortunately, yeah, good one.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I graduated from high school, I knew two things.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that I was not gonna do anything in science, and I knew definitely I was not gonna be a teacher.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I found myself in a uh just a general education class, and it fit the schedule that I wanted.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up in a physical geology course taught by one of the most gifted people.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and three days in to that class, I knew right there that geology was for me.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea what direction I was gonna go.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew this is it.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: It landed in my lap.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was immediately in love with it, and uh I took it for everything it was worth.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So when I went through my undergrad uh degree, I majored in geology.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're uh Earth Science Teacher.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had you in class.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're not just any old Earth Science teacher, though.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: You are a nationally recognized Earth Science Teacher, um Earth Science Teacher of the Year award nationally uh in 2014, was that?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: 2013, yes.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've done a a load of different teaching, really diverse stuff, including a summer science field trip, which we'll talk about later.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you just start started teaching an astronomy course, is that right, this past year?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you've had I mean you've done this your whole career, opening up new classes and uh and sort of start pushing the limits.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: But uh most high schools in in Michigan don't teach a dedicated earth science class.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: We do.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this goes back to our thing.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's ridiculous that earth science is not a required curriculum at the high school level for for public school system, right?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um uh uh whereas biology and chemistry and uh many of these other science disciplines, which are clearly important for society, are um, and we're you know, we we feel strongly that earth science should be in that category because it's important to everybody.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Recently, uh the geosciences have been thrust into or the earth sciences have been thrust into the spotlight.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about things like climate change and the water issues that we face and the natural resource issues that we face.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you know the next gen high school standards uh reflect a a lot of earth science content.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's uh I'm happy to hear that.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's good.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us what what you did.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you went to college, yeah, and then tell us about your background.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a small uh liberal arts college in Michigan called Hope College, um, and uh we studied geology there.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I knew from the outset.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I grew up uh as a son of a biology, high school biology teacher.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I was always interested in science, and then when I took your class in ninth grade, you know, it was just like boom, blew the doors off.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is for sure what I was gonna do.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I knew going into college that I wanted to to uh be a geolog study geology.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went to grad school, um, started in a master's, went to the University of Alberta, uh, ended up not getting a master's, but changed into a PhD.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I got my PhD there in 2015, uh, went and worked in Washington, D.C.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: for a couple years as a researcher, and now uh I'm a professor at Penn State.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm uh professor in the geosciences department at Penn State, and I've been there uh for going on a year now.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So new job, new title, new new exciting stuff.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: You are a PhD in geology, and I told you that I would call you Dr.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Rymanck one time, um, and I've done that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So come on.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right, come on, come on, come on.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Show some respect.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, show some respect.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: You don't deserve it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't deserve it.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we have very different backgrounds, um, but we do share a love for the geosciences.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Jesse.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um tell tell us a little bit about like uh how you define geoscience.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so geoscience, I mean, I would consider myself a geologist, which is sort of has the connotation of looking at rocks and studying physical rocks, but geosciences and earth sciences are are are really interchangeable and they cover everything about the earth.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the atmosphere, oceans, studying rocks, how rocks interact with the oceans and atmosphere, minerals, groundwater, you know, studying the crust, the mantle, the core, earth's magnetic field, all this stuff is part of the earth sciences or the geosciences.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you know, you've covered a broad swath of the really important processes that are are are really important for understanding how our earth works.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um what about you?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, that that was a but that works.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is it's a broad category because you know you have this interaction between you know geology and biology and geology and chemistry and I mean basically for uh the importance to society kind of perspective, if it's not grown in the ground, then we're extracting it from the earth in some way or another.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we're mining it, we're we're pumping it out of the ground, we're using it as water, we're drawing water out of our lakes.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's all earth science, geoscience questions.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So a huge amount of the materials that we consume as a society are intimately related to our understanding of the geosciences.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna get any argument from me.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So shocking.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: The one time, the one time.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have experienced um how people think geology is cool, but they don't quite know how it matters or why geology or earth sciences are important.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Say anything about that?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we you know we've talked about this uh over many many late nights with uh a few beverages, uh talking about you know the earth sciences and how to uh you know uh people are genuinely interested, I think.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how how many times have you had this happen where you say to somebody, they ask what you do, and you say, I'm a geologist, and they look at you like you have a horn grown out of your head.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um That's right.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do with that?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's right.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, Well, what the hell do you do?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just look at rocks all day, and for me, I'm like, well, that's what we do.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we stare at rocks.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I do a little bit, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: But but I'm not I'm not the typical geoscientist out there in the world, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a whole big wide world that that you kind of uh get to experience when you you have this little bit of an understanding of how the planet operates and and why it is the way it is, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you have a lot more experience with this.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you've been teaching high school for what, like 85 years now, something like that?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been teaching for 23 years.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, nice that's good.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, looks interceiving.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but but but speak to this.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Speak to uh, you know what you you you have a whole new crop of freshmen in high school to seniors in high school in your class uh with a little bit of attention focused on you in your classroom every every week, every day, every new year.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So can you speak to this a little bit?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I don't I don't think this is uh a hard sell.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I think maybe I used to struggle with this a little bit more in terms of making this relevant.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but over the course of of my career, how can earth science not be relevant to everybody?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all about you know volcanoes popping off and massive earthquakes and things like this, but but we have real issues.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean that's definitely part of it, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's definitely some cool that's definitely volcanoes are a super cool aspect about earth scientists and earthquakes and they matter, but they're not the only thing that matters.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, they aren't.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: They aren't.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: When you read the news, there's just a lot in the news that that surrounds geoscience.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's our planet.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: How could it not be out there all the time?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot going on.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something we're we're absolutely gonna try and highlight uh as throughout the this podcast.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and good to touch on something you said too, is you know, in terms of why Earth Science matters, is just I mean, there are a lot of different levels to to uh go at this, but one of the the easiest ones is is just the more we know about our planet, the more we can appreciate it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so just like connected, being connected to this planet, we have to know about it, otherwise we don't have that connection.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we and there's two you know two aspects to that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's first of all, just a general walk it around appreciation, right?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Something you can carry in your back pocket when you're walking around your daily life and you can understand a little bit more.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's another lens you can put on.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can put on your oh, I understand a little bit about the earth science, I understand a little bit about diamonds or oil or you know, glaciers or their landforms or lakes or whatever it may be.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you understand a little bit more.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So when you walk around the world, you see those things, you can, you know, appreciate that experience.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can experience that in a different way, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is that it matters to our society, that there are key issues that are, you know, uh we're we're running short of some mineral resources.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's strategic metals out there we're running short of.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be focused on finding these things as a society that consumes a lot of stuff.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: We need to find more of this stuff.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: We need to mine these things, we need to do it in an eff in an efficient and in and uh uh environmentally sustainable way, but we need to pull them out of the ground.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that is kind of what this is all about, right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're that's what we're doing.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna be talking about a lot of uh various aspects of the geosciences from you know, interesting aspects about national parks, places we've been, newsworthy topics, uh, a lot of different stuff.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think one of the things we're gonna really try and convey is is our passion for the sciences and why it's a really sort of uh it's a beautiful science in some way.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember this one story.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was sitting in your, I think it was my junior year.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I took your class, was it your geology class that we did a field trip, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Up up to the upper peninsula, Michigan.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like a long weekend or something like that, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're camping.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I dropped the transmission out of my car.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: In Ewan, Michigan.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole nother story with that, but I bought a new truck on that trip.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot about that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, hey, taking kids uh up into the UP and outlasted, it's not been a cheap endeavor.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not easy and it's not cheap, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember I remember we had that we had uh several fiascos on that trip.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing I do remember that's relevant here is we're on this field trip, and um basically we're sitting out on these outcrops, we're looking at these uh metamorphosed basalts.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So these are volcanic eruptions, these are rocks that were erupted on the surface of the earth back uh during a period of time when uh our continent almost split apart.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, there's a failed, what's called a failed rift event.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so these are really old rocks, they're pretty complicated.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: They've been metamorphosed, meaning they've been heated up to high pressures and temperatures.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And do you remember the location I'm talking about?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's like behind the lows, or there's like more low landing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: On Lake Superior.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: On Lake Superior.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can picture this outcrop.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been there in however many years.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're sitting there, and and you know, we're the exercise is all right, there's all these little veins going across this rock, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's like deformation in it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically, you'd say you your exercise you put together was figure out what happened, how many events are there, and when did they happen, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just by sitting there for a couple hours observing the rocks, and you can come to an understanding.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's there's there's great beauty in that.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as a science, the the Earth sciences are inherently observational.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Earth is so big, the time scales are so long that we can't model them, we can't replicate them in the lab that well for the most part.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we can't replicate, we can't make a lab experiment that is plate tectonics.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's inherently observational, it's a little bit artistic, and you just use these very simple logical steps that anybody can follow along with.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a beautiful thing.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that that hooked me.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: That trip was the first time I ever saw your personality, by the way.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hit it, I played it pretty tight to the chest in high school, didn't I?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you were a piece of work.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you that right now.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had to check your pulse to make sure you're still more than once.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not get too uh too personal on it here.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: But no, yeah, I played it pretty close to the chest.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting back there, just I think I think I had my arms crossed sitting in the back of class for scowling at you for most of the class.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought you hated it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then I took you up there, and it was whoa.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really got to know you on a different level on that trip.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the the that summer is when we went out west on summer science.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I just remember um you you never you really didn't ever leave my hip pocket during that trip.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we we hiked together.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I remember walking down from Amphitheater Lake.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's about a six-mile hike down in the Teton.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you just were asking questions because we had to leave the top because the storm was blowing in and so on.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on our way down, and you're just asking me questions about things that we had seen.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: We'd seen everything, we'd seen enough to be able to work through the general geologic story of the Teton.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a which is a fascinating, you know, uh fascinating thing.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Grand Tetons are spectacular.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um they are.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm stuck in a rut.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've been yeah, it's a good rut to be stuck in, but every summer I've been going back to the Tetons to go climbing and backpacking for three weeks and with my family.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not a bad life.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Not a bad life at all.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I I remember you were just asking questions, and uh I didn't give you any answers.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just would uh I would either confirm or or ask a different question, different way, and you then you would think about that for five, ten minutes, we'd just walk in silence, and you come back with another question.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: By the time we got down to the parking lot in the trailhead, uh you had you do worked through the entire generalized geologic story of Grand Tetons just off of your own observations, and it was just a it was a cool thing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, that's uh uh it shows uh I'm a little bit of a nerd, and also that you know, geology is a relatively simple thing.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's uh you know, we can work through basic observations, understanding the earth at at the the scale that is important.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, you don't need too much fancy stuff to be able to do that.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of the hard things about it though, and this was uh one of the difficult things about me and geology, is I'm able to, you know, you get these really cool and fancy diagrams that you can get online or get out of a book or things like this about the the models of how geology works and how this planet works, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you see it on scale, it's it's tough.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the hard part about geology, is is taking the extremely large and extremely slow and putting it down on a on a on a on a sheet of paper.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you've been doing all these trips for a long time, nationally recognized earth science teacher.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, there's a reason that you are that, and and you've been teaching for a long time, you've produced a lot of of earth scientists, meaning students who've been in your class, taken your geology class, have gone on to earth science degrees, a surprising amount for a place like Southwest Michigan where there's not a lot of industry uh that people can go into.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a PhD, so you know I don't I don't bring that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not overqualified for anything.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you mean?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I didn't say that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't say that you did.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I'm I'm not a PhD, and um, so I don't I don't have that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you come with this uh you're a research scientist.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've never done that.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I try to do geology where geology is best, and geology is best not in a classroom, geology is best outside, that's right out in nature, where we can sit and see the stuff we're talking about.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean understanding the uh understanding the earth is uh you know it's best done out in the out in the world a little bit.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um now we can do it in in various avenues and and and we hope that this podcast will be one of them.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's to me, being a geologist um is with the best excuse in the world to go travel, to go see these things because I read about them, I see, you know, examples of different things, and then you you do a little digging on it, and you're like, where is that?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have to go see that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I remember the first, you know, these first things that I've I've seen where I saw my first anacline.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm like, whoa, that's an anacline.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Holy cow, you know, we'll get to what an anacline is later on.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've had that experience time and time and time again because when I come across these things, um, I have to go, I put it on my list, and my family goes with me.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a funny story about that uh once upon a time in high school when uh when uh you you were you were being a little bit of a wuss about going somewhere.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: You needed a little push.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I I remember that you were a senior doing an independent study project for me, and uh this was back in 2005.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, four, two thousand four, in the fall of two thousand four.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Mount St.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Helens had uh a brief uh couple month period where Mount St.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Helens started to show some life again, had some small explosions and stuff like that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Mount St.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Helens is a massive volcano that erupted in the 80s, you know, and uh in the 1980s.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I've always talked about it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm in love with St.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Helens.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: You came in, and behind I was in the middle of teaching class.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was teaching my geology class, and you're you're a giant, you're like 6'5, and so you just walked up right behind me and and interrupted me and say, Are you going to Mount St.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Helens?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because you that's kind of the way you talk.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on now.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So uh um and I looked back at you, I looked over my shoulder and up, and and I'm like, no, and I'm right in the middle of teaching right now.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you want?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and you said, I knew you were all talking well, that's because you just walked away.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've been you walked away.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but in every class, you know, I'd taken two classes from you, plus the Summer Science field trip at that point.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And every time, you know, you get out there in Yellowstone and you're just banging out about how amazing it would be to die in a volcanic eruption.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when I die, I'm gonna I'm gonna be turned around, you're gonna see the impact from the the volcanic eruption on my face, so that everybody knows that I turned around to look at it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you thought you were such a badass about all this stuff.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then here you are, not going out to Mount St.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Helens when it might erupt.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that that bothered me.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I so that night I had a night class at Grand Valley in downtown Grand Rapids, and so I went to class.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: We were in the computer lab, and before I knew what happened, I bought a ticket to leave on a Thursday night and come back on a Monday night.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna miss two full days of school.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Bigger school week.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and I have young kids at the time, and so I hadn't I hadn't checked with anybody.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had to go home and talk to my wife then, you know.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I walk in the door, she's she's sitting there watching TV.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I turned TV off and I sat down and next to her, and I'm like, hey, I got I gotta talk to you about something.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and she looks at me and she'd be like, What's going on?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, unbelievable.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, this is I mean, we we love Jenny though, your long-suffering wife.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: We love Jenny, yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: We love we do, we do.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: But she so anyway, and I said, Hey, um, and I just broke it to her.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I went and bought a ticket to go see Mount St.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Helens.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she's like, Where's your hotel?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, hotel.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not leaving the mountain.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I'm we're gonna I'm we rented a car, I'm sleeping in the car.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna die.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna die with a volcanic eruption hitting me in the face.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's what we did.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was a cool experience.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to the city.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Mount St.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Helens did not erupt, but it did not erupt.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do have some really cool pictures though of steam plumes coming up out of it.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember you brought those back in.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were you were proud as a peacock.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: You were proud as a peacock when you came back.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You were strutting around for months, just you know, so happy.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, and honestly, those are super cool photos, and you know, it's uh it's a beautiful thing to see a mountain kind of rumbling that it, you know, volcano rumbling that it might erupt.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's amazing.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, all right.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so the main point is all right, you're so you're a little bit gung-ho.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was sitting in your class about I don't know what, 15 years ago, something like that.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we've we've done a lot of camping, rock collecting, sitting around talking about life uh since that time.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and you know, we have this this shared interest, shared passion in in earth in the geosciences, uh, with very different experiences.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, I mean, you are an unbelievably good teacher, and you can to still down these really complicated things so that you know anybody can understand them.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a work of art watching you teach a classroom.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I'm a research geologist, I've been researching for a long time, uh, doing some some potentially pretty esoteric research.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I'm now in a position where I need to I'm teaching undergraduates and and you know uh uh Penn State geology or geosciences department is a really excellent department, and I'm very happy and honored to to be a part of that.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we're gonna put together these podcasts, we're gonna cover a lot of stuff.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna begin, Jesse, with our next episode on Plate Tectonics, correct?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: We think that's a really good place to start because it's the foundation for a lot of things that we're gonna want to talk about as we move through.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us, and stay tuned for our next episode coming up in two weeks.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are really excited about this project, and we as part of it, we are looking for your feedback and input.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So please leave us any questions, topic ideas, and comments on all the social medias.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: We are at planetgeocast, and our email is planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: We would love it if you liked and subscribed to this podcast, and we will chat with you soon.