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Murder Mysteries, But For Trees · The Most Important Question

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] In 1904, somebody noticed a sick tree at the Bronx Zoo. Within 50 years, the fungus killing it had wiped out about four billion American chestnut trees from Maine all the way down to Georgia.
• 0:18
  In 2018, Richard Powers wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory, which I loved. He set it in the early 20th century and made the American chestnut tree the main character.
• 0:28
  This fabled tree, which most of us had probably never even heard of at that point, was a tree that fed families and wildlife for
• 0:36
  generations, and yet most of us had never seen one fully grown, and we still might not, unless a small team in Syracuse pulls off a caper.
• 0:46
  But last month, for the first time ever, the USDA cleared a forest tree engineered to bring a wild species back, an American chestnut carrying one gene from wheat.
• 0:55
  Over the last 37 years of work, there had been progress made and mistakes made, new generations of researchers and partnerships that have ended. That's just called science.
• 1:05
  But we, and I use that term loosely, may be on the cusp of a breakthrough, and not just for the chestnut tree. So what can I do about bringing back the trees we've lost?
• 1:15
  Every week, I ask someone working on the front lines of the future the most important question in the world: What can I do? I found out why they do the work and what you and I can do to support it.
• 1:25
  I'm Quinn Emmett and my guests today are Dr. Andy Newhouse and Sophia Soriano. Andy directs the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project. It's a college of environmental science and forestry.
• 1:36
  He spent more than 20 years on this tree, and contextually, his favorite quote comes from Dune, so sure.
• 1:43
  Sophia's on his team digging, literally, into the soil under these trees inside and outside, and into the disease now spreading through our beech trees.
• 1:52
  We talk about what we've lost, how one gene can help a chestnut survive, the mix-up that nearly sank the whole thing, and why anyone would give their life to a specific tree that they may never see full grown.
• 2:05
  You will leave this conversation knowing exactly how to help, from a walk in the woods to the next public comment period. Let's go.
• 2:11
  [upbeat music] I'm gonna do something a little different to start off today's conversation.
• 2:20
  My entire knowledge, despite growing up on the East Coast and in Virginia especially, of the American chestnut tree started when I read The Overstory by Richard Powers.
• 2:31
  It came out in 2018, New York Times bestseller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I had no idea what this was about when I started it, which is how I like to read things now.
• 2:40
  If more than one person I trust or source I trust recommends it, I try to go into it blind.
• 2:45
  And then I thought since that contextualized everything for me and set up this conversation all these years later, I thought I would read you a few parts of it that can contextualize this for you, whether you've already read this book like so many have, probably listeners of the show, or if it's new to you.
• 2:58
  This was all new to me. Again, it's historical fiction, but this is pretty beautiful, so I'm gonna skip around a little bit. It's just a few minutes, but I hope you enjoy. Now is the time of chestnuts.
• 3:10
  Chestnut trees thicken like enchanted things. Chestnut is quick. By the time an ash has made a baseball bat, a chestnut has made a dresser. Bend over to look at a sapling, and it'll put your eye out.
• 3:24
  Fissures in the bark swirl like barber poles as the trunks twist upward. In the wind, the branches flicker between them, dark and paler green. The globe of leaves sweep out, seeking ever more sun.
• 3:36
  Twelve hundred miles east of where our main characters are, in the city where John Hull's mother sewed dresses and his father built ships, disaster hits before anyone knows it.
• 3:48
  The killer slips into the country from Asia. In the wood of Chinese chestnuts destined for fancy gardens, a tree in the Bronx Zoological Park turns October colors in July. Leaves curl and scorch to the hue of cinnamon.
• 4:02
  Rings of orange spots spread across the swollen bark. At the slightest press, the wood caves in.
• 4:09
  Within a year, orange spots fleck chestnuts throughout the Bronx, the fruiting bodies of a parasite that has already killed its host. Every infection releases a horde of spores on the rain and the wind.
• 4:22
  Sydney gardeners mobilize a counterattack. They lop off infected branches and burn them. They spray trees with a lime and copper sulfate from horse-drawn wagons.
• 4:32
  But all they do is spread the spores on the axes they use to cut the victims down. A researcher at the New York Botanical Garden identifies the killer as a fungus new to man.
• 4:43
  He publishes the results and leaves town to beat the summer heat. When he returns a few weeks later, not a chestnut in the city is worth saving.
• 4:52
  Death races across Connecticut and Massachusetts, jumping dozens of miles a year. Trees succumb by the hundreds of thousands. A country watches, dumbstruck, as New England's priceless chestnuts melt away.
• 5:06
  The tree of the tanning industry, of railroad ties and train cars, telegraph poles, fuel, fences, houses, barns, fine desks and tables, pianos, crates, paper pulp, and endless free shade and food, it is the most harvested tree in the entire country, is vanishing.
• 5:27
  Pennsylvania tries to cut a buffer hundreds of miles wide across the state.
• 5:31
  In Virginia, on the northern edge of the country's richest chestnut forests, people call for a religious revival to purge the sin behind the plague.
• 5:39
  America's perfect tree, backbone of entire rural economies, the limber, durable redwood of the East with three dozen industrial uses, every fourth tree of a forest stretching two hundred million acres from Maine down to the Gulf,
• 5:54
  is doomed. If God had a brownie, he might shoot another animated short subject. Blight hovering a moment before plunging down the Appalachians into the heart of chestnut country.
• 6:05
  The chestnuts up north were majestic, but the southern trees are gods. They form near pure stands for miles on end. In the Carolinas, boles older than America grow 10 feet wide and 120 feet tall.
• 6:21
  Whole forests of them flower in rolling clouds of white. Scores of mountain communities are built from the beautiful straight-grained wood. A single tree might yield as many as 14,000 planks.
• 6:32
  The stocks of food that fall shin deep feed entire counties every year a mast year. Now the gods are dying, all of them. The full force of human ingenuity can't stop the disaster breaking over the continent.
• 6:47
  The blight runs along ridge lines, killing off peak after peak. A person perched on an overlook above the southern mountains can watch the trunks change to gray-white skeletons in a rippling wave.
• 6:59
  Loggers race through a dozen states to cut down whatever the fungus hasn't reached, and the nascent forest service encouraged them, "Use the wood at least before it's ruined."
• 7:09
  And in that salvage mission, men kill any tree that might contain the secret of resistance.
• 7:16
  A five-year-old in Tennessee who sees the first orange spots appear in her magic woods will have nothing left to show her own children except pictures.
• 7:24
  They'll never see the ripe, full habit of the tree, never know the sight and sound and smell of their mother's childhood.
• 7:30
  Millions of dead stumps sprout suckers that struggle on year after year before dying of an infection that, preserved in these stubborn shoots, will never disappear.
• 7:41
  By 1940, the fungus takes everything, all the way out to the farthest strands in southern Illinois. Four billion trees in the native range vanish into myth.
• 7:54
  Aside from a few secret pockets of resistance, the only chestnuts left are those that pioneers took far away to states beyond the reach of the drifting spores.
• 8:04
  One of those, of course, is the, the pillar of this beautiful novel. Let's go talk to the people trying to bring the chestnuts back. [upbeat music] Andy and Sophia, welcome to the show. Hello.
• 8:21
  Thanks. Hello. Great to be here. You're great. I'm sorry you can't see each other. I don't know how to work anything, but I can see you.
• 8:27
  I feel like the, the wizard and behind the curtain or whatever it is, and we'll see, we'll see how this goes. But thank you for joining and taking time out of the long life of, of trees to chat with us about it.
• 8:40
  I discovered The American Chestnuts through this bad boy, like probably a lot of people. I... Not you obviously, but a lot of folks.
• 8:46
  It's a novel, it's fiction, but I appreciate the storytelling device and, and the historical fiction anchor that they use, and I love this idea of like unsolved problems. You know, I was
• 9:01
  talking to/yelling at my children the other day about how we haven't quite figured out how the Romans did concrete and the Greeks did concrete, and how I love that, and they're like, "Why? Doesn't that bother you?"
• 9:11
  I'm like, "No, it's, it's great. We still got work to do." But like, how the hell is it still standing, you know? It's amazing. And this is one of those.
• 9:18
  There's a thousand other ones, like we don't know how anesthesia totally works. We don't know how Tylenol totally works.
• 9:23
  And the more you pull the string on it, the more you're like, "Oh, we're not gonna figure this out."
• 9:28
  One of my favorite quotes is somebody saying, some neurologist at some point who said, "I'm pretty sure our brain is incapable of understanding the brain." And I was like, "That's fantastic."
• 9:41
  So I was really excited when I saw some news pop up about chestnut trees, having read this and thought about them.
• 9:47
  And again, I'm very lucky to live in a very green place where, where we have done a lot to try to take care of them here. Again, some of this stuff's very old. College of William & Mary is 10 feet that way.
• 9:57
  They've got some very old trees that I love, and I yell at my kids about, and it's wonderful to be surrounded by that and to appreciate them, especially as I get older and they get older.
• 10:06
  So I'm, I'm really thankful for your work and thankful to talk about it today. Before we get into it, though, I've got this question for you guys. It's a two-part question. It sounds like the same question. It is not.
• 10:15
  And you cannot have the same answer, guys. That's the- Got it... that's the only deal. This is part... This is- Yeah...
• 10:20
  what's, what was that old game show where the, where the two people couldn't see each other before they get married? That's kinda like the question I'm asking. What's that reality show? Mystery Date?
• 10:29
  No, that was a board game. Oh, God, I'm so old. I don't know. Here it is. Sophia, you get to go first. Why do you have to do this work? So of everyone in the world who could do this- Mm-hmm...
• 10:40
  obviously Andy and a ton of other people you guys are working with do this work. Why do you have to do it? And two, why do you have to do this work?
• 10:48
  So of all the other ways you could've answered the call about soil- Mm-hmm... and genomics and things like that, why do you have to do this work? You go first. Yeah.
• 10:58
  So I like to consider myself a plant pathologist, and I kind of fell into it in college.
• 11:03
  I, I knew I wanted to do research, and I just happened to email the right lab at the right time, and I ended up working there most, Shauna Eanes' fungal pathology lab at UMaine. It was great, and it...
• 11:15
  I knew I wanted to do science because it just scratches my brain the right way, and working in with a pathology setting too, it feels like you're solving murder mysteries, but they're, they're plants and everything.
• 11:27
  Mm-hmm. But it also is very fulfilling in a way of it feels like you're adding tangible good to the greater world, right?
• 11:33
  You're, you're helping these plants that are integral to these systems that, you know, in ecology as well as in agriculture and all these different settings that we rely on plants for.
• 11:44
  It's very satisfying, and it, it feels like I'm, I'm giving back in a way. So that's, that's why I think I feel called to do it. I love it, but why does it have to be you? Of all these other people. I got- Yeah...
• 11:55
  an idiot friend in the desk behind me. He just sells steak knives all day. Why, like, why can't it be him? Why does it have to be you working on these things? I think- This is the part where you're not humble. Yeah.
• 12:04
  Okay, which is truly the hardest part. I think 'cause I'm, I'm pretty good at it- Yes... and I really enjoy it.
• 12:09
  So, and I also, as Hard as it is to gain the skills you need to answer the questions you have, and as much as it feels like maybe, okay, I'm like
• 12:20
  slamming my head into a brick wall over and over again, but maybe if I do it right this time- Mm... then I'll solve the puzzle or something like that.
• 12:27
  And that can like, you know, cascade and s- help answer a bunch of different questions, and it's kind of this like pursuit of knowledge that's also like very satisfying, and then once you have it, you can help other people as well, as well as continue to do your research and everything.
• 12:40
  So that's, that's why I think I should be doing it. Fantastic. I love that. Andy, good luck. Thanks. I'll start, I guess, with a little bit of my background that led to this. So in- Please...
• 12:52
  college, I was mostly focusing on ecology and environmental science, and I liked being outside, wanted to do something with science. Was pretty sure about that. And something that was kind of helpful. Mm-hmm.
• 13:04
  Something that would address these, these growing environmental concerns. And then
• 13:12
  I spent one summer while I was in college working in a molecular biology lab, working on DNA, and kinda liked that, and so I was looking for some way to combine those approaches, working with DNA and working outdoors, doing something- Mm-hmm...
• 13:27
  with and for the environment.
• 13:29
  And so that led me ultimately here to College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, working on American elm trees, and working more specifically on genetically engineering American elm trees to tolerate a pest, Dutch elm disease at the time.
• 13:45
  And that's really still what drives me, that combination of approaches, of using really novel tools to address these problems that humans have caused.
• 13:54
  I think there's some element of that giving back, some element of that, of, of a responsibility to, to address these problems that humans have caused over the past century or more. That's the basics. Great. I love that.
• 14:07
  We can explore more if you want, but does that answer both of those questions? Oh, both of them, I think you could do, I mean, a little more to match Sophia on the why does it have to be you kind of thing. Okay.
• 14:18
  All right. Let me- Also, I think she's really looking forward to that, so let's do this. Okay. I'll do my best.
• 14:25
  I think, again, it's kind of a combination of experiences and talent or gifts and ways that, yeah, my experiences and gifts line up with the world's needs. Mm.
• 14:39
  And so for me, that was, again, the, the combination of approaches, working in a molecular biology lab, working in field settings, like I, I'd spent years playing with tree DNA in a lab, and then also- As you do...
• 14:51
  spent years in... Well, of course. Yeah. Had spent years growing chestnuts in a greenhouse and in the field, and I've learned lots of ways to kill chestnut trees to- Sure... ultimately figure out how not to. Mm-hmm.
• 15:04
  And, and then I started working on the parts that no one else wanted to do at the time, and that was permitting paperwork.
• 15:12
  As we were working on transgenic trees, so starting with poplar trees before I even joined the lab, and then elms as I was joining the lab, and then chestnuts as we, our broader team was making progress on research with chestnut trees.
• 15:28
  Because these trees are transgenic, because we use genetic engineering, they're very tightly regulated, and so we need permits to plant them outside. Mm-hmm.
• 15:35
  And of course, the permitting and the paperwork is not anyone's favorite thing to do.
• 15:40
  But with a combination of the background and the ability to do some amount of writing, I started handling those, those permits, taking care of the paperwork as a technician at the time. And
• 15:54
  as the work progressed even more, it became clear that that regulatory oversight was the, maybe I'll say choke point, the critical thing to overcome in order for these trees to get out and make a difference in the world.
• 16:10
  So permits were the temporary solution to try stuff outside, but that's not gonna restore a tree.
• 16:15
  We need to get broader permission to plant these engineered trees outside in order to even potentially use them for restoration plantings. Mm.
• 16:25
  And so again, it was that experience with permits as well as all of the various science steps that led me to ultimately pursue a PhD involving the regulatory policy surrounding biotechnology as applied to plants- Mm...
• 16:41
  and more specifically as applied to plants used for conservation- Mm... which is very unique. So
• 16:48
  that's where I am, and that's, that, that unique combination of experiences I think has set me up to, well, be in the position from where I am now leading the project. There you go.
• 16:57
  I love that, and I love that phrase, the unique combination of experiences, and here I am. I mean, that is, my kids are like, "Have you always had this job?" I'm like, "Sweet Jesus, no, I have not."
• 17:06
  My sixth grader, well, he was a sixth grader, now he's in eighth grade, different human obviously now, but I remember at one point, he was like two or three weeks into middle school, and we all remember middle school.
• 17:17
  My theme to him was no one escapes unscathed. I remember at one point he was like, "It's just, I don't know, I feel like all those seventh graders just have their life figured out and know what they're gonna do."
• 17:27
  And I was like, "Oh, no. No. No, I promise."
• 17:32
  And honestly, that was one of my, the fun things about going to a liberal arts college having no idea what I was doing is how many kids came in because of family pressure or their own interests who were like, "I'm gonna be a doctor."
• 17:43
  And then they took some weird shit on Greek history or whatever it is, and they were like, "I don't know. Art's pretty awesome." And you just never know, and they might come back to that, right?
• 17:52
  They might come back to that. And they might be people who illustrate DNA or whatever it might be. Anyways, combination of experiences. I love that.
• 18:00
  So let's talk about, let's get weird about trees and, and what you guys have been working on. So Andy, like you said, you've been doing this for a long time, and I'm, I had, sorry, I have my notes over here.
• 18:10
  I'm not looking out the window. You took over b- both of the project's original founders, I believe, passed away shortly after that. I think they started in the mid-'80s, late '80s, something like that?
• 18:20
  Or as my children call it, the 1900s. Yep, that sounds familiar too.
• 18:24
  Yeah, so our project started in 1989, 1990, and my predecessors, Bill Powell and Chuck Maynard, again, had this unique set of experiences that were kinda complimentary to each other and really set us up very well and, and started this, this whole effort.
• 18:42
  And so I joined in 2003 to start my master's degree. Very naive, but happy to learn. Mm-hmm. And been going since then.
• 18:55
  And right, gradually worked on different aspects of the project, and then as Bill and Chuck were approaching retirement age, we started talking about me becoming an assistant director of the, to the project, and then both unfortunately had health issues.
• 19:10
  Bill was diagnosed with cancer and passed away too early, and I'm honored to carry on the work.
• 19:16
  You both have signed up for, again, not just a project that started in the, in, in, in the late 1980s, but, you know, this blight started early 20th century? Is that right, basically?
• 19:27
  And, and we can get to that a little bit, but it's, it's very interesting to me as we talk about,
• 19:33
  at least in our work, you know, we, we, we'll, we'll go from tree DNA to, to civil rights, which, which are often intermixed in a lot of ways, but these are very long fights that many of us probably will not see the end of because the people before us didn't.
• 19:47
  But that's what got us here in a lot of ways, right? Is, is the work that came between us, and came before a lot of us, even if some of us, like people who look like me, didn't have to do a lot of that work.
• 19:58
  But you guys, this is... Trees are not easy. You, you're gonna plant trees.
• 20:03
  This is not, you know, so the lifespan of some of these people who work in different biological contexts where the, you know, a, a, a fruit fly has a lifespan of three days, and you're like, "Well, here's the new generation."
• 20:13
  The stuff you're planting now, you know, has decades in front of it before you can see the long-term effect of some of these things. Is that daunting or is that exciting? Absolutely both.
• 20:23
  It is daunting in the sense that, yeah, these trees are hopefully gonna outlive me and outlive my children- Mm-hmm...
• 20:30
  and, and can contribute to that broader impact, but also exciting because we get to, well, participate in that thing that's bigger than me, but also look for ways to improve it.
• 20:43
  So just the, you mentioned the generation time of trees. Yeah, for chestnuts, that's typically at least seven years before a few trees can cross-pollinate and make a viable offspring.
• 20:55
  It can range from five to 30-plus years, but several years anyway.
• 21:00
  But through some unique, or I guess I should say creative approaches to taking care of plants indoors in controlled conditions, we've been able to shorten that generation time under careful conditions to about one year.
• 21:15
  So we can- Hmm... be producing pollen on little potted chestnut trees indoors year-round, storing it in a freezer, taking it outside to do pollinations, and we can get almost a generation every year.
• 21:30
  So that's hugely influential, not only for our own program, but any other chestnut breeding, potentially other types of tree breeding programs to, to just speed up that generation time and understand more about how those trees work.
• 21:44
  Sophia, you, your work concerns the, the soil around it. So can we... I used to have a copy of it here. I just, really great... I've had, I've had guests on about trees, let's put it that way.
• 21:57
  We have, we have all heard trees can migrate now. Trees, we know that they talk to each other. We know about these underground networks, all this stuff.
• 22:05
  You all are trying to eventually get to a place, and I know you've had some recent approvals, where you can plant these trees outside, that you've done a lot of work on that I understand that's been kinda complicated 'cause at one point we thought one tree was a different tree.
• 22:19
  When does your work really come into play for telling people, you- Andrew was, was talking about the regulatory stuff, like, the underworld is okay.
• 22:28
  W- we're putting, we're not, you know, this isn't gonna turn into The Last of Us. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, so my work kind of started as we're working with a transgenic, like genetically modified organism.
• 22:41
  And so because of that, we're doing a lot of, and we have done a lot of environmental impact studies to make sure, you know, the, this, our darling trees are not rocking the boat ecologically- Mm-hmm...
• 22:53
  compared to a traditionally bred chestnut tree. Mm. Which largely it's very close. Like, it's the difference of 100% chestnut versus 99.999. Mm-hmm.
• 23:05
  So this kinda started of, especially in popular science, the microbiome has been such a big buzzword. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you, people talking about, you know, their own gut microbiomes. Yeah.
• 23:15
  There's probiotics in sodas now and things like that. But also that there's this supportive benefit of a well-balanced microbiome for trees- Mm-hmm... especially below ground.
• 23:25
  So started out as, well, let's see if there's any difference in the type of bacteria and fungi that associate below ground with the transgenic trees versus the non-transgenic. Mm.
• 23:36
  And kind of establishing a baseline for, like, what that looks like.
• 23:40
  And then next I went and I collected some soil from some sites across New York State where the landowners were interested in planting chestnuts for restoration purposes.
• 23:50
  And, you know, their land had a history of agricultural land use, which is a really common scenario for, like, afforestation or land rec- reclamation of, like- Mm-hmm...
• 24:00
  reforesting these areas that haven't been forested for a while. Right. And that sort of interaction with the land, like whether it's crops or livestock, affects, you know, the diversity below ground.
• 24:12
  So kind of looking to see if I could find any indicator species that might be able to help or even hinder these, these trees, like, if we were to plant them, kind of to, hoping to inform site suitability.
• 24:24
  So can we say, based off, like, a couple soil tests and DNA extractions and everything- Are we good to put these trees directly in the ground? 'Cause it is kind of an investment, you know, with these kind of,
• 24:35
  especially as we're hoping to get these transgenic trees out into the world, right, eventually. And we're getting closer and closer every day.
• 24:42
  Is this something we can just do, like chuck like 50 in the ground, or is there a lower diversity below ground? Maybe we need to plant some things beforehand. Hmm.
• 24:51
  So that's kind of where the bulk of my project kind of fits in with like now we're getting closer to deregulation. We can begin to think of restoration scenarios. How might microbes be supportive of those goals?
• 25:06
  All I can think about is how complicated this part must be. Not to shortchange you, Andy, but like- Oh, no, no... you mentioned sort of a history of a plot of land in New York State. Mm-hmm.
• 25:17
  To say nothing of the 10,000 years that native peoples and, and what they grew or didn't grew in any, grow in any beginning of season, or different things in different seasons, and when they harvested and w- and when they didn't, and then the, all the different things we've done and now leached into the soil and this and that.
• 25:32
  And the fact that bacteria beat us here, and they will definitely outlast us. Mm-hmm. The second you've got one acre of land, you're like, "I know the whole history here. We can put them here."
• 25:43
  40 feet down the fucking road, it's a totally different thing, much less anywhere else- Yeah... in this incredibly wide country.
• 25:50
  And I know, you know, again, my limited understanding of, of, of the chestnuts was, you know, I'm very East Coast biased, you know, is that they were here.
• 25:58
  But still, you know, from, from the very soil rich Southeast up to, you know, we've got the, the fall line up here towards Richmond's different. My front yard's filled with beeches. Down the street is pines.
• 26:09
  Like, how do you proceed and go like, "No, I'm pretty sure it'll work in more and more places"? Is there some sort of common denominator? Keeping in mind, again, I'm not 100% sure what bacteria is. Yeah, no problem.
• 26:22
  So you bring up a really good point. Like, especially like microbiomes can, can differ in like their community structure in a matter of inches. Mm-hmm. Right?
• 26:33
  So when I went sampling to collect this soil that I was testing, I did it in such a way that kinda like approximates the largest amount.
• 26:43
  So I did a square plot with that are, you know, 50 meters on each side, and collected from each corner in the center to kinda get an approximation of that area. Mm-hmm.
• 26:53
  And ran transects into forested areas to see how that, you know, microbiome might change as y- you get from like an open field setting more into like forested conditions and things like that. So especially with like this
• 27:09
  big of, of a scale, like these microbiomes are kind of approximations. Mm-hmm. And site by site, you're gonna see like site specific microbes, right?
• 27:20
  So you can largely, you know, get a good understanding of the overarching, like who are the big players.
• 27:27
  What I'm hoping to find, you know, from this analysis is not like, here's the one bacteria you need to give your chestnuts or else it'll die- Right... right?
• 27:36
  It'll probably be like, here's this like panel of a bunch of different microbes, you know, bacteria and fungi, that might be really helpful for, for these trees below ground so that way they, you know, have a better chance of surviving or, or just, you know, dealing with stress in general.
• 27:54
  Mm-hmm. Just like a well-balanced, quote-unquote, "healthy" microbiome is better for us, right? Sure. It's the same for these trees. So not looking, again, for a silver bullet or anything, but kind of- Mm-hmm...
• 28:06
  like a, a wider understanding of more diversity below ground is likely to be more supportive- Mm... for trees above ground.
• 28:14
  We also, here, like in the Northeast, are very lucky is that we don't have to deal with any soil pathogens. Mm-hmm.
• 28:23
  Like in the South, they have this disease called ink disease that affects chestnuts that lives in the soil, but I have the luxury of working in New York State where it's not an issue and hopefully never will be.
• 28:35
  Fingers crossed. That is also something like to take account of. I'm working with what will likely largely be helpful organisms because we don't have any big antagonists, or maybe I will identify some antagonists.
• 28:47
  Mm-hmm. But, you know, it's, it's this trying to capture a community structure below ground that we can't even see and that we need these crazy analyses in order to even understand is, is really tricky.
• 29:00
  And so I'm doing it our best- Really tricky. I'm sitting here, I'm like, "Is there bacteria? Did I wash my hands?" It's amazing. I love really tricky. Thank you for making it gentle for me. I appreciate that. So
• 29:13
  Andy, to come back to that, you know, we talked about the, the underground world and, and, you know, this idea of all these different elements in different places, right?
• 29:22
  And again, we had done a lot of agriculture by 1900. We, everyone who had been here, right? On purpose or inadvertently, whatever it might be. So this thing hits, right?
• 29:32
  In my understanding, it's four billion trees-ish across 200 million acres, Maine to Georgia, starting, as far as we could tell, ground zero, right, was Bronx Zoo, something like that.
• 29:45
  How does, keeping in mind 1900 is, again, no idea, germ theory, all these things are so new. How do we understand and start to deal with a blight and chase it down and understand it?
• 30:01
  Did we have to wait until 1989 to have the tools and the knowledge to do that? Or were we just completely lost at the time?
• 30:08
  Like, how does something so small that we barely understand do that, and then how do we get to here?
• 30:14
  That's a great question because I think that chestnut blight was really the example that expanded people's understanding of that, at least as far as an introduced pathogen that affects trees.
• 30:28
  That was the first one we had seen that really wiped through and made such a huge impactful difference, dis- yeah, difference to ecosystems.
• 30:36
  And it was this confluence of, yeah, global shipping and trade and importation of ornamental trees, but also our understanding of the biology and the, the fact that microbes are causing these diseases.
• 30:48
  People realized fairly early on as they were seeing these trees die, that it was caused by a fungus. They could grow this thing in the lab and knew that it caused the disease.
• 30:59
  And so the first, first efforts that were made to control it were spray something on the tree that kills fungi. And there were a few examples of that, and it didn't really work with chestnut blight.
• 31:11
  The next thing that was tried was look for where it came from, Asia, in this case, probably China, and look for related trees there.
• 31:21
  Sure enough, there are Chinese chestnuts that co-evolved with the chestnut blight and are inherently resistant, generally, to the blight. And then bring those over here and plant those instead. Mm-hmm.
• 31:33
  And so people have been planting Chinese chestnuts for 100-plus years- Mm-hmm... and trying to cross Chinese and American chestnuts. And planting Chinese chestnuts wasn't a simple solution either.
• 31:45
  Breeding between the two species is still ongoing. Also, not a simple solution. Mm-hmm. But all of those things, all of those approaches have worked at least to some degree in other situations.
• 31:58
  So there are some cases where pesticide treatments or fungicides or topical sprays or whatever can do a pretty good job of controlling a pest.
• 32:05
  If you catch something early and you can kill it off before it has a chance to spread, that has prevented other diseases from, from becoming so problematic.
• 32:14
  Traditional breeding or replacements, planting closely related stuff can address- Mm-hmm... these issues in some cases. Didn't work for chestnut. So to answer your question, yeah, I think in this case,
• 32:28
  it was technology that's been developed in the last few decades that's, that's really our only hope for addressing this. There are a few approaches that have potential.
• 32:37
  Biotechnology is not going to be the only thing that- Mm-hmm... can possibly save American chestnut trees, but I think it has a role to play. Sure.
• 32:45
  And I think even more importantly than that, people should be considering biotechnology as a conservation tool. Mm-hmm.
• 32:53
  Where until now, it's been used for medicine and agriculture, and has largely revolutionized those fields, but hasn't really been accepted for conservation. Mm.
• 33:03
  And I don't think we have the luxury of taking our time and waiting to see how things will play out in the conservation space. So yeah, I, I feel strongly that we should be trying these things [laughs] and- Mm-hmm...
• 33:16
  and being open to the use of modern tools for, for conservation.
• 33:20
  But at the same time, you have such a history of understanding and a knowledge of, of the regulatory frameworks, you know, and the pros and cons of those, which I fully get, right? That, you know, you just can't...
• 33:31
  One of you said, "Chuck a bunch of chestnuts out there," right? Which is what I've, which is what [laughs] I would do, obviously.
• 33:38
  So y- you understand, yes, and we have to respect the, you know, again, some of these regulations are, are, are brutal and hold things back, and some of them are really important 'cause we gotta protect what, what we actually still have, right?
• 33:53
  I wanna understand a little bit. So first of all, why are they called Darling chestnuts? Who's Darling? Darling comes from a family name. The, one of the people who originated this project was named Herb Darling. Okay.
• 34:07
  He was not a scientist. He was a hunter and a business owner in Western New York, and
• 34:12
  as I understand it, he and some of his friends kinda stumbled across a chestnut tree in the woods as they were out hunting, out, out, they were outdoorsmen. Sure.
• 34:21
  And this would've been in the 1980s, and so before you could just go home and Google it, but they were- Uh-huh... able to read about this.
• 34:28
  They discovered that it is a chestnut tree, looking at the history of chestnuts, the plight and the blight of, of chestnuts. And they became aware of the traditional breeding program.
• 34:40
  That was kind of the only option at the time of s- hope, cross American and Chinese chestnuts and kinda hope for the best combination of traits in their offspring.
• 34:49
  They were not thrilled with that traditional breeding approach in this case, and so they were generally aware that there were newer technologies that might be applied. So they went around to universities.
• 35:00
  They weren't the scientists, but they went and tried to talk to the scientists- Mm... about whether other approaches might make sense here.
• 35:06
  They eventually landed here with my predecessors, Bill and Chuck, who we talked about.
• 35:11
  And then Herb went on to help found a group, a nonprofit at the time, called the New York Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. Now it's under a different name called American Chestnut Restoration Incorporated.
• 35:26
  But this group really started the whole project and has been continually supportive. And so that, that core of enthusiasts- Mm-hmm...
• 35:34
  who are not scientists, but just excited about the science, excited to participate, excited to chuck chestnuts- Yeah...
• 35:40
  trees in the ground, has, has underpinned our work, has, has really guided our, our approach and [laughs] helped us stick with it even when, even through some challenges.
• 35:50
  And so Herb's founding and support of this group and of our project led us to name Darling Trees after him and his family. Amazing. I love that.
• 36:00
  That's, the, the, the perseverance of someone who's not 100% sure what they're talking about, I can fully empathize with. I'm into it.
• 36:07
  It's when I use the little, like the eBird, the Cornell app for listening to birds- Oh, really?... and I'm like, "Am I a fucking genius?" Like, it's amazing.
• 36:15
  So you talked about some challenges, and again, limited understanding here. Apparently, two trees got confused at some point. Is that right?
• 36:22
  The Darling 58 and Darling 54, it sounds like we're talking about the robots in Ex Machina here, so I'm trying to, trying to understand, and perhaps some sort of tiff with the American Chestnut Foundation.
• 36:33
  I can't imagine, first of all, how you keep track of all this in the first place, but I guess what happened, is that sort of thing inevitable in this kind of work?
• 36:41
  And how do you proceed from there, again, knowing that then Sophia's gotta deal with all the people who are like, "You're putting the genetically modified stuff in the ground"?
• 36:50
  H- how do you-- how did you navigate that, and how do you continue to do that? Yeah, so what happened is we had these two lines of trees, Darling 54, Darling 58, and the Darling 54s had the wrong label. So- Happens...
• 37:05
  we were testing trees that had the wrong label. We messed up the label. So what we were actually testing all along was Darling 54- Hmm... that had been labeled as Darling 58. So- Interesting...
• 37:17
  it wasn't that we were testing the wrong trees. It wasn't that- Yeah... any of the data is, is wrong or anything like that.
• 37:23
  We were testing trees that had the wrong label on them, and that came out, unfortunately, right around the time of Bill's death in late 2023. Mm.
• 37:31
  And so that's when The Chestnut Foundation decided to stop their support of our work that they'd been supporting for just the last few years leading up to that.
• 37:41
  They used the name as a chance to stop their support, I guess. There's probably more going on there, but- Sure... so what we did was correct the error. Sure. We approached the regulatory agencies primarily.
• 37:53
  We had already submitted something to the USDA for the, the approval, and so we said, "We need to correct the name," and they said, "Okay, send us corrections." We did. Mm-hmm. They corrected it. We moved on.
• 38:04
  We got their approval a few months ago. So we've corrected it. We're good. Yeah. And we're ready to, to move forward. I just can't imagine, again, like I,
• 38:16
  I understand having worked with so many organizations of, of so many kinds who, who, who have no margins and people working very hard, and when they commit money to something, they're terrified the entire time.
• 38:28
  I, I, I get it, but I also, again, like I've had con- two different conversations with people who are working on, somewhat for, somewhat against, like mosquito gene drives.
• 38:38
  Like the complexity of keeping track of these projects, like these things are unfortunately inevitable.
• 38:44
  You hope that harm is reduced, and there's practices in place to do that, and again, no one had chucked 50 chestnuts out the window to see what had happened yet, mixing them up, but it, it is gonna happen.
• 38:55
  And, and hopefully science and, and your work can, can learn from that, you know, again, even if it's just a label, and, and go on.
• 39:03
  But again, then you gotta deal with this regulatory framework, which doesn't make it easy in the first place, right?
• 39:09
  Right, and part of it is that the regulatory framework that you mentioned is targeted so specifically to the process, to the technologies- Mm-hmm...
• 39:19
  that we use to, to create these trees, and it's not focused so much on potential harm or actual risks involved in different approaches. Mm-hmm.
• 39:29
  So for example, we know that there are some bad outcomes, some risks that can occur from traditional breeding of chestnuts. Sure.
• 39:39
  If you do some types of crosses with a Chinese chestnut pollen onto an American chestnut tree, for example, the offspring are male sterile and don't form viable pollen. Wow.
• 39:51
  They still form viable female flowers, and then if those get pollinated by other pollen, their offspring are fine, so this is reversible. But it's just weird stuff can happen even with- Yeah... traditional breeding.
• 40:04
  Yeah. But because it's traditional breeding, it's not regulated at all. Right. And so the biotech approach, even though it's making a much smaller change to the genome- Mm-hmm... is very tightly regulated.
• 40:16
  We know down to the base pair exactly- Right... what changes have been made to the billions of base pairs of DNA in that whole organism- Right...
• 40:25
  where none of that is required to be reviewed before a, a traditionally bred tree gets released- Right... or used in the environment. So kind of a double standard, but- Sure, and, and-...
• 40:36
  we can now say confidently- Yeah, and you have to empathize a little bit with it again, like with new thing-- I mean, you know, we did the, with- Sure...
• 40:42
  mRNA, and then all of a sudden, look, man, some billions of people have versions of these shots and of many different versions, Sophia, like your work, who all have
• 40:52
  probably honestly innumerable combinations of underlying factors involved, right? We're, we're pretty sure we're good to go, but I get it.
• 41:00
  However, you know, the, the, like you said, traditional breeding, like traditional methods of, you know, testing for, for vaccines and, you know, the way they distributed them, not, not exactly amazing, but it was the best we had.
• 41:14
  It's a little bit how I think about now something like chemotherapy, where you're like, look, at some point, we're gonna look back and say, "Oh my God, that was barbaric," but for a very long time, it's been the best tool we have, which is fight fire with fire, you know?
• 41:28
  But hopefully something like immunology becomes less expensive, more applicable to more people 'cause like you said, we have such a specific knowledge of what we're doing and how we're doing it and what the potential impacts might be, right?
• 41:41
  Sophia, so my front yard, as alluded to, is full of enormous, beautiful beech trees. My understanding is that you're gonna save them from something that might happen because of what you're learning here.
• 41:53
  So please tell me how you're gonna do that 'cause my kids will kill me if I- Yeah... kill those two. Okay, so I, right off the bat, I don't think I'm the one saving them.
• 42:04
  The goal right now, beech leaf disease in particular, which is what my research during my master's focused on, also as a part of The Chestnut Project, was kind of-- It's a, it's a newer pathogen on our landscape, right?
• 42:18
  It was first introduced to United States, North America in 2018. It got to New York in 2022, so, like, it's only been here for- Sure... for a short amount of time. And it's also a really unique system.
• 42:35
  So it's caused by instead of a, like a bacteria or a fungi, it's caused by a nematode Which What'd you call me? Are you familiar? No. What is a nematode? So a nematode is a microscopic animal- Sure...
• 42:51
  in the phylum Nematoda. But it's basically a microscopic worm. Okay. Sounds fun. So they're one of the most abundant animal phyla on the planet. A lot of them live in, like, ocean environments. There's a lot of...
• 43:08
  They're parasites of animals as well as plants. But this nematode in particular, Litynkus crenatae, is a pathogen of a forest tree, specifically a foliar pathogen. And there are
• 43:22
  next to no other examples of a foliar nematode in a tree species that we can look to to base off any assumptions or questions. So kind of operating a little bit blind.
• 43:35
  We're starting from zero of understanding this disease. Do you like that? Um, it's really cool. It's a really unique opportunity. Mm-hmm. And sometimes pathologists get a bad rap because it's like, are you...
• 43:47
  You're getting a bit too excited for this horribly invasive organism that's devastating these tree species. Like- Yeah...
• 43:54
  but we're trying to figure out, the consensus is, like, figuring out what exactly the target is before we start trying to figure out how to stop it or how to mitigate it. So- What the worm's target is? Apologize. Oh, no.
• 44:09
  No, it's no problem. Sorry, that was just a maybe poor analogy.
• 44:13
  But trying to figure out as much as we can about how the nematode is functioning in the system and as a pathogen and in these beech trees so we can figure out what are some points in their life cycle in how they interact with their environment that we could potentially put an obstacle that makes them a worse pathogen or kills them or something along those lines that we're able to better understand how it's spreading, how it's infecting, how it's perpetuating symptoms.
• 44:44
  Mm-hmm. So beech leaf disease, let me know how granular I can get with this. But- That's a very kind way of putting it. Thank you. No worries. It, the nematodes will get into beech leaves. Mm-hmm.
• 44:58
  And it's really tricky to track because it takes a full year of the nematodes being in a tree for symptoms to show. And symptoms are these, like, thick, darker green bands in between leaf veins. Okay.
• 45:10
  So they look striped. Okay. And it's also tricky because these infection rates are, like, leaf by leaf too because all the symptoms are predeterminant in the leaf bud.
• 45:22
  So in the fall, all the nematodes will leave the leaf and get into the leaf bud, and they'll, there's the, like, leaf primordia or baby leaf that's gonna be next year's leaf. Mm-hmm. And the adults will
• 45:34
  have a good time, lay some eggs- When two leaves love each other... die. Right. Very much. Mm-hmm. And then the juveniles will mess up the cellular division of this little baby leaf.
• 45:45
  And what they do is they add a bunch of layers of this spongy mesophyll, like the cream filling of a beech leaf, which is where, like, when it emerges from the bud and leafs out, they can get fat and happy on chlorophyll- Mm-hmm...
• 45:59
  and, you know, live out the rest of their life cycle. Now, for the tree, this is an issue because those thicker leaves don't photosynthesize as well. Like- Hmm...
• 46:08
  it's hard for them to finish all their metabolic processes and everything. Hmm.
• 46:12
  So especially severely symptomatic leaves that are really thick and really dark, they'll drop those leaves early, and they'll try to push out a better leaf, but those are, like, really thin and dinky.
• 46:23
  It's kind of like a chronic disease for these trees. So it's estimated that for saplings, it will kill them in, like, two to five years, in adults, six to 10.
• 46:34
  But it's kind of a question of, is it actually killing them, or is it just weakening them to the point where they're getting infected with other pathogens- It's like it's-... or they're getting hit by other pests?...
• 46:43
  one of those COVID death total questions, right? Of did you die because- Yeah... of COVID or with COVID, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it, it's tricky.
• 46:51
  So my work in particular was looking at, we know the nematodes are in the leaf. What happens when those leaves senesce and, you know, fall to the ground in, in autumn? Are they still able to live in the leaf- Right...
• 47:03
  or are they dormant? Are they viable? Could this potentially be where some of these nematodes are coming from? And long story short, yeah. It's not unheard of, especially with the family they're from.
• 47:16
  There's one nematode in the same family they're from that has been known to live in an anhydrobiotic state, so completely dehydrated, no water, for 20 years, and then rehydrate, and then just go back to its day.
• 47:30
  Um- My kids are such assholes when they forget their water bottle for 45 minutes. I know, right? If only they were nematodes. That's crazy. Yeah. So that's just one aspect.
• 47:40
  So now we have this understanding that most likely they are, you know... Leaf litter is probably where they're, like, building up inoculum. So maybe, you know, they're moving around or things like that.
• 47:51
  There was a paper that came out in 2024 in a, out of a forest stand in Pennsylvania where they found nematodes in wind traps, that they're being blown around.
• 48:01
  So it's this really complex problem that is likely not going to be solved with one specific thing, right?
• 48:10
  So it's, it's very tricky, and it's very interesting, especially with American chestnut as this kind of comparison where, you know, all the work that has been done with American chestnut has been dealing with a pathogen that's ubiquitous, right?
• 48:25
  Mm-hmm. That's everywhere, 'cause it can live on oak trees asymptomatically. So it's, it's kind of like wherever chestnuts would grow, it's already there. So as pessimistic- That's crazy...
• 48:36
  as it sounds, some of, you know, some of the thought is, well, maybe we need to prepare for this nematode to be like chestnut blight. Like- Right...
• 48:45
  what do we need to do to prepare to conserve- The American beech genetics that are out on our landscape, and, you know, there's another pathogen of, of beech, beech bark disease that's more prevalent in the North.
• 48:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:58
  That we've found, you know, not us specifically, but beech researchers have found, you know, resistant or, or lingering beech that don't have beech bark disease, so maybe trying to see if we can get started what we've been doing with chestnuts, but for something similar with beech.
• 49:15
  Which we've also done with, as Andy mentioned, like elm, and- Mm-hmm... um, starting to work with ash as well. And I think, uh, there's been some cool work being done.
• 49:25
  We already have beech into tissue culture, which is like- Sure... this mad science. I'm not, I, I've never done tissue culture, but every time I hear about it, I imagine lab coats and- Totally. Aliens.
• 49:37
  Uh, it's alive, you know? S- That's amazing. Let me ask you this question, 'cause I love two things. Sure. I love a lot of things. Mm-hmm. But I love two things. Yeah.
• 49:45
  I really fucking love the idea of, and the, how the US spent so much of the 20th century doing basic research, right? It is- Mm-hmm...
• 49:53
  what helped build our university system in so many ways, and so many of these inventions that we capitalized on in a thousand different ways.
• 50:00
  But before we get to Edison doing all his light bulbs and all these different things, and your, your Dyson- Yeah... and all this stuff, you have to do this basic research of like, "I don't know." Mm-hmm.
• 50:08
  "Let's keep pulling this string." Where Andy has gone really far down the road with this other thing I really love, which is there's a really great- Mm-hmm...
• 50:14
  economist named Mariana Mazzucato, and she has this idea of... She has this great book. She's a bunch of stuff. She's very smart. Called The Mission-Based Economy.
• 50:21
  And there's a lot to take out of it, but there's one little thing that I really love, which is this idea, and I'm gonna bastardize it, which is, Sophie, if you're like, "Okay, my goal, my clear measurable outcome, is to put a woman on the moon, and to bring her home safely."
• 50:38
  I have to design everything in my project reverse engineered from that. The paint colors, the teams I pick, all these different things.
• 50:47
  You're past basic research for most of that, because you've done the things to be able to probably confidently start to say that, right? To the, that I, that- Mm-hmm...
• 50:55
  not only can you get her there, not only can you put her on the moon, but you can also bring her back safely, which is a whole different can of fucking worms, right?
• 51:02
  In what you're describing, it seems like there's still a lot of push/pull as you're s- looking at everything that Andy and those folks have done with The Chestnut Project, and c- continue to do,
• 51:13
  with all these other trees and all these other environments underground. Between we gotta go back to do some more basic research, and we gotta pursue something like this, like the beech, the one beech tree problem.
• 51:24
  Apparently there's two now. Thanks for that. And how it might apply to go and taking a step back and go, "Oh, do we need to prepare for a world of that?" Knowing again- Mm-hmm...
• 51:32
  what's happening with fungi in a warmer world and, and things like that. Mm-hmm. So how, how do you decide what the fuck to do every day? Like, how do you decide to, today I wanna- Yeah...
• 51:41
  do basic research, throw shit against the wall for this, or do I wanna like, all right, it's time to pick a lane, and it's time to hone in? Mm-hmm.
• 51:47
  Or is the answer we just need more funding and more people like you, which is... Yeah. Fair. I mean, I should also highlight one of my colleagues, Allison Humber, who's a PhD candidate- Mm-hmm...
• 51:57
  also working with Chestnut Project, is looking at, you know, microbial biocontrols that could potentially help. And with, with beech specifically.
• 52:06
  And there are a lot of experimental chemical treatments for individual, more high value trees, like trees in your yard, that are being investigated, but the tricky part is what works for someone's yard is not gonna work on a forest landscape.
• 52:19
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And also, beech don't have the same reputation as chestnut. Foresters are not a fan of beech. They, they really don't. So I- Fuck them. I love my beech trees. Yeah, so it's not only is it...
• 52:34
  It's one where similar to like when chestnut blight first became this very big apparent problem, trying a lot of different methods, throwing spaghetti at the wall, seeing what sticks.
• 52:44
  In the '60s or '70s, they irradiated chestnuts to try and see- Sure... if they made Spider-Man-esque trees that had this crazy resistance to the blight. Mm-hmm. It just made some very weird trees.
• 52:59
  But I think with, with beech specifically, we're still trying to figure out what this system looks like as a whole, so we can figure out where weak points are that we could potentially instigate some sort of management.
• 53:14
  So a lot of it is still really in flux, 'cause we still don't know exactly everything. So- It feel, it feel- But it doesn't hurt to like- It feels like a bit of an understatement, doesn't it? Sorry.
• 53:22
  So it's kind of a contingency plan, like- Sure... to try and do what we can to like see if we can... You know, it took 10 years to get American chestnut into tissue culture, which is what we used- Mm-hmm...
• 53:32
  to make that expedited process that Andy was talking about. Yeah. And so if we get tissue in, in, and then also we can capture a bunch of the genetic diversity out on the landscape, it kind of is a just in case.
• 53:44
  It wouldn't hurt to try and get these things started. Maybe try to like, you know, I think they're trying to do some transgenic events similar to the darling right now.
• 53:52
  They're just testing if we could get this ruby indicator gene to make these trees red right now to like- Mm-hmm... proof of concept. Mm-hmm.
• 53:59
  While a lot of other people are, are also working on different aspects, not only of just trying to figure out what's going on. Mm-hmm. How do we deal with, with a nematode that's- Mm-hmm... that's affecting our trees?
• 54:11
  People are also beginning to think of, of management stra- strategies, especially for a forest, which is just so different. Which is, to get to Andy, back to your, to your work here. Mm-hmm.
• 54:23
  That is the goal, is to be able to start reforestation in places, to be clear, like- Exactly... haven't had forests in a very long time in a lot of places.
• 54:32
  You know, they're doing a lot of the rewilding of the highlands in Scotland. All, all these different things, like that is the eventual... Y- eventually you do have to start thinking what about at scale, right?
• 54:43
  What about in the- Mm-hmm... quote unquote wild? So Andy- Tell me, you asked the EPA to let you plant 280 acres of Darling 54, is that right, in, in 28 states? What did they say and where do we go from here? Yeah.
• 54:56
  We're still working with EPA, so we don't know... They haven't given us a specific answer yet, but we're figuring out what that'll mean, and the next step with EPA is basically expanded permits.
• 55:07
  Like you said, a limited number of states, a limited number of acres, but enough that it's a diversity of environments well beyond what we've been able to test so far.
• 55:16
  So we'll be able to see how they do in different, different parts of their geographic range- Mm-hmm... and test different establishment techniques.
• 55:22
  And you mentioned planting new forests, and that's some of it, and it goes back to some of the agricultural land use and land use- Mm-hmm... changes that Sophia mentioned. Mm-hmm.
• 55:31
  The, there will be some aspect of planting chestnuts, and hopefully other mixed native species, in places that didn't previously have forests, or didn't immediately previously have forests.
• 55:43
  There will also be priorities for integrating chestnuts into existing forests. Mm-hmm. Especially in the Northeast, we have a lot of forested land that just doesn't have chestnuts, at least not prominently.
• 55:55
  And so historically, maybe it did. In the future, hopefully it will. Mm.
• 55:59
  So people are already thinking about how to log that, how to benefit from the forests, how to maintain the forests, what can we, you know, not pull out, but what c- how can we benefit from the forests?
• 56:12
  What can we get from them? How can these forests provide services that we, as people, need?
• 56:19
  And there are responsible ways to do that, and so people are logging and being selective with how they're cutting, and then being intentional about what they replant after logging, and things like that.
• 56:28
  Forest management is its own field, and that's not my field, but there are smart people doing it. And so my goal would be, how can we think about getting chestnuts integrated into that, that system that already exists?
• 56:40
  And so I think there's good potential there, both for the forests that already exist as forests, and also for areas that weren't forests. Both, though, being careful...
• 56:54
  Well, being just responsible with what we're planting, knowing that we're probably losing other native species as we speak, or at least they're declining due to pests and pathogens and environmental pressures and climate change and droughts and floods and all of the, the, the things that we've been talking about.
• 57:12
  But if we can offer biotechnology as a potential tool to add species back into that mix, rather than just having them pulled out of the mix- Mm-hmm... I think that's really one of the broadest goals.
• 57:25
  One, I volunteer as tribute. If it's possible to piss my HOA off more by planting, I will call it invasive, you don't have to, a, a chestnut, I'm fully in. You can label it whatever you want. It'll be great.
• 57:39
  No, but actually, getting to the what can I do part of this, where I could keep having this conversation forever, uh, even though Sophia's only used 5% of her brain to talk to me.
• 57:48
  How does someone on the East Coast that is a large landowner of, of whatever kind, small farmer, whatever it might be, let's say the EPA is like, "Sure, man, go... Best, best wishes."
• 58:01
  How, how does someone get in line for that? How can they work on that? And then, because most people are not that, how do they... else do they support this project and other versions of it?
• 58:09
  'Cause as Sophia said, you know, there's more coming down the pipe here, and there's stuff going on every day. Yeah. Well, first answer is you can support us directly.
• 58:18
  Go to our website and make a donation and support our research. But more broadly, plant chestnut trees. So even though we can't widely distribute the transgenic chestnuts yet, plant wild chestnuts.
• 58:30
  Plant the non-transgenic varieties. Just become aware of it. And so part of it is letting people just get practice planting chestnuts- Mm...
• 58:38
  and they don't have to be blight tolerant chestnuts to- for you to get an idea of whether this is a good spot, whether the chestnut's likely to get established there, 'cause they won't typically get blight for 5 or 10 years after you plant them, depending on the area anyway.
• 58:51
  Mm-hmm. So just planting wild chestnuts. That also is a benefit for when we are able to distribute blight tolerant material.
• 58:59
  If there are established chestnuts there, even if they're starting to succumb to blight, they'll occasionally flower if they're in a good location, and they can cross-pollinate. That's gonna be the start of- Mm-hmm...
• 59:10
  restoration, when our blight tolerant material, our engineered trees, can get out and start intercrossing with some of the few remnant trees.
• 59:18
  Whether they're carefully cultivated by people or out in the wild, if they can cross-pollinate, that will be capturing some of the genetic diversity that was still there but hasn't been allowed to really thrive for 100 years.
• 59:31
  Yeah. And so the offspring of those crosses hopefully can. If they have a little bit more blight tolerance, that'll be the, the chance to start building a population. Mm.
• 59:41
  It's still going to be a multi-generational project and, like I said earlier, there won't be any simple solutions that solve the whole thing- Mm-hmm... but that's a start. That's a start- Sure... is plant some chestnuts.
• 59:53
  Is there any sort of app or map or d- or, or something like Tree Snap or Plant Snap or anything provide any sort of data for you of what's already out there, if there is that much?
• 1:00:03
  Or if I go get some chestnuts, wherever someone gets chestnuts, and plant them in my yard, chuck them into my yard, can I then Plant Snap them and you'll be like, "Oh, great. Look, he, he did a, he did a chestnut"? Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  There's a couple of apps. Tree Snap is one. iNaturalist is another one. Mm-hmm. And so those are more used if people find a big, wild chestnut- Mm-hmm...
• 1:00:25
  even if it's declining from blight or just really isolated and happens to be- It's data, though... healthy so far. Exactly. And so- Okay...
• 1:00:31
  especially a Naturalist, I think, is a good example of sometimes those locations are shared, so you can go and see. Other people can go and share the excitement of this wild find.
• 1:00:41
  Other times, a landowner might not want that attention toward a rare tree, and so the location might be hidden. But it can be still shared with researchers. Mm-hmm. So yes, that's definitely beneficial.
• 1:00:52
  And as far as where to get chestnuts, the group I mentioned earlier, ACR- Mm-hmm... American Chestnut Restoration Incorporated. It's a nonprofit.
• 1:00:59
  You can join that, and if you ask them for chestnuts, they'll either hook you up with someone local who might have some chestnuts from their little tree in their yard, or- See- seeing people selling me raw milk probably...
• 1:01:10
  cringe some. Rest- [laughs] yeah, something like that. Great. Black market chestnuts. I'm- I'm fully in. That's really exciting. So, and we can contribute to it.
• 1:01:19
  Do you guys have any sort of newsletter or catch-up pe- way super nerds can pay attention to this stuff? Yeah, you can... Again, joining ACR is probably the best way. That's a nonprofit- Okay...
• 1:01:28
  that we share updates with regularly. They're actually having their annual meeting on our campus in a couple of weeks, and so it's a way- Nice... for people to come in person, getting their newsletters.
• 1:01:38
  Also, we publish progress reports on our website fairly regularly, so looking up our website on ESF, uh, or following ACR would be the best ways to stay in touch. Okay. Sophia, have you seen Interstellar? I have, yes.
• 1:01:54
  You know the, you know the end when the mom flies out to Mars, and she's 1,000 and- and everybody's there? Mm-hmm. You're- you're that lady, and there's a bunch of chestnuts everywhere now. My gosh, yeah. Including Mars.
• 1:02:06
  What would you like your great-great-grandchildren to be able to be like, "My great-great-grandma did X." Her contribution was what? Oh, that's- that's a good question.
• 1:02:20
  I think just knowing that I was able to contribute to a project as, you know, robust and amazing as the American Chestnut Research Restoration Project at SUNY ESF is probably going on my headstone.
• 1:02:32
  It's really been just a pleasure, and it's a great team of people, and really fascinating research.
• 1:02:37
  I think it would be also cool to have this potential legacy of being able to help facilitate restoration of these trees- Mm-hmm...
• 1:02:45
  even in, insofar as I looked in the dirt, and it saw that it was okay, and you can plant a chestnut. That's- that's good enough for me, I think.
• 1:02:53
  But just to be able to contribute to- to this body of work has been just a privilege. I love that. Andy, what's your answer? You can be a different character if you want. Like- It's wh- it can be whatever you want.
• 1:03:04
  I just...
• 1:03:05
  Well, I th- part of it is similar to Sophia, in that contributing in some small way to the restoration of the American chestnut, this iconic species, and the environmental benefits, and the benefits it provided to people, that'll be so impactful if we can move the needle toward restoring American chestnuts.
• 1:03:23
  But for me, more broadly, I would go back to, I think, what I started with, the potential for using biotechnology or even other types of modern tools for conservation.
• 1:03:34
  That would be really huge, I think, to- to expand the use of these tools beyond agriculture toward protecting native species, toward addressing environmental threats.
• 1:03:45
  We clearly need to do something, and need to do it soon, and this is a- a set of tools that could really be helpful in many cases. I think that's great. I really appreciate all that.
• 1:03:57
  I had a really interesting conversation last year with the daughter of Katalin Kariko, who worked on mRNA for a long time.
• 1:04:04
  She's the one who got fired 75 different times by UPenn along the way to trying to develop mRNA and prove that it works, and then it was ready just in time because she didn't give up for 45 years on a set of tools that she believed could be useful should we require them at some point, which we do require them for a million different things, but for that specifically, and that really matters, right?
• 1:04:28
  We had a wonderful woman on the show a couple years ago, it might have been longer than that, time has no meaning anymore, who, a lot of times, someone is chasing something like this because, you know, it's who hurt you?
• 1:04:39
  A chestnut, right? Or you grew up under a chestnut tree or whatever.
• 1:04:43
  We had a guy, a gentleman from- from Iraq, oh, God, years ago, who- whose dad died of a muscle dystrophy disease, and he grew up and cu- and- and figured out how to cure it, but not in time. Crazy shit. Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:54
  But she had a aunt, I believe, who was going blind for some reason, and her fix was to invent a robot that could turn over pipettes during the night so that humans didn't do it and break all of them.
• 1:05:07
  'Cause she was like, "It is a bottleneck in the whole process, and I think it can unlock many more things."
• 1:05:13
  So as much as we're focused here on the chestnuts and all that, and- and- and the- the beaches and everything else Sophia said could be in trouble, or maybe we need to think about because of all the choices we made, I appreciate this idea of, b- b- maybe we can do more.
• 1:05:28
  Not to put it back the way it was. I know there's a lot of fights, especially among, you know, more modern folks and the indigenous folks of- of what conservation and preservation really mean.
• 1:05:37
  But to- to repair some of this harm, because w- I- I- I believe- Absolutely... if we're going to develop these tools- Mm-hmm... we have an obligation to- to- to repair, right? To heal where we can.
• 1:05:48
  So I appreciate that, and I'm glad you're doing it, 'cause I don't know any- I still have no i- you're great. I don't know anything. So it's great. I'm so excited to plant one in my yard.
• 1:05:58
  Anything else that you wanna leave us with here before we let you go?
• 1:06:02
  Thanks for the opportunity to tell the story, and hopefully get people thinking about GMO is outside the context of Roundup, then this is a different conversation even though the technologies happen to be similar.
• 1:06:13
  Loaded, complicated conversation. We can try to be smarter than we have been, hopefully, in how we talk about these sort of things. You know, we've only got one banana for a reason. You know? It's like, let's- Mm.
• 1:06:23
  Mm-hmm... let's come on, guys. This stuff's all around us. Thank you both for your time so much. Genuinely appreciate it. Please let me know when you've fixed it. We'll have you back on. Can't wait. That's it.
• 1:06:32
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• 1:06:45
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• 1:06:57
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