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Geology's Ologies · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:13
unknown: Late night sweet.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Do we got the we got the Bullhois Christopher Bullhois radio voice on?
0:21
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: It's very soothing.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: It's very soothing.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Late night sweet jams with Chris Bullhois.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Coming your way.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Drive time.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Drive time radio.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Um Chris Man.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: We get a bunch of listener questions or listener emails, some of them, you know, very, very nice and and uh and some of them great questions.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm really curious to have this conversation with you and to see where this conversation goes, because I think this this could be a really deep, deep rabbit hole that we've opened up or Pandora's box that we've opened up, and we kind of end up doing series on all these types of things.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: But the listener question comes from Brad, and Brad is a geographer by training, and um is kind of interested, just basically asked, like, okay, what do you think about the differences here between geology and geography?
1:15
SPEAKER_01: And and what a so it's a interesting question that I've we've gotten before from other people, Chris.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious first and foremost, what is your what was Grand Valley State University's department called when you graduated from it?
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Geology.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Like straight, just straight geology.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and uh, I got my degree in geology, and you know, we had uh NRM majors, natural resource management majors, we had earth science majors, and some associated fields with it.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: We the geology majors, we without exception, looked down our noses at the other subsets.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was well, the other okay, we were so arrogant about the other majors within your department umbrella, yes.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: So was there a geography department?
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know what I don't I uh think you could get a geography major, but it was not tied at all.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: And I find this very interesting, not at all to geology.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: Geography was so because of that, I think like when I when I see this umbrella of geography and geology, it's very confusing to me.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what do you what do you what about you?
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is this is uh okay, this is the intro here is the this is the ologies of geology.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: There's all sorts of subdisciplines within geology, and there's different names and terms, and we're undergoing well, we're probably on the the waning stages of a massive rebranding in the United States and across the world of what used to be geology departments, geological science departments.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Those were kind of the names.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: And as maybe the value of that degree or that name changed, departments rebranded into Earth and Planetary Science Departments, or we are the geoscience department at Penn State.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: There used to be all sorts of different names, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: That's the department that I got my PhD in at the University of Alberta was Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, EAS.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and hold on.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: Um, where I went, Grand Valley is in the process of of rebranding classes within the major.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: It's still a geology major, but they're they got rid of mineralogy and petrology, and now they call it rocks and minerals, and they have a materials and you know things like this.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: And I had really, I don't know what it does Hope still just do mineralogy and petrology.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: Do you know that's where you went for Hope College, Southwest Michigan?
3:50
SPEAKER_02: That's where you got your undergrad.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: Hope college.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: When I did my undergrad um at Hope College, it's the I think it still is the GES department, geological and environmental sciences is the department.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: We had a mineralogy class, which is one of the ologies in geology.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: We had a petrology class, which is one of the ologies.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: That's one that's very often confused.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: People think that's oil, that's the study of oil, but it's not.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: It's the study of rocks.
4:16
SPEAKER_02: Never never occurred to me.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: It never did, really.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I if I say oh I'm a petrologist, that's what I am.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: People would be like, oh, you study.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: They hear the petrol.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, the petrol.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, and then I went to Alberta, Chris, and it was Earth and Atmosphere Sciences Department, much bigger, because it's a huge state university, big research profile.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: But in there, we interestingly had geographers in the EAS department.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: So there's a bunch of geographers, but but we didn't have any of the geophysicists.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the geophysics people were in the physics department, or in actually in a different in the faculty of science, but in a different department.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot less kind of scientific communication between the geophysicists and the geologists.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: And so, and then the the geographers.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: So the way that you kind of structure the department actually matters a lot.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: Which ologies you keep in the umbrella and which ones you don't.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: It matters not just at a bureaucratic level, but like how do people talk to each other in the department?
5:14
SPEAKER_01: And what exposure do students get to scientific disciplines outside of your your major?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Because a department usually has a major that they're in charge of or a couple majors that they're in charge of.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: That's their kind of home turf.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: I've gone through this personal evolution with this whole thought too, because before we started doing this podcast, Jesse, five years ago, when Grand Valley switched from mineral, they got rid of mineralogy, they got rid of just straight-up petrology, and now they might have an igneous petrology elective and so on.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: But I was upset by that because mineralogy was a weirder course, it was tough.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: This was the course where you know, if you don't do well in this, it's time to go maybe move on and find a different major.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: It was a very difficult class, and petrology followed right in line with that, and it was just really tough.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: So it's almost like a rite of passage, you know, to go through these things that you know, yeah, I I got an A in mineralogy and you know, that kind of thing.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: And that's how I used to feel.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: I was not happy with Grand Valley's rebranding of these really important classes.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: Now I have a 180 on that.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: I think that it is so important because we need this bigger umbrella in geology.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: We should not just be about geology, we're we're about environmental, we're about the atmospheric sciences, we're the it's gotta have a bigger umbrella, or we're gonna get chewed up by environmental science.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that Chris, you know, I kind of feel the same way.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: I I have a tendency towards students should have a mineralogy class.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: Mineralogy, the study of minerals, ology of minerals, right?
6:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that seemed like a difficult word for you to pronounce there.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just to break it apart like that uh is difficult.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, a petrology, the ology of rocks, and you can have igneous petrology, metamorphic petrology, sedimentology is you know, sedimentary petrology.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: You can have all these ologies, and I, you know, my default is always like, yeah, learn the basics and then go off and and do the uh the other stuff.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: But when you say, oh, in at Penn State, we don't have a mineralogy class or petrology class, we have what's called earth materials, which is basically all of that combined in one semester.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: However, our students, compared to what I compared to the other undergrad education I got, our students have a much broader exposure, they have a much more rigorous exposure to let's say statistics.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: They know statistics at a level for the geosciences in a way that I I didn't, I never got that until graduation.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: And so there's this pros and cons.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: There's a push-pull, right?
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Of rebranding things, and you just went through this, you just relabeled your class instead of geology, it's geoscience, right?
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: I changed the name yesterday.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: Changed the name to geoscience.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh did you poll your students?
8:08
SPEAKER_02: Did you ask your students?
8:09
SPEAKER_02: Did you no, I just didn't do it.
8:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna tell them tomorrow that this is what's happened, guys.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: Big news.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: This is not the same class as it was before.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you guys thought you were taking geology, but no, you're taking geoscience.
8:25
SPEAKER_02: But you know, Jesse, like I talk about environmental, I talk about climate science also.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: It's and planetary geology.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: Uh so it's not just straight up old to me.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: This geology seems to be more old school, and it's more it has different connotations, I think, for people and and maybe a lot of embedded misconceptions.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would agree with that.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: So, so back to our listener question, real quick.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: How do you think about the compare and contrast geology and geography in your mind?
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Just your your like instinctual reaction.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: Do it.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: You want me to go ahead and compare and contrast like um geology is the study of the earth, and geography is the study of places.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: I I think that's what I think.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: I get it, you know.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: I make my students responsible for a lot of geography in terms of knowing, you know, what are examples of volcanic island arcs and you know the different tectonic boundaries.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: I I think that that's important stuff.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: So I I kind of understand this mingling of geography and geology, but that's how I think of geography is more like location, place.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: So there were when I was in Alberta, and I think there still is, what gave birth to the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department was a merger of geology and geography departments.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: So the higher up said, You guys need to merge, merge, figure it out.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: Which means that in geography, to me, we have there's a geography department in our college.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: It's different than the geosciences department.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm in the geosciences department, we have a geography department as well.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: That's separate.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: Geography has a couple different branches.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: There's human geography, which is very much social science.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: This is social science, economics of human movement.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: How do humans you know influence the atmosphere?
10:20
SPEAKER_01: What's the human experience on Earth?
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Very social science, you know, it's surveys, it's a lot of stuff like that that they're dealing with.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: The data is different.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, there is physical geography, and I that I think is more at home.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: I view that as kind of almost more at home in the geology.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: What is geology?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: That's like geomorphology or hydrology or glaciology.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: These I'd say surface processes.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: And and this is one for me.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: You just went through a bunch of ologies there, Jesse.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: Like there's so many.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: There's so many ologies, right?
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Just tons of of I feel like Jesse, should we call Joyce?
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Try and call Joyce.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Let's see if we can get her on the phone.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: Did you finish your thought first?
11:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh sorry I interrupted you, but I can uh yeah, let's go.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: Should we ask Joyce what her favorite ology is?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: You dial her up and I'll finish my thought while while we're dialing here.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: All right, gotcha.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: Go.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: Physical geography, Chris, I think overlaps really nicely with the geosciences.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: We have geomorphologists in our department who could be in the geography department as physical geographers if that was like the way the departments were divided, right?
11:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, and I think that makes sense.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: So what's our joy status here?
11:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay, uh, I'm dialing right now.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: Put her on speaker, right?
11:32
SPEAKER_02: Is that the best?
11:34
SPEAKER_02: Hey, hi mom.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how are you?
11:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm doing well, how are you?
11:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm good, thank you.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: Good.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: Hey, Jesse, Dr.
11:43
SPEAKER_02: Jesse and I are recording right now.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: And yes, and we were doing an episode, mom, on the different ologies of geology.
11:54
SPEAKER_02: And we were just curious, you know, what your favorite ology is of geology.
12:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, it does put you first of all, hey, what are you doing right now?
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're just just dad and I just are drinking a glass of wine and watching TV.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: All right, all right, all right.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Can I tune in to what you're doing?
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Well, sure.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: So we made a list, mom, of all the ologies that fit under the umbrella of geology.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: And then we're just curious as to which one that you liked.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: So I can read through a couple and and you can maybe chime in in terms of what you you think is your favorite.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me get to my computer a minute.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: What are you doing on your computer?
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Why do you got to get on your computer?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, don't I have to?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna say to me?
12:47
SPEAKER_02: Geohydrology, crystallography, gemology, things like that.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: These are the ones that you've already done.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: No, these are just this is we're doing a listener question right now on what what are the different ologies of geology.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: So name some.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: I know I like the one gemology.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so we have geohydro.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna list just a few of them, mom.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: So we have geohydrology.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Geo is earth, and hydro.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: What does hydro mean, mom?
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, high.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh hydro.
13:26
SPEAKER_02: Huge.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Huge, huge, huge.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: Mom.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: You do not listen to our podcast enough.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: You need to not sleep as much.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: Mom.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: So geo hydrology is water.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: Hydro, hydro.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, hydro, yeah.
13:42
unknown: Yeah.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Teller glaciology, geochronology, paleontology.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes, hydrate.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: All right.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: So we have gemology, mineralogy, volcanology.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: That one too.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, me too.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: That's seismology, glaciology, and geomorphology.
14:02
unknown: Okay.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: Geochronology.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Chronology.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes, geochronology.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: And then I'm gonna end with paleontology.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: Which one is your favorite ology, mom?
14:14
SPEAKER_00: I like the uh anthropology.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: I like the study of people.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you do?
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: I didn't name one.
14:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: That's not an option, Joyce.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't think I did.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, you're on the podcast right now, mom.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: And you're entertaining Jesse immensely over there.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: So he's Joyce.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: You better pick geochronology or volcanology.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: One of the good ones.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: So you like you're going with anthropology?
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's one about gemology.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I love gems.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's a good one.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, rings.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: All right.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: All right.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: So gemology or anthropology are your favorite ologies.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: All right.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: All right.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, we're gonna we're gonna go with gemology, then is your favorite ology.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: And uh all right, I'll see you in a couple days.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: All right, all right.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: Love you too.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
15:09
unknown: Bye.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, Chris, that was a full, that was a full Joyce experience right there.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Gemology.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Gemology wins after much.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: It was the full it was the full Joyce experience.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: It's the full experience.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Love that.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Gemology, good one.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: Chris, I'm gonna turn it to you.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: I want I'm uh I got two questions, and I'm gonna answer them too, I think.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: But I want you to answer them first.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: What's your favorite ology?
15:34
SPEAKER_01: You just listed a bunch of them to Joyce, and I'm not sure how many of them registered with Joyce, but what's your favorite one?
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And then the follow-up question is what is one that you are newly interested in or newly appreciative of?
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, that's a really, really good question.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, I can do this.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I can't pick one.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know you I can't because I'm really, really interested in what you do.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: All right, and that's not because you know, I've I've I told you this story before, but uh I did a deep dive into geochronology because I think the you know the age of the earth is is a really important topic for me.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: And it's important that I'm able to tackle this issue with my students, especially with coming from Southwest Michigan.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, you know, it's a Bible belt, and and so I get I don't want to say I get opposition, it's a healthy thing, but I want to be able to sensitively but very knowledgeably talk about this, and this has been for my entire career.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: So if you were gonna let's point it towards the students out there who are who listen to this, if you're gonna go get a PhD in one of these things, you would lean towards geochronology and becoming a geochronologist, you know, having a yeah.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm really well, I think yes, I would I would lean to that because I believe in following your passion, and that is definitely one of my passions.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: And and I'm torn because I also really love volcanology, you know, but I I'm a little bit ashamed to say that.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: And and I want to say this because everybody loves volcanology.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: Like, are there people that exist that don't love volcanology?
17:25
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
17:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's kind of like saying I I don't want to swim with the dolphins, Chris.
17:30
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's it's the well this is a really interesting, this is a really interesting thing to me.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, with all the interviews that we do, we we have interviewed a lot of people of your generation who actually got into geology.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh part of their story, part of the origin story is something to do with Mount St.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: Helens.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: I think that that seems to be from our small number of samples, anecdotally, that seems to be a thing for people of your generation that Mount St.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: Helens was a really influential event that got them interested in volcanoes or volcanology, and then they went down that path, right?
17:59
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think that's a unique story that you have.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh and I was eight years old, Jesse, when Mount St.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: Helens erupted.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: And when I was eight years old, I was relentless with my mom to take me out to Mount St.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: Helens.
18:12
SPEAKER_02: And you know, she has family that's from various parts of Oregon.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: And so when we went out on summer science in 1980 and 81, she I just wouldn't stop.
18:23
SPEAKER_02: And she took me out there and we went to Mount St.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: Helens and I collected ash, you know.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: And so that that's a that makes sense.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: That I I think that's those are the ones I would have guessed for you, geochronology and volcanology, that those were ones that kind of by default that's your interest.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Which one are you newly appreci?
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, we talk all the time.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: We've learned so much in this podcast by doing this podcast.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious if there's one that stands out, not just because of the podcast, but that you're interested in that's new.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: Maybe not that's new, but another one that I'm I would say maybe geomorphology.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:00
SPEAKER_02: Why do you think I say that?
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Um well I don't know if I would have guessed that one, but I would have it would have been in the top three that I guess for you.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: We have done a lot on rivers and how rivers move and how landscapes change, and that's geomorphology.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a and you can tell a lot from geomorphology.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: It's super and I've learned a ton about this since we've been doing this podcast, and and I think it's just so exciting understanding how rivers work and that their dynamics and how how it's not random.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: What they do is determined by actual physics, you know, I think is is amazing.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: Super I so I love that.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: So I yeah, I guess that's the new thing for me.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my love of geomorph.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: I had a I had a fantastic professor in geomorphology.
19:52
SPEAKER_02: He was the same professor that taught my intro geo class that got me into geology in the first place, also taught geomorph.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: So maybe that has something to do with it.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: I I'm not sure.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: Maybe a little nostalgia.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: I um for me, Chris.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: I uh petrology, igneous petrology is one that, and I I view that as there's volcanology in that, but igneous petrology, I think the difference between igneous petrology and volcanology is volcanologists look at the volcano, and some volcanologists look at the rocks that come out of a volcano, but not not all of them.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talked to Diana Roman who who studies volcanoes and doesn't really look at the rocks that come out of a volcano that much.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, igneous petrology looks at the igneous rocks, and that for me is like home turf.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: I love I'm an igneous petrologist and geochronologist, and those are the I love igneous petrology.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: I love understanding thinking about how Earth distills itself.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: That's just such a cool thing to me.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: And that goes all the way back to your class to you know in in in high school when I was taking your class.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: So can I pick out and guess at what your underdog is?
21:02
SPEAKER_02: I just in knowing you, looking at this list in front of us, I think that either uh for some reason crystallography and gemology jump out at me for really okay, interesting.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Why?
21:17
SPEAKER_02: Um I think because of crystallography, the internal crystal structure, the way things build, uh, I think that that would be interesting to you.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: I yeah, that's just my guess.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: That well, that wasn't one of the ones that stood out to me, but I I can I'd certainly get that.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is very interesting.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: I could see why you would think that.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: So, what is the underdog?
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, the underdog, there's two under there's two underdogs really.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: One is the obvious one, and one is the less obvious one.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: The obvious one is geomorphology in this for all the same reasons that that you talked about.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: And research wise, I've started getting interested in continental emergence above sea level and and and the interplay between oceans and You know, rivers and and weathering, all this interesting stuff.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: It's a super, super interesting field.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just newly appreciative of what geomorphologists can tell us about the world based on the landscape and and how the landscape has changed and is changing.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's one that's that's pretty obvious.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: And then the the the cheap one is metamorphic petrology, which in my field I've always that's what I thought you were gonna say right off the bat.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And and the backstory here is I've always tried to just see through metamorphism in research land.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: I've always, you know, I'm always trying to I'm looking at metamorphic rocks, but I I'm not interested in the metamorphism fundamentally, not interested in the 1.9 billion-year-old metamorphic overprint in the Acostanized complex.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm interested in how the rocks formed initially.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: So you kind of always skip through, you gotta understand a little bit about metamorphism.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: To be able to see through it, you need to understand a little bit about it.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: But I'm newly appreciative of in mostly working with a colleague of mine, Andy Smai, who's a metamorphic petrologist, newly appreciative of how important I mean, metamorphism is linked to how igneous rocks get formed, and also linked to how they sometimes don't get formed.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we melt crust?
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Why do we sometimes not melt crust?
23:17
SPEAKER_01: That's such an interesting question.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: I never really thought about it from like the the two sides of the coin.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: I'd always thought about it as like something that gets in the way, and it's actually something really, really interesting to study.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: And I I do think metamorphic petrology, like mineralogy, like crystallography, is kind of an old school one that's fallen out of favor for many students.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think there's more way more students who are interested in planetary geoscience or you know, going to study Mars and drive rovers around Mars and look at images of Mars rather than understanding the details of metamorphic petrology.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a bit of an old school, it's a bit of like a 1980s, 1990s field.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: That's when it was really popular, that was its heyday.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: But I think I think it's coming back around a little bit.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: I think in the next decade you're gonna see, like you said, crystallography mineralogy, these kind of older allogies kind of rejuvenate a little bit scientifically.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: Um in the Yeah, uh yeah, and also Jesse, metamorphic rocks are arguably the most beautiful.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: I probably not arguably.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: I they are.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: I I think we it's safe to say.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we could say it.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: They are, they're spectacular.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: It's our podcast.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: We can say what we want.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: Spectacle.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: Metamorphic rocks are the most beautiful.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: So the but the best metamorphic rocks you can stack up against any other rocks out there, and they're just stunning, stunning rocks.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: So they are yeah, I uh I I agree.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting, Chris, that we're both kind of geomorphology, is is um both in that category for us.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: Shall we just run down the list that we have in front of us to for our listeners to let's do that a minute, Chris?
24:50
SPEAKER_01: But let me put a put a question in front of this.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Chris and I, we are talking about what to do with this.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: Like it is this is there something deeper here?
24:58
SPEAKER_01: And if you're interested in the allogies and you want more information about if you want to hear more about the difference between them, how they overlap, what each one is, let us know.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Send us an email at planetgeocast at gmail.com.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: Please let us know that.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: And then Chris, yeah, why don't you run down the list and we can wrap it up here?
25:13
SPEAKER_02: And just just uh to tag on to that, Jesse, too.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: This is not a necessarily a complete list.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: This is off the top of our heads.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: This this is definitely not a complete list.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and in no particular order, yes, in a completely random order.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: Geohydrology, or what is often just called hydro, pedology, which is the study of soils, crystallography, gemology, mineralogy, which is a kind of a dying breed.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: And we talked about uh Gabriela Farfan, uh one of our guests, and and how this is like a dying class in the field of geology, petrology, and then the subsets of that igneous, petrology, metamorphic, and sedimentary, and then volcanology, seismology, sedimentology, and then the subset of that is stratigraphy, uh glaciology, which one of my professors in college, the guy that got me into geology, was a renowned glaciologist.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: Um excellent, right?
26:15
SPEAKER_02: Geomorphology or geomorph, which is the study of landforms on the surface of the earth, which is just uh it's so so awesome.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: Geophysics, geochronology, Jesse's baby, paleontology, paleomag or paleomagnetism, paleo seismology, orography, oceanography, planetary geology, which has a bunch of subsets in that, which are interesting.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if Jesse, if we want to miss those or not.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're interesting.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: I've never heard a lot of the words before.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, but so yeah, so anyways.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: And then physical geography, paleo brisozoology.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, there's a story behind this one.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, I I assumed there was the lab um on the door next to my office.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: It's an old lab, uh, obviously.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: The the labels on the lab are uh go back a long time, but it is labeled the PaleobryoZoology lab.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: And so every visitor I have comes back and they're like, what the heck is that right next door?
27:24
SPEAKER_01: What kind of lab is that right next to you?
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Um and it's a classic, like old school door with an old window pane in it with this paleobryo zoology lab label on it.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: It's uh like a postdoc office right now or something, but anyway, it there's all these old labels around Penn State in our geosciences department for old lab labels that haven't come off.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: And it's just great to go around reading them because some of them are they're so niche, but they're niche from like the 80s and 90s, and it's interesting to see how the names and and what's a popular ology has has changed over time.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really interesting thing that we won't get into now.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And that, but I uh it would be really interesting to go through how these things change and and why they change.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, is Brian Bodenbender still teaching at yeah, he's still at hope.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: As far as I as far as I know, I don't know.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I just think of you know paleobryozoology with him because of your story.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: Like he had this he has a massive femur bone from a dinosaur's door prop.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: You know, oh it's so good.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, he he was you know paleontologist at Hope College and just has loads of stuff in there.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Um and uh yeah, it's great.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, has all sorts of of of cool stuff and cool stories to tell about the the fossils.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: So all right, man.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I think that's what do you think?
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Is that a wrap for now?
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And and if you have listen to this and you're like, hey, you didn't cover my uh my favorite ology, shoot us an email.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it will probably get a lot of pissed off people here, Jesse.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know, because this is a good thing.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: You know, these niche people that are like, wait a minute, I'm a paleo seismology, and none of them mentioned that at all.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: We're in for it.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: There's way more ologies.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: We could do the uh the ologies of just geology and um geoscience.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, hey, that's a wrap.
29:01
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29:02
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29:03
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29:05
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29:07
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29:08
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