Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

Rants about ruining Christmas, disappointed family members, mixing and making soil recipes, Thornscrub Sanctuary update, maintaining a positive outlook despite the spiritually-poisonous effervescent fart of modern consumer society, feral pigs, ruderal plants, and more. Before you whine about the ads, keep in mind all episodes of the podcast are available Ad-Free on the Crime Pays Patreon.

In this episode we talk with Crime Pays Field Correspondent WIll Doran about his traumatic experiences in the Car and Retail Slums of the American Sunbelt, possibly one of the ugliest and most soul-crushing landscapes in the first world. This is a landscape that exists as pure "anti-culture", and as many of you may know, is the only kind of landscape and infrastructure option offered to many people living in the lower-latitude United States. It leads to deteriorating mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health in myriad ways, and we here at Crime Pays are excited to lance the figurative boil and share our findings on the pus that oozes out with our listeners. We also discuss options for dealing with it if you live in these places, especially for young people : stay away from excessive playing of videogames, pot-smoking or booze and immerse yourself in art, plants, science (and occasional psychedelic use in "nature" if you feel comfortable) in beautiful places. Rather than whining about the ads, join the Crime Pays Patreon where you'll have firsthand access to exclusive content, educational rantings and lectures, and early screenings of videos.www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

Kerry Knudsen is a Lichen Biologist who originated outside of academia and worked in construction until becoming fascinated by the natural world and immersing himself in desert lichens.In this episode we talk about the modern human approach to the living world, why the study of natural sciences is becoming increasingly popular among people outside of academia, the biosphere as a living machine, self-education using the internet, and more.  A lichen is the symbiosis between a fungus and algae or cyanobacteria, many of which can go dormant for extremely long periods of time and tolerate harsh winds, drying out, being blasted with UV radiation, and slowly cooked on the rocks that they grow on. Some of them can live for thousands of years.If scrolling through the obnoxious ads is getting tiring, then join the Patreon, where you'll have early access videos and ad-free access to every podcast episode, plus photo posts, patreon-only lectures and other benefits.

Here's your reminder that all episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available ad-free (because ads are the equivalent of cold sores) on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt.What happened to the transgenic American Chestnut? In January of 2024 news broke out that a "lab error" had "compromised years of research" regarding the re-introduction of American Chestnuts into Eastern North American forests, this time with a simple 700 base-pair gene for blight-resistance inserted into the tree's genome. For those that don't know, an invasive fungus from Asia that was unintentionally introduced to North America devastated the entire population of American Chestnuts, rendering the species "functionally extinct". Within the last decade, however, through genetic engineering, the insertion of a single gene from the wheat plant that can break down oxalic acid has made chestnut blight nothing but a minor pest to the trees whose genome has been altered with it. In this episode, we talk with PhD student Erik Carlson from SUNY Syracuse's College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry about this "lab error", how it really wasn't that big of a deal on the long run, and how the project is still on track.

In this episode we talk about how we are explicitly NOT condoning it, how to harvest mycorrhizae from soil duff, what is "KNR" and what "IMO"s are, the paucity of study concerning mushroom diversity in the Davis Mountains and how some species there might be eventually extirpated due to the drying climate, the fungal genus Tarzetta, and more. The episode is polished off by a 40 question botany quiz.If the ads are bumming you out, then stop whining about having to hit the fast forward button and join the Crime Pays Patreon, where you'll never have to hit the fast forward button again... https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

In this episode I sit down withAdam Black about planting fruit trees in the park, how to save the honeybees, why invasive species don't exist, and how to properly apply a glue-on moustache and select proper attire so as to "fit in" when botanizing in West Texas. /sAdam Black is a field botanist and researcher with Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories and Arboretum who has traveled to numerous continents and countries researching oaks and conifers (he has nothing to do with permaculture, that is just a sick joke on my part).Before you whine about the ads (yes, they're terrible, I know), keep in mind that for a measly $5 a month you can have access to all the podcast episodes ad-free on the Patreon. The ads really are insidious, but your ability to hit the "15-seconds-fast-forward" button is key to otherwise ensuring that the sleazy morons that advertise on the podcast help support the podcast by paying to bark in the ears of people who will never buy their products. Fast-forward through them with spite and realize that it's supporting me to keep doing what I'm doing.

If the terrible Ads are bumming you out, then episodes are available on the Patreon Ad-Free at https://www.patreon.com/c/CrimePaysButBotanyDoesntIn this lecture we rant about Invasion Biology, Continents as Ecosystems, the concept of a "Living Machine", and David Bowie's package in The Labrynth.PDF download for this rant : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rL5WP8zI0-Oqh4DYkRFBpjk0tBrcP9Hl/view?usp=drivesdk

If the ads are a bummer, then join the Patreon, where you'll have early access to videos, exclusive access to learning material, and Ad-Free episodes of this podcast.This was a conversation I had with my friend Martin Grantham about how humans relate to the living world around them (or rather, how most of them don't) and the factors that influence it.

This podcast episode is available ad-free on the Patreon with a screenshare of the presentation that accompanies it at www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntHow do plants evolve? How do plants speciate? What is allopatric speciation? What is sympatric speciation? How do plants like the Hawaiian silverswords evolve to be such big weird bastards while their ancestors on the mainlaind (the tarweeds) are so small? What the hell happened with the genus Echium (Boraginaceae) when it got to the Canary Islands? Why were islands the big reveal for how natural selection might work when Darwin saw his finches and what the shit? How can geology cause a new plant species to evolve? We cover all that and more in this here episode. Textbooks recommended in this podcast if you wanna be less of a dummy : Ecology of Plants by Gurevitch (3rd Edition) Evolution : Making Sense of Life by Carl Zimmer (the edition with the bunny on the cover). Both downloadable in PDF form from www.libgen.is

If the ads are a bummer, keep in mind all episodes of the Crime Pays podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at : www.patreon.com/c/crimepaysbutbotanydoesntCodi Lazar is a Professory of Geology at California State University San Bernardino and a passionate and utterly hilarious geologist. In this episode, we get into the weeds talking about a wide variety of topics such as how limestone forms, why some plants might be restricted to it, what "serpentinite" is, what's in story for the state of Nevada in the next few dozen million years, how related the granite that's beneath Joshua Tree National Park might be to the granite in the Sierra Nevadas (very), the former love affair between the African continent, Scottland, Newfoundland and Appalachia, and much more.