Patricia Kaishian: Lessons from fungi as queer companions (ep407)
“What if the framework of conservation wasn’t about proving that each individual species was either at risk or not, but recognizing that there isn’t actually a true ability to separate any given species from its ecological niche, that it is just part and parcel?”
In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Patricia Kaishian, a mycologist, writer, and educator who gestures to mycology as a queer discipline. Situated as a queer member of Armenian diaspora, Patricia threads connections between the often misunderstood and mis/under-represented displacement of mycelial bodes and her own. Offering a glimpse of the complex, fascinating, taxonomy-defying world of fungi, Patricia invokes reflections on how we can learn from, dream with, and reclaim queer existence with our fungal kin.
What stories of diversity, fluidity, and resilience do they sporulate? What lessons can they inspire in an age of ecological collapse? And what narratives can they invite us to decompose and re-birth?
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About our guest:
Patricia (Patty) Kaishian holds a Ph.D. in Forest Pathology & Mycology and has designed and taught courses on topics such as: Fungal Ecology, Natural History, Evolution & Phylogenetics, Fungal Diversity & Climate Change, and Queer Ecology. Alongside holding a role as Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, she works in the realms of philosophy of science, ecofeminism, queer ecology, and queer theory, exploring how mycology and other scientific disciplines are situated in and informed by our sociopolitical landscape. Patty is also a founding member of the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, a research organization comprised of ethnically Armenian mycologists who seek to simultaneously advance mycological science.
Artistic credits:
Music: When You Carried Me by Oropendola via Spirit House Records
Episode-inspired artwork by Fernanda Peralta
Dive deeper:
“Mycology as a Queer Discipline,” an article co-written by Patricia Kaishian and Hasmik Djoulakian
Forest Euphoria, a forthcoming book by Patricia Kaishian
International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, a network co-founded by Patricia Kaishian
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, a book by Eli Clare
Expand your lenses:
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Transcript:
Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Patricia Kaishian: My identity as an Armenian person is one that a lot of people are not very familiar with. Armenians are an ethnic minority group in what some would call the Middle East, some might call West Asia or the caucuses. And it's a group of people that many people have never met because there are actually very few of us. In Armenia today, there's actually just less than 3 million people who live in the country.
And there's actually more Armenians in diaspora than there are within the country of Armenia. And that, of course, is due largely to the Armenian genocide that happened in and around 1915 and waves of violence that preceded that and actually continue to this day that have caused mass displacement of Armenian people. And the Armenian diaspora is in the United States, largely in New York and in California, but it's also all throughout Southwest Asia and the Middle East. So in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, so places that have also continued to be imperialized and subject to violence. So many Armenians have yet to find any stability, even generations later after the genocide. So the story of Armenians is really complicated. It's a story often of fragmentation, of a fugitive city, and sometimes even a cryptic nature. It's an identity that people don't necessarily recognize right on its face.
For me, as a person growing up in the United States of Armenian heritage, it took a kind of a long time to fully understand what that identity meant and to see my place in it.
As someone who had been, you know, several generations removed from living in the country itself. So I think I understand this is, for me, a very amphibious identity. It's a slippery one. It's at times very unclear and sort of non-binary in a way. And I see in that a relationship to other parts of my identity as well, you know, other parts of my identity in terms of my orientation as a queer person that, you know, people don't quite know what to make of right away. So as a child, I was always pretty conscious of this history.
I think I was sort of born an activist or an organizer of sorts. And it took to me sort of grappling with the legacies of injustices has always been core to my identity and that I extend to the more than human world or the nonhuman world as well. So I do think that the lessons I've learned from my own experience have shaped how I interface with other types of complicated identities and other ways of being that are not maybe always recognizable to other people.
Kamea Chayne: Hmm. And that's, of course, how mycology has come to be such a central way that you have tried to explore your Armenian identity as well. Right. Because it challenges a lot of standards and norms and all of that.
Patricia Kaishian: Yes, exactly. So, you know, the connection wasn't always obvious. You know, it's something that I sort of started to piece together, like I was drawn towards fungi and mycology because of this sort of inner resonance that I felt with these organisms that had been long misunderstood and sort of discarded. Right. And other creatures as well, thought. Actually some of my earlier creatures that I most connected to when I was a smaller child were like snakes and frogs, turtles, things like swamp creatures, right? Things that existed in these mucky spaces that were seen as sort of disgusting to other people.
So the connection that I've made with my work as an Armenian person is sort of like, you know, I've seen it's something that I've sort of almost understood retrospectively…and then have sought to kind of continue to cultivate that connection as time has gone on. So for me, my connection to fungi was one that was born out of this feeling of kinship, right? That I saw in them something that I saw in myself. And I actually found that when I saw how I felt companionship and care and comfort around these organisms, when I saw that people had such a negative reaction to those same organisms, that was very clarifying to me. It was interesting to me, like, how could I feel so comforted by these beings that other people feel so revolted by? And actually, that was really helpful for me to see these patterns in my own life and my own way of being, right?
So I found that [fungi] taught me in many ways about how to accept myself…the self-acceptance that I had been grappling with in my own life kind of made me open to forming these relationships with a group of organisms that have historically been really cast aside.
So I do see these things as being very related. And also, of course, the the way that fungi are in this in their nature, their being of their sort of neither plant nor animal. They have both sort of qualities of both fluid and solid. They form these webs of interconnection in which it's hard to differentiate an individual from a group or from a collective. And these are things that I see, both in in my query, but also in this my identity as an Arminian person. And particularly one that has a very fragmented lineage.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing all of this. In your piece: Mycology as a Queer Discipline, you share that “complex social histories have influenced outcomes and trajectories of mycology, rendering it a marginalized science”. I would appreciate it if you can share more about how particular cultural perspectives on mushrooms and fungi rooted in our social histories have prevented people from really embracing the field of mycology. Because I think it is really interesting to consider how social dynamics and cultural norms might influence or skew a scientific research and knowledge.
Patricia Kaishian: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a scientist, I am formally trained in science. I have a Ph.D. in mycology. So I've gone through sort of this very particular academic training and in the culture of academia, and I love science. I think it's a very powerful and fascinating tool. It's a tool that has revealed so much knowledge and beauty about our universe. And I think that I have a lot of respect for the scientific method and the goals that the scientific community sort of coalesce around, which is to produce knowledge that is understandable in some way, you know, regardless of culture, regardless of what year it is or what have you. Right? There's like a set of of ways that we produce information and ask questions of the universe and interpret that information so that it can be as understandable as possible. And I think that that ideal is really wonderful. But I often think that we fall short of that.
I think science has a very long history of unexamined biases and social lenses that it's been conducted in and through that affect what we know and who you know—there are so many ways in which the human perspective enters this supposedly objective pursuit.
And I think that there's no getting around that. But the problem really is that many scientists exist in the culture in which to acknowledge that and to talk about that is seen as somehow inherently political and is then therefore ignored. So there is this sort of pressure to not be political in science, but as I think many people would agree, the choice to not be political is sort of a false choice. To choose to not see the ways in which you, as a person, as a human, are affected by the world around you is not a way of preventing being affected by the world around you, its just to simply not talk about it. And so throughout the history of science, there's so many examples of people being pretty explicitly biased in particular ways and sometimes very harmful and evil ways. And then another time is just sort of, you know, neutral, but not nonetheless not objective ways. And that actually affects what we know about the universe, right?
So if you if you're asking questions about, for example, about mushrooms and the culture around you is telling you that they're disgusting, that they're deadly, that there are diseases that they're, you know, maybe even associated with the demonic and devil and all of these things, you are less likely to think about or ask about, you know, what if they are actually these life giving ecosystem engineering dynamic beings that can be that are actually responsible for like the forest to health. So over time, we've seen that the culture, particularly of Western Europe and Euro-American institutions, was responsible for forming what became sort of the dogma, right? What became the bedrock of of knowledge, what was accepted into canon was information generated by European and Western European institutions, because they, of course, were in power. So they were able to determine what was legitimate information, who was a legitimate scientist and who could participate in the practice of science and whose work could be published and so forth. So all of these moments, all of these influences, of course, create a particular knowledge base that is socially and culturally located. And it happens for reasons that are not fully clear.
But mushrooms and fungi were not considered worthy of formal investigation by professional scientists in sort of the Victorian science area in Western Europe and for a while thereafter as well. So we just did not study them intensively the way we studied other organisms. That literally means we know less about them, right? So the way science plays out is it's a social endeavor. And again, I'm a scientist who loves science, and I think the way of making science more accountable and actually better— and by better, I mean to actually learn more about the universe would be to talk about this—to talk about the ways in which culture influences what we're interested in, how we ask about it, and how we interpret that data and communicate that data. And I think, you know, it's in our best interest collectively as scientists, have to be very serious about that. And sometimes it's about learning how fungi function in ecosystems. But it's all a manner of implication to that as well, like in medicine and you know, other aspects of health, of social health and social sciences as well.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah, totally. If the goal were just to learn as much as we can about ourselves and the world, then yeah, we should always maintain a humility to ask questions about even the lenses that we're applying in order to better understand the world. And here I'd be curious to go deeper and also explore the relationship between myco phobia and queer phobia, because I think it even more clarifies why we need to rethink the whole idea of scientific objectivity. So what would you say mycology cause into question in regards to objective truths and repeatable outcomes as the measure of credibility? And I wonder if you have any examples of how maybe research on mushrooms may not be able to be continually replicated because of how they in part act as a synthesis and reflection of their ever changing and very dynamic environments and communities?
Patricia Kaishian: Thanks for asking about this, because this is something that I think is really important, and particularly when we're talking about climate change and the planetary crisis that we find ourselves in and, you know, our conservation goals and frameworks. So I think there's a lot here to this question. But I'll start with talking about how we sort of, as scientists, are working in the realm of conservation. We know that we have a biodiversity crisis that is linked with climate change. You know, climate change is many things, but one big part of it, that I think is not actually discussed enough, is the massive loss of biodiversity mostly due to habitat destruction or alteration. And so we have, in the United States and in other across the world, different measures of, you know, documenting risk to species. In the United States, we have the federal lists for endangered species or threatened species. And then there's also international lists as well that document the threats that different species are experiencing. And fungi are really, really poorly represented on these lists. So, for example, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has a red list, which documents these threats, and on these lists, there's only about 500 species of fungi compared to about 28,000 species of plants. And I want to say like 35,000 species of animals. So maybe if you look at that, you might think, oh, fungi are not as at risk to climate change and habitat destruction than plants or animals because there's orders of magnitude fewer of them on the list. And we know that there are millions of species of fungi, so maybe they're just doing better. But actually that would be the completely wrong answer because they're only so poorly represented on the list because they're so poorly studied and we have very little data about them. And, not only that, the way in which, as you were sort of talking about the fungi, their very nature, their very biology, is really difficult to quantify, often. There are some species that are very reliably found in their habitat that can be counted and sort of quantified, similar to how you might quantify a flower or a tree or a bird.
But many fungi exhibit a much more ephemeral, cryptic, creeping and sort of difficult to decipher way of being that makes proving their risk or their decline really, really difficult.
Nonetheless, they're held to the same sort of biological norm and standard as other species that we're more familiar with, like vertebrate animals, because that's what we've established as the burden of proof. We need to prove that these species are at risk. We do so by documenting them over time and measuring their decline in particular quantifiable ways. But if a fungus is sort of slipping out of our reach and beyond our tools, then there is no real recourse for proving that they're declining, even though we can be sure that, for example, their habitat is like basically gone.
There's also this problem we’re in. I think when we think about conservation in these lists, which of course I respect so much— all of the effort that's gone into the effort of conservation-and so this is not to to dismiss the labor and efforts of those who've worked so hard to protect species. But we are nonetheless working in this very individualized conception of what a species is and what it even needs to survive. Right? So fungi have this capacity and many, many species of them have this capacity to form more symbiotic relationships with their habitat, whether it's the mutualisms of the mycorrhizal fungi or its fungi that live within or on other species like within the tissues of other animals. Fungi very often in and with on other species.
[Fungi] are challenging our ability to really make sense of what an individual is.
And they kind of what I find so beautiful and inspiring about them is that they can challenge our sort of deeply held notions of caring about an individual.
So for example, what if the framework of conservation wasn't about proving that each individual species was either at risk or not, but recognizing that there isn't actually a true ability to separate any given species from its ecological niche, that it is just part and parcel?
It's a component of a niche. And I think that we as humans have been operating in this very individualized sort of perspective where we can we see ourselves, for example, as apart from nature, right? We're sort of something separate from the rest of the tree of life. And I believe that's a big part of why we find ourselves in this crisis in the first place, is that we are protecting what we think is our own interests by being massively selfish. But in doing so, we're destroying the things that we're actually deeply interdependent on. So while fungi might not neatly fit into these conservation frameworks that we've been utilizing, they're actually kind of pushing us to to realize the shortcomings of those as well. And again, that's not to dismiss the important work of conservation scientists who are trying to protect species, but it's to maybe challenge us to be more imaginative about how we move forward in this world during this time of crisis.
So, when you see a mushroom, it's growing in the forest. Maybe you're walking in the forest and you see a log that's covered in fruiting bodies. And so one question we have as mycologists is: are those one individual mushrooms that you see? Or are they 20 of them? But maybe there are one because they're maybe coming from the same mycelium or are they 20 because they're, they're separate fruits of this mycelium or maybe there are multiple mycelium in the same exact place and their fruits are all sort of combining and blending. And how would we count that? How do we count that as one? Do we count that as 20? And these are questions that we have, right? Because either answer tells you something about, you know, the fungus, right? So if you count them as two fruits, that's going to tell you that the fungus had enough energy to produce 20 fruits. So if you don't if you count it just as one, then maybe you can see that you're right that it's a genetic individual, but you're not giving information about how that genetic individual is thriving or not thriving in its habitat. So, you know, other species, especially like a tree or a blue bird, they're not sort of sprouting pieces of themselves and and then re-absorbing that into their flesh and putting it up somewhere else a year later. They're just a little bit more fixed. And so fungi are just really complicated in our ability to get clear data about them.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah, I love that fungi put so much into question, including, as you mentioned, the idea of separate individuals and distinct species. And with that, I actually want to go back to a really basic question, which is: what are fungi and how would you go about defining them? And of course, I want to be careful with defining this kingdom in any sort of a rigid or bounded way, because they seem to defy a lot of dominant standards of categorization. But what are some of their common denominators? Is it the roles that they play in a community? Is it certain traits and characteristics? What is your best understanding of what fungi are or do, or how they relate to other community members? However you want to approach this question.
Patricia Kaishian: So I'll start with a more just sort of straightforward taxonomic way of describing fungi. Fungi are a kingdom of life, like the plant kingdom or the animal kingdom. That's the taxonomic unit that we're using when we talk about this group of organisms. And they are characterized by sort of a collection of traits that in their totality separate them from other kingdoms. For example, for a long time they actually were mistakenly thought of as plants, but they're not plants, they're actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants. But for most of our taxonomic history, they were put as a group within the kingdom plants and they were considered “lower plants”. But now we know that they're not plants and they've been removed from that kingdom and properly established in their own grouping.
They have a collection of character traits, for example, they are heterotrophic meaning that they eat like animals do. They don't, and we don't, photosynthesize, but we eat right. We have to source our nutrients somehow, usually with the production of enzymes and digestion. Right? So fungi are heterotrophs. They also they have chitin in their cell walls, which is really common— it's a material that's found in fungi that is pretty characteristic of the group. They undergo intra nuclear division, which is a way of dividing their genetic information. And they also produce spores and discharge spores. So all of these things would be like a technical way of talking about them scientifically. And then, of course, we now have also molecular evidence that positions fungi as unique from both plants and animals, but being closer to animals and amoebae, things like slime molds and other amoeba. But then there's also, I think, you know, I think that's a useful way of framing them. Then there's also though, this idea of like, well, how are they perceived? Right? I think a definition of fungus, a fungi is also it's a scientific one, but it's also like kind of what I was saying earlier, it is also somewhat a social one.
I think their identity is tied with their history of how humans have perceive them.
So a lot of people have a relationship towards fungi that what we would call myco-phobic, which is being kind of fearful of them. They are often found in dark, damp areas. They are kind of ephemeral. They can be micro or macro and they can be both. They can go between micro and macro phases of life. And I think also there's this positive aspect to gui . When I think about what they are definitionally, they are life giving organisms, they're organisms that have shaped and created the earth in the way that we now recognize that, they're bound up in our human evolutionary history. They live in our guts, they live in all of our tissues. They make food for us. And they are this dynamic microbial and macro organism that has shaped, shaped the earth and gave way, in fact, to human evolution as well. So all of these things are ways in which I kind of define fungi.
Kamea Chayne: So in consideration of how fungi haven't been able to be aligned neatly within the framework of how species are typically defined or measured in terms of how or whether they're deemed endangered, I'm interested in hearing what you've thought through in terms of taxonomy, in mycology and how species are defined in this realm. Like, how have you approached this work without it falling into the same bounds of conventional methods of categorization and maybe instead have the intention of identifying and classifying new species with a lens of queerness and with an understanding of the limitations of defining in rigid ways altogether.
Patricia Kaishian: I love this question because I am a taxonomist. I am someone who names, describes and classifies new species of fungi. And I'm really fascinated by how taxonomy is a really powerful and sort of effective, interesting science. And I would argue an art form as well. And also I'm really aware of the limitations of naming and sort of imposing limits in boxes around organisms. So I also am very conscientious of the fact that taxonomy has some of its roots in colonialism and at times has been used to displace the names of organisms that were known and were the intimate companions of indigenous peoples. It's a really complex field and I really am interested in these tensions.
I came to mycology and to taxonomy specifically because I saw it as a taxonomy, as a practice of honoring organisms. So for me, my relationship to this practice is with this understanding that giving an organism a name and reflecting on its journey, evolutionary journey that its been on, however quietly, and how ever outside of the human gaze. This is something worthy of celebrating and worthy of making, you know, a record of, sort of recording these chance encounters that we have with other beings on this planet.
So to me, naming is not stamping something and branding it or putting ownership over it, but I see it as sort of an act of humility.
I am on this planet as a human species, a member of the human species, and so are you, right? And in this case, I study these really small micro fungi that that live on insects. And very few people have ever seen them because they require a microscope and to be looking for them pretty explicitly. So sometimes I am aware of that. I may be one of the only humans that have encountered in a direct way this species, and they're not really particularly useful, like they're not, you know, in a conventional capitalistic sense. they’re profitable. But that would not be why I would want to celebrate them. Right? So now that's sort of my relationship to the craft. And I say it's an art because there is decision making involved. I mean, in the naming itself. Choosing the name, but also sort of grappling with this idea of like, what is a species, right? What are the limits of the species concepts that we're using? What ways do they affirm the fact that this is a lineage that is distinct from other things. It has its little idiosyncrasies molecularly that have made it present, you know, that have evolved and emerged as these unique little features. But then there's also ways in which, you know, emphasizing difference would not allow us to see the full picture. And instead, there's also this knowledge that these things are deeply situated in the environment itself, right? So thinking about how, for example, like organisms, we're not really existing in a vacuum. We are this call and response of, you know, between our DNA and the landscape and the other organisms in that system. So I love thinking of organisms where their genetic code is the relief of all of these interactions that are around them and that came before them. So taxonomy to me is this practice, right? I think that it can, if done with that type of intention, make us conscientious of just how staggering the diversity of this planet is. And for me, it helps me be reminded of the smallness of humans in many ways, of myself specifically, but also of the species. We are just here so briefly in the scheme of things.
The fungi that I study, they're called Lab Albany Yalies, which is the taxonomic order. It's kind of a mouthful, but, you know, they emerged evolutionarily, we think like 400 million years ago. And I mean, that's like an incomprehensible amount of time. And when we think about how long the human species has been here, it's just a fraction of that. So I think that they helped me reflect on being in intimacy with these organisms is a way for me to meditate on the smallness of us. Which to me a good thing, right? I think it's good to be small. I think it's good to be part of something much bigger than yourself, both in your individual life. But also, I think as we think about the human relationship to the earth.
Kamea Chayne: I really love and resonate with the idea of naming not as mastering or boxing in or imposing limits, but as honoring and expanding our awareness and humility. So thank you so much for this perspective. What I also really appreciate is how you've differentiated between pseudoscience and the real harms, that it can have an alternative ways of knowing because it can feel murky, but it feels like a very important distinction. So I would love it if you can elaborate more on that and on the difference between tools and the truth that everybody might be working towards. And also, as we kind of touched on earlier, on the problems with conflating replication and standardization with knowledge itself.
Patricia Kaishian: Yeah, this is something that I think is really important as we, you know, right now, like there's so much political tension. You know, I'm speaking from living in the so-called United States. And there's been a long history of the politicization of science. But I think it's intensified in a way. It's shifted. You know, I feel like there used to be a lot more debates about evolution. And I think that's sort of like dying down a little bit, thankfully. But now it's shifted into, you know, of course, COVID and vaccines and all of these things. And so I think that having a high degree of science literacy is something that's really, really important, whether or not you're a scientist or a policymaker, but just being a person trying to navigate the world.
And I am very wary of pseudo science. I guess the way I think about pseudo science is it's a claim or a statement (or a set of statements or claims) that is trying to appear to be abiding by the standards of science, but failing to do so and doing so in a way that is somehow manipulative or with the intention to deceive or to capitalize on something that, you know, to sell you something or to somehow benefit someone over another. Right. And so it's pseudo science is asserting to be using the scientific method or, you know, maybe misleading someone into thinking that it's a real study or it's like their results are valid even though they maybe got contradicting results or can be done in a lot of different ways. But to me, there has to be a level of intentionality in that or just a gross negligence. And I think that is always bad, right? It's always, like, not good. But what's really different in my mind from what would I would call and others have called other ways of knowing. So ways of being in the world that is not claiming to be science, right? So this could be religious beliefs, this could be astrology. This could be what I mean, some people might be saying it science, but those who don't claim it is, but believe in it and practice it. It could be also just like your own personal belief that, for example, like I'm going to say, I believe that biodiversity is sacred and earth is sacred, right? And that's not really rooted in a very specific religious tradition. But that's something I believe. And it's not that I don't justify with science and I don't feel the need to justify that with science. So of course, scientists can be people with complex belief systems, and many scientists are, you know, but then those are different things.
And so another way of knowing is Traditional Ecological Knowledge, some of which would, I think, fall into the definition of science, but not all of it would, right? Some of it would be more culturally located, cultural stories. Ways of making sense of the world that isn't purely standardized-able or isn't replicable is very explicitly and but it is nonetheless bounded in something very profound and essential to maybe being in that culture. All of that is not pseudoscience, right? So I think that those things are so often conflated and there's a kind of, type of person that I encounter a lot who's—you know, I call them like the “logic bros”—but it's not always men who think that everything is only valid or valuable if it is scientific fact. And I think that there's a really big problem with that when we think about what we were talking about earlier, which is the legacy of science, which is socially located and flawed and at times heinous, like, you know, if you think about eugenics and and so forth. And then it's also a problem because it so that you're then asserting that worldview onto people who are coming from a different worldview. And and I think that also it puts this burden of proof on justifying. So, for example, when I say that I believe that the earth should be destroyed, even if it was scientifically like even if climate change, as we kind of now understand, it, wouldn't occur. But because I believe that organisms aside from human, have the sort of right to to exist in their equal ecological birthright, if I can't justify that scientifically, then I could be told that that's just pseudoscience. Or that's , just stupid. Right? And I mean, I guess if you want to believe that, that's up to you. But to me, I think philosophically, these are just really different things. So I'm kind of forgetting what your the next part of your question was. Could you maybe restate that?
Kamea Chayne: Yeah. Wasn't really specific questions, but I guess just elaborating on, I mean, you kind of touched on this, elaborating on the difference between tools and truth, which with what you just said, it does remind me of my most recently published episode with Dr. Chandler Prescott Weinstein, where she so she mentions that the the science and tools of physics for her, for example, is not meant to answer questions of religion and spirituality. And it's okay to have that humility to know what your set of tools are equipped to be used for in terms of knowledge seeking.
Patricia Kaishian: So I follow her work and I think she's a great, amazing scientist and science communicator. I agree with that idea. You know, I think a good scientists are people who recognize, you know, reflect as much as what we what we don't know, as what we do know and are very conscientious that we like. You know, we're swimming in this vast and infinite universe and we we don't have omniscience and there are limits to what we know. And all the time we see science sort of course correcting and revealing new things that we didn't know previously or sort of complicating what we thought was maybe established fact. So that happens all the time in science. I think science is an amazingly powerful tool that I use, both because I think it's wonderfully invigorating to be able to investigate the world and reveal things. But then also because, you know, I'm trying to leverage my skills as a person to sort of protecting the earth. And so I deploy science as a tool towards the protection of the earth, trying to prove that fungi are endangered or, essential members of our ecosystem. But then I also am pursuing my other belief in this sort of parallel but separate way, which is that, you know, that…
I believe that whether or not we can prove a fungus is going extinct, it deserves to be able to exist.
So yeah, that's me using science as a tool. And then also me sort of having this parallel belief system as well that's related but different. Yeah.
Kamea Chayne: The final theme I would love to explore with you is the concept of deep time, because it's something that has always felt a little abstract for me personally, but I think could really help us to open up other ways of seeing and relating to the world. So on this note, I wonder if you can speak more about all these fascinating tiny events that you speak to that we're constantly engaged in at a biological and relational level and with the backdrop of our sixth mass extinction in mind. What you mean when you suggest that it is actually pleasure and not pain that drives the process of evolution?
Patricia Kaishian: Yeah, so I starting with deep time. So I think humans are really not very good, our brains did not evolve with the need to process the entirety of history of the earth, like the 4 billion years or so of the Earth's history and all of the evolution that preceded us or, you know, the history of the universe or these things are, I think, are just so incomprehensible in scale.
So when we talk about deep time, we're talking about an amount of time that so far exceeds the human lifespan that….it's almost like the idea can only exist in the abstract.
But then again we see it in everything we do, every moment we're existing in and alongside species that have been there for, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of years. And so I think when we think about climate change, we're thinking about this crisis that has happened in such a small snapshot of time when it comes to, you know, the history of life on earth. And when we think about the fact that basically just in the last 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, we've seen the massive decline in like another wave of extinction and, you know, the absolute alteration of the face of the earth and the chemical constitution of the planet. And this crisis that we're in, it feels like it's been going on forever. But really it's just happening in a blink of an eye when it comes to biodiversity. And when we think about, for example, that like, you know, 99%. Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth are actually extinct now because there have been so many waves of radiation, of not like chemical radiation, but evolutionary radiation like species emerging in their lineages, dividing and splitting and covering the earth. And then, you know, some major planetary event happens that changes fundamentally the ecosystems that leads to these mass extinction events. So this has happened, you know, there are five previous mass extinction events. So in totality, so much has happened and come before us, we really can't even wrap our minds around it. But it's essential to think about this when we think about the climate crisis, because we need to act in a way we can't fully grapple deep time, I think.
But what we need to do is recognize the hubris in believing that what happens now on earth is the most important thing, and that our comforts now could be more important than the sort of entire dynamic of the planet.
It's such an insane, almost pathological, I think, deeply pathological way of seeing the world. So I find that this meditation on deep time gives us that smallness I was talking about earlier that is essential in cultivating humility and care and stewardship. So when I think about, like all of these millions of interactions, I also think about our human body and our DNA, there isn't like a legibility or a way of really seeing this body without seeing it as part and parcel with the ecosystems through which it evolves. And not just our exact human species, but all of the species that came before it when we were just like four legged, basically fish, that slithered on to land and and then the all the organisms that exist in our tissues that make the biological processes that we recognize as human, human. We can't exist without them. And that type of sort of interdependent way of thinking, I think is really lacking even in our climate justice movement, even in the sort of environmental movement. There's still this narrative of our singularity and our exceptionalism that takes up a lot of space. And what I think I, and a lot of the thinkers that I've been inspired by and that I read frequently—so thinking of Donna Haraway, Dr. Robin Kimmerer, Anna Tsing. I coauthored a piece with a friend of mine, Hasmik Djoulakian, who's a feminist and who studied gender studies. And you know, I think that we need to think about these things in ways that make us really reflect on this, on our interdependencies. And that's something that I think science is also starting to come around towards. But I've done a lot of the thinking that I've really learned from about this is, has been rooted in more feminist, queer and traditionally the feminist queer theories and traditional ecological knowledge. I think we have a lot to learn from those disciplines as well.
Kamea Chayne: Well, we are coming to a close for our main discussion here, and I would love to leave room for you to share about your forthcoming book, Forest Euphoria, and anything else that's on your mind right now. And yeah, just any other cost of action or deeper inquiry you have for our listeners.
Patricia Kaishian: Thanks so much for for inviting me on here. And I'm really excited about my book. It's called, as you said, Forest Euphoria. And it's a queer bestiary. It's a collection of essays that all focus on different organisms that are somehow queer or sort of challenging our perception of what is like normal or beautiful or possible. It doesn't have a release date yet, but I can send updates as I have them. I'm really excited to have that be out in the world. So, you know, what I'm interested in sort of the spirit of writing that book is, is to show and help share how A) what we're talking about with science being, you know, this imperfect discipline that is has revealed so much to us.
But we can actually further leverage to understand our various identities and the biodiversity of humans better, right? So our inner, neurotypical or neurodivergent ways of being or queer ways of being. And what I'm hoping to communicate is how, that for me, it was literally life saving to find these companionships with nature and with other organisms. And to have that intimacy is something that has brought me tremendous joy and comfort and is a blessing that I think of the greatest kind. And I want other people to have that, too. And I think too, I'm hoping to sort of share a little bit about that. So one of the things I care the most about is helping people form a relationship to nature. And it can be for many people, it can be and probably should be something that's, you know, private. That you just don't try to make a living off of or a career from, but you just in your daily life have this special bond. And so I that's something I care a lot about. And I would love to help people, like, figure that out, what that looks like for them as well for.
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Kamea Chayne: What has been an impactful book that you've read or a publication that you follow?
Patricia Kaishian: So the book question is so hard, but I'm going to say the one that comes to mind first right now, because I read it very recently, which is Eli Clair's book Brilliant in Perfection, which is a book about disability, queerness and nature. And I could not recommend Eli Clare's work more. All right. So that's one quick book. And then I you know, I'm forever grateful for what I've learned from Doctor Robin Wall Kimber. All of her writing is essential for me and like, I can't really imagine where I would have ended up without that. So those are the two that come to mind first.
Kamea Chayne: What is a personal motto, mantra or practice you engage with to stay grounded.
Patricia Kaishian: So a practice would be just being outside all of it as much as possible. It doesn't always. It can't always be. It doesn't need to be in like wilderness. It doesn't have to be like pristine, quote unquote nature. It could just be an urban park or just anywhere you can be outside. And I do that whenever I can. And it's an essential way for me to stay grounded. And then also, I think the mantra would sort of be like I think actually a theme I return to a few times already is just the smallness of reflecting on, you know, you're part of something you don't know, you are not alone and you don't have to do it alone…there was something before you and there will be something after you as well.
Kamea Chayne: And what is one of your greatest sources of inspiration at the moment?
Patricia Kaishian: I think my greatest source of inspiration at the moment would be the people, most of whom are just people I know personally, not necessarily like famous people, but like who are just so dogged and fears about doing their work, right. So whether their work is their writing or their advocacy or their defense defending of of, you know, of justice and truth. And I have a few people I'm lucky to know, a few people in my personal life who are just kind of insane. And I mean this word with both love and also literally in their sort of relentless pursuit of making the world a better place. I draw a lot of inspiration from my sister, who is a civil rights attorney and from one of my friends, Sophie Strand, who's a writer, and my partner, who also just lives their life every day with this commitment to their ideals and their vision. That is really inspiring. So I think, yeah, that's that.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It's been an absolute honor to have you. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Patricia Kaishian: Thank you for coming. I loved being here. It was super nice to have this chance to talk with you. I guess I think just go outside and I think just know that everyone has a role to play in in stewarding the earth. So to use your gifts, I think, in the best way you can.
