Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't Tony Santore

This conversation will make you want to buy a microscope and will make you rethink the way you envision the Tree of Life, where animals, plants and fungi are just a tiny speck on the overall tree of life.

Dr. Julia Van Etten (of the @Couch Microscopy Instagram page) talks about what the hell a Protist is and where you can find them (everywhere). We reveal how Protists are the fine particles that weave within and throughout our world."The Tree of Life is Really a Web".

The paper that the thumbnail is from can be found at : https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395

In this episode we take a break from botany-related content to talk with my friend and fellow former locomotive engineer and railroader Lance Jenkins about railroading, sobriety, sad male archetypes in the US, stealing overtime, precision scheduled railroading and how it's responsible for the wreck in East Palestine Ohio,  "The Sun Train", and a whole lot more.

South Texas Sandsheet, Uvalde County Botany, Using a Leafblower & Diatomaceous Earth to rid yourself of crabs, what the sh*t is a Heterokont aka Stramenophile, Texas Men Will Be Able to Admit Having Feelings in 2028, and more 

In this episode we talk with Hunter Martinez of the Cactus Quest YouTube Channel about how he got into growing cacti from seed and lurking on them in habitat. We discuss the spirituality of loving plants and deserts, the pros and cons of the collector habit common among this family of plants, why so many cacti grow on limestone geology, and the benefits of growing from seed over purchasing full-grown plants.

A series of extended rants about "F*ck the Honeybees", trying to settle beefs between friends, Male Primate Rivalry, Riding Trains in Mexico in 2005 & Brakemen with gold fronts, spreading the cult of native plant gardening via demonstration by example and killing lawns.

A long-winded rant about the social media phenomenon known as Instagram Drug Bros™️ and trying to encourage them to seek spiritual refuge (como se dice nice) in education about plant ecology and evolution rather than just the hoarding and collecting of plants that may have been sourced through somewhat unethical means. Why is plant habitat just as, if not more important than the plant itself? How is the ecological context in which a plant evolves inseparable from the plant itself? Can we get Instagram Drug Bros ™️  to start studying and collecting data on things like native solitary bees? What are the means through which Instagram Drug Bros™️ can expand their scope of interest to include things like phylogenies, breeding systems, pollination ecology, and geologic substrate? Why are so many cacti obligate out-crossers? Why is peyote self-fertile? Why do so many angiosperms produce bisexual flowers and what the hell is a breeding system?

Also includes a nice rant about  a vestigial population of Agave unvittata found growing on a limestone cliff face above a freeway in San Antonio. Was there ever a basement in the Alamo or was that just a BS story that that huckster psychic conjured up in order to milk PeeWee out of cash?