Our book for January is Life Lessons from a Parasite by John Janovy, Jr. The book is about parasites. These are the minuscule life forms that live inside other organisms. We learn a lot about the wide variety of these organisms and how they infect their hosts and why the study of these parasites can lead to new understanding about how infected words and ideas become parasites in our modern-day life. Linny is, let’s just say, not a fan of parasites and biology, in general! She does like the life lessons, though! Linny, recalls very traumatic experiences in high school biology. She says it was, along with Spanish, the worse subject she ever took in high school. She says her good drawings kept her from getting an F in biology. Linny found the sections on dissection very challenging and the sections made her nauseous, even. She had trouble eating the fish her husband made her. Linny acknowledges that John seems like a nice person, so this has nothing to do with that. She likes the conclusions he draws, she assumes all the time he has in the lab alone. Nancy says, John is always talking about getting together at the bar, so it’s not as isolating as Linny might believe. Nancy remembers practically nothing from high school biology. Linda also remembers that she wanted to be a veterinarian, but when the Girl Scouts took a trip to a veterinarian office, she started passing out and needed to be administered smelling salts. That was the end of her veterinary dreams. Janovy tells us that parasites are species that must live in or on other, unrelated species to survive. Further, he says, “The relationship is both physical and physiological, involving parasite use of host tissues and substances such as sugars and amino acids. Furthermore, parasites cannot survive without this relationship.” Linny says just hearing Nancy read this makes her stomach flip flop! Nancy was surprised to read that parasitism is the most common way of life among animals on earth! Janovy says that every species that has been studied has been shown to be infected with several different kinds of worms, lice, ticks, mites, and other parasites! In this book, John discusses different parasites and how scientists have studied them and why it matters. The book, to Nancy, felt like a love letter to all scientists, whether amateur or professional. Especially parasitologists. You get the feeling he thinks it would be a good thing if everyone did a little parasitology in their lives! You can tell that John loves to flame an interest in biology in his students. He really emphasizes the importance of curiosity. He talks about “how” questions - those are questions about the way things work and he says these questions are relatively easy to answer. The questions he seems to love are the “why” questions which for parasitologists involve evolutionary histories. Linny loved learning that parasites migrate during their stages of development. If there’s a break, the parasite won’t come to maturity. Linny and Nancy were surprised to understand malaria was a parasitic disease. Nancy was enamored with the parasite that takes over ants’ brains, forcing them to climb up on a blade of grass so it will be eaten by sheep and infect it with the parasite. Linny likes how John takes parasitism and relates it to words and ideas. What ideas do we ingest that change our behavior? Nancy liked the section where John talks about how his graduate work helped him understand the difference between the individual and the kind. He writes: “that experience, building on it to form a worldview in which this difference between the individual and the species, between the one and the kind, is central to every thought I will have for the rest of my life, and shaping my reaction to personal, professional, biological, and political events. My daily news feed focuses on kinds: immigrants, gay people, Black people, Democrats, and Republicans, to mention a few; but my daily life deals with individuals, people with whom I do business, buying goods and services, sharing conversations, and sending emails. Those individuals rarely, if ever, match the images portrayed by some who talk constantly about kinds, often in derogatory terms. Sometimes I wonder what might happen if I could collar some state legislator, sit that person down at a microscope, pull out a drawer of museum specimens, and ask: How do theory-headed worms of a single species different among themselves? To answer that question, this elected official would spend hours, then days, sometimes turning into months, making measurements, counting hooks, drawing then comparing anatomical features, and following up with statistical analysis. In the end, that person would never again comfortably equate kinds with individuals or vice versa, no matter what legislation was being proposed… Never again would this person use those words so common in our current political discourse – immigrants, LGBTQ+, Blacks – in the same way as do their less-educated colleagues who’d never spent that time at a microscope. It’s easy to label kinds; we do it every day. It’s not so easy to label individuals. When we are introduced and learn about their lives, they become real people with parents, children, spouses, jobs, feelings, and responsibilities, just like the rest of us.” (p. 137) Linny says what John says here is true for her, too. It is easy to categorize types of people, but dealing with people one on one is an entirely different experience. Nancy likes this point because it emphasizes that individuals are unique from one another, despite sharing certain traits or beliefs. Nancy likes how this forces us to think about engaging people without prejudice and this is hard. Linny says it takes some good self-awareness to recognize your own biases and get to know people for who they are. There’s a lot of value in being a part of groups of diverse groups of people which helps us see them as people like us, even. Then, we are infected with good ideas about individuals. Linda really enjoyed Janovy’s general theory of infectivity, basically of ideas. He proposes four principles: 1. Words are infective and can alter the physiological condition of a listener. 2. Words are any entity that can be identified as, represented by, or linked to a sequence of symbols, signals, and/or spaces in a communication system. 3. Words enter and leave other words. 4. Words alter their environment. Nancy resonated with the first principle, especially. She sees this in herself. She reads an article, or has a conversation with a friend, and those experiences may change her thinking about something and change her behavior. Linny thinks often about how negative words impact people’s behavior. For example, a person’s belief about themselves and subsequent behaviors may be based on negative words from their parents. This can even change their brain neurology. The third principle, maybe, is also a representation of generational trauma. Nancy commented on the iterations and adaptability even with something like the Wizard of Oz which inspired the movie which inspired the book Wicked which inspired the Broadway show which inspired the new blockbuster movie. Linny comments that the movie, itself, shows the power of words as Glinda is a part of changing the Munchkin’s minds about Elphaba. Next episode, we visit with the author, John Janovy, Jr.