Before we welcome our guest, Linny tells Nancy about her latest acting gig, in Iceland, well, Baltimore standing in for Iceland. She tells us it was cold, like Iceland, so the acting was not a stretch. She also talks about how complex the lighting was. Linny is learning more about people’s roles in movies. All of this will come in handy as Linny has put in her name for a movie Steven Spielberg is filming in Cape May, NJ. Fingers crossed! The night of our recording, Nancy is headed to a benefit gala wearing a long dress that she made out of some lovely burgundy crushed velvet. Our guest for this episode is John Janovy, Jr., one of the world’s preeminent experts on parasites. Janovy’s works with a natural history theme include the well-known Keith County Journal (St. Martin’s, 1978), Yellowlegs, Vermilion Sea: A Naturalist’s Journey in Baja California, On Becoming a Biologist, Ten Minute Ecologist, and Pieces of the Plains: Memories and Predictions from the Heart of America. His other book subjects include high school athletics (Fields of Friendly Strife, winner of the American Health magazine book award), anti-intellectualism in America (Comes the Millennium), higher education (Teaching in Eden), and travel (Africa Notes: Reflections of an Ecotourist). He is the co- author of five editions of Foundations of Parasitology, the leading textbook in his discipline, and the senior editor of A Century of Parasitology: Discoveries, Ideas and Lessons Learned by Scientists who Published in The Journal of Parasitology, 1914-2014. He retired from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011, where he was the Paula and D. B. Varner Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences. John is also a member of Nancy’s longform writing group! John tells us he got interested in biology from his boyhood days on the north edge of Oklahoma City, tracking muskrats and hunting. His parents encouraged his interest in outdoors. When he got to college, he majored in math. But the last semester of his senior year, he took a class from a world-famous biologist, so he studied biology in his graduate program, focusing on parasitology since he thought they were asking the most interesting questions. In Life Lessons from a Parasite, John says everyone should become a parasitologist. He obviously loves his field. John says parasitologist look at things that move though populations and cause infections. This concept in adaptable to marketing, words, ideas. John tells us that evaluating good infective ideas and words must be based on what we think of as an ideal human: rationality, understanding, kindness, empathy, appreciation for the arts. Anything that destroys this decency can be considered a bad parasitic idea. We can hear many of these parasitic ideas in the news every day. John tells us that he started teaching during the era of the Vietnam War. Those students were unafraid of asking questions which made John more open to being curious and questioning, himself. John tells us that the idea for the book came from a discussion with some retired colleagues. His first draft focused on people driven by curiosity. His editor suggested he generalize it and add some political nuggets, leading to the book it became. Curiosity is important to everyone from artists to composers to scientists. John says people can nurture their curiosity by asking questions, talking about why something happens. Causality is a key factor in scientists thinking. Everyday people should read social media or new sources thinking about whether what they are reading is true. John gives many ideas for future research. He says that he and his colleagues actively identified projects that would help students get an advanced degree that would lead to a good project and scientific fame. John has written something like 27 books. He said he’s always been an addictive reader. John tells us he first wrote a novel in the late 1960s, but he’s somewhat embarrassed by it now. Later, when he was showing some of his paintings at an art show, a passerby suggested he should have his paintings published in Nebraskaland magazine. When he approached them, Nebraskaland accepted them and asked him to write a paragraph for each. Doing so made him think he could easily write a chapter for the work he did, which he then turned into a book length project that became the very successful Keith County Journal. John says he was always painting as a child and had encouragement from his parents. When he met George Sutton that final semester of his undergraduate program, he realized artistry was part of being a biologist. Drawings are a part of scientific publications in biology and parasitology. However, one reviewer critiqued his illustration for a paper saying his colors were repulsive. When he resubmitted as a pen and ink, the article was immediately accepted. Llinda asks John about the worm in Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s brain. John tells us the worm is a tapeworm that he somehow picked up, probably through pig or human feces. The parasite hatched and migrated to his brain. The tapeworm calcifies and is dead, but remains in the brain. Tapeworms are easily identifiable through an MRI. John’s website has a chapter on this tapeworm. Linny says she has washed her hands more than before after reading John’s book. Nancy liked John’s discussion of the Iron Wheel, which has been the biologists’ concept of the life cycle. Concepts like this Iron Wheel are helpful because they simplify events to represent the aggregate, rather than the individual. John’s graduate student named Matthew Bolek pointed out that the Iron Wheel, or other simplifications can blind us to what is happening. John writes, “The world is not like you believe it to be; the world is not like you’ve been told that it is; the world is not like your textbooks are claiming it is.” John says the individual experience is what makes us unique human beings. We need to recognize how we experience nature is a simplification. We need to recognize that our reception of the news is a simplification. We should develop the habit of asking ourselves what information we are getting that are simplifications and in what way. Nancy asked John to tell us more about the individual versus for the kind experience. John says the political rhetoric talks about and weaponizes kind a lot. John suggests we can immunize ourselves against kind thinking by encountering a wide array of people, using the library, going to diverse movies. John recalls he assigned grades to about 18,000 students from a wide range of students. Based on his experience, he learned very quickly is that you can’t tell what’s inside a person by looking on the outside. Linny cringed that John told of picking up a dead bird on campus and putting it to his cheek. John said you’ve got to be careful if they’re live because they’ll pick your eye out! Nancy thought it was adorable to show the reverence for life. John says it’s the source of a biologist’s career, but also a source of wonder, really. Linny says you have to take a lot of life to be a biologist so there is an ethical component. John implores us to think about the words and phrases as infectious agents that may change our behaviors, for good and for bad. We should also think about paralanguage in this way. John says he is currently work on a fictional book, sixth book in a series, about a young woman in charge of a petroleum company who is faced with testifying against her father in a conspiracy trial. Nancy and John’s writing group will review this next month, so Nancy will be reading it soon! John is also finishing up a book about ivermectin that the writing group has already reviewed an early version. Nancy loved it. John says people can find him at his website: https://www.johnjanovy.com/index.html