 Biomimicry just basically says, well, if we have specific challenges that we're trying to solve for, whether it be in architecture or in material science or in business planning, you sort of break that problem down to a functional question. How does nature make color? How does nature keep an environment cool? And then you basically investigate, you do research to figure out what are the answers there? What are the processes and principles behind how nature has achieved it? Whether it's insects or mammals or whatever, look at a variety of organisms, understand what they've done and boil it down to some principles and then try to apply those principles to a solution. Mark Dorfman is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Mark is a New York City-based senior principal and lead chemist at Biomimicry 3.8, where his work is centered on the premise that living organisms by necessity have developed sophisticated, highly effective life-friendly chemistries that can inspire provocative, high-performing sustainable technology for modern society. Mark seeks out and applies the design principles of nature's time-tested chemical strategy to the development of innovative solutions to the toxic chemical and material challenges facing the 21st century. Prior to Biomimicry 3.8, Mark worked in the nonprofit sector researching and writing case studies on industrial chemical pollution prevention and wastewater management practices that ultimately influenced the creation of federal and state pollution prevention policies. Mark, that is a wonderful profile and a wonderful bio, and I'm so thankful that you're here on the show today. Welcome. Thank you, nice to be here. It's so good to have you, and I know you have a much longer biography and list of accolades. You've spoken all over the world and many different events and meetings everywhere from pioneers to green business form practices and many, many others. I have to start right off the bat, kind of to get the elephant out of the room. You've been doing this for a long time, working on protecting our environment, our planet, thinking of the different ways to do things without damaging our environment or causing suffering, human suffering. And has any of that prepared you with a little bit of resilience to whether this last and now going on, at least a year of craziness, pandemics and all sorts of unrest around the world? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, I've been an environmentalist since I was a teenager, which was a long time ago. And even back in the 70s, there was certainly an environmental movement. But the reaction from a lot of people when I would point out simple things like maybe try to use less plastic, use it over again, don't litter, things like that. The reaction from people was always like, oh, Mark, don't keep bothering me about that. So it kind of made me realize that you're not just gonna change people's behavior. And particularly around something like plastic, I realized that you're not gonna get people to stop using plastic. That really the solution to the environmental and public health problems that plastic causes is gonna be to invent a plastic that serves the functions that current plastic serves. But in a way that mimics nature chemistry processes and materials, which is not only not polluting, but actually creating conditions can do stuff to life. So I think just all of those experiences just made me realize that people aren't gonna change right away. You've gotta just really put a lot of thought into this and really do research and R&D when it comes to some really new innovative idea that takes a long time before you go from that idea to actual commercialization. So I think that has helped a little bit. But not only my work experiences, but my life experiences as I mentioned before we started recording that this background is in view of or actually taken from the village where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. And I lived in a village with no electricity, no running water, I was the only non-Napali. I was only Western or around. Everything was completely different from climate to geography to language, to food and to customs and such. And at first it was really hard. People kept pointing at me and laughing like, oh, he's brushing his teeth, oh, he's shaving, oh, he's drinking tea. And it just forced me to be able to kind of, you know, work myself into the surroundings, kind of use one of life's principles, which is to adapt and evolve. You know, that's one way that organisms and ecosystems have survived for so long. 3.8 billion years, which is where the 3.8 in 5.3.8 comes from. So I think all of that has helped me whether the storm, plus the fact that I just really enjoy being home. As you mentioned, I do a lot of traveling and I enjoy doing traveling, but I actually enjoy being home and I haven't traveled for more than 10 months now. And I miss the travel, but I also enjoy being home. That's nice, that's beautiful. Is there, so I mean, a little bit of all this being home and kind of catching up on, it probably gave you a little bit more focus on work and some other projects as well. With this craziness, did any of that, as long as you've been in this arena, give you a little bit of resilience and maybe a better life operating system to be able to ride some of these storms and unrest, not only Black Lives Matter, some political issues and obviously just this lockdown and what's going on in New York and Washington really been kind of a hotbed around a lot of these things. And I'm kind of leading you in some respects. I wanna see, is there a better operating system, maybe mimicking regenerative practices, biomimicry, some things into your home life, into your life period that gives people a little more resilience to whether storms or things like this and when we kind of reflect back on how nature works and to do that or is this not applicable at all? Well, I think one thing that's helped me anyway is optimism and maybe that's what's come out of all of these years of working in the environmental movement and certainly from the last 13 years and working in biomimicry that I just have a lot of hope and optimism still, even in the face of all that's happened, particularly in recent years and recent days. So that's one thing, just having optimism, not only from understanding how nature works and nature is resilient, but in the understanding that science is always improving. And so along with our better understanding of how nature works, how nature can be resilient, the scientific tools that we have are better enabling us to understand nature's processes deeper, but also have more opportunities to mimic them. Plus the younger generation is great being around younger people who are really smart, really optimistic and a large part of the young generation today, I think, values, ecosystems and nature, perhaps a little bit more than previous generations. And so all of those things together give me optimism that we're certainly gonna have more and more problems, particularly with population growth, but I think that there's hope for us getting out of this. The other is just being out in nature. And I live in the middle of Manhattan, yet I make an effort every single day to usually take a bike ride, but just be in nature. So I ride into and around and around Central Park every day. I ride along the waterfront, so I'm by a big body of water. And the cool thing about being in an estuary is that depending on the time of day, the tide and the wind direction, you can be smelling saltwater or you can be smelling freshwater. So being out in nature on a regular basis, I think is just good for the soul, it's good for the body, and I think it's kind of rejuvenating. And in general, that's something that I think that we need to do more and more, is just get out in nature. It helps us be, I think, just happier and more resilient, but also gives us an increasing appreciation to kind of a reconnection to nature. I mean, obviously, human beings almost safety and started out being more in an interaction, more dependent on nature. And a lot of people now, they walk into the grocery store and they don't know where a lot of the food items come from. And so I think that that just really helps to just be out in nature on a regular basis. Yeah, it's also a great lab to observe new ways of how things work and maybe get some aha moments on some new tools or some new ways to mimic nature, maybe get that understanding where it finally clicks in and you say, oh, really? I've never recognized that before. It's funny how that happens. I totally agree with you. You are very fortunate to not only with Biomimicry 3.8 be surrounded by fabulous colleagues. I don't know how the working environment is, how often you guys get together and work collaboratively, but Janine Benes, is that how you say her name properly? Nene Benes. Nene Benes wrote a wonderful book, Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature. And I really think it was also, she gave a TED talk around the same time and I believe it was 2006, I might be wrong. At the same time, there was Al Gore who spoke at that TED and also William McDonough who does cradle to cradle and circular economy type of discussions and talks about sustainable architecture. And a lot of those, those are also alignment with a lot of, you know, people caring about environment, climate, activism and things like that. And it just came at a beautiful time as well listened to and the book is fabulous. Since that time, that's a while and you've been doing this a while, how have you seen this whole thing evolve and can you get us maybe up to speed on what type of things you're working on, what type of things you guys are really excited about and maybe even through the craziness we've experienced with the Trumps and the Bolsonaro's and the Shays and the Putin's, all the other crazy other worlds, how this has almost inspired a speed up or a catapult. Let's apply some of these innovations inspired by nature to really solve some of our global grand challenges and get away from this, you know, this some of the current trends of plans that our world's been on our tracks that we've been on. Well, you know, Janine and Dana Balmeister. So Dana Balmeister and Janine together started Biomimicry 3.8 and they, well, the book came out 13 years ago now, well, actually 14 is 2021. And for many years in the beginning, like up until, you know, perhaps less than 10 years ago, you know, we talk about Biomimicry and the reaction would be by a what, you know, but now you don't really get that so much. People have heard the term and just biology in general is being embraced by companies, by governments, by, you know, many different entities as a source of inspiration. So I think that's one reason I'm optimistic is I see us valuing nature in a variety of ways, whether it be biophilia, you know, where you just have buildings that just either include nature or, you know, reflect nature or something just to make us feel good, but also in the development of new products and processes. I mean, Biomimicry spans the entire economy, the entire commerce, you know, from developing, you know, new consumer products to architecture, even to social innovation, you know, creating better business models and things like that. So, you know, that's just very encouraging to see. Some of the things that, well, you know, I'm a chemist, so I tend to be really fascinated by nature's chemistry and, you know, most interested in projects and such that have sort of a chemistry component or chemistry challenge to them. And what a lot of us may not understand is kind of the role of chemistry in nature or the role of chemistry in commerce. And chemistry basically underlies everything, you know, it underlies everything in the natural world and underlies everything in the developed world. And, you know, whereas it's often the cause of public and environmental health problems, you know, from the industrial side, it's often the source of, you know, cures and, you know, solutions in the natural world. You know, one way that I start many of my talks is that there's this misconception that chemicals are something that, you know, is produced, that they're man-made things produced by industry that contaminate an otherwise chemical-free natural world. But, you know, the truth is, is that nature is a live chemistry, but nature has figured out how to do chemistry in ways that enable us to meet those functions, whether it's, you know, color and lubrication or protection from water or, you know, management of oxygen or protecting from, you know, pests or other environmental factors. You know, chemistry is the basis of it. Chemistry is the basis of all the materials we see in nature, whether it be, you know, a really hard, resilient shell or a flexible stem or all the squishy parts of organisms, you know, chemistry is at the basis of those materials. And the principles that nature follows to achieve those functionalities, you know, are what gives us the fodder for creating concepts for biomimetic alternatives to, you know, the most problematic of materials. And so one of the things that I'm most interested in, I mentioned plastic before, you know, come back to plastic is that there are sort of two principles that drive the functionality and the life-friendliness of nature's materials. And that's the composition of it. And they tend to be multiple compositions. Like we may think that leaves are cellulose and, you know, fingernails are keratin. And for the most part, those materials that we associate them with are the main material. But there's always, you know, a mix of proteins and carbohydrates and minerals and other types of, you know, biological compounds that together in certain proportions and positions, if you will, I mean, even along the length scale of any biological material, unlike a synthetic material, they're usually not uniform throughout. There's a gradient and that gradient helps to give properties, you know, where they're needed. So like for example, if you've ever been by the sea and see where, you know, muscles come from, sea muscles, they don't just appear out of the kitchen in a bowl. They actually grow on near shore waters. And they feed off of, you know, all the suspended microorganisms and particles that are in the water. But in order to be able to feed on them, they can't be, you know, being banged around and blown around by the near shore waves and such in the turbulence. They have to glue themselves to surfaces. And so, you know, the glue part of it is also pretty amazing that, you know, these animals this big without even brains are able to produce a glue that sticks to a rough, dirty surface underwater. You go into the store and try to find an adhesive that'll do that. But the point I wanted to make was when they created the adhesive, then they have these thread like things, these viscous threads that attach from the adhesive point on the solid surface to their bodies. So there's a gradient because at the point where it's attached to the rocket needs to be kind of stiff and strong. But at the part where it attaches to the body, it needs to be, you know, more flexible. So it doesn't, you know, as it's being blown around in the turbulence, it doesn't, you know, rip itself apart. So that's one example of where you have a natural material, but there's a gradient. And so along with gradient of composition of variety of ingredients, you have this hierarchical bottom up 3D architecture. So very often there are layers and those layers may have fibers. Sometimes they may be in a plywood like configuration, you know, where they change 90 degrees or they may be in more of a helicoidal. So each, you know, the fiber orientation of each layer is slightly moved so that, you know, look from it to the top, it's actually like a spiral. So it's those two things together. It's that composition with the gradient and this 3D architecture that give nature's materials their functionality. But you're talking about proteins and carbohydrates and minerals and such. And so at the end of their useful life, they break down, they decompose and become then nutrients or building blocks for making either the same type of material or some other material or food. And so if we can understand what different compositions and gradients and what different sorts of hierarchical architectures are associated with different functionalities, we can begin to mimic that and create materials that operate even better than the synthetic materials do now. But at the end of their useful life, they will just, you know, feed the environment instead of polluting the environment. So of course, that's no small ask, but that's kind of, you know, my, you know, it just kind of, you know, gets me out of bed in the morning wanting to understand nature better and how it's able to do this to make materials and how can we mimic that to begin to replace some of the most problematic of materials? What I kind of hear out of your answer and in the passion, the way you describe some of that is that over the time as well, there is almost an academic language or in a language that has been created that's become more common or understandable in our everyday that we're hearing it more often. So people are understanding what biomimicry is and some of the terminology around it and what goes on into it. And thank you for explaining a few things. Just during this last year, there were some new things that I'd like to ask you about that came out about protein folding and some of the algorithms to solve these structures a little bit faster that is there some things that might help? Biomimetics in this way at all through the knowledge of how proteins fold to come up with some different types of things or do you have any excitement around that at all? Well, protein folding is just fascinating. You know, if you've ever taken a chemistry course or even just maybe read an article where they show a picture of a protein, you look at it and you go, well, it's a bunch of curls and it's a bunch of spaghetti stuff that looks completely haphazard. When actually there's a great deal of information there it's not haphazard. It's like if you have a scrabble board and you just take all the letters and you just kind of dump them out, that's haphazard and there's not really any information there. But if you organized all those letters into words and sentences and phrases, you know, it has meaning, there's information. And so this 3D shape of the folding of the protein is like creating, you know, words and sentences and paragraphs out of, in the case of proteins, amino acid, because a protein actually in its initial stage is just a string, a linear linking of proteins. And the order of those proteins is the start of that building of information. And then those proteins self, you know, once the linear protein is produced and the cell kind of lets go of it, it's in this watery environment. And based on attractive and repulsive forces because, you know, there are some plus charges and minus charges and there are sort of oily areas and water loving areas. And so you sort of let those go and the areas that repel each other, you know, force folding in one direction that attract each other force folding in another direction. The oily areas, something called a hydrophobic effect want to sort of gather all together and get as far away from the watery environment as possible. And so all of that together leads to the folding. And then the folding is so important because the way nature does chemistry is something called molecular recognition, which is kind of this lock and key. So all of these folded proteins, you know, they only interact with each other if they fit together like lock and key, you know, the way we do chemistry and industry conventionally is you turn up the pressure and you turn up the heat and you turn up the pressure. So all of these molecules are kind of closer to each other. You turn up the heat so that they're really vibrating and flying around and you get them to crash into each other with enough energy that there's, you know, some interaction and that's pretty crude. Whereas nature, you know, you can have different chemical reactants or compounds kind of come in contact with each other, but if there's not that lock and key interaction, then there's no transformation, there's no chemical reaction. And that's why a cell can be this dense industrial facility, if you will, where there's thousands of chemical reactions happening at the same time. You know, it'd be really hard to do that through conventional industrial chemistry because you'd have everything reacting with everything else, you know, and you'd have to have the cell under pressure and heat that would be not exactly conducive to life. So these shapes, this folding and shape is really important and understanding, you know, how do you link, you know, what order do you put proteins in in order to get that self-assembling folding in the first place and then what functions do different types of folds and shapes mean? And that can have, you know, impact. I mean, it does have impact on living organisms, everything from enzymes to hormones, you know, just everywhere in the body, you know, proteins are seen as the work horses of biochemistry. So that folding is really important. And so, you know, as I said earlier, there's tools and science that's allowing us to, A, understand, you know, how that folding is happening and how, you know, the association between the amino acids that you string together and whether they have, you know, plus charges or minus charges or whatever on them. In what order do you put them so that you end up with this self-assembling? To understand what kind of shapes will you then get out of it to provide a certain function, whether that function is going to be for a chemical process in making a material or in a material itself. So it's just a huge, it's a huge topic and it's a fascinating topic. So I think there's a lot of really promising things that'll come out of our increasing understanding of how proteins fold and what those foldings and shapes mean. I agree, I was very excited to hear about that and how we could apply that. You've really addressed several things that kind of took us already very deep into biochemistry, but I'd like you, if you don't mind, for those who have no clue or maybe even a younger audience that have never heard of this, could you kind of, in your best words, a simple explanation explain bio-memory, bio-memetics to my audience and kind of lead them in on why it's such an exciting field as well and kind of a little intro for those who maybe are blind or unaware of what it is. Sure. So simply put, bio-memory is taking inspiration from the natural world. If you think about it, nature, life has been around for 3.8 billion years and humans, modern humans have only been around for maybe a couple of hundred thousand and it's hard to really sort of make that comparison 3.8 billion years is hard to get your head around, but if we were to take that whole 3.8 billion years and boil it down to one year, so January one is when life first appeared on Earth and December 31st is now, that humans have only been around for like the last few minutes and modern industry and agriculture have only been around for a couple of seconds. So you have 3.8 billion years in which life has been doing R and D and has had to figure out what works, what do we have to do to be able to survive and thrive? And it's not just solving an immediate problem, but it's solving an immediate problem without poisoning the world around you because nature has to do everything that it does in the same place that it raises it's young. So that's kind of a life's principle right there. And so if by a mimicry just basically says, well, if we have specific challenges that we're trying to solve for, whether it be an architecture or in material science or in business planning, you sort of break that problem down to a functional question, how does nature make color? How does nature keep an environment cool? And then you basically investigate, you do research to figure out what are the answers there? What are the processes and principles behind how nature has achieved it? Whether it's insects or mammals or whatever, look at a variety of organisms, understand what they've done and boil it down to some principles and then try to apply those principles to a solution. So I've talked more about chemistry and molecules up till now, but there have been buildings built that are inspired by termite mounds. Termite mounds, termites survive by growing fungus inside their mount and that fungus is their food. But in order to grow that fungus, they have to maintain a temperature of 85 degrees or so and a certain amount of humidity. But they don't dig basements where they have boilers and air conditioning systems and humidifiers and things like that. What they do is they build their structures. If you've ever seen a termite mound in really hot areas in Africa and such, they look like these big tubes. They can be a few feet to six feet or even taller. And what they do, they're hollow inside and they've got just the right amount of combination of thick walls that are protecting from the heat of the day or the cold of the night, plus air flow, convective air flow that maintains that consistent temperature inside. So architects have mimicked that to build buildings as one in Harare's and Bobway that was built in a hot area, excuse me, that otherwise needs a lot of energy used to maintain the temperature. But using the principles of the termite mound, this building was built that uses fans and opens windows and such to maintain a very comfortable temperature. So there's a whole array of ways that we can be inspired by nature. And so when we do workshops and such, one thing we do is we say, when you're trying to solve a problem through biomimicry, the first thing you need to do is quiet your cleverness. And even when we work with business clients, people always have ideas of how a problem can be solved. But when you're doing biomimicry, put those ideas aside for now. Maybe those will end up being the best ideas, but put them aside from now. Put your focus on the methods that nature has used to solve it. And just see if you come up with new ideas or maybe ideas that can be in combination with your older ideas. But that's kind of the real exciting and challenging part of biomimicry is getting people to just sort of quiet their cleverness and just really take in what nature is doing so that we can really use our creativity to come up with truly innovative solution. Do you use a lot of practices where specific to the product or those solutions that they're trying to resolve that they do it more in an indigenous way where it's more local to where they're at or do you spread, so no, we'll take the whole earth, for example, and we apply it that way or it depends on the company, whether they're global or kind of solving a local solution that you use kind of those principles. Well, it depends on the project and such. Excuse me, we've recently started something called project positive and we've thought about this for a long time and project positive is basically saying, okay, any facility in its location, how can, before that facility was there, that building, whatever, there was an ecosystem there and that ecosystem was in balance with the climate and everything else. So the ecosystem there, like every ecosystem was providing services, was taking in a certain amount of water and storing a certain amount of water or allowing stormwater to run off without causing damage. It was absorbing a certain amount of carbon, it was filtering the air, there were all sorts of services that it was providing and so this idea behind our project positive is, how could a building or a facility or a city provide the same ecosystem services that the original ecosystem there provided? So in those kind of projects, then we're looking very local and if the local ecosystem no longer is there, like in the middle of Manhattan, then you would look for what we call reference sites, nearby that have the same kind of climate and topography and everything else so that you can begin to figure out, okay, what changes do we need to make either to our landscape or to our building or to the processes that we use in our building in order to eventually have the same ecosystem services that the ecosystem in this area used to provide. So in that sort of context, you're looking very locally. I'd say more often than not when you're trying to solve the whole array of problems, whether it's finding a new plastic, whether it's looking to not have as many toxic elements in our electronics, normally in those kind of projects, we look globally and in fact, we make an effort in our research to have examples of how organisms have solved for that function that we get representation of different ecosystems and different species, insects and mammals and amphibians and microorganisms and whatever because the more you can get examples of how nature has solved that in different contexts, the more you can tease out what is the real principles and patterns to achieve that particular function because after 3.8 billion years, it's not surprising that nature's chemicals and nature's materials are multifunctional. That would be the most efficient way to do things is have every material not just serve one function but serve multiple functions. So in order to know what features of that material and such are contributing to the function that you're interested in, it's best to look globally and look across species to see what's of the common thread so that you can really pinpoint the principles that will give you the final functionality that you're looking for. I love that. This year with the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, a lot of international events and organizations, there's really this theme of regeneration. So the year of regenerative years, what they're calling it, where there's a lot of discussions on everything from regenerative agriculture, regenerative ranching. In general, things that take the endless re-imperatives, reuse, recycle, repurpose on and on, they're just really are endless. Does that tie in to biomimicry at all? How do those two complement each other? Do they play off of each other? Is one a part of the other? Can you tell us anything that you know or maybe might be working on or how they kind of work together? So I'm knowing those of us who will maybe be back to events and be discussing this can also see how that fits in. Well, you know, there's a set of lights principles and I encourage people to go to our website, biominemetry.net and one of the things to look at is lights principles. So Janine and Dana and particularly when they were starting biominemetry 3.8, they were really looking to see, what are just some underlying principles that has allowed nature to thrive for 3.8 billion years? You know, aside from the specific protein foldings and things like that. And so one of them is using cyclic processes and reusing things. And you'll see that on every level of nature, whether it's the proteins that at the end of their useful life, they break back up into individual amino acids so those amino acids can be reused again to whole ecosystems where you have leaves come out during the spring. They photosynthesize and provide food for all the plants and such, but at the end of that season, they die, they fall down, they decompose and not only produce nutrients and such for that tree, but also for everything else that's living in that ecosystem. So certainly cyclic processes, regenerative processes are part of, you know, the living natural world. So to achieve a regenerative economy, looking to nature makes a lot of sense. I love that. I want to, we've touched on it quite a bit, but I want to go now and how do we bring biomimicry into our homes? How do we bring it into our lives and whether we're maybe don't have the glasses or the lens right now to see it in our daily lives? Maybe there's something already in my home, in your home that we didn't even know is kind of mimicking nature. Is there some tips or tip tricks or some things to be excited about looking forward or that we should know to kind of get put on those glasses? Well, I think again kind of the most important thing to sort of bring biomimicry home, you know, whether it's inside the building we call our home or, you know, really deep inside us, because if we bring it deep inside us, then we're going to, you know, manifest it everywhere. And so again, I'll say that, you know, one of the best ways to do that is to reconnect with nature. Just, you know, get out into nature and, you know, especially after a conversation like this, you know, not only look at nature, you know, look at beautiful scenery, beautiful plants, you know, wondrous animals and not just see the beauty in them, but see the functionality in them, you know, ask your question, ask questions like, you know, why is that leaf shaped that way or why are leaves arranged that way? You know, what could be the function of that? Or look at the sweat on an animal's back and say, you know, is that just for cooling or can there be some other functions there? And, you know, just look at nature, you know, not taking away from the beauty and the awe of nature, but sort of adding this layer of, you know, these are our teachers out here. We have a lot to learn. And I think with that respect of nature, all of us will gain a better appreciation for the preservation of nature because it's so, you know, we know a lot, but we don't know a lot. We're a little too clever. I love how you use that term. We're just too clever. Yeah, and so, you know, if we haven't discovered everything there is to discover in the natural world, it makes sense to wanna preserve the natural world for selfish reasons so that, you know, in the future we can, you know, discover what is yet undiscovered, whether it be medicines or materials or whatever else. But at the same time that we're doing it from a selfish reason, you know, you have the ecosystems there to thrive that will help, you know, regenerate our world in terms of, you know, the climate crisis and everything else because these intact ecosystems are providing services. So I think, you know, rather than necessarily, you know, look and see what are we bringing in our home, I think the most important thing could be this reconnecting to nature and realizing that nature can help us solve a lot of the problems in our man-made world. It doesn't mean we have to, you know, break down our cities and go back to living on the land. In fact, that's exactly what we don't wanna do. Biomimicry is really telling us in this current world with our population, future populations that we need thriving cities. We need thriving cities that, you know, have a positive footprint on the earth. So that we can leave our natural environments, you know, sort of alone. There's gonna be some people that are gonna wanna live in more rural areas, but we wanna make cities something that are attractive and healthy environments for people. So by bringing in that understanding of, you know, value of nature, you know, into our beings, I think, you know, that's going to really have a positive effect on the future. So there's a couple of really interesting things and this is kind of also why I brought up the question. Have a good friend, we spoke about this before we started the podcast who was a professor at Trinity College and this is actually the Trinity College Library behind me and he has a show called Human Beasts and he did a segment on his show called Human Zoos. So during this lockdown, during this pandemic, we've really run into this situation that now we've seen a much more microscopic or closer look, 24 sevens for some of us of our human zoo that we've created for each other and we're like, and the way that we've worked has also changed more online, more working from home and now people are complaining that they're sick of working in their pajamas and from their bed and getting neck problems, whatever it is or they don't know how to educate their children or be the teacher of their children and this new view of this home, this human zoo that we've created for ourselves, some people are saying this is not the type of zoo or the type of place that I really should have created for myself and it's not totally conducive towards 24 seven living and working and all these things. And so some really some things that bubble to the surface we've seen more domestic violence and more cabin fever where people have really just said, wow, I'm going crazy here 24 seven and it's just not a very good environment. And so it would always be nice on how we could think on how we could change and improve the future of cities. And that's really my next question or places that we live that how do we do that? How is that currently being applied? There are some big projects out there like Neom, the million plus city in Saudi Arabia that's called draw the line city that spans 175 or more kilometers long and a sustainable city where they wanna use sustainability and regenerative practices and biomimicry and especially livability in the homes and the type of place they create. And there's other projects out there as well. And so I wanna know what are some things that have already come to light? What are some things that are being put into practice and how can we kind of avoid what we've seen definitely during this pandemic and this lockdown time how to create better livability, better homes or better places for us in cities? I think one thing in cities, the architecture part of things is not my top area focus but one thing that we've seen gaining momentum gaining momentum are green roofs. And those green roofs not only provide sort of a beautiful place for people to either gaze at from their desk or to actually be able to go into on their lunch break or whatever, but actually provides a service. It helps maintain temperature within the building. You can be growing some food. It can help sequester some carbon. So I see that as well as the introduction of more parks. I've seen many designs for buildings where you have more vertical agriculture. So you're growing plants, not just to create oxygen and sequester carbon but also to grow some food as well particularly in areas of cities that tend to be food deserts where all that's really available are McDonald's and other fast foods. So there's bringing that into those neighborhoods which I think is great because those neighborhoods have been underserved. Just think of all of the brilliant minds that are in the children growing up in those areas and if you can really get them interested in these sorts of potential solutions, you're increasing that pool of people with great ideas and optimism and such. And so I think along with thriving cities that I mentioned before is you just need, A, you need the green areas and natural areas for people to go to and people need to have that desire to sort of and have the value of going out in nature on a regular basis. I think that just not only calms you down but continues to give you that appreciation of the natural world. I love that. Yeah, there's several cities out there in the horizon. So Liam Young also has a city called Planet City. Eventually we'd like to tackle 8 billion people in there and he wants to do it through biodiversity and solving some of our climate change issues. So I think there are some big things on the radar. I, in 2018, I went to Songdo, no, it was 2019, sorry, I went to Songdo, Korea which is one of the cities of the future and planning with innovation, latest technology and things. But to me, it was like a city built around cars. You know, it was these big roads, four or five lanes and it was like the future was all gonna be about cars. And in reality, we know that, you know it's actually more and more moving away from that. And so I just would really like to think of more solutions how we could use this and apply this when we build cities. I'm also working on with Neom on their city and Saudi Arabia and so I'd like to figure out how we could apply more biomimicry and regenerative practices into what they build and what they're planning. You touched on it a couple of times but I really would like you to go more to depth because food really touches environment and human suffering quite a bit. And I would like to know what type of biomimetics you're using towards our food systems to create more sustainable food systems to get us to think differently about those because that's really also one of my passions and a lot of my listeners as well. Can you give us some excitement or some things to look forward to in this area or what's going on? Well, one of the areas that I've been involved in is alternatives to conventional chemical based pest management. And if we continue to use monocrops, I challenge you to find any natural ecosystem that's a monocrop. So most ecosystems are diverse. If you think about diversity, it's really a key word in society. When someone is trying to give you economic advice, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify, diversify. Yet in our agriculture, we have this monoculture which eliminates all of the natural processes that ecosystems use to keep potential pests in balance. And so we've looked at for several clients different ways that nature protects from pests. And your knee jerk reaction is okay, well, you protect from pests by killing the predator. But nature uses a whole host of strategies to protect itself. It tries to confuse pests or create decoys or call in other helpers. And so it's just so interesting to uncover all of those different ways. For example, maize seedlings, they can be attacked by a certain type of predatory bacteria. And so their roots will secrete a chemical that will actually kill a significant portion of those predatory microorganisms. But that same substance is also a signal to other bacteria that then come in and feed on the survivors. So there's a variety of ways. There are nematodes that create kind of these decoys for viruses that then attack that decoy that has no nutrients or anything in it. And so without always having to kill the pest, you're not triggering that sort of chemical warfare of developing resistance to it. And so there's very interesting innovations that can come in pest management that does not rely on developing more toxic pesticides that then have ramification somewhere else. But there's also going back to having diversity within your agricultural practices so that you have this balance of organisms so that you don't need external inputs to control for pest. Or you do something interesting like move to perennials, which is where we used to be as opposed to having to plant annuals which requires you disturbing the soil. And soil is a whole nother thing because we take soil for granted like we take water for granted, but soils take thousands of years to actually develop. And so the land institute in Kansas is one place that has been looking at how can we grow perennial food crops that provide a harvest every year without having to replant annuals all the time? Absolutely love that. One of my favorite and heroes in science is Lynn Margulis. She's passed away a long ago, but she was Carl Sagan's first wife and she wrote numerous books, but she kind of developed this term symbiotic earth, symbiosis was big along with Jim James Lovelock and kind of was in there with other scientists, mainly male dominated scientists that said, you know, it's not natural selection, not survival of the fittest, not severe competition that it's this symbiosis that microorganisms and this microcosmos really works in harmony together. They cooperate and collaborate and it's this great world that she opened my eyes to not only the symbiotic earth, but symbiosis, which I really love and I see that in biomimicry a lot and in regenerative practices. We crawled out of the primordial soup no matter what your belief is and we're made up of more microorganisms in our body than we have human genes and human cells in our body. The majority of us is microorganism. We are a species and we're closely related to, more closely related to a tree or a squirrel than we are to each other as human beings in some respects. And so if we learn this biomimicry and if we learn some of these principles that Lynn Margolis spoke about and really disrupted this world, I think we would be in a much better world. And this really kind of leads me into a couple of my hardest questions for you today. And that is, do you feel like you're a global citizen and how would you feel about a world without nations, borders, divisions of humanity, one from another? Well, I definitely feel like a global citizen, particularly ever since I was a Peace Corps volunteer back in 1979 and went to the other side of the world and my eyes just opened up to the world out there and I've been returning to Nepal but also going to many other parts of the world ever since because it's just so fascinating and rich. I mean, one reason I like living in New York City is that you can get exposed to so much interesting culture but being able to actually see other parts of the world and be immersed in it is just a wonderful opportunity. But yet that same, I think we're always gonna have borders and divisions of some sort. If you have other cultures, borders used to be natural, like in a country like Nepal that's very mountainous, it was the geography that was sort of keeping different tribes or groups separate and different cultures. Different tribes or groups separate and so they then develop their own language culinary practices and rituals and such that wouldn't have happened if everybody was always together all the time. So there's kind of a richness and beauty in the separation. You know, it would be great for there to be freedom and respect, sort of a respect for the commons. I mean, one thing that has become, you know, more has sort of bubbled to the surface in the last four years, especially when there's been this kind of attention to ourselves and especially in the United States, there is so many people who are like, you know, freedom and liberty and they're basically saying, I can do whatever I wanna do. They're totally missing the point that with freedom comes responsibility and that's a responsibility for the commons, you know, for the air, for the water and certainly when it comes to, you know, health from, you know, protecting each other. So I think you sort of need that balance between, you know, who we are and who our border is and where there's borderlessness, you know, particularly with the commons. And so there just needs to be that respect and that balance, you know, you need to respect yourself but you need to respect others and find that balance between your own freedom and responsibility. I love that answer and I really agree with you this respect for the commons. What our world used to be much smaller for the majority of us and partly why I ask you this question as well is because species don't have any borders, they are just moved where they want air, water, nature moves food during the lockdown was one of the few things that continue to transcend borders, nations and divisions and when we go back to the roots of it, you've talked about, you know, if we put the time span of the birth of the earth to present day into a one year period that we've only been here a few minutes and the industrial revolution a few seconds. I totally agree with you but we're breathing the same regurgitated recirculated air that Gandhi breathed, that the first Dalai Lama has breathed that see Julius Caesar or whoever has breathed and drinking the same types of water. It's all here on our planet. There is no throwaway. If you look at our planet from outer space there is no throwaway and it's got this not only the re-imperatives but this regenerative and this, you know, how nature works. And so I see in biomimicry and in some of these practices really this, I love the cultures, I love the languages I love the diversity and I love how we have these indigenous tools that we can use of nature and local spots but that they really transcend these other manmade type of borders or our beliefs and I wanted to kind of get your opinion on that and I love how you answered it, it was beautiful. Then really the hardest question that I have for you today is the burning question. I ask all my guests this, it's WTF and it's not the swear word although for a while now I believe we've been using the swear words asking what's going on but it's what's the future and I would like to know from you not a government or a nationalistic perspective well, what's your perspective, what's the future? Well, like I said in the beginning I, you know I have to be optimistic in order to be able to get out of bed every day. You know, I think we're gonna have our ups and downs we're gonna have our challenges in society but I think as long as we can keep our eye on the prize and really value each other and value nature I think the more we can reconnect to nature the more we will thrive and survive. So that's the short answer. Yeah, that's great. I mean my second question or my second kind of follow up to that is very similar and I ask it because I wanna see if you'll answer it different but what does a world that works for everyone look like for you? Is it the nature or is it a little bit different? Well, I think it goes beyond nature. You know, you mentioned symbiosis and mutualism so, you know, you and your listeners may have heard of what's been coined as the Woodwide Web which is under forest, which are for the most part perennial you know, it's not the forest don't die and come up again every year. So you have this established root system and you have these feather like, you know fungi, these mycelia that sort of hold the soil together they join roots together. And so what we might think of a forest as this big competition like, you know the biggest tree is gonna get up there and get the sun and the other ones are gonna be shaded out and screw you you know, I want you boss but what's actually going on is that there's this mutualism and it's happening you know, sort of underneath hidden from view whereas, you know, that tree that grew the biggest and you know, one, you know and is getting all the sun and can photosynthesize and manufacture sugars. It's sending those sugars to, you know the tree that's maybe not getting as much sun but happens to be in an area where there's you know, all these mineral nutrients in the water that's not near this big tree. So the big tree sends sugar that way and the smaller tree that's not really getting a lot of sun is sending the, you know mineral nutrients the other way. And so there's just a lot of symbiosis and mutualism. And so I think that's really the secret to the future. And I think just having more people understanding how nature works, you know just, you know, this aha of, oh well that's what's going on in the forest that I think it then sort of triggers us and motivates us to wanna kind of be less competitive and more mutual because we see the benefit of mutualism. You know, it's not a pie necessarily. We can all, you know, survive and thrive together. In fact, we'll survive and thrive better together because each of us has something you need to bring. You know, whether it's inventing new scientific solutions or, you know, being a really great singer or artist you know, we all survive and thrive on what each one of us brings to the party. Well, I've never had it answered so beautifully before. Thank you. I absolutely love that answer. More mutualism. And I would just as you were saying that thank you for referring to Lynn Margolis and the symbiosis and that, but the mycelium there's something else. The mycorrhiza is just an amazing way that this wood-wide web works and how there's a whole life underground speaking to each other and connected and networking and that this mycorrhiza is so amazing that you can see these big, huge, heavy trees growing on rocks on cliffs, you know, in Ireland or in some remote place. And you're like, there's no dirt. How are these big, huge trees growing and a solid rock and some of it, you know maybe lava type of rock? It's because this mycorrhiza just can get in it's so minute and microscopic that I just can bore in and get the nutrients and rock and hold it there stable as possible which is other tools and forms of this biomimicry which we've discussed today. So this is just a whole nother world that really can come to life not only for my listeners, but for many others that is fascinating on how we can apply it to the way that humanity works in the future and humanity lives in the future and how we can reconnect ourselves to the symbiotic earth and to nature. I just love all the things that when you speak that they just bloom and come out in my mind and excite me to apply or to dive deeper into this world. The last three questions I have for you are really selfish takeaways for my listeners and those are, if there was one message you could depart to my listeners that your message, you may have already departed it a few times, what would that has a power to change their life? What would it be? I guess it would have to be to to get out in nature and value and respect nature. I think that's just the best jumping off point and for developing this vision of thriving biomimetic world. But I think it also soothes us in a society and a situation that where we can all benefit from sort of little regular inputs of just sort of calm. You mentioned regeneration, it's the one way of regenerating our souls and such is just by holding nature's hand and just sort of letting nature do its thing for us. I think that would be the main thing, yeah. What have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you really would have loved to know from the start? I guess being okay would not knowing. I think a lot of times where sort of pressured to feel like, oh, we're supposed to know the answer to that and not following up with questions. And I think if I had embraced that from the very start that it would have provided many more opportunities to learn. So I think, not only do we have to quiet our cleverness, we sort of have to quiet our ego. I agree. Because we're all in the same boat. I think there's a lot of times when you can be in a classroom or in a lecture or just in a group conversation and someone can mention something and you don't know what they're talking about but you assume everybody else does. But those times that you actually do answer or ask the question like, what do you mean by that? Or what is so, such and such mean you realize that? A lot of other people had the same question. And so if we had that, I know if I had that much earlier on of always asking questions and not feeling like, oh, I'm supposed to know the answer to that. I think I'd be a little more ahead of the game. The last question is really, what should young innovators in your field, young chemists, young scientists, be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make real impact? And also, is there anything that you haven't gotten to say during our conversation that you really want our listeners to know? Well, one thing that I would say to young people, I get the question a lot. Oh, I'm interested in biomimicry. How can I get into this field? And I think learning biomimicry and the biomimicry thinking process, as we call it, is just one thing. I think what I always suggest people do is what are you passionate about? Is it chemistry? Is it architecture? Is it art? Whatever. So first, go with your passion, really become an expert or a professional in your passion. And at the same time, understand what biomimicry is and what that process is so that you can apply it to your area of expertise. So basically, follow your passion and sort of layer the icing of biomimicry on top. And I think that's the key to that. And I was going to say one other thing, there's so much in the news now about, we're going to the moon and we're going to Mars and we've got the space station and, oh, we can take Mars and we can make it a place that's more habitable. And I just keep thinking, we're on Earth. We have this great planet right here. First of all, how do you think we could take a planet like Mars and make it livable if we're not even solving the problems that are making our very livable planet unlivable? That's a much easier problem to solve. So I would like to see people, yes, be fascinating. One of the things I wanted to be as a kid, one of the first things was an astronaut because it's just fascinating to think about other worlds. But when we hear conversations about the excitement of developing the moon and Mars, just think about, A, if we can't do it here, in New York, we always say, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. So on planet Earth, if we can't make Earth work where everything is sort of already in our favor, how do we think we're going to make Mars work? So let's get it right here. Let's deal with climate change. Let's deal with toxic pollution and such. Let's deal with disease spreading, managing potential future pandemics. Let's get that right first here so that we will be much better at, perhaps recreating it on other worlds. I love it. Thank you so much, Mark. It's been a sheer pleasure to have you on the show and I hope we can have a follow up again. Hopefully end of the year or next year, it would be wonderful to hear how you're doing and what else is going on this year of regeneration. Thank you. Hopefully we'll be able to be traveling again and I'll actually be in Nepal. Yeah, that would be great. Have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.