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Em Grebner-Gaddis
1.9k Plays1 year ago
Em Grebner-Gaddis is a self-professed plant nerd with a love of history and story-telling. She started Rooted to share her passion for plants, and as many cursed history facts as she can.
Rooted is a weekly podcast diving into the tall tales & true stories of plants. If you like folklore, history, plant facts, and terrible puns, you're going to dig this show..
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Vellante, editor and producer, Peter Bauer. This is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast.
00:00:23
Speaker
Have here on this episode, M. Grebner Gaddis, who does a podcast, which I've come quickly to adore, called Rooted. M, it is a very special pleasure to have you on the show. Yeah, Ken, thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely.
00:00:42
Speaker
I've, uh, I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed, uh, your show.
Passion for Botany and Podcast Collaboration
00:00:46
Speaker
Um, and, uh, I just want to give you, I think it's sometimes useful for somebody to say how they hear it, you know, and you could tell us a little bit more about it, but, um, the pieces I've enjoyed in the episodes that you've done, um, I like jumping around.
00:01:01
Speaker
in my mind as far as trying to understand something. So as you talk about plants and in particular type of botany, you talk about aspects of importance, cultural importance, maybe tied to history, and just the connection between like history, culture, science,
00:01:25
Speaker
And the fact that you do it in these really sweet, succinct episodes, you know, like around 15 minutes, I think is quite the accomplishment that I so that's what I wanted to say about your show before you talk about it.
00:01:40
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much. That means so much to me to hear. Um, yes, I have always loved plant history, but with a lot of history, I've always found that it can be kind of hard to get into because there's a lot of very flowery language and oftentimes it's not necessarily written for everyone to understand. It can be a little bit gatekeeping sometimes and science as a whole can be hard and kind of intimidating for people to really get into.
00:02:08
Speaker
But one of the great joys of my life has always been kind of taking that those big picture concepts or that really flowery language and really breaking it down for other people to understand so that they can kind of see the world the way I see it. So yeah, that's kind of what inspired me to start the podcast was really seeing these really cool stories and knowing that they can be kind of intimidating to start diving into, but really wanting to create a fun kind of entrance point for people.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I think we should tell the listeners about the connection between the podcast. And we have Em here, again, who does the Rooted podcast. But I have the special pleasure of going on Rooted, which will be aired in May.
00:03:00
Speaker
In a little while later on we're gonna be talking about Sunflowers, which is the the flower the plant that that I chose so it is great to be able to connect our two shows and kind of like the intellectual interest or maybe the Unique ways of looking at things so it's nice to combine podcast superpowers with the M
00:03:25
Speaker
Yes, I'm so thrilled to be here and to be sharing my superpowers with you and then having your superpowers on my show. All right.
Art, Philosophy, and Expression
00:03:35
Speaker
On my show, we talk about art and philosophy, and we're going to definitely bump around creativity that you have around podcast and maybe talking about podcasting itself, just to give a little heads up to listeners. But starting off, I was wondering,
00:03:54
Speaker
talking about art. This is an art and philosophy show and I was wondering with your creativity and the amount of time that you dedicate towards that, I was wondering what your opinion is of what art is. What is art?
00:04:12
Speaker
Oh, gosh, what a great question. I think for me, art is really just any kind of thing people create that elicits any kind of emotional response, whether it's from the person creating it or people who are perceiving it. I love that. The emotion comes up a lot of times in talking about what art is.
00:04:38
Speaker
I like the realm of this answer because I think myself, when I see paintings, that's what I really hear. When you say that, I'm so affected by paintings in express or immediately exchange emotion with what I'm seeing. So it's that deep connection. That's the one that kind of pulls me by the heart and how I think about art primarily. So I like that. When did you see yourself as an artist?
00:05:08
Speaker
Oh gosh, what a great question.
00:05:12
Speaker
I really grew up always being encouraged to create. That was something that was really important for my parents. They just really knew that being creative was an important outlet. So it's always been important to me. And I guess in that sense, I've always kind of been an artist, although I hesitate to use the term artist for myself. I've always been comfortable with the term creative, but for some reason, artist feels like this accolade that is like so intimidating to me.
00:05:43
Speaker
The term artist and I think I think it can be You know, I think everybody has a journey on this and I've only identified as an artist for the last five years or so though I look back in my inclination to Create or kind of combine different type of things and you know to tinker I guess it was really expressive of a deeper desire to
00:06:10
Speaker
Make things make art, you know, and I think that's a crystallized as a time and I think you know with podcasting which you know, I'd imagine your experience in as a creative outlet, you know of composition of of of audio I have found that it's been such a way for me to um connect my mind to maybe things that I'm not simply like interested about but that I Obsessed about that. I go much deeper in kind of
00:06:39
Speaker
So I get excited about talking about those things. And I think with philosophy and talking about art, there's a lot of like hope and openness that kind of feels better in times that have felt trying for me recently. And so art is, art's my go-to, and I'll defend it to the end.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I kind of feel like art has always been the greatest gift we can give to each other because it really does open up different worlds that can sometimes be hard for us to express. Like every human is different in the ways that we're able to express emotions or kind of take in other people's ideas. So I feel like art and expressing ourselves is just such a great gift and it's really something that bonds us together.
00:07:36
Speaker
And this probably anticipates the answer to this question. I don't want to answer it for you, but I hear you say, you know, binding people together. But the question is the role of art. What do you think the particular role of art it serves and whether that has changed over time? Is it different today in 2023 than it was before the role of art? I think that art
00:08:02
Speaker
Obviously, it's meant ultimately to be a form of expression, whether it's for the people who are trying to express themselves or express a concept or make it easier for other people to kind of understand who they are and where they're coming from. So it can help us process things for ourselves or for other people. It's really ultimately the only way to get inside each other's heads.
00:08:25
Speaker
Um, so I think in that respect, art really hasn't changed much since the beginning. Obviously it's changed in terms of the mediums we have available to us or the ways that, and things that we're expressing. But I think ultimately for me, at least art has always been about expressing something for ourselves and for others. Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, thank you.
Human-Plant Relationship
00:08:49
Speaker
Em, tell us about some of the stuff you covered on Rooted, a couple episodes or things you like. All right, I started this podcast. I can't wait to talk about this. Tell us about Rooted. Oh, gosh, we could go all over the map, which is why I love the show. All over the map is good. Yes, you already know that that's great. OK, we're set there. Yeah, tell us. Tell us about Rooted.
00:09:12
Speaker
Oh man, so my favorite parts of the show are really being able to tie back to the ways that we've used plants throughout history and how they've become parts of our history and then being able to throw to how we're still using them.
00:09:26
Speaker
because I think there's just such a big disconnect for us as people with how we've always used plants. And the fact that we still rely on them and use them so much today, I think people really sometimes just think of plants as like things that grow in gardens or there's trees in the forest, but they don't think about how that really impacts them today. So some of my favorite episodes are the ways we get to talk about how we're still relying on these plants. I guess a good example of that would be
00:09:54
Speaker
I think it's episode three. We talk about carrots, wild carrots, and I think that's a really important one because most people in North America probably see wild carrots every day, but you might not think about the ways that we relied on them for so long and the ways we're still relying on them, even though they're basically only ever seen as a weed.
00:10:18
Speaker
And there's all kinds of different things we talk about with that and the science behind those things. So that's, I think, my favorite part of the show. But we also talk a lot about different roles that plants have played, sometimes literally. The last bonus episode I released at the time we're recording this is honestly just on two different kinds of mushrooms in film. So I love getting to talk about the ways that plants can play actual literal roles in different stories that we tell.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, I loved the fact, I believe Midsomer came up, the movie Midsomer came up in that discussion. Yeah, absolutely. That was a good one. I loved that.
00:11:02
Speaker
I'm staring at the director's cut of Midsommar in my room. And in that director's cut, there's an art book inside with the art pieces that you'll see throughout the film that symbolize the progression of the fence. I'll send you a couple of photos of that. It's gorgeous. It's done by the original artist that did all the stuff in Midsommar you see on the walls and all that.
00:11:29
Speaker
type of thing oh my gosh i can't wait to see that because that is so that movie is so beautiful as a plant person and a horror movie person it just scratches like all the itches i've ever had
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And I was stunned. I was stunned by it. So I'll share that. And I'll share that with listeners, too. Some of those images, just beautiful from that director's cut in mid somewhere. Okay, so you see how we can just jump over into film. But yeah, that recent episode, I think what's a connection that I find in your show that intrigues me is almost like the, I'll express what I'm thinking here.
00:12:04
Speaker
the embodiment of plants within the human, right? I think when we're talking about culture and history and ingesting plants and them being good or bad and how they're used, just kind of how, of course, with consumption, we embody plants in a way I think we don't normally think about or have a good way to understand. Am I picking up on something that you're dropping there in the show?
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, as a society, we've really grown away from the parts of plants that are like literally a part of us, like for so long, they were our only option when we needed medicine, when we needed food that wasn't just meat, like plants have always been a huge part of our society. And a big part of what we've relied on to get us to where we are today, whether it was construction materials or like the literal food we ate. So
00:13:00
Speaker
I think helping to kind of show that plants were and are a part of us is a vital part of the show. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I got to tell you, I realized something and I'm a huge comic book fan. You might, listeners might notice that in the show here and there were comic book artists, but like my favorite superhero is Swamp Thing.
00:13:20
Speaker
who is the totem within the comic universe, DC universe is the totem for all plant life. And on the other side in the DC universe, the totem for all animal life is animal man who can transform between animals. And of course, Swamp Thing is kind of this collective plant living human totem. So for me,
00:13:44
Speaker
For me, I just see Swamp Thing in all of this. I hadn't made that connection before, but Swamp Thing is my favorite, and he is the plant totem of the DC Universe. I love that you brought this up because I too am very into Swamp Thing, and I didn't notice that that might be a part of the podcast, but honestly, Ken, I'm here to say I think that might just be Ken, because I also love Swamp Thing. He is delightful.
00:14:12
Speaker
All right, so folks, listeners, now you hear the other episode, which will be the Swamp Thing episode. So we got that down and we're making progress. Here we go. I really appreciate, I remember listening to an episode you had, Rhododendrons, and correct me right off the bat if I'm wrong, but I remember, I believe it was with that plant flower connection to kind of Tibetan history. Is that proper? Yeah, that's correct.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I I had recalled that it kind of spurred a memory from a while back from me. I've studied Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism and I was able to recollect connections, you know back towards rhododendrons and so it's nice to kind of like recapture that and hear that in your episode and I think if folks
00:15:03
Speaker
you know, have that interest in type of plants or have this like connection in their heart to those things. It's kind of fun to celebrate them and be like, I didn't know where that came from. Or like you were saying about the wild carrots, where, like, the plants that are around us at a certain time in history would be vital for how we understand the world. And then, you know, right now it'll be a, you know, a car passing them at 80 miles an hour, you know, on the side of the highway, you know, it's just, you know, plants role in,
Philosophical Questions and Podcasting's Role
00:15:30
Speaker
you know, how we live.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yes, yeah, absolutely. All right, we get to hit one super big giant philosophical question, M, is why is there something rather than nothing? Oh, gosh, I knew this question was coming. And yet I'm still so flabbergasted by it as a concept. I've really been racking my brain on this one. It's obviously a hard question to answer, right? It's like the biggest question we have in the universe. Why is there one?
00:16:02
Speaker
Um, the best my brain has really come up with is just that like having something is so vital, so necessary for just existing, that there just inevitably had to be something, if that makes sense. Like the dark emptiness of nothing is just so devastating and awful that something just
00:16:29
Speaker
Had to be created it was inevitable I guess if I were to put it in like terms of my life when I think about the worst darkest most terrible parts of my life it was times where I felt like I was empty and I had nothing and The best brightest parts of my life have always been when I create something regardless of what it is and so
00:16:53
Speaker
I guess to humanize the universe a bit, I can imagine that it would kind of be the same, where that dark emptiness just needed to not exist anymore. So we had to create something. And then now we have this.
00:17:08
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you, Em. That was quite the answer. I've always, I announce it on the show that the only quick answer, so you don't have to answer the question is the number, you can answer the question number 42 as a tribute to Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
00:17:28
Speaker
No, people catch on and people catch on too much. I'll be doing the show for episodes in a row and people say 42 and then I have to develop another question to get at things. But it is the it is the hall pass at present. So we're both podcasters and.
00:17:47
Speaker
You know, podcasting is quite the thing. And right now, what I would say is I run into so many people who use podcasts as their daily listening for things they're interested in or rooted.
00:18:05
Speaker
Listen something rather than nothing or they listen to you know movies and true crime is really popular a lot of people derive so much enjoyment From it, and I've become a big kind of podcast Advocate because I see so many discrete
00:18:25
Speaker
brilliant artists operating in the podcast sphere with what feels like to me, not to idealize it, but with a greater ability to create what you want and a greater ability to directly get that out there and try to talk about and see if other people like what you're talking about.
00:18:47
Speaker
The industry's growing really fast. There's a lot of attention to it. People's listening habits are up on the rise. What's been your relationship with, you know, as a beginning podcasting, but also as a listener, like what a podcast meant to you?
00:19:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I feel like podcasting has always meant so much to me. As a communicator by trade, words have always been super important. And in terms of art, music has always been a really important part of my life. So I think the fact that podcasting has become this way for people to share their stories and the different things that they're nerdy excited about and being able to form community around that.
00:19:30
Speaker
has been such an important and powerful tool, not only for podcasters, but I think for everyone. I just really love the ways that specific podcasts can help us all to feel seen in the things that we obsess over or get excited about. And I think rooted for me has been such a cool way to really be able to deep dive into the things that I'm nerdily excited about.
00:19:53
Speaker
and find and build a community that is also just like unapologetically and extraordinarily nerdily excited about those things. So I think that's been really powerful and important for me and I think for a lot of other podcasters as well.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Sam. We're speaking with them, Greg Nogatas, again, podcast hosts of Rooted. Make sure you check out that podcast. And everybody, like I mentioned earlier in that episode, I'm very excited to be jumping on to the Rooted podcast to talk about sunflowers.
Sunflowers and Cultural Insights
00:20:32
Speaker
So we give a little bit of a teaser towards that without giving away too much. What's one pretty cool thing about sunflowers, folks should know. Oh gosh. Without spoiling too much, I think an interesting point about them is that sunflowers were actually used to symbolize the women's suffragette movement in the United States. So they're a very empowering symbol for us here in the US.
00:20:58
Speaker
Wow, I didn't know that. Well, that's a perfect one. That's a perfect one. M, where do folks find you, the things you create, rooted? How should folks connect with it? What should they do? All those things.
00:21:15
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, I hope you'll stream Rooted. So you can find Rooted pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. We have an Instagram at Rooted.pod. We have a YouTube channel. And you can also go to our website, www.rootedpod.com to find transcripts, blog posts, and any other relevant links.
00:21:37
Speaker
All right, so we can also just do a tiny bit here before I let you go on this bit.
Swamp Thing and Pop Culture Connection
00:21:45
Speaker
How'd you encounter Swamp Thing? Oh my gosh, okay. An ex-boyfriend who was good for basically nothing else, but he introduced me to Swamp Thing ever since then. Hey, I'm sure the other parts don't sound so great, but it is good you're able to pull Swamp Thing. So that's how you're gonna introduce Swamp Thing.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yes, I was yeah, I'm mostly grateful for Swamp Thing out of that relationship. But yes, that's how I found out about Swamp Thing. And he has been in my heart ever since. Have you ever seen the movie Swamp Thing with Ray Wise and Adrian Barbeau?
00:22:22
Speaker
I have not. It's been on my list for a really long time, but every time I sit down to watch it, I end up getting distracted. So maybe that can be another thing we do. We can watch Swampy. That's what we'll do. We'll talk about Swampy. Now I have to gauge your expectations, unfortunately, Em.
00:22:38
Speaker
I mean, I have excitedly brought folks into the film over the years and their reactions are strong one way or the other. It's an odd 1980s Swamp Thing film. I really enjoy it. I watched it probably at a tender time in connecting to Swamp Thing.
00:23:07
Speaker
You know, it's seen by some as low budget, a little bit cheesy. I adore it. So yeah, well, so we got it set up for the next episode after I'm on Rooted. Let's get into further about Swamp Thing. I really want to thank you for coming on to the show and very much look forward to being part of Rooted. Yes, I'm so excited to have you, Ken. Thanks so much for having me today.
00:23:38
Speaker
Thanks so much. This is something rather than nothing.