Jenny Urge (2:16)

How does someone become mother's Mother Nature's apprentice?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (2:20)

Well, actually it started out as sort of an outlet. I. I'm an epidemiologist and a nurse practitioner and a clinician educator. But I investigate well being and joy. But I'm also a fanatic nature lover and gardener. And to sort of balance out that whole academic part of my brain, I thought I would start a fun blog called Mother Nature's Apprentice. And I would talk about gardening in nature and some of that, but also how it impacts health, of course, because that's, you know, where I am with epidemiology. But what really happened was as a clinician I had become more and more concerned with the wellness model, I guess. And I started leaning more into health and well being and nature's impact on that. And that took me in a different direction that was complementary but slightly separate. And the result was this book.

Jenny Urge (3:19)

I love it.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (3:19)

I'm so glad you said that because. And I'm very glad that you said it wasn't a how to book because I really want to make that clear. It's called a guide, but really it's more of an invitation, perhaps I should say. I just was hoping that in these incredibly stressful times we're living in, I'm seeing so many people who are literally wired and tired and I go into the what that means and I want people to realize that you're okay, you really are okay, you're not alone. And that there truly are some very simple ways that we can embrace joy and see and appreciate truly the wonders in our world. And when you can change, shift that perspective a bit, even biochemically, there are some very sound rationale about why you chill out and how you can embrace a much more wholehearted, joyful life and get a relationship so importantly with nature and each other.

Jenny Urge (4:16)

Again, I love the format of it. Like I said, it wasn't what I was expecting. You know, I was expecting a sort of how to book. And when I started getting into it and I was like, wow, this is just like, let me give an example. Dolphins have names for each other. And then you're like, okay, first of all, you're just kind of like thrilled and jaw dropped and like I had no idea dolphins have names for each other. So then you're talking to your kids about it. I was telling you before we started that our youngest daughter has been using it to come up with trivia questions to text and ask her grandparents. You know, it just fosters all sorts of relationship because you're like, hey, did you know, you know, did you know that only a fraction of the known animal species have been identified? Did you know that there are transparent spook fish that have completely transparent heads through which you can see their internal organs that live in the deep ocean? I mean, you're just like, wow. I. It's, it's a unique, it's a very unique format of a book and it does what you're trying to do, which is kind of like get you out of your doldrums and realize there is an incredible world around me. You brought up the wellness industry and this is something that you bring up in the book Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired. You say wellness and well being are often used interchangeably, but they are not synonymous. Can you give us a little more about that? Because I didn't know this.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (5:43)

Yes. And that was something that came up very clearly in this study. Because when I was frustrated with this model, I decided to do this international study which I briefly referred to in books. I didn't want it to be this dry academic piece, but I found out that wellness is the actions or practices that we undertake to achieve well being. And well being is that cumulative health effect. I suppose you could say that's the sum total of our physical health, our emotional health, our mental health, and our spiritual health, which we often don't talk about outside perhaps organized religion. And when I say spiritual health, it may mean organized religion in some way or really it's also something just connecting with something bigger. How, how your worldview is seen with each other and with nature. And yeah, I don't know if you want to go into that differentiation because it's huge. Yeah. Okay, so here's the thing. The wellness model became the go to model for healthcare around 45 years ago. And it was a great thing. And that's clearly today, even how we're operationalizing healthcare and healthcare delivery. And the problem with that, though, has been a victim of its own success because over those 45 years, we were supposed to be getting healthier. Chronic diseases were supposed to be decreasing. Mental health challenges were supposed to be decreasing. But the bottom line is wellness isn't well. And one of the biggest problems is big business. Wellness is a great thing that big business has jumped on. And people need to realize that the wellness industry is a trillion with a t dollar business every year, Trillion dollars. And two very important points about this that have been most concerning and people are starting to identify more. The wellness industry traditionally has focused on women and also marginalized vulnerable populations, which sometimes also includes women. People turn to wellness industries often because they have been dissatisfied with traditional medicine or that they're just searching. And big business is very savvy. Advertising is, is brilliant. They first help create these insecurities that we as women have or our, our figures, our breasts, our faces, our youth, our success, etc. Etc. And now that those insecurities have become ingrained in our society and our culture, they then say, well, I can fix that for you. I can help your mood, I can cure what's ailing you, I can make your breasts bigger, your eyes shinier, whatever. And we unfortunately have been sucked into it. But what's interesting too is I've noticed in the last two years that they're targeting men more. And you'll probably notice on the commercials that they're focusing on men with perhaps erectile dysfunction or male hair loss or perhaps testosterone levels. And that's becoming a big business too. The other thing that's a real big issue. And I talk about it in the book about this Hamster equals wellness hamster wheel that we're on. Wellness has come equated to happiness. And as a society, we are chasing happiness. But study after study are showing we're not so happy. And I'm encouraging people in the book to jump off that hamster wheel. We don't want happiness. I mean, happiness is great. Happiness is a wonderful emotion. It's different than joy, though, and that's what we should be embracing. Those two things are also very important to differentiate because happiness is a transient emotion. Happiness is what we feel, it's exuberant. It's when we meet up with friends, it's when we get that new job promotion, et cetera. But we also know that happiness dissipates as soon as the toilet gets plugged, or the kids are, or our kids, or our husband or spouse, whatever, comes home and they're in a crappy mood. You know, it's gone, that moment is gone. But joy, joy is a very deep, often more subtle emotion. It can't be exuberant. But joy is what truly sustains us. Joy, that deep seated joy is what gets us through the dark times. It sustains us when perhaps we're sick or lonely or depressed. And that study, I wish we could talk more about it. I was so impressed with what I found in individuals, whether they even had chronic, very serious physical ailments and all, they still carried this within life. We would call important, you know, relationships with each other, with God or with nature. And they interacted with nature a lot, at least five times a week or more. And those people achieved well being and they were very joyful.

Jenny Urge (11:12)

Oh, what an applicable book for this audience. And the format of it speaks volumes. The format of these just incredibly robust, fascinating lists of what's around us. So well being is dealing with our physical, emotional and spiritual health at any given moment. And that's the North Star. So you're going to learn about that in this book. You talk about wonder. So this is wonder and joy for the wired and tired. So you brought up joy. Wonder is another thing that you talk about in the book. And obviously the book is filled with jaw dropping bits of wonder. I just, I loved it. I mean even like if you, if you're, you know, a mom, a grandma listening, you're like, oh, you could just take this book and have it right at your kitchen table and there'd be so much to talk about because they're like, here's one. The word borboregame, I don't know, but it's like the sound, it's the growling. How do you say it?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (12:13)

Borboregmi.

Jenny Urge (12:14)

Borgorygmi. The growling sounds your stomach makes, you know, and why does it do that? So it's just like a jaw dropping book filled with wonder. But you say it was easier to experience wonder when we were kids. Can you talk about what changes as we get older and why?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (12:33)

Thank you for bringing that up because that's also a very huge central premise. First, I want to briefly talk about wonder, because that's kind of a new word in industry. You may see it in some of the health articles, but it's actually a fascinating and very robust research project. Research topic rather to be investigated. Wonder is that emotion that's similar to awe, but again, they're separate. Awe can be something like you see a tornado and you're in awe of that. That's right. That's threatening. It could be frightening. Yeah, but wonder, wonder is similar, but it's never threatening. It truly is this incredible feeling. It's that. How can I explain it? It's that ooh, ah moment. Like perhaps when you see the mountains for the first time or when children see fireworks in the fourth of July. It's that moment that we've all experienced now as kids, we have more synaptic, neural Networks in our brain. And there's a reason for that, because we use them to explore and understand our world. We need that genetically for our survival. And children, of course, are much more free to experience things less inhibited. So they experience butterflies and lightning bugs, but that light up in the summer and they have no embarrassment, perhaps in social cueing. But as we age, those social connections that are in a special part of our brain called default mode network, they start to dampen a bit of maturity. And also there's social interactions that dampen that. We get to be teenagers and you know, we're, we're too cool, we're too cold to notice butterflies, you know, we're too cold perhaps notice the minor things that as children blowing bubbles would be, you know, a wonderful thing. And then we progress to adults and those synaptic connections decrease even further. Plus, you know, we have responsibilities, right? I mean, we're busy too. Sometimes we're just too busy, too stressed to notice these things. And that's why we experience wonder less. The good news is that those synaptic connections are still there. They're just sleeping. And they're like anything else, they have muscle memory. And it's called plasticity in our brain. And all it does to awaken, all it needs to awaken is to experience it. So if we can be conscious and to try to appreciate what's around us a bit more, we'll start to experience wonder more. And then the more we experience it, the more we are able to experience. It's like that positive feedback system. Then I want to talk really quickly about wonder because not only as I said, it's a research topic, but the reason it is is because that emotion is critical to our emotional mental health. We find that when we experience the emotion of wonder and joy, because they're interrelated, often in relationship to nature, it releases those feel good hormones. It's the serotonin and the dopamine and all those wonderful things that make us chill out and it lowers our blood pressure and it makes us happy. Well, more joyous after two, but. And that's why it's critical and we just need to learn how to re tap into that.

Jenny Urge (16:16)

Yeah. So this book, and you've got your blog as well, Mother Nature's apprentice. And I'll put all the links in the show notes. This book actually also comes with a complimentary guide and workbook. So I'll put the link for that as well. It's just like it's your kickstart, you know, I think we're outside quite a bit and I was like there are a thousand things in this book that I didn't know. You say most ways to kind of up your wonder and up your joy. Talking about the default mode network pathways hardly cost anything.

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Jenny Urge (20:25)

you talked about and I was like oh, this is basically what we're trying to do. Connect with nature and embrace curiosity. Seek out novel experiences, nurture your creativity, nourish your spirituality and beliefs, stay open minded, commit to lifelong learning, make time to laugh and play, celebrate big and small joys and view life as a journey. You wrote As a clinician Clinician I thought this was super interesting. Pam As a clinician, I have found that most people already know how to correct the challenges in their lives. What they need is an objective voice to allay their fears and and affirm the wisdom of their inner voice. I hope this book will be Your objective voice of support and affirmation. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So I would love to just give the listeners a small taste of what's in this book. I think it's a wonderful investment to add into your home. It's called Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired. Since we brought up a little bit of the ocean piece. So you kick this book off talking about water. It's really like a little bit bigger than water, but you're talking about like the, the mysteries of the universe, the planets, the speed of sound, the speed of light, seasons, the wind, you know, so you're learning about all these things. But water gets brought up. Deep water mysteries. And you wrote Less than 10% of Earth's oceans have been explored. Less than 10%. 80% of all life on Earth is found in the oceans. You talk about which ocean is saltier. The Atlantic versus the Pacific. So your kids are going to learn a lot. You know, you do it as a family. You're going to learn a lot. But I love that the Great Lakes brought up. Got brought up because we're in Michigan. So I have heard this, I guess, maybe. But it is kind of wild that these five Great Lakes, which we learned as kids homes, an acronym for all the names of the Great Lakes, contain one fifth of the world of the world's surface freshwater.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (22:18)

Yeah.

Jenny Urge (22:18)

That's huge.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (22:20)

It's huge. It's huge.

Jenny Urge (22:22)

Can you talk about the way that you study? Like, I was like, there was that. And then in terms of the Michigan piece, there's Lake Superior, which is called Lake Gitchigumi. And this is like part of like going up north, you know, where we live. All of these just little things that you learn. And like, Lake Superior's just got so much fresh water in it. But, you know, then you also talk about the Red Sea and you talk about there's a river of five colors. And then you talk about the Amazon River. The Amazon river produces approximately. So like where the Great Lakes, 20% of the. The surface is fresh water. The world's surface, fresh water. The Amazon is 20% of the world's oxygen. What is your research process like? I was just like, Florida, I was like, it was just thing after thing after thing.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (23:09)

Well, part of it was my undergrad. I'm a biologist. And again, I love nature. So I did a lot of work with natural ecologies and animals. So I have a, a strong foundation. But I guess for the better part of a year while I was writing this, I feel. Right. I just was Knee deep in books and research. And I have to honestly say I was so excited writing this book because I, I too learned so much about our wonderful world. I mean even being a biologist, I learned things about plants and animals that just blew me away. And I was saying to my husband, who's this wonderful, wonderful man, our house was just full of books and papers and God bless him, he was walking through this. But I just said, this is probably one of the most exciting things I too could do to embrace wonder and joy and to much better appreciate the world around us. And yeah, it was. I still sometimes go back and just when I have some free time, I go look at some facts, someone will ask me something and I may have forgotten something, right? And I go back and refresh my memory. I'm glad you mentioned that too because actually the gentleman who was the editor for the book, he has a nine year old daughter. And when we were going back and forth with, you know, adits and making sure grammar was correct, he said, you know, Pam, my wife and I sit down with our daughter. He loves her book, she just loves it. And we too have made it into a game. He was saying that, you know, they would read like a chapter and then they would quiz each other and I thought, oh my gosh, I, I didn't know or think that the book might be used that way. And I have to tell you something funny. At first I thought, oh dear. I got a review from someone who said this, I love this book, which was the great first part and said, you know, I was talking to my brother in law about it and he said, yeah, this, this book is a perfect book to read on the toilet. And I went, and then there was this pause and they said, because it's exactly what you said, Jenny. You know, you don't have to feel that you need to sit down and read it in one go. You know, you might read a few pages and then off you go. And I thought, yeah, that is kind of perfect. Do you know what though?

Jenny Urge (25:35)

I love him that you said you, it's being used in ways you didn't realize. And I think that is the mark of a good book, right? Which is like there's a multitude of ways that you can use the book. You can use it as an adult if you are wired and tired to flip through, you know, every day, flip open a page, you can use it. If you're a homeschooling family and you're like, oh, you know, or, or your public school family, a private school family in the Summer's coming up, and you want to have, like, a little bit more structure to your learning. What if you pick, you know, 10 of these fascinating topics? Like, let your kids pick, you know, do they want to learn about cheetahs? Do they want to learn about the baobab tree that's upside down? Do they want to learn about leaf shapes and how they capture the sunlight? Do they want to learn about the. That there's 352 known flowering plant. 352,000 known flowering plants. Like, what do they want to learn about? And you could pick a topic and you would learn so much, and it's just fascinating. So there's all sorts of ways that you can use this book. So what an incredible resource is. So we talked about the water a little bit. There's a ton in here, about the deep oceans, you know, talked about the Amazon river, the lungs of the earth, it's called. I mean, I didn't know that. What a cool thing. So because you're a gardener and are you kind of. Are you more drawn to flowers or vegetables, or do you do all of it?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (26:58)

I guess I. I don't do a lot of vegetables. We do some on our. Our back deck. But we've been blessed to have a fairly large backyard. It's like three and a half, four acres. And I truly am a fanatic, but I'm into native flowers and environmental impact. So I have a ton of perennials. I have a lot of things I don't milk beef for monarchs. And I just really want to support nature because it's inter relative. Right. So, you know, I planted a variety of native trees, like oaks and maples and just a ton of perennial flowers. And I. I love it. That's my. My happy place. I get on my porch and I. I talk to God. I plan my day. I walk around and watch the birds nest and the butterflies and the bees and. Yeah, it's gardening for me. And just being outside, it's just. It's just my place where I can exhale and find peace.

Jenny Urge (28:06)

Yeah. Okay. So then I love that that's basically what we grow to our flowers. But I don't. I'm not quite as good at the native. I just basically grow zinnias.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (28:16)

Oh, zinnias. I love zinnias. Those are. Those are like a perfect flower, right? They're just.

Jenny Urge (28:21)

They're so easy, and they shoot off in all these different directions, and there is so much life back in you. A small patch of them. There's bees everywhere and butterflies everywhere. So I loved the part in the book where you talked about the flowers. First of all, I had no idea that there are 352,000 flowering plant species in the world. There's one that smells bad. So I think a kid. A kid would be excited to know. You know, like, you always think about the fragrance. So can you talk about the one that smells bad and it's horrible.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (28:52)

It's horrible. It's. It's. It. It smells like rotting flesh. It does. When it blooms, it's really gross. But you're right. Kids would love that.

Jenny Urge (29:03)

Yeah. To know about it. It's called the corpse flower. The corpse flower is stinky. Who would have known? Okay. Ben. And I don't know if there's something that you could do with kids in terms of like a little bit of an experiment, maybe. You talk about that the hydrangea will change colors based on the soil.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (29:25)

Yes. And that would actually be a really good and easy experiment because depending on where your soil, it becomes more acid. The hydrangea will become pink or purple. Or if you make it a bit more basic, it changes. It changes the color. And also this would probably be for older kids, but plants actually can. Some plants can change sets depending on the environment they're in. So if they're environmental stress, either due to predator, prey relationships or weather or whatever drought, they can sometimes go into male form, female form, and some plants, or both. Some plants have male and female flowers on them. Some are just males, female. But I do that with our grandkids. And it's very easy to go up to a flower and. And look at the petal and you can say, that's a boy flower or that's a girl flower. So I have the kids walking around sometimes in the garden and we have little, you know, little. A little play time where we try to figure out who your boys and who are the girls and who are both. And what a fun thing, one flower to another. It's just fun little things you can do. That's actually, Jenny, I love what you're doing because that's. That's exactly what we should be doing with our kids and with each other because it's. It's life, you know, and we have gotten so far removed from nature because of the industrial age at first took us away from agricultural endeavors. And then of course, now we have this technological age and I talk about that too, which definitely contributes us to why we're wired and tired and why we have gotten so far away from nature and really how we need to find A way to get connected to it. Because it's just not an aesthetic. It's. It's actually a biological imperative. It's hardwired into our DNA and it's called something that was called biophilia, which is the love of nature. And we really need to get back to that.

Jenny Urge (31:27)

Yeah. And the book is a reminder. And it's interesting how it fosters relationship. Right. Because you read these things and you know, talking about your grandkids and you're like this type of flower and that type of flower and you know which ones are edible. We talk about the, the boy and girl monarch because they've got those two spots on the back and you know, so that, that's always a fun thing, you know, to see if they are, aren't, you know, when they're flooding, flittering around. And so it, it also brings you into relationship with other people. I mean, we were immediately texting grandparents, like, did you know this? It's, it's a book you don't keep to yourself. And so what an interesting thing that, that fascination with nature and it becomes something that also fosters relationship. So I want to stick with the plants and the flowers here for a little bit longer. Tons of information in here. Okay. There are bioluminescent plants that can produce. This is the wording, the plants actually produce light. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (32:29)

Yes. And actually I was just watching that last night. You can see this on YouTube if you just look up, you know, bioluminescence. There are plants that have it's chemical within their bodies that actually produce luminescence. And they're beautiful, they glow blue in the dark and people can, you can walk into the water. It's actually a bit freaky when you first see it because the water is calm and it's black at night, but as soon as you step in it, all these beautiful blue lights explode into the air and you can pick up the water. The last YouTube I saw, they picked up the water and they tossed it into the air and this beautiful blue light comes down and there's a ton of them. And also those you mentioned, the deep sea animals and plants, many of those have bioluminescence too because there's no light at the bottom. It's so deep, sunlight cannot penetrate into the depths. So many of them are either transparent or bioluminescent.

Jenny Urge (33:29)

I had written, I loved this. I'm gonna read it so people. Can I read this so people have a little sense of what's in the book? This is like hundreds of Pages of just phenomenal things. Like in the deep sea, there's gigantism and dwarfism. You say there's extreme size variations compared to the shallow water. That the giant squid can be over 40ft, 40ft in length and way over a thousand pounds. But then there's things that you can only see under a microscope. But talking about the creatures of the deep, the hadal zone, is that how you pronounce it?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (34:03)

Yeah.

Jenny Urge (34:04)

The deepest part of the Ocean reaches between 3.7 and 6.8 miles. I mean, that's, that's not even all that far. No, it's like, oh, we go 3.7 miles to the grocery store. But when you're going down, there's this environment of, like you said, it's not been explored. The water pressure that, the temperatures in it, and you say the water pressure can reach over 1100 times that of the surface. The pressure is equivalent to A person carrying 50 Boeing 747 jets on their back. And yet it is teeming with life.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (34:39)

That blew me away. I realized that it was incredible pressure, but when I read that back, I thought that has to be wrong. So I triple checked that and it was correct. And when you really sit there and think about that number of 747s on your back, how could anything possible survive? Here's the other incredible fact that I think is like, what? Because as you go deeper and deeper down, these animals often lack bones because bones would be crushed, they are cartilaginous and they have soft bodies, which makes sense. But still, that kind of pressure, the compression of that, why doesn't that happen? So that's a very interesting fact. Scientists don't understand how that can still be achieved. And have some bioluminescence, some of them. And they look strange. Some of these deep sea creatures have kind of freaky, spooky looking appearances by our standards, like very, very large eyes to help them see and pitch blackness, et cetera. But yeah, it's a very cold zone and we know more about space than we do about what's at the bottom of our oceans on this planet. That's something to think about.

Jenny Urge (35:54)

Yeah. And you, you kind of think that they go down endlessly, but they don't. It's really only a couple miles. So this is talking about all of those types of things. Also that plants recognize other plants within their species and they can share nutrients and they can message with each other. Talking about trees for kids that love trees, that there are 70,000 known tree species and it is thought that approximately 9,000 more have yet to be discovered. What a cool thing. Even that, Pam, that there's more things that could be discovered. And, you know, we haven't discovered everything. So then you have, like plant trivia, grapes explode in the microwave. The large. We've been talking about this one. Our youngest has been using this one. What do you, hey, do you know what the largest berry is? You know, people will give their guesses and the answer is a pumpkin. Who would know? Okay.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (36:50)

Right.

Jenny Urge (36:50)

Yes. Okay. So talking about the different sections in here, Pam, is there one that draws you in the most? So there's universe and planet, nature in our living world, human body, the miraculous, the mystery, the spirit, creativity. So is there. Of the different topics that you cover, is there one that for you is the most intriguing?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (37:16)

Oh, that's a hard one. Because I honestly, honestly loved them all. And I learned, as I said earlier, so much about each. But I think if I had to hit one, perhaps that struck me most emotionally, it's probably the last one. Really, it was, it really made me sit back, too, and think about my relationships with my loved ones, my relationships with just the simple things we overlook. And I think I was actually, I'm going to share this. There are actually parts that I was. I would cry when I was typing away because, you know, we don't often think about the wonder of, you know, holding our newborn for the first time, how that would elicit wonder and joy or the hand of a loved one the last time, or they pass away. And it's just so many little things. You know, the calm smile from a loved one across the room. You know, the gentle touch of someone you love and trust on your shoulder at a moment when you're feeling vulnerable or afraid. And I think I said in the book I mentioned, I listed down things that came to my mind while I was writing that chapter. And it may not resonate with some readers because we're all different, right? We all have different things that elicit wonder in us, that resonate with us. But, and I encourage, I think in the book, I said, make your own list, you know, and even in the workbook, think, think, think what brings you joy and peace and that, that's your happy place. That's. That's how you can exhale and close out, you know, the bad news, the stress, the crazy politics, the bad social media, whatever is, you know, causing stress. And that's what's important. You know, that's what's going to give you joy. That's what's going to ground you. And make you realize it. Life's pretty good. Life really is good. Despite whatever you're going through, which may be very difficult, we're all going to have those moments. But if you carry joy within you, and I don't mean this to sound cliche, I truly use some research. If you can carry the strength of joy and love and grounding with your relationship with each other, with nature, with something bigger, whether that's God or whatever, how you define that, you'll get two of us who will and Ginny. I have to say one thing that I don't think I've shared much, but I mentioned in the book that who doesn't want to have a best selling book or it's. Unfortunately it sold well. But I said to Marty, my husband, that is a clinician, I guess if I can have this book help one person maybe in a really dark place, realize that things are going to be okay and I'm not going to cry. But I did. I had a couple people write me already and say, you know, this really helped me. I was really, really in a dark place and he's helped me change my mindset and thinking. And I thought,

Jenny Urge (40:36)

okay, it's huge. It's huge. Like you said, you had a maze of books in your home for researching this. I mean, it was a huge undertaking. And the book also includes, I thought this was a really valuable resource. You know, we're coming at it from the lens of, you know, family often, whether or maybe teaching. You know, you've got a classroom of students. And so the book also has questions for further consideration and discussion. Like this is one. How has living in a turbulent world impacted your life? Most people have experience feeling wired and tired. How do you cope with stress and anxiety? I mean, it's a huge list of deep questions. List 10 things in your life that bring you or have brought you joy. What helps you experience wonder? Did the book inspire you to take action, change behavior or think differently? So there's if, if you could ask the author one question. I get the opportunity of doing that. Other people do not, but they could start their own podcast and then ask you the questions that they have. So anyway, that's in the back of the book as far as a reading resource. So there's a lot of kids that listen to their parents and I will just edit out if you feel like this was an awful question. But I thought it'd be fun to go through a couple of these sort of shocking stats for animals because obviously kids love animals. Shocking statistics, shocking things and and so the kids can maybe kind of think of what their answers will be and then you can share. And if there's one that you don't remember because there's so much in this book, then I'll just give hints. Okay.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (42:05)

Does that sound good?

Jenny Urge (42:06)

Okay. All right. So no pressure. No pressure. I think a lot of people know that the fastest land animal is a cheetah. And I would have, had I not read your book, thought that the fastest animal in the world was a cheetah, but in fact, it's not. The fastest animal in the world is one that flies. Can you talk about the fastest animal that size?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (42:27)

That size? Oh, my gosh, no. What was. Okay, so this.

Jenny Urge (42:31)

This is wild to me, Pam, because a cheetah can run 70 miles an hour. But the peregrine falcon. Oh, yes.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (42:39)

Peregrine falcon, yes. Thank you.

Jenny Urge (42:41)

240. It's over three times faster than the cheetah.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (42:46)

I should know that. My gosh, we have those. Well, I'm in Northern Kentucky now, and you're right, they're shockingly fast and their acceleration is blinding. It's incredible. Sorry. Those facts are great because when I talked to kids about this, too, that wasn't one of the facts that they often are interested in. Like, we don't have to talk about it now, but grass, why we smell grass. Kids love that fact. Did you read that one? Yes, go ahead.

Jenny Urge (43:14)

No, we can go back and forth. Tell us about the grass smell.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (43:17)

Well, grass kids always love because they like kind of. Oh, wow. So, you know, when we're out in the summer and people are cutting grass and we can smell that and we think, well, that's kind of a nice smell. Unless you have allergies and you move on. Well, what that is, it's a very complex relationship. A blade of grass, when it's getting cut, the very first blade releases biochemicals into the air as aerosols, and it is picked up as, what they call it a chemotransmitter by the next blade of grass to the next blade of grass. And essentially it's saying, we're dying, someone is cutting us, and we need to do something quick. And it encourages grass to grow. It sets off a whole bunch of biochemical reactions to make it grow. The grass is screaming for help. The kids love that fact. And also when it sends off that aerosol chemical, it tells birds and other insects that the fresh grass is on the ground. So it's, you know, dinner is served. So. So they can come in and eat the grass. And attack the bugs that are in the grass. And it's a very complex relationship that we would never think about.

Jenny Urge (44:33)

Never. You never think about it. The grass is screaming for help. But that makes sense too, because you think, okay, in places where grass is never cut, like, you know, whatever. A place that's undisturbed, it doesn't grow forever. So the fact that you're cutting it, then it's making it grow again, then you gotta cut it again.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (44:51)

Yeah.

Jenny Urge (44:51)

Next Saturday, you're back out there with your lawnmower. Interesting. Wow. That's why, you know, you talk about your native plants. And I talked to this man who, he says, homegrown national park, and, you know, he talks about trying to have all those native plants so that you can support all this wildlife. And the caterpillars was a huge thing. And you talked about the caterpillars in your book. You talked about, in a couple instances, you say the oak tree supports over 530 species of caterpillars. And you're like, well, I didn't even know there was 530 species of caterpillars. Okay. But caterpillars have more muscles than humans. So that's an interesting one. Okay. All right, back to another question. What is a type of animal that can breathe through their butt?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (45:40)

Oh, gosh, I thought you were gonna ask me about wombat poop.

Jenny Urge (45:45)

I do like the wombat poop. We. We have talked about that before because someone came on that rescued wombat, he lived in Australia, and so he. We've talked about the wombat poop, which I love. Shaped like a cube. They stack it up. But there is an animal that breathes through their butt.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (46:01)

Okay, now that one, I. There's actually a couple of them. Are you talking about the amphibian?

Jenny Urge (46:06)

I was thinking. Well, I wrote down here, turtles. I didn't know that there was more than one.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (46:11)

I think there's a few. But actually, I wasn't going to say turtles. A lot of the amphibians, because they have that. The skin that. With moisture and air. Right. But, yeah, turtles turn.

Jenny Urge (46:28)

All the things that you would never know. I love that. Okay, let's do another one. What animal has fingerprints? That's. That are nearly identical to those of humans. Almost indistinguishable, even under a microscope.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (46:42)

Oh, that is. Oh, I can see him. I should know this. It's not a koala.

Jenny Urge (46:48)

Go ahead.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (46:48)

It is.

Jenny Urge (46:49)

It's a koala. You knew it. I mean, they have fingerprints. A koala has fingerprints.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (46:55)

Yeah.

Jenny Urge (46:56)

Okay. What insect lives for only five minutes.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (47:00)

Five minutes it is. You said an insect, right? Yeah. Okay. It is mayfly.

Jenny Urge (47:07)

Yes. Why would something only live for five minutes?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (47:11)

You know, it's. I found that fact really sad. Do you fish at all or do you live by a pond or anything?

Jenny Urge (47:16)

We live near. Yeah, we live near water and obviously

Dr. Pamela Stevens (47:20)

ton of tons of mayflies. And mayflies are great for fishing and trout catching. Mayflies have one biological imperative, and that's to reproduce. So they're born and they mate and they die. And I, after I learned that fact, I did not know that fact. So many others, but once I learned it, I was just sitting by our pond and the mayflies hatch. I was quite sad, you know, I thought five minutes, you know, here and then you're gone. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jenny Urge (47:54)

Okay, this is an interesting little bit. And this is kind of how the book is. And it's all sorts of topics. So I mean, and it's just hun, like 180 pages of incredible topics. Ends with a. I thought just a beautiful, beautiful list of. It's so long in an ordinary but extraordinary list for wonder, joy and gratitude. I think you could print this out and put it on your fridge. You could have your kids draw photos of the different things in here and make their own list. Like warm socks on a cold day or the glow of the full moon. It just goes on for pages. The geometric perfection of a honeycomb. Do you know my youngest is always like, mom, what should I draw? And I'm always like, I'm out of ideas. What should I draw? Mom? I'm like, I can't think of anything. A cloud, you know, a tree. So, you know, well, maybe you could draw a picture of a pine forest or you know, the soaring hawk or a bee gathering pollen or hummingbirds in the garden. So anyway, just a whole amazing list at the end, but a couple more about the animals that are so fun. How about this one about how big? Well, I'm like. I feel like I'm just putting you on the spot. This is one we sent to the grandparents. What insect has six legs but cannot walk?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (49:06)

Six legs? We cannot walk. Six legs. We can walk. Okay. Spiders walk. I should. Like this. I don't know.

Jenny Urge (49:14)

A dragonfly.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (49:16)

I forgot that.

Jenny Urge (49:17)

Jenny, isn't that fun?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (49:19)

I. I didn't know. I forgot that.

Jenny Urge (49:22)

What animal produces pink milk?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (49:27)

This actually to your point, Is that a platypus?

Jenny Urge (49:29)

Well, this says maybe, but this also says a hippopotamus. I'm sure that there could be more than one. I think this is why it's a good toilet book. Because you can constantly be going. I mean, I would call it a coffee table book. Or in our home, this is when I just leave in the kitchen.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (49:44)

Well. And I have to. I mean, here. I wrote the book, for goodness sake. And, you know, that's why. You're right. It's good to kind of go back. I didn't know that. I mean, I had. I won't have to share this because it's a bit off color, but I had the funniest thing happen. We were talking about blue whales, how massive blue whales are. Yeah. And there was a holiday dinner and there was a woman who was around, I think, 80, 90, but she's got a great sense of humor. And we're all eating. We were just sharing little tidbits like what we're doing. And she said, do you know how big are whales penises? And I'm just sober. And out came the measurement, which was, you know, of course, huge. But it was funny because, I mean, how often do you think about that? And there were some other.

Jenny Urge (50:37)

Not often.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (50:38)

Book is very clean. Book is very clean. But it was just a fact of science. And, you know, I thought of all the things you could have brought up at Christmas.

Jenny Urge (50:47)

Well, or you could just go with the tongue. The tongue might have been a better one to bring up because the actual. The. The blue whale's tongue. So here's what you go. You go from the elephant. So the elephant's trunk contains more than 40,000 muscles. Just the trunk. Which is why they can pick things up. Like, I didn't know. You're always like, how can they pick stuff up with that huge trunk? But then you say the blue whale's tongue can weigh as much as 6,000 pounds, approximately the weight of an elephant, an African female elephant adult. I mean, why their tongue?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (51:20)

Yeah. And they're. And it's really, truly hard to truly understand how large a blue whale is. I mean, they're truly miracles. And they're so, so very big.

Jenny Urge (51:31)

And they swim. And then you compare it to the baby water bear, which you would think a bear is big, but the water bear, 0.02 inches when it's born.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (51:44)

And it's very cute. Have you seen the way it looks under a microscope?

Jenny Urge (51:48)

No, I never even heard of this.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (51:50)

It's cute. It has a cute little face. I think it has a cute little face. Yeah.

Jenny Urge (51:55)

Yeah. Talking about extreme sizes. And then you go through the human body, which I thought this was a really cool thing about. Wonderful. Like, the brain has the same number of neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The human eye can distinguish approximately 10 million. 10 million different colors. We talked in the beginning about the growling sound your stomach makes. It's impossible to hum while holding your nose. I tried that.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (52:24)

I did, too. I did, too. When I read that again, I thought I should know this, but I tried it now. That's true.

Jenny Urge (52:30)

I tried it. There's different types of color tears. No people hear the same. No two people hear the same way based off of, like, your ear canal shapes. And I guess this kind of brings it back toward what we were talking about more toward the beginning, but that humans are mildly bioluminescent.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (52:46)

We are. We are. And of course, we can't see it because our. The. The human eye cannot pick up those wavelengths. But when you do photographic imaging. Yeah, we. And I guess that's kind of what auras sort of thing is about. Yeah, I'm not sure they exactly extrapolate directly to each other, but that's. That's the theory behind it. You know, we get false light energy.

Jenny Urge (53:12)

What a robust book. I loved it. And like I said, because it wasn't what I was expecting. I just. It was like, shocking in a good way. And I guess refreshing might be a really good word. Like, you're so used to people being like, here are the six steps to being less tired. You know, And I was like, oh, this is really. Yeah, this is a really different reframing. And I found that, like we had talked about, there are so many different ways to use it. So if you're listening and you're a teacher, if you're listening in your parent, if you're a grandparent, if you're someone who's wired and tired and you need more joy and wonder in your life, this is your guide. It's beautiful. It's compact. Or we just. We leave this one in our kitchen. Um, but, you know, you can leave it in your bathroom or leave it in your school room if you're homeschooling, or leave it, you know, on the. You know, the kids, wherever they do their homework and they just pick it up and there's just cool things, and then they'll have this wealth of knowledge inside of them, you know, that just. It's remarkable, Pam. Like the Clark's nutcracker. It's a type of bird, can remember the location of thousands of buried seeds. I mean, I just loved it.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (54:17)

It.

Jenny Urge (54:17)

I loved it. So huge congrats on the book. And I cannot recommend it More highly. And thank you. Thank you for saying yes to be to being here and honored to get to talk to Mother Nature's apprentice. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?

Dr. Pamela Stevens (54:35)

I, I have this wonderful memory and I was, I can tell you Exactly. I was 6 years old and I was sitting outside and there was a total eclipse. Eclipse that day. And we were waiting for it and my mom had made, you know, those homemade glasses you can use to watch the eclipse. And I was sitting next to this lovely patch of plants for monarch butterflies, the milkweed. And I got up and I tripped over the sound. Sounds bad, but it wasn't. I tripped over this low border fencing and I cut. I still have the bruise. I cut left my hand open on the tin can. But you know, it was interesting because I, I didn't freak out for some reason because I guess inherently I grabbed my wrist and I stopped bleeding. And I was fascinated with, you know, if you apply pressure, the bleeding stopped and I was looking at the blood. And of course I ran to my mom and of course she freaked out. I can't, I'm not even going to repeat what she said. Needless to say, next door neighbor was a physician stitched me up. I was fine. And long story short, I went out to sit in the afternoon sun next to this beautiful patch of milkweed and there are all these cocoons of the monarch butterflies getting ready to hatch. And just before, just before the eclipse, my mom came out with two popsicles and the glasses and she sat next to me with my bandaged hand. And just as the eclipse happened, I mean, that in itself was a wonder, right? To see a total eclipse of the sun, everything dark and quiet, birds stopped singing. And the butterflies, the monarch butterflies, started to hatch. And one by one, of course, sky became the sea of orange and black around me. Wow. And I just remember, of course, I didn't know it was wonder. I didn't have a name for it. But I just remember looking at my mom who's now in heaven, and I just remember I was completely filled with this incredible sense of wonder and love. And to this day I can still smell the air and see the butterflies and the love I have for my mom. And I think that experience with nature sort of carried me through wanting to become a scientist and a gardener. Yeah, that's probably a pretty profound memory.

Jenny Urge (57:07)

Yeah. And isn't it incredible how the wonder is connected with the relationship, connected with long term memory and there's so much

Dr. Pamela Stevens (57:15)

there and it still brings. Just sharing that brings, I guess, a sense of wonder. Makes me feel very warm and grounded and yeah, it's a lovely memory.

Jenny Urge (57:26)

Yeah, I love that. Pam, I love the book and thank you so much for taking the time to come spend with us and kind of explain about the wellness and the well being and helping people to live better lives. Really, really appreciate it.

Dr. Pamela Stevens (57:38)

Jenny, I can't thank you enough. I love what you're doing too. And thank you so much for inviting me to have this podcast with you. Found something funny? Send it instantly. TikTok makes sharing with friends effortless. One tap whole group laughing moments move fast. Download TikTok now.