Right Relation with Tobacco: Decommercialization and Reverence

New article out in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science exploring the most controversial plant on Earth. The paradox: Tobacco kills 8+ million people yearly through cigarettes. Yet for Indigenous peoples, it’s sacred — a messenger plant, vehicle of prayer,...

Talk: 9 April, 2025 on Exporting Suffering: The Flower Industry at Home and Abroad

Everyone loves flowers. They brighten our day. They remind us of the beauty of life, and they are ephemeral, a memento mori of sorts to reflect upon our own mortality. But in the past half-century, the presence of flowers has moved from local to global markets, from...

Algae communication, conspecific and interspecific: the concepts of phycosphere and algal-bacteria consortia in a photobioreactor (PBR)

How does the race to make algae do tasks for us undermine the ability of those algae to perform their metabolic tasks? My colleagues and I have a new article out looking at the limits of enclosed ecosystems (lab controlled algae breeding for energy/food/oil, etc)....