Stuck between a rock and a sledge hammer - with Dr. Andrea Stevens Goddard
Hi, folks. Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to learn more about the person behind the science. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining me today is doctor Andrea Stevens Goddard. Welcome, Andrea.
Andrea:Thanks, Shelby. Thanks for having me.
Shelby:So Andrea is a colleague of mine here in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and she does some really, really interesting work and has gone to some very cool places. And so, hopefully, we'll get to hear a bit about that today. So since this is a podcast where we're learning more about you over drinks, what is your drink of choice, Andrea?
Andrea:Well, I have to give a special shout out to a drink that I discovered in Argentina. When I was there, what I learned a very common thing was to have Fournette and Coke. So Fournette Branca is a, like an herbal liquor that is originally Italian, but very popular in Argentina, and you mix it with Coke. And so I often have on hand Coke that has, like, real sugar in it to replicate the true Argentine experience with Fernet Branca. And if you eat that with Lay's potato chips, I feel like I'm just sitting next to my tent in Argentina at the end of a long field day, and it takes me right back.
Shelby:It takes you back in all the best ways. So, Andrea, sort of very generally, if someone were to ask you, what do you do, how would you classify yourself?
Andrea:Well, if I were talking to someone who had a background in earth science, I might tell them that I'm a I do basin analysis or I'm a low temperature thermochronologist. But if I were describing it to a student who walked into my class and was taking their first geology class, I would tell them, I look at the earth materials that are on that have been on the surface of the earth and maybe eroded from one place, and were transported and stopped in another place. And I look at all the stages of that process. So I look at why are we eroding materials? Where is it coming from?
Andrea:What are the processes of transferring it? And then why do they stop moving? Where are they permanently stored in this place, which is called the sedimentary basin?
Shelby:And so you mentioned this term thermochronology. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of what that means or how that works?
Andrea:Yeah. So in addition to this, I have some analytical techniques that I use, and that is a low temperature thermochronology. And, generally, if you break that word apart, thermo is heat and chrono is time. And so we're getting an age of the time that a earth material, it's usually a mineral, was at a certain temperature. So we can look at processes on the earth and the time and rates and dates that those happen based on their thermal histories.
Andrea:And so if you have a rock that's deep, deep down in the earth, we I think we all know it's, like, pretty hot down there. And then as it gets closer to the surface of the earth, it gets cooler. And so dating the time that it passes these kind of temperature thresholds can tell us about a lot of questions that span a lot of different disciplines in inner science.
Shelby:And so what would be some sort of general applications of this work? So I always think shout out to my mom and dad. How would I describe my work to my parents in a way that they could say, oh, I understand why you do this. So what would that look like for your work?
Andrea:Yeah. Well, I think we just have to think about all of our earth questions in terms of temperature. So things that can happen are erosion. If you have a rock that's buried and the material that's eroded on it is removed, it's gotten cooler because now it's at the surface, and it used to be farther down. If you think about that in tens or 100 of 1000000 of years, you can actually move a rock from really hot temperatures to really cool temperatures.
Andrea:But you can also have tectonic processes. You can have faults that deform and they shift where rocks are. And so you actually expose on those faults rocks that were once buried are are now close to the surface because you removed with a fault the material on top of it. So those are a couple of ways that are common to think about it.
Shelby:Yeah. And so with your work, I know that you do a lot of field work. So first, can you sort of talk a little bit about the concept of field work? What what does that mean? I think that that could be something that may be useful for for listeners to have some context on.
Andrea:Yes. So field work is where we go out and we observe rocks in context. A lot of times we're making a lot of really detailed measurements about those rocks where we see them when we're in the field. So it might involve lots and lots and lots of travel to get out to these places so that we can What are the sizes of the minerals or the the pieces of sand or the little pebbles that are embedded in the rock? And we'd measure all of those things.
Andrea:We take lots of measurements, and we compare it. We walk around and try to find other places where that's connected. And then a huge part of my work is taking samples. But if I don't have that context, a really good context of where I'm coming from, then the the, you know, I can get information from those samples and go back to the lab and work on it, but it doesn't make any sense if I don't have the context for it.
Shelby:What does it look like to take samples? What does that mean for your field?
Andrea:Oh, well, I have I have honed this technique, Shelby. When I started out, I had we started with what's called a rock hammer. You can go out and you can get a rock hammer at the, you know, hardware store, and then you can, you know, you it's kinda thin. And those work okay on sedimentary rocks. So the rocks that are kind of in layers, they look like there's screens of sand in it.
Andrea:But then if you have to get out harder rocks or or really old rocks or, you know, just you're in a situation where that that hammer's not cutting it, then what I like to do personally is I have a little chisel and I have a sledgehammer, and it is the best. I've yes. I'm I'm that is my preferred technique for selecting samples, and the sample size can really vary. Sometimes you need, oh, like, a you can think about, like, a couple ziplock bag size of material, and sometimes you need a fist sized amount of material. Just kinda depends what you're picking it up for.
Andrea:But, yeah, we we spend a lot of time, hammering rocks in the field. Get out of all your aggressions. Yeah. It works. It's great.
Shelby:I I teach a class and there's, it's an introductory geology course in the department, and there's one day where I sort of talk about mineral properties and how you can look at, how they break. So do they break evenly or or in sort of predicted patterns? And on that day, I bring in my rock hammer to class, and that's probably the day of the whole semester that the students remember, which either says a lot about me and the teaching or a lot about the power of a rock hammer. I think that that's a really memorable experience for folks who are getting into to geosciences. Yeah.
Andrea:I mean and it's great if you're if you have kids and you tell them that you can go out and break apart rocks
Andrea:and, like, learn about them by looking inside them. It's like a fantastic thing to have to tell people you can do.
Shelby:Yeah. So where are some places that you have done field work? Because I know you've you've gone to some really amazing places both as a a student and now as faculty. So sort of a little fun fact for listeners. Andrea and I actually have known each other since graduate school.
Shelby:So a little over 10 years now. Maybe aging ourselves a little bit. Mhmm. And so, yeah, I was I was familiar with the work that Andrea did both as a student and now now here, and she's gone to some really beautiful places.
Andrea:Yeah. So as a graduate student, I did a lot of work in the Central Andes. So in, San Juan province and La Rioja province of, Western Argentina, working in an area called the Cerrace Pompianas, which means mountains in the plains, which is like a natural question. Why do you have mountains in a place that looks like there are plains around it? So that's it's part of what we were investigating there.
Andrea:I then worked in the Patagonian Andes, which was pretty cool because we got to go out on a fishing vessel for 2 weeks to get to rocks that are either impossible or or very very difficult to get to, any other way. They're exposed when you have low tides. So we'd have to wait on the tide and go out on these fishing boats to get into the little inlets in the, Patagonian Andes. I have a project now in Mongolia, in, Western Mongolia, and this is a place where you have major mountain system, but it's really far away from a modern plate boundary. It also has some of the biggest earthquakes.
Andrea:It it's the biggest inter intercontinental earthquakes, like magnitude 8 or greater have been recorded in this region. But I've I've also done a lot of work in the US, and I've been I've been working in the Western US and Northeast Utah, and I come back to my roots. I'm here at Indiana University, and I'm from Indiana. I grew up in a really small town in Indiana. And I've always thought, oh, you know, what are the rocks that are beneath my feet?
Andrea:Like, I've been going to all of these cool places. The what's the story about the rocks where I'm from? So my latest kind of project that's been growing is looking at at core samples that have been taken for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes there are wells that are drilled for water. Sometimes there are wells drilled for hydrocarbon.
Andrea:Sometimes there are wells that are drilled so you can inject brines. And whenever companies do this, they take out core samples and they, have to log them and record them, and they're they're often archived at state surveys.
Shelby:Could sorry. Can you describe what a core sample is briefly?
Andrea:Yeah. It's like you take a giant straw and the I mean, the diameter of this, I would say, oh, in in inches can well, it can vary, but I would say on average is, like, 3 or 4 inches, and they they drill down into the earth. And so you get this circular column of rock, and they just have boxes and boxes, And you can look at them, and it's like you poked a straw down into the earth, and you pulled it up, and you saw it was inside of it. So, so I've been looking at those materials from the Midwest, that have been held at at core repositories in the Midwest to learn about what are the the layers of rocks that are beneath us. Where did they come from?
Andrea:Why were they stored here? And, you know, why was that material eroded in the first place?
Shelby:So so I definitely wanna come back to hear a bit more about sort of where you've been and how you got here, because, yeah, in, Andrea's a homegrown Hoosier. Mhmm. But thinking about some of your field work, can you sort of describe a typical day in the field? So are you, you know, staying in a hotel the night before and you're waking up and taking a limo out to the the field site? How are meals being prepared?
Shelby:What does that look like for folks who haven't experienced that before?
Andrea:Yeah. Well, Shelby, it sounds like you might have a really different concept. Well, so when I would work in in the Andes, we would have, we would go out. I would rent a a field vehicle. I would have a field assistant.
Andrea:I would have often would be with some collaborators from Argentina. So we work to be involved with the with the scientists who were there and who had spent a lot of time working there. And we would go we would we would buy a bunch of groceries and things that wouldn't spoil, and we would go out and we would camp. And usually, we would stay out for a week at a time, and there would be lands that were basically communal access, and we could stay on those lands and and camp there. And we would come back to town about once a week and get a shower and get more food and, like, just had to take a break.
Andrea:Yeah. But, you know, so you wake up you wake up. You follow the cycles of the sun, really. You know, you wake up as the sun's coming up. You get ready.
Andrea:You are often gathering around looking at your maps, making a plan for where you're gonna go for the day. And then you're out, and you either spend some time hiking. Sometimes you hike for a couple hours to get to the spot where you need to be, or sometimes you get there a little bit faster than that, or it might have some remote road access or something like that. And then you're out working, measuring how thick are the layers, what are the grain sizes, what's the orientation of the rocks that are there, collecting samples, and, yeah, coming back to always keeping track of when the sun sets so that you make sure you get back in time and you're you cook cook dinner on your camp stove and and go to bed.
Shelby:Are there any sort of field experiences you've had that that stand out either for really good reasons, like it was probably one of the favorite things that you've done or maybe for for not so great reasons. It's a very memorable field day because things weren't so great.
Andrea:I mean, I do think one one that stands out. This was a unique and it this wasn't camping. This was when I was in the Patagonian Andes, and we were on this fishing vessel. And it was just this we were all it was this kind of incredible experience to everyone that was there was on this small boat. There were just bunks stacked in the bottom of the boat and, like, a a table that was maybe, I don't know, 5 feet long, and everyone would crowd around us.
Andrea:And there were 8 scientists and 4 crew on board of this small boat. And you just wake up every morning, and you might be the captain might have said, okay. I'm gonna, you know, go while the water is calm or depending on the tides he would be taking you. And you'd wake up, and you'd look up, and you're in this, you know, snow capped glacial area. And you just be like, what is this magical place that I've just popped out of?
Andrea:And I think in some sense too that, doing doing field work has also been really, incredible when I'm camping as well. Certainly, these last couple field seasons in Mongolia have been really incredible, you know, just looking at the landscape. And it's a it's a nomadic country. It's a nomadic society. And so there are not really very many roads.
Andrea:There are 2 major roads that cross the country, and a lot of the transport is kind of off road anyways. And and it's on motorbikes and on, you know, rugged more kind of rugged vehicles. Although, there are a lot of Priuses in Mongolia. That's a whole thing. Those those are considered very rugged.
Andrea:They just jack them up. And then but you also wake up and you're like, oh, we're working and there's, like, a herd of horses that are going by or, like, a a group of camels going by or, goats and sheep were also common. So being out in the these landscapes and seeing, you know, people who are making their lives in these landscapes and the animals that are there too has been pretty incredible.
Shelby:Yeah. The the times that I've gone, camping for field work, that has been one of the things that stood out to me. So I can remember when I was a grad student in Arizona, I'd done some field work in sort of the arid southwest region, and we were driving from one site to another. And there was just this giant herd of wild horses that that come by, and those are the moments where I think, like, I never would have experienced this otherwise. And sometimes it almost feels otherworldly because you're you're in such a remote area that that you're only there because you're doing the field work.
Shelby:And it's probably very rare that people are there at all. And it's just really it's sort of impressive and and beautiful.
Andrea:Right. Well, I think too, it's never a place you you're not gonna go on vacation to these places. No. No. But it's it's it's so mind blowing to see some of these things that it's it's the fact that it's part of our job is is really one of the things I I love most about being a geologist.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So so you sort of alluded to the fact that you grew up in Indiana. So how did you, you know, go from growing up in a different part of Indiana than Bloomington and and end up here now?
Shelby:What was sort of your journey like to get you here?
Andrea:Well, I grew up in a very small town in Northeast Indiana. I went to one of the smallest public high schools in the state. There were 39 students in my graduating class, and one of them was my twin sister. So we were, we could track ourselves in any kind of statistics as a as a group of 2. Hamilton High School, so shout out to the to the northeast corner of the state.
Andrea:And I didn't have a geology class or an earth science class in high school. And I think, you know, it in part because it was small, but I think there are a lot of places that even are much bigger and don't have those kinds of classes. And I took science classes, and I liked them, and I was good at them, but I never thought of it as a career because I never knew there was a place for that. I didn't think there were jobs. And I so it just kind of seemed like something that never crossed my radar.
Andrea:It wasn't it wasn't good or bad. It just wasn't ever an option that I knew about. And then I I went to Purdue University as an undergrad, and I took an introductory geology class the 2nd semester of my freshman year, and I loved it. And I would tell my roommate how much I loved it. And I was like, so you know, I was like, oh, but I'm so far into my college career.
Andrea:I can't change now. Like, what am I gonna do? I was an economics major, but I, I couldn't shake it. And so I decided, well, I don't really know what you're gonna do with this job because I mean, I didn't know anyone who was a geologist. This didn't seem like a real profession.
Andrea:So I decided to hold on to my economics degree, and I would I would just take a bunch of classes and double major in geology. And I did. And and even then, the whole time I thought, I'm so glad that I got to do this. So I can look back and say, I have no regrets, but I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it. And then it wasn't until nearly the end of my college career I had a mentor, Ken Ridgeway, who's a professor at Purdue, who who kinda stepped in and said, what, you know, what are your plans?
Andrea:What are you interested in? And pulled me in and really just mentored me and told me about what my options were, and told me that I could go to graduate school without paying for it, which I did not realize at all, and told me about all the different career pathways if I didn't wanna go to graduate school at first or wanted to go for a master's or what I want to go for a PhD. So I am deeply indebted to Ken for
Andrea:I would not be here without him. And what was it about that that intro geology class that sort of was your gateway to to pull you over to the side of things? Because I think that's not an uncommon experience for people to have.
Andrea:I loved that rocks could tell stories. I loved that you could look at boring rocks that were, like, in a in your hand. Right? If this is what we would get in lab, it was just like a piece of rock in your hand, and there was nothing special about it. It wasn't something you'd find in a museum.
Andrea:But you have the tools now to tell the story of that rock, even just with an introductory class that you could tell about what were the places it could have been. What was the what it did the place look like where it stopped moving? Was it a swamp? Was it a beach? Was it a river?
Andrea:And was it a volcano? I and I think I love the storytelling aspect of geology. Yeah.
Shelby:I think that's a that's a really good way to frame it is that so much of what we do in this field is unraveling a story. It's like a big puzzle that that you can take in almost a 1000000 different directions. I also have to ask, when you were talking to your roommate about, you know, being interested in this field of geology, what was their reaction? Partly because, when I really decided this is what I wanted to do as an undergrad, I was living with 3 of my best friends. We're still very, very close to this day.
Shelby:And, you know, we all were were sort of in in different trajectories for what we wanted to do. One of them was planning on going to graduate school to become a CPA. 1 ultimately wanted to get into education and sort of move into upper administrative roles. 1 was pre med. And so there was one night that we were all sort of talking about what we were wanting to do.
Shelby:And one of my friends said, you know, I just can't wait to see where we all end up. I'm gonna be an accountant. This person's gonna be a doctor. This person's gonna be a university president. And Shelby, she's gonna look at rocks.
Shelby:Like, they really didn't know what to do with that. They were really excited for me, very supportive, but really thought it was a little strange. So how how did your roommate respond?
Andrea:I think her response was, this is silly, Andrea. If you like this, you should do it. Good for her. Why are yes. She's also a very good friend.
Andrea:And she was she was just, like, kind of, like, okay. I know you need to do this. I'm here for you when you come to the conclusion that it's possible. Like but it seems like your angst is is not worth it. Yeah.
Andrea:Isn't isn't you just just do it. Yeah. But I do think that there wasn't a sense. And and, you know, we were in the Midwest. It was a lot of my friend had also grown up in the Midwest.
Andrea:We didn't we didn't know geologists. We didn't look. We didn't see where the rocks were, like, relative to where we lived. Some places you can see it. Even in Southern Indiana, you could see it.
Andrea:I was in Northern Indiana and you could not. And so we just didn't understand why it mattered, and we didn't know where you would what you would do with that. Yeah.
Shelby:I think that's fair. Mhmm. So so once you sort of decided on this route, then where did you go after Purdue? How how did that journey progress?
Andrea:So I did my PhD at the University of Arizona. I under the guidance of of Ken Ridgeway at Purdue, I had gotten really interested in tectonics and and how sedimentary rocks and the sedimentary record could could tell us about tectonics. And this is so Arizona was the place to go, and I was really lucky to be able to go there. So I did my PhD there, and that's when I started working in the Andes.
Shelby:And then from there, what what is your path look like to end up here in Bloomington, so a different part of Indiana than where your family is?
Andrea:A lot of hopping around. Yeah. That's the I think the part of if you wanna end up in this in in an academic role, there's a lot of flexibility. You have to have a lot of flexibility for where you land. So I did a 1 year in the University of Connecticut, where I did a post doc with, doctor Julie Fosdick.
Andrea:And then I was a faculty member for 2 years at Rowan University in New Jersey. And that was great, and I loved it. And then my dream job came up here at IU, where I was gonna be close to home. I was gonna be able to say that I'm a product of the public education system, like, k twelve, you know, undergrad degree that, like, so much had been invested in me by the state of Indiana, and I could come back and give back to that and and learn about also the geology of, you know, Indiana, which was was huge part of the motivation.
Shelby:Yeah. From knowing Andrea, I can attest to her. Her being a very proud Hoosier. I feel like I'm a proud Kentuckian. Andrea is definitely a proud Hoosier, so it's really nice that you've you've ended up back here.
Shelby:And we're very lucky to have you.
Andrea:Mhmm. I had a whole collection of Indiana, like, you know, t shirts and, like, jewelry and things like that. And it and and here you wear it, and people are kinda just like, yeah. Duh. You know?
Andrea:But other places you wear it, and you're like, yeah. I want you to ask me about this so I can tell you about Indiana. Yeah.
Shelby:Did did you ever have any of those experiences where you were elsewhere and people brought up IU? Well, maybe not IU, but the state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby:Yeah. Good. You're a good mouthpiece for Yes. For positive reinforcement for the state.
Andrea:Yes. Mhmm.
Shelby:You should be their new spokeswoman.
Andrea:Yeah. I mean, I think it's wonderful.
Shelby:If you were to sort of think back through this whole process, so sort of, you know, your early childhood moving through where you are now, are there certain things that stand out to you or sort of if you could go back and give yourself advice, what might that look like?
Andrea:Well, I remember very specifically the summer before I went to college. I was on a walk with my mom, and my mom was talking to me about the things I could do, the the, you know, the careers I could have or the, you know, the classes I could take, the majors I could have. And I remember her saying, like, Andrea, do you think you'd be interested in being a scientist or being an engineer? And I just thought, I could never do that. Like, that's impossible.
Andrea:I don't know. I don't see myself in that way. And my mom did. And, you know, so that was it wasn't environmental, but it was something that I saw about myself that I it was just so I was just so surprised, and I look back on that surprise and I think, where did that come from? That this couldn't have been part of my identity to be a scientist, and it took a lot to get me into that that I was I took this intro geology class because I was trying to avoid, physics and chemistry, which then I had to take and work great.
Andrea:You know? But I had my identity was was not as a scientist, and I loved to read and I loved to write. And so I just thought I didn't understand what my compatibility was with it.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's sort of funny that you mentioned things like chemistry classes because because I would say you also do some pretty interesting chemistry too. So you sort of mentioned that you you do some analytical work. Can you talk a little bit about your lab?
Shelby:So Andrea runs her own lab here at IU as well, which is impressive in and of itself. But can you talk a little bit about what that what you do through those processes and what that looks like? Yes. So I run the Indiana University Fission Track Lab, and Fission Track is a thermochronometer. So when we said low temperature thermochronology, Fission Track fits in that category.
Andrea:And, so what we do, we take minerals that have uranium in them. Typically, the most common minerals are apatite and zircon that we work with. And we take them, and we polish them. And we all know uranium. Right?
Andrea:So it's, like, it's not stable. So uranium over, you know, long long periods of time, 1000000 of years, it undergoes decay, and sometimes that happens with fission, which is where the atom actually splits in half, and it creates a physical zone of damage in the crystal. When that happens at really high temperatures, that that zone of damage is healed. You can think about it. It's like if you had silly putty and it's it's warm.
Andrea:Right? But if it's at cool temperatures, that zone of damage stays permanent. And so that's like if you put your silly putty in the freezer, it might retain that original shape, or if it's something that's really rigid and cold. And so when we look at it and we polish those minerals, we can see those zones of damage, and look at how much damage has accumulated, and use that to figure out the last time the mineral was at a temperature that is around 90 to a 110 degrees c. So that's usually, I don't know, it can be around 2 or 3 kilometers into the earth's crust, maybe a little bit more, 2 to 4 kilometers into the earth's crust.
Andrea:And so we're dating that material. So it's yeah. We have to we have to we have to polish the grain. We have to etch it with some pretty nasty acids. We have to send it off.
Andrea:There's a whole process where it gets treated, with more actually radiation. It comes back, and we use microscopes to identify those these fission tracks with really high resolution and high precision.
Shelby:Yeah. And what I think is really cool about what you do is it's this really nice intersection of very unique field work, but also very detailed lab work. And that's a good thing for folks to know that there are opportunities sort of on both ends of that spectrum, but also sort of somewhere in the middle. And you have sort of found this Goldilocks area, it feels like.
Andrea:Yeah. I, you know, I think I was enamored with geology in part for the field work. But I have absolutely loved being able to do the lab work and the analytical work and interpreting that data and then, you know, playing around with it and modeling it and figuring out what it all means. That is definitely the part of my job that I I mean, field work is great, but I love that part the most. Yeah.
Shelby:Very cool. Well, thank you for joining us today. I hope that folks have gotten to know a little bit more about Andrea and some of the things that she does. Another aspect of getting to know Andrea and getting to know me a little better, and other guests in future episodes will be a segment that I like to call yes, please, where each of us will have one minute to sort of stand on our soapbox and, talk about something that we're excited by. And it the the only rule of this for folks who are coming on the show is that it can't be related to their research.
Shelby:So I wanna hear a little bit more about things that they're really enthusiastic about in this moment, and it could be really broad, it could be really niche. I'm gonna have to come up with one every week, so you all might get to see some really strange things for me. And so this is an opportunity to learn a bit more about things that really interest you. So do you wanna go first? You want me to go first?
Shelby:I can go first. Okay. You sure?
Andrea:Are you gonna set a timer? Yeah.
Shelby:So I'm gonna set a timer, and I will give you a, 30 second, 15 second, and 5 seconds left, update. And I'll I'll just say it very quickly so that way you you and the listeners sort of know where we are.
Andrea:Okay.
Shelby:Okay. I'm ready when you are. Are you ready? Yes. Okay.
Shelby:So this is doctor Andrea Stevens Goddard and her yes, please.
Andrea:Olive and June nail polish. I have become obsessed in the last, oh, I don't know, 3 or 4 months with this nail polish. I had like, painting my nails, I enjoyed it, But it seemed like it was it they chipped really often. It, like, took a lot of time. It took a lot of time to, like, clean it off.
Andrea:And my sister, my twin sister, clued me into this, and I didn't believe it. And then I tried it for myself. And it is incredible. It lasts a long time. If you follow you have to like follow the whole system.
Andrea:So you really do need to like you need to buy into the system. You need all of the products. But I use it. I put it on and I wear it for a week, and then it starts to chip. And then I trim my nails and put another top coat on, and it lasts a whole other week.
Andrea:And my nails have been painted for months, which has never happened in my entire life.
Shelby:Alright. And that was Andrea's. Yes, please. Can you say the the brand name again?
Andrea:Olive and June nail polish. Okay. If they have, like, a code for me to give out, you know,
Shelby:that would be They wanna sponsor the podcast? Right.
Andrea:Yep. Feel free. I I no. It's not nobody's paying me to say this. I'm just
Shelby:How how does it stand up in field work?
Andrea:Well, I haven't really been to the field with it, but I don't think it's field work that's the issue. I think it's like washing dishes and cleaning your house. Yeah. And it holds up. Yeah.
Andrea:Yes. And I also know that, like, all of the the female instructors at the field station like to paint their nails. Yes. And so and I've talked to them about this, and they think that it's a good one to go with for field work.
Shelby:Yeah. So for a little context there, IU has a field station. So that's an area where we actively own land in the state of Montana, which is a little strange. And it has some really, really nice facilities where we run a field camp in the summer. And so oftentimes with geology programs or earth science programs, undergrad students are required to take some sort of field component and say spend 6 weeks in the summer in Montana learning how to work in the field.
Shelby:So how to take certain measurements, how to map, and then they come back and and write reports related to all of that. And, yes, the the faculty there are very much into manicures, and we should have a podcast guest next season who is quite prolific when it comes to this. So so maybe they can give us some insight later on. This will
Andrea:not be the only nail tips of geology on the rocks.
Shelby:Yes. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Okay. If you don't mind Yeah.
Shelby:To and I should time me.
Andrea:Say in here when you're
Shelby:Yeah. So just give me a 30, 15, and 5 second countdown.
Andrea:Okay. Ready?
Shelby:I'm ready. This is my first, yes, please segment.
Andrea:Okay. Go.
Shelby:And yes, please. Can we talk more about regional snacks? I love regional snacks. I think that they're this really strange insight into an area that you probably have never been before. It's a little bit like a risk opportunity.
Shelby:So you could go into a gas station on a road trip, find something you haven't seen before, and maybe it's not so great, but you learn something, or maybe you find something that is really amazing and that you love. So I've already said I'm from Kentucky. I'm a very proud Kentuckian, and I think that Kentucky has some very incredible regional snacks.
Andrea:30 seconds.
Shelby:I had mentioned earlier, Ale 8, which is a ginger soda or a pop. If you're from the area that I'm from, we refer to those pop. It is delicious, produced and manufactured in Winchester, Kentucky. Shout out to Ale 8. If you're ever in the area or if you're nearby, you should make a trip to Kentucky just for it.
Shelby:Another incredible regional snack for Kentucky is beef jerky that's called mingua, m I n g u a. It is the best beef jerky I've ever had, so please make a trip to the state of Kentucky just for these snacks.
Andrea:Shelby, have you ever had a bun bar?
Shelby:I don't even know what a bun bar is. Okay.
Andrea:This is a well, that's because it's a it's a local regional snack. Oh, it was originated in Fort Wayne. Oh, okay. And it is a maple, like, nutty interior. It's like a maple nougat with, like, some with, like, some nuts in it, and it's covered in chocolate.
Andrea:I'll get we buy them at our very, very local small grocery store, by the box.
Shelby:Are they are they available regionally or just I've never
Andrea:seen one in Bloomington.
Shelby:Okay.
Andrea:But if I did, you wouldn't because I would buy them all. Yeah.
Shelby:You're stockpiling all the bun bars. Yes. Yes. Please bring me a bun bar. I wanna experience this.
Shelby:I am very poorly educated on Indiana regional snacks. So would be welcome for suggestions from you or from the viewers because I do feel pretty strongly about this. I think that, like, these are diamonds in the rough and
Andrea:and
Shelby:can be some of the best things that you've ever encountered.
Andrea:A friend to a geologist.
Shelby:Yes. Yes. Because you always are in places you don't expect. And every now and then, you need a little pick me up.
Andrea:Mhmm.
Shelby:And a bum bar sounds like that would be just it. Yes. Alright. I wanna thank Andrea again for joining us today. And for our listeners, tune back in next week when we'll have a new guest on the podcast.
Shelby:See you then. Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant, EAR dash 2422824.
